Falwell Responds

From Christian NewsWire:

Liberty University Student Group Op-Ed from Jerry Falwell, Jr.

LYNCHBURG, Va., , May 24 /Christian Newswire/ -- Jerry Falwell, Jr., Chancellor and President of Liberty University, submits the following op-ed:

A number of media sources recently reported that Liberty University banned Democrats from meeting on campus. One headline erroneously read: "Democrats at Liberty University forced to meet off campus." Apparently many journalists do not let the facts get in the way of a juicy, agenda-driven story.

The story was spun out of control from the beginning, when Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Virginia, called a telephone press conference to talk about the College Democrat club formed by students of Liberty University. The presses began to buzz. Much of what went to print was wrong. Most journalists were interested in scooping their competitors rather than seeking the truth. Even when some reporters learned the facts, they could not bring themselves to correct their stories because the fanciful reports were just too tempting.

The University has not banned Democrats from campus. Nor has the Democrat club been banned from meeting. And, never has the University or its' officials said that a person cannot be a Christian and a Democrat. Sorry for those who want to run with these titillating soundbites, but these are the facts.

The students who formed the Democrat club last October are good students. They are pro-life and believe in traditional marriage. They can continue to meet on campus. The only thing that has changed came about as part of a University-wide review of all student organizations for official recognition status. Official recognition carries with it the benefit of using the University name and funds. While this group will not be an officially recognized club, it may still meet on campus.

Liberty University is the world's largest and fastest growing evangelical university. While many schools have faced budget short falls and declining enrollment, Liberty is debt free and continues to grow at a rapid rate. We now have 11,500 students on campus and nearly 38,000 students online. This fall Liberty University will exceed 50,000 total students.

Parents and students support the University because they believe in its' distinctly Christian identity and mission. Liberty University is pro-life and believes that marriage between one man and one woman provides the best environment for children. Liberty University will not lend its' name or financial support to any student group that advances causes contrary to its mission.

While the students in the college Democrat club are pro-life and support traditional marriage, the constitution of the club pledged support to advance the Democratic platform and candidates. The 2008 Democratic platform has taken an extreme turn to the left on social issues. For the first time it supports federal funding of abortion and repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a law passed overwhelmingly by a bi-partisan Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. Liberty University will not lend its' name or financial support to undermine marriage or to promote abortion.

While students are free to meet on campus, debate and discuss politics of every stripe, the University will remain true to its' core principles and not lend its' name or fund groups that work to undermine the principles that make Liberty attractive to so many people. Liberty brings many diverse speakers to campus. Last year Senator John McCain's brother spoke to the students along with Virginia Democratic Governor, Tim Kaine. Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to our students this Spring about how her opposition to same sex marriage put her at odds with her family and her political allies. Ted Kennedy also spoke at Liberty in 1983.

We encourage our students to bring positive change to all political parties, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. We hope our students challenge all political parties to remain true to the core moral values consistent with the Christian mission of the University. To blindly support any candidate solely because of party affiliation irrespective of their moral views is wrong. Liberty would never endorse a Republican student group that supported abortion rights. Liberty stands for certain core values; not for a political party.

Jerry Falwell, Jr.
Chancellor and President
Liberty University


Christian Newswire

CTI Shuts Down 4 Titles, Lays Off 30+ Staff

CTI Shuts Down 4 Titles, Lays Off 30-Plus Staff
New publishing realities force not-for-profit to focus ever more fully on its core.

Contact: Marty White, Christianity Today International, 630-260-6200 ext 4268, mwhite@christianitytoday.com

CAROL STREAM Ill., May 22 /Christian Newswire/ -- Christianity Today International (CTI) today announced the closing of four publications and the laying-off of 30 employees. To be shut down over the coming months are Today's Christian Woman magazine, the Campus Life College Guide, the Christian history bulletin insert Glimpses, and the Church Office Today bimonthly newsletter.

"Needless to say, we are profoundly saddened by these necessary decisions," said Harold Smith, President and Publisher. "The impact on employees who are truly gifted--and the impact on the church as a whole--is a sobering reality for me and the entire CTI team that remains."

These latest cutbacks follow similar moves made in January, when a total of three periodicals--Ignite Your Faith (formerly Campus Life), Marriage Partnership, and Today's Christian magazines either ceased publication or, in the case of TC, was sold.

