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• July 28, 2010
• 23:00

  Ethnic Restaurants Worry They Won't Make the Grade

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  Ethnic Restaurants Worry They Won't Make the Grade

• 15:27

  'Life in a Day' Collaborative Film Echoes in Hyper-Local Projects

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  When I think about my project, SochiReporter, I often recall the seminal 1961 book by Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

  This book challenged the conventional wisdom of city planners of that era and celebrated the vibrancy of the urban streetscape. It also encouraged citizen involvement in the development of neighborhoods. I wonder if Jacobs ever looked at the cities and the changes they undergo to host the Olympics, as Sochi will in 2014?

  Life in a Day

  Along the lines of citizen participation, July 23 was the day when anyone worldwide could make a short movie and submit it at YouTube's Life in a Day channel to participate in the Oscar-winning director Ridley Scott's new global project.

  By January 2011, Scott will put together a movie containing short videos taken by professional and amateur film directors worldwide. We at SochiReporter submitted a video and it would be great if we're included. Even if we aren't, participation is the key.

  This project reminds me of the recent YouTube Symphony Orchestra global initiative, which I previously wrote about for Idea Lab. But while the Orchestra experiment was targeted at a comparatively narrow and professional audience (musicians), Life in a Day is more popular and aims at reaching ordinary people living ordinary lives. This is probably why I liked this project, though it's pretty simple at its core.

  It focuses on the small things happening in people's lives. The video "must be personal," according to Ridley Scott. The other person behind this project, Kevin McDonald, said that each video:

  ...could be something that to you seems really banal, it could be your journey to work, watching your baby at bath time, going to a hospital to visit a friend, your birthday, going for a walk in the countryside, or it could be something much more meaningful to you, much more emotional -- the knocking down of the building next to where you lived, that you've always loved, the death of a friend. It's a little snapshot of your life.

  I think this project is in many ways similar to hyper-local journalism, which is about the daily life of an individual in his community. Hyper-local journalism puts a community online suddenly so anybody anywhere can see it and maybe criticize it or present it as an example.

  McDonald said the resulting film will be a time capsule. He recommended people think about the three things while shooting their video:

  1. What makes you frightened.

  2. What makes you laugh.

  3. What is in your pockets (literally) -- film it.

  Covering the Special Olympics

  This project made me think of Jordan Pascale, a city desk intern at the Lincoln Journal Star because the day to submit a video was also the closing day of the Special Olympics, which began in Lincoln, Neb., on July 17. I met Pascale when I was serving my six-day term as innovator-in-residence at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska, where he is a student. When the Special Olympics came to town, Pascale had a lot of work to do.

  I saw an immediate connection between Lincoln and Sochi -- both are small towns hosting big sports events. I recently got in touch with Pascale to have him share how his paper covered the event, and how they documented the reactions of locals and the changes in the everyday life of the local community.

  I was interested in how a local paper adapted to cover such a big event online using multimedia tools. I wanted to compare it with what we have been doing in Sochi. Here's what Pascale wrote in an email to me:

  Our newsroom at the Lincoln Journal Star has been doing multimedia videos for a while, but thanks to new technology we recently bought, we are now equipped to cover events even better than before.

  The Lincoln Journal Star has been using iPhones, Twitter and CoverItLive.com to provide Special Olympics fans with instantaneous updates from around the city.

  Here's an example from Saturday.

  Using twitter on the iPhones, our reporters in the field have been taking photos and videos and collecting snippets of "color" from each venue around the city. CoverItLive.com pulls our Twitter feeds into one place, making a convenient one-stop spot for readers.

  It really has been a good learning experience for our newsroom. Few have ever used any of this technology but a lot have adopted it and are now comfortable reporting from the field this way. Web users from around the United States have been following our feed and we have received a lot of compliments for the depth and breadth of the coverage.

  Back at his journalism school, Pascale participated in a new media and design class led by Adam Wagler. As part of that class, Pascale and his fellow students built a special website to cover the Special Olympics. That, too, is a feature that connects Lincoln and Sochi.

• 15:15

  Parsing the Test Scores

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  New York State raised the bar on education yesterday, and many city students stumbled on it. But even though the new standards means far fewer city public school kids now qualify as meeting state standards in English language arts and math, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said at a press conference this afternoon.
  that the city schools under their years of leadership have made enormous progress. If you have any doubts, they said (repeatedly) just ask Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

  Following years of charges that the state standardized tests had become too easy, the state education department raised the cutoff score for achieving a level three or four — the two level that indicate a child meets the standards and can go on to higher levels of work.

  The increase made state and city proficiency levels plummet. But that, Bloomberg said, does not mean students are doing worse. Instead, he told reporters, “you’re writing a story about a change in definition.” Any other take, he continued, might tell “the teachers the principals, the parents and most particularly the students, that all the work they’ve done is for naught.”

  In the state, 53 percents of students met the new standards in English and 61 percent in math, as opposed to 77 percent and 86 percent, respectively, in 2009.

  In the city, using the new scale, only 54 percent of students in grades 3 through 8 met the standard for math and far less than half — 42.4 percent — did so for English, according to numbers released by the city.

  More results — and the achievement gap — after the jump.
  

  For junior high, always a laggard in public education, the results dipped lower. Only 37.5 percent of eight graders qualified as proficient in English, raising serious doubts about the ability of many to do high school work. Under the old cut-off, 68.2 percent would have met the standard in English and 83.3 percent in math.

  Using either scale, though, far more New York City students met standards in 2010 than they had in 2006 when the city began relying on the state test.

  The revised cutoff, though, did cause the so-called achievement gap between Asian and white students at one end and black and Latino students on the other to widen into a chasm. In 2009, with the old cutoff, 94.9 percent of Asian students met standards in math, followed by 92.2 percent of whites, 78.5 percent of Hispanics and 75 percent of blacks. That meant that at its widest — the difference between Asians and blacks — the gap in math was about 20 points. This year, though, with 81.7 percent of Asians getting levels 3 and 4, compared to the 40.4 percent of black students , the gap increased to more than 40 points. About 34 percentage points separated black and whites, while Latinos did a little better but still saw their scores lag substantially.

  The English results brought similar findings. Here in 2009 the widest gap — between white students on one hand and Latinos on the other, amounted to almost 23 percentage points. This year that same difference widened to a bit more than 30 points, with a slightly wider difference between blacks and whites.

  The new system also raised questions about gains by special education students, only 24 percent of whom met standards in math and 13.4 percent in English. English language learners also fared poorly, with only 13.5 meeting standards in English and less than a third in math,

  Bloomberg and Klein pointed out repeatedly that the scores themselves — the actually numbers on the scale of 600 to 730 — had not gone down. After years of increases, this year they remained flat, with students getting a mean score in 679 in math, down a point form the previous year, and a 662 in English, unchanged from the 2009 result.

  The flat results represented a sharp change from previous years — and last year’s mayoral campaign — when the administration trumpeted increases. But here too the mayor said the seemingly bad news was good. The tests, he maintained, had gotten harder.

  “If the test is actually harder, the fact that the core stays the same is basically a compliment,” Bloomberg said.

  Whether the test actually has been made more difficult remained a point of contention, although the state has said it plans to make the exams harder in the coming years.

  Bloomberg and Klein said they endorsed the state’s higher standards. “The best way to improve student achievement is to demand higher results … because we should never doubt our students’ ability,” the mayor said.

  Certainly the changes seem to do nothing to dim Bloomberg’s taste for testing or Klein’s affection for data.

  “You can’t tell whether you doing a good job unless you have accountability and standards,” Bloomberg said and later embarked on a tangent about singing Kumbaya and holding hands to make people feel good. And Klein anticipated diving into the data with the best data system of any education system in the country (Yes, you can just ask Arne Duncan.)

  As to whether Bloomberg and Klein are doing a good job, experts undoubtedly will have much to say in the coming hours. Certainly some will be uneasy that, after eight years of major changes and increased spending — to say nothing of all the hype and spin — less than four in 10 eight graders seem ready for high school. Others will say it could be a lot worse.

  As the reaction comes in and more numbers are crunched, we’ll keep you posted.

• 14:02

  Gaming + Mobile + Social = 'Conspiracy for Good' from Tim Kring

   » ‎ MediaShift

  Tim Kring, a long-time television writer and producer, is best known as the creator of the NBC show "Heroes." But he's rapidly expanding his media universe -- last week at Comic-Con he launched a new book project, "Shift," which will debut in August from Crown Books.

  He has also created a new transmedia project called "Conspiracy For Good" (CFG), which describes itself as "a movie where YOU can be the hero and impact the outcome of the story for the better." Participants travel through a blurred narrative that mixes media, interactive storytelling and a learn-as-we-go collective approach to fight a greedy corporation and benefit good organizations.

  CFG is being partially supported by Nokia and its Ovi mobile platform. Plus, the fictional story includes chances for players to do real good in the world. For instance, there is a collaboration with the Pearson Foundation and Room to Read, where each time an online visitor reads a book to a child, the corresponding book will be donated to five libraries set up in Zambia. Nokia and Room to Read will also fund a year of education for 50 girls in Zambia.

  The first live meeting of participants in "Conspiracy For Good" occurred on July 17 in London. I connected with Kring to explore this new genre he calls "social benefit storytelling," and what its implications are for entertainment and social good.

  Q&A

  What is "Conspiracy For Good" (CFG) and how can people participate or experience it?

  Tim Kring: The "Conspiracy For Good" is a global movement for change driven by a story, which the audience becomes a part of and every participant has the ability to impact the outcome of this story. The story will be played out on websites, mobile devices, at live meet-up events in London, and ultimately in a village in eastern Zambia where CFG will be responsible for building a library, stocking it with books and providing 50 scholarships for school girls.

  This U.K.-based project of "Conspiracy For Good" is the pilot for game-changing entertainment -- narrative mythology that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, compelling the audience to become a part of the story with real world outcomes.

  To get into the "Conspiracy For Good" and join in the story, simply go to the web page and watch the featured video. A recap will point you to the current activities and detail how you can get involved. And if you're in the London area, register online at the site and join us on the streets.

  Anyone can follow along -- comment, contribute, share, decipher, solve, connect and collaborate at the website. The site is the global hub for all things CFG: Watch videos, follow progress and events on the blog, and make an impact and interact with the characters of the story through the main websites.

  "Conspiracy For Good" is called "a social benefit experience." What does this mean and how can an entertaining story generate social benefits?
  
  
  Kring: The "Conspiracy For Good" creates a new genre of entertainment which combines rich narrative, philanthropy and commerce. We call this genre "social benefit storytelling." The "Conspiracy For Good" aims to become a movement. Individuals are now being "tapped on the shoulder" and asked to join this movement to continue to make the work of the "Conspiracy For Good" a reality with global impact. By participating, members of CFG have the opportunity to affect real word change from the environment to education to the economy by applying their unique abilities, talents, networks and passion as an active part of the story.

  The entire gameplay centers around causes, and direct action...on the streets in London, where participants will be involved in book drives, toy drives, cleaning the Thames, etc. By creating a secret society for good, and providing a forum for people to connect with one another, the hope is that there will be a tremendous amount of user-generated interest in new and worthy causes.

  "Conspiracy For Good" says it integrates "interactive theater, mobile and alternate reality gaming (ARG), music and physical participation." Is there one component that excites you most? And will this multi-screen experience include movie theaters or television?

  Kring: I am very intrigued by the mobile aspect. It has just exploded over the last few years as smartphones are reaching a wider demographic. I love the idea that a mobile phone can be both a content consumption device and a content creation device. In other words, an audience can use their mobile phone to receive story and create video and text and geo-tagging themselves. For a storyteller, this really piques my interest.

  

  "Heroes" was a fictional story about people trying to save the world. "Conspiracy For Good" seems to be a real-life extension of this narrative. What elements and lessons from "Heroes" were applied to the development of "Conspiracy For Good"?

  Kring: You are right that I came up with this idea when I saw how connected and committed the "Heroes" audience was to the underlying core message behind "Heroes" -- interconnectivity and global consciousness. So, I thought, wouldn't it be great to not just talk about "saving the world" in fiction, but to attempt to do it in the real world. In many ways this is the logical extension of what was known as the "360 Platform" that NBC.com and "Heroes" built around the show. The attempt there was to build a broad, connected universe around the show that created multiple extensions of the story that could cross all platforms.

  We learned a tremendous amount doing this. One of the key things was just how motivated the audience can be to create content on its own. So in many ways, CFG takes that idea and makes it the ultimate goal -- to create a self-sustaining movement for good that ends up having real-world implications and direct action.

  You just announced that Room to Read and the Pearson Foundation will be beneficiaries of the "Conspiracy For Good" experience. Will there be additional organizations and how can participants support them?

  Kring: Other organizations are invited to include their missions in the "Conspiracy For Good," and participants are welcome to join those missions, too. The meeting place for missions and people is conspiracyforgood.com.
  
  
  The experience includes live meet-ups in London. How will participants meeting other participants evolve the story? Will there be meet-ups in other cities?

  Kring: London is the first of what we hope will be many cities around the world. When participants come together they will follow a clue trail of video drops that move the story forward. They will have to work together in teams to solve various clues in order to advance the story. They will find key props and sets and locations for the story, interacting with these and using their collective efforts to confront our bad guys and have justice prevail for our protagonist. Along the way they will interact with actors in character, creating a sense of a truly pervasive experience.

  Here's a video giving the back story on "Conspiracy for Good":

  Blackwell Briggs is a fictional greedy corporation in the energy industry that distributes false information. Is it inspired by any real-life company or event?

  Kring: We've all become very familiar with corporate greed of all stripes. Blackwell Briggs is an attempt to draw from that sense of familiarity without necessarily conjuring up any one corporation in particular. The corporation seems to be involved in almost everything controversial. So, in many ways, they are a "catch all" for corporate greed. By showcasing a fictional, evil corporation, we also celebrate, by contrast, the admirable, real world companies that really do exist in the marketplace today.

  What does success look like for "Conspiracy For Good"?

  Kring: Teams in five different countries have worked together to bring an idea to life, to do something that has never been done before. Designed as a proof of concept pilot that integrates narrative, cross-platform participation and philanthropy, the measure of success is that it has been built and deployed and proves viable on a story level, a participation and community level, providing a foundation for greater expansion.

  *****

  Do you plan to join the Conspiracy For Good and contribute to the movement? Share your thoughts about this transmedia project in the comments below.

