This editorial shows how a smaller market group "gets it" as far as the future of news. Students and teachers of Journalism, do you get it?News Sentinel | 12/30/2004 | Who has ‘the news’?

Tsunami update with a good list of who to donate money to. I have been looking at earthquakes and volcanoes through history, and was surprised to find that the most deadly earthquake took place in 1556 in Shaanxi (Shensi) province China. More than 830,000 people were killed. This one is beginning to shape up as one of the worst ever. t r u t h o u t - Tsunami Death Toll Jumps Over 120,000

Best of 2004Top Ten Internet Hoaxes of 2004Top 10 Net Hoaxes / Urban Legends of 2004 - Printer Friendly

So it goes. R.I.P. Susan Sontag.

Bibliography

E-mail build-up is that thing that happens when we go on vacation. What is your strategy? Do you bring your laptop on vacation? Do you sneak out to the local library or Internet Cafe to "just check" email quickly and then find that 15 minutes has stretched into an hour and a half? I say, let it build up, and then use Junk Filters to help clean out the dross. Be liberal with deleting chunks of emails. Don't forget to have fun on your vacation. The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > E-Mail Doesn't Take a Holiday

Podcasting is the next big thing, and here is a guide to making your own podcast. Playlist: Puncturing Podcasts

Well I never...Wired News: Cell Phones That Do It

Blogs, blogging. Here is a thoughtful piece about blogging and journalism from the NYTimes (registration required--or use bugmenot.com.) The New York Times > Magazine > Phenomenon: Your Blog or Mine?: "There are two obvious differences between bloggers and the traditional press: unlike bloggers, professional journalists have a) editors and b) the need to maintain a professional reputation so that sources will continue to talk to them. I've been a journalist for more than a decade, and on two occasions I asked acquaintances whether I could print information that they had told me in social situations. Both times, they made clear that if I published they would never speak to me again. Without a reputation for trustworthiness, neither friendship nor journalism can be sustained over time."

Mark Glaser provides good information about online publishing. This is from his Online Publishing Association newsletter.

"InternetNews reported that Google had applied for a patent called "Method for searching media," which could signal that Google News will bring in money by indexing print magazines and newspapers and then charging a subscription cost for viewing them. The patent also mentions a technique for allowing publishers to serve new ads into archived pages."

Go take a look at "EPIC 2014" the flash movie that presents a possible scenario for the development of news media in the near-term future where Googlezon, the algorithm powered searching giant beats any and all legacy news businesses as the news tool of choice. It seems fanciful, and there are lots of flaws in the little movie, but there might be some truth to it, too, in light of this new patent and the direction Google is moving in.

Cool but unattainable at least in the USA. Portable playstation, hot phones that can be remotes to your TV and more, Linux handheld computer, a camphone with a hidden keyboard...read it and dream of travel or better infrastructure in the States....Forbes.com: Five Gadgets You Can't Buy In The U.S.

Future of news. Dan Gillmor, author of "We the Media" is leaving the Mercury to start a new venture. Here is an exclusive interview from OhmyNews. Interesting questions and answers. I haven't seen a picture of Oh My before, either. OhmyNews is a Korean news portal that relies on citizen reporters and professional editors. Stories are submitted and posted online. As a story "rises to the top" of Ohmynews, it gets edited so that if it makes it as a top story, it reads and is 'vetted like any legacy media story. Gillmor is going to practice what he preached in We the Media and start a news enterprise that is not dominated by a large company, though he takes pains to point out that he is not an anti-capitalist. OhmyNews International

The first 10 years of Online Journalism and some ideas about the next 10. Milestones in online journalism: " the next 10 years will be as unpredictable as the first decade. But a key issue will be how journalists respond to the ways non-journalists use the internet to express themselves"

The House that Murrow built...Printer Friendly Version - Moyers retires his bliss

"Astroturfing" means setting up a fake grassroots email campaign. Looks like Michael Powell and FCC got astroturfed big time by a right-wing extremist group. The resulting censorship of television and radio has an impact on everyone else. Attention, FCC: You've got mail: "o refresh: According to Mediaweek, 99.9 percent of 'indecency' complaints to the FCC came from one group -- the Parents Television Council. This completely hijacked the process of viewer complaints, which in turn drove FCC Chairman Michael Powell to tell Congress people were outraged (except only a select, censorship-prone group really were), and the chilling effect of politicians being riled up was felt immediately in Hollywood. It was heartening to get hundreds of e-mails from p"

Consumer Action to work for media reform. SinclairAction

Voting irregularities. Isn't this important news? How are media gatekeepers outside of Ohio deciding to ignore this developing story? The Free Press -- Independent News Media - Election 2004

In 2001, a host of US Representatives, most from the Black Caucus, asked that the tainted Bush electors be challenged.  This year at least 14 members of the House of Representatives will demand an immediate "investigation of the efficacy of the voting machines and new technologies used in 2004 election, how election officials responded to the difficulties they encountered, and what we can do in the future to improve our elections systems and administration." Their action requires the consent of a single Senator, which did not come in 2001.  As the battle to save democracy rages in Ohio and elsewhere, January, 2005, could be very different.

It might be good to watch this story. It might be time to write or call your senators and ask them to allow the doubts to be settled.

I assigned the NYTimes article to my students for reading. The move of marketing into intimate social relationships and what that means for what people think life is about what they value is disturbing to me. My family shops at second-hand stores and we have gotten the "Blackspot sneakers" from adbusters.org. If its marketed, it makes us suspicious. We don't watch commercial television. Are the hours of viewing TV likely to make one embrace the idea of selling as a social pasttime? Let's talk. What do you think? Poynter Online - Convergence Chaser

I remember back in grad school when "PLATO" was the hot system and Bitnet was the standard thinking about what an effort it would be to digitize the UIC library. The has come, soon we will have search access to the Bodlian, Harvard and other major libraries. The New York Times > Technology > Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database: "Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web."

Collaboration environments are springing up across the web. From Wikinews to this site which aims at investigative reporting. Do you have a favorite conspiracy you want investigated? Send them a note, and they may put the team on it. This is such an obvious technology for the classroom that it will probably take a long time to get adopted...Center for Online Investigative Research | To assist one another in important investigative research projects.

Wikinews is now the news as Wikipedia moves into a peer reviewed news center, like indynews but a bit more neutral. The story is making its way around the blogs. I had written about it when I saw the chloracne story on Yuchenko first in Wikinews, and subsequently in mainstream papers.CyberJournalist.net: The potential for WikiNews: Collaborative news by all

Blogs, blogging Do you make sure your students have started a blog they can show to employer? Let's not hamstring our students by ignoring what we may not fancy ourselves...TCS: Tech Central Station - We Have Met the Enemy, and They Will Be Us: "Indeed, the current generation of freshman pro journalists is the last one which will have been hired in the pre-blog era. If you were an editor looking for a new hire these days, what would your first move be after checking your candidate's resume and clips? To check their blog, of course. And what self-respecting Bob Woodward wannabe doesn't have a blog now? (As our hypothetical editor, would you even consider hiring a candidate who didn't?)"

RFID I just bought some J Crew trousers and found a strange little tag sewn inside a nice little pocket inside of them. It advised me to cut the label and device out before washing or wearing the slacks. I googled for J Crew and RFID and found they are a case study in retail so it seems to be my first encounter with RFID. IDTechEx: Smart Label Revolution - The complete introductory report to low-cost RFID and beyond

Blogs, blogging. Bloggers, journalists, and confidential sources on a collision course.

Mr. Abrams said he thinks many bloggers should be entitled to the same kind of protection he is seeking for his client and other traditional journalists. “I think a blogger who communicates with and tries to communicate with thousands of people is not less deserving than a journalist who may communicate with a smaller audience through a small-town newspaper,” the attorney said. “There should be protection so long as information was obtained for the purpose of dissemination to the public at large in some sort of analogous way to what ‘journalists’ do.”

