Medill School of Journalism students put together a Web site for American journalist Roxana Saberi (photo by Eustacio Humphrey of ZUMA Press), arrested in February and recently convicted of spying in Iran. Saberi is 31, and is a freelance journalist with dual citizenship; she's worked for NPR and the BBC. Saberi is expected to start a hunger strike tomorrow.

The Medill connection? She holds her first master's degree in Journalism from Northwestern University, with her second master’s degree in International Relations from Cambridge University. She is currently working on yet another master's degree in Iranian studies and international relations. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that in 2008, Iran was the sixth-leading jailer of journalists.

To help release her, Medill students are asking folks to Officials in Iran need to know your concern for Roxana Saberi and your desire to return her home, and while she is in Iran to have a fair appeals process.

Write to:
His Excellency Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee, Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran
622 Third Ave.
New York, NY 1007
e-mail: [email protected]

Playboy puts the UA at No. 5 in the list of Top Party Schools. Congrats, Zona!

The Zona school that traditionally gets the love is ASU, and though we think Tempe is a great place to spend a three-day weekend, four years are better spent at U of A in Tucson. Consider some of its party names: Natural Disaster, Heaven and Hell, Fubar, Jungle Party. Sounds wild. Leo, a senior, describes the biggest decision of his life thusly: “When I was applying to schools, it was between the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Would I rather walk around in board shorts and sandals, looking at gorgeous girls in bikinis for eight months out of the year or shovel snow and freeze my nuts off in Boulder? I made the right decision.”

UPDATE: Crack TW intern Hank Stephenson has already tracked down a Q&A with Ashley, who appears to have first appeared in the October 2005 issue. Money quote: "My parents were not fans. But I did find out my mom tried out when she was my age. I pretty much got the 'better morals' lecture."

America's stuffiest columnist, George F. Will, is outraged that Americans wear blue jeans:

On any American street, or in any airport or mall, you see the same sad tableau: A 10-year-old boy is walking with his father, whose development was evidently arrested when he was that age, judging by his clothes. Father and son are dressed identically — running shoes, T-shirts. And jeans, always jeans. If mother is there, she, too, is draped in denim.

Writer Daniel Akst should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he has denounced denim, summoning Americans to soul-searching and repentance about the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche.

This brings back very hazy memories of a Harvard Lampoon Newsweek parody from the mid-’80s, which included a "George Fwill" column headlined: "Why I Love The Feudal System."

Looking for work? The Tucson Citizen reports that a possible buyer of the afternoon paper has placed an ad looking for salespeople:

The publisher of the Culver City (Calif.) Observer has placed an ad online with craigslist looking for "highly motivated" newspaper advertising salespeople to work in Tucson.

I've never been much for the Twitter.

Sure, when it first launched at SXSW Interactive in 2007, I followed the unofficial geek handbook and immediately created an account. Until a month ago, my only posting was "on the phone, testing Twitter."

I mean, who cares what anyone else is doing or thinking? At last year's SXSW Interactive, my friend Ward just about drove me crazy updating his location to his friends every 10 minutes.

But, last month in Austin at this year's conference, I witnessed the evolution of the Twitter and its advanced use. I'm now a "tweetaholic" (find me @thefitz on Twitter).

It's not that the Twitter itself has changed - it still sports the same functionality as when it first launched. It's all the "twapplications" (Twitter applications) that have sprung up in the last year to sort, slice and dice the "twitterscape." Plus, the liberal Twitter elite (a.k.a. techno geeks) are now using all this random flotsam and jetsam of information for useful purposes - a far cry from the way your friendly neighborhood CNN, politicians and celebrities are stretching their Twitter wings.

Presented as evidence:

* I went to SXSW Interactive this year to try and build my professional relationships for digital media consulting. Every time I sat down next to someone, I found myself Mac-blocked from making an introduction because the person was either sending a message to their "tweeps" (followers), reading other people's tweets, or updating Facebook. But I witnessed more than one spontaneous "tweetup" when people who had been following each other on Twitter suddenly realized they were in the same session and met in person for the first time. Genius: Find out whether you care about what someone has to say before you waste time talking to them in person.

* Thanks to the ingenious addition of hashtags (#tucson) and the ability to search by keyword, you find yourself connecting to people with similar interests you never knew before. A posting on my second day of tweeting - about how artificial intelligence algorithms are confused by "Napoleon Dynamite" and Dido recommendations - earned me an artificial intelligence engineer follower from Florida. My response to a tweet about science cafes picked up a follower with the National Museum of Health and Medicine at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C.

* At dinner with my girlfriend, her dad, and his friends, I found myself at a loss to remember the name of the father of quantum physics (I know, I know). To prove a point about a Twitter debate we were having, I sent out a tweet asking for the information. I had the answer - delivered by someone I didn't know - within 15 minutes. Not exactly Google, but not bad.

Or, you can just say, "twuck it."

Link:
L.A. Times interview with Twitter creator Jack Dorsey

The East Bay Express (whose staff is considerably hipper-looking than all of us freaks at the Tucson Weekly), has used their infinite hipster wisdom to come up with the best idea yet for saving print newspapers.... I won't ruin the surprise...

The Citizen reported earlier today that Mr. Guffman has not stopped by the offices to kick the tires.

Gannett Blog's take.

In an ominous sign for the Tucson Citizen, two investors Gannett identified as "interested parties" have failed to visit the paper, and Corporate has now pulled back two executives it sent to the paper amid signs of turmoil in the newsroom. What's more, the Citizen now says that spokeswoman Tara Connell refuses to reveal Corporate's next move.

The media biz hackings continue.

Employees of Journal Communications—which includes the Journal Broadcast Group's KGUN Channel 9 and four radio stations in Tucson—got this notice today.

Here's an excerpt:

Today we announce an additional company-wide cost saving effort—An Employee - Wage Reduction Program. Here is how it will work:

• Beginning with our first pay period in the second quarter, full-time employees will take a 6% base pay reduction for the balance of 2009.

• These full-time employees will receive 10 personal days off to be used between April 7, 2009 and December 31, 2009. The personal days off will not be paid out upon separation from the company, will not be accrued, and can not be carried over into 2010.

• Our current intention is to restore employee compensation in 2010. Of course the decision depends upon the business conditions at that time.

On Tuesday, San Francisco Chronicle management reported that 120 employees voluntarily agreed to leave as part of an effort to save costs to keep the paper running.

Sound familiar?

The company is expected to announce on Friday how many buyout applications it receives in this ongoing round of cuts and cuts.

Reaction to the possible/eventual shutdown of the major daily has been interesting. The San Francisco Bay Guardian is keeping tabs, and a group of SF citizenry is exploring life after the Chronicle through a digital lense.

And, of course, in the wake of newspapers struggling across the country, there remains plenty of passion and perspective.

Stop the presses! Shyam Jha, a professor at the UA's Eller College of Management, has discovered that newspapers are in financial trouble! Turns out there's this Internet thing that's lessening the demand for the print product and blogs that provide commentary and all these new things like Twitter that break news.

In an op-ed from today's morning daily, Jha notes that "the vigil for the demise of ink-on-paper version of newspapers is on. Unless they realize they are in the information business, rather than in the business of printing and distribution, they will go the way of the typewriter and horse buggies."

To which we reply: Duh. I would think that if a student at Eller turned in this analysis, he'd get maybe a C for stringing together a bunch of factoids and coming up with a conclusion that most of us made years ago. Why is the Star printing this? Did the editors lose a bet to Shyam?