UCABJ/UC SPJ Mixer & Movie Night

We're hoping to see all of you journalism, communications, E-media, and English majors at this Thursday night's mixer & movie night in the basement of McMicken Hall. Get some grub, "talk shop" with fellow student journos, and enjoy our showing of Shattered Glass. The 2003 film is all about ethics in journalism, delivered by the deceptions of Stephen Glass (played by Hayden Christiansen), a former writer for The New Republic, whose antics cost him his job. What? We're a journalism organization. Did you think we were going to show Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle?

Start time: 7:30 pm (general body meeting at 7!)

Location: McMicken Hall basement

Sponsors: The University of Cincinnati Association of Black Journalists and the UC chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists

See you there!

EVENT ALERT: Night at the Movies

I just got notice of this event and wondered who might want to attend:

February 3, 2008

Sunday, 2PM

Cincinnatri Museum of Art

(Eden Park)

A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES...RACE MOVIES

Presents

BODY & SOUL

Cincinnati World Premier of Oscar Micheaux's 1925 silent classic featuring the inimitable Paul Robeson in his first screen role. A short documentary celebrating Robeson's life & career, A Tribute to The Artist follows along with a discussion/Q&A with Pamela Thomas of BFMMI.

Tickets $7 or $9 day of show.

check www.cincyworldcinema.com for ticket specifics

Presented by BFMMI & Cincinnati World Cinema

February 21, 2008

Thursday, 7-9 PM

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

RACE MOVIES: A PRESENTATION

Featuring

MIDNIGHT RAMBLE:

OSCAR MICHEAUX & THE STORY OF RACE MOVIES

Experience the early age of Black American Cinema. Learn thehistory of 'race movies,' films made primarily by, for and about Black Americans. Beginning in 1910 through 1950 (WWI), Blacks began to embrace the new medium of film.

A panel discussion/Q&A follows the screening with MR producer, film historian & Executive Director of BFMMI, Pamela Thomas; University of Dayton Entertainment Law Professor, author, performer & former Columbia Pictures VP of Production, Dennis Greene; and Cincinnati's own favorite son, Mr. William Mallory, Sr., Ohio's first Black American Majority Floor Leader and 2008 class of Great Living Cincinnatians reflects on early Black cinema in Cincinnati.

This event promises to be a lively evening & is free & open to the public.

Sponsored by BFMMI & NURFC

Happy Birthday To You...

In the spirit of the holiday, I thought I would put up some excerpts from the speeches and writings of Dr. (or “the Rev.” if you prefer) Martin Luther King, Jr. We have probably already been bombarded by sound bites of the "I Have A Dream" speech, but these tend to present a tame, watered-down representation of the prophetic, global, and sometimes subversive nature of what King stood for.

There’s a passage in James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” in which he writes about the “emasculation of acceptance.” He references great figures he reveres that were each a “fury” in their own time – people like Beethoven, James Joyce, and of course, Jesus Christ. Somehow, after receiving official acceptance, the edges get softened and the things that make great people revolutionary is replaced by something more palatable for those with a vested interest in keeping things the same. I fear this is happening to Dr. Martin Luther King.

Dr. King was cursed by presidents, governors, clergy, black entrepreneurs, and other civil rights leaders. In his final years, many in the American press were devoting massive energy toward portraying him as an unpatriotic, communist sympathizer. The early ‘80s campaign to make his birthday a federal holiday was opposed by people like Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Trent Lott. (Reagan only relented and signed the holiday into law after both houses of Congress passed it with a veto-proof majority.)

He was not universally loved in his own time, and some the things he stood for – like the peace movement, the labor movement, and affirmative action – continue to be touchy subjects now.

So today, let’s remember some of the things King said that are more challenging and revolutionary – things that might make us more uncomfortable.

“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
- Taken from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963)

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
- Taken from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)

“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.”
- Taken from “Beyond Vietnam,” a speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City (4 April 1967)

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
- Taken from “Beyond Vietnam,” a speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City (4 April 1967)

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.”
- Taken from “Beyond Vietnam,” a speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City (4 April 1967)

“A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, ‘This is not just.’ The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.”
- Taken from “Beyond Vietnam,” a speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City (4 April 1967)

~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ

Another Wire Post

OK, yes, I'm on a Wire kick. Sue me. But first read Secrets of the City: What The Wire reveals about urban journalism. You'll thank me.

Aiesha D. Little
NABJ Adviser
University of Cincinnati Association of Black Journalists

Only Two Months Left!

Early bird registration for UNITY 2008 ends on March 14, 2008! The quadrennial event, the country's largest convention for minority journalists, is sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Native American Journalists Association.

For more details, go to www.2008unity.org.