Bloggers Blur the Definition of Reporters’ Privilege

Future of news and WIKI. Here is the new wikinews. I was interested in the Ukraine story, as it included phonecam photos from the people in the streets. Then I noticed the thread about the illness of Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko (?????? ?????????? ??????) because it mentioned chloracne, something that I had heard about when my husband worked at UIC School of Public Health. I was browsing on Friday. Over the weekend, the mainstream papers picked up the story about Yushchenko's illness. Interesting sequence especially since the Wikinews was in all the blogs last week. Who is scooping whom? Main Page - Wikinews

Future of newscontinued. Time-shifting, competition from Internet, cable, and radio have already signaled the end of the dominance of broadcast news. The networks, and sadly, lots of educators, are still looking at the future through a rearview mirror, and don't see the necessity of preparing students for the 24 hour news cycle and to give them the skills they need to do better news reporting than bloggers or citizen journalists. The question isn't "if" TV news is going, going, gone. The question is "when." NETWORK NEWS COULD SOON SAY GOODBYE

Ethicsand blogging. When is a blog a sneak attack by unscrupulous admen? MediaPost Communications: "'For 18 years, we have worked very diligently to ensure that the entire PR industry and the video and audio providers within it, endorse full and complete disclosure. So a blog that does not clearly disclose its sources, violates so many of the tenants we've worked to create,' says Laurence Moskowitz, chairman, president and CEO of Medialink, a leading provider of VNRs for corporate marketers."

The future of news doesn't seem to lie in print on paper. I have been following the story of "EPIC 2014" because it is a typical example of how a network creates and transforms a meme into a frenzy, in EPIC's case a Flash movie, into a web phenomenon. EPIC 2014, a simple animation that purports to document the history of the news from the present to the year 2014 in which no news organization is left publishing in the face of "Googlezon" and the "Google Grid," is simply an 8 min. projection of trends and "what ifs" showing how customization, reputation rankings, computer algorithms, and P.O.V. editing could transform both how news is gathered as well as how it is presented to its users. Is it profound? Yes and no. The tech discussion communities like metafilter and slashdot discuss some of its shortcomings in terms of technology (Friendster is an economic joke, for example) and its relatively unsophisticated production values. Should you watch it? Yes. Watch it with your students and discuss it with them. It works for me like a good cartoon, or a koan, presenting complexity in simple form. McLuhan notes how we tend to view the future through the rearview mirror. Newspaper circulation figures show a steady decline. Studies of the vital 18-34 group like the one reported in this brief Wired article Wired News: Newspapers Should Really Worry point to an electronic future for those who are in the business of gathering and reporting news information. Tom Curley, CEO of A.P. gets it, noting that "The franchise is not the newspaper; it's not the broadcast; it's not even the Web site," Curley said. "The franchise is the content itself." The current buzz comes down to this: today's readers are used to being viewer/users (v/users), not simply readers. V/users want to do things with information "as they may think" to paraphrase Vannevar Bush. News is what the v/users are going to make it, as they search, link, use RSS, blog, Wiki, and talk back to the news media and each other in worldwide, networked "multi-log." Join or perish.

The future of news in a flash piece? This simple but effective animation works from technology that is here and builds a scenario of the future of customized feeds where "news" is threatened if not dead. It warns us that "it doesn't have to be that way." I liked the animation and Robin's discussion of how it became view de jour is instructive. Poynter Online - Convergence Chaser

Future talk beyond the zigbee which is a form of technology, here are some predictions and scenarios of how technologies will play out in the world of work. Still pushing the "lone wolf" model of work? Forget it. Social collaboration mediated by devices is the direction we are headed. On the tech radar | Tech News on ZDNet: "Gartner's prediction that by 2010, 70 percent of the population in developed nations will spend 10 times longer per day interacting with people in the digital world than in the physical one is not surprising. Coincident with that trend, collaboration tools for enabling electronic interaction -- ranging from Wikis to sites that can identify and provide specific expertise to a group -- will take on more prominence"

Oh yes. Interesting way to solicit the wisdom of crowds for commercial use. receiver

The big story that is lurking in the blogs and online. Was the election flawed? How bad were the errors? Why is the mainstream media, especially the TV news acting like nothing happened? For media mavens, this is the story to watch.BuzzFlash > Maureen Farrell > Election Angst Update: Clark Kent Vs the Media Wimps

Zigbee: new topic. You know me and my curiosity about new technologies. I like to watch the new technology as it tries to establish its own tipping point and become ubiquitous. Zigbee seems like it is at the beginning of this move. You will read about zigbee in Current Buzz from now on. Wi-Fi, which I followed from its beginning is just about ubiquitous, so it is of less interest to me now. When whole cities (Philly, for example) are getting wired, and every coffeeshop is a wi-fi zone, even journalists who are often the worst type of close-minded techno-phobes probably are using Wi-fi, so I am going to write about it less as I shift my interest to Zigbee. Just in case you are thinking, who would want to use zigbee, I note my husband would like to be able to sit at my computer and monitor the efficiency of oury heating system and set the thermostat setback to its most efficient setting. I think it would be fine to use zigbee to send a shopping list to my phone's "to-do" list from my refrig, based on what products are running low. So much for the news from geek central. What Is ZigBee?

E-voting issues. Statistical analyses by several experts suggests that e-voitng machines produce trends that are not likely to have happened at random. This is a simmering story, but "legacy media" seems to be ignoring it. Maybe they are waiting for experts and the blogosphere to finish reporting the story before they dive in. Report: Florida data suggests e-voting problems | CNET News.com

Search tools. For the academics in the crowd, finally a place to "google" your name. It is Googel Scholar, a search of academic work on the Internet. According to Google, this web search tool sorts your results by relevance according to full text of the article, publication the article appeared in, and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Thus, it is like a version of Social Citation Index. The tool locates document references to print citations, too, so that your search can locate older (pre-Web) works and seminal articles which are cited by many in a field. (I was relieved to find at least some of my work on there.) Google Scholar

Whoa there advertisers. Looks like DVRs or PVRs (personal video recorders) are changing the face of mass media. No more 30 sec. spots? Worse things could happen. MediaPost Communications

This study of TV and Print collaboration demonstrates that there are lots of people who have not grasped what the "continuous news cycle" means. MediaDailyNews 11-17-04

RSS or real simple syndication was one of the Online News Association buzzwords in Los Angeles at the conference. I have done overviews, introductions, and How-to's for our faculty on two occasions, but I don't think a single person has tried it out, or set up feeds. I was using Amphetadesk, but I found it took more time than I was willing to give it to go through the massive list of feeds available from the Amphetadesk site. Now I am using bloglines because it features one of those menu bar tools you drag to your browser. Now when I find a site that I want to see feeds from, I just click on bloglines, and if the site has an RSS feed, it gets added to my bloglines. This is a pull program because you choose when you want to view the feeds. Here is a simple explanation and guide to using RSS News Aggregator programs and getting feeds set up. Download.com: How to read RSS feeds

Votes, voting. At the Online News Association conference in Los Angeles, the story lurking in the shadows was the one about the vote count and whether there were problems with it. When Tom Curley of AP was asked about it, he didn't answer, he just ignored the question. If the Green Party has the money to pay for a recount, then the story would seem to have to become news on the AP and elsewhere. t r u t h o u t - Recount in Ohio a Sure Thing Here's a link to an MSNBC video report from November 11, 2004 on voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida which features an interview with John Conyers (D. MI) and documents what the questionable issues are.

Trippi and Winer are at odds. Beyond the Internet, politics still counts. People still vote on issues and not based oon web campaigns. Huffington: Used "Benedict Arnold" line in New Hampshire but was dropped at national level so that big funders wouldn't be offended. Jehmu: Dean is responsible for rise in young voters. But blogs can keep extremism continue--savage parodies. Trippi: The big problem is money. That is why we don't have health care, etc. If one candidate got lots of money from the poeple, then her/she wouldn't need special interests. Winer: Says the money to advertising on networks is no solution. How can we finance reporting on the Internet? CBS guy says we can't answer this yet. There is no model for orignal work on Interent. Trippi: Lots of blogs are self-sustaining, not from subscriptions but from donations.