"We find ourselves--as does our industry--in the midst of a perfect publishing storm," says Smith. "Nevertheless, we're grateful to God for the continuing strength of our core periodicals--namely, Christianity Today and Leadership journal. These iconic brands," continued Smith, "along with the myriad web properties tied to them, will once again point the way for this ministry in the days, months, and years to come."

Christianity Today magazine and ministry were founded in 1956 by evangelist Billy Graham.

"Dr Graham envisioned," said Smith, "a ministry that could engage, encourage, and equip pastors, church leaders, thought leaders, academicians, and culture makers through the creation of quality content that is journalistically excellent. Accurately reported, creatively presented, fair minded, intellectually sound, theologically orthodox, irenic, clear, accessible.

"Today," Smith continued, "that call remains the missional bedrock of this ministry. And we will, under God's continuing direction, build upon this solid foundation for the strengthening of Christ's church and to the glory of God alone."

Christianity Today International publishes 9 print magazines and newsletters and operates an award-winning website reaching more than 2.5-million unique visitors monthly.

Theories of Teaching and Learning: The Staged Self-Directed Learning Model, G.Grow.

View more presentations from Barbara Stokes.

Extreme Local May Be the Way to Go

This is an excerpt. To read the entire article, click here.

Future of online news may be 'hyperlocal'
By John D. Sutter, CNN

(CNN) -- On a recent morning, when many newspapers and news sites were buzzing about swine flu, voiceofsandiego.org wrote instead about a local science professor and his quest to understand the beginning of the universe.

The swine flu story was nowhere to be found.

To some news junkies, it may seem like the nonprofit news site missed the big story of the day. But this intentional omission fits right in with the independent publication's values.

It also indicates what the future of local news may hold.

"We don't cover anything unless it's squarely about San Diego, even national trend stories and stuff like that, we tend to steer away from," said Andy Donohue, the outlet's editor.

"Especially the way things are going right now on the Internet, you've got to be really focused on doing something really well -- and if you try to spread yourself too thin, you're not doing anything well."

With many newspapers ailing, there's been a steady drumbeat of layoffs at major news organizations -- nearly 25,000 jobs have been lost at papers since 2008, according to Paper Cuts, a blog that tracks the layoffs.

But a relatively new crop of "hyperlocal" news sites is growing into the void left by failing news organizations.

Most of the hyperlocal sites focus exclusively on a community in a tight geographic area. Some are trying to find new ways to fund the news, since nearly all online information is free. They're also experimenting with unconventional ways of gathering the news: Several nonprofit news sites publish reports from volunteer reporters who are active in the neighborhoods they cover.

Other sites, such as EveryBlock.com, aggregate news on a block-by-block basis. EveryBlock.com pulls in government documents -- health inspections, building permits and crime reports -- as well as news articles and photos from sites such as Flickr to make news feeds with an extreme local focus.

Worst Places in the World to be a Blogger

This is an excerpt. To read the entire article, click here.

CNN) -- Bloggers in Burma, Iran and Syria work under some of the most repressive conditions in the world, facing tactics such as regulation, intimidation and even imprisonment, according to a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Burma, where students sit at an Internet cafe, tops a list of the worst places to be a blogger.

The organization released a list of the "10 worst countries to be a blogger" to call attention to online oppression in connection with World Press Freedom Day, which was observed Sunday.

"Bloggers are at the vanguard of the information revolution, and their numbers are expanding rapidly," the group's executive director, Joel Simon, said in a report posted on the organization's Web site. "But governments are quickly learning how to turn technology against bloggers by censoring and filtering the Internet, restricting online access and mining personal data.

"When all else fails, the authorities simply jail a few bloggers to intimidate the rest of the online community into silence or self-censorship."

Burma -- also known as Myanmar -- is the worst place in the world to be a blogger, Simon's organization says. A military government restricts Web access and throws people into jail for posting critical material.

Twitters Aren't Sticking

From MediaWeek:

Twitter's Audience Has a 'No Return' Policy

-By Mike Shields, Mediaweek

NEW YORK Twitter’s audience is exploding. Now if only they could get people to stick around.

