There’s a kid in there? I thought to myself, exchanging furrowed brows with my roommates. Did a little kid named Falcon Heene steal an airship?

Looking past the over-nurturing concerns of the news anchor, the helium balloon specialists and the family, I thought, with hands gripping the bottom of my chair, “Fly on Falcon, Fly.”

As the news unfolded my roommates and I learned that a Colorado family had an experimental, helium balloon in their backyard that their child had managed to untether and float away in on Oct. 15. It was speculated that the balloon contained about 2,000 cubic feet of helium, more than enough to support such a small boy, according to cnn.com.

A vivid scene formed in my mind.

Pilot Falcon manned the joy stick of his aircraft, soaring over the Colorado desert. He knew the police would be looking for him in no time at all so he went for maximum altitude, banking on it being harder for them spot him. Seven thousand feet would do the trick. Through his tiny, circular, viewing window he could clearly make out the curvature of the earth and the ocean sparkled, reflecting the sun. At his set speed he would make the Cayman Islands by sunset. With all the instruments calibrated and auto-pilot engaged, Falcon loosened his aviation goggles, slouched in his seat and reached for his sippy cup. The hard part was over.

I wanted to believe this young boy was not only on board but knew exactly what he was doing. I mean, his name was Falcon, what more needs to be said. When the helium balloon touched down I waited to see a little boy spring from the wreckage and commandeer a police car, but it was empty. Everyone else seemed relieved.

No, Falcon was never on board the homemade helium balloon ship. He was hiding all along in the garage of his family’s house.

I felt betrayed on so many levels. The coolest thing I’ve seen on the news turns out to be a set up, which I deduced from the very awkward interview with the family in which Falcon told his father, Richard Heene, “You guys said that we did this for the show.” His father stumbled over his words and went on a tangent about Falcon’s tendency to lag behind and hide when he’s in trouble. An entirely unconvincing explanation by my standards.

When Wolf Blitzer questioned Heene further on Falcon’s reasoning behind saying, “…we did this for the show,” he became so visibly uncomfortable and defensive toward Blitzer that it made my own stomach churn.

Later that same month an associate of Heene’s named Robert Thomas reported him as “being consumed with his desire for fame and attention,” according to cbsnews.com. He allegedly staged the whole event to get publicity for a reality show he was pitching. The Heenes apparently wanted to star in a reality show focusing on a range of bizarre experiments, such as trying to attract UFOs with a weather balloon. He had tasted sweet fame on the ABC show Wife Swap and needed his fix, even if it meant pretending his son was floating thousands of feet in the air inside of a helium balloon.

What really got to me is that Falcon’s identity will now be inherited from his father’s selfish decisions. Falcon will be “the boy from the great balloon hoax,” and that is incredibly unfair to him. Ultimately, for Falcon, if he didn’t die in the process, he would be a lot better off if he had accidentally, or intentionally, taken off in the helium balloon. Instead his parents used him as a tool in their aspirations for fame and that will never be forgotten.

The children are still with their parents but child protective services were contacted to investigate their well-being, according to cbsnews.com. The parents are also facing multiple felonies that could lead up to six years in prison and half a million dollars in fines.

My imagination began to wander again.

Headline news, Richard Heene found guilty of conspiracy/publicity stunt involving helium balloon and 6-year-old son, Falcon Heene. Heene led the media to believe that his son was aboard a home-made helium balloon designed to attract UFOs that was accidentally released from their back yard. Ruled by the court authority of Poetic Justice, Heene will be cast off at 5 p.m. Nov. 19, in his own helium balloon. The dispatch will be held on a U.S. Coast Guard vessel off the coast of Texas. Though Heene will most likely survive in the balloon for several days, it will ultimately run out of helium and fall into the sea. The coast guard vessel is instructed to follow Heene’s movements and to open fire on the balloon should they see fit.

Of course it would never happen like that though. Instead this whole garbage heap of a situation will just cause these stupid parents and their three innocent children a huge amount of grief.

Falcon, you’ve been through a lot lately, and lord knows it’s been hard. But there’s still time to take matters into your own 6-year-old hands. Your parents are crazy, the whole world knows that now. Sometimes life demands that we grow up fast, and as grown ups, we have to know when to bail out. Get in that helium balloon. Get yourself a few days worth of food and don’t forget your sippy cup. With favorable winds, you can make the Caymans by nightfall.

Red headed hippie enjoys pizza

At 4:10 p.m. A light skinned gangly man with red hair, a thin, arching nose and narrow dark eyes sat at a booth in Celestino’s Pizza talking enthusiastically to his friend across from him, waiving his half-eaten slice of pizza in front of him as he spoke between chews.

He had a gangly way about him because he let his free hand drop loosely at his side but it would occasionally twitch around like he was having a spasm in his shoulder.

