Increasingly, media coverage of college-related incidents is conducted by individuals unaffiliated with official media outlets or the institutions they cover. The observations in these online "blogs" shape public perceptions of issues in unanticipated ways.
The trend has been highlighted in recent weeks by numerous high-profile incidents including ongoing commentary about racial incidents here at the University and a student at the University of Oklahoma who detonated himself in an explosion.
"Increasing numbers of situations have an indirect blogging influence," said John Rosenberg, who has written commentary on racial incidents at the University on his Web site. "Blogs often force the press to cover something they might otherwise ignore."
Rosenberg's site, "Discriminations," focuses on the theory and practice of discrimination and how it is analyzed. In the blog, Rosenberg posts his thoughts about current issues in discrimination, and users are allowed to react to his entries.
The racial incidents here at the University have been a hot topic on his blog during the past few months. He has expressed frustration about the amount of attention the racial incidents have received on Grounds.
In an Oct. 14 entry, Rosenberg wrote, "Increasingly, intense diversiphiles remind me of intense audiophiles: they are both so intent on the imperfections, on the static, on the sometimes almost inaudible scratches on the surface of things that they can no longer hear the music."
He also has sharply criticized The Cavalier Daily for its coverage of racial incidents on Grounds. Rosenberg said he thinks the coverage is excessive and, at times, ignorant.
The complaints are typified by his response to an Oct. 13 lead editorial in The Cavalier Daily in which Rosenberg observed, "There is almost tangible disappointment that there have been no hate incidents lately, or at least reported ones."
The entry characterized The Cavalier Daily's Managing Board as being, "obviously well versed in lifecycle of hate crime incidents."
Rosenberg said what he observes at the University is similar to what is going on nationally.
"My concern with U.Va. is fed by proximity," said Rosenberg, who lives in Crozet. "However, U.Va. is a good example of what is happening on campuses everywhere. It is a racial hothouse where the issue is so whipped up with and there is so much sensitivity. The accidents are exaggerated. The more concern there is about the issues, the more incidents there will be. People respond to them."
In some cases, the blogs themselves make the story take on an entirely different tone.
On Oct. 1, Oklahoma University junior Joel Hinrichs blew himself up 100 yards from the school's football stadium packed with 85,000 spectators watching the game against Kansas State. In the days following the incident, anxiety began to surface in the college town of Norman about what drove Hinrichs to his final act.
Bloggers jumped to speculate that Hinrichs was an Islamic suicide bomber, prompting some traditional news outlets to adopt that perspective as well. Apparent inaccuracies made their way into media accounts, including that Hinrichs visited the mosque frequently; that he tried to enter the stadium twice but was rebuffed; that he had a one-way airplane ticket to Algeria; that there were nails in the bomb and that Islamic extremist literature was found in his apartment, according to the accounts issued by Oklahoma University officials and the FBI to The Wall Street Journal.
Tres Savage, the opinion editor of The Oklahoma Daily at Oklahoma University, emphasized that many of the bloggers do not actually live in Oklahoma and do not know what is going on.
"They aren't here reading the newspapers, watching the news," Savage said. "It is on the Internet, which is what makes it a national issue."
Savage explained the blogs exist to please the public, even if the story is potentially libelous.
"People wanted information. They were looking to newspapers, OU's Web site and TV news, but nobody knew much," he said in an interview. "A lot of people turned to blogs because they may have looked like they had a lot of information, but what they really had was a lot of speculation ---- rumors put out there by people who actually wanted there to be an Islamic connection."
Bloggers defend their role in shaping coverage, and say they perform a valuable service and are driven by personal interest in the subject matter. Rosenberg said he did not start blogging to sway the news and swing angles.
"My daughter provoked me into doing it," Rosenberg said. "I have been interested in [discrimination] for a while, but no one was concentrating on it in a blog. I didn't start with any great goal, and I still don't have great ambitions for the blog. It is just something I enjoy doing."
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