Pitzer, though, which sounds nearly vulgar (we’ll assume it’s named after someone and try not to be impolite by pointing and giggling), doesn’t have quite the recognition as Stanford, but was named one of the best 50 colleges by US News & World Report, so they must be doing something right over there.

The Yale Daily News Staff named Pitzer one of the "most artsy schools," too. We’ll also assume that to mean a certain, well, unorthodox approach to learning, and that they might not be able to throw a football.

But it’s all good…this isn’t the Eighties and Alpha Beta‘s not running things anymore.

"That’s the beauty of college these days," says Droz.* "You can major in Game Boy if you know how to bullshit."

Well, I think we’re just talking one class here, and not a major…yet. I did take a weight-lifting class in college, and karate, and acting, and one called International Approach to Dress (they called me crazy until they found out it was 49 girls and me in there) – you know, classes to help round out my education.

"Classes: nothing before eleven," says Droz. "Beer: it’s your best friend, you drink a lot of it."

What do you do in YouTube class? Well, you study what goes on on YouTube. The students have their own area on the site where they post videos and comment, and use YouTube as a tool to study American culture and Internet culture, and of course, American Internet culture. I’m back to counting words in my essays.

What exactly the class is seeking to learn about YouTube wasn’t clear in USA Today, but that initial WTF twinge you had wasn’t helped any by wondering how posting a video of yourself juggling is a form of study.

But Alexandra Juhasz, a Pitzer of a media studies professor there (couldn’t resist), brings up a more compelling reason to study YouTube later in the article: raising issues about "corporate-sponsored democratic media expression."

And that is a big issue. We’ve got a raging conversation going in the comments section of our article on CBS and bloggers about that very thing, and I’ve raised it previously when YouTube struggled with international censorship concerns.

A commentator at TechCrunch by the handle "Wakarimasen," (Japanese for "don’t understand," but without a pronoun antecedent it’s hard to know if he or she means himself/herself or Arrington), says:

it’s absurd to think that academic study should not examine a prominent contemporary phenomenon like youtube. this class may need some fine-tuning, but is sorely needed in our increasingly technological world.

I think Wakarimasen gets it, and most likely Pitzer gets it too. This citizen media thing is important and revolutionary and should be studied, even if users admit, from one of the latest student videos posted, they "look at dumb things" on YouTube.

 
_{*Yes, I’m quoting fictional characters. You got a problem with it? Talk to Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds. "CRITICS!" says Ogre. Get’em Ogre.}

“We’re now inviting members from our hyperlocal communities to take over the controls and help us edit the news.”

Topix (which recently raised $15-million) has been a bit of a wallflower at the social-media dance — perhaps in part because local news isn’t quite as sexy as national or international news — but as Skrenta’s post points out, the service has been growing fairly rapidly, and contributions from readers (in the form of posting in story-related forums) have also been increasing dramatically:

“We went from zero to 1 million users posting in our forums, and now have over 1,000 active local forums (5 posts/day or more). The traffic is growing 10-20% per month — and now accounts for nearly half of our total traffic.”

Skrenta says that Topix is getting about 37,000 posts a day, and the site was looking for a way of featuring the top 1 to 5 per cent of those contributions that actually add something to the story. Now, anyone can submit a story, or facts about a story, or an opinion, or cellphone photos, and they will be handled by what amounts to an editor.

In some cases, editors will be drawn from the pool of active contributors, in the same way that Wikipedia.org does — but in some cases, stories or tips or opinions will be handled by an editor from one of Topix’s member papers. It will be interesting to see how Topix fares with a model that is also being pursued by Newsvine and (to a lesser extent) Daylife.

Greg Sterling has some thoughts on the relaunch at Search Engine Land, and so does Jason Chervokas at the Social Media Club. Ross Mayfield thinks that there could be some old media-new media acquisitions coming as more media entities realize the benefits of the local community model.

P.S. On a completely unrelated note, Rich Skrenta created the first computer virus when he was 15.

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Called the Knight Citizen News Network, it’s managed by J-Lab — the Institute for Interactive Journalism — with content created in part by Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media and by Amy Gahran of I, Reporter (as well as Right Conversations and the Poynter Institute’s E-Media Tidbits).

There’s a press release with more info here. The resources at KCNN.org include:

• A database of U.S. citizen media sites, searchable by keyword, town or state and displayed on a Google map.
• A “Things We Like” feature.
• An interactive overview of the “Principles of Citizen Journalism,” with more than 40 audio and video interviews.
• Citizen media research.
• Case studies on how to train citizen journalists.
• A list of resources.

And (gratuitous Canadian reference) the site was designed by Hop Studios out of Vancouver.

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