web_producer_whitney's Blog

The Vatican may be slow to change, but no one said they won't embrace technology to reach out to their flock.

Reuters reports:

"Pope Benedict will text message thousands of young Catholics on their mobile phones during World Youth Day in Sydney in July, hoping going digital will help him connect better with a younger audience."

So... does he T9? Or will the Our Father go something like this:

R father n hvn is 2 cool.
Plz give food.
We R sry, plz b chill.
Dlvr us.
Thx.

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who fathered seven children with his daughter, is complaining that his case is getting bias media coverage.

"I could have killed them all," reads the front page headline of today's Bild Zeitung. And Fritzl, dubbed a monster by the Austrian media, told his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, "I'm not a monster," according to today's report.

My friend Laura and I were trying to figure out how saying this could make things better for this guy. This is what Laura came up with:

"i mean, seriously
it could have been worse
he could have um...
uh..."

Exactly.

Sandie Petee received a frightening message when her son's cell phone accidentally dialed her number during a firefight in Afghanistan, reports KPTV in Portland.

The three-minute message contained audio of shooting, swearing and calls for more ammunition.

"His friend died a year ago in Iraq and I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, this may be the last time I hear my son's voice on the phone,'" Petee said.

Stephen Phillips survived the fight and was not injured.

WARNING: The message contains graphic language and may not be appropriate for all users.

Listen to the entire message.

For some reason, the big stories always come when we least expect it - on the weekend. There's something about major news... You remember every detail of how the coverage came together. Who was standing where in the newsroom, live from what location, editing, working the desk, etc. It's frantic, but it's a rush.

These are all stories I put in that "memorable" category:

• The Ward Parkway shootings were on a Sunday afternoon. Executive Producer Jeff Mulligan struggled with the decision to interrupt the NASCAR race with the breaking news. We interrupted, and viewers really didn't appreciate it.
• The Porter children's bodies were found on a Sunday. Paul Stewart caught wind of the search near Sugar Creek early that morning and we followed the story all day.
• KCK Police called for an Amber Alert during the Super Bowl this year. Toddler Seth Guerrero was missing after his mother was found murdered. Anthony Guerrero, Seth's dad, was arrested in Texas a few days later.

Another weekend story was the Greensburg tornado - though it was on a Saturday. Covering this was different, because though the destruction was far away, it was jaw-dropping all the same. The video below makes me feel that way again.

I hope this guy is weeded out of the gene pool asap.

EASTAMPTON -- A 47-year-old township man sustained severe burns to his legs and groin areas Wednesday night when he accidentally ignited rubbing alcohol he was applying to his body with a cigarette that fell into his lap, a township police clerk said.

Idiot.

An angry beaver went on a rampage in Russia, plowing through a shop window and destroying several bottles of vodka (sad!)

Apparently, the wild and crazy guy was trying to flee from danger:

"The saleswoman saw a large animal near a store room and called the local emergencies service," a spokesman for the Ozersk administration said. "The animal was apparently frightened by nearby forest fires, and decided to get assistance from people," the spokesman added.

Authorities returned him to a safe part of the forest.

The article adds that Russia is experiencing some of its worst forest fires in 30 years due to long dry spells.

The Jayhawks were featured on the CBS Early Show on Wednesday. Professor of Architecture Dan Rockhill talked about building green, and Danny Manning and some of the 2008 Miracles honored the Greensburg high school basketball team in their brand new gym. Video below!

Google is collaborating with 70 different artists around the world to give us customized iGoogle home pages.

It's like having cute outfits for your home page!

"The iGoogle personalized home pages have been graced with new flair thanks to the introduction of iGoogle Artist Themes, a way for Google members to do digital interior decoration."

"Google has pulled out the stops, with contributions from artists and architects like Jeff Koons, Michael Graves, Philippe Starck, and Yann Arthus-Betrand, as well as fashion luminaries like Diane von Furstenberg, Tory Burch, Oscar de la Renta, Marc Ecko, and Dolce & Gabbana. A few music artists like Coldplay, the John Butler Trio, and the Beastie Boys also are present, as are pop-culture figures like BoingBoing's Mark Frauenfelder, Jackie Chan, The Wiggles, and...Lance Armstrong."

I picked Diane von Furstenburg.

There's a fancy youtube video you can watch, too.

On a side note, here is the pic I took of Jeff Koons' sculpture at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain!

