A weblog for Pete Ellertsen's mass communications students at Benedictine University Springfield.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

COMM 317: Link for Wednesday's class

In class I want us to take up media critic Neil Postman's 1969 speech titled "Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection" to the National Council of Teachers of English. Postman, who died in 2003, was a pretty insightful media critic.

Now this ... "The News is Broken" by Dana Milbank of The Washington Post.

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About Me

Springfield (Ill.), United States
I'm a retired English, journalism and cultural studies teacher at Springfield College in Illinois (acquired by Benedictine University and subsequently closed). I coordinate jam sessions for the "Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music" at Clayville Historic Site and the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, and I sing in the choir and the contemporary praise team at Peace Lutheran Church in Springfield. On Hogfiddle I post links and video clips for our sessions and workshops on the mountain dulcimer (a.k.a. "hog fiddle"), as well as research notes on folklore and cultural studies, hymnody and traditional Anglo-Celtic and Scandinavian music. I also posted assignments and readings in my interdisciplinary humanities classes. The Mackerel Wrapper (now on hiatus), carried assignments and readings for my mass comm. students. I started teaching b/log when I chaired SCI-Benedictine's assessment committee, and reopened it as the privatization of public schools grew increasingly troubling and closer to home.