GOING BYE-BYEI wrote earlier I was going to decide what to do with this blog site. Now I have: I'm going to let it die a graceful (or not) death, when my licence for Radio Userland software runs out about 10 days from now. I've switched to WordPress software, as it's more to my liking.
My main blog, and links to my other sites, will continue at www.tamark.ca/students. |
SHOOTING SNOWJohn Nordell posts another Christian Science Monitor In Focus report on doing photojournalism and describes the perils of shooting snowstorms.
Flushed with excitement from tromping in the snow, I headed my car home to transmit the photos. Alas, my transmission gave out. I pulled into a gas station and then the battery in my laptop expired. In the gas station's convenience store, a very pierced clerk let me use a power outlet. After transmitting the images to meet my deadline, I set about finding a tow for my car. With a couple of nice photos, too.
TECHNORATI TAG: PHOTOJOURNALISM |
BERATING CBCJim Elve, who has done more than anyone to promote blogging in Canada, is taking on the CBC over a look at blogging on The Current Tuesday. At Blogs Canada, Elve has posted a letter he has sent to the CBC. It reads in part:
I was extremely disappointed with the one-sided nature of your report. You spent plenty of time on the pitfalls and perils of blogging. You cast aspersions on the credibility of bloggers. You trotted out legal experts whose expertise is limited to the United States. This is all par for the course. Over the past few months, numerous news articles and features have been published on bloggers who were fired from their jobs due to their blogs. It ain't news. Well, maybe it is news but its just one part of a big story. I kept waiting for the part where you would talk about progressive companies who use employee blogs as an effective public relations tool. I waited to hear about people who were hired on the basis of the writing abilities and research skills that their blogs display. I listened to hear how bloggers, untethered by editors and corporate sponsors, acted as fact-checkers and whistle-blowers on the mainstream media. In short, I looked for balance and fairness. I didn't find it. Props to Elve for the work he does promoting blogs and for jumping to the defense of bloggers. But after following the links from his site to The Current's web site, reading the partial transcript of the section on blogging and listening to snippets of the audio, I'm not sure the criticism is warranted. Anna Marie Tremonti's report wasn't presented as an overview of blogging, she was looking at specific aspects of it, primarily privacy, bloggers' rights and credibility. And other than a few slips (both the host or the interviewer, for example, were fuzzy on the dust-up over Dean campaign payment to bloggers), it seems like a credible piece. (As I said, I've only listened to parts of the audio: I may have more to say tomorrow after I've had a chance to listen to the whole thing. Yes, I recorded the streaming audio.) A lot of bloggers are defensive, understandable because of some of the truly horrid ways blogging has been treated in mainstream media. And most often when media takes a look at blogging, the tone is dismissive. But I don't think that's the case here. UPDATE: I was originally pointed to Jim Elve's piece by a short post at Todd Maffin's I Love Radio. When I went back to get the link, the post was gone, making me wonder only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if he's fallen afoul of some of the issues raised in The Current's report. (UPDATE: That should, of course, be Tod Mafffin.)
TECHNORATI TAG: BLOGGING |
MOVING ON OVER
I've been using this site as a mirror for my main site, mostly through a period of redesign. I won't be posting here for the next little while (at least until I figure out what to do with this site). I will continue to post media-related matters at Notes From a Teacher. If you have this site bookmarked, you'll probably want to change it. |
FACING HORROR IIEarlier today, I pointed to Ron Steinman's essay exploring issues raised by sometimes horrific photos and video from the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami. (Post below.) The Christians Science Monitor has added to he debate with Susan Llewelyn Leach's piece, How to tell the story of the dead without offending the living.
Natural disasters, manmade calamities, and wars all produce imagery that can shock and sometimes offend. Yet how the media communicate the magnitude of an event depends heavily on who the audience is and how far they are from the unfolding drama. So can a tragedy on the scale of the tsunami - with 150,000 dead, and counting - be conveyed to an audience a world away without graphic images of death?
