World's largest cruise ship sails for US port

World's largest cruise ship sails for US port

By MATTI HUUHTANEN, Associated Press Writer Matti Huuhtanen, Associated Press Writer – 20 mins ago - 31 October 2009

HELSINKI – It's five times larger than the Titanic, has seven neighborhoods, an ice rink, a golf course and a 750-seat outdoor amphitheater. The world's largest cruise ship is finally finished and Friday it began gliding toward its home port in Florida.

The Oasis of the Seas will meet its first obstacle Saturday when exits the Baltic Sea and must squeeze under the Great Belt Bridge, which is just 1 foot taller than the ship — even after its telescopic smokestacks are lowered.

To be on the safe side, the ship — which rises about 20 stories high — will speed up so that it sinks deeper into the water when it passes below the span, said Lene Gebauer Thomsen, a spokeswoman for the operator of the Great Belt Bridge.

Once home, the $1.5 billion floating extravaganza will have more, if less visible, obstacles to duck: a sagging U.S. economy, questions about the consumer appetite for luxury cruises and criticism that such sailing behemoths are damaging to the environment and diminish the experience of traveling.

Travel guide writer Arthur Frommer has railed against Oasis and other mega ships he calls "floating resorts," suggesting that voyages on such large vessels are "a dumbing down of the cruise experience."

Oasis of the Seas, which is nearly 40 percent larger than the industry's next-biggest ship, was conceived years before the economic downturn caused desperate cruise lines to slash prices to fill vacant berths.

"Obviously we did not want or anticipate she'd be born into the most significant economic downturn since the Depression," Royal Caribbean International President & CEO Adam Goldstein told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this month. "Even in this environment, we're excited about her."

It sets sail as cruise lines clamor to increase capacity, adding newer — and bigger — ships to their fleets.

The Oasis of the Seas has 2,700 cabins and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members. Company officials are banking that its novelty will help guarantee its success.

The enormous ship features various "neighborhoods" — parks, squares and arenas with special themes. One of them will be a tropical environment, including palm trees and vines among the total 12,000 plants on board. They will be planted after the ship arrives in Fort Lauderdale.

In the stern, a 750-seat outdoor theater — modeled on an ancient Greek amphitheater — doubles as a swimming pool by day and an ocean front theater by night. The pool has a diving tower with spring boards and two 33-foot high-dive platforms. An indoor theater seats 1,300 guests.

Accommodations include loft cabins, with floor-to-ceiling windows, and 1,600-square-foot luxury suites with balconies overlooking the sea or promenades.

One of the "neighborhoods," named Central Park, features a square with boutiques, restaurants and bars, including a bar that moves up and down three decks, allowing customers to get on and off at different levels.

The liner also has four swimming pools, volleyball and basketball courts, and a youth zone with theme parks and nurseries for children.

Frommer suggests that such ships should never even leave port: "Who would know the difference?"

"If the life on ship were a vital one, then you might justify building a ship so large," Frommer told the AP in an e-mail exchange. "But when the activities program consists largely of ziplines, surf-boarding, rock-climbing, a boxing ring, and imitations of Cirque de Soleil, when the lecture program deals with napkin-folding (the subject matter on other humongous ships operated by the same company), then there doesn't seem much appeal to well-read, intellectually curious people."

Paul Motter, editor of Cruisemates.com, has said that other critics have also complained that these huge ships flood ports of call, dumping 5,000 people all at once in an area.

Motter said suites are sold out for most of the sailings. Junior suites are mostly sold out and there is availability in inside, ocean view and balcony rooms.

He said ticket prices are still high for the Oasis, running $1,299 to $4,829, compared with $509 to $1,299 on the company's next most popular ship, Freedom of the Seas.

While environmentalists have said that the ship does not do enough to reduce air pollution and burns more fuel than a land-based resort, engineers at shipbuilder STX Finland said environmental considerations played an important part in planning the vessel. It dumps no sewage into the sea, reuses its waste water and consumes 25 percent less power than similar, but smaller, cruise liners.

