Introducing a New Column: Top Links of the Week

We are wired.

As of November 2011, data from the media usage tracking company Neilson found that the average American visits near 100 domains more than 2,900 times a month for an average of about 29 hours.

Those numbers may be a bit more exaggerated among journalists. 

Top Links of the Week is a new IB Patch column which asks local journalists which links stood out to them in the past week, and invites users to share their own.

What stories or links did you come across this week that caught your eye? Share in the story comments.

Sandra Dibble

Border reporter, U-T San Diego

I think the most interesting link of the week to me involved the PRI's presidential candidate in Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, coming to the U.S. border to shoot campaign ads. He apparently hired actors to play migrants near the border fence.
Here's a fun photo gallery from Frontera.

Paul Gallegos

Freelance photographer and Patch.com contributor

You don't see this kind of good work everyday. 

I like these shots of underwater dogs a lot. 

There's some real aggressive behavior in there with those pups and the photographer Seth Casteel captured it. He was all up in their faces and it didn't seem like they knew he was even there. 

Editor, Imperial Beach Patch

A link that stood out to me this week was an Associated Press story about the Syrian uprising. Following a failed U.N. vote to call for president Bashar al-Assad to step down, the revolt entered one of the bloodiest weeks since its start last March. On Sunday an Al-Qaeda leader announced the terrorist group's support for the rebel's cause. I won't begin to profess some sort of deep knowledge into the matter, how this was received in Syria, or the rammifications of the endorsement, but it's a very interesting development. Maybe it's a grasp at remaining relevant.

Nicholas Furr

Writer, blogger and overall policial and news junkie

When the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure organization made a sudden and shocking decision to yank funding from Planned Parenthood, the public outcry was quick and enormous. Only days later, after pundits and politicians painted both Komen and Planned Parenthood with politically-biased colors, Komen vice president Karen Handel resigned. She said the decision to strip Planned Parenthood's funding was not political, but ran for governor of Georgia in 2010 part based in part on a similar promise. 

Albert Fulcher

IB Patch contributor, freelance journalist, former Southwestern Sun editor-in-chief

Found this photo by Ted Soqui in LA Weekly blogs under Queertown. The eyes say it all. My hope is that by the time they are my age, rainbow flags, parades and demonstrations will be a part of America's civil rights history.

"Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California," a panel of U.S. District Court of Appeals judges said in their decision earlier this week to uphold a lower court's ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional.