The Olympics are the closest to coverage parity female athletes get
Columbia Journal Review – Feb. 24
For every Olympics since 1994’s Lillehammer Games, Andy Billings has broken down how much time the primetime broadcast spends covering male athletes and female athletes. Usually, men get significantly more of the clock time. But this year, when Billings, who directs the University of Alabama’s sports communications program, and his collaborators ran an initial data-crunch on the first week of the Sochi Olympics, NBC’s coverage was looking more equitable. Through the Friday night of Valentine’s Day, NBC spent 47.6 percent its time covering men and 37.6 percent of its time covering women, with the remainder going to pair sports, like ice dancing. That counts as an improvement. “It’s a 10-percent gap favoring male athletes, which is smaller than normal,” said Billings, late last week. (Researchers like Billings focus on NBC’s primetime coverage because it reaches the most people—averaging 22.5 million per night, according to the Washington Post.) At the last winter Olympics, in Vancouver, the gap was 20 percent. And, at that point in the Games, women’s figure skating hadn’t even started yet.
NBC Enjoys Olympics Success Despite Lower Ratings, Aging Audience
ShootOnline.com – Feb. 23
NBC Universal’s Sochi performance is partly measured in gold, too. Televising the Olympics is a complex, multi-million dollar business venture that seems to have more riding on it every two years. Beyond attracting millions of people to the broadcast network each night, NBC used the Sochi games to popularize streaming video, develop a cable sports network and launch entertainment programs. NBC was able to concentrate on these goals largely because pre-Olympic worries about terrorism, security and the safety of people uncomfortable with Russia’s gay rights laws faded when competition began. “If I’m NBC, and I’m looking at the biggest crisis being Bob Costas’ eyes, I think it’s been a success,” said Andrew Billings, a sports media professor at the University of Alabama and author of “Olympic Media: Inside the Biggest Show on Television.”
Chillicothe News (Mo.) – Feb. 24
Hawaii News Now – Feb. 23
SDSM&T Lands $1M in Research Funding For Rare Earth Metals, Reduces Dependence on China
Digital Journal – Feb. 24
A faculty team at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology has been awarded $999,998 in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense – Army Research Lab through a subaward from the University of Alabama. Focusing on novel extraction technologies for rare earth ores, the research will use a multidisciplinary approach to develop new leaching and concentration techniques and strategies for recovery of rare earth metals. The School of Mines has a long tradition of research related to the metallurgy associated with mineral concentration and metal recovery. Rare earth metals, derived from their ores, have been deemed critical to the nation’s economy and defense. End uses for rare earth elements include applications in petroleum refining, cell phones, laptops, wind turbines, jet fighter engines, missile guidance systems, antimissile defense and hybrid vehicles.
TutorialFinder.com – Feb. 24
Cultural center brings student art downtown Crimson White – Feb. 25 At the corner of 7th Street and Greensboro Avenue, artwork from The University of Alabama is displayed from the front windows of a former hardware store, where Tuscaloosa residents once bought everything they needed, from two-by-fours and nails, to their first baseball gloves. Now the space is used as the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center for community art events. “It was like the Walmart of Tuscaloosa,” said Sandra Wolfe, the executive director of the Tuscaloosa Arts Council, whose office is just a few steps down the block, next to the Bama Theatre. The Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center consists of two galleries, the Black Box Theatre and meeting space for members of the Tuscaloosa Arts Council on Tuesday, the Council members will have the opportunity to connect with the public at the Community Arts Conversations event.
Artist undeterred after stray bullet leaves her paralyzed
Abilene Reporter-News (Texas) – Feb. 24
In the past couple of years, about 20 paintings by Mariam Pare have been reproduced and sold internationally. This month, she’s a featured artist in two shows. And, any day now, she expects to take a job that will pay her a comfortable salary to paint. Those are intoxicating developments for any artist, especially Pare. She paints with a brush in her mouth. That’s how she has created art since 1997, a year after a stray bullet struck her spinal cord while she was driving and she watched her hands drop from the steering wheel. In that instant, a promising young artist from Naperville, Ill., became a quadriplegic. Pare, 38, has risen from that hopeless place by tapping the mysterious neurological pathways that allow creative expression to flow through a broken body. Today she is an arts activist and teacher who survived a life-changing plunge into Lake Michigan while strapped in a wheelchair … Forging that path, as arduous as it was for Pare, is a “fascinating” property of the brain, said Dr. Daniel Potts, neurologist and associate professor at the University of Alabama. Founder of Cognitive Dynamics, an organization focused on expressive arts therapy for cognitive disorders, Potts noted that the brain’s capacity to generate art remains after a paralyzing injury. The issue becomes how to bring out that art. “When the end point of the normal motor pathway is taken away and the drive to produce art is still present,” Potts said, “the brain and motor system work to create a new mechanism for artistic production.”
Conway Orchestra students earn top spots at All-State Music Conference
The Log Cabin Democrat (Conway, Ark.) – Feb. 24
Nine of Conway’s finest high school string players earned seats in the 2014 Arkansas All-State Orchestras. Entrance to the annual event is highly competitive; string players from all over Arkansas vied for seats at the state’s highest honor for high school musicians. … The top half of the string section made up the Arkansas All-State Chamber Orchestra, which also includes the top two wind, brass and percussion players from the All-State Wind Symphony. These students spent all day Wednesday in rehearsals and performed a concert Thursday evening under the direction of Dr. Blake Richardson from the University of Alabama.