My name is Heidi DeVries.
I am a multimedia producer and social media trainer for The Ledger in Central Florida.
I am a student at UCF.
I have a cat named Cringer.
I sometimes go days at a time writing only in limericks.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
From the description: Fantastic video on the progression of information technology, researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman, remixed. And there’s not much I can add except, the more I learn, the more I know how much I don’t know.
Print companies that I’m aware of, Time Inc, Conde Nast, Washington Post, New York Times, all of them are making experiments,” says Gaines. “None of them are thinking in new ways about this new medium. They’re treating the Internet as if it’s a new distribution channel. When what it is is a new medium.
Jim Gaines, former editor of Time magazine and founder of StoryRiver Media.
Should the Media Cover Elena Kagan’s Sexual Orientation?
On Thursday, I participated in an online chat hosted by the Poynter Institute that discussed whether the media should be covering Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation. You’ll have to scroll down for the chat but the article is well worth reading, as well.
The discussion was lively and interesting. It seemed that most journalists participating in the chat felt that the sexual orientation question was one that was not relevant but Poynter Institute moderators had a different take on things. For instance, this exchange between me and Poynter’s Kelly McBride:
Me:
If she’s not a lesbian, that’s an awkward sentence. That’s like randomly introducing a sentence in an profile like, “And Kelly McBride is not a vegan.”
Kelly replied:
It’s true, I’m not a vegan. However, because I hang out with a lot of vegans, some people might think I am and assign to me a philosophy of a vegan. But I think it’s responsible if you are asking the question to explore the notion that this is not a simple question with a simple answer. Many people have a shifting understanding of their own sexual identity that ranges from straight to gay to other to asexual. And even within each of those answers are subcategories that challenge conventional wisdom. Straight or gay, for some people, is an unreasonable set of boundaries.
Another chat participant, Zerlina Maxwell, blogged about the subject about if the interest in Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation was perpetrated by sexism. Well I thought that the analysis was interesting (that the topic is brought up because she is unmarried, has short hair and is not what most people would consider especially attractive. As I pointed out in the Poynter chat, there were rumors that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was gay because he was an attractive, unmarried man.
However, there’s also an interesting presupposition that her sexual orientation matters because she could end up reviewing cases that involve homosexuality. This to me seems like a false dilemma for two reasons.
First of all, it assumes that if you’re a member of a minority group, you should not be a participant in deciding how that minority group is covered or treated. There is no litmus test to find out if a Supreme Court judge is a homophobe or may rule on homosexual issues because he believes strongly in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, so why would there need to be a censorship of someone who may feel a different way?
Second of all, even if Elena Kagan was a lesbian, that doesn’t mean that she will always rule in favor of what could be seen as homosexual issues.
One of the chat’s guests, lawyer and journalist Michael Triplett, put it this way:
Heidi, you are right about the way identity intersects with a judge’s views on the law. Being a lesbian doesn’t necessarily mean someone is always going to support gay rights. Clarence Thomas’s racial identity doesn’t necessarily translate to a strong civil rights record and even Justice O’Connor wasn’t a consistent advocate for women’s rights before the court.
Photo of Elena Kagan by Matthew W. Hutchins
-Heidi A. DeVries
