This dispatch was added by one of our Nonprofit Neighbors. It does not represent the editorial voice of The Rapidian or Community Media Center.
Catalyst Radio is a weekly radio show with hosts Linda Gellasch and Denise Cheng that looks at the behind-the-scenes of Rapidian reporting as well as grassroots and nonprofit efforts around the community. The show comprises a media analysis and developments portion, interview segment and calendar of events. You can catch it on air at noon every Friday on WYCE 88.1 FM or streaming on the Grand Rapids Community Media Center Website.
This week, Catalyst Radio speaks with Erv Gambee, president of the Thornapple River Watershed Council. Music featured this week is by local musician Lynn Thompson with "Let Me In" from the disc More Money.
MEDIA ANALYSIS
Pixar, famous for Toy Story and Wall-E, is finding its 3D animation technology in new hands. A radiologist at University of California in San Francisco is repurposing and tweaking the storytelling technology to fill out images of people's bodies without having to perform surgery. Typically, doctors get some insight to an individual's body through x-rays, but can only see a 2D slice of our bodies. Three-dimensional technology would transform x-ray images into dynamic images that allow doctors to rotate the image to see our insides at whatever angle is necessary.
WikiLeaks, a crowdsourced site where users can browse possible news leads, has leaked a video that shows a potential cover-up of 12 civilians killed, including two employees of Reuters-Baghdad, and two wounded children during a rain of gunfire from U.S. attack helicopters. The U.S. military released the video to the press after WikiLeaks had cracked the code-protected the video, leaked by an unnamed source. WikiLeaks sent two correspondents to Baghdad to confirm the leak.
In response to a class-action lawsuit, Yelp has decided to make changes to how it manages reviews. Yelp is a popular, user-driven site to review and rate local businesses all over the country. Small businesses believed Yelp was unfairly catering to their advertisers by allowing advertisers to choose which review to showcase on businesses' review pages. There was also much complaint about the ambiguity surrounding Yelp's spam filter, which claims to keep out computer-generated reviews and reviews added by friends and family of business owners. From now on, Yelp will no longer let advertisers curate reviews and will allow users to browse content that has been marked as spam.
Reuters, Village Voice, MediaIte, Salon, Poynter, Vanity Fair has reblogged
Sharon Waxman of The Wrap has accused Newser of lifting content from news sites and condensing articles without giving proper attribution. Newser is a pop news site that aggregates content with the motto, "Read less, know more." It aggregates stories, employs staff writers to condense them to 100-ish words and republish it on the site. Michael Wolff, founder of Newser, is duking it out with Waxman over the ethics of aggregation. Since then, columnists from Reuters, Village Voice, MediaIte, Salon and Poynter have either weighed in or covered the issue.
An investigative journalist in Indonesia recently broke the story that U.S.-backed Indonesian armed forces were assassinating civilian activists last year. Since then, the Indonesian military has contemplated action against the journalist and the journalist has publicly challenged the military to arrest him so the issue could go to trial in an open court.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
In San Francisco, a federal judge found the federal government guilty of wiretapping calls made to an Islamic Charity in 2004. The ruling in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama means that the NSA does not have the right to do warrantless wiretapping, which has been justified since Bush's administration and adopted by Obama's administration that only the executive branch has the right to decide if a case against the federal government can go to court because it could jeopardize "state secrets."
UC Berkeley students are at risk of suspension after protesting tuition hikes, layoffs and cuts at the university. Actions taken include taking over an Oakland freeway and rioting. The Office of Student Conduct has offered a seven-month suspension. Students face more dire consequences if they take the issue to university court. Other students and faculty have protested in defense of those at risk of suspension.
CALENDAR
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