Now that Cubans can own computers, many are finding their way to the Web. Some are even starting blogs, and giving us an inside look at what daily life in Cuba is like.

Yahoo! News reports on a woman whose blog grabs over a million page views a month. Yoani Sanchez (pictured to the right) writes the "GeneraciónY" blog, and she goes through a major process just to post:

Sanchez dresses like a tourist and slips into Havana hotels with Web access for foreigners. It costs about $6 an hour and she can't afford to stay long given the price and the possibility someone might catch her connecting without permission.

I'll definitely be bookmarking.

A recent study found that 68 percent of Swedish high school students don't know where the EU headquarters is located, 75 percent can't find Tehran on a map and 96 percent can't name two Swedish national parks.

Do you think this happens in the U.S. America, too, Miss South Carolina?

I'm not on the Twitter train yet, but where would this Cal-Berkeley student be without it? (what's Twitter? Learn about it.)

James Karl Buck was taken into custody with his translator in Egypt while covering an anti-government protest. On his way to the police station, he grabbed his cell phone and sent out a tweet:

The message only had one word. "Arrested."

Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt -- the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier -- were alerted he was being held.

Read about how Buck finally got out of jail.

I know Twitter sounds strange but if it helps you get out of jail in a foreign country... maybe I should finally sign up this week?

I'm wearing a polo shirt today, so this story goes with my outfit.

Some guy hit a 139-yard hole-in-one on a Par 3 in Niagara Falls the other day. But he isn't just any guy - he's a paraplegic! Frank Peter uses a special cart designed to help him swing a club:

Itching to get on the course after a long winter, Peter made an impromptu call to his 17-year-old nephew Jordan, inviting him to a game.

The pair were enjoying their day on the links when Peter used a 22-degree Wilson Staff hybrid on the 14th hole and hit the ball just short of the green on the right-hand side of the flag stick.

The ball took a bounce up and rolled onto the green and Peter heard the distinctive "ting" of the ball hitting the flag stick.

Read the rest of the story.

Long story short, his golf game is better than mine.

This is very upsetting news. Christy Bradford, a journalism lecturer at the University of Kansas, died from what is believed to be a heart attack on Thursday morning:

The former managing editor of the Detroit News came to KU in 1999 after overseeing coverage that led to the paper's 1994 Pulitzer Prize, awarded for uncovering corruption in spending at the Michigan House Fiscal Agency. Bradford taught a number of classes for the school, said Associate Dean David Guth, including research and writing, multimedia reporting and a community journalism class that worked with the Journal-World and other area newspapers.

"She was passionate about good teaching and good journalism and cared about her students and their success," Guth said. "She was also incredibly important in our multicultural scholars program. That’s a huge loss. She was an excellent mentor for our multicultural scholars."

Read the rest of the LJWorld article (written by Jonathan Kealing, one of Christy's former students).

Christy was the first teacher I connected with in J-School. She was my lab teacher in my research and writing class, and one of two fearless leaders in my multimedia reporting class with Uncle Rick (the class that pushed me toward becoming a Web producer.)

Please keep Christy, her loved ones and her students in your thoughts. Her death is a great loss for the University of Kansas and the journalism community.

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UPDATE 4/25: Chancellor Robert Hemenway and Ann Brill, dean of the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, released a statement on Christy's death.

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UPDATE 4/26: Via the J-school Web site:

A memorial service for Christine Merrill Bradford will be held Monday, April 28, 4:30 p.m., at the Ecumenical Christian Center, 1204 Oread Ave., Lawrence, Kan. (one block north of the Kansas Union). Christy's family has asked that in lieu of flowers, memorial gifts should be sent to the Journalism Multicultural Scholarship Fund in care of KU Endowment. The family wants to be able to acknowledge any donations, so please make sure that your name and contact information are on the check.

We do this experiment each year at School Day at the K, but a group of 1,500 students in Lueven, Belgium has set the world record for the largest Mentos and Diet Coke explosion.

Starting July 1, Kansans will be able to own machine guns, other fully-automatic weapons, sawed-off shot guns and silencers. The Lawrence-Journal World reports:

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed a bill Monday to legalize the possession of such weapons. The state banned owning machine guns in 1933, but some legislators said a change was necessary because legal questions threaten to keep dealers from delivering weapons to law enforcement agencies.

Something to buy with that tax rebate check, I guess?

My brother hunts and has made a solid case for it, so I'm not against owning guns or anything... but I'd be creeped out if my next door neighbor was showing off his new silencer.