We all share the grief in the tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, but it is especially gnawing on me. Over the years that I lived in Virginia, I watched with pride as The Hokies became a first-rate school and a true rival to prestigious UVA in sports and academics. NAA’s Digital Edge has a nice rundown on how local and college media are covering the story.
I really like what The New York Times did. It published an interactive feature on each of the students and faculty. The write-ups are really nice, and well reported. But what makes the effort special are the links to many students’ MySpace and Facebook pages. In some cases, their self-portrayals are very different than the written obits, but even more compelling.
I was looking at one student’s MySpace profile, and noticed the rotating banner ad: “Shoot the Rapper, win $5,000.” I hope MySpace deletes the ad soon.
Regarding MySpace’s failure to pull the offensive ads….. Peter Zollman notes in Poynter tidbits that airliners have a three day rule that any media org that takes their advertising is required to automatically pull it whenever there is bad news impacting them. Clearly, My Space and others have got to develop a similar system, across the board.
I saw the ad on another site this morning. Regardless of the tragedy this week the ad is offensive. We all know about the shootings over the years in the Rap community. This ad should have never been made in the first place. It’s very disturbing to have an ad poke fun at violence. The ad should be banned period.
the “shoot the rapper” add would actually bring up a camera to “shoot” the rapper with, not a gun like one would expect. The desired affect was to make the person think a gun would come up, but have it be a more acceptable image when you actually went to the add. Not saying it’s appropriate, but really thinking it was in reference to a firearm shooting would be the viewers own contribution and prior conditioning. A paparazzi photographer viewing the page might thinking of shooting the rapper with a camera first. It’s definitely an underhanded advertising tactic regardless
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[...] Actually, this is not the first time this has appeared. During the horrific events at Virginia Tech earlier this year, the ad was frequently spotted on MySpace, alongside the profiles of Virginia Tech students who happen to have lost their lives in that horrific tragedy. Peter Krasilovsky, on his “Local Onliner” blog was the first to notice this in his post about the Virginia Tech shootings. [...]