  Nick Mendoza is the director of digital communications at Zeno Group. He advises consumer, entertainment and web companies on digital and social media engagement. He dreamstreams and is the film correspondent for MediaShift. Follow him on Twitter @NickMendoza.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 13:30

  Diaz to Fight Back NY: "You Are Making Me Stronger"

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Sen. Ruben Diaz had some pretty strong words for Fight Back NY the PAC that is targeting legislators who voted against legalizing same-sex marriage this year. They started a campaign today asking “What’s in Ruben’s Closet?”

  “Sen. Ruben Diaz has spent the last few years showing that he will stop at nothing to attack and insult LGBT New Yorkers,” begins the release from Fight Back. “When we asked you to vote on which senators you wanted us to send packin’, Diaz topped the list. We heard you. Now Fight Back New York is gearing up to build the case against New York’s most notoriously anti-gay state senator.”

  Fight Back plans to hire “expert political researchers” to dig up dirt on Diaz.

  But Diaz says he welcomes the groups involvement in the race:

  “The people of my district are very smart people they aren’t going to change senators from one who brings them housing and resources for a person who is just going to bring them gay marriage. It’s stupid– what they doing is making me stronger and i love it. They make me stronger, they should keep on doing it.”

  Unlike controversial Bronx Sen. Pedro Espada, Diaz has the support of Democrats despite the fact that he hasn’t exactly been reliable in providing his vote when they need it. His Democratic opponent Charlie Ramos will try to take advantage of Diaz’s reputation as not being a team player when they face off  in the September primary.

• 13:16

  Diaz: Special Session "Just Another Joke"

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Sen. Ruben Diaz is not pleased about Gov. David Paterson’s special session and as always he is voicing his opinion.

  “Its another joke,” said Diaz. “We all know that nothing is going to happen. This is just going to addd to the deficit. Nothing is happening, we don’t have the numbers. Stop this mockery! But like I’ve said before I’m just a pasty.”

  It is expected that Senate Democrats won’t have enough bodies in chairs to actually pass anything and besides that there is no deal in place to make them want to pass the remaining budget measure. There is already talk that the senate is preparing to return next week to try again.

• 12:45

  Paterson Report Out

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Former Chief Judge Judith Kaye’s report on Gov. David Paterson is out. Kaye was given the task of investigating Paterson’s involvement in contacting the Sheruna Booker who claimed Paterson’s aide David Johnson had abused her. The woman did not pursue charges against the Johnson after Paterson contacted her.

  The report does not find any criminal wrongdoing. It simply finds Paterson made the wrong call in contacting the woman.

  “The Independent Counsel finds no evidence that the State Police or the Executive Chamber interfered with the NYPD response to the October 31, 2009 domestic incident. However, evidence revealed errors in the NYPD response to the incident and errors in judgment following the incident by the headof the Governor’s State Police protection detail, by Johnson and by another close aide to the Governor, and indeed by the Governor himself.

  “There were numerous telephone contacts between the Governor and Booker, some that he initiated even after he became aware of the serious nature of her accusations, and even just after he referred this matter to the OAG.”

  “Regardless of any good faith reasons on the part of the Governor for contacts that he initiated, these were errors of judgment.”

  The report leaves open the possibility of criminal charges against Johnson.

  You will recall that this entire scandal led to Paterson dropping his bid for governor.

• 10:49

  New Direction for the GED

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Nationwide, more than seven out of 10 people who take the test to receive a high school equivalency degree pass. In New York City less than half do. Experts cite a variety of reasons s, including a confused and chaotic systems for preparing for and taking the test to receive the state’s General Equivalency Diploma. (For more, see Poor Preparation, Confusion Lead Many to Fail GED Test.

  Yesterday the City Council, city agencies and the New York Community Trust announced efforts to change that — and boost New York’s pass rate. A new website, GED Compass, is aimed at providing people with information on how to prepare for the test and where and when they can take it. A program locator, for example, allows people to type in their ZIP code and the type of course they need to get a list of appropriate and convenient classes. The site also offers lots of basic information such as the length of the test — a taxing seven hours — and the various sections in the exam.

  Other sections still seem to be works in progress. At 11:15 a.m. today, for example, the seat reservation system that allows registered users to sign up for the test was “currently disabled.” And the section on the official practice test simply refers visitors to a program locator (with the link missing this morning).
  
  “We believe this GED Compass is a great tool that allows the City to make the best use of its resources and reach that vulnerable group of New Yorkers who want to acquire the GED to gain entry to the labor market, secure a better job or pursue higher education opportunities,” said Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott in the press release.

  In her 2010 State of the City speech last winter, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn had called for a number of changes to what she has described as a “broken” GED system. The new website is part of that.

  The statement yesterday said GED Compass is part of a three-tier plan what will also try using city Workforce 1 Career Centers to connect people with high school diplomas with GED programs and work to encourage more people to prepare for and take a practice test prior to sitting down to the real GED exam

  “Anyone who’s been caught in the mess that is the current GED system knows that it feels just like being lost in the woods without a compass,” Quinn said in the release. The new website, she added, will “help provide much needed direction.”

  .

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-28

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • A Guide to the Wireless Engineering Body of Knowledge (WEBOK) free ebook Free e-book version of a pricey key guide to the technology underlying cell phones (tags: mobile resources technology engineering books e-books)
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) | Linked Data – Connect Distributed Data across the Web "What is the relationship between Linked Data and the Semantic Web?

    "Opinions on this topic do differ somewhat, however a widely held view is that the Semantic Web is made up of Linked Data; i.e. the Semantic Web is the whole, while Linked Data is the parts. Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web and the person credited with coining the terms Semantic Web and Linked Data has frequently described Linked Data as "the Semantic Web done right", e.g. in these slides. The following blog posts (and comments) discuss these issues in more detail…"

    (tags: linked-data semanticweb tutorial)
  • Getting Things Done with Evernote: Nozbe Integration « Evernote Blogcast "Link your Evernote and Nozbe accounts from within Nozbe. Next, create a note in Evernote with a tag (or tags) that matches a Nozbe Project or Context name. By doing so, your notes will automatically show up in your Nozbe account within the appropriate Project or Context. Nozbe does the same thing for Evernote Notebook names.

    "The integration with Nozbe means that Evernote users can take advantage of Nozbe’s great task management, which is perfect for the GTD fans out there. Now, keeping your tasks and your notes in one place is easier than ever. Create notes in Evernote using your computer, phone, and email; and they will automatically show up in Nozbe—you can even add pictures, files, and anything else from Evernote right into your task list.

    "The folks at Nozbe have been kind enough to give Evernote users a 15% discount off of a Nozbe account! Just use the coupon code EVERNOTE when you sign up for Nozbe to get your discount."

    (tags: productivity tools apps services integration mobile notetaking)
  • Got To Do Lite – Android app on AppBrain Android app that syncs w/ Toodledo GTD productivity service (tags: Android mobile apps productivity GTD)
  • Toodledo : A to-do list to organize your tasks Productivity service I might try out. Less expensive than Nozbe, works w/ Android app GotToDo, supports collaboration. (tags: productivity tools mobile GTD Android)
  • Get More Done With Android – mediabistro.com: MobileContentToday Comparison of two sets of GTD tools: Nozbe/Evernote (No native android app, but Nozbe does have a mobile site — and costs a lot more) and Toodledo/GotToDo (costs less, has a native Android app) (tags: productivity tools mobile GTD android)
  • Evernote Launches 'The Trunk' to Showcase Integrations Built on the Evernote Platform " Evernote, makers of the popular multi-platform memory enhancing service, today announced the launch of The Evernote Trunk, a dynamic catalog designed to help users discover complementary products, applications and content that enrich their Evernote experience. The Trunk also provides increased exposure and revenue opportunities to the ever-expanding number of products and services that tie into Evernote's platform for human memory.

    "The Trunk is built into the desktop and Web versions of Evernote, allowing users to explore dozens of partner offerings, ranging from document scanners to voice transcription services to collaboration platforms to PDF annotation tools."

    (tags: tools integration productivity)

  

• 7:51

  A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Web Design

   » ‎ Online Journalism Review
  By Robert Niles: CHICAGO - I recently spent an afternoon at the Art Institute of Chicago, admiring, among many other works, the museum's famed "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," the impressionist masterpiece by Georges-Pierre Seurat. What on Earth does this have to do with online journalism?, I hear you ask. Plenty. For starters, Seurat's use of pointillism might be considered the intellectual catalyst behind the pixilation that makes all broadcast imagery, including Web pages, possible. Standing in front of this work forces the viewer to consider how countless multiple parts can come together to create a coherent whole. And isn't that something a Web designer ought to be doing all the time?

• 7:26

  [Video] Introduction to Women of Minya Day by Day

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  Women of Minya Day by Day is the newest project of the New Women Foundation [ar] based in Cairo. Nevine Ebeid and other members of the Foundation team will provide workshops to women living and working in El Minya located approximately 250 km south of the capital city. The target participants will be women who work in informal agricultural and domestic jobs, and who are often faced with discrimination and harrassment. The team will show the women how to use digital tools, such as audio recorders and video cameras to capture images in order to tell the stories of their daily work lives, and which will be featured on the New Women Foundation website. In this video, Nevine talks about how the project will be a first step towards advocating for increased rights of the women and to give this population a voice online.

  • Download MOV Video (.mov)
  • Download Flash Video (.flv)

• July 27, 2010
• 23:00

  Divisions in District Dominate Brooklyn Assembly Race

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  A challenger in Brooklyn charges that the longtime Assembly member has neglected the poorer black and Latino residents of the district.

• 21:35

  Agaric Sponsors Modulecraft for the building of Drupal shared business, development, and training tools

   » ‎ Benjamin Melancon

  For community shared business, development, and training tools, Agaric throws a little sponsorship at http://modulecraft.com

• 17:49

  5Across: Beyond Content Farms

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  5Across is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  What are content farms? If you've been reading our special series at MediaShift on the subject, you'd know that content farms or mills churn out massive amounts of content tailored to Google searches. But the approach to churning out that content varies from how-to articles (Demand Media), vertical topics (High Gear Media), hyper-local (Patch.com) and sports (Bleacher Report, SB Nation). And at some sites, writers get paid a small amount, while at others they toil for free.

  

  We convened a group of people to discuss the highs and lows of content farms, how they are changing journalism, bringing down pay rates for writers and possibly polluting Google searches with poor quality content. Is there harm in sites like eHow creating huge amounts of content at low pay? Some panel members believe Demand Media is simply fulfilling a need, while others believe there are possibly dangerous repercussions from the proliferation of these low-cost articles across the web. Check it out!

  5Across: Beyond Content Farms

  contentfarms.mp4

  >>> Subscribe to 5Across video podcast <<<

  >>> Subscribe to 5Across via iTunes <<<

  Guest Biographies

  Andrew Brining is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report and has been writing on the site for two years. During this time, he has been credentialed by Strikeforce, the UFC, the Oakland Athletics, and the Laureus World Sports Academy to cover its award ceremony in Abu Dhabi. Additionally, his work has appeared on SportsIllustrated.com, FOXSports.com, CBSSports.com, AskMen.com, and the San Francisco Chronicle's website. His homepage at B/R can be found here and you can follow him via Facebook or Twitter.

  Shelley Frost writes about dogs for San Francisco Examiner.com and about animal issues for AnimalBeat.org. She is the author of two books, "Throw Like a Girl" (Beyond Words Publishing, 2000) and "Your Adopted Dog," co-authored with Katerina Lorenzatos Makris (The Lyons Press, 2007). Shelley has been a guest on Oprah, Dateline NBC, Evening Magazine, The Tammy Faye Show, Crook & Chase, Caryl & Marilyn (The Mommies), and The Gayle King Show. People Magazine did a feature story on Shelley and her best selling children's video, Babymugs.

  Matt Heist is responsible for day-to-day operations as well as general
  corporate strategy at High Gear Media. Prior to joining High Gear Media, Heist was senior vice president and general manager of Sidestep.com, where he was responsible for the company's core vertical search product. Sidestep was acquired by Kayak in December 2007. Prior to Sidestep, Heist was vice president of business operations at Yahoo, responsible for driving strategy and operations for Yahoo's vertical search and commerce listings properties, including Yahoo Autos, Shopping, Travel, Real Estate and Local.

  Ari Soglin is Northern California regional editor for Patch.com and is responsible for a cluster of sites in the East Bay. Before joining Patch in December 2009, he was assistant managing editor for online content for the Bay Area News Group-East Bay. He is an award-winning journalist with 27 years of experience, much of it focused on community news and the last 10 on the online side of the business. He was the founding editor of GetLocalNews.com, one of the first online community news and citizen journalism networks. He also wrote the blog Citizen Paine on citizen journalism.

  Andrew Susman co-founded Studio One Networks in 1998 with Bob Blackmore, and is the active CEO. He is in charge of the organization's quality, productivity, and competitive position. Previously, Susman was an executive at Time Warner and Young & Rubicam. Susman is the founding chairman of the Internet Content Syndication Council, which functions as the central resource for the industry on a variety of issues including quality standards in online content. Susman also serves on the board of the Advertising Educational Foundation and Business for Diplomatic Action.

  If you'd prefer to watch sections of the show rather than the entire show, I've broken them down by topic below.

  Pay Rates Sinking

  An Issue of Quality

  Push and Pull Content

  Generating Story Ideas

  The Local Angle

  Credits

  

  Mark Glaser, executive producer and host
  Corbin Hiar, research assistant
  
  Charlotte Buchen, camera
  
  Julie Caine, audio
  
  Location: Vega Project & Kennerly Architecture office space in San Francisco
  
  Special thanks to: PBS and the Knight Foundation
  
  Music by AJ the DJ

  *****

  What do you think? Are content farms a danger to the public trust? What do you think about sites like Bleacher Report and High Gear Media that depend on contributions from amateur writers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

  Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

  

  5Across is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 16:21

  Mexico: A Political Kidnapping Versus Chuck Norris

   » ‎ David Sasaki

  Mexican Twitter users poked fun at their politicians back in April when congressman Nazario Norberto Sánchez of the Revolutionary Democratic Party sponsored a bill to more closely monitor and regulate the use of Facebook and Twitter with the aim of disrupting the use of online social networks by drug cartels and organized crime. “The bill would make sharing information that helps others break the law or avoid it a criminal act,” writes Alexis Okeowo in Time.

  Mexican Twitter users reacted with laughter and scorn when they heard about the bill, with many saying that the proposed legislation was just an excuse for the government to act as Big Brother. Instead of cracking down on Twitter and Facebook use, some analysts say that law-enforcement and intelligence agencies should adapt to the new technology by creating fake identities on the sites to track criminals down instead of seeking to regulate the sites.

