A note from the classroom: Yesterday, I had an excellent discussion with my undergraduate students about the war (communication department). We agreed at the outset that we were not going to rehash the debates we've been having; that we would instead focus on how internet technologies influence how we make sense of this war. Only two students had discussed the war in other courses. When we finished, they were grateful that they got to talk about it, especially because we focused on it in a different way than they have been in conversations with friends and family. We talked at length about blogging and the differences between mainstream news and independent journalism, in terms of perceived credibility and truth value. We looked at various types of news sites, from the Forbes "top five war blogs," to some of the anti-war blog sites that I've gathered from previous AOIR postings, to those blogs that look more like official news sites than personal blogs. They were really into this exercise; they identified and reflected on their criteria for judging the credibility of various media. They were surprised at their own hasty judgments of non-mainstream news. After looking at news sources from other countries, they talked at length about gatekeeping and the construction of reality by the media. All in all, a really good experience for all of us, especially as it brought potent real-life meaning to many basic communication concepts most often discussed in fairly abstract terms. Thanks to those of you who are supplying all the news sources to this list; it's a direct help to me and my students. I encourage us to continue discussing these issues in our classrooms; these are vital discussions, whether or not our students appear to understand that right now. Annette ************************************ Annette N. Markham, Ph D Assistant Professor Department of Communication University of Illinois at Chicago 1007 W. Harrison St. m/c 132 Chicago, IL 60607-7137 312 . 413 . 2124 amarkham@uic.edu http://ascend.comm.uic.edu/~amarkham/ *************************************