Live from L.A. and ONA. The Internet in politics 2004 is the topic. Joe Trippi, Arianna Huffington, Jehmu Green (Rock the Vote) Mickey Kaus (Kausfiles on Slate) and Dave Winer are the panelists. So, this geek gathering is called a PowerPoint Free zone. Bloggercon was last week and Kaus says he is an optimist, though he meets lots of others who aren't. Winner tells the story of the video of Dean's scream that showed Dean's scream in context and could have been released on the web and might have influenced the outcome. Kaus: Vote fraud. Conventional response wait for facts. By not waiting as conventional media would wait, the truth came out (he asserts that there was no voter fraud.) Huffington: Loves the blogosphere. Greatest breakthrough in mainstream journalism because it allows passion to come through. Contrasted stories that play on the front page and dies, but how bloggers stay with a story and keep on it until they get some effects. She says it is bad to put stuff out that you never check--don't misquote Lincoln. Joe Trippi: Information is power. Internet in a top-down world passing information is a power transfer, not just information transfer. Money is what's wrong with our system--he talks about the vote by folks to urge Dean to abandon the campaign limits. Kerry abandoned public funding too and that made the election close. Jehmu Green: Who benefitted most from electronic and online technology--young people. They built a register the vote tool and gave it out to all kinds of yount people. They got a kick-ass email list. The message about young people coming out is false, they did come out and did vote in big numbers. Kaus: Linked to recount sites without checking their accuracy, but he holds that this led to a quicker fixing of the truth through all the blogs Winer: Media of all kinds were wrong before election because it was the moral values. Huffington: Election wasn't decided on moral values. Bloggers disproved this. If a state had the gay marriage limit, they voted for Bush less than other states. CBSNews and ABCnews showed that the moral thing wasn't the issue, but it was terrorist threat issue. Joe Trippi: rumors have always existed, blogs just make the concerns more obvious. Blogosphere is the canary in the coal mine--indicates the stories that the main media need to cover. Winer: Completely legitimate form of journalism. Not top down. Opens door for anyone to be powerful. Blue staters got told "you aren't liked" and now we need to create a dialogue with the red states. Moderator: Lippman said the television is a truth machine, but this isn't true anymore. Did the Web contribute to being a "truth machine?' Huffington: Yes, because they showed discrepancies in polls were just reported win main meia without analysis. Trippi: Mainstream media created the need for blogs on the Internet. The embedded TV journos set up a situation where the only place you could go to get more news or different perspective was web. "The only place to get stuff that wasn't rah-rah." Exit polls--mainstream media paid lots of $$ for exit polls but now bloggers can grab the exit polls and run with them. Then eyeballs ignored mainstream sites because eyeballs went to blogger sites. Kaus: Swift boat debunking and truth finding about Kerry and Bush record came out of blogs. CBS acted like blogger with the memo story, but then pretended they weren't just floating a trial balloon. Jehmu: Young voters trusted internet info more than mainstream media. Amount of info 53% from TV/43% from Internet in the young groupl. However, they are using sites run by partisans. Have more confident in their info, but they don't take into acct bias in the sites. Opensecrets--not biased. Question: Is internet contributing to partisanship? Huffington: Sees new voters as a unifying force. They are the "purple" voters. Money that can be collected from little people via internet is a new big force. Trippi: Polarization already existed. Internet just reflects the acase of real life. Blogs are communities of like-minded people finding their group. Kaus: is the web less polarizing than talk radio? Atrious is example that it might be. Winer: Presidential blogging is ineffectual. Blogs will be felt in local community. Local bloggers will be asked to run in elections because there isn't any local coverage now. Local coverage is the big idea

Wonkette uses Movable Type. Asked for advice from Wonkette on how news orgs should or should not embrace blogs? If you are a Journo, when you blog, blog like one, follow ethics.

Questions to the Wonkette Bush admin is inaccessible to press. Will Blogging community be able to open it up the communication process? Only if bloggers were conservative, and if folks inside the admin started wanting to leak. What's the career track for bloggers? She meant to quit after the election, but now she's "addicted" to the style of writing, She said she wouldn't want to write for an editor again. Exit poll question: CBS guy claims they have never depressed the vote or made a diff in the outcome. The CBS guy points out the need for exit polls to see if the election votes are being counted correctly. He challenged her on what she said about publishing exit polls. She dodged the question, Jay Rosen: Notes that the gap between the way Washingtonians see themselves and the way they are is at the heart of her appeal as a blogger. So what does she think of the relationship between media/press crowd and bloggers. Wash press corps as "AV crowd" at HS, where washington is high school with nukes. Mary Meeks talked to Joe Lockhardt -- so what, she says? The flaws and foibles of the politicians are the same as those of the media. Don't mind if she ruins someone's day, but don't ruin someone's life. She sees the community part of internet and interactivity as the important part. Focus on "blog" is as stupid as focus on "printing press." What values from J did whe bring to the blog? She can use a telephone, claimed she didn't know what the values of a J are. In the area between paper readers and paper writers. "Blogs aren't supposed to be fair" and she doesn't have to be. She doesn't want to lie but doesn't feel she needs to get both sides of the story. You can use the format of the blog to write journalism or anything else. Never pretends to be a journalist.

Real-time blogging Sitting at lunch, I am listening to Kos introduce Wonkette. Here is a gathering of journalists and they have chosen a Blogger Queen to address the group. This was the year of the blog in politics and so its appropriate to feature them. Kose tellus us that Wonkette is better than he. Wonkette: the old joke about getting out of her pjs. How have blogs had an impact on ploitics and journalism. She noted that her raison d'etre for being the MTV rep on TV at the convention was simply to talk about herself, and that it made bad TV. What will stand out is the "rag-tag" band that brought down the mainstream media. Joked around the bulge in the back story. Blogs have sped up the bar. They probably have made mainstream media think harder about IGNORING blog stories. Blogs raised lots of money, and served a sort of PR or activism story. Blogs have "de-professionalized" journalism. They have in her opinion made bias in media something that needed to be regarded. Bloggers showing up journalism as a flawed first version history, Bloggers eliminated gap between always getting it right, versus mostly getting it right. The speeding up of news cycle leads to stories like the CBS document one. Exit polls: she published the polls to "kill them" in the public mind. Playing field has changed for journalism. but she isn't sure what the changes have been. Shortest speech I've heard recently. She is cute. Kind of thin, with reddish hair. She seems better in answwering questions, than in giving a speech, Just to note, we are in the Salon where she is speaking, there is wireless access, and at my table alone, there are two people beside myself blogging.

Online News Association conference is is L.A. So far, the sessions are fantastic. One on journo education, and a presentation by Tom Curley of AP about "disintermediation" and how AP is going to use RSS to try and beat out Google news and other search services.

Here is a link to the conference blog: ONA conference attendee realtime blog

. So much for transparency Big media seems to take its own case to the public, but fails to disclose its business interests...Free Press News : Printable Format

Check this out. Mishmas or convergence? Poynter Online - Convergence Chaser

This isn't the spin we always hear in the USA. Read Robert Kaplan's Ends of the World and you can find out more about the Unocal oil pipeline plans. His discussion from the 1980s foreshadows the current situation in an eerie way. AFGHANISTAN: The Adventure of Building an Independent Press

Voting irregularities. Interesting story. Must do more looking into this, but I have to admit that finding Dick Morris on Fox suggesting irregularities, is cause for pause. t r u t h o u t - Thom Hartmann | Evidence Mounts that the Vote Was Hacked: Fox's Dick Morris, writing in The Hill claims this about the 204 election and the discrepancy between exit polls and the actual results: "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play"

Blogs, blogging. And voting. Here is the pulse I have my finger on now. I'm not sure it will pan out but Greg Palast is a credible journalist. We'll see.t r u t h o u t - The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy Greg Palast's "Kerry Won" story

Blogs, blogging. Post-election analysis picks blog exit polls apart. I agree with Prof. Rosen that people need to be able to triangulate to judge the likelihood of any given piece of information, from whatever source, being true. I think many of the multi-tasking generation, the under 25's, already live in the world of likelihood estimates, rather than the world Walter Cronkite truths.MercuryNews.com | 11/04/2004 | Election results humble bloggers: "It's so much harder to control information today, we have to stop putting our hopes in controlling it and start seeding people with the knowledge of how to use it,'' said Rosen, a professor at New York University."

Geek chic as Tim Russert's new electronic "tablet pc" gets its own interactive flash coverage. The tablet pc is flexible, takes pen input, and includes data security because you swipe your fingerprint through it to login. The tablet pc debuted about three years ago, and will grow in popularity with reporters because it is light and accepts handwriting, drawing, and typing as input. It is Wi-Fi enabled, too, so you can use it in the soon to be ubiquitous Wi-Fi blanketed spaces we inhabit. Poynter.org - Tim's Tablet

Election. Note to the anonymous European who sent my blog the "stopbushstopbushstopbush" message on election day: I did my best, but to paraphrase H. L. Mencken, every decent person is ashamed of the government he or she lives under. I won't beat a dead horse, I have managed to live through Nixon and Reagun, but here are a couple of more of Mencken's quotes that ring true today:

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Every normal man [I'd add "women, too"] must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

Mostly in the USA, we are tempted, but fall back on our democratic process, with all of its all too human faults, to avoid bloodshed.