  Twitter is back in the controversial spotlight today after journalist José Cárdenas used his Twitter account (30,000 followers) to release the contents of a letter allegedly written by kidnapped former presidential candidate Diego Fernandez de Cevallos along with an accompanying photograph. Both the picture and letter are circulating widely on Twitter among the political class:

  

  However, to put everything into context, the news about Diego Fernandez de Cevallos’ letter can still not compete with “#martesdechucknorris“, a weekly tradition among Twitter users in Mexico to creatively discuss Chuck Norris’ superhuman abilities:

  

  

• 14:52

  Sign Language in Space!

   » ‎ SignCasts -

  NASA video of Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson on the International Space Station signing a special message to Earth.
  Source video

• 14:44

  President Obama's ADA Anniversary PSA

   » ‎ SignCasts -

  
  

  Captioned Public Service Announcement from President Obama celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Video was posted to Youtube by the AAPD.

• 14:08

  Reaction to Race to the Top

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  State Democrats are weighing on New York’s position as a finalist for Race to the Top education funding.

  Here is a release from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office:

  The U.S. Department of Education’s selection of New York State as a finalist for Race to the Top (RTTT) funding is welcome news for our school children and our school districts, and is a clear acknowledgement of our strong commitment to ensuring that each and every one of our public-school students receives the finest possible education.

  I commend Assembly Education Committee Chair Catherine Nolan, all of our Assembly colleagues, the Governor, the Senate, Mayor Bloomberg and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew for the concerted effort which made possible the sweeping education reforms enacted earlier in this legislative session.

  We applaud our State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, State Education Commissioner David Steiner, and Senior Deputy Commissioner John King for their leadership in crafting an RTTT application worthy of serious consideration for federal funding.

  I firmly believe that New York State is positioned to receive the maximum award, which will fortify our mission of improving student performance and closing the achievement gap.

  Here is a release from NY Senate Dems Executive Director Josh Cherwin:

  “For over four decades Senate Republicans have been a roadblock to progress at every level. Today, Senate Democrats scored another point for reform, despite a majority of Republicans standing in the way.”

  “This is another undeniable example of why New Yorkers are supporting a stronger Democratic Majority, why 68 percent of New Yorker reject GOP-rule, and why donors are backing Democratic Senate candidates throughout the state.”

  “New York needs a Democratic Majority that will fix our schools and create jobs. An educated workforce is the foundation of creating economic opportunity for New York’s hard-working families.”

• 12:45

  New York Finalist in Race

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  New York State is one of 18 finalists in the quest to win up to $700 million in Race to the Top Federal education funding.

  Don’t get your hopes up though–New York was a finalist in the first round and lost out on the funding. The legislature did react to that loss by passing legislation designed to up the state’s chances. They raised the limit on charter schools and allowed test scores to be factored in to teacher evaluations.

  New York’s competition includes: Arizona, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.

• 11:06

  [Video] Introduction to Mokattam Blog Tales

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  Nesma Gewily has been working with youth and development for the past several years and took an active interest in finding ways to use citizen media to engage youth and their creative talents. She is one of the most recent Rising Voices grantees in Egypt and is partnering with the local non-profit organization Alwan Wa Awtar, which has been serving children and youth in the Mokattam Hills neighborhoods in Cairo for the past five years. Some of the organization's activities include puppet-making, music lessons, academic enrichment, and all types of creative arts. Now, Nesma is organizing the Mokattam Blog Tales project at the Alwan Wa Awtar Center, as a way to teach teenagers how to use citizen media to tell the story of their neighborhood. In this video, Nesma talks about her hopes for the project and what she thinks the project will mean to the youth of the neighborhood.

  • Download MOV Video (.mov)
  • Download Flash Video (.flv)

• 10:28

  Spot.Us Goes National, Gets Clay Shirky as Sponsor

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  Anyone that has followed Spot.Us from the beginning knows we've tried to remain iterative and agile. In the earlier stages of Spot.Us I thought this was one of the larger lessons for journalism-entrepreneurs. I went through the iterative and agile process and tried to document it so others could repeat. I hope to continue this tradition as I get ready for an academic fellowship at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Indeed, the heart of this post addresses two features of Spot.Us (expansion and community-focused sponsorships) which will be my focus while in Missouri.

  Inherent to this mindset is the ability to acknowledge missteps and pivot. There are countless things I believe we've done right (pats self on back); but there are other things where we made the best guesses we could and upon failure had to pivot. Recently, Spot.Us made one big pivot and is openly thinking about how to dance around two remaining problems. Before we analyze those, let's get to the good news (pats self on back again, rewards reader with cute kitten photo).

  
  

  Community-focused sponsorship continues.

  We have another community-focused sponsorship, this one made possible by Clay Shirky (how cool is that!).

  In this sponsorship we are asking the community questions about objectivity and journalism. Not only do we reward your time by giving you control over a part of our budget, but we will release answers to these questions so that we all may become smarter and learn about what the Spot.Us community thinks about this subject.

  Community-focused sponsorships was also a notable entry at the Knight-Batten awards and we've created a sponsorship package to help spread the word. The next step is an affiliate program. If you help us sell a sponsorship, you'll get the commission. Interested? Contact me at david at spot.us.

  Editorial Highlights

  Just about every week we complete a reporting project and publish a handful of blog posts. Some of the recent victories are highlighted below:
  

  • The Los Angeles Times imitates Spot.Us reporting: They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. If that is true, then the L.A. Times gave Spot.Us a huge kudos recently. Our ongoing investigation into the UC Regents found that one regent has invested lots of money into private educational institutions. The L.A. Times followed up our reporting, giving a small nod to the original investigation without really giving full credit. In a separate email the L.A. Times reporter did admit that our reporting inspired his column. The Spot.Us community can collectively pat itself on the back for that one.
  • Our most dynamic collaboration ever -- covering the Johannes Mehserle trial: This week we published the 40th post in our coverage of the Johannes Mehserle trial. Mehserle, a former BART police officer, was found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of Oscar Grant. What was unique and interesting for Spot.Us about this project was the number of partners that participated. Our pitch had seven different organizations taking part including Oakland Local, New American Media, California Beat, KALW and The Bay Citizen. In another era, each organization would have hired its own reporter and provided competitive (and perhaps overlapping) coverage. Through Spot.Us we were able to create a ethos of "co-opetition." We hope to see more pitches like this in the future, and our hat is off to these organizations who were able to pull it off.

  • The Treasure Island investigation: Our partners in crime, the SF Public Press, put out a print product recently with an exhaustive spread on Treasure Island. It's a fantastic look at development in SF from several angles and will be adapted and republished by Shareable.Net this week.

  • Tons of new pitches: There are more new pitches than we can highlight. They range in topic from Native American issues in Minnesota to recycling in Champaign-Urbana, homelessness in California and beyond. Check out all the new pitches. You can fund them through our community-focused sponsorships. Taking a quick questionnaire can create $5 for the pitch of your choice!

  Lessons Learned and Missteps

  
  

  1. Expansion isn't clean: A careful observer of Spot.Us would have seen this coming and may have even noticed the change last week. We have removed the networks on Spot.Us. We used to say we were based in SF, LA, Seattle, Minnesota and expanding; we are now open to anyone with a good local/regional pitch anywhere in the United States.

  As I noted in a previous post in June:

  From the start, I thought Spot.Us would expand a la Craigslist: Pick locations, create sub-domains and let people aggregate around them. Certainly San Francisco and Los Angeles have worked like this. We always have about five active pitches in both locations at any given time. Seattle however, might not be that way. I fear I'm viewed as an outsider ... But that shouldn't stop me from expanding. Especially not when I am getting very solid pitches from around the country.

  It makes little sense for me to tell a good pitch from Illinois or  Texas that they can't put their pitch up until we find a handful of other pitches in their region. So, as of last week, the sub-domains at Spot.Us have been removed. Trying to convince people in a specific region to use the site -- while stopping others from using it because they aren't in the right region -- is not the best use of our time or energy.

  So the lesson here is really one about internal expectations and external realities. While in my mind's eye it still makes sense for Spot.Us to expand region-by-region, I don't see this happening anytime soon. This is not the end of the world. In some respects I find it freeing. In the end Spot.Us is a platform, not a news organization. Opening up the platform is a positive endeavor, especially considering the vast majority of pitches so far have been successful.
  

  The major misstep then is not making this change sooner. The challenge going forward is finding a different organizing mechanism so that people can find pitches that are relevant to them as quickly as possible on our search page without expecting those pitches to be grouped geographically.

  2. Letting go isn't easy: Related to the misstep above is a larger phenomena. Put bluntly I was a smothering Jewish mother (trust me, I know what these are like). I think I clung to the "babyness" of the Spot.Us project instead of letting it go free. It's natural for anybody who starts something to hold onto it and fear releasing it into the wild. I've tried to avoid that, but  I'm afraid I've put Spot.Us into a tough position of wanting it to expand but also being protective over the pitches that are uploaded into the site.
  
  

  There are some pitches I felt very comfortable rejecting. The best example was a pitch from a Seattle fortune teller that was going to read people's future via the Internet and publish on Spot.Us. I feel justified in saying "that's not for us." As a non-profit, we have a mission to fund local/regional reporting.

  At the same time, this tension hasn't always been easy to negotiate. Some pitches we get exist in a much more difficult space. The tension exists between being a site where the founder has authority over what pitches are included, and a site that is truly open but still filters out pitches that don't meet our mission. I am not 100 percent sure how we will negotiate that tension.
  

  For the immediate future, Spot.Us will be a site where I filter pitches. I will not be filtering pitches based on "credentials" but rather the topic of the reporting and the earnestness and eagerness of the reporter. Ideally Spot.Us and its community board members will be able to come up with a system whereby pitches can be accepted and/or rejected not at the whim of my decision, but by the community and its representatives.

  In Conclusion

  Spot.Us continues to push forward. We've had some missteps and some beautiful moments. I suspect both will happen in the future as well. The beauty of all this continues to be that both happen in public, and that it is only with the public's participation that either can happen. This remains an experiment in transparency and public control over the process of journalism. It will continue to be such an experiment as we move forward.

• 9:37

  Another wartime disconnect

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  We're in the midst of another wartime disconnect, though it's different this time around.

  During the Vietnam War, the disconnect was between the government and its citizens. With the publishing of the Pentagon Papers, the press solidified a long-suspected belief that the government, through its spokespersons and the military, was misleading the public about the prosecution of the war.

  Because they were published in 1971, the Pentagon Papers were late to the game, so to speak, to affect public opinion about the war. Yet they helped turn Americans away from their government: Americans knew their government had failed them, and since then, but for times of extreme crisis, Americans haven't trusted their government to make best-interest decisions.

  Today there is another disconnect, highlighted by Wikileaks' publication of tens of thousands of documents purporting to show that the war in Afghanistan is going much worse and with much more innocent bloodshed than the government has admitted. Wikileaks frames this documentation similar to that of the Pentagon Papers, claiming that there's dissonance in what the government is saying and what the public now knows.

  But there's not.

  The disconnect, instead, is entirely within the public. The unsavory work of special forces, the unnecessary death of civilians, the unpalatable role of Pakistan in propping up the Taliban: all of these were already well documented. The public, however, simply didn't know or didn't care. The disconnect is between hearing facts and then feeling compelled to act on them.

  Thus opens a space for Wikileaks and those like 2010 Knight News Challenge winner Teru Kuwayama, a photojournalist trying to break through the shield of indifference by embedding himself with Marines in Afghanistan to tell stories that Americans will--must--pay attention to. As he told journalism.co.uk yesterday:

  We've been in Afghanistan for a decade now, and yet the vast majority of Americans have a very limited sense of what we're doing there. That means we [the media] haven't been doing a very good job. We're now in a situation where our press is in serious decline, at a moment when our nation is escalating a war with tremendous costs. That means the public gets even more disconnected from its military, at a time when it should be the most concerned. I can't tell people what to think about this war, but I believe very strongly that they should be thinking about it.

  What the Wikileaks episode illustrates isn't that the American government is lying. Rather, it's that we're bad at hearing and processing the truth. We need more compelling methods of journalistic storytelling--whether Wikileaks' data-and-p.r.-intense version or Kuwayama's intimate photojournalism--in order to engage the public, even or especially when engagement is actually enlistment of the public to do more work for itself.

  [Edited to include a correction from David Chandler on the extent to which (even less than I'd originally argued) American opinion on the Vietnam War was affected by the Pentagon Papers.]

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-27

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • New Copyright Office ruling sanctions iPhone jailbreaking – Jul. 26, 2010 "The U.S. Copyright Office, a division of the Library of Congress, has authorized several new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), one of which will allow mobile phone users to "jailbreak" — or hack into — their devices to use apps not authorized by the phone's manufacturer. The new rules will be published on Tuesday in the Federal Register.

    "Jailbreaking iPhones in order to download apps that are unavailable in Apple's App Store had been a legal gray area: Apple technically had the right to request a $2,500 government fine for damages every time a user violated the law that bans "circumvention of technological measures" controlling access to copyrighted works — in this case, the iPhone's iOS software."

    (tags: iphone law government control)
  • More on the iPhone 4 signal issue • fscked.co.uk "the signal strength bars are almost meaningless and should not be relied on.

    Incidentally, this also explains what’s going on when you have a strong signal, attempt to make a call, and can’t connect. The bars only indicate how well your phone can listen to the cell tower. They don’t tell you anything about how well the tower can receive your phone, but that’s a pretty important part of making a call. Similarly, the phone doesn’t know anything about what’s going on in the cell provider’s network past the tower; if you’re on a really busy cell it might not have any spare outgoing circuits to direct your call to, so even if the radio is working fine, you might still not be able to get through. If you’re on AT&T it’s probably all of the above at the same time of course."

    (tags: mobile technology visual+communication problems)
  • Technology Review: New Languages, and Why We Need Them "Another evolving area of computing concerns programs running on mobile devices linked in "ad hoc" wireless networks. AmbientTalk, an experimental language presented by Tom Van Cutsem from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, explores a new paradigm called "ambient-oriented programming," which departs from traditional distributed computing in two main ways. First, it does not rely on central infrastructure. Second, it assumes that network connections are volatile and unpredictable (as is usually the case with mobile devices passing in and out of range with each other). According to Van Cutsem, "AmbientTalk is smart enough to buffer messages so that when the connection drops, they're not lost, and when the connection is restored, it sends the messages through as if nothing happened." (tags: programming language evolution mobile solutions change)

  

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-26 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • Fox News: 'Big Mexican Women' Are Helping Afghan Soldiers Go AWOL In U.S.! | TPMMuckraker
    I assume that this will be made into a movie? [via Noah]

  

• July 26, 2010
• 23:00

  Challengers Emerge to Take On Espada

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  With the Senate majority leader facing a criminal investigation and anger over last year's 'coup,' three Democrats hope to stage that rare act in New York and defeat an incumbent.

