Monday, April 24, 2006

What to Wear to a Non-Protest

Washington Post fashion editor (and 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner) Robin Givhan had an interesting take, from a communication perspective, on the organized effort of gay and lesbian families to make their presence felt at the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn last week.

Although criticized by some for politicizing an event that has taken place annually at the White House since the Rutherford B. Hayes administration, organizers said their actions were not a protest, but a chance "to give our fellow citizens the opportunity to see us as real families, participating in a great American tradition..."

That effort, wrote Givhan, put the gay and lesbian participants "in the difficult position of wanting to underscore the averageness of their families, while simultaneously and quietly identifying themselves as a group that is different."

Their solution, she reported, was to reject initial plans to wear t-shirts identifying them as LGBT parents and families and, instead, wear rainbow leis.
A T-shirt [wrote Givhan] is fashion's equivalent of a billboard. They are not subtle or nuanced, boiling a complicated issue down to a few words, a symbol or a slogan. (Silence = Death. A peace sign. Choose Life.) T-shirts are not a tool for dialogue or diplomacy. They are not a gentle form of persuasion.

Accessories such as necklaces, rubber bracelets or satin ribbons, on the other hand, whisper one's affiliation, mumble something about ideology, politely request support through all the proper channels. Thank you very much. And please, sir, will you hear me out?
The result, according to Givhan, was mixed: "The symbolism of a T-shirt is loud. It's braying. It's in people's faces. Those leis were polite, but they also mumbled the message."

Friday, April 21, 2006

PressDisplay: Same-Day Newspapers from Around the World

PressDisplay, the newest addition to the BC Libraries' collection of online databases, lets you look at more than 250 newspapers from around the world, exactly as they appear in print and on the same day they are published.

PressDisplay includes papers from more than 50 countries and in more than 30 languages, with the current edition and a 60-day archive.

To select a newspaper in PressDisplay, click on the Newspapers tab on the right of the opening screen. You can click to view a list of newspapers from a particular country or, via the drop-down menu, by language or from an A-to-Z list.

After selecting a country (or a language or letter of the alphabet), the screen will show a list of titles in that category in the far left and the front pages of each of those newspapers in the center. Click on a title or a front page to go to that newspaper.

To zoom in on a particular article, click on any part of the text or click on the magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen. Once you are in an article, you can move around the page by holding down the button on your mouse and moving the mouse up or down, left or right. To zoom back out, double click on the page or click again on the magnifying glass.

Among the papers included in this online service are:
  • Washington Post
  • USA Today
  • Chicago Tribune
  • Los Angeles Times
  • New York Daily News
  • Columbus Dispatch
  • Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
  • Le Figaro (France)
  • La Nacion (Argentina)
  • Irish Times (Ireland)
  • Kathimerini (Greece)
  • Huriyet (Turkey)
  • Asharq Al-Awsat (Saudi Arabia)
  • The East African (Kenya)
  • and many others
A detailed tutorial for PressDisplay will be available on the BC Libraries Web site soon.

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:
Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Bloggers Cross the Border

Two announcements about bloggers crossing the borders of the mainstream media caught my eye this week.

One is the launch today of BlogBurst, a blog syndication service that feeds selected blog content to newspaper publishers to incorporate into their online sites or print editions.

The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express, Austin American-Statesman, and the Gannett Co. have signed up for an initial trial with blog content in five topical areas: travel; women's issues; technology & gadgets; food & entertainment; and local news.

Eric Auchard of Reuters reports that BlogBurst staff members review and edit blogs before offering them to participating newspapers. "Everything that flows on to publishers' sites they have the opportunity to bless and to put a unique spin on while giving them the quality levels they are looking for," Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck Corp. (BlogBurst's parent), told Auchard.

In another development, online news aggregator LexisNexis announced it would be adding full text blog content in partnership with Newstext and its Blog on Demand service. The content, licensed, tagged, and routed by Newstext, will cover such categories as art, career, economics, environment, finance, food, health, law, and others, according to the announcement.

Monday, April 10, 2006

New Communication Books at BC

The April edition of New Communication Books in the BC Libraries is now online.

This edition features 39 books added to the collection in recent weeks, including titles in such areas as: Communication Theory & Research; Political Communication; Religion & Communication; and others.

Follow the links on the New Books page to view the catalog records for each of these titles and see if they are available. Links to past editions of New Communication Books are at the bottom of the page.