Daily Archives: February 22, 2009

Impressions of CollegeJourn

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Tonight was the first time that I took place in the weekly CollegeJourn talk. This week it was the “Bring a Professor” chat so in addition to the journalism students that usually take part in the discussion there were a significant number of journalism professors and professionals there as well. Below are some of my first impressions of the system and the mode of communication.

First, as much as I like the idea of a streaming chat interface it was just too many people to make that useful. The lag between entering a message and seeing it appear was just too long. Personally I liked the idea that @joeybaker provided which was combining Twitter hashtags and Tweetchat. This would utilize Twitter and create what seems to me to be a more open group chat forum.

Second, after taking part in a discussion I truly understand the power of tools like Twitter. For something that (correct me if I’m wrong) has only been going on for the last couple months CollegeJourn brings together a surprising number of people who are really, truly bright. The ideas that were being bounced back and forth (even in a limited CoverItLive chatroom) were great. Hearing opinions from students, professors, and professionals was really great for me. Even though I’ve only really been into this college journalism scene since I was hired at the Whitman Pioneer it is something that is truly captivating.

Third, three hours is just too long in the present format. It was exhausting, and frankly I got too hungry by about 7:15 p.m. and had to drop the chat to make dinner. Thus, I missed out on some of the discussion concerning collaboration. While the length provides for some excellent discussion I think that a slightly shorter session (maybe 2 hours) could be a lot more digestible.

Fourth, just to reiterate, there are some really bright students out there in journalism. They’re smart, motivated, and passionate about what they do; it’d be great to have more people like that here at Whitman. CollegeJourn is a great idea and a great place for them all to come together.

Anyway, it was a great experience, and I plan on taking part in future chats. If you’re interested in college journalism, or even journalism in general check it out every Sunday night from 8-11 p.m. EST.

Slumdog Millionaire Protests

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The current Room for Debate article on the New York Times website is a set of three opinions concerning the recent protests in India over the popularity and offensive nature (at least in some eyes) of the Oscar-nominated film, Slumdog Millionaire.

Responding to the calls of some that the film is essentially Western “poverty porn” Sadia Shepard writes that:

In the film, the director Danny Boyle uses a grab bag of recognizable Indian symbols — the Taj Mahal, cricket, Amitabh Bachchan — with which to make his film accessible and entertaining to Westerners. The Dharavi slum as depicted in the film, indeed the very notion of poverty itself, is merely one of these tropes. Choosing to represent squalor as colorful scenery may be in questionable taste, but it’s hardly pornography.

To me this seems to be a very important point to make about the film and it’s potential to be offensive. The reality is that Danny Boyle used the aspects of the slums simply as one more theme in his movie to convey the story. If you have seen the movie then it is pretty apparent that he was not intending to be offensive or derogatory toward the real inhabitants of the slums.

There is an important distinction between what is offensive and what is not that somehow got lost in these protests over the film. A film that was not intentionally offensive and was by no means derogatory to slum residents somehow got re-appropriated as a political catalyst. A more fitting use of political energy for those who are protesting would have been to take the real exploitation that is occurring in the slums and to have used that to provoke protests and political action. Instead, people have simply resorted to using fictional films as a reason to feel compassionate about social issues. It’s time that the real conditions sparked protests and fictional films simply remained as what they are: fictional entertainment.