No Good Black Journalists?

I know this blog is meant to be about journalism and I've already written an entry about The Wire's new newspaper angle, but I thought this Associated Press quote from David Simon, the show's creator, is pretty interesting:

"Let me indict Hollywood as much as I can on this one. We have more working black actors in key roles than pretty much all the other shows on the air. And yet you still hear people claim they can't find good African-American actors. That's why race-neutral shows and movies turn out lily-white."

Rejigger this a little and Simon could easily be talking about the field of journalism. How's that for relevance?

adl

Aiesha D. Little
NABJ Adviser
University of Cincinnati Association of Black Journalists

Desert Power

On this second day of the new year we were all greeted by a fun piece of news about the price of oil. They say that for part of the day oil was finally selling for $100 a barrel on the market. I decided to fill up my tank today in anticipation of a rise in gas prices. I thought I was clever until I saw the line at the pump at the nearest UDF.

As I looked at news broadcasts about it on TV and listened to radio reports, my mind went to an odd place. I thought about a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert that was first published in 1966. The book is called Dune.

(I know, I know. Unbearably nerdy. Hear me out though.)

During one of the awkward silences while Terron Austin (president of UCABJ) and I were in Detroit last November, I tried to explain how innovative the novel was. I told him the book featured space travel and futuristic gadgets like a lot of other science fiction. But these things were just plot devices in a story that was really about imaginary (but strangely familiar) political intrigue. I knew it was time to shut up when Terron gave me one of those looks that said, "I'm listening because I'm courteous, not because I'm remotely interested."

It's a complicated story, but as it relates to oil and journalism, I'll just highlight the role of a fictional substance called "the spice melange." In the universe of Dune, spice is central to the economy and modern life in general partly because it is absolutely necessary for transportation. In all of the galaxy, spice comes from only one planet called Arrakis. Arrakis is only of interest to most people in the galaxy because of the spice. In all other respects it is a barren wasteland - rain never falls on the entire desert planet (hence the nickname "Dune"). The various power players in the galaxy have long engaged in Machiavellian maneuvers against each other to gain political and economic control of Arrakis.

The rich and powerful make war, colonize, backstab, make agreements and break treaties over Arrakis. Every time something changes in the political situation on Arrakis, the elites try to figure out a way to capitalize on it and the rich contemplate the impact it will have on the spice-dependent economy of their own planets. By the time the main events of the novel take place, this has been going on for generations.

Still with me? Great.

Now things get interesting because, for all of their conniving and calculating, for all of their gadgets, money and armies, the elites completely overlook the natives of Arrakis, the Fremen. The Fremen are so desperately poor and culturally isolated the galactic aristocracy doesn't even know how many of them there are, and doesn't really care. Almost none of the elites even understand their language or religion. Despite the incredible wealth being mined and shipped from the world they inhabit, they are so lacking in basic necessities that they drain water from the dead to give to the living and no one ever cries for fear of losing H2O. They are unimaginably poor, and (surprise, surprise) a little bit miffed about it.

Skipping to the end, these Fremen and a prophetic outsider from another planet end up overthrowing the elites and take over the galaxy because of their deep understanding of their home turf. This unforeseen advantage is dubbed "Desert Power."

OK, where am I going with this? As we talk about oil reaching this long talked about economic threshold and how it will affect the economic lives of Americans, I think journalists should probably put some time into discussing where this oil is coming from. There is a lot of anger in many oil-rich parts of the world and there is a lot of poverty in these places too, but I rarely see media even attempting to report on the connection.

A lot of us seem to have this perception that the oil just so happens to come from places where people don't like us. I think too little thought and attention is given to the fact that part of the reason they hate us is because we are buying up their oil. I'm not saying terrorism is even remotely justified - not when others do it to us or when we or our allies do it to others. Targeting civilians is always barbaric.

But we do business with people (like the Saudi royal family, for example) that exploit the forgotten populations of their nations in the Middle East, South America, and Africa (and Louisiana). Incredible oil wealth is hoarded by a precious few that enjoy the favor of Washington and Wall Street while masses live in relative squalor. And for some wild reason, the "rogue states" with lot's of oil get more attention from our media and our invasion forces than the ones that don't.

Then when we see angry faces on the evening news we shake our heads and wonder "Why would anyone hate us?" As morally shallow as that is, we often move from that to another comment that might be just plain dangerous. "They're so small and powerless, who really cares what they think anyway?"

As we discuss how much Americans might be spending on gas this month, we should also consider the source and unpredictable strength of "Desert Power." It might surprise us. It definitely has before. If we play our cards right and fight for justice, it might even work to our advantage.

(See! This nerd stuff is good for something after all!)

~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