Mike’s Points

Apparently, Major League Baseball is upset over the most recent “Got Milk?” ad.

According to the AP story on Yahoo!, the ad “talks about a player getting pulled from a game ‘after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.’

In the next scene, a coach pulls a carton of milk from the slugger’s locker.”

MLB’s Exec VP for Business Tom Brosnan noted, “There is nothing humorous about steroid abuse.”

Yes, Brosnan is right. But, it’s just BASEBALL. And, baseball brought its steroid problems on itself through a players’ union being too strong, weak-knee owners, and players not truly strong enough to play using their own abilities. They simply cheated.

Poking fun at MLB’s steriod problem is not going to lesson its dangers and encourage youth to try it. The players making big $$ and getting away with it has and will do far more damage to youth.

Good job California Milk Processor Board and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (who has been producing the “Got Milk?” ads since 1993)!

– Mike

P.S. My favorite is the third one (”tabloid”) where the player claims to have introduced this “substance” to a star player by the name of Javier Castillo. HHHMMMM? Sounds very similar to Jose Conseco?!

Technorati tags: MLB, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Got Milk?, Advertising

A couple stories in the “Joplin (Mo.) Globe” and The Age (Melbourne, Australia) about citizen journalism raise some very good points about the growth of it, and benefits of it.

However, just like recent quality issues have crept up at Wikipedia, the same caution should be noted for any and all citizen journalism sites: quality.

But, in terms of quality, we’re talking about credibility, integrity and just plain verifiable facts. Yes, trained and professional journalists and have their own biases (see related post). But, you expect the truth.

With CJ reports, how can you be sure?

As Clyde Bentley, an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia, Mo., said in the Joplin Globe piece:

“But a citizen journalist is not out to cover something, but to share it. For them, they want to tell everybody about their passion.”

And, with passion, you can get opinion and even false information — purposeful or not.

As Al Gibes, online editor of the “Las Vegas Review-Journal,” said during the recent Society of Professional Journalists’ convention in Las Vegas, “[T]he increased popularity of ‘citizen journalism’ blogs meant newspapers were no longer the ‘gatekeepers’ of news and information, and had to change to avoid being superseded.”

If there is greater competition, newspapers will survive and adapt. That is good. But, just be cautious about what you read. Despite any perceived bias, traditional media is still more credible overall than citizen journalists who are not bound by ethical guidelines.

And, on that note, it looks like OhMyNews in South Korea is getting a North American counterpart with the planned Nov. 1 launch of Orato. I’ll be there when it launches, and keeping an eye on it.
– Mike

Technorati tags: Orato, OhMyNews, Citizen Journalism, Journalism, In the News