• 14:54

  Finally -- Something to Rally For

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Never moved to march against the want in Iraq? Uninspired by unfair immigration laws? Blasé about budget cuts.
  Well do we have a cause for you — assuming (no guarantee!) that this is for real.

  Tomorrow you can join with other fans of Lindsay Lohan to agitate something really important: her immediate release from prison. And just to give the event the pathos is deserves, they will tie a ribbon and tell Lindsay they love her.

  Organizer of the event, Beach Bum Tanning Salon (cancer causer to the stars?), hopes to “draw awareness to the harsh punishment inflicted on Lohan due to her celebrity status.”

  Remember, you read it here — not TMZ — first.

• 14:09

  New York and Its Mosques

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Plans to build a mosque and Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero continue to attract comment from afar.

  This morning, Canada’s premiere English-language newspaper the Globe and Mail weighed in accusing Sarah Palin and others who oppose the project of “flirting” with religious hatred. In a hats off to us, the editorial noted, “New Yorkers … don’t seem to mind” the proposed mosque, it said, noting, “The proposal was convincing enough to lead a community board to vote 29 to 1 in favor of the project, which is also supported by the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg. … The area already includes churches, sex shops and department stores.”

  The Chicago Tribune drew a similar distinction. Noting Newt Gingrich’s comment that there should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York “so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” the paper commented, “It’s an interesting innovation to suggest that American freedoms should be no greater than those of repressive nations. What’s next? No political protests in Washington until political protests are allowed in Pyongyang?”

  But while the project has caused some “Republicans to take leave of their better judgment,” the Tribune said, “The proposal hasn’t aroused much opposition among residents of the neighborhood. The local community board approved the center by a 29-1 vote, partly because it will provide amenities the area sorely lacks.”
  

  Writing in Crain’s Amanda Fung agreed. “Many lower Manhattan residents and elected officials have supported the project from the very start. They note that the planned $100 million complex on Park Place will include much-needed facilities,” she wrote. “Some go so far as to hope Park51 [as it now is called] will someday stand among such beloved New York City institutions as the 92nd Street Y and the West Side YMCA.”

  While as New Yorkers, who work fairly close to Ground Zero ourselves, we appreciate the praise, it may not be entirely deserved.

  A poll found 52 percent of New Yorkers oppose the Ground Zero mosque and center. Last week, the board of trustees of a Catholic church in Staten Island — which has as a member Archbishop Timothy Dolan — rejected plans to sell some vacant property to a group that planned to use the site for a mosque. Some residents had raised concerns about traffic and congestion but others claimed the mosque –simply by nature of being a mosque apparently — could become a front for terrorism.

  According to the Staten Island Advance, though, U.S. Rep. Michael McMahon had asked the FBI about the group seeking the mosque, the Muslim American Society. “The FBI responded to my request for information and they gave me no indication whatsoever that the Muslim American Society is affiliated with any organization that threatens our national security,” McMahon told the paper. But he then said he did not support the mosque anyway saying the location was too small. (P.S. to the Tribune: McMahon is a Democrat.)

  The pastor of the church — St. Mary Margaret — had originally called opposition to the mosque “not totally rational” but then stepped down from his post and reversed his stand.

  And across the narrows in Brooklyn, controversy continues over a proposed mosque in Sheepshead Bay. Ibrahim Anse, a backer of the project, told the Brooklyn paper those planning the mosque “are not backing off. This is our right and it’s a cause we believe in.”

  As in the Staten Island case, some opponents deny any bigotry is involved here. ” “We’re not racist, we’re realists,” Susan Gerber said. “We are entitled to traffic studies and noise studies and safety studies. People will be walking in the gutter to get around [the mosque]. They’ll be all kinds of fatalities.”

  However, some opponents are less measured. “If they build a mosque there, I’m going to bomb the mosque,” said one resident who refused to give his names but said he was a former Israeli soldier, reportedly said at a public meeting last month.

  Mosque supporters say most services will be small and that many attending with walk to them.

  In general the opposition seems to be part of a national trend — one Palin and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio among others seem all too happy to try to grab on to. “Building new mosques has become increasingly difficult since 2001. Over the past three years, at least 18 mosque projects — from Mississippi to Wisconsin — have run into fierce opposition,” USAToday,

• 12:54

  Don't Blame the Content Farms

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  From a business perspective, traditional journalism is rather inefficient.

  Stories are chosen by a small group whose members often have similar experiences and outlooks. With little knowledge of true market demand, they assign the stories to a limited pool of writers and reporters who may not have the knowledge or contacts to quickly do a top-notch job. The stories are then produced and put out to consumers who may or may not like them. The process is repeated, daily or weekly or otherwise, often with little hard data on what, exactly, made a given story or feature popular.

  But despite the inefficiencies, publishers have been able to survive, even thrive, because of other inefficiencies and barriers to competition, such as costly printing presses, advertisers with few other viable outlets and controlled distribution.

  Enter the Internet. The "content farms" that MediaShft has focused on this week are exploiting new digital information technologies and systems to turn the model on its head, remove the friction caused by the inefficiencies, and reap the economic rewards. Rather than a small group of editors surmising what a community might want, algorithms from Demand Media, AOL and others process search queries and social media, glean what's wanted, then use other pieces of technology to calculate the likely value; they then quickly find writers or producers at a profitable price, assign and produce the content, attach money-making ads, and pay the "content creators" in a streamlined way.

  Some in the industry may bemoan what's produced as "dreck," a term AllThingsD's Kara Swisher used while interviewing Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt, but it does seem to satisfy a significant number of media consumers.

  "Whenever you do stuff at scale and it's disruptive, people immediately think it's not good," Rosenblatt told Swisher, saying Demand produces some 6,000 pieces per day. "We're trying to prove that our content is good."

  It's not as if the content farms invented the idea of producing work that's just good enough to sell. Just scan the racks at your local newsstand. As for complaints about the amount the content creators are paid, anyone producing the content is doing so voluntarily. By definition, they're being paid a market rate.

  Not All Content Creators are Content Farms Not every company trying new media business models can be put into one "content farm" bucket. Organizations like Politico, Patch and MainStreetConnect (a recent client of my company) are hiring reporters according to a more traditional model and focusing them by subject matter, geography, or both, while also using technology to keep costs down and drive new efficiencies that allow them to become, they hope, profitable with lower revenue than is required by traditional news organizations.

  It's the classic case of a disrupted industry: The newcomers can do what's required to make a profit without having to support legacy processes responsible for a majority of current profits.

  "It's hard to do something for future gain that is costly in present revenue and margin," publishing industry expert Mike Shatzkin told me in an interview. "If you don't have present revenue or margin, you have nothing to lose."

  Writer James Fallows, in a recent Atlantic Monthly article, suggests that those bemoaning the fate of journalism might take a page from the engineers at Google, and instead try new processes, test and iterate, to discover how to derive enough revenue from what they make to sustain its production.

  "Find out what [consumers] really want and value, and try to give them that, instead of what you've been making (which they may or may not want to buy, but which you've wanted to sell)," Alan Webber, who co-founded Fast Company magazine, told me in an email. "Find ways to cut costs. Find ways to cut waste. Find ways to test new ideas, new products and services faster, cheaper, and better."

  That's more productive than fretting that the old ways of doing business are no longer working. And it sounds like what the content farms are doing.

  Transformation of the Media Industry

  About a century ago, as Americans were switching from horses-and-buggies and trains to cars, there were said to be more than a thousand companies producing automobiles in the United States. After a vigorous era of foment and entrepreneurialism, a handful survived, often incorporating the lessons learned from some of the other players that they bought out. Eventually, a thriving industry supplying millions and millions of consumers was born.

  Entrepreneurial journalism -- an increasingly popular topic at journalism schools and institutes around the U.S. -- is just that, entrepreneurial. Amid the ordered disarray of startups and growth, different models are being tried. Some will succeed, and more will fail. New standards will be created.

  Those upset that their skills can't get them more from the market might do well to bolster those skills. No longer is it enough to be able to report and write; hiring managers are looking for the ability to template, shoot, mic and perhaps even write a bit of code. If you don't know how to use Twitter these days, you're nowhere near the cutting edge.

  Think of the power the new tools give journalists, including ones working for such venerated institutions as the New York Times, to reach beyond the confines of their publications and personally assemble communities of readers, viewers and participants around the journalism they create, while also developing leads and sources. That's more traffic for the publication, more influence and voice for the journalists. The tools also give people working for the content farms, also known as content mills, the ability to quickly get their work done and in some cases earn an hourly wage well beyond journalists' typical starting salaries.

  "Yes, Demand Studios is a content mill. A new business model well adapted to the way consumers demand information. Get over it already," writes a commenter on a previous story in our series. "Why do I work for Demand Studios? The hourly pay is worth it and the independence fits my lifestyle."

  A former managing editor at ABCNews.com and an MBA, Dorian Benkoil has devised and executed marketing and sales strategies for MediaShift. He is SVP at Teeming Media, a strategic media consultancy focused on attracting, engaging, retaining and monetizing audiences. He tweets at @dbenk.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 11:24

  The Need for Cultural Translation with Community Media

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  The TED talk of Ethan Zuckerman, the founder of the international blogging site Global Voices, provides amazing insight into the challenges of telling international stories online. It's told in the great TED way of painting lots of pictures and using a ton of anecdotes.

  Zuckerman said it's a big myth that the web is bringing us closer to other cultures or countries -- when we're on the web, we're basically in our own small islands of our social networks. Most of us who are building businesses/non-profits around non-traditional media content know this, but he has some great PowerPoint slides that add a lot of meat to the arguments. Give it a look:

  Cultural DJs

  In addition to providing some very telling facts -- did you know that "Madagascar" the movie is a bigger brand than Madagascar the country? -- he talks about translation. And not just the challenges of literal translation from one language to another, which is something Video Volunteers faces in our work all the time, especially now when we have community video correspondents working in nearly every state of India, a country with dozens of official languages. He talks about "cultural translation." He makes the point that we need more "DJs ... skilled human curators" who can speak the language of the West and of other cultures at the same time.

  The incredible editors at Global Voices fit that bill, and so does the blog Afrigadget. Video Volunteers attempt to do this, too, in the articles that accompany the online videos made by our community correspondents in our new IndiaUnheard community news network.

  This is really interesting to me because at Video Volunteers we talk a lot about the need for "unmediated" voices -- essentially, voices that are not culturally translated. This is one of the differences between community video, which to us means equipping traditionally "unheard" communities to tell their stories in their own words, and documentary film, where a professional uses his or her artistry and insight to translate community voices for outside audiences.

  At VV, we believe, in fact, that so much is lost in translation that you want to keep "cultural translation" to a minimum. And so, with our newly launched IndiaUnheard community news network, we want to bring voices out voices in their raw form. As my partner Stalin K. often says, "if I say the words 'Masai warrior' you get an immediate visual in your head. You don't, in a similar fashion, hear their voices in your head."

  We know from TV what the Masai look like. But we don't know what they sound like, because in traditional National Geographic-type media, we just see the Masai with a narration; their whole culture, never mind their language, is translated for an international audience.

  There are real limits to the possibilities for translation. As I heard Zuckerman himself say at a Civic Media conference, it's hard enough to find cultural translators for English to other cultures. But what about all the learning that could happen between the readers of, say, Kurdish media in New York City and Haitian media in New York City? How is that translation going to happen? I don't know that we could ever have enough translators to solve that problem.

  Two Videos to Watch

  So how do we get people to watch -- rather, to want to watch -- videos like these two posted below, made by our IndiaUnheard correspondents? If the world had an ideal system for enabling the poor to represent themselves in the media, which I would say is something like one community journalist per village (or even per 20 villages), how would we interest people outside those villages to watch this content? Here are two recent videos to check out and see what you think:

  Children Carry Trash, Not Books shows how children of poor families do not benefit from the current schemes on compulsory free education. The video is produced by Pratibha Rolta, a community correspondent from the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh, who works as an activist on women's issues.

  The second video, titled Children Denied Education, captures the plight of child labourers in Haryana's brick kilns who are deprived of several rights, including education. The correspondent here, Satyawan, was a Sarpanch (village head) for five long years before joining IndiaUnheard, and has in-depth knowledge of corruption within the local administration.

  Besides our own website and within the communities where the producers work (where most of our work is shown) there are some forums for videos like this. I showed these two videos two weeks ago as a panelist at the IFP/UN-sponsored ENVISION 2010: Addressing Global Issues through Documentaries, an event organized by the IFP, UN Communications Department, and New York Times. This was a one day conference on education and documentary films and, happily, there was space for user-created content.

  A few years ago there probably wouldn't have been. I was on a panel about the impact of user-generated media, along with with Mallika Dutt of Breakthrough, John Kennedy of World Without Borders and Ryan Schlieff of Witness -- all good friends in the field of media and human rights. People in the world of documentary film, or in the UN sector with its huge budgets for traditional communications, were getting a taste of what's possible when you turn the camera over to communities. This is progress towards the acceptance of these voices.

  More Global Than Ever

  With our work, I take a long term perspective. (Wanting every village in the world to have someone skilled and motivated to represent his neighbors' concerns in the media kind of requires that!) I think that media preferences are not fixed in stone. What Americans liked on TV and in the movies in the fifties is different from what we liked in the seventies and today. Who knows where people's tastes will be twenty years from now?

  I'm an optimist. I think we will only get more global and more curious, and more open to raw, unfiltered reality. I believe there are even studies that show that kids today who've grown up with mashups and social networks are much more open to gritty media that their parents wouldn't look at.

  In the meantime, we keep telling our correspondents to tell their stories in their own words, with their own style, their own analysis -- no matter how challenging it may be for outsiders to understand without translation.

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-26

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • A Message from Freedom Input :Update Regarding Android KeyPro Drivers Info from Freedom about pairing w/ Android via BT/Keypro (tags: android mobile hardware integration notetaking tools)
  • Step by Step Install Instructions for Freedom Pro Bluetooth keyboard how to pair it to an Android phone. I have not yet determined whether this works for a Droid incredible (tags: mobile android notetaking tools hardware tutorial)
  • [www.startribune.com] W00T! World War Z was one of my favorite zombie books! (tags: zombies books movies entertainment)

  

• 3:15

  ‘United Breaks Guitars’: Social media tips the scales

   » ‎ J.D. Lasica
  
  
  

  United Breaks Guitars: The interview from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

  Musician Dave Carroll’s advice to companies: Respect your customers

  Asmart company these days understands that everybody has a voice. So the best way to avoid a public relations nightmare is to give great customer service right out of the gate. “It’s a bad day when a customer’s upset,” says Dave Carroll, creator of the viral three-part musical trilogy United Breaks Guitars.