Over 60 percent of people who sign up to use the popular (and tremendously discussed) micro-blogging platform do not return to using it the following month, according to new data released by Nielsen Online. In other words, Twitter currently has just a 40 percent retention rate, up from 30 percent in previous months -- indicating an “I don’t get it factor” among new users that is reminiscent of the similarly over hyped Second Life from a few years ago.

Nielsen found that Twitter’s unique user base doubled in March. But most newbies aren’t coming back. “People are signing up in droves,” wrote David Martin, vp, primary research, Nielsen Online, in a blog posting today. “But despite the hockey-stick growth chart, Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest.”

Martin sees this low retention rate a long-term problem for Twitter, citing growth patterns for previous Web sensations. According to Martin, a low retention rate limits how much a site can consistently grow its audience; by his calculation, a 40 percent retention rate results in just a 10 percent reach level. That limits how big a property can get over time, since there are a finite number of potential new users.

“A high retention rate doesn’t guarantee a massive audience, but it is a prerequisite,” he wrote. “There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point.”

Of course, it’s early in Twitter’s development, and the average Web user may simply need more time to understand its benefits and change his or her behavior. But Martin sees ominous signs. For one, previous Web calculations showed MySpace and Facebook had double Twitter’s retention rate at a similar growth stage, and their retention increased over time.

“Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty,” wrote Martin. “Frankly, if Oprah can’t accomplish that, I’m not sure who can.”

Owner Threatens to Shut Down Boston Globe

This is an excerpt. Read the entire article here.

Boston Globe owner threatens to shut newspaper down

(CNN) -- The Boston Globe management warned the newspaper's four unions Sunday that failure to reach a financial concession would force the company to file a notice to shut down, the Guild said in a statement.

The Boston Globe faces an ultimatum: Reach a financial concession or force a shut down, the Guild reported.

The notice would allow The New York Times Co., which owns the Massachusetts newspaper, to close it in 60 days, the Globe reported.

The Times Co. is seeking $10 million from the Boston Newspaper Guild, $5 million from the mailers, $2.5 million from the delivery truck drivers and $2.2 million from the press operators, the Globe said.

The Guild, which is the main union, represents more than 600 editorial, advertising and business office workers, according to the Globe.

"We have provided our unions with a copy of a notice that we are prepared to file if we are unable to reach an agreement by the midnight [Sunday] deadline," Globe spokesman Robert Powers told the newspaper. "This notice is required under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires 60 days advance notice before the closure of a business."

The Guild said the ultimatum was issued after it presented management with a proposal that exceeds the $10 million in cuts demanded.

I Lived 'The Soloist'

Here's a thought-provoking perspective from writer John Shore. Is he right? Do we "use" people when we write about them? How far can you go? When does it become an ethical problem? Access John's original here.

I Lived the "The Soloist"

About 10 years ago I lived a scaled-down version of the plot of the new movie The Soloist.

I was freelancing for a free biweekly music tabloid here in San Diego called SLAMM.

One Friday night I was seated at an outdoor bar in downtown in San Diego, when I heard cutting through the noise of the crowds and cars a male singing voice so ... robust and perfectly pitched that I left the bar to go stand on the sidewalk outside of it, hoping to again hear that voice. I did, and started walking toward it.

Four blocks later I found a shirtless black man wearing a suit vest, jeans, and a porkpie hat playing a harmonica and singing the blues with such powerful authority he had effectively transformed the whole corner of 5th Avenue and G Street into his very own juke joint. After his set I stepped up and offered him my hand.

"You're a terrific player," I said. "Amazing control."

"Thank you," he said shyly. He took my hand, and almost broke it. "I'm Sam Michaels," he said.

Over the next couple of weeks I got to know Sam. When he was nine years old, his parents had immigrated from Cuba to Texas. His mother was a school teacher, his father a musician. After the Vietnam war had officially ended he served with Special Forces, rescuing American soldiers still being held in Vietnamese jungle camps. Sam was a Christian; he kept a pocket-sized New Testament with him at all times. He was also homeless.