TECHNORATI TAGS: MEDIA ETHICS, PHOTOJOURNALISM |
FACING HORRORRon Steinman pokes around the issues of photographic truth-telling and of the willingness of readers to face reality in an interesting essay at Digital Vision Network. A couple of quotes:
Almost as soon as the photos and words appeared in print and on TV screens, editors, reporters and news executives started to receive e-mail, phone calls and letters that attacked them for showing too many powerful pictures of the disaster. Suddenly many Americans had become squeamish about death, especially those of the many children swept away in the wave's fury. There were debates in newsrooms that were not about a photo's power, but about whether a single picture, or, in the case of TV, a sequence of pictures, served to exploit the horror of an event that was beyond belief and one that would not go away. The debates he's talking about are standing debates in newsrooms, whether it's dealing with a tragedy on the scale of the Indian Ocean tsunami, or a single picture of a local fatal traffic accident. But, as he points out, the internet has brought some new considerations into those soulsearching agruments.
The Internet, unless it is a mainstream Web site, meaning it takes responsibility for its content, gets a free ride when it comes to any moral review of what it presents. When you are on your computer, it is the most personal act of communication with something that is both private and distant and therefore nothing you share with anyone. Pictures and text on the Internet move around the world in an instant, sent everywhere simultaneously in an effort to share in what some call "citizen journalism." Is that an act alone or something we have yet to understand? I always thought reading a newspaper or magazine, even a book was highly personal and something you did by yourself. When the audience complains that it does not want to look at something too graphic over breakfast or before dinner, I wonder about its ability to process truth, or, as I said earlier, the real reality. Legacy media, in order to maintain audience, has to err on the side of the squeamish. Wander too far into unpleasant truth, and the impact goes from a few phone calls and letters to the editor to cancelled subscriptions and channel switching. The internet, on the other hand, answers a huge demand from those who want unmediated access to reality. Some of the interest may be prurient, but that can't be the whole story. Whenever I've posted items about significant news events and how media treats them — the beheading of Nick Berg, the death of Boston College student Victoria Snelgrove, the amateur videos from the tsunami — there has been a significant spike in visitors to this site, driven by Google searches. Newspapers have attempted to deal with issues of the often upsetting nature of reality by "hiding" graphic photos on inside pages, with front page warnings. Steinman's final point raises troubling questions, not so much about media, but about audience.
When the audience complains that it does not want to look at something too graphic over breakfast or before dinner, I wonder about its ability to process truth, or, as I said earlier, the real reality. For me that does not bode well for the future, a future where I know we will witness more tragedies that people create as well as the natural tragedies over which we mortals have no control.
TECHNORATI TAG: PHOTOJOURNALISM |
MASSLESS MEDIA ONLINEThe much-discussed Atlantic Monthly article The Massless Media is now available online. William Powers does a good job of putting a lot of things in perspective, tracing what seems to be a historical loop from a vibrant, fractious press in the early days of the U.S. to the the emerging vibrant, fractious mediascape of the internet age. Lots to chew on. (My earlier post on this is here)
TECHNORATI TAG: MASSLESS MEDIA | SOURCE: LEONARD WITT AT PUBLIC JOURNALISM NETWORK |
SETTING UP THE CONFERENCEJay Rosen isn't alone in posting his pre-conference thoughts as he prepares for the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference. Jeff Jarvis has published his thoughts, ideas and talking points on economics and the news in two separate posts, and here. Like Rosen, he's looking for comments. Both have interesting things to say. Go read.
TECHNORATI TAG: CREDIBILITY |
CITIZEN JOURNALISM SPREADSJeff Jarvis has posted a job opening at his web, Buzz Machine, that's also an explanation of another citizen journalism project:
Advance Internet, which includes NJ.com, MassLive.com, OregonLive.com and other fine local sites, is about to create a half-dozen town blogs in those markets -- new, group blogs (using iUpload) to which any neighbor can contribute. These will live alongside the many individuals' blogs, local forums, newspaper headlines, blogs outside the services (and their RSS feeds), and more. The idea is that -- as in GoSkokie.com and NorthwestVoices -- people may not want to start their own blog but they have plenty of news to contribute to their communities: opinions, news updates, sports reports, photos, calendar items, and so on. The hope is also that once we have a critical mass of content in a town from all these sources, a critical mass of audience is sure to follow. This means, we hope, that we can target ads down to the town level and automate them, saving the cost of sales and production, and price them in such a way that we can serve local advertisers who heretofore could not afford to market in big papers. That, I emphasize is the hope -- untested, unproven. Testing that is the job. I don't have an exact count, but the number of such experiments in erasing the line between news provider and reader seems to be growing exponentially. We're getting near the point where if local legacy media isn't planning on joining the parade, they risk being left watching from the sidewalk.
