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"An Air Force Reserve 403rd Wing "Hurricane Hunters" WC-130J is scheduled to depart May 19 as the military's first-ever media flight compromised solely of bloggers. This flight gives bloggers from across the country an opportunity only available to traditional media outlets until now. Members from the international blogging community will be able to share with their audiences what it is like to ride with the Hurricane Hunters while learning what goes into training for one of the most challenging missions in the Air Force. Immediately after their flight, bloggers will be able to update their sites in an adjacent computer room. The two-hour flight over the Gulf of Mexico will give a new audience a better understanding of how the Hurricane Hunters collect life-saving data inside storms and highlighting the coming hurricane season which starts June 1. According to a Pentagon survey, 94% of people born after 1990 actively either blog or use social networking, such as Facebook, and new media ranks number two behind television on how people receive information. The Air Force Reserve and the 403rd are pioneers when it comes to embracing new media and are proud to offer this opportunity to the blogging community. "Social Networking and blogging is not the communication of the future, but of today. This is the way current generations communicate and the Air Force and Air Force Reserve needs to keep up with how technology is evolving and making communication faster and easier," said Brigadier General James J. Muscatell, Jr., commander of the 403rd Wing. This flight is another example of how the 403rd is communicating through new media, the Wing mission that includes the maintainers, the Hurricane Hunters and the Flying Jennies. The public can keep up with news about the 403rd Wing via Facebook Groups listed under '403rd Wing', 'AF Reserve Hurricane Hunters', '815th Flying Jennies' and '41st APS'. In addition, full-resolution photos can be found u

Date / Length: 7/14/2009 10:30 PM UTC - 30 min Description: h:34685 s:607634 Lindy Kyzer, strategist with the Army's Online and Social Media Division, will join us to discuss how the U.S. Army is implementing social media to better tell the Army Story.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that the Pentagon would pay for families to travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware if they want to be present when the body or remains of a loved one is returned from war.\n\nMr. Gates announced last month that the Pentagon was reversing its longstanding policy of barring media coverage during the repatriation of fallen soldiers at Dover. He said then, and reiterated today at a news conference, which the Pentagon's Web site streamed live, that the decision about media coverage would be up to each family.

"In Changing the Organizational Culture, his article in Small Wars Journal, Caldwell writes that it's time for the Army to rethink its approach to the new media. Caldwell has some experience here: he was the person you saw in the Baghdad press conferences last year, speaking for the Multi-National Force [MNF, as he refers to it below]. Wherever you stand (or stood) on the war, what he's saying here bears reading, as he's proposing a new approach: Recent experiences in Iraq illustrate how important it is to address cultural change and also how very difficult it is to change culture: After MNF-I broke through the bureaucratic red-tape and was able to start posting on YouTube, MNF-I videos from Iraq were among the top ten videos viewed on YouTube for weeks after their posting. These videos included gun tape videos showing the awesome power the US military can bring to bear. Using YouTube - part of the new media - proved to be an extremely effective tool in countering an adaptive enemy."

Duckworth told senators yesterday that: "To become a 21st-century organization, the DVA (Department of Veterans Affairs) will have to change some past methods. It's no longer enough to hand out brochures at demobilization ceremonies. We must develop social networking strategies, use nontraditional outlets such as blogs, and employ the wide variety of new media available to get the message of available benefits to our veterans."

"Excerpt: Every month, Ilona Meagher, author of Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops, posts a collection of "combat clips"-essentially a stack of statistics reported in the mainstream media but buried by the daily barrage of news and chatter. The stats, collected at her blog, PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within, cover a lot of ground, from suicides to face transplants, but I wanted to pull out some numbers relating to women in the military... Full story: http://www.utne.com/War-and-Peace/Women-in-the-US-Military-6216.aspx -- Tanya L. Roth PhD Candidate, Department of History Washington University in St. Louis "

"Every month, Ilona Meagher, author of Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops, posts a collection of "combat clips"-essentially a stack of statistics reported in the mainstream media but buried by the daily barrage of news and chatter. The stats, collected at her blog, PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within, cover a lot of ground, from suicides to face transplants, but I wanted to pull out some numbers relating to women in the military:"

Over the past five years, blogs have gone from an obscure and, frankly, somewhat nerdy fad to a genuine alternative to mainstream news outlets, a shadow media empire that is rivaling networks and newspapers in power and influence.

Martha Ortmann, professor of sociology at UNH, has made the social work issues of the military the forefront of her classes. She used "Moving a Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops" by Ilona Meagher to illustrate the need for social workers in and around the military. According to Ortmann, the need is stronger than ever.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- whose previous job, I might add, was Chief of Naval Operations -- tweets near-daily. The Pentagon has a new principal deputy assistant secretary of defense who has focused a lot on social media. The U.S. Naval Institute, one of the most respected pillars of military thinking, has a blog, and even more surprisingly, it has a good blog, written by some of the best navy-bloggers around.

"Ilona became a devoted advocate for military personnel and their families. She is the editor of the online jounral PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within and earliest force behind the ePluribus Media PTSD Timeline, a comprehensive database of press- and independently-reported OEF/OIF PTSD-related incidents. She has received national recognition for her work, everywhere from FOX News to The New York Times to the US House Veterans' Affairs Committee. Her blog is crucial for anyone who has a professional interest in helping soldiers and families, and an excellent resource for news about veterans' issues."