Blogs, blogging. The blogosphere was aquiver with election predictions. Most of them were unconfirmed and proved to be rumor, not news at all. ctnow.com - Home Page

Blogs, blogging. Charles Madigan's blog is a pretty good read. In an election race this close, the man on scene p.o.v. might yield more insight than yet another poll. Chicago Tribune | Election Day: Stormy weather

The last word. So, the Bush bulge has been examined by experts, including a real rocket scientist. There certainly is evidence that the President was wired and getting help in the debates. Let's hope that the voting is done the old-fashioned way, without any technical help to either side. Was Bush Wired? Sure Looks Like It.

Alex Darbut, technical and business development vice president at Resistance Technology, Inc. of Arden Hills, MN, a company that makes back-mounted transceivers that link to wireless earpieces hidden in the ear canal, says he is certain the president was wearing such a device. Darbut, whose company sells such a device to "the military and to professionals," including actors and people in communications, says, "There's no question about it. It's a pretty obvious one -- larger than most because it probably has descrambling capability."

Check out the competition at Temple in Philly. Maybe some ideas for our work? MURL: Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab

Party hearty on election night. In Chicago, politics is our entertainment. Here is a list of places to hangout on election night around the city.After you cast a ballot, there's a lot more election fun than just watching the tube

Votes, voting. Here is a preview of what the coverage about the election will be like on Television. We can compare what the networks are saying with what they do. The first person to comment on this story makes a good point. He takes the mass media to task for reporting about the news about news on the election, not real news...good point.Poynter Online - Monday Edition: Election Night Projections & Exit Polling

We have our appointment with Dr. Ed Bell and will tour the new dorm. How will we cover this for our audience?

Voting, voting rights. In my lifetime, it was with pride that Americans could look to their national government and how it stood up for the disenfranchised and the citizen's whose rights were denied by vicious state officials. This latest move by the Bush Administration to move voting rights out of the hands of citizen's is shameful. Ask yourself if YOU would trust John Ashcroft to look out for your rights.t r u t h o u t - Ashcroft Seeking Control of Voting Rights: "But some former Justice voting-rights officials and some election law and civil rights experts said the department's latest position represented a marked philosophical shift. Historically, they said, the department had been aggressive in supporting the idea of private suits as an important tool in fighting discrimination and other ills, even where such rights were not clearly spelled out by legislation.     'Before this administration, I would say that almost uniformly, the Department of Justice would argue in favor of private rights of action ... to enforce statutes that regulate state and local government,' said Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford University's Law School.     She said the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not originally include a private right to sue state officials who discriminated against aspiring black voters. The Justice Department backed the idea of private suits, nonetheless, in a test case that ultimately reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969."

Alt media including blogs and blogging. First from the Inter Press Service News comes an overview of "citizen media" from cellphone smartmobs to blogs and blogging. The author notes the lack of attention in mainstream media to the FBI's confiscation of indymedia servers that I commented on earlier. I was tracking the story as it broke into mainstream media in Australia and Britain, but not the USA. Is it fear that covering the story would be publicizing the competition that put a lid on this story of the trampling of journalistic integrity by a repressive FBI?

Two-dozen websites belonging to Indymedia, a "democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate and passionate tellings of truth," and one of the most well-known "alternative media" organisations were shut down for six days recently. "To date not 'The New York Times', the 'Washington Post' or the 'Los Angeles Times' have seen fit to comment upon it," says Downing. (note: John DH Downing, director of the Global Media Research Centre at Southern Illinois University) "In their cases, it is a classic instance of the selective ethics that permeate corporate mainstream media, and that give the blunt lie to their professions of 'all the news that's fit to print,' the vital role of independence from the state, the scandals of censorship. Nauseating hypocrisy!" he adds.

There is a very good summary of the Sinclair Broadcasting debacle in USA Today that shows how blogs can do what mainstream journalism can't or won't and makes a good case for the symbiotic relationship of professional and citizen reporters.

Alt media including blogs and blogging. First from the Inter Press Service News comes an overview of "citizen media" from cellphone smartmobs to blogs and blogging. The author notes the lack of attention in mainstream media to the FBI's confiscation of indymedia servers that I commented on earlier. I was tracking the story as it broke into mainstream media in Australia and Britain, but not the USA. Is it fear that covering the story would be publicizing the competition that put a lid on this story of the trampling of journalistic integrity by a repressive FBI?

Two-dozen websites belonging to Indymedia, a "democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate and passionate tellings of truth," and one of the most well-known "alternative media" organisations were shut down for six days recently. "To date not 'The New York Times', the 'Washington Post' or the 'Los Angeles Times' have seen fit to comment upon it," says Downing. (note: John DH Downing, director of the Global Media Research Centre at Southern Illinois University) "In their cases, it is a classic instance of the selective ethics that permeate corporate mainstream media, and that give the blunt lie to their professions of 'all the news that's fit to print,' the vital role of independence from the state, the scandals of censorship. Nauseating hypocrisy!" he adds.

There is a very good summary of the Sinclair Broadcasting debacle in USA Today that shows how blogs can do what mainstream journalism can't or won't and makes a good case for the symbiotic relationship of professional and citizen reporters.

Alt media including blogs and blogging. First from the Inter Press Service News comes an overview of "citizen media" from cellphone smartmobs to blogs and blogging. The author notes the lack of attention in mainstream media to the FBI's confiscation of indymedia servers that I commented on earlier. I was tracking the story as it broke into mainstream media in Australia and Britain, but not the USA. Is it fear that covering the story would be publicizing the competition that put a lid on this story of the trampling of journalistic integrity by a repressive FBI?

Two-dozen websites belonging to Indymedia, a "democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate and passionate tellings of truth," and one of the most well-known "alternative media" organisations were shut down for six days recently. "To date not 'The New York Times', the 'Washington Post' or the 'Los Angeles Times' have seen fit to comment upon it," says Downing. (note: John DH Downing, director of the Global Media Research Centre at Southern Illinois University) "In their cases, it is a classic instance of the selective ethics that permeate corporate mainstream media, and that give the blunt lie to their professions of 'all the news that's fit to print,' the vital role of independence from the state, the scandals of censorship. Nauseating hypocrisy!" he adds.

There is a very good summary of the Sinclair Broadcasting debacle in USA Today that shows how blogs can do what mainstream journalism can't or won't and makes a good case for the symbiotic relationship of professional and citizen reporters.

Notes to myself

• GOS=General operations "keep the lights on"
• Project funding-within proj funding make budget-like list of what you need and how much its going to cost. Make it specific for the asks--we need blah,blah bathroom fixtures.
• In-kind support can be easier than getting money outright
Clear your asks with Lona and Tamara because they know what corporations Columbia has connections with already. Share w/their office.
• Corporations--big ones w/structure, under the radar" w/mushy guidelines where it helps if you have a connection with the organization,non-structured small business--these are like in No. Mayfair and working with Marie's.
• Barriers
Communications, finding resources, getting external support.
• 80% of giving is from indivs, the rest is foundations and corporations

Notes to myself

• GOS=General operations "keep the lights on"
• Project funding-within proj funding make budget-like list of what you need and how much its going to cost. Make it specific for the asks--we need blah,blah bathroom fixtures.
• In-kind support can be easier than getting money outright
Clear your asks with Lona and Tamara because they know what corporations Columbia has connections with already. Share w/their office.
• Corporations--big ones w/structure, under the radar" w/mushy guidelines where it helps if you have a connection with the organization,non-structured small business--these are like in No. Mayfair and working with Marie's.
• Barriers
Communications, finding resources, getting external support.
• 80% of giving is from indivs, the rest is foundations and corporations

Notes to myself

• GOS=General operations "keep the lights on"
• Project funding-within proj funding make budget-like list of what you need and how much its going to cost. Make it specific for the asks--we need blah,blah bathroom fixtures.
• In-kind support can be easier than getting money outright
Clear your asks with Lona and Tamara because they know what corporations Columbia has connections with already. Share w/their office.
• Corporations--big ones w/structure, under the radar" w/mushy guidelines where it helps if you have a connection with the organization,non-structured small business--these are like in No. Mayfair and working with Marie's.
• Barriers
Communications, finding resources, getting external support.
• 80% of giving is from indivs, the rest is foundations and corporations

