Thursday, June 7, 2007

Today’s Response
Middle Tennessee State University

What are friends for?

One of the latest promotional tactics is to pay people to do what they formerly did for free—word-of-mouth advertising. Folks you know will work a plug for a product subtly into their everyday conversations with you—for a fee. Dr. Larry Burriss, journalism, finds this odious. “Fortunately, this kind of chicanery has attracted the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, which last December said the people who are paid to endorse products have to disclose who they are working for,” Burriss says. He thinks this kind of advertising ultimately will backfire. “People are going to learn to say to their friends very quickly, ‘Look, I don’t want to hear about what you’re trying to sell me.’ Sure, a lot of friendships are doing to be lost, but I bet the advertisers will get the message pretty fast that this kind of thing isn’t appreciated.”

Contact Burriss at 615-898-2983.
lburriss@mtsu.edu

Ironing it out

“Tennessee Iron Furnace Trail,” an informational video in digital-video disc (DVD) format, garnered a Bronze Award at the 28th Annual Telly Awards. The DVD was a collaborative effort between MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation (CHP) and the university’s Audio/Visual Services. According to the CHP Web site, “The Tennessee Iron Furnace Trail interprets the remnants of the historic iron industry that operated in counties along the Western Highland Rim in the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Furnace stacks, buildings, dams, museums and oral traditions from Stewart to Decatur counties tell the stories of people—black, white, free, enslaved, men, women, and children—who worked on these nearly forgotten industrial plantations.”

For more information about the Tennessee Iron Furnace Trail, contact Caneta Hankins, assistant director of the CHP, at 615-898-2947.
chankins@mtsu.edu

The Muslim connection

For Americans to think of Muslims as “other” doesn’t quite pass historical muster. “From the beginning, Muslims played a crucial role in European history, shaping the location, culture, size, and industries of Europe’s settlements in the Americas and later the nations of the Western hemisphere,” writes Dr. Sean Foley, history, in “Muslims in the History of the Atlantic Basin,” a paper he presented last year at the annual meeting of the National History Center in Affiliation with the American Historical Association. Foley notes that “the Muslim presence in the United States and the wider Atlantic basin predates Jefferson by centuries. Muslims were present in the Americas in the fifteenth century, if not earlier.”

Contact Foley at 615-904-8294.
sfoley@mtsu.edu

TR EXTRA

THAT’S A TAKE!--Don’t wait to give your child an exciting, fulfilling way to spend part of his or her summer! Registration runs through June 15 for another recording workshop for children ages 12-17 at MTSU. The workshop will be conducted from June 21-July 15 in the John Bragg Mass Communication Building under the tutelage of Ryan York, who also teaches guitar, bass and drums at Chambers Guitars and Musical Instruments in Murfreesboro. For a fee of $125 per student, York will introduce the youngsters to cassette four-track recording, digital eight-track, computer recording and electronic music. The workshop is sponsored by the Youth Culture and Arts Center, a project of Youth Empowerment through Arts and Humanities, a nonprofit organization. For more information, or to enroll, contact York at bororecording@gmail.com.

THE GRIDIRON GIRLS, WHOSE THEME SONG IS “THANK YOU FOR BEING AN END”--MTSU Head Football Coach Rick Stockstill and the MTSU football staff invite you to join them for the 2007 Ladies Football Clinic on Saturday, July 14 in Murphy Center. The clinic, which will feature seminars on strategy, equipment, training and rules, will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. with registration slated to start at 8 a.m. Ladies will be encouraged to take part in coaches’ drills and demonstrations. The goal is to provide a fun learning experience. Participants will receive commemorative T-shirts and lunch will be provided. The cost of the clinic is $25 dollars. For the children, the Rick Stockstill Youth Camp for rising 1st through 8th graders will be held June 4-7. For more information, contact Danny Lewis at 615-898-2311.