  

  Click to see full-size ad

  I met Carroll just after his keynote at the annual conference of the Society for New Communications Research (I’m a senior fellow). Carroll gave a funny and wise blow-by-blow of the PR and customer support blunders by United Airlines after baggage carriers broke his Taylor guitar.

  The incident has gone down as perhaps the ultimate self-inflicted customer relations screw-up by a major corporation in the social media era of empowered customers. The original video has been seen 8.8 million times since it went live a year ago and is the 12th most-watched video in the history of YouTube.

  “I was almost out of options but I wasn’t because social media allowed me to express myself in a creative way.”
  — Dave Carroll

  “Companies providing poor customer service can’t ride out the situation as in the past,” Carroll says. United ran Carroll through the bureaucratic ringer for 9 months before giving him a definitive answer about his compensation claim: No.

  “I was almost out of options but I wasn’t because social media allowed me to express myself in a creative way,” he says.

  Watch, download or embed the interview on Vimeo
  Watch or embed the video on YouTube

  In the interview, Carroll discusses his take on the idea of “a market of one” — the notion that today there are no statistically insignificant parts of the marketplace. “The market of one is everybody,” he says. Incorporating good customer service should be part of a holistic approach to a company’s business processes — not because it’s right but because it makes sense from a competitive business standpoint.

  As for Carroll, his viral hits on YouTube have helped juice his career as an independent musician and, now, a public speaker. CD sales are “through the roof,” he says, and he’s fielding offers to play gigs and to write songs. (The trilogy has taken on a life of its own: see Taylor Guitars’ video response and UBG Song #3.)

  All in all, great fun — and definitive proof of how social media has shifted the balance of power toward customers and away from arrogant multinational corporations. (For another example, see Greenpeace’s takedown of Nestle this past spring.)

  JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

  Related posts:

  1. 35 tips for getting started with social media
  2. United will let you email — for a price
  3. Watch iPod videos on United soon

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-25 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • What’s Your Take On the GPL Argument Between Matt and Thesis? « Weblog Tools Collection
    For you intellectual property people out there, a fascinating moral back and forth about the 'virality' of the GPL and the responsibilities of developing within a nebulous community of open source values. There was a great chapter in the Richard Stallman biography about this.
  • Long Now Locations | Atlas Obscura | Curious and Wondrous Travel Destinations
    Tourism for time nerds.
  • Cognitive Surplus visualized
    I have a feeling that this visualization will be used in a lot of keynote slides.

  

• 1:31

  The Afghanistan War Logs Released by Wikileaks, the World's First Stateless News Organization

   » ‎ PressThink
  "In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new."

• 0:49

  Cultural Dee Jays – the need for cultural translation with community media

   » ‎ Video Volunteers

  - Jessica Mayberry

  The TED talk of Ethan Zuckerman, the founder of the international blogging site Global Voices, is quite an amazing insight into the challenges of telling international stories online, told in the great TED way of painting lots of pictures and using a ton of anecdotes. He says it’s a big myth that the web is bringing us closer to other cultures or countries – when we’re on the web, we’re basically in our own small islands of our social networks. Most of us who are building businesses/nonprofits around non-traditional media content know this, but he has got some great powerpoint slides that add a lot of meat to the arguments.

  In addition to giving us some very telling facts (did you know that Madagascar the movie is a bigger brand than Madagascar the country?), he talks about translation. And not just the challenges of literal translation from one language to another, which is something Video Volunteers faces in our work all the time, especially now when we have community video correspondents working in nearly every state of India, a country with dozens of official languages. But also cultural translation.

  He makes the point that we need more “deejays… skilled human curators” who can speak the language of the west and of other cultures at the same time. The incredible editors at Global Voices fit that bill, and so does the blog Afrigadget. Video Volunteers, in the articles that accompany the online videos made by our community correspondents in our new IndiaUnheard Community News Network, attempt to do this too.

  This is really interesting to me because at Video Volunteers, we talk a lot about the need for “unmediated” voices – essentially, voices that are not culturally translated. This is one of the differences between community video, which to us means equipping traditionally “unheard” communities to tell their stories in their own words, and documentary film, where a professional uses his or her artistry and insightfulness to translate community voices for outside audiences.

  At VV, we believe, in fact, that so much is lost in translation that you want to keep “cultural translation” to a minimum. And so, with our newly launched IndiaUnheard community news network, we want to bring voices out voices in their rawest form. As my partner Stalin K. often says, “if I say the words “masai warrior” you get an immediate visual in your head. You don’t, in a similar fashion, hear their voices in your head.” We know from TV what the Masai look like. But we don’t know what they sound like, because in traditional National Geographic-type media, we just see the Masai with a narration – their whole culture, never mind their language, is translated for an international audience.

  There are real limits to the possibilities for translation. As I’ve heard Ethan Zukerman himself say at a Civic Media conference, it’s hard enough to find cultural translators for English to other cultures. But what about all the learning that could happen between the readers of, say, Kurdish media in New York City and Haitian media in New York City? How is that translation going to happen? I don’t know that we could ever have enough translators to solve that problem.

  So how do we get people to watch – rather, to WANT to watch – videos like these two posted below, made by our IndiaUnheard correspondents? If the world had an ideal system for the poor representing themselves in the media, which I would say is something like one community journalist per village (or even per 20 villages), how would we interest people outside those villages in watching this content?

  Here are two recent videos to check out and see what you think: Children Carry Trash, Not Books

  The video shows how children of poor families do not benefit from the current schemes on compulsory free education. The video is produced by Pratibha Rolta, a Community Correspondent from the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh, who works as an activist on women’s issues.

  The second video, titled Children Denied Education captures the plight of child labourers in Haryana’s brick kilns who are deprived of several rights including education.

  The correspondent here, Satyawan was a Sarpanch (village head) for five long years before joining IndiaUnheard and has in-depth knowledge of corruption within the local administration.

  Besides our own website and within the communities where the producers work (where most of our work is shown) there are some forums for videos like this. I showed these two videos two weeks ago as a panelist at the IFP/UN-sponsored “ENVISION 2010: Addressing Global Issues through Documentaries“, an event organized by the IFP, UN Communications Department, and New York Times. This was a one day conference on education and documentary films, and happily, there was space for user-created content. A few years ago there probably wouldn’t have been. I was on a panel about the impact of user-generated media, along with with Mallika Dutt of Breakthrough, John Kennedy of World Without Borders and Ryan Schlieff of Witness – all good friends in the field of media and human rights. People in the world of documentary film, or in the UN sector with its huge budgets for traditional communications, were getting a taste of what’s possible when you turn the camera over to communities. This is a progress towards receptiveness to these voices.

  With our work, I take a long term perspective. (Wanting every village in the world to have someone skilled and motivated to represent his neighbors’ concerns in the media kind of requires that!) I think that media preferences are not fixed in stone. What Americans liked on TV and in the movies in the fifties is different from what we liked in the seventies and today. Who knows where people’s tastes will be twenty years from now? I’m an optimist. I think we will only get more global and more curious, and more open to raw, unfiltered reality. I believe there are even studies that show that kids today who’ve grown up with mashups and social networks are much more open to gritty media their parents wouldn’t look at. In the meantime, we keep telling our correspondents to tell their stories in their own words, with their own style, their own analysis, no matter how challenging it may be for outsiders to understand without translation.

• July 25, 2010
• 23:00

  The Next Step for Domestic Workers' Rights

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  Domestic workers scored a major coup when New York passed a landmark bill to protect nannies, cooks and cleaners on the job. Now comes the tough part: Enforcing it.

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-24 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • WP Web Scraper » WebD :: Web design, developement, wordpress themes, plugins, web technologies
    Ah, this could be very useful for a new website I'll soon be launching.
  • Publisher to give free access to digitised newspapers | Media | guardian.co.uk
    Pretty cool. I hope that they geo-locate and go semantic. [via Jose]

  

• July 24, 2010
• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-24

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Dying Alone Intestate Burdens County – The Bay Citizen "in Marin County. In recent years there has been a surge in the number of people dying alone intestate — without a will — leaving the government to deal with what has been left behind." (tags: california government life law problems)
  • What do cell phone reception bars mean? | Ask MetaFilter According to most of the answers here, they don't mean much. (tags: mobile technology visual+communication problems graphics)
  • Why GPS voices are so condescending – CNN.com "The best computer voices may be those that sound exactly like the person who's listening. If a computer voice matches your mood, your speech patterns, your accent and your tonal range, you're less likely to be annoyed by it, researchers said.

    "How well a computer voice matches the listener's mood is not just a matter of preference — it's a matter of safety, said Clifford Nass, a Stanford professor who studies computer voices.

    "In a 2005 study, Nass found that these emotional mismatches may actually be dangerous in driving situations. Sad drivers who get instructions from happy computer voices — and happy drivers who listen to sad voices — are more likely to have accidents, he said. The emotionally confused drivers are also less likely to be able to pay attention to the road."

    (tags: safety navigation GPS tools psychology emotions transportation research problems)
  • Gadgets | Mark Fiore's Animated Cartoon Site Mark Fiore consummately nails the evils sides of mobile — something I need to write about more. (tags: animation mobile environment economics global culture psychology emotions problems)
  • BART – BART Board approves new Oakland Airport Connector funding plan Looks like the BART airport connector project is back on in Oakland. This whole concept has serious problems, especially considering the current state of local transit issues. This money could be much better spend on bus rapid transit and on AC Transit. (tags: Oakland transportation government economics problems policy)

  

• 7:18

  [Video] Introduction to Nazra for Feminist Studies

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  Preparations continue for the first workshops in the “Exploring Taboos” project organized by the team from the Cairo-based group Nazra for Feminist Studies, one of the three projects in Egypt currently being supported by Rising Voices. One of the group's coordinators, Fatma Emam provides an overview and history of the group, as well as the goals of the planned workshops. Currently, the group is taking applications and interviewing potential participants to gauge their interest in learning how to use citizen media to discuss these sensitive issues relating to gender.

• July 23, 2010
• 18:05

  4 Minute Roundup: The Problem with Content Farms

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  4MR is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  In this week's 4MR podcast I give an overview of "content farms," sites such as those from Demand Media, Yahoo's Associated Content and AOL Seed that produce massive amounts of content for low pay. While there have been issues with the quality of content from these sites, they often provide "good enough" how-to information for people searching for it online. Blogger/journalist Jason Fry has been a critic of content farms in the past, but now takes a more nuanced view of them, saying he's more worried about how they affect readers and searchers than the journalism business.

  Check it out:

  4mrbareaudio72310.mp3

  >>> Subscribe to 4MR <<<

  >>> Subscribe to 4MR via iTunes <<<

  Listen to my entire interview with Jason Fry:

  fry full.mp3

  Background music is "What the World Needs" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.

  Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:

  Writers Explain What It's Like Toiling on the Content Farms at MediaShift

  Your Guide to Next Generation 'Content Farms' at MediaShift

  Beyond Content Farms series at MediaShift

  Hey, Demand Media! Get Off My Lawn! at Reinventing the Newsroom

  Comment by Demand Media writer about getting $100 per day at MediaShift

  The 'Craigslist Effect' Spreads to Content as Free Work Fills Supply at AdAge
  
  
  Content 'Farms' - Killing Journalism, While Making a Killing at The Wrap

  Also, be sure to vote in our poll about what you think about content farms:

  
  
  
  What do you think about "content farms"?Market Research
  
  

  Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

  

  4MR is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 16:51

  Weekly Web Wrap

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Smart Grid Battles the Heat Wave
  (GOOD via Planetizen)
  Sheridan Study is Questionable
  (Tri-State Transportation Campaign)
  33rd Senate District Candidates on the Issues
  (Bronx News Network)
  Why the City is the World’s Marijuana Arrest Capital
  (Change.org)
  Bloomberg Risks Creating More Homeless
  (Coalition for the Homeless)
  If the World was as Dense as New York City
  (Urban Omnibus)
  Subsidies for Healthy Firms, Cuts in Services for Poor
  (Clawback)
  City Unveils Real-Time Water Metering
  (Inhabitat)
  Cartoonist’s Take on the MTA Budget Gap
  (Matt Davies)
  Palin Criticizes Ground Zero Mosque
  (Newsweek)
  Schumer Most Active Member of Congress
  (US News and World Report)
  Cuomo’s Run Sans Labor Support
  (The American Prospect)

• 16:01

  Writers Talk About Working the Hyper-Local Beat

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  In my first article for our special Beyond Content Farms series, I examined the opportunities available to writers at some of the biggest content farms. Today, I look at jobs covering hyper-local news.

  What hyper-local news organizations are aiming for is nothing short of revolutionary: AOL's two-year-old Patch network and established players like Examiner.com are attempting to recreate a profitable business model for professionally produced local journalism in the digital age. Unlike companies like Demand Media that pump out largely face-less content, the hyper-local sites allow writers to build a name for themselves on one geographic or subject area.

  These companies are hiring a lot of journalists in communities all over the U.S., which means more and more people will find jobs in hyper-local news. So what's it like to work in the new hyper-local journalism space? I spoke with a few writers and editors to learn more.

  Going Through a Rough Patch

  Jennifer Connic works as editor of the Millburn-Short Hills, N.J. site that's part of Patch's expanding hyper-local network. But she bristled at the hyper-local tag. "I think it belittles in some ways the journalism people like me are doing," she said.

  

  No matter what you call it, the job she is doing is not an easy one, as Connic readily admits. Patch editors are all basically one-woman news organizations. "You're really the only person who's running the site," Connic said. When people have a news tip or there's breaking news, she said, "I'm the one who gets contacted, I'm the one who has to be on top of that."

  Nearly two years into the job, Connic is still putting in long hours. She had a very difficult spring where, Connic said, "I had a lot of days where I'd get up in the morning and start working and I wouldn't be done until after midnight."

  Most of that time was spent providing invaluable coverage of how the New Jersey state budget crisis was impacting the Millburn public school system. Well-known media industry reporter Joe Strupp highlighted some other great reporting from Cecelia Smith, the former editor for Darien, CT. She broke a story revealing the criminal history of a candidate running for the town's First Selectman (similar to the mayor). Smith discovered the candidate had an attempted murder conviction, and he eventually lost the race.