TECHNORATI TAG: REMAKING MEDIA |
THE POWER OF MOBSEvery time I figure I'm starting to get a handle on new media, somebody much smarter than I am throws in a new wrinkle. This one — mobcasting — knocked me straight sideways. Andy Carvin explains the potential:
A quick example: imagine a large protest at a political convention. During the protest, police overstep their authority and begin abusing protesters, sometimes brutally. A few journalists are covering the event, but not live. For the protestors and civil rights activists caught in the melee, the police abuses clearly need to be documented and publicized as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting for the handful of journalists to file a story on it, activists at the protest capture the event on their video phones -- dozens of phones from dozens of angles. Thanks to the local 3G (or community wi-fi) network, the activists immediately podcast the footage on their blogs. The footage gets aggregated on a civil rights website thanks to the RSS feeds produced by the podcasters' blogs. (Or perhaps they all podcast their footage directly to a centralized website, a la OneWorld TV but with an RSS twist.) This leads to coverage by bloggers throughout the blogosphere, which leads to coverage by the mainstream media, which leads to demands of accountability by the general public. That's mobcasting. In a separate post, Carvin spells out how to set up a "network" using freely available internet technologies, including blogs, audio blogs and RSS. Consumer technology (video and photo phones, digital cameras, etc.) has led to the idea that everyone can be a journalist. Online technology (individual and group blogs, RSS, etc.) has led to the idea that everyone can be a publisher. Mobcasting is one of the places where it all converges: audio and image over the phone line, delivered by RSS, potentially to a central source. What's missing is organization: all this information can be delivered to a central web site, but how do you navigate it as a user and get to what you consider the vital stuff? Add organization, and you have a potent new "container" for delivering breaking news.
Technorati Tags: MOBCASTING |
GOING DEEPChristian Science Monitor photojournalist John Nordell updates his blog with I dig the Big Dig. I'd love to see more working photojournalists do what John is doing: not just showing me pictures, but telling me stories about his work.
TECHNORATI TAG: PHOTOJOURNALISM |
EXPLAINING GREENSBOROIf you're not up to speed on what's happening with the Greensboro News & Record, MSNBC news has a great story that captures it all and puts it in context.
TECHNORATI TAG: GREENSBORO NEWS & RECORD |
JOURNALISM MIND SHIFTJ.D. Lasica takes advantage of it being his day to post at Morph to shine the light on another new voice in the mediascape. What I find most interesting isn't Lasica's latest "discovery" — The Lexington League — but his changed views on what journalism is. He writes:
A couple of years ago I might have reacted to subjective journalism like this by dismissing it as fundamentally flawed because of its imbalance, or because I didn't agree with the reporter's conclusions. Now I just marvel at the sophisticated ways in which people are joining the media conversation. That's a mind shift a lot of legacy media hasn't got to yet. There is no longer (if there ever has been) a single definition of journalism as professional, detached, uninvolved and objective. What Lasica wrote captures it as well as anything I've seen.
TECHNORATI TAG: RETHINKING MEDIA |
MORE COPYRIGHT CHILLWhen a seminal documentary like Eyes on the Prize is "silenced" because of copyright issues, it's time to take a serious and common-sense look at how the misapplication of copyright is effecting us all. Guy Dixon, in an excellent Globe & Mail article, reports:
The makers of the series no longer have permission for the archival footage they previously used of such key events as the historic protest marches or the confrontations with Southern police. Given Eyes on the Prize's tight budget, typical of any documentary, its filmmakers could barely afford the minimum five-year rights for use of the clips. That permission has long since expired, and the $250,000 to $500,000 needed to clear the numerous copyrights involved is proving too expensive. This is particularly dire now, because VHS copies of the series used in countless school curriculums are deteriorating beyond rehabilitation. With no new copies allowed to go on sale, "the whole thing, for all practical purposes, no longer exists," says Jon Else, a California-based filmmaker who helped produce and shoot the series and who also teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California, Berkeley. It is more than ironic that copyright, designed to offer limited protection against exploitation of creative work, has been turned on its head and is on its way to becoming a permanent "right" to lock up creative work and turn it into just another commodity. Beyond the irony is one of the realities that Dixon points out: the commodification of creative work is putting our history out of the reach of documentary filmmakers and others. We need to protect the rights of creators, but we also have to find a balance that allows creative work into the public arena, where it can drive other creators and creative activities. That was the original intent of copyright, allowing the original creator to benefit from a limited period of protection, before creations passed into public domain. We need to go back to that idea — and get away from the idea that a creator should have rights to creation "forever."
