UPDATE

My brother gave me an awesome update about the protests that I haven't been seeing in the media. When he stopped by he said there were a large number of high school student along side of their teachers. They had a day off and they spent it in (in my opinion) improving our country.

Sunday February 20th

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bearing-witness-20-you-ca_b_231096.html

I read the article about traditional journalists and onsite eyewitness new media. I agree with Arianna in that part of the issue with todays traditional journalist is the lack of emotion "leaving a chunk of yourself" in each story, I would attribute that to objectivity. We read Orwell recently in a class and while there are ethical issues with his piece the honesty in his writing allows the reader to acknowledge that we are looking at the issues through the writer's eyes and it induces a critical eye. With both traditional and new media the amount of information that is available to you is unable to sift through and, lets face it, it all contradicts each other. Readers have to make judgments about what they read, transparency gives them at least a context for the lens they are viewing an event through.

There is the part of me though that is frustrated that Arianna wrote this article in which she is clearly unhappy with the mainstream media which she has always been critical, and yet the news of the AOL I think devalues a lot of her ability to do exactly what she is preaching. I hope she takes her own advice and continues to support the thousands of blogger and tweets. What I think would be really interesting is if she posted on her blog about AOL and the ways in which they interact with her and the huffington post. I don't know if that is possible with nondisclosure contracts but I think that would be really interesting as far as creating a new hybrid of media.

Thursday 17th

My brother today texted me from Madison letting me know about the protesting going on there.

Here is what he told me is what he is seeing and hearing in the state:

"the budget bill cuts public workers benefits and ignores unions. The Dem senators left so that there was no quorum and they can't vote. Like up to 100,000 people were at the capital at a given time during the past three days. The past two days and probably tomorrow 20-some public schools closed for teacher absences. While I was there people were trying to sit down to prevent the Rep senators from leaving. I heard rumors that the police were going to clear out the capital."

He also gave me a blog to look at for information:

http://budget.wispolitics.com/

http://budget.wisc.edu/budget-news/chancellor-martin-sets-record-straight-on-flexibility/

One part focused on the falsehoods being spread in the media (didn't find those sources) about Madison University and the part was places for citizens to post. There were a few really interesting post where you could see citizen journalist had talked to different people unlike the mainstream media.

I looked at CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/17/wisconsin.budget/index.html?hpt=C1

They seemed much more focused on the national politics of it. They ignored the people on the ground and focused about what the governor was saying and how necessary it was especially in the current climate and that Wisconsin wasn't the only state thinking about these kind of cuts.

I also found two blogs that are focused on local issues:

http://www.dane101.com/

http://bluecheddar.wordpress.com/

Overall it seems like the facts of the story are the same between indy and mainstream but what is varying is the way in which it is approached. When I asked my brother what the feel was in madison that people were either very involved and thought the governor was out of line or that people were not concerned.