Filed under: cronkite, events | Tags: 9/11, George Bush, Iraq, iraq war, President Bush, Russomanno
This week’s Must See Monday featured Cronkite Professor Joesph Russomanno. During the hour-long event, Russoman discussed his new book, Tortured Logic: A Verbatim Critique of the George W. Bush Presidency.
Unlike other books on the subject, Russomanno’s contains more than 18,000 quotes and is a juxtaposition of classic philosophers’ written works and quotes from Bush administration officials. He utilizes these two contrasting points of view, placing their quotes side by side to make it feel as if the two groups are talking to each other.
For example, the book might contrast a quote from John Milton with Dick Cheney or George Washington with former President Bush.
The book explores the misinformation spread to the American people during the Bush administration in order to ‘sell’ the American people on the war in Iraq. Russomanno argues, citing extensive research, that the Bush administration is guilty of cherry picking facts that pertained to their overall world view and disregarded those that did not. This picking and choosing led to a spew of untruthful information, deceit and overall disregard for democracy, he argues.
The Bush administration completely, “manipulated, distorted and warped the information,” Russomanno said.
Russomanno was full of excellent, poignant examples. Still, there is one in particular that stood out. To illustrate the administration’s trickery, misleading spread of information, Russomanno gave an example where Dick Cheney leaked a story to the New York Times about Iraq having purchased aluminum tubes, which could have been used in the creation of weapons of mass destruction. Soon after, Cheney was interviewed on Meet the Press where he misleadingly cites the Times story as evidence of Iraq’s efforts to create weapons of mass destruction.
Throughout the event, Russomanno stressed the importance of truth and transparency to fostering a healthy, functioning democracy. That’s why Russomanno believes that the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in the name of democracy and liberty is so ironic, since Bush, at the same time, was in his belief destroying democracy here in America by allowing officials to spread utterly false information.
Most of all, Russomanno said that he hoped the book gave a more truthful peak into the Bush administration to expose its faults and ensure that they never happen again.
Filed under: Uncategorized
In creating an online presence, I’m looking to build a personal brand as a young, news savvy PR professional who is interested in politics. Beyond that I’m aiming to connect with professionals in both the communications and political arenas as well as follow news updates regarding politics and digital media. As such, I believe engaging in online media through various outlets allows me to really create a well-rounded digital presence. Furthermore, through building a strong personal brand and staying informed on topics, like politics and media, which PR professionals care about, provides a great way for me to attract these professional’s interest in me as an industry authority, and possibly even as a job candidate.
courtesy of tech marketing
Mainly, I believe the people I’m looking to connect with through my online communication efforts are largely on Twitter and Linkedin. With that said, I believe it is much more effective to reach these professionals through Twitter. Twitter is much more informal and shares more about a person’s interests, rather than just career motivations. Moreover, I find that it is common practice to connect with people you’ve never met on Twitter, whereas connecting with people you’re not familiar with is a bit more rare.
In order to be seen as an authority in the PR and political industry, I work hard to limit my posts to things that pertain to those subjects and do not utilize my Linkedin or Twitter for personal use. I also try to regularly post, at least 2-3 times a day, in order to stay relevant but not post too often. And as most of these professionals are exceedingly news savvy, I try to tweet articles or developments that are items that they might not have come across before, unless I catch it as it is breaking.
- Some examples of the people I’ve connected with to interact with on a professional level is:
- @AricZion: CEO @ZIONandZION, #1 PR firm, #3 Ad agency, #1 Social Media firm (Biz Journal / Ranking AZ, AZFM). Located in Tempe, AZ.
- @BellCV: Postdoc in GWU’s School of Media & Public Affairs researching media, politics & public opinion,& their intersection with race, gender & sexuality. Go Tar Heels!
- @jdavidsonPR Public Relations professional in AZ: working in government, healthcare, non-profits and commercial products to create public awareness. jdavidson@riester.com
- Some examples of my tweets:
- RT @BreakingNews: Katie Couric will leave her anchor post at ‘CBS Evening News,’ network source tells AP. http://abcn.ws/dKE22p #305am
- TIME: Could ‘deliberative democracy’ work to in US, allows small group, picked at random, to make tough gov’t decisions. http://ti.me/blIo2Q
- Really interesting. Johns Hopkins going back to manual faucets after study shows hands-fee taps may spread more germs. http://t.co/vY65L9W
Filed under: blogs, food, food policy | Tags: best blogs, food policy blogs, food politics blogs
So after my many hours trolling food policy and politics blogs, I’ve decided to share the fruits of my labor and share the four most well maintained, thoughtful and through blogs out there discussing food policy and politics.