"I would say this is the most environmentally friendly cruise ship to date," said Mikko Ilus, project engineer at the Turku yard. "It is much more efficient than other similar ships."

The Oasis of the Seas is due to make its U.S. debut on Nov. 20 at its home port, Port Everglades in Florida.

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Largest cruise ship squeezes under Danish bridge

By JAN M. OLSEN, Associated Press Writer Jan M. Olsen, Associated Press Writer – Sun Nov 1, 9:23 am ET
KORSOER, Denmark – The world's largest cruise ship cleared a crucial obstacle Sunday, lowering its smokestacks to squeeze under a bridge in Denmark.

The Oasis of the Seas — which rises about 20 stories high — passed below the Great Belt Fixed Link with a slim margin as it left the Baltic Sea on its maiden voyage to Florida.

Bridge operators said that even after lowering its telescopic smokestacks the giant ship had less than a 2-foot (half-meter) gap.

Hundreds of people gathered on beaches at both ends of the bridge, waiting for hours to watch the brightly lit behemoth sail by shortly after midnight (2300GMT; 7 p.m. EDT).

"It was fantastic to see it glide under the bridge. Boy, it was big," said Kurt Hal, 56.

Company officials are banking that its novelty will help guarantee its success. Five times larger than the Titanic, the $1.5 billion ship has seven neighborhoods, an ice rink, a small golf course and a 750-seat outdoor amphitheater. It has 2,700 cabins and can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew members.

Accommodations include loft cabins, with floor-to-ceiling windows, and 1,600-square-foot (487-meter) luxury suites with balconies overlooking the sea or promenades.

The liner also has four swimming pools, volleyball and basketball courts, and a youth zone with theme parks and nurseries for children.

Oasis of the Sea, nearly 40 percent larger than the industry's next-biggest ship, was conceived years before the economic downturn caused desperate cruise lines to slash prices to fill vacant berths.

It was built by STX Finland for Royal Caribbean International and left the shipyard in Finland on Friday. Officials hadn't expected any problems in passing the Great Belt bridge, but traffic was stopped for about 15 minutes as a precaution when the ship approached, Danish navy spokesman Joergen Brand said.

Aboard the Oasis of the Seas, project manager Toivo Ilvonen of STX Finland confirmed that the ship had passed under the bridge without any incidents.

"Nothing fell off," he said.

The enormous ship features various "neighborhoods" — parks, squares and arenas with special themes. One of them will be a tropical environment, including palm trees and vines among the total 12,000 plants on board. They will be planted after the ship arrives in Fort Lauderdale.

In the stern, a 750-seat outdoor theater — modeled on an ancient Greek amphitheater — doubles as a swimming pool by day and an ocean front theater by night. The pool has a diving tower with spring boards and two 33-foot (10-meter) high-dive platforms. An indoor theater seats 1,300 guests.

One of the "neighborhoods," named Central Park, features a square with boutiques, restaurants and bars, including a bar that moves up and down three decks, allowing customers to get on and off at different levels.

Once home, the $1.5 billion floating extravaganza will have more, if less visible, obstacles to duck: a sagging U.S. economy, questions about the consumer appetite for luxury cruises and criticism that such sailing behemoths are damaging to the environment and diminish the experience of traveling.

It is due to make its U.S. debut on Nov. 20 at its home port, Port Everglades in Florida.

Hotel owner tells Hispanic workers to change names

By MELANIE DABOVICH, Associated Press Writer Melanie Dabovich, Associated Press Writer – Mon Oct 26, 4:13 am ET
TAOS, N.M. – Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel.

The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they'd be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names.

No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.

Whitten's management style had worked for him as he's turned around other distressed hotels he bought in recent years across the country.

The 63-year-old Texan, however, wasn't prepared for what followed.

His rules and his firing of several Hispanic employees angered his employees and many in this liberal enclave of 5,000 residents at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, where the most alternative of lifestyles can find a home and where Spanish language, culture and traditions have a long and revered history.

