From the desk of Ren LaForme

The U.S. is in a pretty sorry condition when an empty balloon captures its collective attention for hours at a time.

The other day, I was surfing reddit.com, a popular news aggregation and social media site, when I saw this headline:

Balloon Boy is the perfect metaphor for cable news: America spent hours riveted by a powerful and gripping story that turned out to be totally meaningless, and will have no significant impact on anybody’s lives going forward

This is exactly right. We now have 24-hour news stations, but not 24-hour news – meaning the extra time is filled with meaningless garbage that means nothing to any of us in any way, shape or form.

Sometimes we get to see car chases happening thousands of miles away. Sometimes we wonder if the president’s choice of attire is appropriate. We even get to see Bristol Palin’s baby-daddy from time to time.

When did he become relevant again?

We are going to be watching balloon boy news for months to come. There are going to be further interviews with his family. Talking heads like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck will discuss whether his parents are suitable and will bring social services workers on to their shows to discuss the matter.

Taken from the San Diego Union Tribune

The fact of the matter is that 24-hour news is here to stay. So instead of mindlessly watching cheesy stories about kids in balloons, we should focus on the stories that really matter.

Earthquakes in Asian countries that kill thousands of people. Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. AIDS crises in Africa.

We need to pay attention to these stories because they matter – we can do things to help them.

The Heene family is messed up and there is nothing we can do about it.

Let’s move forward.

http://www.ubspectrum.com/article/118

When I contacted the Office of Special Events to get Kofi Annan tickets for The Spectrum, Director Bill Regan presented me with an opportunity I couldn’t pass up — I could interview Kofi Annan.

I’ve spoken to a handful of other famous people before, including Ralph Nader and Ishmael Beah, but never someone as worldly or influential as Annan.

I immediately began pondering what sorts of questions to ask him. Should I take the role of a serious reporter and ask him hard questions about his failure to protect Rwanda from the genocide that occurred there in the mid-’90s? Should I ask him the stupid questions that the other on-campus publication would probably ask?

I even probed Facebook to see what other people would ask him.

Finally, I decided to ask almost totally serious questions, though they weren’t too probing, with one fun one at the end.

When I walked into the room I was a little bit starstruck. There was Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations — a man that has met countless world leaders —  justing sitting there at a table signing books. However, the feeling wore off completely once I began asking him questions.

I thought it would be nice to print a raw interview with Annan and I’m satisfied with the way it turned out. I hope to print more raw interviews for the next distinguished speakers in the series.

http://www.ubspectrum.com/article/113

At the last minute we realized that we neglected to run a preview of Kofi Annan’s lecture. We generally always preview distinguished speakers, so I decided to write a quick bio.

Since it was so late in production, it ended up being Web only. There was a small box on the front page of the print issue advertising this fact.