Journalism, Avengers, something for everyone

Did you know that the history of video has recently been re-written?

British photographer Edward Raymond Turner patented color motion picture film in 1899, but the credit for the first fully functional system went to George Albert Smith’s Kinemacolor in 1906. Researchers at the National Media Museum recently discovered that Turner had in fact shot a few rolls of color film that were languishing in the museum’s archives and set out to see if they worked.

Edward Raymond Turner had no idea in 1899 that you would see this:

From the first parrot, the first people shot in color, to the biggest blockbuster of 2012, re-imagined by the people at Honest Trailers:

A friend had this to say about that trailer:

OK, as a Marvel pseudo-expert, allow me to punch some holes in this “honest” trailer. First, Bruce Banner has ALWAYS been able to turn into the Hulk, just not the other way around. He spends most of his life trying NOT to turn into the Hulk. If you want misunderstood character, see Edward Norton’s Hulk. Anger is what sets off the Hulk, not heart rate. However, in the very first Hulk comic, he changed whenever it turned night. Back stories change. But this one got it right.

Second, every true comic fan knows who Thanos is. If you don’t know who Thanos is, then you aren’t a fan, you are someone who went to see a movie. And that’s fine. But don’t hate because you like superheroes with S’s and bats on their chest so you know who to root for.

Third, Loki didn’t die at the end of Thor, he just let go. He’s a god. He’s immortal. He also has inter-dimensional teleportation capability, see character back story.

And that’s what happens when the comic book set chimes in.

Story about news of the day: Alex Green is the editor of the student newspaper at Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn. One of his professors, he learned, was leaving school. Green started looking into into the public records and learned the professor was facing of “having attempted to meet with a minor child” at a gas station. He wrote a story. School president Dr. Stephen Livesay ordered it killed.

So he publised it himself, out of his own money. He also emailed a PDF version. As you might expect, all of this earned a big reaction.

All of that to get you to the latest, from Jim Romenesko:

This morning I talked to Bryan College Triangle adviser John Carpenter and asked: Are you aware that Alex Green called and asked me to remove the post?

The adviser said he was.

Did you or someone else at the college tell him to make that call? I asked.

“I can’t comment on that,” Carpenter said.

OK, that answers that question, I thought. (Someone else I talked to this morning believes the editor “has been guilted” by the college president to believe he did something wrong by publishing a story about a professor charged with trying to hook up with a minor. Green hasn’t returned a message that I left this morning.)

And that, friends, is a president big timing a student. (For even more, here are notes from a meeting the president had in the aftermath. He would not allow that meeting to be recorded because he can flex that particular puny muscle.)

Update: Now President Livesay says “In hindsight, this may have been a mistake.”

Yes sir. For all sorts of reasons. First, while The Triangle is a class project, and thus under the purview of the administration, Green published this of his own accord after you shut him down. Second, you overreached in your reaction with regard to the intrepid young report. Third, from the university’s PR perspective you’ve now made this much bigger for you than it had to be.

Sure, this is a private school, and we can talk all about the case law. But there should be more to the ethical and moral leadership of students than the case law. The good folks at Bryan, as Dr. Livesay said tried “doing the right thing to protect the privacy of a man charged, but not convicted, of a crime” briefly forgot about their other obligation. Seems that everything is being righted now.

By the way, the Student Press Law Center has a great guide for private school media.

Quick links: When the Tuscaloosa News won their Pulitzer last year for tornado coverage, an important part of that was how they used Twitter. But don’t tell the Associated Press, which is vowing to not break news on social media.

Moving away from their paywall, The Times and the Sunday Times will allow their stories to be indexed by Google, or at least the headlines and the lead. They’ll come around.

Facebook discovers re-targeting, which ad-sellers have been using for years.

From Neiman, something we’ve been saying for a while, too, students really need to know digital research. In some respects, this is a “Can you find it?” era.

On my Samford blog I wrote about perception and elisions as they pertain to quote accuracy.

A picture! On my Tumblr! And more things, of course, on Twitter.

And, now, for no reason whatsoever, a shot of the fountain in Ben Brown Plaza on the Samford University campus this afternoon:

fountain

I work in a beautiful place.

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