"I came into this landmine of Anglos versus Spanish versus Mexicans versus Indians versus everybody up here. I'm just doing what I've always done," he says.

Former workers, their relatives and some town residents picketed across the street from the hotel.

"I do feel he's a racist, but he's a racist out of ignorance. He doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong," says protester Juanito Burns Jr., who identified himself as prime minister of an activist group called Los Brown Berets de Nuevo Mexico.

The Virginia-born Whitten had spent 40 years in the hotel business, turning around more than 20 hotels in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and South Carolina, before moving with his wife to Taos from Abilene, Texas. He had visited Taos before, and liked its beauty. When Whitten saw that the Paragon Inn was up for sale, he jumped at it.

The hotel sits along narrow, two-lane Paseo del Pueblo, where souped-up lowriders radiate a just-waxed gleam in the soft sunshine as they cruise past centuries-old adobe buildings. One recent afternoon, a woman slowly rode her fat-tire bicycle along a cracked sidewalk, oversized purple butterfly wings on her back and a breeze blowing her long, blonde dreadlocks.

The community includes Taos Pueblo, an American Indian dwelling inhabited for over 1,000 years, and an adobe Catholic church made famous in a Georgia O'Keeffe painting.

After he arrived, Whitten met with the employees. He says he immediately noticed that they were hostile to his management style and worried they might start talking about him in Spanish.

"Because of that, I asked the people in my presence to speak only English because I do not understand Spanish," Whitten says. "I've been working 24 years in Texas and we have a lot of Spanish people there. I've never had to ask anyone to speak only English in front of me because I've never had a reason to."

Some employees were fired, Whitten says, because they were hostile and insubordinate. He says they called him "a white (N-word)."

Fired hotel manager Kathy Archuleta says the workers initially tried to adjust to his style. "We had already gone through four or five owners before him, so we knew what to expect," Archuleta says. "I told (the workers) we needed to give him a chance."

Then Whitten told some employees he was changing their Spanish first names. Whitten says it's a routine practice at his hotels to change first names of employees who work the front desk phones or deal directly with guests if their names are difficult to understand or pronounce.

"It has nothing to do with racism. I'm not doing it for any reason other than for the satisfaction of my guests, because people calling from all over America don't know the Spanish accents or the Spanish culture or Spanish anything," Whitten says.

Martin Gutierrez, another fired employee, says he felt disrespected when he was told to use the unaccented Martin as his name. He says he told Whitten that Spanish was spoken in New Mexico before English. "He told me he didn't care what I thought because this was his business," Gutierrez says.

"I don't have to change my name and language or heritage," he says. "I'm professional the way I am."

After the firings, the New Mexico chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a national civil rights group, sent Whitten a letter, raising concerns about treatment of Hispanic workers. Whitten says he sent them a letter and posted messages on the hotel marquee, alleging that the group referred to him with a racial slur. LULAC denied the charge.

The messages and comments he made in interviews with local media, including referring to townsfolk as "mountain people" and "potheads who escaped society," further enflamed tensions.

Taos Mayor Darren Cordova says Whitten wasn't doing anything illegal. But he says Whitten failed to better familiarize himself with the town and its culture before deciding to buy the hotel for $2 million. "Taos is so unique that you would not do anything in Taos that you would do elsewhere," he says.

Whitten grew subdued as a two-hour interview with The Associated Press progressed. He said he was sorry for the misunderstanding and insisted he has never been against any culture.

"What kind of fool or idiot or poor businessman would I be to orchestrate this whole crazy thing that's costed me a lot of time, money and aggravation?" Whitten said.

Whitten should have dealt with the situation differently, especially in a majority Hispanic town, said 71-year-old Taos artist Ken O'Neil, while sipping his afternoon coffee on the town's historic plaza.

"To make demands like he did just seems over the top," he says. "Nobody won here. It's not always about winning. Sometimes, it's about what you learn."