At the end of his right arm, practically brushing the floor, was a watch with brown straps.

He looked to be over six feet tall but slouched in his seat, giving his back a big curve. If his head went any lower it would be level with his shoulders. His posture was made even more awkward by the way his long legs folded under the table, like a grown man trying to sit down at a fisher price table for a tea party.

He had a white, long sort of face that was emphasized, in color and shape, by his hair. His red main blossomed into a cauliflower held above his ears by a banana yellow headband; his chin was extended by a thick, red, squarish gotee.

He looked to be in his late 20s, with a scrawny but athletic build; long arms and long legs. He wore long, baggy blue jeans with brown sandals and long white toes peeking out from underneath. He had a big enough white button-up that the sleeves covered his elbows.

When he spoke his mouth would spread into a toothy grin that seemingly extended past the sides of his head, dimples doubling up in his cheeks.

He had the demeanor of a laid back, skater kind of guy.

When they finished up their pizza he and his friend got up and walked off in the direction of campus.

The guy looks like an environmentalist. Like he wants to be thought of as an out door, hiker enthusiast. I would guess he was a stoner by his style of clothing and body language. He also looked like someone that would ride a road bicycle. He had the look of a guy that you might see on a college campus playing Ultimate Frisbee all day. He has a kind of new-age hippie look. Part of his stoner image had to do with looking somewhat dirty and the headband.

Young woman eats trail mix and reads outdoors

An athletic brown-skinned girl walked with a determined stride through campus and sat down at a bench table across from Butte Station. She had light freckles just under her eyes and across her nose. She swung off a tightly packed Jan Sport backpack and sat it on the table. She wore basketball shorts that went down past her knees, a Chico State sweatshirt and a pair of grey Nike running shoes. Her black hair was up in a pony tail that but looked like it would fall a little past her shoulders when it was down.

Her hair was pulled back tight, stretching the skin in her face. She had big dark eyes with high cheekbones and full lips that parted just enough to show slightly gaped teeth. She dug through her backpack and fished out several books and a plastic baggy of trail mix-like food.

While she read she didn’t move her lips, except when she occasionally took a bite out of her bagged snack. She held her book close to her face and furrowed her brow as she turned the pages.

Her body was fit and heavy set. She looked like she might excel at any sport. Most visibly when she walked, determined and sturdy.

This girl looks like she plays a sport and takes them seriously. She also looks like she takes school and probably life in general pretty seriously too. She has a no non-sense kind of demeanor. Her expression, which is a little angry, makes her look like she does not wish to be spoken too.  The thing that first caught my eye about this woman was the way she passed by me walking almost twice as fast. Her athletic style shoes fit the image and she had a compact build that looked like it would knock someone over if they stood in her way. Something in her face shouted competition.

On Oct. 15 at 4:30 p.m. the sun broke through a grey and dreary cloud layer and filtered down through a thick layer of leaves on to the rain-soaked street. Trees that rose about two stories arched together giving the whole block a shaded atmosphere. Each house has large trees in the front yard or on the sidewalk, most of which still have all their leaves. There is so much foliage the word luscious comes to mind.

Spruce Avenue has the look of a place where families live. A lemonade stand on the corner manned by a pair of 8-year-olds would not be out of place. The houses look like homes as opposed to the student-beaten dwellings downtown and closer to the Chico State campus. The people that live here are no transients. The gardens are well maintained, the houses have fresh looking paint and newer cars sit in the driveways.

A couple that looked to be in their 60s pulled up to a house in the middle of the street in a Mercedes SUV, got out and walked to the back of the car and started unloading groceries. The man had wispy white hair and wore a brown suede jacket and blue jeans. His companion was a tall slender woman with closely cropped white hair and wire rim glasses that made her look like a doctor. The two gathered up their purchases and disappeared inside.

The street doesn’t have much traffic on this in particular day. More people passed by on bicycles rather than cars. It appears to be a family kind of neighborhood. It might be hard to find a kegger around here.

When users read an article that upsets them, impresses them or moves them, they are going to want to react. And Journalism is about prompting reaction in the world.

Multimedia in journalism gets the user involved and once they are involved real understanding of can take place. A good example is what it’s like to get a child to learn something. You can say things to him all you want but if you want him to understand you go for a reaction. The same goes for the classroom setting; being able to get involved shows their intelligence and input are respected.

The disadvantages of multimedia incorporation comes down to the user’s ability to stay on track with what’s relevant and realize that multimedia is there to enhance the primary content, not create short cuts.

Allowing users to provide feedback can also contribute to further understanding for other users. A journalist can do the research and interviews to write an article but that doesn’t make them professionals. According to Online Journalism by James Foust, there will always be someone in a journalist’s audience who knows more about the topic then the journalist. In other words, there is always something to be learned from the audience and multimedia are narrowing the gap between the journalist and the user.