1. Civil Eats—A great site that offers a lot of different food related categories including Life on the Farm, Re-Localize, Eating Culture and Food Policy. In particular, their Food Culture subsection excels at providing up-to-date information of just about everything going on in the food world as well as really thought provoking opinion pieces. And if you’re still looking for more, follow Civil Eats Editor Paula Crossfielf (@civileater) on Twitter!
A good sampling of Civil Eats style: “No Quick Subsidies Fix for Food”
2. Obama Foodorama—This is one of those blogs that I religiously check. It explores and keeps a diligent record of literally everything that goes on in the White House that even remotely has to do with food. Also, with First Lady Michelle Obama’s core initiative, Let’s Move!, dealing with child obesity and altering food and nutrient guidelines, this is a good place to get the details from an outside source.
An example of the detailed analysis of Obama administration’s food policy initiatives: “FDA Unveils ‘Consumer Friendly’ Search Engine for Recalled Foods”
3. Girst—Another great strictly food policy blogs. It highlights the main stories, but also emphasizes some of the smaller topics like agriculture. In addition to following food policy’s journey through Congress, it also explores the hard questions in U.S. food policy. Nonetheless, one of my favorite things about Girst is that it highlights a lot of emerging scientific studies relating to the food industry, which makes it a great place to stay informed on the newest global food research.
Girst asking the hard questions: Will the U.S. hog industry ever kick its reliance on low-dose antibiotics?”
4. Eatocracy—CNN’s Eatocracy might not be all food policy, but it does an excellent job of including the major developments in key food policy. Its playful style and wacky stories are always entertaining and enjoyable reads—be sure to check out their daily “Box Lunch” post, which includes the top articles about food swarming the internet. Still, it’s Eatocracy’s addition of non-partisan updates and detailed interviews and videos, which are uncommon for blogs, involving food politics that keep me coming back.
Post showing Eatocracy’s excellent interviews: “ADHD, the FDA and Blue Dye #1”
Filed under: food policy, healthy options | Tags: healthy, hunger-free kids, school guidelines, School Nutrition Association, USDA
As the news of School Nutrition Association released a detailed letter on March 29 in opposition to many of the USDA’s sweeping school nutrition guidelines, I thought it would be a great opportunity to recap the exciting new initiative that will fundamentally change the American school food system.
A little background: The new federal guidelines are part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, the bill championed by First Lady Michelle Obama that was signed in December 2010 by President Obama. It is intended to ensure that healthier meal options were provided in America’s schools. In January, the USDA announced its new guidelines that promote more fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products in American schools.
Courtesy of Obama Foodorama
Courtesy of Happy Healthy Food
“With many children consuming as many as half their daily calories at school, strengthening nutritional standards is an important step in the Obama administration’s effort to combat childhood obesity and improve the health and wellbeing of all our kids,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a press release.
Schools must comply with these new guidelines by 2012 in order to receive government reimbursement for the meals. Currently, schools receive $2.72 for every child, but schools that implement these changes will get an extra 6 cents per meal.
Some of the changes:
• Schools must offer two servings of vegetables at lunch, and a serving of fruit at both breakfast and lunch.
• There are even guidelines as to what types of vegetables schools can offer. For example, starchy vegetables like corn and potatoes are limited to one cup a week.
• Half of all grains served in cafeterias must be whole grains.
• The guidelines, for the first time, set limits to portion sizes as well as a minimum and maximum calorie limit for school meals.
• Lunch meals have a maximum of 650 calories for students in grades K-5 and 700 maximum for grades 6-8 and 850 for grades 9-12.
• The guidelines also cut the allowable sodium content in school lunches by 50 percent by 2021. Currently, the USDA estimates that there is an average of 1,600 milligrams of sodium in the average high school lunch.
While the SNA has been a staunch supporter of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! Campaign, it argued in its letter Tuesday that the new guidelines are too much too fast.
In the letter to the USDA, the organization says it’s worried that all of these changes might with little to no transition could have unintended. For instance, they are worried that forcing a certain fruit and vegetables, may make school food very unappealing causing an increase in students bringing brown bag lunches, which has been proven less nutritious than school lunches now.
“Too rapid change can cause participation rates to drop, complaints from students and parents regarding the changing nature of meals to increase, costs to rise more rapidly than can be prudently managed, and the integrity and acceptability of the school food program may be called into question,” Nancy Rice, President of SNA, said in the letter to the USDA.
Thus, they offer that they need more time to gradually introduce the changes, starting with a voluntary phase that provides incentives to those schools that adopt changes.
I think that this a great start as more than 31 million children eat lunch and almost 11 million eat breakfast through the federal feeding programs. But I understand where SNA is coming from– there are a lot of changes!
Filed under: cronkite, events | Tags: must see monday, photography, photojournalist, poynter institute
This week’s Must See Monday event featured Kenny Irby, visual journalism group leader and diversity director at the Poynter Institute. Irby highlighted the significant changes photojournalism has gone through in the past year as well as its importance in the continuation of story telling.
