Good reads for 01.21.08

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Melissa Worden

>> Media are off their game plan, says LAT’s Bill Dwyer:

Our society has a massive appetite for drama, and little for reality. We read about Britney Spears when we need to read about Afghanistan. And the media, which has the mandate — and the constitutional right — to lead us from this abyss, are all too often not doing so. Media, which once led public opinion, now all too often follow it.

We aren’t just talking celebrity scandal sheets, weekly shoppers and sports-talk radio.

Last week, a Los Angeles bureau executive of the Associated Press, no less, put out a memo to staff that said they were to pay more attention to developments about Britney Spears. The message was: She is news.

No she isn’t. She is titillation. She is a troubled young woman whom we cover with delight, rather than empathy. She is web hits, the current fool’s gold of the newspaper industry.

Out of this toxic atmosphere comes the current chapter of the Kelly Tilghman story. Racism is ugly, even the inadvertent kind. Perpetuation of racism under the guise of journalistic creativity is worse.

The consumer, especially the more thoughtful type, is both aware and confused.

>> The “Google Generation” aren’t expert Googlers, says a new UK study:

It’s true that young people prefer interactive systems to passive ones and that they are generally competent with technology, but it’s not true that students today are “expert searchers.” In fact, the report calls this “a dangerous myth.” Knowing how to use Facebook doesn’t make one an Internet search god, and the report concludes that a literature review shows no movement (either good or bad) in young people’s information skills over the last several decades. Choosing good search terms is a special problem for younger users.

So what’s true about the Google generation?

* They like to cut-and-paste. “There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and plagiarism is a serious issue.”
* They prefer visual information over text. “But text is still important… For library interfaces, there is evidence that multimedia can quickly lose its appeal, providing short-term novelty.”
* They multitask all the time. “It is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills.”

>> Teens find online news stressful and a reminder of danger, according to a Northwestern University study.

Among the research findings and recommendations:

Because news often is stressful for teens, news outlets should actively experiment with ways to diminish negative associations and make news a better springboard for talk, action and change; writing about teens’ feeling of peril and about the subjects they’re worried about; and increasing attention given to solutions and problem-solvers.

Awww. The poor kids. We don’t want them to get stressed out by the news, do we? Now I’m all about serving the reader … but really??? Seriously??

Here’s a quote on this coddling problem from a story on parents.com:

“We’re hurting our children by expecting too little and giving too much — too many toys, too much help, too much leeway in how they can behave,” contends Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., an adjunct assistant professor at Harvard University and author of Too Much of a Good Thing. “By always trying to protect them from adversity, we’re depriving them of the chance to learn coping skills. By not setting appropriate limits, we’re undermining our children’s character development. I worry about how this generation will handle the challenges of adulthood.”