Bob Stepno: podfolk

It's of a bold reporter...

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:24:57 GMT

When I was in high school, Phil Ochs' album "All the News that's Fit to Sing" convinced me that I needed a better guitar case than my crushable cardboard one... and a subscription to The New York Times. It also had a song that began, "It's of a bold reporter whose story I will tell..."

Maybe that album helped plant the seeds for my eventual career, one that didn't require rhyming or hitting notes above B-flat.

Journalist turned private investigator Larry Lopez just reminded me of that album and song by sending along this Boston Globe clip about a neighbor, William Worthy, the "bold reporter" Ochs sang about...

William Worthy isn't worthy to enter our door,
He went down to Cuba, he's not American any more.
But somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say,
'You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay.'
--Phil Ochs

Unlike most folks immortalized in song, Mr. Worthy is still alive, but suffering from Alzheimer's disease. At least he's back on the radar of those who want to give him some overdue recognition, including Harvard's Nieman Foundation.

As the Nieman site notes, "Worthy traveled to both China (1956-57) and later to Cuba (1961) in violation of U.S. travel restrictions. The United States subsequently tried and sentenced him to jail. A federal appeals court overturned that conviction in 1964, ruling that the travel bans were unconstitutional. Worthy continued to report from overseas, visiting North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia."

Without any folksingers to consult for more details, I resorted to Google, which hooked me up with this profile in a Bates College alumni magazine, an additional account from Bates of Worthy's 1981 confrontation with the CIA, a testimonial at Cuba-watcher Walter Lippmann's site, the full lyrics to Ochs's song, the recording itself at Rhapsody, and an ironies-of-media-history tidbit: One liberal daily Worthy wrote for in the 1950s was, according to the accounts above... the New York Post.

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:06:17 GMT

Sorry... still no time to podcast... But I just discovered this heavily linked essay on "The 100 Greatest Acts of the Anglo-American Folk Music Tradition."

"A Combined Current/Retrospective Ranked List of Those Folk Acts
from Here and Other Countries Who Have Most Contributed
(and/or Are Most Contributing)
to This Folk Music Tradition in the United States"

Undervalued communication medium -- the porch

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:48:54 GMT

Dave Winer launches into The debate about the worth of podcasting with a wonderful observation:

My phone doesn't have a business model. Neither does my porch. I still like having a phone and a porch because they help me meet new people and communicate with people I know. Same with my blog and podcast.

He reminds me of a speech I heard Lawrence Lessig give at AEJMC (very similar to this one)... Lessig was quoting none other than John Philip Sousa about hearing people sing songs on the porch in the evening. He expressed some apprehension that newfangled media technology, an "infernal machine" called the phonograph, would end that traditional melodic community conversation.

Podcasting, which literally started with Winer's Web wizardry, lets people sing to each other again... even when they can't afford a house with a porch in a musical neighborhood. (Podcasting also lets NPR and PRI radio fans do the time-shifting that video recorders have made possible for years... Old-time-radio fans have made that time-shifting a real time machine to the mid-20th-century days of professional radio entertainment.)

Even better, YouTube's shared videos are letting people show off some guitar licks, sing and dance for each other! It's all Web-as-a-porch!

Right now, I just wish the sun would come out so that I could sit on my porch and play with the sunshine-reflective screen of my little green laptop, even though it's not set up for podcasts or YouTube. While the OLPC does play music, the singing-to-each-other about it is going on in wikis and bulletin boards and blogs. (Oh my.)

Back to Dave at Scripting News, here's another nice definition to discuss in my journalism classes, which resume Tuesday (so much for sitting in the sun):

"A blogger is person who has an idea, expertise or opinion who wants to convey that to other people. The unedited voice of a person. What makes a blogger interesting is that they do something other than writing a blog....

"Professional writers and broadcasters probably have a place... But let's be clear blogging and podcasting exist independent of a professional's ability to eek out a living using the tools of blogging and podcasting."

Oops. Bloggers also don't have the luxury of someone else copyediting their spelling. But I'd say eek myself at the thought of making a living with a blog or podcast. And I've often been a candidate for a pullet surprise, even with an editor or two trying to save me.