Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

Recorded at the U.S. State Department, Clay Shirky talks in this TED Talk about how technology becomes phenomenal, or its uses become broader and more important (or more socially interesting), once that particular technology becomes technically boring and “everybody takes them for granted.” He used the example of the monitoring of elections via SMS in Nigeria in 2007, followed by the 2008 U.S. election and how we monitored our votes using cameras and phones. In other words, a first world country followed the example of a third world country not because the technology was new or revolutionary, but because the technology had become so common that it was part of the social landscape and therefore seen purely as a tool for everyday use.

Shirky goes on to explain how the media landscape has changed forever. Some of this is new, most of it isn’t, but Shirky’s analysis and explanation of the current and future state of media is well worth the time to watch. In particular, how we create environments for discussion and shape that conversation, has become the ONLY effective way of delivering a message and defining that message as “news” or anything else is getting harder and harder to do. I think one of the most important changes that has occurred is that today, we learn more from the discussion of the news than we do from the initial delivery of that news. ‘Twitter, Facebook, and cellphones can now make history.’

In my opinion, one of the most important jobs in this world is held by those who report from the parts of the world ‘less traveled by’. My favorite poem, by Robert Frost, finishes like this:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

Today’s New York Times prominently features a story on the inherent dangers associated with reporting from places often forgotten about. Sometimes the reasons for the inattention are due to the country’s lack of resources, failing public infrastructure or disassociated importance from the rest of the world. But often such places are not read about because of political pressure keeping such things unsaid. But ask any foreign correspondent about his or her sense of accomplishment and the answer will revolve around traveling the road less traveled. They have, putting their own lives in danger, impacted change throughout history in the most important way; telling stories.

Now, with the fractured media landscape and cost-cutting, these stories are not being told in the same fashion. First, we are seeing an increased bias towards “American” coverage, as opposed to news from the rest of the world, as I wrote about in April. But what international stories are being told, are being reported by different people or at least backed by different and less powerful organizations than the BBC and CNN. This has a very dramatic effect on the coverage or lack there of…

Back in March I asked my readers the following question after journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained by the North Korean government:

“However, my more pressing question is whether or not the North Koreans would have detained the two for more than a few hours or days had they been on assignment for a large news organization. My guess is no; the larger organization would have worked to arrange their release sooner than Current TV is doing. Of course, it doesn’t even appear that Al Gore, the Chairman of Current TV and one of its primary investors, has had any affect on the situation (either out of choice or not). I’m sure the diplomatic back channels are buzzing because of Gore’s connection, but take a circumstance where the independent journalists don’t have the backing of a former Vice President. Do you think the same thing would be playing out? There are examples of this out there for sure. In Russian it doesn’t matter how big or small your backing is, but in African countries or other locales where the central government isn’t as powerful as in Moscow or Pyongyang, would it make a difference? What about in China where economic policy seems to trump all? When NBC has the backing of GE, does that matter? What do you think? Are small and independent news organizations more susceptible to political pressure with diminished resources for negotiation and the inability to apply appropriate political pressure?”

Apparently the mainstream media has caught wind of this precarious situation with today’s Times’ article. But if Al Gore’s journalists can be sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp, where does this leave us? Where does this leave those brave journalists willing to travel the road less traveled by, in order to make what difference they can?

Who? What? Why? When? Where? These are the five governing principles of any news story and the basic tools of the journalism trade. Anyone who has ever worked in the industry knows this and most readers do to as these facts make up the foundation of any good story. Unfortunately, these days (look at me, sounding all old and shit) not everyone remembers the rules. I’ve just spent more time than I would have liked searching through a clumsy video replay of yet another round-table discussion on the future of news (or in this case, “traditional media”), looking for the names of the participants as well as the date this occurred. I was able to piece together the names, although the date was found only through a trusty “new-media” tool I like to call Google: June 4th, 2008. The original broadcast was on GroundReport.com, but it contained no information next to the video as to who the participants were and when this discussion took place. Both IWantMedia.com and GroundReport.com have included this information elsewhere on their sites (found it too late), but it was easier for me to Google the information, ending up back on the original sites I started from, than to search through the mass of nothingness accompanying the video. Perhaps new-media has something to learn here? I’m not sure if that lesson is to be learned from Google or perhaps a legacy company like the New York Times… More on that later.

Anyway, I’ve included below the discussion that took place at NYU’s J-school about the future of traditional media. The discussion was hosted by I Want Media and Ground Report, one a media industry general information website, the other a citizen journalist/news platform (still in its infancy, as I discussed earlier). Both are worthy ideas and worth a look. The discussion was fairly interesting and featured Michael Wolff (Vanity Fair and Newser.com), Kenneth Li (Reuters), David Carr (New York Times), Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch.com), Keith J. Kelly (New York Post) and Johnnie L. Roberts (Newsweek).

What did they have in common? They are all men, all happened to be in the same television studio in New York at the same time and for the most part, they all are media commentators and journalists with something at stake (although some of them are obviously less complacent than others about their careers). Other than that, as you’ll see, the line is pretty clear as to who “gets” it and who doesn’t. Schonfeld and Wolff were on their own it seemed simply because of the way they approached the discussion where as the other panelists spent half their time defending old media and the other half of the time blaming new media and news aggregators for “stealing” their content. More on that to come… My favorite part of the discussion was the last question of the night: “What are you all doing to secure your future in this industry?” Not one of them was able to provide a viable response although clearly Scholfeld and Wolff have a head start on the others.

At least I thought Wolff had a head start until I saw this news about the AP looking to shut out news aggregators (like newser.com) from publishing its content (and that of its affiliated newspapers). We’ll see how far that one goes, especially considering the New York Times Company is guilty of doing the same thing (see the lawsuit here brought by Gatehouse Media), although the lawsuit against their Boston.com subsidiary was settled out of court. Seriously, now the AP is resorting to suing instead of embracing to stop this change? For one, it explains why The New York Times Company settled out of court…

But the real kick in the teeth on this one is the following quote from the AP’s William Dean Singleton, “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.” I know Dean Singelton. I met him during my childhood right before he bought my father’s paper, fired and then re-hired the entire news staff so as to do away with seniority and by doing so drove away the best talent that paper had known. To say the least, I’ve never been a fan of his…

From the pages of Photography is Not a Crime:

“In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment – which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.”

You can read more from the local paper here. All I have to say is that at least they don’t kill bloggers here, like they do in Russia.

Continuing on my previous post about anonymity and blogging, I came across some related news this morning in catching up on my RSS feeds after a brief vacation. The MudFlats is a political blog in Alaska written by a local person who cares about the issues concerning her city, state and nation. A patriot who decided, for her own reasons, to share her opinions anonymously. At least until she happened to piss off a local politician. Alaska State Rep. Mike Doogan made it his mission to out the MudFlats blogger and has apparently succeeded in doing so. I’m not sure even he knows what he has accomplished, other than to apparently piss off his political base and endanger his career, but he did it anyway. Despicable indeed. Well, the blogger has responded with a very well written post on how she feels, some of the history behind it and this very good segment I’d like to share:

“If he were around, we could ask the “anonymous blogger” of his day, Benjamin Franklin what he thought about this.  Using the “screen name” Mrs. Silence Dogood, Franklin was able to put out thoughts and ideas that were weighted on their own merits, not attached to a particular person.  Sometimes it’s easier, if you don’t want to think, to attack the person, rather than the idea.  I think Franklin would heartily approve of anonymous bloggers.

So, it seemed odd to me that Mr. Doogan was seemingly more focused on the messenger, than on defending his position, or even better, apologizing to people whom he had insulted.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.