As the news and media industry continues to struggle to find the right balance between traditional and online, the photojournalism industry continues to shift and evolve with the changes. Therefore, Irby contends that photojournalism is far from dead.
Instead photography, with the rise of online media, has taken a new, prominent role. Whereas we used to have to wait for the newest edition of Time Magazine of National Geographic, now photos just come right into our living rooms as they happend, Irby said.
Courtesy of the Poynter Institute
And instead of just complementing print stories, photography can take center stage and even stand alone.
“Photojournalists can lead the content,” Irby said.
And the capacity for storytelling through photography continues to grow. For example, photo galleries and audio slideshow garner significant traffic and clicks.
Sill, all the commotion in the news industry means that photojournalism will have to continue to reinvent itself and photographers will have to experiment in order to find the proper balance.
As change is the only certainty, photojournalists will have to continue to innovate and challenge their assumptions to deliver high quality stories through photos, Irby said.
And while there have been plenty of changes in its role, its core purpose and values have stayed the same.
“A big picture comes from a small camera, that moves the hearts and mind of people everywhere,” Irby said.
And it is these big pictures that create compelling, powerful images that act as vehicles to transport people to places they’ve never been.
Filed under: food, food policy, GMO, organic food | Tags: alfalfa, genetically engineered, gmo, organic food, USDA regulations
Early this week, NPR came out with a great article that discussed a growing dilemma many in the food industry are beginning to question whether some organic food can really be defined and labeled ‘organic’.
While this whole debate dates back much earlier than this year, it has intensified after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allowed American farmers to plant and sell genetically engineered alfalfa.
This decision sparked huge controversy, as alfalfa, commonly known as hay, is a frequent staple in farmer’s livestock feed. Organic farmers in particular were outraged that this genetically engineered food essentially tainted their livestock (typically cows and horses), and thus tarnished the animal’s products. As such, their food could no longer really be defined as ‘organic’.
And although alfalfa is much less likely than corn to cross-pollinate, some organic farmers and the Organic Trade Association, in particular, are concerned that if genetically engineered alfalfa seed spread to other crops it would render those crops un-organic.
All of this has led to the scrutinizing of organic regulations to decipher whether a product can really be considered organic or not.
USDA regulations state that in order to be qualified as “organic,” the product contains at least 95 percent organic ingredients. If you want further clarification on organic regulations, this is a great site that succinctly sums up the USDA’s current regulations and the current labeling system.
Nonetheless, many organic farmers contend, as discussed above, that allowing animals to eat GMO feed automatically ruins their ability to produce true organic food.
“If you’re not willing to sue the person who pollutes the organic crop and really undermines organic integrity, then we’re not going to stand up for you,” Ronnie Cummins, from the Organic Trade Association, in the article. “You’ve got to do the right thing.”
Still, not all organic farmers and experts agree with the dangers of GMO alfalfa. Charles Benbrook, chief scientist for the Organic Center, argues that the contamination is a mere 1 percent and is not significant enough to compromise its organic labeling.
But at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what Benbrook and Cummins think. In my opinion, it comes down to the American consumers who will dictate the ultimate definition of organic food and whether or not a small amount of GMO contamination makes it lose its classification.
That being said, there is reason to believe that many American want organic food to be truly organic, or at the very least be aware that their food contains GMO products.
For instance, 77 percent of organic food purchasers said they would stop buying organic food if it contained GMOs according to George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley.
In addition, an overwhelming 96 percent in an MSNBC poll, albeit it’s possibly a bit of a left-leaning crowd participating in the poll, indicated that they believe GMO food should be labeled in order for consumers to make an informed choice.
Seth Godin, social media guru and best selling author, has developed a minimal, yet still playful website that highlights his accomplishments, products and experience. Set on a clean white background, the website is very simple and modern. It does not contain a lot of frills, animations, extras or ads. Instead, the website truly excels at the ‘less is more’ mentality.
The site is certainly not text-heavy and works to get the message across succinctly. For instance, his contact page is a simple one-sentence statement and then his personal email. No pictures, no mandatory forms, just the information and nothing else.
Still, its simplicity is nicely complemented by its playfulness, which really makes it stand out from other sites. Godin’s “blurbs” tab is a great example. Instead of having a text-heavy, dull and plain section that merely lists his recommendations, Godin uses colorful word clouds, very reminiscent of the iPhone’s text messaging bubbles, to display what others are saying about him. This clever graphic helps differentiate one recommendation from another and keeps the reader’s interest through the bottom of the page.
And while the site is designed with simplicity in mind, it is not to say that it is lacking information. On the contrary, many of the pages offer an option to see the full story or click for additional information.
