One way that social media has turned traditional communications upside down is that individual people, not media properties, have become the "brands" for news dissemination. Vincent Maling gives us a Hemingway-esque report on human rights abuses at prison rodeos:
"The bull effortlessly throws most of them over its shoulders, goring the unlucky ones in the process. In the end, it's a more direct approach that wins the day: one inmate manages to snatch the chit after leaping onto the bull's head. He's jettisoned into the air, but that's a small price to pay for the "glory" that is his victory.
The whole thing feels like an inbred, country-fried version of Spartacus. The winner of the final game even tosses his hard-earned chit up to the prison warden, who sits in a special box overlooking the whole violent spectacle alongside his wife and daughter."
When you find a good blog, such as Michelle Mart's Media Artist where Vincent guest-wrote the rodeo post, you return again and again to see what you will find. Rodeo abuse is a topic we never would have dreamed of, and perhaps never found given the "objectivity" of traditional media, without the opinions and personal news accounts of blogging.
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