  Like most Patch editors, Connic has a degree in journalism and her pay is likely relatively modest (although she declined to give any hard figures for her salary). As Andria Krewson reported on MediaShift, Patch competitor MainStreetConnect pays editors a salary of roughly $40,000 a year. "It is what it is," sighed the New Jersey transplant, doing her best to adopt the local patois.

  Connic was more forthcoming about the pay rates offered her freelancers: They can make between $50 and $100 per article from Patch, depending on their experience and their pitch. Connic generally features only one freelance piece a day on her site, so it would be difficult for writers to support themselves by contributing to Patch alone. But these contributors play a vital role in easing her burden. In particular, she relies on a few trusted freelancers to cover for her when she takes time off.

  Connic also uses high school interns to run her site. Although the positions are unpaid, the internship can lead to a "full paying freelance job for these kids if they prove themselves," she told me.

  If they come to terms with the long hours and meager salary, successful freelancers can even aspire to a full-time position with Patch. Connic pointed out that Mary Mann and Marcia Worth both freelanced for Patch before being hired as local site editors.

  Examining the Examiners

  The barriers to entry are lower at Examiner.com, an established hyper-local network with a much wider reach (and millions more page views) than Patch. Examiner has local sites in over 200 cities in the U.S. and Canada. While it's easier to become a writer (or "examiner") for the company, it has less to offer writers aspiring to a full-time reporting or steady freelance gig.

  Examiner.com recruits writers to cover beats generated by search engine demand. Here are just a few of the odd openings that are in my local area: Washington D.C. Movie Locations Travel Examiner, D.C. English Springer Spaniel Examiner, and Bethesda Holistic Family Health Examiner. The company then pumps out as much cheap local content on those topics as its writers can produce.

  While motivated examiners have access to a full range of videos and tutorials on blogging and search engine optimization, after their first submission, they are often offered little substantive feedback on their writing from experienced editors. If their blogging does not include enough local search terms, examiners can expect to receive an automatically generated email encouraging them to make their content more relevant to the community.

  Complaints from examiners about the paltry and opaque compensation rates are also surprisingly common around the web. The Welcome Handbook given to new Examiners offers little clarification: "Examiner pay is based on a rating that considers a number of factors, including revenue and the quality of your audience, which includes things like subscriptions, page view traffic and session length. Pay may fluctuate depending on any of these and other factors."

  The lack of any minimum rate left some contributors to this Writers Weekly survey of examiners recalling their content farm assignments fondly. "I have plenty of paid writing work, none of it all that well paid, true, but I'd rather get $15 per article (or even $10) than zip. Duh," said one former examiner, who only identified himself as "Mario."

  Even more irritating to some examiners is the $25 minimum threshold the company requires before it will deposit money in a writer's PayPal account. Washington City Paper highlighted a cautionary tale from one disgruntled former examiner, who very nearly failed to reach that figure before parting ways with the company. After being reprimanded by an Examiner.com editor for using Sarah Palin as SEO bait to attract attention to his beat, which was ostensibly about local music, Ben Westhoff wrote:

  I silently vowed to get over the threshold as quickly as possible, and to entertain myself in the process. And so I began to blog about nothing but Lil Wayne and boobs -- Katy Perry's, mostly -- in as absurd a manner as possible. Oh, and I still talked about Sarah Palin via ridiculous musical tie-ins. 'Katy Perry and Sarah Palin to wrestle in Jello?' one was titled.

  Westhoff's tale may not be all that uncommon. As TV Examiner Rick Ellis noted in the comments of a MinnPost story on the company, "the last number I saw was that about 1/3 of their examiners make enough to reach the $25 payment minimum each month."

  Yet, as with other content farms, the Examiner network has its supporters. Among them are Ellis and some of the commentors on my previous piece.

  

  It certainly can provide a platform for writers hoping to have their voices heard, those looking to build up a portfolio, or make a little bit of pocket money. But can it be a good career move? Dianne Walker, the D.C. Job Search and Career Examiner, thinks it has been for her.

  "It keeps me in tune with what's going on in my career," Walker told me. She has worked as an HR manager in the Prince William County public library system since 2005.

  Walker hopes to publish a career advice book and has used her examiner positions to market herself. In the two years Walker has written for Examiner.com, she has had some limited success: Local television show "Let's Talk Live" asked her to come on and discuss her story about unemployment in D.C.

  Would she recommend Examiner.com to people looking to make a career in writing? After a long pause, Walker said, "I have recommended people that I know that just need a couple extra dollars." (She also noted that Examiner.com pays its writers $50 for each new examiner they recruit.)

  For now, however, Walker continues to pursue her own editorial ambitions as only a part-time examiner. Even after two years of building up her audience, she's not quite ready to quit her day job.

  *****

  Have you worked for a hyper-local news organization? Would you consider doing so? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

  To read more stories in the Beyond Content Farms series go here.

  Correction July 26: This article originally said Sasha Brown-Worsham freelanced for Patch before being hired as a local site editor. She did not freelance for the site prior to being hired. Marcia Worth did, and her name has been added to the article.

  MediaShift hyper-local correspondent Andria Krewson contributed to this article.

  Corbin Hiar is the DC-based editorial assistant at MediaShift. He is a regular contributor to More Intelligent Life, an online arts and culture publication of the Economist Group, and has also written about environmental issues on Economist.com and the website of The New Republic. Before Corbin moved to the Capital to join the Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program at Mother Jones, he worked a web internship at The Nation in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @CorbinHiar.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 12:13

  Paterson Sets Another Budget Deadline

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Gov. David Paterson is calling a special session for Wednesday at 6 P.M. to have the legislature consider his legislation that would close the budget process and address the loss of Federal Medicaid funds.  If the legislature does not address the budget on Wednesday Paterson will call them back again the following day.

  The legislature has gotten missing deadlines, and ignoring Paterson down to a science– so this may not mean much of anything. Here is a statement from Gov. David Paterson’s press person Morgan Hook:

  “The State budget is 15 weeks late, we have yet to close our $9.2 billion current year deficit or reduce our out year gaps, and have no plan to address an additional billion dollar problem that may arise if the Federal government does not provide FMAP contingency funds. New Yorkers cannot afford to wait any longer for a final State budget. That is why Governor Paterson will call the Legislature into extraordinary session on Wednesday, July 28, at 6 p.m., to consider legislation required to complete the State budget, as well as other critical policy issues that were not addressed in the regular session of the State Legislature. If the budget plan is not resolved on Wednesday, the Governor will call special session for the following day.

  “Governor Paterson repeatedly has said that he will do everything in his power to protect New York’s fiscal health. As it stands today, the State has no budget and no plan to address a billion dollar loss in Federal support. Governor Paterson has proposed legislation that would address these issues and would provide certainty to the millions of New Yorkers and New York businesses that are currently operating on a day-to-day basis without answers from their elected officials. State government has a responsibility to the people and businesses of New York; finish the work that Governor Paterson started in January when he proposed his budget plan.”

• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-23

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Bookmarklets on Android? | Wap Review great resources for customizing mobile bookmarking & sharing (tags: android mobile social-media sharing tools)

  

• 7:56

  Filming and Editing with youth in Jabaliya refugee camp, Gaza – Week 3

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  The final week of our workshop in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza focused on getting youth narratives filmed on-location along with editing the video shorts. In the upcoming days we plan to finalize all films and screen them in the local community, along with post-workshop evaluations.

  More photos and updates on our blog: http://voicesbeyondwalls.blogspot.com

  The following summarizes our experiences in the final week:

  Day 11: A day of ups and downs shooting video in the camp…

  A day with many ups and downs - we had left video cameras with all groups and trainers to continue filming over the weekend. All but one group reported in their morning check-in that they were nearly done with their primary shooting. Many had worked hard on the weekend in new locations and reworked narratives.

  However, during our video footage review it became clear nearly all had critical challenges, which nearly left their films either unusable or fairly flat. These included very poor audio and lighting for many crucial scenes; interestingly at least 2 groups shot scenes in the center (when they were unable to get permission to shoot elsewhere) but somehow failed to notice the roaring diesel generator running in the background, muting all but the loudest characters in the scenes. Others shot indoors in very poor lightning or composition and outdoor shots at a distance had little or no expression seen in the characters. Natural and dramatic acting was also turning out to be a challenge for many groups in difficult locations with little preparation, coaching or rehearsal.

  There seems to be a dilemma to get the right balance between indoor/outdoor shooting to handle light and the inevitable noise in the camp. So we suggested good "location scouting" was most crucial for all groups, along with getting compelling characters in desirable roles. In some cases, simply casting other individuals in critical roles that are more authentic, was the only solution to make the films seem compelling. Finally, we urged some trainers to work closer with the other teams to provide more guidance and support.

  One could feel the exasperation of the teams as they watched their footage and we noticed that many scenes re-shot had only gotten worse. This was certainly not an outcome we all wished at this stage of the workshop with all the training and critical reviews we had done. So we simply went around and got everyone to give constructive suggestions to each group as they presented their work; clearly seeing it on large format screen really helps each time. At least two groups decided to completely re-write their stories or choose a new concept, as they saw their current work fall flat. We decided to work intensively with the two groups most in need to get them back on track.

  The only group that finished shooting all footage was the one doing the silent abstract film which they shot in a new location around destroyed buildings by the sea - the effect was quite moving and everyone clapped at the end. I suggested they combine their footage from the previous location to retain the urgency and dramatic character they originally achieved. Overall, this group appears to have some powerful footage to go into editing.

  With the inspiration from the last group's footage, we got all other groups to meet separately with us to consider how to improve their work. Roger and Maha worked closely with a group where the children quickly developed refreshing new story, which they are excited to shoot tomorrow.

  I had one group, which was a bit demoralized due to internal dynamics and trainer issues, to revert back to a piece they originally developed in the first week, focusing on human rights issues and persons injured in Jabaliya camp during the war. They were psyched to get back on-location and begin shooting. So we developed a new angle where we would have one team interview and shoot the emerging story, while another "camera crew" would film them doing so, thus creating a film inside a film. We had the "camera crew" of a 11-year old boy (Mohammed) and girl from another group use Roger's professional Panasonic video camera for the secondary shoot; they both took to it readily panning gracefully between the interview and the team filming it.

  The pairing worked really well as we re-interviewed the Hammad family who suffered during the war; they welcomed us back in their home as both teams filmed them in a somewhat odd fashion (one saying "action" after the other). They understood the concept and that it was for training purposes as well. The camera team also filmed the group making decisions about their shots and preparing for interviews while walking along, so the film may turn out to be fairly compelling once it’s completed. The team plans to meet Mezan, the human rights center in the camp and film two other cases as part of their documentary narrative.

  This was a great high-point for the frustrating day as the group felt a sense of satisfaction at seeing a concept come together quickly and having a workable plan of action to produce something effective in a short time. Let’s see how the rest goes with all other groups as they wrap up shooting tomorrow, and get into editing...

  Day 12: Wrapping up shooting and brief editing tutorial

  The day started with all the groups eagerly waiting in the courtyard of the center holding tripods and cameras ready to go for their final shoot. I came in with a large tray of Bakhalava to celebrate the arrival of my little sister's baby boy this morning. Just enough sugar to get everyone recharged for their filming on-location all morning.

  Each team went out to their final locations; I took our group to the Mezan Center for Human Rights to see if we could get them to take us out for an interview with a family. No one was around, so we instead went to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), also nearby... they too were hesitant (and asked for formal letters of request), but the young team persisted and the staff finally asked a field officer to take us out to a site in Beit Lahiya where several families and schools had been hard hit. The group worked in two teams conducting the interviews and filming the film; I was impressed at their clockwork dynamic. Even the 11-year old Mohammed closely held his professional Panasonic DVX camera (which was way bigger than his sholders) and shot footage indoors and in the streets, walking rapidly backwards to frame the shots.

  The group filmed 3 families two of which were in Jabaliya camp, each with devastating stories of loss and inspiring resilience. Abeer, the 15-year old girl directing the group, conducted most interviews along with Nour, while others assisted with photography and basic production work - a natural team with each one taking turns to manage the shoot. We did many interviews indoors, with several shots in the open to capture the destroyed homes and conversing while walking with our characters in the narrow alleys of the camp. Both cameras captured multiple angles of the shots; with nearly 3 hours of video it will be quite a bit of work for the group to begin sorting out and trimming their final scenes during editing.

  In the afternoon, I conducted a brief hour-long tutorial of the VideoStudio editing software using an example of the "Rabbit City" film this group had shot last week. They have subsequently abandoned the story in favor of the human rights piece. So it made for a good example that was fun to edit. They learned the key elements of editing, trimming, sound tracks, audio recording, titling and transitions with only a few special effects in the context of this narrative. They suggested slow motion and repeat takes in some scenes, which all added nicely to the final film rendered.

  Tomorrow all groups will begin organizing and capturing their footage to begin editing in groups, so we hope to get them off on a good track, though some may still insist on re-shooting a few scenes with audio/lighting issues. Let’s hope we can keep the full group engaged in the editing process somehow or find other constructive video/photo activities as the Al Aroub team has been trying.

  Day 13: Power cuts and video editing...

  A frustrating day for many groups as we struggled to begin video editing with just 3 laptops available for 5 groups. One finally finished shooting its last 2 scenes, while the others tried to review their footage, logging scenes, writing up key descriptions, and sequencing them on paper.

  The center had no power for most of the day - later we heard it was a scheduled power outage throughout the camp, and the center's only diesel generator simply broke-down. So we tried to use laptops with whatever battery charge was remaining, while some groups reviewed their footage on the tiny video camera screens. At some point 2-3 groups tried to move to other buildings (a nearby UN office and a special needs center) for an hour or so to continue working, however most simply fizzled out by early afternoon with all the logistical challenges and resource constraints.

  Only one group managed to finish most of their initial editing (for the abstract silent film) while 2 others made it part way through their footage. My group had shot nearly 3 hours of interviews (using two cameras), so it took a great deal of time to sort through and select some key scenes from just one camera - turns out to be a more ambitious effort than expected. We have a great deal more to do tomorrow. The remaining two groups are still essentially beginning their editing work tomorrow.

  So the next 2 days will remain intensive if we can keep groups focused and manage with the power outages; our plan B is simply to move to another center temporarily. We'll review rough cuts tomorrow late afternoon, and hope to get all shorts completed by the end of the week for final screenings.

  I expect we'll do our post-workshop evaluations on Sunday morning, so all groups have enough time to wrap-up prior to it. I'm working on a new questionnaire for the evaluation.