Technorati Tag: COPYRIGHT | SOURCE: BOING BOING |
MORE ON ETHICSThe debate on blogging and ethics keeps spreading. Armed Liberal, posting at Winds of Change, points past the current kerfuffle over consulting payments paid to bloggers to other issues that Blog World is going to have to confront.
The amateur nature of blogging up to now has been a significant part of its delight; we may well look back on this as the Golden Age, before Duncan Black and Oliver Willis rode partisan commentary to advocacy jobs, before Lauck and Van Beek slammed Daschle in their blogs while taking cash from Thune's campaign, and before Kos got hired to make sure he didn't defect to Clark. But the downfall — if it happens — isn't something that's unique to blogging, no not at all. He links two articles — one on the "swag" offered (and too often taken) by journalists, and the other on the growing use of viral marketing — to point to the type of ethical issues a rapidly-maturing blogosphere is going to have to deal with. The point he doesn't make is that these are issues that have long confronted "professional" journalism and even there they have not always been adequately dealt with. Worth a read, whether you're a legacy journalist, a blogger or a little of both.
TECHNORATI TAG: ETHICAL BLOGGING |
PUTTING IT OUT THEREAt Shutterbug: How Photographers Are Making The Internet Work For Them. Once you have all those images, get them out there so people can see them. Consider a photo blog as part of a resume, something to point potential employers to to let them see what you can do.
TECHNORATI TAG: DOING JOURNALISM |
JAY ROSEN GOES DEEPJay Rosen has published the draft of an essay he's writing for a coming conference on Blogging, Journalism & Credibility, and it is an incredibly dense piece of writing. I mean dense in the best possible sense: it is thick with information and one of the most compelling looks at the state of journalism that I've read. Rosen's hook is:
I have been an observer and critic of the American press for 19 years. In that stretch there has never been a time so unsettled. More is up for grabs than has ever been up for grabs since I started my watch. You can give the piece (and the comments) a surface read and absorb some of the central questions confronting the coming together (or collision) of blogs and journalism, along with a thoughtful analysis of what it all means. At a deeper level, Rosen pulls together a number of strings — some of them familiar grist for the new mediascape mill, others (like the Pro-Am Revolution) not. I'm not even going to try recapping or highlighting what he's written. There's too much there. I can't add much to the conversation at this point either. I've read Rosen's essay twice (once last night and again this afternoon) and I'm still absorbing everything that's there. I'll probably read it at least once more, but later, after my thoughts have settled a little. As far as I'm concerned, though, this is essential reading.
TECHNORATI TAG: RETHINKING MEDIA |
INDIAN OCEAN PHOTOJOURNALISMVII Agency's collection of truly outstanding photojournalism from the Indian Ocean areas devastated by the tsunami has grown. Very quickly after the disaster struck, the agency's web site featured the work of members John Stanmeyer and Gary Knight. Recently added to those are the work of James Nachtwey and Joachim Ladefoged. Amazing work that brings home the tragic reality.
TECHNORATI TAG: PHOTOJOURNALISM |
EXPLAINING GREENSBOROEditor John Robinson's newspaper column outlining the News & Record's plans to turn its web site into a town square, is as succinct an explanation of you'll find about all that fuss in Greensboro.
The gist of the report is this: We intend to build a Web presence that invites readers in to share the news they know and engage in the civic discussion. That will take a variety of forms, but, if we do it right, you will be able to come to our site and find the news of the day, featuring our reporting and stories from other newspapers and from other citizens.... You will be able to interact with others, in forums and comment sections. The topics could range from hard news issues such as school discipline to narrower interests like High Point Central football or video games. Readers will help drive the direction. I can only repeat what I've said in earlier posts: this is one of the most significant things to happen in North American journalism since the rise of the internet. A number of technologies and ideas come together here — access, blogging, reader desire to be involved and more — but the real significance is in an established newspaper buying into the idea that there is a better way to do journalism. In his column Robinson writes that most of the paper's resources will still be devoted to the print product (which is as it should be) but it would be surprising if what happens in the News & Record's on-line town square did not begin to have some impact and influence on the newspaper itself. This is about relationship, not technology. Greensboro may turn out it be what so many of us have been waiting for: journalism that combines the power of the press and the power of the reader to create a new vitality.
TECHNORATI TAG: GREENSBORO NEWS & RECORD | SOURCE: ED CONE |
Last update: 2/5/05; 3:19:25 PM .
