the romance of dead trees

If there is a “Crisis In Student Media”, maybe it’s this: student media has become the romance of dead trees. It’s a very good question why none of the student newspapers don’t have online presences beyond dumping grounds for rejected content. The official and internalised line is “It’s too hard,” but with a school full of IT students looking for work experience, that’s a copout: I suspect the real answer is that student media isn’t really about content so much any more: the newspapers tend to recycle the same thematic elements over and over, as noted.  & journals, well - they’re getting better. But they’re not nearly harsh enough, I think. There’s still a lot of pure junk in there sometimes. But all of this is totally irrelevant, because these things have transcended content. All that really, really matters is the production of the printed word, the nostalgic ecstasy of the production of physical objects.

Matt, in Thoughts on the Student Media Symposium, whose comments perfectly describe my forays into student media this year and last.

"I didn’t begin as a reporter at my school paper (was rejected, actually) or an intern at a magazine. I began as a blogger. In 2003. Sources didn’t return the calls of bloggers in 2003. And so I developed a heavy reliance on, and a healthy attachment to, the ugly stepsister of reporting: research. Since I couldn’t depend on experts to tell me what they thought, I had to read what they’d written. And that had some drawbacks — there really is no substitute for talking to people — but also some advantages. The difference between reading a think tank paper and interviewing the author is the difference between learning what an expert thinks you should know and learning what you think you want to know. There are advantages to both. But I think traditional outlets have a tendency to overvalue the benefits of interviews and undervalue the benefits of document diving."

The graphic novel, available in its entirety online or in PDF, reimagines Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis, and places the characters in modern but no-less politically tumultuous Iran.

From the website: Since the Revolution in 1979, Iranians have coped with an increasingly repressive regime. Attempts for greater social and political freedoms have resulted in brutal crackdowns by the hardline government. The ensuing apathy and significant boycott of the 2005 presidential elections led to the election of the ultraconservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Four years later Iran has become increasingly alienated and its people more polarized than ever before. The campaign of former Prime Minister Mir Hussein Moussavi galvanized voters hoping for change, especially among the youth – two thirds of Iran’s population is younger than 32. On June 12th 85% of eligible voters cast their ballots and what happened next changed Iran forever…

(via buyhercandy: alohanico: thetwelfth)

Trying not to quote the entire thing was difficult.

In many ways, the Internet is providing a next generation public sphere. Unfortunately, it’s also bringing with it next generation divides. The public sphere was never accessible to everyone. There’s a reason that the scholar Habermas talked about it as the bourgeois public sphere. The public sphere was historically the domain of educated, wealthy, white, straight men. The digital public sphere may make certain aspects of public life more accessible to some, but this is not a given. And if the ways in which we construct the digital public sphere reinforce the divisions that we’ve been trying to break down, we’ve got a problem.

(via anthropophagous)

Tweet @wunderkammermag with the words that you think should continue the story. Check back tomorrow to see if your sentence was published. Stop by everyday to read the growing story.

(via portraitoftheartistasayoungman)

"Young people may regret tomorrow what they make public today but I think we will all be protected by the doctrine of mutually assured humiliation (I won’t dig up your college-party picture if you don’t dig up mine)."

buyhercandy:

“PDF Search Engine is a book search engine search on sites, forums, message boards for pdf files.

You can find and download a tons of e-books but please respect the publisher and the author for their creations if their book’s copyrighted.”

Um, new favourite site?

A typical day on tumblr.

taf:

Scroll through, scroll through, scroll through, OMG PICTURE OF HAIRY VAJAYJAYS WITH GOOGLY EYES ON THEM.

Scroll through.

outofprint:

Reblog to spread the word if you feel so inclined.

I’m crying a bit, no lie

"People can obviously do whatever they want with their blog. But just to FILL UP your tumblr with stuff that’s basically interchangeable and mindlessly easy to appreciate and unarguably aesthetically pleasing — I mean, fuck. Your tumblr is just a half-price Nicholas Sparks book. In massmarket paperback."