Who needs real life when you can have a Second Life?

-Courtesy of Google Images

For those people looking for an escape from the everyday hustle and bustle of the real world, there is a growing online outlet that may soon allow everything from virtual music, games and businesses to operate in a false reality, reaching millions of members.

Second Life is an online virtual environment, which allows users in their 3-D community persona, called Avatars, to do everything from attend press conferences, dance at night clubs and even show their support for select political campaigns. Estimates of registered users currently range from 400,000 to 4 million.

Washington State University professor Brett Atwood has become a relatively frequent user of the online reality under an Avatar pseudonym, and recently gave an online lecture to his 20 student journalism class using the site.

"It's something that's fairly new and it's getting a lot of hype," Atwood said. "At this point, from my perspective, it's experimental, but it's worth looking at."

The site is nowhere near a perfect process. More than half of Atwood's Convergent Journalism class was unable to load the site which caused numerous computer crashes. Problems varied from improper graphics cards to slow processor and connection speeds.

"If you have an older computer, good luck," Atwood said.

For those people lucky enough to be able to regularly visit the site, roaming the virtual reality opens up growing amounts of options such as browsing online school campuses, visiting corporate headquarters for companies such as Adidas and Reebok, and even spending money through a virtual economy that uses a currency cleverly coined as Linden dollars, after the sites' parent company, Linden Labs.

In addition to useful tools such as the Harvard and Texas State virtual campuses, there are some potentially harmful activities as well, as with any internet site.

Linden dollars translate into real dollars, and there are some entrepreneurs who have been successful making their living through that currency including gambling outlets, Atwood said. There are also "red light district" type areas where unexpected nudity, sex and profanity may run rampant.

"Sex drives a lot of web traffic and it's no different here," he said

Although still mostly experimental, the site sees between 40,000 and 400,000 visits during its peak hours on Friday and Saturday, and with a wealth of content from politics to upcoming music, it's hard to see why the fad will not continue to grow.

USA Today Re-worked, For the Better?

-Courtesy of Google Images

During their recent reproduction of their website, USA TODAY has fallen to mixed praise from many readers, and some criticism from other news agencies. Their new actions include providing access to other news sources, allowing reader content and discussion directly on-site and improving communication with their news staff. This I believe, though it has met with some harsh reviews so far, will do amazing things to increase the amount of credibility and trust that readers place in USA TODAY.


The ability to access other news sources online, directly from the site of USA TODAY, is a huge step. It will most likely do wonders to decrease the distrust that the public places on newspapers for being merely profit-run businesses. While the journalism trade is for profit, the primary obligation is to the readers and to inform them, no matter what. An informed reader is one that can make better decisions concerning their community, and USA TODAY is encouraging this without fear, by providing their readers with a great wealth of information, previously unavailable to them.


One of the other interesting topics of their re-vamp is the allowance of reader contribution. This brings the site closer to the growing “blogosphere,” in that it allows readers to not only comment on the stories that they see reported, but allows them to suggest their own stories as well. While the navigation on the site for some of these controls leaves something to be desired (or found as it is), it is a huge step in bringing a particularly large news organization closer to their community. It will hopefully allow USA TODAY to bring a voice to people who had previously been voiceless, and promote more complete and well-rounded stories on a variety of topics that interest everybody.

On a similar note, the increased communication ability with the news staff is vital to an evolving form of journalism. Recently Steve Smith, editor of the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, gave a lecture to my class concerning the same issue. His paper had also recently re-vamped their web-site and was integrating what he called the “transparent newsroom,” to the point that the public can now actually watch video of their morning news staff meetings. As I stated earlier, credibility is essential in journalism, because if people don’t trust the news, they may never get the information they need. Communication is also vital in maintaining constant contact with everyone that you are supposed to represent. This is why this singular action by USA Today, while not as drastic as the Spokesman’s, is another step in the right direction to bring public faith back to this agency sworn to serve
them.

I encourage the editors to push through this early criticism of their new look. The accessibility and increased navigation is second only to an elite few in the world of online news, and their new actions will catch on eventually. For some time now, the entire journalism field has suffered from a credibility gap between the writer and editors and the readers that they serve, and there is no better way to close that gap than by increasing community involvement. It’s clear that USA TODAY is set on strengthening not only their own image, but the image of the field as a whole, hopefully the stragglers will catch on soon.