I just found this post, a few days old now, on Zeckman's Page. Yes I noticed the "prospectives" in class, particularly the mom in 228-02. If I had known she was going to be there would I have spent the class guiding a discussion about "which latin drum beat is the best to go along with the electric guitar we have already picked out"? Well, I don't know. That discussion was an important part of learning to use the audio editing software and creating our radio shows, so I would defend it's relevance to COMM 228. But I have in the past changed my plans for a class period because I was warned that we would have visitors and wanted to be politic. Usually profs are given a choice whether they will accept visitors on such days. I have never refused such a request. But I was not informed that last Monday would be a visitation day. Better that I had planned to show the software that day than to have the conversation about words, eh?
Also, Eric Z. weighs in about the style of discourse on many of the blogs. I won't quote his words directly in this post--if you want to take a look his example is hilarious. But I disagree with him. What I like about these blogs is precisely that they are conversational and honest, that they sound like the way we speak and not like a boring term paper. Believe me, I've read plenty of those. Snore. In fact, that's the very reason I like reading Zeckman's Page. It's funny and personal--I can hear a real human voice behind it. And of course he's right about our neighbors to the north.