  We plan to do a community screening in Jabaliya camp early next week with families (Monday), and hopefully a public screening in Gaza the following weekend. That should give us more time to refine and finalize all films with subtitles, print a selection of photos (from both workshops) and arrange some publicity to attract local audiences in Gaza.

  Day 14: Power back on and video editing progressing

  Today was much better as we miraculously had power nearly all day at the woman's center in Jabaliya camp. After a quick warm-up we asked everyone to discuss their editing and shooting experience thus far, to get some feedback on things we can improve - of course power and access to working laptops on-time were their biggest concerns.

  We then broke up into our editing teams and tried to get everyone back on track; two groups waited around for new laptops to arrive which we had to setup with the editing software , both of them had to switch mid-stream twice, as their laptops crashed... and lost their initial edits. This was quite disruptive and frustrating, but the groups pressed ahead.

  My group spent a great deal of time reviewing and capturing a selection of key scenes from over 6 hours of video they shot using the two cameras. We finally got through most of it by the end of the day and made an initial rough-cut which fairly coherent. It’s the story about 3 families in Gaza devastated during the war, as captured through interviews by a team of young girls and their camera crew.

  We made a brief review of 4 out of 5 films that completed rough-cuts today in a small group of children and trainers remaining late this afternoon. The feedback was very helpful to the groups. One group with the silent abstract film decided to lay a music track over it which nearly destroyed the overall effect of the power footage they shot. Many of us suggested they try creating another version with just natural sounds of the locations and spaces they used, and see what resonates better with everyone in the final reviews tomorrow.

  After the long day, I spent another few hours in Gaza city meeting folks at the French Cultural Center, YMCA and Palestinian Red Crescent Society trying to get a venue for our exhibit and screening. I’m also checking with the Museum in Gaza (the "Mathaf") - a newly renovated private space by the sea near Beit Lahiya. Lets see what works out in the next few days. The event will likely be on August 1st for the opening, with the exhibit on for 2 weeks hopefully.

  Day 15: youth video shorts making progress....

  I think we got a lot done today as all groups were more focused on completing their editing. In the morning, we reviewed a check-list of things each one had to consider for their final pieces, including:

  1. Writing up a title, summary, brief synopsis, and group names for each film
  2. Ensuring their video sequences are coherent and concise to represent the intended storyline
  3. Completing all voice recordings, soundtrack and adjusting audio levels for all scenes
  4. Simplifying any transitions and effects to maintain a seamless flow in the visual narrative (and not distract the viewer)
  5. Add the title and credits including acknowledging the community center and voices beyond walls
  6. Writing up an Arabic dialog script with timestamps for the entire film, and translating it to English for subtitles
  7. Ensuring any images or music in the film are copyright free or get permission or credit them. This year we need to ensure that copyrighted material is well handled if we plan to post the youth shorts on YouTube and submit them to film festivals.

  The groups got through most items on the checklist, though many still need to adjust audio levels, and complete the Arabic/English scripting and subtitles. We plan to extend the workshop into Saturday to finalize their films (given the power cuts and laptop issues all week). All groups and trainers are eager to wrap up their films and are willing to work through the weekend.

  On Sunday we plan to do our evaluations in focus groups for both the video workshop and the Dabke workshop kids (our comparison group). I'm working on the questionnaire this weekend.

  Finally, we plan to do our community screenings with the families and distribute diplomas to all children at an event in the center on Monday evening, followed by a more public screening in Gaza at the “Mat’haf” (Museum) next Sunday. A satisfying close for a long and productive week; we are on our last stretch to complete the youth films by early next week.

• 2:48

  Koreanization of Nagaland: A Reporting truly Unheard

   » ‎ Video Volunteers

  It’s common to blame the west for anything that goes wrong in India including loss of culture and heritage. But, an IndiaUnheard report by community correspondent Renchano Humtsoe shows a different picture where the North Eastern region is experiencing a cultural invasion from the East – Korea

  Wokha of Nagaland is just another hill town of the North Eastern India with the usual picture of poor civic facilities and rich tribal traditions. Like the rest of the region, people here are emotional about three things – forest, land and ethnic traditions. And like the rest of the state, people in Wokha too are supportive of the Naga’s struggle for self rule – often marred with violence – which has been going for several decades now.

  Ironic, therefore, is the fact that, despite the decade-long fierce struggle to save their tribal identity and refusal to be ‘Indianised’, Wokha, quite like the rest of the state is today having a unique scenario where the young generation is under a spell of Korean culture.

  The most watched TV channel in the state is the Korean channel Arirang TV, DVD and CD shops are bursting with Korean films and the hottest hair-dos offered by salons are the ones flaunted by popular Korean actors and actresses. All salons carry posters of a particular Korean actor who is much admired by the youth. Shops are selling street fashions that are currently in vogue in Korea, cultural evenings in the state have special ‘Korean song’ contests and sports events have categories like ‘Korean wrestling’. Arirang TV is not only watched avidly but also receives requests from the youth of north-east Indian states and newspapers regularly carry a listing of its programmes. In the meanwhile, the entire media seems to be ignoring the issue and treating it as an inconsequential and natural phenomenon.

  While it is difficult to date back the advent of Korean culture precisely, by 2007 it had already been around for long enough for the government of Nagaland to have included Korean wrestling and songs in the annual Hornbill Festival.
  Breaking this incomprehensible silence, one IndiaUnheard Community Correspondent from Wokha filed a story on this Korean invasion.  Shot on streets of Wokha, the video report of Renchano Humtsoe captures the disturbing trend of unquestioningly accepting all things Korean by the younger Naga population.

  Breaking this barrier of this incomprehensible silence, one IndiaUnheard Community Correspondent from Wokha filed a story on this silent Korean cultural invasion. Shot on streets of Wokha, the video report of Renchano Humtsoe, titled Wave of Korean Culture Hits Nagaland captures the disturbing trend of accepting all things Korean by young Naga population, without a question.

  Says Renchano,“ I always felt, this isn’t normal that everyone is adopting Korean style and Korean culture so much. But I wasn’t sure if that’s worth making a news story because nobody seemed to talk about it.”

  However, once Renchano’ story was done, there was more revelation made by IndiaUnheard’s other correspondents from the region: From Ukhrul of Manipur to Itanagar of Arunachal Pradesh, the influence of Korean culture has been growing at an alarming speed. In fact in Manipur the insurgents have banned Hindi films which has, in turn, thrown the gate wider for Korean consumer goods and films and videos to flood the state.

  A Kamei, a journalist with AIR stationed in Imphal does not at all find the advent of Korean culture surprising. She says, “People always liked non-Indian things here. So we were anyway using non-Indian products. Korean products are just an extension. In fact Koreans are so similar to us, specially the way we look.”

  As I watched Renchano’s video, it sparked a number of questions: How do the Korean consumer goods manage to reach the market so easily? Why do the cable operators subscribe to Arirang TV? Why did people choose to prefer Korea over Thai, Taiwanese or, for that matter, any other Asian country of the region? Why people who are so vocal against Hindi, have no issues with the Korean?

  But above all, the story makes me wonder why the media, which is always so quick to point out the foreign invasion of any kind, especially in the region, is so silent about this overwhelming influence of Korean cultural especially on their young generation?

  These are questions that will be pondered over by many in coming days. Meanwhile, reporters like Renchano should take a bow for bringing forth a story that has gone unheard for a long time.

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-22 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • Author Joy Deja King
    I can't believe how many teenagers I've seen reading her books on the metro here in Washington DC. There's something going on here that's not making it to the pages of the New York Times.
  • Joy Deja King's quiet life in Collierville belies her steamy 'street lit' stories » The Commercial Appeal
    Interview with Joy Deja King. Interesting life.

  

• 0:17

  Keep Your Friends Close...

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Ed Koch’s New York Uprising has released its friends and enemies list. Their friends include anyone who signed their reform pledge; their enemies anyone who didn’t.

  One of their friends happens to be Sen. Pedro Espada–the man who helped launch the coup that so enraged Koch to begin with. Espada is such a fan of reform and transparency that he canceled a town hall meeting scheduled for yesterday evening because he was afraid that people his office did not hand pick might show up. His office says the event was canceled due to safety concerns.

  Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver takes a different approach at questioning the credibility of Uprising’s list.

  “For decades, Republicans controlled the State Senate and blocked every single piece of reform legislation proposed by the Assembly and Democrats in the Senate — campaign finance reform, election reform, ethics reform and budget reform,” said Silver in a statement. “For Ed Koch to call Senate Republicans ‘reformers’ and ignore our record undermines the credibility of the pledge and his entire campaign.”

• July 22, 2010
• 21:51

  Kids and digital storytelling: Who will teach them?

   » ‎ Online Journalism Review
  By Robert Niles: As a former statistics major, I know that no one should read too much into a single example. But watching my 10-year-old son embrace video production is challenging some of my beliefs about the timing and content of journalism education. But it's not just my son. For many of his elementary school classmates, producing and distributing video has become as ubiquitous as writing and passing paper notes was to students of my generation. I've seen kids whip out Flip cameras and cellphones at school events and around the neighborhood, recording their conversations, performances and play. Don't mistake this as the activity of a privileged few. These are children at a public school where more than half the students are receiving free or reduced-price lunches. Thanks to cheap cellphones and Flips, digital video technology has become so inexpensive that it's penetrated well beyond the middle class into poor segments of American society. When I taught journalism in the university, I'd note with other instructors how the undergraduates typically knew much more about publishing online than the graduate students. And that high school students who'd come on campus during the summer could do more still. I'd joke that if we could just get some elementary students on campus, we'd could get moving with some really advanced online publishing work. It's no joke. My son's grown better at video editing now than I am. My wife and I have given up shooting and editing video, and now assign all that work for our websites to our son. For a recent clip on my wife's website, our son set up a green screen background, shot the video, edited in a slow motion sequence and laid down a musical track he'd recorded of my wife performing, then uploaded his edited work to YouTube (using my wife's account - we won't let him lie about his age to set up a YouTube or Facebook account, although many of his friends have). How on Earth did he learn how to do this video work? It wasn't through his school - most of the teachers there remain as flummoxed by this technology as I sometimes feel. Nor did he learn it from me, or from a textbook. He taught himself video production the same way that I taught myself Web publishing over 15 years ago - by reading about it online and then trying it for himself. And that's what has me rethinking the direction that journalism education needs to be taking. It's not simply the accelerating pace at which younger students are accumulating digital production skills. We knew that was happening, and smart educators have been anticipating that, slowing shifting the emphasis of even introductory classes from teaching basic multimedia production skills to the application of those skills to producing more engaging news storytelling. What intrigues me, though, is the way that many younger students, even elementary-age children, are embracing the Internet for self-instruction. This seems to me an emerging opportunity for post-secondary educators. Why leave what was previously our work to others? If students have the passion to pursue, at an early age, something that we teach at an advanced level, why shouldn't we draw a path between where they are now and where we can lead them?

• 16:38

  Commission Split on Grandfathering Council Members

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Council members will have to hold their breaths.

  At a hearing in the Bronx last night, the majority of members of the city Charter Revision Commission said they want to ask voters to consider rescinding the three-term limit approved by the council in 2008, going back to two terms. But the commission was split on whether that provision, if it is approved by the voters this fall, should apply to the current council.

  “Frankly, I could go either way: to allow currently elected officials to continue for 12 years or to cut short the 30 members of the City Council,” said Commissioner Katheryn Patterson.

  We covered this issue last week. See our story here.
  
  Currently, 32 members of the council are either in their first or second term. If the proposal applied to the current class of legislators, 13 of them would be kicked out of City Hall after 2013.

  While some commissioners said applying the measure to the current class would be “punitive,” others said it was hypocritical not to.

  “This seems like the easiest question of all,” said Commissioner Hope Cohen. “Absolutely the change in term limits should apply to the current incumbents… It flies in the face of the whole argument for prospectivity,” she added. If the commission plans to put a question on the ballot to restrict current council members from extending their own term limit, Cohen said, than any change in the law should apply to the current council.

  In the end, no decision was made on the issue last night. Commission Chairman Matthew Goldstein argued more discussion is needed.

  “I think the issue about implementation is complex, and I think it certainly needs more discussion,” Goldstein said. But, he added, “I don’t like the idea of punitiveness at all.”

• 16:32

  Voces Bolivianas: From The Blogosphere

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  In our latest feature on Voces Bolivianas, the Rising Voices grantee from Bolivia, we will highlight some blogposts from its network of bloggers.

  Cristina Quisbert at Bolivia Indigena writes about a protest March by indigenous Bolivians:

  Earlier last week began a march of Indigenous people on the way to La Paz, whose main demand was indigenous autonomy. About 500 marchers set off from different places like Trinidad, Beni. [machine translation]

  Read the post [es] for details.

  Mario Duran at Palabrtas Libres took pictures of the 16th July traditional parade of the Folk merchants:

  

  Image courtesy Mario Duran

  Mario Duran also highlights the blog of Yerba Mala Cartonera, a writers community project, which publishes books of new young authors who cannot find the space for the their publication. The book covers are made of aesthetic cardboards and made by young recyclers.

  RC - The entrance to the literary elite Bolivian becomes very difficult for young Bolivians writers, and more coming from El Alto. The Bolivian literary circle feeds on itself, it works with the old system of patronage and almost no attention has been paid to the project Yerba Mala Cartonera. However, I feel that somehow, Yerba Mala has begun to annoy those closed circles, and they have become concerned. They realize that in El Alto has begun to generate other literature. (read more) [machine translation]

  Hugo Miranda celebrates publishing of 50,000 Tweets in his Twitter account @angelcaido666x - this is surely a feat. On this occasion he interviewed Graciela Ventimiglia, a bio technology professor and a blogger and a prolific Twitter user of Latin America.

  @Graciadelcielo

  • Graciela Ventimiglia
  • Charata-Chaco-Argentina
  • [graciadelcielo.com]
  • Bio Technology Profe. Agnostic, apolitical, mental stripper, samurai spelling, something geek, abarcóloga, UPWARD compatible, multitasking, fun and fearless.

  2,116 Following,

  4,581 Followers,

  414 Listed.

  “Graciela Ventimiglia, surely retweets people more, if their tweets are fun, and contains interesting information, because it teaches us things …Finally the interview with her is posted here.”

  First Why the name graciadelcielo? This is what my name means. Later I found out it was a little long, but it was too late to change it. Who is Graciela Ventimiglia? What she does? What are you I am 53 years old, the only daughter in charge of my two elderly parents. I am divorced with two daughters, Marisol (25) and Maribel (22), remarried with #husband with whom we adopted a baby (of 17 days): Marilis, now 6. How long and why you use Twitter? I am using Twitter since January 2008 and at first did not know what to do there. Without knowing, @laquesefue prompted my desire to follow, was my mentor for much of my personality teaching, even though she is a Social Media evangelist and I am not. But she admired my way and helped me a lot when I had only three followers.