The Other Side Of Me

Adopted Christian Name ............Real Jewish Name

Joey Adams ....................................... Joseph Abramowitz

Eddie Albert ........................................Eddie Heimberger

Woody Allen...................................... Allen Konigsberg

Lauren Bacall ..................................... Betty Joan Perske

Jack Benny ........................................ Benny Kubelsky

Milton Berle ...................................... Milton Berlinger

Ernest Borgnine ..................................Effron Borgnine

George Burns .................................... Nathan Birnbaum

Joan Blondell...................................... Rosebud Blustein

Joyce Brothers ...................................Joyce Bauer

Mel Brooks ....................................... Melvin Kaminsky

Joey Bishop ...................................... Joey Gottlieb

Charles Bronson ................................ Charles Buchinsky

Rona Barrett .......................................Rona Burnstein

Cyd Chrisse .......................................Tula Finklea

Tony Curtis (daughter is Jamie Lee Curtis)........ Bernhard Schwartz

Joan Crawford ................................... Lucille Le Sueur

Dyan Cannon ..................................... Samile Diane Friesen

Kirk Douglas (son is Michael Douglas) .......... Issur Danilovich Demsky

Bob Dylan ...........................................Robert Zimmerman

Rodney Dangerfield ............................Jacob Cohen

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. ........................ Douglas Ullman

Joel Grey (father of Jennifer Grey)................... Joel Katz

Zsa Zsa Gabor ....................................Sara Gabor

John Garfield ...................................... Julius Garfinkle

Judy Garland ....................................... Frances Gumm

Paulette Goddard ................................ Pauline Levee

Eydie Gorme........................................ Edith Gormezano

Elliott Gould ........................................Elliott Goldstein

Cary Grant ......................................... Larry Leach

Lorne Green ........................................Chaim Leibowiz

Judy Holliday ....................................... Judith Tuvim

Leslie Howard ...................................... Leslie Stainer

Buddy Hackett ..................................... Leonard Hacker

Jill St. John ........................................... Jill Oppenheim

Danny Kaye........................................... David Kaminsky

Alan King .............................................. Irwin Kniberg

Larry King...............................................Larry Zeiger

Tina Louise.............................................Tina Blacker

Ann Landers (Abigail Van Buren is her sister) .........Esther Friedman

Dorothy Lamour ................................... Dorothy Kaumeyer

Miehael Landon .................................... Mike Orowitz

Steve Lawrence .................................... Sidney Leibowitz

Hal Linden............................................. Hal Lipshitz

Jerry Lewis ........................................... Joseph Levitch

Karl Maiden ..........................................Maiden Sekulovitch

Paul Muni ..............................................Muni Weisenfreund

Ethel Merman ....................................... Ethel Zimmerman

Jan Murray ........................................... Murray Janofsky

Walter Matthau ..................................... Walter Matasschanskayasky

Lilly Palmer ........................................... Maria Peiser

Jan Peerce............................................. Jacob Pincus Perelmuth

Roberta Peters...................................... Roberta Peterman

Eleanor Parker...................................... Ellen Friedlob

Joan Rivers ...........................................Joan Molinsky

Tony Randall ....................................... Leonard Rosenberg

Edward G. Robinson ........................... Emmanuel Goldberg

Dinah Shore ......................................... Francis Rose Shore

Shelly Winters ...................................... Shirley Schrift

Gene Wilder.......................................... Eugene Silverstein

Winona Ryder....................................... Laura Horowitz

Fact or Fallacy ?

Ariel Sharon:
"We control America"

"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."
- Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001.




"Israel controls the United States Senate."
- Sen. William Fulbright

The slow decline of newspapers and television (or why Singapore sports fans see little relevance in local media)

The slow decline of newspapers and television (or why Singapore sports fans see little relevance in local media)

Oct. 30, 2008 - By Les Tan

Managers who need to figure out where to spend their limited sports marketing dollars would not have missed the war of words between The Straits Times and MediaCorp this week about their respective readership and viewership figures.

