Media Watch November 21, 2007

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

By PJH Staff

Scabs for Thanksgiving
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The other Planet writers and I were packing our dreams into a suitcase, prepared to heal an embattled, rerun-afflicted, striking Hollywood with scab screenplays like “Anthrax, Y’all” (Ben’s), “Dude, I Don’t Even Know Why We’re Having This Conversation” (Sam’s) and “Bears: What They Eat, Where They Sleep” (mine). The Internets assured us our plan would work.

The Evil Corporations™ were busy pretending the World Wide Interwebs would never make it out of the ’90s – I mean 2000s – and the members of the Writer’s Guild Association remained as vulnerable to peer pressure as a group of 8th graders at gym class, so we figured we could sneak in, unnoticed.

But, alas, when I computered the Writer’s Strike in my promotional-video-only-machine, I learned that members of the Velvet Rope message board were trolling coffee shops in Los Angeles and subjecting potential screenplay writers to guerilla shoulder-tapping and lecturing tactics, and, further, that WGA maintains the right to get all Joseph McCarthy on your butt if you so much as drop a chapter of Battlestar Galactica fan fiction in the near vicinity of Sumner Redstone.

Rather than head to H-Town, Ben took to the kitchen to whip up a short video with the gents at The Hole Production Studio. So turn off that American Idol season two marathon and check out Ben and his “it’s not stuffing” Thanksgiving video cook-along at www.PlanetJH.com.
— Grace Hammond

How much is your vote worth?
A recent survey by an NYU journalism class revealed that many of the upper-tier school’s students would put a price on their vote.

For a full year’s tuition, two-thirds of the 3,000 students surveyed said they would forgo their right to vote in next year’s presidential election. Half said they would give up their vote forever for $1 million, and perhaps most staggering – and actually kind of funny –  is that about 20 percent said they would trade in next year’s vote for an Apple iPod Touch, a portable media player that starts off at about $300 retail.

Still, the overwhelming majority of students polled also said voting is very important, with 70 percent saying one vote can make a difference.

The results do not necessarily reflect hungry college students scraping by to attend a fairly expensive private university, though: 60 percent who said they would trade their votes for a year’s tuition described their family’s income as upper-middle or high, according to student reporter Lily Quateman of NYU’s school paper, the Washington Square News.
— Ben Cannon
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Media Watch November 21, 2007 | Planet JH News Article: Media Watch

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