Notes to myself

• GOS=General operations "keep the lights on"
• Project funding-within proj funding make budget-like list of what you need and how much its going to cost. Make it specific for the asks--we need blah,blah bathroom fixtures.
• In-kind support can be easier than getting money outright
Clear your asks with Lona and Tamara because they know what corporations Columbia has connections with already. Share w/their office.
• Corporations--big ones w/structure, under the radar" w/mushy guidelines where it helps if you have a connection with the organization,non-structured small business--these are like in No. Mayfair and working with Marie's.
• Barriers
Communications, finding resources, getting external support.
• 80% of giving is from indivs, the rest is foundations and corporations

Notes to myself

• GOS=General operations "keep the lights on"
• Project funding-within proj funding make budget-like list of what you need and how much its going to cost. Make it specific for the asks--we need blah,blah bathroom fixtures.
• In-kind support can be easier than getting money outright
Clear your asks with Lona and Tamara because they know what corporations Columbia has connections with already. Share w/their office.
• Corporations--big ones w/structure, under the radar" w/mushy guidelines where it helps if you have a connection with the organization,non-structured small business--these are like in No. Mayfair and working with Marie's.
• Barriers
Communications, finding resources, getting external support.
• 80% of giving is from indivs, the rest is foundations and corporations

Notes to myself

• GOS=General operations "keep the lights on"
• Project funding-within proj funding make budget-like list of what you need and how much its going to cost. Make it specific for the asks--we need blah,blah bathroom fixtures.
• In-kind support can be easier than getting money outright
Clear your asks with Lona and Tamara because they know what corporations Columbia has connections with already. Share w/their office.
• Corporations--big ones w/structure, under the radar" w/mushy guidelines where it helps if you have a connection with the organization,non-structured small business--these are like in No. Mayfair and working with Marie's.
• Barriers
Communications, finding resources, getting external support.
• 80% of giving is from indivs, the rest is foundations and corporations

Concrete example of why media consolidation is harmful to the public interest. The Sinclair saga continues...t r u t h o u t - Filmmaker Sues Sinclair over Anti-Kerry Documentary

Tech issues Voting problems surface in Texas.

To: > > From: "Katie Malinski" > > Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:28:15 -0500 > > Subject: [V] Fw: [AustinMamas] FW: Electronic voting problems in > > Austin > >   Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling > >   location in Austin.  She voted straight Democratic.  When she did > > the final check, lo and behold every vote was for the Democratic > > candidates except that it showed that she had voted for Bush/Cheney > > for president/vice pres. > >   She immediately got a poll official.  On her vote, it was > > corrected. She called the Travis County Democratic headquarters.  > > They took all her information.  They told her that she wasn't the> > first to report a similar incident and that they are looking into > > it. > >   So, check before you leave the polling booth, and if anything is > > wrong, get it  corrected immediately. > >   Report any irregularities to your local Democratic headquarters. > >   Go Kerry/Edwards.  Let's win this election fair and square! > >

Texas will vex us. News from Texas and it is pathetic. As a voter since 1972, I don't think I could correctly vote with a punchcard ballot without the template. All those little tiny numbers. Bureaucrats are taking away our civil liberties and attacking our electoral process which is a bedrock of our nation. Women have died for the right to vote and it enrages me to see little people in petty positions of power act like there is nothing that can be done about egregious policies like the one described in my friend's email. She is a real person, and her parents are real Texans. Watch out for YOUR vote this year. First they take our votes, then it will be the rest of our rights.

My elderly parents requested and received mail-in ballots, which elderly or disabled persons are allowed to do. They were completely taken aback, however, when they received in the mail the exact same punch ballot that you use in the voting booth. They are expected to figure out which numbers to select and punch out the tiny little rectangular chads by hand, without the benefit of the template given by the voting booklet in the voting booth. Furthermore, the instructions say that it is a misdemeanor for anyone to help them vote unless they are physically unable to punch the ballot or unless they cannot see to punch the ballot. I don’t know about you, but I think it is ridiculous to expect elderly and disabled people to be able to vote using this method. In my opinion, this is tantamount to denying them the right to vote. Priya Hudson-DiTraglia

As an academic, I can often argue without concern about sticky economic details, however, the fact is, my students will need to make a living when they graduate, and the issues addressed in this report get at some of problems in a converged world of work. Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits

P.O.V. So, here is the weblog for an experimental performance art event that I am taking part in. It is in some sense about "Slow Journalism" but also how representations relate to the thing or event represented. This will be a departure from the journalistic canon, but maybe that canon is more a conception than a reality.Hayley Newman: Slow Journalism

Technology & voting. This is going to be one of the big election stories again. Students, who are likely to be first-time voters, are going to be especially at risk. If you can check for your name and polling place before Election Day, make a print out and take it with you to show your polling officials. This story outlines many of the problems and possible snags ahead. t r u t h o u t - Weston Kosova | A Clean Count? Using "Clusty" a new search engine from Vivismo, I < ahref="http://clusty.com/search?query=find polling place by state">aggregated the "Find my polling place" sites from many states. If you don't find your state listed here, then try "find polling place [your state]" in your search engine.

Free speech. Is the US reaching out with Big Brother's grasp? BBC NEWS | Technology | US seizes independent media sites

Spam. Here is an idea that seems to make sense and would cut down on spam. Spam: Leave it to the sender | Tech News on ZDNet

New tech. Podcasting is an idea that will catch on quickly. Why not make your own news show for podcasting? Wired News: Podcasts: New Twist on Net Audio

Blogs, blogging. Latest news on the sequestered servers. This is a story that is making its way from the indymedia sites to the blogosphere and may make it to the mainstream in the USA. It has been covered in Australia, Canada and the UK by mainstream media. AxisofLogic/ Civil Rights/Human Rights

Free press hints that Internet could be shut down as tight as Big Media have been evident. Dan Gilmor, Lawrence Lessig, the EFF and others suggested that it was only a matter of time before Big Media or Big Government put the squeeze on the "free' Internet. Here it is. The story is just breaking, ironically enough on the same day as final debate of this USA presidential race. The news in brief is that the F.B.I. issued an order to Rackspace, the ISP for indymedia, and took away several of its servers. This took down some Internet radio stations and some indymedia sites are down. The servers were physically located in the U.K. The order was served on Rackspace, so indymedia doesn't know exactly why the servers were seized. The story is breaking across the indymedia sites, and in slashdot and other tech publications, however it is also beginning to enter Big Media in Australia, U.K. and Canada. Will the press in the U.S. present this story or just ignore it? Time will tell. The International Federation of Journalists has spoken out about this action, claiming it is harassment, not law-enforcement. In recent months, the FBI tried to get indymedia in Nantes to remove a photo of an undercover agent from its server. The New York police served indymedia with subpoenas designed to prevent problems with the Republican National convention. Another brush with the Feds " may be linked to a September 30 court case in San Jose California, in which Indymedia San Francisco and two students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania successfully opposed an application by Diebold Election Systems Inc to remove documents claiming to reveal flaws in the design of electronic voting machines which are due to be used widely in the forthcoming US Presidential election." says the IFJ statement. International Federation of Journalist's statement about the server confiscation. Type "indymedia rackspace server fbi" into Google news to follow the story as it moves from the e-world into the blogosphere and beyond. OOPs, while I was posting, the first mainstream media story was posted Star-Telegram in Texas.

Blogs, blogging. The difference between conservative people who use blogs and bloggers... Wired News: Prof Pursued by Mob of Bloggers

Puppet sex is bad. Puppet violence, especially if it happens to anti-administration critics is okay. What a sick set of values the movie industry seems to uphold. Loving, bad. Hating, good. What do you think?CNN.com - 'Team America' cuts puppet sex, gets R - Oct 6, 2004: "Barbie"

RSS RSS, aka, "webfeeds" comes of age as a major publication begins to present them online. Using an RSS newsreader (I have posted lists of them previously) you can set yourself up to get info from the Guardian customized to your interests. This is like having a wire service of your own. If you have been ignoring RSS, it is probably time to dig in and learn about it. See how the Guardian is providing webfeeds hereGuardian Unlimited | The Guardian

Covering Iraq. Here is a follow-up on report Farnaz Fassihi's email from Iraq. She is a reporter for Wall Street Journal who's been told to take a vacation until after the election. Her email to some friends has become a global news story overnight. ctnow.com - Home Page

Polls, polling. Here is an explanation of polling from electoral-vote.com a site that is kept by a Kerry supporter who sets out his methods so that one can judge if the site is presenting material fairly. This discussion of how polls are conducted and the intricacies of sampling is vital to understanding how poll results can be skewed or presented in biased ways.