What started it all?

The Straits Times published a full-page advertisement* highlighting itself and three other papers (My Paper, Shin Min, The Business Times) for having an increased reach year-on-year. It cites as source the 2008 Nielsen Media Index survey**. (The New Paper (TNP) is absent from this ad because its readership has fallen since last year.) The same advertisement points out that the reach of free-to-air television channels (Channel 5, U, 8, CNA) has fallen anywhere from 1.9% for CNA to 3% for Channel U.

MediaCorp sent a letter to the Straits Times forum (Wednesday, October 29, 2008, page A23) in reply. While they did not dispute the reach numbers, the Deputy CEO of MediaCorp stated that the absolute numbers of viewers for their channels have gone up, quoting viewership statistics from Taylor Nelson Sofries (TNS). TNS uses the people meter system, measuring television sets electronically across a sample of households on a minute-by-minute basis.

So who is correct? Both are, but only because they are looking at different measurements. While MediaCorp is focusing on absolute numbers, the Straits Times is focusing on reach. While everyone understands absolute numbers, “reach” is advertising industry jargon.

Reach is defined as the size of the audience who listen to, read, view or otherwise access a particular work in a given period. So when the Straits Times says in its headline that “1.44 million read ST”, it doesn’t mean the researchers met 1.44 million people who read the Straits Times. The Nielsen Media Index survey only interviewed 4,700 respondents aged 15 years and up. The 1.44 million figure is therefore only an extrapolation, an educated guess.

The more relevant statistic is “circulation”, the number of newspapers distributed everyday. The circulation figures of English newspapers are showing a long-term decline. In a separate set of figures provided online by the Department of Statistics, circulation of English newspapers dropped 24.5% from 2002 to 2007. Looking at the Audit Bureau of Circulations and numbers culled from littlespeck.com, the circulation of the Straits Times in particular has dropped 3.5% from 1998 to 2007 (see graphic below).

The circulation number is far more illuminating because it is a better indicator of true behaviour. If you pay for your newspaper, you are actually going to read it.

Reader surveys on the other hand, have an inherent flaw by their very nature. Folks always tend to ‘upgrade’ their answer to avoid looking like an uneducated fool. A Maxim magazine reader may not admit to reading the title and tick “The Economist” magazine instead, for example. If you don’t read papers at all, you may indicate otherwise just to come across a little more educated to yourself or the surveyor. So the fact that the Nielsen Media Index survey indicated that the Straits Times has 105,000 more readers this year than last must be taken in that light.

As for television, their lower reach numbers this year simply indicated that as a percentage of the population, fewer households are watching free-to-air telvision channels. So while their absolute numbers can go up, as a percentage of the population, television viewing is down, and so the Straits Times advertisement in correct. The declining reach shows a decline in relevance, regardless of the absolute numbers.

What has this all to do with Singapore sports?

If you are an advertiser or public relations executive leveraging on your sports sponsorship, it is relevant because you have to find an emotional connection with your Singapore audience. The problem now is to find them. Reaching them through the traditional media like the local newspapers and free-to-air television channels has yielded declining results over the years. An emotional connection is hard to make, especially if the medium concerned has had less relevance to the sports consumer over the years.

Perhaps the local English newspapers have seen the long slow decline in circulation over the years because of just this lack of relevance. The sports sections of English newspapers focus primarily on the international sports scene. The New Paper is essentially a newspaper dedicated to the English Premier League, so its drop in readership may be even more alarming for Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) Limited which owns the paper. If you can’t keep your readership with coverage of what is supposedly the most entertaining football league in the world, then the future looks bleak.

The newspapers can provide so much international coverage because of the globalisation of news. They depend on the news agencies (Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse) for all the sports stories that you read (you can see the relevant agency quoted at the end of each story in the papers). The problem with this approach is that whatever you read in the sports section is already online the night before.

