The White House + Social Media

The 1978 Presidential Records Act states that White House staffers must preserve all presidential records-- but does that include Twitter messages? Facebook posts? Emails?

Next Tuesday Brook Colangelo and David Ferriero will testify before the House over how far the 1978 Presidential Records Act extends.

As this WSJ blog post states, it makes sense that with the increase in communication outlets, these rules need to be clarified.

Thoughts on 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners

This week the winners of the Pulitzer Prize were announced and a couple of things struck me as interesting.

1. The first award was given for non-print (ie online) reporting to ProPublica's "The Wall Street Money Machine"

and

2. For the first time there was no award given out for local reporting of breaking news (even though there were four finalists in the category).

These two things show that online news is considered credible enough that it is deserving of a Pulitzer, and that there is something lacking in local reporting.  I think that it is very significant that there was no prize given out in that category.  They could have given the prize to any of those finalists, but they chose not to.  Any other thoughts on this?

(see list of other winners here)

Female Reporters

I think someone posted about something similar last week, but I saw this article in the Washington Post and wanted to post on it as well. 

Emily Wax writes about being a female correspondent overseas in light of the sexual attacks on Lara Logan and Lynsey Addario. 

Wax makes the point that these women need to be trained in how to deal with the dangers that they are susceptible to in these war-torn countries.

While maybe one can make the argument that women should not place themselves in situations in which they could be in danger, women reporters, unlike men, are able to connect to the women in these countries and hear stories that male reporters may be unwilling to report on (women in the Congo who needed vagina reconstructions due to violent gang rape, for one example).

The answer to the safety of these women reporters is not for them to not be in these places, but for their editors to train them in how to stay safe in these situations.  

The WSJ Wrote It Best: "Here's an Unlike.ly Tale: Gadhafi Does Swimming.ly on the Internet"

Unbeknownst to many, the .ly internet domain name is actually owned by Gadahfi.  

Many people like to use web services like Ow.ly and bit.ly which enable them to shorten domain names and the .ly is especially popular because of the memorable domain names they can create ("For those without their own adverb indexes, the company helpfully posted a list of "8,742 words ending in ly." While cruel.ly, gris.ly and smel.ly are taken, inept.ly, violent.ly and psychotical.ly remain available, the company said."- read the entire Wall Street Journal article here).

In fact, most of the users of .ly are not actually Libyans, 43% of .ly users come from the UK, US and Canada. 

This, naturally, has created a small scandal for those who do not want to be supporting Gadahfi, not that the $75 is costs to create a .ly is his main income source, but it's the priniciple. 

(Side point- everyone needs to get together and decide on one way to spell Gadahfi (WSJ) Qaddafi (NYTimes) Gaddafi (Washington Post) etc. etc. What's up with that?)