In addition to its clean layout, Godin’s site is also very easy to navigate. On the right hand side is a straightforward navigation list. It is simply labeled and does not have any messy drop down options. The navigation is located in the same place, in the same order when clicking through the tabs. One particularly clever navigation exists on the home page, where the viewer can click Seth’s head to be taken to his blog.
Still, there is room to improve the site’s navigation. For example, when clicking on the “blog” tab, unlike the other tags, it is difficult to navigate back to the site’s home page—it can only be done by manually clicking the “back” button on your web browser.
Overall, it’s a very well designed site that really grabs a visitor’s attention and keeps it there by offering clean navigation, uncluttered information and lighthearted design.
Filed under: food, online recipes, recipes, search tools | Tags: Google recipes, Recipe View
Great news for all us foodies–last week the search giant Google rolled out a new search feature that lets you easily search for recipes and then refine the searches by calories, cook times, ingredients and more.
Unlike past Google recipe searches where you had to use Google’s main search bar, type the particular dish you wanted and then dig through the results for actual recipes, the new Google search, dubbed Recipe View, aggregates all the recipes and then does the sorting for you.
Once you’ve put in your search term, recipes will begin appearing. You then can start getting rid of entries that don’t fit your needs based on your ideal ingredients, calorie count and recipe rating.
You don’t even have to search for a particular food item, Recipe View lets you search for holidays like St. Patrick’s Day or 4th of July and common holiday recipes will pop up into the feed. And if you’re just craving one ingredient in particular, say pumpkin, you can search just that and recipes containing pumpkin will appear.
And if that’s still not enough specificity, you can even search by your favorite chef! So for me, Anthony Bourdain—by the way check out his recipe for onion soup, yum!
This is truly a great tool for to find recipes that utilize the ingredients you have on hand.
So, curious as I am (with an insatiable desire for tortilla soup), I decided to try this whole Recipe View thing out.
First, I did a generic search on Google for tortilla soup and then clicked the “Recipe” button, which is located on the left hand side under the “more” option.
Then I started clicking and sorting away—checking off the “less than 300 calories” option and choosing that I did want to use chicken but didn’t want any chili powder. And just like that—wahla—the perfect tortilla soup recipe just for me!
I must say, I was very impressed by the ease of this new feature. It was really great to be able to sort through tons of recipes at once, quickly finding one that had all the ingredients I wanted, and none of the ones I didn’t. Plus, Recipe View just makes it that much easier to find healthy, low-calorie meals, customizable to your exact taste and time constraints because with just a few clicks, you can customize just about everything. The only thing I wish the Recipe View offered and doesn’t, would be a selection component to click off “organic,” “vegetarian” or “vegan,” which I understand only applies to small group of people but a girl can wish, right?
Filed under: food, healthy options, restaurants | Tags: fast food, lyfe kitchen, mcdonalds
Let’s face it, McDonalds has been blasted by just about everyone for its unhealthy menu options. From highly critical documentaries and novels like Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation to San Francisco’s “happy meal ban” last year, McDonalds has taken a lot of flack over the years. And that’s not even the half of it.
All the while McDonalds has contended that ultimately people make their own choices when choosing food. And to give credit where credits due, it has made some significant efforts to include healthier options on its menus.
Still, McDonalds inherent connotation as an unhealthy restaurant made last week’s news that a former McDonalds’ executive was planning to open a new, healthy fast food-like chain that much more interesting.
Add this to the executive’s partnership with an Oprah Winfrey celebrity chef, and it was just downright strange.
That’s right, Mike Roberts, a former McDonalds’ president and chief operating officer, and celebrity chef Art Smith are in the midst of creating Lyfe Kitchen, a health-conscious restaurant that is set to launch its first restaurant in Palo Alto, Calif. this summer.
Unlike McDonalds, Lyfe will feature a menu that contains no butter, no high fructose corn syrup and no fatty fried foods. Instead Lyfe, which is an acronym for Love Your Food Everyday, will emphasize on crafting a healthy menu that includes low calorie meals and vegan options.
Each menu item contains less than 600 calories and most ingredients will be local and organic, according to the company’s press release.
Still, the restaurant will keep with McDonalds’ simple ease and quick service that many have come to replicate. While it won’t be exactly like McDonalds, it will still have a “fast-casual feel,” something that reminds me of a mix of Chipotle and Wildflower Bread Company.
Still, Lyfe is not just focused on delivering quick, affordable and healthy food. It will also emphasize eco-friendliness and local philanthropy in an effort to inspire customers to do the same.
“LYFE Kitchen is a socially responsible brand that will awaken the customer’s ‘Sixth Sense’—the intrinsic desire to do right and make powerful purchasing decisions that inspire good in the world,” according to the press release.
There’s a lot of big names and big ideas behind Lyfe, I only hope that they truly deliver on creating healthy, affordable food. If so, I think Lyfe has the potential to be really successful in this health-conscious niche market.
the green apron 