The Cory Maye Case

Your 18-month old daughter is cuddled along your side. The moon shines brightly on her face through the bedroom window. The only noise emanating from this room is the repetitive sound of snoring.

BAM!

Your door gets kicked in by police officers wielding dangerous weaponary. Fearing for your life, what do you do in a situation like this?

This scenario was adapted to the real-life story of Cory Maye, an African-American man who was peacefully sleeping when his bedroom was broken into as part of a drug raid. Further details and commentary on the situation can be found at Battlepanda and Professor Kim, a Mississippi professor's blogs.Scared for his own life and that of his young daughter, he instinctively fires his own pistol at one of the police officers -- the caucasian son of the town's police chief.

Authorities later found out that the drug raid was meant for his neighbor, a man who lived on the other side of the house. Authorities initially did not find any drugs in Maye's part of the house, but later altered their story as to finding traces of marijuanna.

Although the situation is extremely unusual, there is one point that can be brought up: gun control.

Police officers are trained not to fire unless necessary. Hypothetically, had Cory Maye not owned a weapon in his bedroom, police officers would have held him at gunpoint and searched him only to later identify him as the wrong person.

Granted, a gun would provide adequate "protection" against home intruders of any sort (robbers, serial killers, even police officers). However, a compr0mise needs to be achieved: allow homeowners to own tasers or other sorts of defense that will disable the offender but not murder them. This applies not only to the Cory Maye case, but also to society in general as handguns clearly pose a threat to society, even to those who are licensed gun owners.

This topic can be debated for hours on end, but one thing is for certain: accidents do happen...but they can be prevented at the same time!

Wiki...The Final Frontier...

Imagine the whole world uniting for one common purpose: to share wealths of information. Scratch that! There's no need to imagine as this concept already exists with Wikipedia. Such a site is possible through the use of wiki technology - the ability to let anonymous visitors freely edit a webpage at their own leisure.

As we speak, Wikipedia entries are updated very frequently (and in some cases, more than once a day). This prevents Wikipedia from ever becoming obsolete as long as Internet users continue to contribute. Besides the encyclopedia, the authors of the same site also created other Wiki-based sites which include...

• Books (cookbooks, computer manuals, etc.)
• Dictionary and Thesaurus
• Directory of Species
• Collection of Quotations
• Updated News

Have no fear computer illiterate people! It's VERY easy to contribute information using wiki-technology! It resembles typing in Microsoft Word as users type in a white box in which the text is editable (ex: boldface & italicized). Wikipedia currently has a "sandbox" open to new users; this page allows those who are unfamiliar with wikis to practice before they actually edit real, legitimate content.

Like blogs, the design layout of a Wikipedia entry is similar to that of a blog. Let's use the entry on the Thirty Years' War as an example. This particular entry has a Table of Contents similar to that of a blog's "Recent Posts" box which allows visitors to navigate through different topics. It's also important to note that graphics and artwork are integrated into the text as it wraps around the images. There is also a great deal of interconnectivity as hyperlinks are abundant allowing for many entries to become linked to each other somehow.

Are wikis simply a fad that will fade away one day? How will wiki's emergence change the way we publish websites now? Is this new level of interactivity change the way producers deliver the news and consumers receive the news? It will be interesting to note the role that wikis play in our lives and on the Internet over the course of this next decade.

From Vietnam to Space to the Classroom

Fourty-seven years is a long time...even my own mother isn't 47 years young, yet! But for Jeff Gralnick, 47 years equates to a laundry list resume that is full of lifetime broadcasting experiences. And these experiences are not ordinary in any sense, as most broadcast journalists yearn to even have a fraction of what Gralnick has seen.

One right that Gralnick has to brag is his work experience with the big three (ABC, CBS, and NBC). According to his employer, MSNBC's website, Gralnick has notably...

• Reported on the field in Vietnam for CBS News
• Served as a Vice President and Executive Producer for ABC's World News Tonight
• Served as an Executive Producer of NBC's Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
• Served as an Executive overlooking the creation of ABCNews.com
• Covered Astronaut Alan Shepard's mission in 1961
• Produced the coverage for every U.S. space flight through Apollo 11
• Covered man's return to space in 1988 after the space shuttle Challenger's accident

Gralnick's shelf is crowded with gold as he's become the receipient of many emmy awards, according to Consumer Reports. Several of these recognitions were earned for his journalistic efforts during the 1991 Gulf War, and 1992 presidential election. His nearly five decades of excellence in the field makes him a modern-day Walter Cronkite.

As a graduate of New York University and an adjunct professor of new media at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Gralnick is sure to be familiar with the NYC metro area -- including Fairfield University. He is scheduled to speak at Fairfield's campus on Wednesday April 5th.

When he makes his visit, I will pose these two questions to him:

1. During your experiences in covering the Vietnam war, did you have a pro or anti-war stance? Did either of these stances pose difficulty in doing your job as an unbiased journalist? This question intrigues me as I am of Vietnamese descent and am always curious as to what people thought of the war, as well as how much it personally affected them.
   
2. If you had to choose your most and least favorite experiences during your 47 years - what would they be? I want to see if he is able to choose two moments throughout his vast career or if he will cop out and say he enjoyed every single minute of it.
   

It will be a pleasure for our Digital Writing class to become enlightened by his presence when he comes and speaks to us.