Tomas' Web-O-Rama

A thrilling new site chronicling the life and work of
Tomas Murawski

 

You're probably cursing yourself right now, wondering why you had to click on the link that brought you to this egregiously self-indulgent web page. But, hey, now that you're here, you may as well stay a spell. Take a load off and, while you're at it, a look at my homepage. Or, if you want to know more about the schmuck who keeps this thing up and running, you can browse through my resume and portfolio. If you'd still rather be somewhere else, you can always travel away vicariously through a memoir from one of my trips abroad. You might also want to take a peek at my research page, which provides background on one of the countries I visited.

 

Here's a picture of your web author taken before a recent jaunt to Moscow. I traveled there in March, 2001 - two months after a trip to Iraq, and less than a year after I studied in England.

When I'm not busy trotting all over the globe, I'm a full-time student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - home of the famed UNC Tarheels. Around here, we have a saying that god must be a Tarheel fan, 'cause the skies are always Carolina blue.

Well, UNC-CH saw some dark skies this year, after our basketball team suffered incalculable humiliation when our arch-nemeses at Duke won the National Championship. But Carolina remains high in the rankings when it comes to other aspects of higher education - and, yes, there ARE things other than basketball at UNC-CH.

Our School of Journalism and Mass Communication is reportedly one of the top five in the nation, and I'm privileged enough to have experienced this acclaimed program firsthand. But, you don't have to take my word for the caliber of our "J-School." You can take a look at the homepage for one of the best, and most popular classes, in the School - JOMC-50, a web based course taught by our very own maharishi of modems, Deb Aikat.

I'm currently pursuing the News and Editorial sequence at this fine institution, although I'm also trying out areas of journalism other than news writing. Frankly, the newspaper can seem rather black and white at times.

I help broadcast the news in true color as an associate producer for Carolina Week, a student produced newscast out of the School. Occasionally, I host a radio talk show, Northern Hemisphere Live, on WXYC campus radio, which boasts to be the first station to broadcast it's programming over the Internet twenty-four-seven. Too bad the programming is mostly Indonesian gamelan music and other tunes chosen with "cultural diversity" in mind. Besides dabbling in broadcast, I also put in some hours for The Blue and White, a campus monthly that promotes itself as the most read magazine on campus - Maxim and Cosmo not withstanding.

Well, that's about the extent of it. Feel free to show yourself around, and if you have any questions, send me an email and let me know what's rattling around in your gourd.

 

Had enough of me? Check out some of these links.

The mother of all progressive magazines - this monthly has made a name for itself publishing alternative news; stories that papers like the New York Times have deemed unfit to print. It also has regular features like "the Mother Jones 500," a list patterned on Forbes' catalog of wealth, featuring the largest contributors to political races.
Journalists frequently pat themselves on the back for their objective reporting. But this nonprofit organization works to expose situations where this isn't the case. Often, as this site reveals, the most flagrant violations of objectivity aren't in what's being reported, but in the information that's left out.
It might come last in an alphabetical list, but this publication is one of the first among progressive magazines. This website also contains a vast archive housing the political writings of linguist/agitator Noam Chomsky.
Once the leader in progressive radio, this nonprofit network has recently started to go corporate, to the chagrin of its on-air talent. Yet, it still broadcasts some provocative programming, like the famously seditious talk show, "Democracy Now."
Political Cartoons are supposed to be simple and evocative, stating their message in uncomplicated, powerful images -  Not in a stream of text. So, why has this strip - which has more text bubbles than Doonsbury, fer cryin' out loud - gotten such rave reviews? Well, why not see for yourself.