Turning to the audience

There's been a rash of shootings over the past several weeks, the most recent being at Northern Illinois University (story and video here), where five people were killed.

CNN.com did something interesting. They asked college students whether they thought their campuses were safe, and posted the responses.

It got me thinking about our own campus. I'm most definitely being naive in thinking that something like the NIU shooting won't happen here, but the truth is that it could happen anywhere. The CNN story really shook me. Instead of having a talking head on TV describing the incident, a group of my peers wrote in about not having doors that lock from the inside, and how effective the campus police are.

This is not to say that the story made me paranoid. It hasn't. But it's made me examine the Northeastern campus much more closely. The fact of the matter is, it happened at Virginia Tech. It happened at Northern Illinois. It could happen here.

To Catch a Predator, and other fun things

Over the weekend, I taped a special on MSNBC of the popular Dateline segment, "To Catch a Predator." If you're not familiar with the show, here's how it goes: Perverted Justice, an internet watchdog group, sets up shop somewhere, and the volunteers enter chat rooms as decoys pretending to be young teens. The teens then chat with older men, who usually end up coming over, only to find Chris Hansen waiting for them.

So, I've been a fan of the show for a while. I've also had an ex who was arrested in an online sex sting, so I guess I've been secretly hoping I'd see him on an episode so I could ridicule him. Today I saw that a study has been released rejecting the "stereotypical" online predator. The study, done by the the Crimes Against Children Research Center at UNH, stated that teens are not in any more danger on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

It's funny, because two years ago, this story came out about how such sites actually attracted sexual predators (then again, the story claims that Newton North High School is in Boston, so already its credibility takes a huge hit). I'm sure that such websites have made it infinitely easier for predators to stalk people. Most teens post way too much information about themselves on Facebook, and there are too many teenage girls in their underwear on MySpace. I'm inclined to believe the most recent story, however. If you're smart about what you reveal, social networking sites shouldn't pose any more of a problem than anything else.

Fun with Craigslist

Let me start off by saying I am a huge fan of craigslist. I have sold several items, and also bought some cool stuff.

But then there's the entertainment factor. This was posted today:



Note: sorry for the cruddy screen shot. It needed to be done.

Universal Hub reaction here.

I think maybe I might notice the beloved family pet if I were to come across it. Hopefully animal control comes across it before me.

Patriots? Who are they?

Welcome to Boston, where there's a wind chill of -20 and we're already talking about the Red Sox.

Clay Buchholz and Josh Beckett arrive at spring training; Manny gives up the Big Macs in favor of a new workout routine, and Curt Schilling's season may be over before it even started.

I can't wait for April 1.

The future of freelancing

There's a cool service started by a Berkeley journalism student called Reporterist, where freelancers can pitch stories and connect with editors and various publications. It's a really innovative way to make the process more efficient, although the Online Journalism Review points out a couple problems:

1. Stealing ideas
When you sign up and put your portfolio online and begin to pitch stories, there is nothing stopping the publications from taking your ideas. This probably already happens, to some extent. However, this service would just offer more ideas to take.

2. Bidding wars
Technically, the site is not set up to have this option, and the two people who started Reporterist took issue with the fact that the Online Journalism Review pegged it as an "eBay for news." However, I can see how this could potentially happen. If a piece of writing is good enough, it might go to the highest bidder rather than the first publication who picks it up.

3. Credibility - Anyone can sign up. Freelancers are trying to sell a product, but you never know who's on the receiving end. The one thing that could prevent this is that it's a service you have to pay for.

4. Design gripe
I, personally, hate the way the site is designed. Instead of being able to click through all the portfolios
(and right now they're mostly Berkeley grad students), you have to constantly refresh to get a new one. The layout seemed primitive. Could be that the paid version is better. I'm not willing to find out, at this point.

Good idea? Bad idea? I'm leaning toward good in an innovative way.

First the Patriots, and now this?!?!?!?

This is video I took at the Beanpot today of Northeastern's student section. This is why I love NU:



Note: by this point we were already losing 3-1, and that was the final score. I wasn't lucky enough to see the Huskies take home a Beanpot championship in my time at Northeastern. It's been a disappointing couple of days.

Archiving abuse

The Globe had an interesting article today about an effort by two concerned citizens to archive documents online relating to sexual abuse by priests around the country (the story is here).

The website is called Bishopaccountability.org and so far has 93,000 files online.

It's an interesting project. People around the country are donating documents to the cause. The site could be a useful resource for journalists and others seeking info.