Furthermore, this service does not come cheap. There is no way to ascertain how much SPH pays because the figure is not in the public domain but the experience of newspapers in the United States may be indicative.

An editor of a US newspaper was quoted by the New York Times as saying that her paper pays over US$1 million in fees per year to the Associated Press (AP). The way the rates are structured, newspapers outside of the US are charged more for the service.

Since SPH would have bargaining power with their huge stable of newspapers, a conservative estimate of the fees they pay to AP and the other agencies would amount to S$2 million per agency per year, or S$6 million in total per year. Just S$1 million would pay for 20 extra reporters to cover the local sports scene.

As a result of this focus on international sports, the local newspapers do not provide a continuing story about Singapore sports, the S.League coverage being a case in point. The S.League is Singapore’s only professional sports league yet receives little or no continuous coverage in the Straits Times or the New Paper. The coverage in Today is paid for and so should be seen as advertorial rather than editorial coverage.

Newspapers are seeing a general trend globally of declining circulation. The Christian Science Monitor, a 100-year-old national newspaper in the United States, has abandoned its daily print newspaper and will appear online only and will sell a weekly magazine hard copy to subscribers. The New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., was asked if the well-known paper would still remain a print product in 10 years. He said: “The heart of the answer must be (that) we can’t care,” Sulzberger added that he expects print to be around for a long time but “we must be where people want us for our information.”

Given our unique environment where the newspaper industry is seen as a pivotal element in Singapore’s political stability, few expect the Straits Times to get ravaged so badly by market forces as to become a dinosaur and fail. There is no competing alternative to the Straits Times in this market to inflict that kind of mortal wound to its reputation and circulation.

As for television, since the collapse of Sportscity at the end of 2001, the sports-only channel that MediaCorp had on air for only two short years, there has been no serious sports programming to speak of on free-to-air television. Television plays an even smaller role in the local sports scene when compared to the newspapers, limiting itself only to the odd news story or documentary about sports. There is no weekly sports programme that covers the Singapore sports scene comprehensively. Sports television is now dominated by cable, with its focus on international sports events, particularly the English Premier League football.

So the Singapore sports story, which once dominated the imagination of an earlier generation with sports heroes like C. Kunalan, Quah Kim Song and Chee Swee Lee – athletes that could strut confidently on the South-east Asian and Asian scene – is now a frail sapling living in the shadow of a foreign implant. The decline is inversely proportional to the increased coverage of international sports.

Singapore newspaper circulation figures

The circulation of local English newspapers is down while Chinese newspapers show an uptrend. (graphic © Les Tan/Red Sports)

*Source: The Straits Times, Tuesday, October 21, 2008, page B8 (The ad quotes as its source the Nielsen Media Index 2008)

The Straits Times: +1.9%
My Paper: +1.2%
Shin Min: +0.9%
The Business Times: +0.5%

Channel 5: -1.5%
Channel U: -3%
Channel8: -2.1%
CNA: -1.9%

**At this point, I am still unable to find a full copy of the 2008 Nielsen Media Index survey and so it’s not possible to provide a third-party view of all the competing claims. My guess is that the report is only available in full to those who pay for it.

Blogging Is Dead, Long Live Journalism - An Excerpt

Blogging Is Dead, Long Live Journalism
BY Kit EatonThu Oct 22, 2009 at 11:39 AM

Technorati's regular "State of the Blogosphere" analysis of the business is just out, and among the stats is the incredible fact that bloggers are being paid more than ever. Is it time to rethink the definition of blogging? Yes.

First, the stats. Technorati's killer finding is that among the professional bloggers they surveyed who fall into the "full time" worker category, the average salary works out at $122,222--an enormous figure. Those full-timers equate to 46% of the respondees, which means that the majority of bloggers are part-timers--but these guys still take home some $14,777 per year, which isn't to be sniffed at. That means the average blogger salary is about $42,548. The money isn't primarily coming from employers (14% of bloggers work for corporations). Nor is it pouring in from ads on self-published blog pages--the financial meltdown put a massive dent in Internet ad revenues. Instead, bloggers are leveraging their popularity and expertise into speaking engagements, "traditional media" assignments, and setting up and running conferences, as VentureBeat notes.