And, from Gallup's own website, their FAQ on surveys and polls. Frequently Asked Questions

Polls, polling How to report polls. NCPP - National Council on Public Polls

Polls, polling. I am taking up a new thread because of the way it seems polls are being shifted from analytic tools that provide a reflection or snapshot of a moment in time, to blatantly political instruments.

In grad school, I studied statistics and how to use them and how not to use them with professors like Houston Stokes and Herb Walberg. The current state of reporting on political polls has raised several red flags for me.

The way margin of error and confidance interval are bandied about often presents a "winner" in a poll that really shows a tie. This CJR article has a fascinating look at Canadian reporting on polls, where more information about how the poll can accurately be interpreted is included.

Another troubling issue that I am just beginning to track was brought to me by a student who works for a local radio station. In Illinois, the Senate race and Presidential race were initially reported to be very one-sided, and essentially, not contested or in doubt. This was causing local broadcasters (radio and television) to feel they were having a revenue shortfall owning to a dearth of political ads. The curious student asked if radio or television stations could sponsor polls to make the predicted outcome of certain races appear closer than they really are.

Using legitimate sampling techniques such as stratified samples, pollsters certainly can conduct a poll where data isn't manufactured, but where the basic assumptions of the sample render the results meaningless or misleading. Without proper explanation of the underpinnings of sampling, of margin of error and confidence intervals, the reporting of such poll results would be biased and unfair whether that was deliberate or based on sloppy reporting. Anyway, this article provides a basis for understanding how error of measure and confidence interval ought to be presented to one's audience. More on this topic to follow. CJR Campaign Desk: Archives

Blogs, blogging. Here is a balanced perspective on old and new styles of journalism.Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/26/2004 | Center Square | Cries of 'media bias' hide sloppy thinking

Blogs, blogging. Tensions could be a result of self-censorship among mainstream media journalists who work for big corporations. Read on for more. OJR article: CBS Scandal Highlights Tension Between Bloggers and News Media

Disruptive technology. As McLuhan noted, new developments like this are often invisible to the society they transform. Broadcasters might think about this for awhile. It won't wait for them to figure it out.Between the Lines » PODcasting; death knell for traditional broadcasting? - ZDNet.com

Elections, politics. Here is a transcript of the first debate between Kerry and Bush, from 9/30/04.t r u t h o u t - FEATURE: Bush v. Kerry: The Full Debate Transcript

Blogs, blogging. This reporter is angry. He does have a point that blogging is not the same as journalism, however, once folks like him relax and realize that for each blog that is vicious or sleezy, there are readers who will "triangulate" and check the info out, or who will read the bad blogs as sort of comic relief, he will feel better. If we think our readers are stupid and gullible, blogs are big trouble. If we think our readers might be thinkers, the threat isn't nearly so great. Nick Coleman: Blogged down in Web fantasy: "So, how is it that nakedly partisan bloggers who make things up left and right are gaining street cred while the mainstream media, which spend a lot of time criticizing themselves, are under attack?"

Polling hijinks. Is Gallup drawing a bad sample these days to enhance GOP poll numbers? I am going to try and chase this one down with some stat folks.The Left Coaster: Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe Other Gallup Polls As Well

Copyright. A new book analyzes the economic and policy implications of the copyright system today, and argues that it is stopping the very process it is supposed to protect. Jaffe, A.B. and Lerner, J.: Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It.

RFID begins its move from exotic to mainstream. NYTimes registration required.The New York Times > Technology > What's in the Box? Radio Tags Know That, and More: ".B.M.'s goal, analysts said, is to persuade businesses to view radio tagging - one of the hottest growth areas for mobile sensor technology - as just one element of a new wave of information technology outside of data centers that must be integrated to be exploited. Radio tags can be read in groups instead of one by one, and they hold far more data than bar codes. In addition to indicating what product a carton holds, they can specify when and where that particular item was made and its intended destination."

Gatekeepers, media bias. This story about Project Censored touches on a variety of important questions for and about journalism today. Pressing issues / Sonoma State's Project Censored takes the media to task for missing big stories: "'We have a big problem today in that half the people don't vote,' he said. 'We need stories about the issues that face us, whether it's the spiraling decline of wages in the country, or the 40 million people without health insurance, or the accelerated gap between rich and poor in the Bush administration. This is new information. It's just assumed that growth is good for everybody, and it's not. There's an assumption that private enterprise is the most effective means of organizing society, and it's rarely challenged in American society.'"

Objectivity Will this story get same attention and care from big media and bloggers that the Rather story did. This one goes to corruption of our legislative system, not just whether one man was scared to serve in VietNam and took the rich boy deferment route.t r u t h o u t - 32 Felony Indictments Returned in Tom DeLay Case

Blogs & blogging Here is a biased article. Now because it takes Rather to task, not because it criticizes "60 Minutes." Yet this article shows that the writer was either biased or just not doing a good job of reporting.

The arrogance and attitude of Rather is certainly an issue. However this article then goes on the list several Republican blogs that investigated this story. That's okay, but in the blogosphere, there are many more blogs with different perspectives that have been existence longer and are kept by real bloggers. The blogs cited in this article are all new and are examples of the use of "blog" the tool, but not "blog" the independent commentary on issues. A political hack or operative has latched on to the blog software to do "dirty tricks" kind of writing.

I think that either mainstream reporters don't "get" blogging at all, or that they are so fearful of citizen reporters and commentators who use "blog, the tool" that they are willing to misrepresent what is going on in blogosphere, out of fear of the very transparency that Overholser talks about.

The facts of the memo about Bush are true. The memo play was awkward and a mistake and maybe its time for Rather to retire. The lack of analysis of those Republican "blogs come lately" which lumps them with the commentary of real bloggers, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, cheapens this story and misrepresents what is really going on.

Here is the original article. Analysis: Guard memo blunder raises questions about future of '60 Minutes,' Dan Rather and journalism: "'We've got to find some new touchstones, and I think a good new touchstone will be transparency,' she said. '[CBS] did not tell us who the source was. That really undermined them. They need to worry about source issues.'"

Blogs & blogging. Here is an interesting kind of techie perspective on journalism and blogs coming out of South Africa. It asks some questions that big media needs to confront. If you want to be a journalist working in the next few years, you need to consider these ideas as well. Mail and Guardian Online: Open source software challenges big media: "Their tone is one of fear mixed with arrogance, and it's a response to a problem all traditional media face: if the public is prepared to consider the views of individuals as journalism, how do we keep up a competitive advantage? If anyone can be a reporter, what value-added services can an online newspaper offer to avoid being left in the dust? "

Voting Here is more about the current registration drives going on. Boston.com / News / Politics / Young people registering by the tens of thousands in battleground states

Objectivity & Opinion Fragmentation of audience and the proliferation of journalism that shows its point of view is in the news these days. Here is a smattering of what people are saying.

USATODAY.com - As media audience fragments, trust not objectivity is what matters

More

Blogs and blogging. This story starts out being about "dirty tricks." Here is a man who exploits his children and gets gullible newsies to cover him in campaign after campaign, as he fakes incidents where democratic crowds tear up his signs and be mean to him. The trouble is, Parlock, the guy in question, stages these events to discredit Democrats. What is really of interest to me is William Rivers Pitt's final note about how the mainstream press has missed the story that Parlock is a provocateur. It was bloggers who did the legwork to find the facts and not just take the incidents at face value. That's a shift from the usual assumption that bloggers analyze what reporters track down.t r u t h o u t - William Rivers Pitt | Scamming the Media, Parlock Style

Pay per channel cable is an idea that I first heard about in the 1970s before Chicago was wired. Here the author argues that it will hurt diversity and suggests that in a pay per channel world the Civil Rights movement would have faltered.

