New Media is HUGE. If one wants to excel in business in general (but especially media and marketing), one has to have a basic understanding of new media. But what exactly is “New Media?”

It’s things such as blogs, Facebook, MySpace, podcasts, Youtube, websites and any other interactive media online. For college students: I highly recommend you add, “Set up New Media Sites” or “Highly knowledgeable of New Media” on your resumé if it somehow applies to the job you are applying for. This applies to marketing and mass communications majors the most.

This actually was the aspect that landed me an internship with Magnolia Pictures. Although I don’t support movies with haram aspects such as music and inappropriate scenes, what I’m doing right now with them is viral marketing research. The assignments I get are all tools to help me learn how to market a film (Google ads are huge!).

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So lesson #1 for everyone to benefit from and understand: “WHAT ARE RSS FEEDS?”

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The name fits just right because it is extremely simple. It lets you subscribe to sites that you frequently visit and every time the administrator of that site adds something new (like a new post) it’s sent you you.

This is the way it works:

1. You’ve all seen the symbol on the left (minus the head phones). This is an RSS feed symbol. And for this blog you will see a link at the end of this post that says “Subscribe to RSS feed.”

2. For those of you who don’t use Google, I HIGHLY suggest you create an account right now. (I’m going to use it for this demonstration).Google makes the world so much easier and convenient. I love you Google.

3. Go to “Google Reader” and sign in with your Google account. This is a place where you can send all your subscriptions and check them as many times a day as you want. I think this is the most convenient because a person like myself, I used to spend a lot of time going to my different bookmarks everyday, and sometimes to find nothing new on those sites. This way, you can go to one site that will tell you if there is anything new on ALL your favorite sites.

4.Next, go to your favorite blog (which you’re already here ) or site, and if you use Firefox this is even easier: Click on the RSS feed symbol.

5. It should take you to this page. Click the “Add to Google Reader” button.

6.Next, It should take you to your reader subscription page you can click either expanded view or list view. Then you can just click the title of the post or scroll down to read the rest of the post. Sometimes it will give you a link that says, “If you want to read the rest of this post click here” This link takes you to directly to the site.

And it’s as simple as that.

The cool thing about Wordpress is that we have an option to see how many people are subscribing. MashaAllah, A lot of people visit the site through their subscriptions. We know you’re out there… So don’t be shy to leave comments - that’ll be a later post inshaAllah.

But I hope that was helpful if you have any comments or anything you found as a cool option with RSS feeds post it below.

WAllahu ta’ala ‘alem,

Umm Ayoub.

     

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Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmitillahi wa Barakatuh,

Recently, Br. Belal sent me a request to be a contributor to the Leechon Films blog. You may have seen the “Press” section of the blog which contains some of my work for the upcoming documentary “Tufaan.” Since I was already considering creating my own blog for just this purpose, I agreed. But as a disclaimer I never claim to be an expert and so I would encourage you all to take what I say with a grain of salt.

To introduce myself: I’m a Mass Comm Student concentrating in Public Relations. I’ll be doing a lot of the media work for Leechon Films and more specifically, “Tufaan.”Insha’Allah we have big plans for the documentary, and bi’fadhlillahi ta3ala it will be a changing point for Islamic media in the West. I’ll be blogging about various media topics including: how to pitch your stories and projects to reporters. And how we have the ability-and yet most don’t realize it- to change the image of Islam at our fingertips.

I want to dedicate the rest of my first post to a topic I thought was very interesting while taking a Visual Communication class. We talked a lot about ethics in media. However, this concentrated primarily on photography.

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I remember in 2004 hearing a news report in which a photographer described her experience in Iraq. She said one of the hardest things for her to do was to take pictures of grieving widowers- Putting a camera in their faces while they just found out their husbands have been killed.

Seeing this picture made me think how this aspect of ethics (photographing people’s personal tragedies) is virtually non-existent in our curriculum.Why? because they consider it an aspect of taste. ETHICS VS TASTE. They teach:

Ethics: Issues of deception or lying

Taste: Blood, sex, violence, etc

We as Muslims need to look beyond what our curriculum teaches us and more deeply into what is truly ethical and not ethical when it comes to our Islamic values.

I agree, sometimes we need to take pictures of people in distress to show the world that they need help and to show their conditions. Societal issues sometimes will outweigh personal tragedy.

They say that publishing gory photos is ethical only if you have a compelling reason and if it is a fair and actual representation of the situation.

This picture of a girl on the verge of dying from malnutrition and hunger while a vulture hovers over her, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. It was taken by photographer Kevin Carter:

There is a documentary about him HBO did which also highlighted the ethical standpoint of taking this photo:

“The photo became instantly famous after it appeared on the front page of the New York Times, while Carter himself became notorious. He embodied a classic dilemma facing journalists: whether to be witness to, or savior of, the subjects they depict.

Many critics asked why Carter didn’t “take off his photographer’s hat” and rescue the child from a dangerous situation. Haunted by all that he had seen - as well as the decisions he made both as a photojournalist and a human being - Carter committed suicide a few weeks after receiving the Pulitzer Prize. .”

WAllahul Musta’an.

Umm Ayoub

     

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If you knew you’re going to die, what would you do?

This spotlight is dedicated to Randy Pausch.

Watch the following video - Stop wasting time, go for your dreams. Truth is you ARE going to do die. It can be tomorrow, you don’t know.

Randy Pausch’s website: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

Randy Pausch on Time Management:

What are you dreams?

     

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