Backdrop Magazine — OUT NOW

Pick up your copy of Backdrop Magazine, OUT NOW!
Available at most newspaper/magazine racks around Athens and the Ohio University campus!

Property of Backdrop Magazine

Can somebody get Cosby outta here?

Bill Cosby getting… “creative”?…. with an intro to the Temple vs. Ohio University football game last Tuesday. Special thanks to my friend Jimmy over at the For the Sports Minded blog for posting it and bringing it to my attention!

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Backdrop Magazine drops October 24!

This Friday, pick up the all new issue of Backdrop Magazine— Ohio University’s premiere fashion, arts, entertainment and culture magazine!!

Catch the editor-in-chief, publisher and photo editor making celebrity appearances on Real Time with Ryan Real, Athens’ channel 25 at 8 p.m. anytime this week! They will also be making an appearance on ACRN (All-Campus Radio Network) on Friday evening, promoting the Backdrop release party which is Saturday, October 25th, 10 p.m. at 19 South. DJ Sills of Oh Snat! It’s an Interview Show! will be interviewing Octoberfist and the Red Army who will be performing at the event. Other acts at the release party include DJ An-log, Nig Unit, Jesty Beatz and Grade School!

Make sure you pick up a copy of Backdrop Magazine this Friday and hit up the official release party Saturday night at 19 South!

Backdrop Magazine Release Party event page
Become a fan of Backdrop Magazine on Facebook

Delaware city police will patrol, learn at the Athens/OU Halloween bash

By Matt Gerish
SNPOnline.com
Click here for the original article

Delaware city police will head back to school next month following the Monday, Oct. 13 approval of a mutual-aid agreement with Ohio University police.

During its Oct. 13 meeting, Delaware City Council approved an agreement to allow Delaware city police to join forces with OU police officers.

The university’s police department invited Delaware police to join them on bike patrol during the annual Halloween Block Party in Athens.

Delaware Police Chief Russ Martin said large annual events in Delaware such as the Little Brown Jug are creating a need for better crowd control.

Martin said more on-the-job training is needed to continue to develop the skills and tactics necessary to deal with the issues associated with such large events.

Although not a school-sanctioned event, Athens and Ohio University receive thousands of out-of-town visitors every year who join the party on the city’s main drag.

“We just think it’s an opportunity for our officers to get some real good experience down there,” Martin said.

Martin will send five Delaware police officers to Athens for the Nov. 1 event.

The officers will pair up with an Ohio University police officer to patrol the crowds on bike.

“It’s a little out of the ordinary. We know it’s not a neighboring community,” Martin said. “It very well could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We’ll just see how this goes.”

Martin said the Ohio University Police Department will pay Delaware back by providing its nationally certified bike instructor for Delaware’s 2009 bike training school at no cost…

Click here for the full story

The problem with the college admissions process and standardized tests

I came across this article in the New York Times today that talks about how college admissions tests (ACT’s, SAT’s) are hurting well-qualified students. It’s a fierce continuum; colleges choose applicants with slightly better test scores over students who didn’t test as well but have clearly more experience in the field they wish to enter as a college graduate. They do this because colleges reach higher rankings from [accreditation] organizations that calculate the average ACT/SAT test scores of its first-year students, and use those rankings to garner more attention and market themselves as a more exclusive and meritorious university. This higher marketability ultimately means that the university is allowed to charge more for tuition and/or elicit more public funds from the government.

What a disappointment. Although I made very good grades in high school (shout out to Coral Springs Charter School) I did not score high on the SAT’s or ACT’s (at least not high enough to separate me from the pack– 1110 on the SAT and I think a 25 or 26 on the ACT). Yet by the time I was ready to apply to college, I had already worked at two newspapers, was the editor of my high school newspaper for two years, plus some other accomplishments I’ll tactfully not mention. I thank my lucky stars that Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism accepted me and has worked with me on my somewhat lackluster performance in non-journalism related courses. Some people just aren’t cut out for generalized memorization and consistently high performance on useless liberal arts exams [cue scathing criticism for my unappreciation of liberal arts classes].

My point is this: some people are worth more than can be summarized by arbitrary test scores. You can’t assign an academic value to a killer smile and a good handshake.

While I’m on the topic of college entrance exams and grades, check out this great essay by Caroline Bird titled “College is a Waste of Time and Money”. It was required reading in my high school AP Language class and I thank Mrs. Curland so much for providing us with an alternative perspective on going to college. When you a high school junior/senior, everyone is pushing college down your throat. Curland was there to say “Stop, calm down, think about your life. Read this essay and think about the direction you want your life to take… Your life is your own to create.” She never discouraged any of us from choosing to go to college, she just wanted to make sure we were going for the right reasons.

Below is an excerpt from the New York Times article by Brent Staples:

“Imagine yourself an admissions director of a status-seeking college that wants desperately to move up in the rankings. With next year’s freshman class nearly filled, you are choosing between two applicants. The first has very high SAT scores, but little else to recommend him. The second is an aspiring doctor who tests poorly but graduated near the top of his high school class while volunteering as an emergency medical technician in his rural county.

This applicant has the kind of background that higher education has always claimed to covet. But the pressures that are driving colleges — and the country as a whole — to give college entry exams more weight than they were ever intended to have would clearly work against him. Those same pressures are distorting the admissions process, corrupting education generally and slanting the field toward students whose families can afford test preparation classes…”

From the CQ Weekly: PR Executives Challenge Candidates To Be Ethical

I was browsing this week’s Congressional Quarterly [CQ] weekly newsletter when I came across this interesting article. You can rest assured that if I come across an article about public relations that mentions Tim Russert (may he rest in peace) and Barack Obama, I’m posting it.

