Walter Lippmann has been rattling around in my brain for the past few weeks. Part of it is because my class, Media & Society, is right up his alley. The other part is because I’m being subjected to the latest pseduo-event in the news, the release of Sarah Palin’s new book.

I love exposing students to Lippmann because he elegantly strips away all of these ways we falsely see our world. His argument was that most of the things we think we “know” about the world come to us via media, which means that most of how we perceive the world is based on stereotypes. Media, after all, is an incomplete picture merely as a product of its function; we don’t ask what’s not in the picture when looking at a photo, because we don’t think to do so. We put together these individual media moments and over time construct our “view” of something based on little facts, images, and information we’ve consumed via media.

The simple example I use in class is to talk about Paris and then ask students what went through their heads when they heard the word “Paris.” Most of them name famous places – The Eiffel Tower, The Lourvre, sidewalk cafes, leisurely ways of life, etc. Our perception is so shaped by images of famous places, pictures, and writings that it astounds us when something shatters that construct we’ve created by our own use of media. When we hear news of ethnic riots, for example, it doesn’t square with how we view Paris. It sounds a lot more like Los Angeles.

This material is often new to students in M&S. Even the bright ones don’t think of media use as thing that frames our world for us. It’s just media – we’re so immersed in it that it just feels like life. It feels real. Read more

It’s a sad day for those of us who care about journalism and public service. The Rocky Mountain News, a newspaper that existed and served Denver even before Colorado became a state, folded this week and published its final issue this morning.

Much has been said how we got to this point. noted that it’s remarkable the RMN lasted this long, because two-newspaper towns (The Denver Post being the competitor in this case) were a dying breed even 15 years ago. Others have lit up the boards at Poynter, blaming everything and everyone from management to out-of-touch journalists.

In some ways, this is a rehash of what we’ve been talking about for 10 years now. Read more