In other words, blogging is now a diverse, popular and successful enterprise that covers a multiplicity of online writers, from extensive Twitterers to self-described Mommybloggers to tightly written, up-to-the-minute, smartly edited online publications like this one--a "professional blog" by Technorati standards. And it's in that last sense that blogging is becoming a farm system for future journalists, who are apparently riding out the economic downturn pretty well (on average, at least). Think about that for a moment, and then remember how many traditional journalism jobs have been lost over the same period.

So here's the radical suggestion: Let's redefine what blogging means. If you're writing self-absorbed or inexpert opinions about the minutiae of daily life, without hyperlinks, fact checks or any pretence at engaging with the news, you're a blogger. You probably fall into the lower categories of pay in the Technorati survey if you in fact make any money at all. But if you're a writer for an online publication, one that takes real-time stories, updates them as events unfold, reference your quoted facts, break stories and produce original writing then shall we just say you're a journalist? An online one, but a journalist all the same.

And when you maneuver your thinking in this direction, you come to a strange new conclusion: Journalists who write for online versions of their (perhaps historic, perhaps not) newspapers are the same as journalists who write for totally different online news portals. Even the Pulitzer committee has said online entities can consider themselves eligible for its prestigious prize, with some limitations.

If the FTC would only figure this out, it would likely scrap its insidious plans to regulate how bloggers behave--an action that many are labeling as unfair, and possibly motivated by behind-the-scenes lobbying and cronyism from newspaper moguls. The FTC has moved back from its aggressive stance a little, but it certainly targets bloggers as a workforce while leaving traditional journalists unmentioned. That's a position often reflected in opinionated but ill-informed commenters on blogs whenever traditional media is downplayed.


But no matter how vehemently the FTC or old guard media moguls reject the coming change, it's still coming. If the advent of ubiquitous mobile Web technology and imminent graphics-rich tablet PCs hasn't signaled the change strongly enough, Technorati's data on blogger income should. Blogging's about to shed its ugly caterpillar stage and emerge as journalism's future.

Even in America’s Mecca, a need for education and understanding of Islam

Even in America’s Mecca, a need for education and understanding of Islam
by Lauren E. Bohn
Oct 06, 2009

Lauren E. Bohn/MEDILL
About half of the people who showed up for an evening of prayer and food at the opening of Islam Awareness Week on Monday were Muslim, which means half were not.
The non-Muslim numbers, organizers said, were up from previous years.
Jennie van den Boogaard, a freshman in Northwestern’s Asian and Middle Eastern Studies department, counts herself among the non-Muslim half.
"Given today’s politics, I can’t imagine studying anything else," she said.

Van den Boogaard was one of about 80 students, many curious to know more about Muslim life, who listened to guest scholar Mufti Hussain Kamani explain the Five Pillars of Islam, the foundation of the Muslim experience.

The education is necessary.
A Pew Research Center survey, released last month, found that Americans see Muslims as facing more discrimination inside the U.S. than any other major religious group. The poll also found that two-thirds of non-Muslims – 65 percent – say Islam and their own faith are either very different or somewhat different, while just 17 percent take the view that Islam and their own religion are somewhat or very similar.
The survey underscores the goals of the week’s organizers.
"We’re not saying people are ignorant," said Atiya Haque, Muslim-cultural Students Association co-president. "We’re just trying to make 1.2 billion people in the world a bit more visible."

Another participant agreed.
"People generally don’t know much about Islam, but luckily our generation is curious," said Goher Mahmud, a doctoral student who led the night’s prayer.
"Tonight’s prayer service may have been the first time many people have seen Muslims praying," he said. "And there are, what, 1 billion Muslims around the world?"
Haque notes that since 9/11, she often finds herself fielding questions about Islam. The most frequent inquiries emanate from a perceived gender inequality in the religion.
"Though it seems so clichéd," she said, "this week is about showing people it’s not 'us' versus 'them.'"