He was a top-notch singer and player in command of a vast repertoire of songs. His voice was a steady, booming melange of Elvis, John Lee Hooker, whiskey, and roasting coffee beans. It scared you and comforted you. And he was a truly masterful harp player. Sam so rapidly switched between singing and playing that often, while watching him perform, your ears often had to inform your eyes what just happened, since your eyes couldn't keep up.

I wrote a story about Sam that (along with a couple of photos I snapped of him) took up the entire final page of an issue of SLAMM. About a week after that story came out, San Diego's public broadcasting station, KPBS, aired a segment about Sam produced by one of their radio reporters who had tracked Sam down after reading my piece on him.

And suddenly, Sam Michaels was a bit of a star.

SLAMM was hardly The Los Angeles Times. But it did 42,000 copies every two weeks, and was distributed at some 700 locations throughout San Diego. Everyone knew the magazine. And nobody in San Diego didn't (and doesn't) know KPBS, one of the largest public television and radio broadcasting stations in the country.

A week or so after the segment on Sam aired on KPBS radio, I got a call from the guy who'd produced it. He told me that Sam had phoned him in hopes of meeting with us both at a coffee shop downtown.

Sam looked as if he hadn't slept in a week. Normally impeccably groomed, his clothes and hair had grown raggedy. His usually steady gaze was fleeting and unsettled. He spoke too rapidly. He was upset about something he struggled to articulate.

The radio reporter and I began to understand that Sam was upset because he feared the fame we had recently afforded him was waning---that his window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

When Sam excused himself to use the restroom, the reporter leaned across the table and said to me worriedly, "He thinks we made him famous."

"I know!" I said. "But ... it's SLAMM magazine. I don't even read it."

"Well, a lot of people do. I do. And then we aired that show about him. He thought our stuff was gonna get him booked into big clubs, and all that. He thinks we can help get him a recording contract."

"Yow. This isn't good. I wouldn't know a recording contract from a grocery store receipt. I don't even get paid to write for SLAMM."

"Really?" said the reporter. "Seriously? Nothing?"

"Nothing. My day job is as a mailroom schlump for a legal office. What are we gonna do? I love this guy."

"I do, too. Sam's the best."

As it turned out, there was nothing we could do. We tried to explain to Sam that we were practically homeless; that we weren't movers or shakers in the entertainment business; that we didn't know anyone who owned a recording studio, or a nightclub, or who booked musicians into gigs.

"I make photocopies all day," I said. "I push around a squeaky little mail cart. You get more money in your hat on a Saturday night than I make in a week."

"We're just guys with crappy jobs," said the reporter.

But we couldn't convince Sam of what, in the end, we perhaps didn't want to, since it was something that I know brought me sudden shame. I'd never thought of it before, but the truth is that, in the process of creating publishable "human interest" stories, I used people. It had never occurred to me that writing about Sam could hurt him---that by putting his name and picture in a magazine that was available all over town, I would upset the world balance he had arranged for himself.

On his downtown corner, Sam was king. But once he had been objectively crowned by way of a magazine and radio story about him, it illuminated for him how tiny his realm really was. And he then desperately wanted to claim that larger kingdom; he wanted in on the action that, however fleetingly, had spun so seductively around him.

But Sam was no more psychologically prepared for fame and the calculating discipline it requires than I was prepared to pilot a space shuttle. While in Vietnam an enemy combatant had clocked Sam in the head so hard with the butt of a rifle the damage to his skull had ultimately required a steel plate to fix. Sam had meds he couldn't keep up with and/or afford. He was so exacting about his music that he'd been unable to stay in any of the bands he'd joined in the past. He was, I felt, a musical genius---but he was destined to remain a solo act.

There was little I or my new friend could do for Sam. We tried a couple of things around his recording a CD and so on---but our efforts crumbled beneath Sam's inability to maintain focus, keep a schedule, arrive on time. Homelessness is its own world, and that world doesn't too readily mix with Productive Land.

In the end, all I could do was sit beside Sam in his tiny, cluttered, $14 a day hotel room, and with him look at some old photos he kept in a shoebox. In one he is standing in a jungle in Vietnam, the sleeves of his camouflage shirt rolled high, its open front revealing his muscular chest.

With his hands on his hips, he smiles into the camera with the sure confidence of a man who knows he has no natural bounds.

Sticking from the pocket of his shirt one can just make out the tip of a harmonica.