I wonder if it is “ethical” of me to post this entire article? Good thing tomorrow is SCRIPPS DAY at Ohio University, where a host of topics will be discussed by several panels of notorious journalists, professors, and mass communication professionals. One such panel is being hosted by my professor of media ethics, Bernhard Debatin. His panel discussion is “Blogging: Are Individual Voices Enriching or Devaluing the Landscape?” and the keynote speaker is E.W. Scripps Company CEO and President Rich Boehneso, who will commemorate the 20th year of the E.W. Scripps/Ohio University relationship. Try to make it if you can!

The aforementioned article (thaaank youuuu Ohio University Libraries’ InfoTree!):

By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff
Click here for the original article
(may require registration)

They are called flacks and spin doctors, and it’s usually not meant in a nice way. So it seemed a bit ironic last month when the Public Relations Society of America, which represents 32,000 PR people around the country, sent letters to the Obama and McCain campaigns urging them to avoid “innuendo, incomplete information, surrogate messaging and character attacks” between now and Election Day.

That irony is the point, says Jeffrey Julin, a Denver-based public relations executive who is chairman of the PR association.

“We understand that there are lots of people who think that public relations is spinning and manipulation of information,” he said. “We’re saying that’s not the kind of public relations we practice or promote. Messaging is an important thing to do, but in a respectful way that is accurate.”

Julin says he initially got the idea to challenge the campaigns last fall, when the now-deceased host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert, spoke at a society conference in Philadelphia and said that American voters deserve a “more respectful discourse” during election campaigns. The society then launched a networking group on the Facebook Web site called “Clean & Fair Campaign 2008,” which now has more than 2,200 members.

But earlier this year, when GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois promised a new kind of political campaign — and seemed quite sincere about it — Julin thought his plan to challenge them to conduct a more upright dialogue would prove unnecessary.

It didn’t turn out that way, though. Since the Republican and Democratic conventions this summer, Julin says, “We’ve slipped back into business as usual,” with both campaigns slinging charges only loosely tied to reality.

The society’s letters in August to the communications directors for the McCain and Obama campaigns, Jill Hazelbaker and Robert Gibbs respectively, challenge both to sign the society’s code of ethics, which commits members to the “highest standards of accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and in communicating with the public.”

As yet, Julin says, neither campaign has responded.

Zeller, Shawn. “PR Executives Challenge Candidates To Be Ethical.” CQ Weekly Online
(September 29, 2008): 2552-2552.
http://library.cqpress.com/cqweekly/weeklyreport110-000002963714
(accessed October 1, 2008).

Why does America vote on Tuesdays?

Tonight I saw Gideon Yago, a former MTV News correspondent and current writer for Rolling Stone and Spin magazines, speak at Ohio University about the current political atmosphere and the impact the Millenial generation will have on America and the world as a whole. One of the many issues for which he advocates is moving the U.S. election day either to Saturdays, or make nationwide elections a national holiday to help increase voter turnout. This really resonated with me… So Gideon name-dropped “Why Tuesday?”, a non-profit organization working toward fixing this big hole in our election process. Watch the video to check out what “Why Tuesday?” hopes to achieve as soon as possible!

Click here to become a fan of Why Tuesday? on Facebook!

From WhyTuesday.org…

In 1845, before Florida, California, and Texas were states or slavery had been abolished, Congress needed to pick a time for Americans to vote. We were an agrarian society. We traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the three days of worship. So that left Tuesday and Wednesday, but Wednesday was market day. So, Tuesday it was. In 1875 Congress extended the Tuesday date for national House elections and in 1914 for federal Senate elections.

Today, we are an urban society, and we all know how hard it is to commute to our jobs, take care of the children, and get our work done, let alone stand on lines to vote. Indeed, Census data over the last decade clearly indicates that the inconvenience of voting is the primary reason Americans are not participating in our elections.

If we can move Columbus Day, Presidents’ Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Holiday for the convenience of shoppers, why not make Election Day more convenient for the sake of voters? First and foremost, it is time to end the deafening silence of good people on this vitally important issue. So we ask: Why Tuesday?

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Mister Got Heat sticker giveaway!

That’s right everyone– Athens’ best band ‘Mister Got Heat’ rocked three shows over the past week in Athens, Ohio. According to my sources. Mister Got Heat will be playing at this year’s Halloween celebrations on Court Street! Yes!

As a result of this awesome news, the first five people to send me their mailing address contact info will receive a free Mister Got Heat sticker within the next 7 business days!

Check out their main website, www.MisterGotHeat.com, for some music samples or check out their next show.. more info will follow!

Click here for Mister Got Heat’s MySpace Music Page
Click here for Mister Got Heat’s Facebook Fan Page

Photo from The Ohio University Post

An Athenian genius: Patrick McCourt and midevil.us

That’s right people… you can’t contain those prodigal Ohio University graphic design/video production students. Check out the website for my friend Patrick McCourt and his brand, midevil.us!

You can usually catch Patty M at Jackie O’s Irish Pub and Brewery where he works (and is known to imbibe the native spirits of Athens)… If you see him, buy him a drink (it was his birthday last weekend) and give him props for his kick-ass photos/designs!

Oh yeah… and while you’re at it… get DIALED.

Experimenting with Photoshop Layers

Just felt like posting this for the heck of it. I’m taking a class at Ohio University called Graphics and Audiences (JOUR 338) and we’re learning about Photoshop layers/effects. I made this in about 10 minutes toward the end of my last class:

I wanted to juxtapose tanks shooting something other than ammunition, so I made them shoot fish.

Below is my homework, where we had to take nine of the same object and apply different effects to each of them. It’s not much to look at– I mean it meets the general requirements for the assignment– but I like it nonetheless:

Any critiques/comments from some Photoshop gurus out there? Your constructive criticism is always appreciated!

-Mike