With roughly 400,000 Muslims, Chicago is regarded as one of the largest and most dynamic and influential communities in the United States.

Gerald Hankers, outreach coordinator of Chicago’s Council on American-Islam Relations, said Chicago is known as America’s Mecca -- the perfect classroom to learn about an oft-misinterpreted religion.

Islam Awareness Week will also focus on Northwestern’s student endeavor to create an Islamic Studies Program at the university.

The student initiative began last year, calling for the creation of an academic program dedicated to fostering a complete understanding of the religion through a multidisciplinary lens.

"Islam is a global religion – one of the fastest growing – and without a program dedicated to a complete understanding of an otherwise misunderstood faith, we are undermining our understanding," said Dulce Acosta-Licea, Northwestern senior and Islamic Studies Program Committee Chair.

"And that's the last thing we need to be doing right now," she said.

___________________________________________________________


The Five Pillars of Islam
1. Testimony of faith (Shahaadah): Fundamental to a Muslim's spiritual life is the declaration of faith: "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah."
2. Prayer (Salat): Muslims perform five prayers a day.
3. Almsgiving (Zakat): Muslims give a small percentage of their annual savings as alms or charity.
4. Fasting (Sawm): During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunup to sundown.
5. Pilgrimage (Hajj): The annual pilgrimage to Mecca is an obligation once in a lifetime for those who are physically and financially able to perform it.

The Truth behind the conflict in Xinjiang, China – from an Uyghur Muslim

The unrest in Xinjiang (East Turkistan), is near and dear to my heart. I am an Uyghur living in Chicago. My parents and the rest of the family are still in Xinjiang. While they are away from Urumqi where the clashes happened, I still have not been able to get hold of them in past couple of days as the authorities have shut down internet and telephone services. I am praying every moment for their safety.

Uyghurs are the Turkic speaking Muslim people living in the northwest part of China under occupation. Their short lived republic, East Turkistan went under Chinese communist rule in 1950. Since then they have been subjected to severe discrimination because of their Muslim identity and they have seen their 97% majority in Xinjiang shrink to almost 50% in last few decades. There are many underlining sources of tension and humiliation of over 10 million Uyghur Muslims.

I am writing to you for your support in helping spread the word and plight of Uyghur Muslims. I go to Juma prayers and everyone prays about suffering of the Palestinians, Kashmiris, Afghanis, Iraqis and Chechnyans, however not once I have heard someone pray for the Uyghurs.

We are the forgotten people in this world and not even our Muslim brothers and sisters have ever provided any moral support for us. Well I’m asking for the support in this hour of dire need. My brothers and sisters are being persecuted as we speak. They have been captured in mass arrests with no sight of what will happen to their future. Uyghur woman with their children have went on street to protest against the mass arrest of thousands of Muslim Uyghur men.

Under communist Chinese rule we are not allowed to practice our religion until the age of 18 and even after the age of 18 if anyone who works for government like teachers and doctor are not allowed to pray or go to Mosque. Our children and teachers are force fed in schools during the month of Ramadan. There is a governmental agenda to slowly take Islam out of common people’s lives. Majority of the high paying jobs go to the Han Chinese with a lot less qualification in our own home land. Our culture is being slowly disappearing.

I urge you to send this to your friends and families and condemn the killings and mass arrest of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. I ask you to pray for the safety of the people of East Turkistan (Xinjiang), Uyghurs and Han Chinese. I ask you to please stand in solidarity with your Uyghur Muslim brothers. The moral support of Muslim community means a lot to me and the Uyghurs as we are desperate to be seen and heard by our brothers and sisters.

I urge you to send a message of solidarity with Uyghur Muslims and pray for them. I urge you to send this message to at least 5 other family members and friends.

Sincerely,

Zulfiye Osman

Noman Khan (husband)