Jammer's Blog

University of Illinois graduate student Dan Maloney portrays Chief Illiniwek at halftime of the Illinois-Northwestern basketball game at Assembly Hall in Champaign, Illinois, on Feb. 18, 2007. The dance was the UI mascot’s next-to-last performance after the UI board of trustees announced Chief Illiniwek would be retired. (AP Photo)

There are some controversial issues that I find I have no strong feelings about either way, until finally I find myself picking a side in the interests of whatever will fastest end the controversy, because I want the damn thing resolved already.

I was a student on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1994 to 1998. For that entire time, I was a staff member at The Daily Illini, the student newspaper. Also during that entire time, there was the tiresome, never-ending debate over Chief Illiniwek, the school’s mascot/symbol. (I have to be careful what I call it. Some pro-Chief supporters will chide me for calling it a “mascot” and point out that it’s actually an honorable “symbol.”) (Read more…)

In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, I’ve found myself wondering: What responsibilities should the media be taking in regard to its coverage of this particular kind of tragedy? I ask this as an outside observer as well as someone who works in the media, where we have posted on our own web site some of the very materials I will discuss here.

Obviously, the media must report the news. The public wants to know what happened, how, and why. I have no problems with the kind of coverage we got on the day of the shootings. (Granted, I only saw about an hour or so of television reports, but what I saw seemed to be generally solid. Wolf Blitzer and that absurd “Situation Room” need to go, but that’s a matter of personal taste for another blog.) (Read more…)

A gunman earlier today opened fire in a shooting massacre at Virginia Tech and killed at least 32 people, in the deadliest tragedy of its kind in the history of the United States.

Let the search for the “cause” begin, as well as the search for solutions to “prevent” future tragedies of this sort. Depending on who the gunman turns out to be, I’m sure the word “Columbine” will be mentioned many, many times in the days and weeks to come. (Read more…)