Considering I am part of a generation that has been raised using computers and the Internet, I am more or less comfortable using them but for people that have not always had them I can imagine there could be a high level of intimidation in just sending an e-mail.

Two examples are my late grandpa, who didn’t “trust” computers, and my high school friend who’s family didn’t own a television or computer. He had a certain pride in not knowing the first thing about computers. He joked about it but I think if he actually had a kind of phobia of the Internet because it was all sprung on him without much time to get used to it. I wonder how that’s working out for him now.

But for the most part I think people who have access to computers can get by, enough to at least check out a YouTube video, in the same way that someone is expected to be able to read and do basic math. If they can’t , they are going to have some problems getting by in a world where the Internet is close second real interaction.

In a sense, being Web savvy is knowing how to function in this digital world that is becoming more and more real every day. And ya, I’m sure some people are scared.

The importance of keeping a journalist’s biases out of his or her work is an idea that goes against the general grain of this, “Social knowing.” Though I understand the necessity of objectivity for traditional journalists, adaptation and innovation will be needed if traditional journalism is going to survive the mass “conversation” happening on the Internet.
I believe we still do need some guidance from traditional mainstream media, but perhaps a new appraisal of the audience and the way they are thinking is necessary.

He also mentions the 15 billion dollar net value of a website that does nothing but, “send people away” by links. He’s referring to Google.

An LA Times article by Jay Rosen discusses the critique of another man’s critique on blogging.  At the end of his article he said no one owns the practice of reporting or assigns the right to do it. It’s a democratic thing to tell others what’s going on. Some people will not be deterred from doing that. He adds that most of them, bloggers, don’t care what you call them but that they do care if their story stands up. In Rosen’s article a professor’s critique of blogging is shown to be based on the assumption that blogs just aren’t taken seriously, but if bloggers lack journalistic titles or simply aren’t printed in a mainstream publication, then linking to blog sites is an interesting way to shed light on what those writers have to say and a progressive way to support an article.

This new aspect of journalism online has diversified news information but also allows virtually anyone to become a news publisher, many with no editor, affiliation, or professional standards. The concept of “free market place of ideas” says that all ideas should be allowed, backed up by the freedom of speech, and that the good ideas will make their way to the top while the worthless ones will sink to the bottom.  But there is a responsibility when it comes to journalism. And it’s becoming a delicate and complicated situation.

Now, with do-it-your-self journalism, the grey area has increased substantially and the question of regulation is back on the table. The world of the internet has become so “real”, and this ties in to the idea of online communities too, that it’s not just about freedom of speech. It’s about the Real World -on the internet. I had my identity stolen several years ago over the internet by someone overseas. They had somehow gotten hold of my social security number and was living in the U.S under the same one as me. It was hard to grasp, it felt distant, but close at the same time. It was a very real problem that was so intangible for me at the time. But now, I see the internet as having the potential to be just another level of the playing field of life.

Today I asked a random student what he thought about online communities. He said he thinks they’re a great way to share something with a whole lot of people as opposed to just a few. The first thing that came to his head when I asked what he thought of when he heard “online community” and he said Facebook or MySpace. But he also included that moderation was important, because it can lead to being reclusive. And on the surface I agree with him. Sitting on a computer for hours is reclusive, right? Maybe it depends. I believe now that there is some gradation here. If you’re sitting at
your computer with a set of headphones, a mic and a webcam you can see and hear whoever is on the other end AS IF they were sitting in front of you. This mediam of communication also provides a comfort factor for many people. Social awkwardness can be hurdled in an online community. And just because the awkawardness is gone, whose to say the social part is absent as well. Blogger Evan Agee talks about his freedom to be who he wants and open up to people online.

In my opinion if you are speaking to someone as if they were in the same room, showing them anything on the infinite world of the internet and even possibly having group chats, you are being social. Reclusive? I think not. Hell, you could be a total party animal. The life of the online party. 

My dad has worked on the internet since it started. He spends hours out of the day on the computer, but whenever he had some material of any length he would print it out and then read it. He would staple the pages together, take it out the living room, sit on the couch and read it there.

I asked him recently why he did that and he didn’t really have that good an answer. But I tie it in with the same reason people keep books they like on their shelves. Print is something personal. There’s something more there then just words on a screen. I like the quote I found on the yahoo discussion board, “It puts the page-turning in a page turner.”

Granted the internet allows the reader to communicate with the author, click on links and learn more or get other perspectives, and being able to trade ideas with others makes but people don’t spend long hours reading their favorite book on the computer. People want to be able to curl up in bed or on the beach and flip through the pages, and feel the pages of what they’re reading.