It used to be way easier to keep a secret. It is pretty close to impossible these days. But it seems the harder it is to keep a secret, the harder government agencies work to try to do just that. When I heard the news in June that someone had hacked into the emails of […]
Marcy Burstiner
Marcy Burstiner is a professor of journalism and mass communication at Humboldt State University. If there's something about the media that confuses you, e-mail her at mib3@humboldt.edu.
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Make Them Care
With all the craziness happening around the country and globe, I find I don’t focus on what goes on in my own geographic world. But one recent story popped out: Humboldt County’s scary spike in cases of hepatitis C. The news came from a report Humboldt County Public Health Officer Don Baird made to the […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
SLAPP Back
Earlier this year, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that a macaque monkey in Indonesia did not have the right to control use of the world’s greatest selfie. He snapped the photo after he grabbed a camera belonging to photographer David Slater. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which had filed the suit […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Get It
If I had to pick a fictional character I’m most like, it would be Fancy Nancy, the girl in a series of books by children’s author Jane O’Connor. She loves big words. She’d rather go on an excursion than a trip and demonstrate her dance moves instead of showing them off. But I try not […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Say Cheese
A school picture of my fifth grade daughter is on my refrigerator, secured with a magnet. On top of that is a little slip of paper with a string of numbers on it. I turned the wallet-sized photo into a mug shot. I did it as a joke, without thinking. With the general inertia that […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
I Carry it in my Shoe
If you include my college newspaper, I’ve worked for eight different news organizations as a reporter or editor. Never once did I flash a press pass. I’m pretty sure I never had one, even in the six months I covered the cop beat. The closest I came was a press sticker I had for my […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
It’s All About Us
The best long-running drama not on television just ended. Let’s call it Ferndale Law. The show starred a hot British ex-pat who somehow found herself owning and running a small paper in a quaint little town 5 miles off a remote highway at the westernmost edge of the continental U.S. She marries a guy who […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Chump Change
Monty Python, John Cleese and Graham Chapman helped create a movie called The Magic Christian in 1969. It starred Ringo Starr as an orphan adopted by a crazy rich man who proceeds to show him how anyone will willingly do anything if you pay them enough money. It was a silly movie, but I saw […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
The Mizzou Myth
When you can take your selfie stick and zip videos of your protest to Instagram, who needs news photographers? In a world of self-publication, we don’t need press anymore. Do we? That’s the question I can’t get out of my head after watching videos of protests over racial issues at the University of Missouri last […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Fair Game
To me, the county fair is about pies, poultry and pygmy goats. But now the running of the fair and coverage of it is a side show as entertaining as the pet circus I saw at the fair itself. Earlier in October, the Humboldt County Fair Association, which runs the fair for the county through […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
All Ears
A decade ago, I watched the media world consolidate so fast I thought it wouldn’t be long before two companies owned all the radio on my dial. But now local radio is springing up like native grass. The consolidation craze first started when President Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1994, which […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Hiding Places
I am not a conspiracy theorist. Well, maybe I am a little. I can’t help believing in a conspiracy when some government or corporation keeps me from information that I need to assess a situation. And, because secrets are harder to keep these days, information kept hidden seems more significant. That’s what has happened locally […]