I think that this is written from the perspective of a middle man who wants to make money in between the content producer and the broadcast "pipe" itself. I argue that the broadcast media needs to be recast as a "common carrier" like the phone lines or highways and the trucking system. Disentangling the pipe from what it carries permits content producers of all points of view to get access. I'll be writing more about this in the future. A la carte cable could be death knell for TV diversity

WiFi When too much of a good thing goes bad. The Shorthorn Online | News | Wireless problems possible: "Students using their own signal points were interfering with the university’s wireless service, which is a free service offered to students and staff, he said. "

Reporting. This is a discussion of the role media play in how terrorists act unfold. The discussion of when what label -- figher, rebel, terrorist-- reporters use to describe perpetrators is interesting. The article reflects a threat to reporting as governments try and deal with media saavy terrorists by restricting the coverage of events. The role of commercials in coverage of terrorist events is startling, but practical.Islamic Fundamentalists Adept at Using Media, Analysts Say -- 09/15/2004: "While the government could never impose guidelines on journalists there are two areas where journalists could improve, Kraft said - in providing context for the stories they report and in their use of language. 'More context...would go a long way to provide more of a balance,' Kraft said. "

The "dot.net" crowd is the sought after voter this year. What will youth do? This is a good look at efforts to register young voters over the past 10 years, and how they voted. The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Vote Drives Gain Avid Attention of Youth in '04

Who won news and documentary emmys?Newsday.com: PBS wins 8 awards at news and documentary Emmys, NBC's Brokaw honored

Search engine warsloom with this announcement by AmazonThe New York Times > Technology > Amazon to Take Searches on Web to a New Depth

Pop culture. I always did think Joe was kind of a blowhard. For all his swaggering and his very cool outfits, what did he ever really do that was heroic? Barbie was a doctor and ran for President, but now we know Joe is a fake.Salon.com | G.I. Joe is a fake

Shift from viewers to "vusers" (viewer-users) continues. It is the content, but it is also the experience. I have been trying to get newsies to understand experience design is critical to the future of news for some time. Recent surveys and shifts in how people use media have now made this clear to a wider range of people than before. Poynter Online - Convergence Chaser

Research that matters. Though there are only 46 subjects in their study, the technology they used to check out how the subjects read is comprehensive. This study is very important to online writers, publishers, and any content providers. Eyetrack III - Homepage

What is news? Is it simply quoting whoever is talking? What is the role of facts and analysis?Los Angeles Times: Campaign coverage needs to read between the lines

Copyright and new technologies.Wired News: Homemade Sat Radio Software Bump

Camphone news Camphone film festival is announced. Get those 1 to 5 min. oevres in shape and submit them now.Cellular Cinema Festival, Cell Phone Festival, Movies for the small screen, digital movies, indie films, joe miale, ZoieFest 2004! Celebrating Award Winning Films from Around the World!

Blogs and blogging. Here is an interesting story about Technocrati's David Sifry may have put the blogosphere on the path to becoming "one huge peer-reviewed journal" as Matt Stoller describes it. Using bloggers identified by reputation and ranking, a Politics Attention Index has come into being. Journos who couldn't see how the trust issue could be dealt with in blogs can check this out. Wired News: Site Tracks Political Zeitgeist

Philly goes wireless

FORGET the stadiums. Ignore the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. John Street's administration yesterday announced what could be the most important legacy the mayor will leave Philadelphia. The administration hopes to turn all 135 miles of Philadelphia into a giant wireless hotspot and bring the Internet to the masses. Street has named a 17-member "Wireless" committee to explore the feasibility of the plan, which would involve installing thousands of transmitters across the city. Computers equipped with wireless cards could then log into the Internet. If this becomes a reality, Philadelphia will be the first major city in the United States to provide wireless Internet access to all its residents. About 1,200 people now regularly use the free wireless access the city provides at LOVE Park.

While this is a noteworthy story in and of itself, for journos, another story is what publications are picking up this story. In the Google search I did, the story appears in the Boston Globe, Forbes, and then notice its global reach: U.K., Singapore, Phillipines, etc. Google Search: Look at where this story is being picked up.

Blogs and blogging. We are back to the clued and clueless of the Cluetrain Manifesto. Some employers just don't get it. I say, if you are on Friendster, get off, or at least write them a nasty note.Friendster fires developer for blog - News - ZDNet

Media reform still incomplete. Commissioner Copps speaks out on TV responsibility to broadcast from political conventions. Free registration required NYTimes. The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Show Me the Convention: "Let's remember that American citizens own the public airwaves, not TV executives. We give broadcasters the right to use these airwaves for free in exchange for their agreement to broadcast in the public interest. They earn huge profits using this public resource. During this campaign season broadcasters will receive nearly $1.5 billion from political advertising. What do we get in return for granting TV stations free use of our airwaves? Unfortunately, when it comes to coverage of issues important to our nation, the answer is less and less. Coverage of the 2000 presidential election on the network evening news dropped by a third compared to reporting on the 1996 election. During the last election cycle we heard directly from presidential candidates for an average of 9 seconds a night on the news. Local races? Forget it. In 2002 - the most recent midterm elections - more than half of local newscasts contained no campaign coverage at all. Local coverage has diminished to the point that campaign ads outnumber campaign stories by four to one. What coverage there is focuses inordinately on polls and handicapping the horse race. TV executives tell us that the convention and campaign coverage provided by the cable channels is sufficient. I don't think so. Around 35 million Americans don't get cable, often because they cannot afford it. To put it in perspective, that's more than the combined populations of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Furthermore, broadcasters legally undertake to serve the public interest themselves in exchange for free spectrum - their licenses don't allow them to pass the buck to cable. Remember also that the vast majority of cable channels are national, not local. So don't look for local campaign coverage on cable, except in the few towns where local cable news exists. Most Americans still must look to their local broadcaster for news of local campaigns and issues"

News is what the audience makes it, as well as what the news media wants it to be. Young people are going for news tempered by irony. The Daily Show continues to capture eyeballs.

And a recent Pew Center survey found that one in five young Americans turns to late night comedic programs like "The Daily Show" for campaign news, just behind newspapers. "We talk a lot about young people being disengaged from politics," said Paul Mitchell, 34, political director for EdVoice, a Sacramento-based education advocacy group. "They are tuning in, they're just not using the same tools and means their parents did," he said. "They may not be able to tell the difference between Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite, but they have these URLs saved on their computers and they're engaging that way."

From the SacBee

Tools, resources. This is a good site for journalists to know about. It tracks spin and disinformation in the public sphere. It is a bit like hoax busters. Disinfopedia - Disinfopedia

Free speech. Here is a chilling story by Bob Barr, former representative and lawyer. He served on the Judiciary Committee. If he sounds the alarm about what the FBI is doing regarding people who might protest publically about a variety of matters, we better listen. t r u t h o u t - Bob Barr | Chilling Political Speech

Sheep pine for absent friends: official | The Register

Social effects of Internet. My idols ae profiled here.Wired 12.09: Weapons of Mass Mobilization

Off message. This is not about technology, but news. Here is a statement from Dr. Will Kennedy Smith, who has just gotten notified that he is being sued for sexual harassment in Chicago. Dr. Smith is head of Center for International Rehabilitation and has been doing some political work around the issue of the rights of the disabled, including a report to the U.N. as the International Disability Rights Monitor and Physicians Against Land Mines. It is unfortunate that this work will be ignored by mainstream media in favor of the more salacious, but unproven charges in the civil suit. Statement dated 8/25/04

