MMMM # 83 - New (South) Media

     This series of postings --- The Monday Morning Media Memo ---  has had an almost 100% weekly attendance record on this site for almost two years. But every now and then, events beyond my control conspire to prevent me from writing one.
     This is one of those weeks.
     (Now that I've returned to the fold of the working full-time masses, I wonder how I will ever get anything else done!)

     So this week, allow me to simply point you toward a Southerncentric new media project that I believe you'll enjoy. The Emory University creators of Southern Spaces have been at it a half-dozen years now, and they've done a fine job of combining the elements that make new media exciting, while managing to avoid those that tend to drag it down (like those after-story comments that make newspaper sites look like loud and mostly ignorant radio call-in shows).

     You'll find essays and photos and videos in the journal...yes, it is a "journal", and as such it tends to the academic, with "peer reviewed" submissions and "interdisciplinary" focus. Some of you, I know, will feel perfectly at home there. But those whose formal education is less structured shouldn't let the scholarly professorship of it all scare them off. There are wonderful stories about you and your people inside.
     For a sample, start with a 2008 short film about midwifery in Alabama called "Birth Right".

     Professor/Author Wayne Flynt is in there too, that living Auburn University treasure who was always such a friendly resource for me in producing stories at APT...and there's an essay about the similar journeys of South Africa, Northern Ireland, and The American South.
     If all that sounds a bit on the progressive side, so be it. Go visit for a spell.

[PLUS: Here's a cute BBC YouTube piece on the anatomy of a television news "package". Thanks to MB for sharing!]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog.]