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I'm sorry I've been such a terrible blogger this week!

I have so much to tell you!
Some of it is sad and some of it is super awesome.

So be excited - I promise that there will be updates soon. I have to babysit tonight and since I'm going snowboarding tomorrow, I promise that there will be time for updating.

Happy Friday, world. You're beautiful.

On Blogging as Not-Journalism

Judge Hits Blogger With $2.5 Million Fine for Not Being a Journalist

3 minutes ago by Peter Pachal

In a case that’s sending a frightening message to the blogger community, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that a blogger must pay $2.5 million to an investment firm she wrote about — because she isn’t a real journalist.

As reported by Seattle Weekly, Judge Marco A. Hernandez said Crystal Cox, who runs several blogs, wasn’t entitled to the protections afforded to journalists — specifically, Oregon’s media shield law for sources — because she wasn’t “affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

The Obsidian Finance Group sued Cox in January for $10 million for writing several blog posts critical of the company and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Obsidian argued that the writing was defamatory. Cox represented herself in court.

The judge threw out all but one of the blog posts cited, focusing on just one (this one), which was more factual in tone than the rest of her writing. Cox said that was because she was being fed information from an inside source, whom she refused to name.

Without the source, she couldn’t prove the information in the post was true — and thus, according to the judge, she didn’t qualify for Oregon’s media shield law since she wasn’t employed by a media establishment. In the court’s eyes, she was a blogger, not a journalist. The penalty: $2.5 million.

The debate over whether bloggers are journalists has been going on for years, but the consensus has been largely settled — on the opposite side of what Judge Hernandez has ruled. Attorney Bruce E. H. Johnson, who wrote the media shield laws in next-door Washington State, told Seattle Weekly that those laws would have protected Cox had her case been tried in Washington.

In a more high-profile case, an editor from Gizmodo escaped criminal charges after revealing to the world an iPhone prototype lost in a bar. Although police raided the California home of editor Jason Chen in 2010, the case was cited as a test for that state’s media shield law, and the district attorney said publicly this year that no charges would be filed to anyone from the site.

When discussing the case, Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg that he believed Chen was “a guy,” not a journalist. Mossberg countered that he himself was a blogger, and that he thought bloggers were journalists. (You can see the exchange in this video, at about the 17:00 mark.)

Are bloggers the same as journalists? And if not, what is the dividing line? Share your thoughts in the comments.

source: Mashable 

On the Letter of Intent That Isn't

I've been procrastinating for the better part of five months now.
Instead of trying to do the big push for graduate applications due in the fall, I decided to wait until the January 15 deadlines.
So I took the big test. I got my scores back. I am awesome at either knowing stuff or test taking, perhaps both.
In early November, I contacted one of my professors. (Mid-November, maybe.) Then Thanksgiving happened. I still haven't written my personal statement. That's what is standing in the way of graduate school application completion.
Transcripts have been requested, from both institutions of higher learning that I attended. The basic forms have been printed out, inked. Recommendations have been asked for - but I can't get them until I write my statement, because my professor wants to read all of it.
Thus, all I really have to do is write the damn statement. It is three pages. It shouldn't be that hard.

And yet, it is. I stare at the blank page, unsure of how to begin. This is attempt number seven. I've even made it a Google Doc so that Maddie can read it and start appearing in my dreams again (she's my super ego, isn't that strange? Whenever I'm upset at myself, or stressed, Maddie shows up in my dreams and bosses me around. It's oddly effective, although I'm not too sure she's entirely pleased because Dream-Maddie is mean).

If I had my way, I'd write my entire letter of intent like I was writing a profile in a magazine. It'd be a sweet look back at my life from my perch on a sweet couch. I'd have sweet gray hair and a mug of steaming tea. I'd even have my colorful reading glasses dangling from a chain around my neck. Badass.

Instead, I'm being professional. I'm being bland. I'm being overly accomplished - that's a lie, I actually look really bad on paper. Real life me is so much more exciting than paper me. Come on, three pages. Just be out of me so I can edit them and then be on with my life!

On Capital, sort of.

The 99%: "Money Can't Buy You Class"

Social Commentary post by GretchenSisson, Submitted by GretchenSisson on December 5, 2011 - 12:24pm;tagged Beverly Hills, Gossip Girl, inequality, Real Housewives, Wealth.

A very special thank you to the Countess LuAnn of the Real Housewives of New York for supplying the title to today’s post.  I doubt this is what the Countess was going for, but she brings up a good point: what’s the difference between having money and having class privilege?  Is there one anymore?

There’s always been the concept of “old money” and “new money,” and the former seems to spend a good deal of time spurning the latter until begrudgingly accepting them—usually when newer money comes along.  In fact, when Caroline Schermerhorn married William Astor in 1854, this was a marriage of old and new money.  Caroline brought to the marriage old New York Knickerbocker stock (this is where the New York Knicks get their name from) and William Astor brought the new real estate money.  The Astors were now “old” money, and would be allowed to look down their noses at the upstart Vanderbilts with their tacky railroads.

But do these lines between old and new money ever really go away?  The Beverly Hillbillies of the 1960s showed us an unsophisticated rural family transplanted into swanky Beverly Hills after oil is found on their land.  Are they accepted by their neighbors? No, obviously not. But their tight-knit family and clearly voiced morals place them as superior to their rich, superficial neighbors.  If upward mobility won’t get you accepted by the people with money, well, that’s OK—did you really want to be like them anyway?

Even on Gossip Girl, ruling prep school princess and over-achiever Blair Waldorf is portrayed as a bit of an upstart because both of her parents have earned, rather than inherited, their money (like Serena’s parents did).  As Jenny (who lives in Brooklyn, takes the subway to school, and makes her own clothes, so is clearly “poor”) tells Blair in season two:  “You might be privileged, Blair, but you work for every single thing you’ve achieved. Like me. Serena just glides through.”

What’s really going on here?

Well, the Countess has a point.  Class privilege is something different from having money, even though having money can take you pretty far. (And it should go without saying that class privilege is connected to race privilege—people of color don't have the same opportunities or experiences as white people, regardless of how wealthy they are.)

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu was one of the first to spell out how class privilege really comes from different kinds of capital.  There’s the obvious kind: economic capital, cash money, the stuff that gives you purchasing power and freedom from having to worry about how to pay rent, your heating bill, and your student loans.  

Then there’s social capital.  This is your network: who you know, who your parents know.  Unsurprisingly, if you go to a fancy prep school with the grandsons of Congressmen and the daughters of business leaders, you have pretty darn high social capital.  You have easier access to sources of power, which means you have more power and privilege.

Finally, there’s cultural capital.  This form of capital is not who you know, but what you know about how to succeed in the culture you live in.  (It can also include what you own, based on what you purchased because of what you know.)  So, if you’re well educated, and you read the right books, know the right artists, own the right gadgets, watch the right TV shows, can name the right designers, speak with the right accent, and eat with the right fork—well, that’s a form of privilege all on its own.  Middle-class families can be really, really good at giving their children lots of cultural capital, even when they lack economic and social capital.

I’m opening my series with this little sociology refresher so that, as you (hopefully) read on, you understand what I mean when I refer to class privilege, and you can think about what kinds of privilege different characters in pop culture might have and where they got it.  Additionally, when we talk about social mobility, we might wonder with kinds of capital are most important to that mobility.  Because, really, we’re not just talking about money.

source: Bitch Magazine