Dr. Smith can not respond in person as he is currently at the United Nations presenting a landmark report on the situation of people with disabilities to the UN Ad Hoc Committee on an International Convention on the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities. Statement from Dr. Smith and CIR The Center for International Rehabilitation (“CIR”) and its President Dr. William Kennedy Smith today denounced allegations made by ex-employee Audra Soulias in a lawsuit filed today. The organization and Dr. Smith characterized the allegations made by Ms. Soulias as outrageous, untrue and without merit. Ms. Soulias has demanded payment of 3 million dollars. A disgruntled employee who had failed to receive a promotion during a corporate reorganization last year approached a number of former employees, including Ms. Soulias, who last worked at the CIR in 1999. The two then detailed the allegations in Ms. Soulias lawsuit and subsequently demanded millions of dollars in payments from Dr. Smith and the CIR. The CIR has issued the following statement, “Despite the time, energy and resources that will be needlessly wasted fighting these allegations, the organization cannot in any way endorse her claims or agree to her unwarranted demands.” Said Dr. Smith, “Unfortunately, my family and my personal history have made me unusually vulnerable to these kinds of allegations. I am saddened to think of the destructive impact this may have on the work and current employees of the CIR.” Ms. Soulias’s attempts to extract money from the CIR and Dr. Smith are especially unfortunate because of their potential impact on the work of the organization and its mission to assist people with disabilities in post-conflict countries. Since its founding in 1997, the CIR has been at the forefront of efforts to improve the conditions of landmine survivors and other people with disabilities in low income and post-conflict areas. In July 2001, the CIR introduced the world’s first distance learning course in artificial limb construction. Today, the program is being delivered to 29 clinics in six mine-affected countries. In Latin America alone, the CIR distance-learning program provides training to 45 prosthetists working at 15 rehabilitation clinics that treat approximately 4,000 patients annually. The CIR also operates a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) to develop artificial limbs and wheelchairs for mine-affected countries. The RERC has been designated a national center of excellence in rehabilitation engineering by the U.S. National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. As part of its engineering activities, the CIR, in collaboration with noted wheelchair architect and user Ralf Hotchkiss, has developed a wheelchair for use in Afghanistan and other conflict-affected countries. The chair, which is currently in production in India, is distributed in the form of a wheelchair “kit” that can be assembled and fitted locally. This approach combines the economies of scale and quality assurance of mass production with the point of service care and local capacity building of cottage industry manufacturing. This month alone, the CIR will deliver 100 of these specially designed, durable and adjustable wheelchairs to the Afghan Ministry of Martyrs and Disabled in Kabul. There, workers will assemble, fit and distribute the wheelchairs.  The CIR participates with the Ministry in training the local workers on assembly, use, and repair of the chairs. The CIR’s work in Afghanistan, however, goes beyond the distribution of wheelchairs. The organization has assisted the interim government in establishing a national disability coordinating council which was crucial to recently passed legislation supporting the rights of people with disabilities in the country. Abdullah Wardak Minister of Disabled and Martyrs for Afghanistan has said: “The work of Dr. Smith and the CIR has been invaluable to the Ministry, helping us to meet the overwhelming needs of Afghanistan’s disability community. We hope their work, and this fruitful collaboration, will continue well into the future. I know Dr. Smith personally and have been impressed by his integrity and commitment to his work.” Disability activists also voiced support for Dr. Smith. Maria Veronica Reina, who heads the CIR’s International Disability Rights Monitoring (IDRM) program said: “I am proud to be working with the CIR. I have been with the organization for two years and we are making good progress. If you work hard you will get ahead in this organization. As a woman with a disability, I can tell you this is not always the case. Dr. Smith has been kind, thoughtful and professional in every interaction that I have witnessed. Over the past several months our team has worked long hours together preparing the IDRM report for the Americas. A group of disability researchers from 22 countries worked for over a year to pull it together. It would be a shame if our work were overshadowed by this kind of attack.”

Edited 9/13/04 to remove a quote attributed to Holly Biron, which she said was fabricated.

Blogs and blogging. Blogging the political conventions part deux. Here come the conservative bloggers to cover the Republican convention. It seems like the story of the convention in NYC could end up being the bloggers, if things keep up.WSJ.com - Meet the Bloggers, Part Two

ISP bluesfor BugMeNot, the site I just told my colleagues about. It was booted offline, but now is back online. When someone like a Journalism teacher is busy checking out online news and comes across a site that requires registration, BugMeNot is a quick alternative. Instead of scrolling through the often multiple page registration form, one goes to BugMeNot, and types in the site URL. Bug then generates a user identification so you can just get to the article you want to read. I'm not against registering for sites like the NY Times that I use all the time, but when there is an interesting story in a local paper that I may never look at again, BugMeNot is the time-saving solution. Wired News: BugMeNot Gets Booted, Restored

RFID and your privacy. A good idea, putting RFID chips into people like Altzheimer's patients who might wonder, or tuna fish to keep track of where the schools are, could go bad if it ends in ubiquitious personal surveillance. This is an issue that needs to be considered and talked about before commercial pressure just makes it happen everywhere. Human chips more than skin-deep - News - ZDNet

Church and state, journalistically speaking. Here's a new wrinkle in breaking down the boundary that should exist between news and advertising. Wired News covers this story.

It's not surprising that marketers love IntelliTxt while many journalists despise it. AlwaysOn columnist Rafe Needleman called IntelliTxt "pretty bad news" from an ethics standpoint "because it blurs the line between editorial content, which readers should expect to be free of commercial influence, and advertising, which we know is paid-for and biased." In AdAge, Kelly McBride, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, compared the technology to "product placement," while Doug Feaver, editor of washingtonpost.com and president of the Online News Association, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he refuses to consider IntelliTxt because for a publication to maintain credibility the lines between ads and news must be "as clear and distinct as possible." When Vibrant Media pitched its product to Wired News, editors also gave it the thumbs down. A chief concern was that rational cynics might suspect that Wired News was loading its stories with keywords like "memory," "video games" and "impotent" just to make an extra buck.

Blogs and blogging. Barb is back from Florida, unscathed by Charlie, and what should be in the news, but blogs and their use as a tool for teaching. Elementary teachers can use them, so I expect that college profs need to roll up their sleeves and get busy with blogs too. Read the NY Times article (free registration required.)

RFID hacking.Forbes.com: A Hacker's Guide To RFID

A bit from Dan Gillmor's new book, "We the Media." (registration required)MercuryNews.com | 08/01/2004 | We the media: "Journalists: We will learn we are part of something new, that our readers/listeners/viewers are becoming part of the process. I take it for granted, for example, that my readers know more than I do -- and this is a liberating, not threatening, fact of journalistic life. Every reporter on every beat should embrace this. We will use the tools of grassroots journalism or be consigned to history. Our core values, including accuracy and fairness, will remain important, and we'll still be gatekeepers in some ways, but our ability to shape larger conversations -- and to provide context -- will be at least as important as our ability to gather facts and report them."

We could do this. When I came back from Newsplex, I tried to get my dept. excited about this, but it was still a bit too new for them. Now that Medill has done it, maybe we can. PCWorld.com - Blogging on the Run in Boston

Blogs and blogging.Cybertourists in Boston | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Blogs and blogging. So, the media frenzy has led to "blogsploitation." OJR article: Blogsploitation: Big Media Try to Steal Bloggers' Thunder at DNC

Blogs and blogging. "PHILADELPHIA, July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Christopher M. Rabb, founder/publisher of Afro-Netizen(TM), is the only Black readership 'blogger' accredited in the inaugural corps of 35 independent 'bloggers,' given coveted press credentials for the 2004 Democratic National Committee Convention in Boston." PR Newswire para Periodistas :: Todo Comunicados de prensa

Blogs and Blogging. This looks at some of the reasons why blogs are catching on as journalism. They are journalism, of course, though they are not the only form of journalism. Big Media blots out local news, and blogs are rich with detail and set at a human scale.

"What they're all skirting around saying is that Big Media are no longer satisfying the regional needs of the politically active community. With newspapers losing ground to television, people who want to know what's happening must absorb it the way TV news presents it: As a national story, with pundits from the national stage analyzing the events."

Read the whole thing.

Too cool department. As a child of the 50s I love drive-ins. Guerilla drive-ins sound like a great way to while away a warm summer night. The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon

Blogs and blogging. Bloggers as the news...Wired News: Stars of Convention: Bloggers

Internet as news channel. PR Newswire para Periodistas :: Todo Comunicados de prensa: "BOSTON, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Since the opening gavel of the 2004 Democratic National Convention on Monday afternoon, the official Convention website has received more than 16.5 million hits from visitors across the globe.

Patriot Act Here is more on the FBI use of the Patriot Act against a fan website that was accused of copyright infringement. The Canadian views on privacy and copyright are interesting. Vive le Canada - FBI uses US Patriot Act against alleged "copyright infringer"

Patriot Act This is a strange snippet about the MPAA urging the FBI to use the Patriot Act against a fan site. Disturbing is a good word for it...Stargate Information Archive - Federal Charges Filed Against SG-1 Archive: "And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP."

Blogs and blogging. Bordering on becoming the most overcovered story, the Democratic Convention credentialed bloggers are providing important information. Even old-school reporter Walter Mears admits that "no one can be totally objective." USATODAY.com - Blogs, journalism: Different factions of the write wing

Collectives. I have ordered my pair, have you? The anti-corporate statement you can wear proudly. Sneakers made without sweatshop labor...BLACKSPOT SNEAKER: BLACKSPOT THE WORLD