  [machine translation]

• 13:54

  The Killing Joke: We Debate Broadband Access Definitions as Library Hours Plummet

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  "Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says 'Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.' Man bursts into tears. Says 'But, doctor...I am Pagliacci.'" - Rorchach's Journal, Oct. 16th, 1985. 

  It seems terribly cruel to debate the potential malignancy of a mole located on a severed hand. At present, two camps are arguing over the rapidity of the spread of broadband, while ignoring a nationwide rollback of potential Internet access for the nation's poorest communities. This would be funny if only it weren't so sad. 

  The Federal Communications Commission recently released the latest report on Broadband Deployment in the United States. In a change from previous reports, the FCC upgraded the standard for “broadband” from 200kbs to 4mbs and focused on subscriber counts rather than overall availability. Due in part to these new tallying techniques, the FCC essentially gave the US a failing grade: "broadband remains unavailable to approximately 14 to 24 million Americans." Predictably, Industry reps claim that the report’s conclusion is offbase. Cue the political bickering.

  The Republican minority argues that the standard for broadband is far too high, that this amounts to an attempt to fudge the numbers and falsely deny broadband's teleological progression. Democrats respond that previous procedures, such as considering an area covered if it housed a single subscriber, understated the problem.
  
  All this makes for good political theater. But it misses the point. The prevalence of broadband-capable infrastructure is unimportant, so long as a main method of Internet exposure is dying. Dwindling library access, rather than stagnant Broadband penetration, is a far larger threat to the nation’s Internet access. 

  Libraries provide the only free Internet access for most poor communities. Individuals without a computer or home Internet connection rely on libraries for assistance in job searching, networking, and e-governance. Of course these needs have become all the more acute during the recession, as individuals are laid off and can no longer afford home access. 

  But libraries, especially those in urban centers, simply do not have the capital to continue operating on a daily basis. The ALA reports that in the 2009 national survey of public libraries, one quarter of urban libraries and 14.5 percent of all libraries decreased operating hours. This means that approximately 2,400 public libraries lost hours.
  
  Let’s focus on some of the more high profile amputations, all of which have occurred in the last month:
  
  - The Los Angeles public library and its 72 branches, as of July 18th, are no longer open on Sunday or Monday. Adding insult to injury, the city decided not to push for a revenue measure because of the high cost of putting the matter to vote.

  - Charlotte's Mecklenburg County Library system reduced the hours of 21 libraries, with most open only four days a week.

  - Brooklyn Public Library reduced the hours of 60 branches, with the great majority going to a five-day only schedule.

  Santa Barbara, Wheaton, Trenton, Tempe, and Mount Laurel libraries are similarly afflicted.  I would also add Boston Public Library to this list, as four branches are slated to close and 68 employees to be laid off, but there is a slim chance the axe won't fall until winter. (Note: As should be obvious from the articles above, if these libraries are not forced to close, the solution will involve laying off a great number of employees to make up the shortfall.)

  So to sum up: Libraries are the sole means of accessing the Internet for a significant portion of our population. While some politicians have the gall to argue that "[b]roadband infrastructure deployment and investment are a remarkable and continuing success story," our libraries are slicing their hours or shutting completely. Let's not argue whether or not five percent of users don't have access to broadband capable infrastructure. Instead, let's focus on the tens of millions of Americans who are gradually losing their only avenue to a wealth of online resources. 

  (Andrew Moshirnia is a rising third year law student at Harvard Law School and a CMLP blogger. He leaves his editor at the foot of this post; one always finds one's burden again.)

  

• 12:37

  How Content Farms Train Their Writers to Write for the Web

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  At the core of every content farm's success is an ability to rapidly recruit and integrate new writers. Publishers like Demand Media, Examiner.com, Suite 101 and others are always hiring, always looking to expand their ranks and replace talent that churns out.

  These operations rely on abundance: of contributors, of content, of traffic. More contributors means more content, which means more traffic -- but the constant influx of new people means their product could vary widely in terms of the quality of writing, and the ability of the writers to promote their work and drive traffic, among other key factors.

  

  Examiner.com has proven adept at bringing new writers into the fold. The site, which is in 250 cities in Canada and the U.S., has over 42,000 "Examiners" -- what the site calls its writers -- and is adding over 3,500 new ones each month. (Read our post from earlier this week to get an overview of what Examiner.com does.)

  That's a huge amount of people to integrate, especially considering the fact that Examiners range from experienced writers to relative newbies who may have an area of interest but no writing experience. In other cases, an experienced writer may have little or no knowledge about search engine optimization and the best ways to promote their work online. Examiner.com deals with this by offering a variety of training and support resources to get people producing quickly, and within a set of guidelines.

  Forums, Guides, Feedback

  Sites such as Associated Content and Demand offer discussion forums where writers can exchange information and search for previously answered questions. They also provide access to editors or support staff. For its copy editors, Demand offers "forums, blogs, newsletters and other channels for you to communicate with and learn from your fellow editors." These editors, in turn, help ensure that all written materials adhere to the very specific guidelines established for each Demand property or client.

  Suite101 offers a range of resources, including text-based tutorials, one-on-one coaching, and discussion forums. "We have created concise tutorials to help writers better understand how to implement white hat SEO strategies and to better understand the overall process of web writing," said Lima Al-Azzeh, the site's associate editor.

  Examiner.com offers support services and discussion forms, but it has also been aggressive, and unique, in creating online, self-directed interactive tutorials. The site has created Examiner University, a standalone section of its site that offers Flash-based classes and other forms of training content that help get Examiners up to speed.

  Inside Examiner U

  Jason Stone joined Examiner.com six months after the site's April 2008 launch. Initially hired to be a channel manager overseeing writers in a specific topic area, he soon found himself spending time helping his Examiners understand search engine optimization, video embedding, social media and other necessary skills and tools.

  "I would write emails to Examiners and it eventually occurred to me that I was spending a lot of time addressing the same issues over and over," Stone said. "I thought that there had to be a more efficient way to do this. So I started making documents and videos and distributing them to Examiners."

  His training materials caught on and he was soon asked to take on this work as a full-time job. The result is Examiner University. Part of the core curriculum of Examiner University are its "101"-level courses that offer instruction in four key areas.

  "Early on we decided there would be four pillars of types of courses which will be reflected in 101 courses: editorial; marketing to a growing audience; technical skills, because publishing online means putting tools in the writers' hands; and then information that is specific to Examiner.com, such as how our referral program works," Stone said. "If any one of those -- especially the first three -- fail then it's an overall failure."

  There are currently 25 courses offered on the site, and the company expects to launch more after a new version of the Exmainer.com website goes live soon. (Examiner University is also home to a video guide to the new website.) The core courses are delivered using a combination of audio, video and text. Other course topics include "grammar considerations," "plagiarism," "finding photos online," "proofreading," "writing locally," and "SEO considerations," to name just a few. The "finding photos" and "writing locally" courses are among the most popular.

  

  "Obviously, we have varying degrees of skill sets coming in the door," says Justin Jimenez, Examiner.com's director of marketing and PR. "A seasoned journalist might come in and skip over the editorial section but could be very interested in the marketing and social media component. The large value for us is continuing to enhance that quality and have offerings for different levels of skill sets."

  Overall, executives at Examiner.com feel the courses are working, even though the company isn't permitted to require its writers to attend Examiner U. (Examiners are independent contractors and not employees, so the company can't make Examiner University a requirement.)

  "Measuring success is kind of difficult in that it's not easy to quantify the effect that the courses are having," Stone said. "We look at the metrics and we now average about 4,000 course launches per week, and that number keeps going up."

  Stone added that the average Examiner spends roughly seven or eight minutes per course. Though many courses are longer than that, each lesson includes a table of contents that enables people to skip to the parts they find most useful.

  Feedback From Examiners

  I spoke with a few current Examiners to see what they had to say about both Examiner University and their fellow Examiners. Here's a selection of their responses:

  Sharon K. West, current Haunted Places Examiner and American History Examiner and a former writer for Suite101.com and Associated Content:

  I've gone completely through the Examiner University, twice. I wanted to make sure that I understood their policies and how to upload articles and pictures.

  I was also searching for information on current styles. During the time that I wrote for Suite101.com, the new style of Internet writing started coming into play. Things like SEO, keywords, and putting the most important points at the beginning of the article, rather than the old style of gradually working up to the mighty conclusion at the end. In some cases, in the old way, you told people what you wanted to tell them and then told them at the end what you already told them. Everything has changed for the Internet.

  I made it a point to go through Examiner University before I did anything else, and in the process, it finally clicked in my head how to write in chunks, start out with the important things, and get those keywords in lots of times, as well as using headings and lists inside the article.

  Brad Sylvester, current Manchester Bird Watching Examiner, Maritime Headlines Examiner, and Manchester Green Living Examiner; a corporate writer and a former writer for Associated Content:

  Generally, when I ran into problems I'd go to their site and see the tutorial. As far as the 101s, I did go through all of those maybe two months in to see if there was a better way of doing things.

  The most helpful were the ones that walked me through their publishing tool and told you what to expect and how it works. Also, there is a community where you can talk with other Examiners and I found that to be helpful as well. People would share best practices.

  There are two camps [of Examiners]. There are some that are very experienced and some that have no experience -- and almost nobody in between.

  Angele Sionna, current Early Childhood Parenting Examiner and Western U.S. Travel Examiner; contributor to eHow; former television news producer and a professional journalist for more than 15 years:

  Initially, there was a feeling of a "workplace" and you got to "know" co-workers, most of whom were other professional journalists who write for a bunch of media...like myself. They used Examiner.com to write about their passions, whereas at some other jobs they'd write on other topics. I'm much the same way. Many of those journalists are still with Examiner like I am... but unfortunately there are also people with Examiner who really don't know how to write or even what to write about. They've tried to crack down on people who would report things just from other sites just to get page views. I was glad to see that, but some of those folks with no original content are still around and that part is frustrating to me...Though I have seen articles from people that do not have a journalistic background that are very well done, well researched and enjoyable to read. So it is really a mixed bag.

  You know, I haven't checked what their current class offerings are lately, as previously I felt there wasn't anything of real benefit for me at the Examiner University. That's fine with me though. It is good they have tools for people who may be experienced writers or experts that need more help figuring out the ways of the web. Not everyone feels comfortable with the web or knows how it works.

  To read more stories in the Beyond Content Farms series go here.

  Craig Silverman is an award-winning journalist and author, and the managing editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is founder and editor of Regret the Error, the author of Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech, and a weekly columnist for Columbia Journalism Review. He also serves as digital journalism director of OpenFile, a new collaborative news site for Canada. Follow him on Twitter at @CraigSilverman.

  

  Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 11:39

  An Ethical Argument for Transparency in Journalism

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  In a recent post on my website I examined an ethical argument for transparency. I will continue this internal dialogue with the caveat that I am not a journalism academic. I do not prescribe my beliefs to anyone but myself. This is a disgustingly theoretical post (I promise the next one will be practical up the wahzoo). I should also note the inspiration behind these two posts was a discussion at FOO Camp: Philosophy and Technology - Tim O'Reilly and Damon Horowitz.

  The First Chapter
  

  The first post on this topic hinged on the idea that transparency is necessary for public participation in journalism.
  
  

  This Wikipedia quote puts it bluntly. The argument for transparency then isn't ethical so much as practical. It's a second order argument. The process of journalism must be transparent if we expect people to participate in a meaningful way. This assumes, however, that we want people to participate.

  If we can reason that participation in journalism is ethical and transparency is necessary for participation to occur, it follows that there is an ethical argument for transparency.

  Which means the next step is to examine the base of this syllogism: There is an ethical argument for participation in journalism.

  The Goal of Journalism

  What is the purpose or goal of journalism? In philosophy I might pose this as, what is journalism's Telos -- its purpose, aim, end and/or design.

  The reason this question (and blog post) is important is that if you look at the current understanding of ethics in journalism you can see that it is more along the lines of a professional code than an ethical debate or analysis. Public accountability is mentioned in many of the existing code of ethics. As is the rightful dissemination of information to the public. But in almost all of these cannons of journalism the public is acted upon and is rarely an actor.

  When I ask what is the goal of journalism I am not interested in the journalism industry or a journalism company. The goal for both of which would be the same for any industry (protecting itself as an economic good) or company (increasing revenue).

  The tagline for my blog is "journalism is a process, not a product," and that continues to be my rallying cry. Too often our ethics, ideas of success and end goals are determined by journalism as a product, industry or company. I am more interested in the process of journalism. What is the end goal for an act of journalism?

  Now here I have to posit a question: If an act of journalism is committed but never published, is it an act of journalism?

  Many people don't know this, but I used to be a musician. I've actually recorded at least two albums. But I never promoted my work. So if a work of art is not shared, is it art? What is the distinction between art and hobby? Related: If an act of reporting occurs but is not shared, is it journalism? What is the distinction between journalism and journaling?

  I ask this question because it gives me the platform to pose a possible end goal of journalism -- to inform. Journalism, which is a tricky thing to define, is the process of collecting, filtering and distributing information that has meaning. One caveat of course is that the information is non-fiction (true and accurate).

  If we take away the "distributing" of information we no longer have the process of journalism. It is the final step in the process because it is the final Telos of journalism -- to inform our fellow human beings. Size of the audience aside, journalism is fundamentally a process of education. But when we look at the conversation about journalism, those two words are most often coupled around journalism education (journalism schools) and rarely about how the two endeavors are intimately tied.

  Informing is Participatory

  
  

  So the goal of journalism is to inform people about events in the world. This is fundamentally a social act and would remain the goal of journalism if we lived in a democracy, republic or any other kind of society.

  Historically speaking, the "participation" of journalism consumers was to consume. That is a form of participation, but not necessarily the kind that I wan to justify. If it were, this blog post could have been much shorter: "We can justify transparency in journalism because people need to be able to read it!"

  The kind of participation that I want to argue for is more engaging. Members of the public are not participating by the sheer act of be informed, but they are self-informing. It's the difference between roads that make public transportation possible and roads that make all forms of transportation possible.

  Why Individual Participation is Ethical

  And herein lies the base of this whole thought process. It comes down to the individual. It is the individual, as part of a collective, that journalism seeks to inform. The individual should be actively participating in the dissemination of information for several reasons:

  1. On a utilitarian level, they will become more informed and help inform more people. If the good of journalism is to inform, then letting more people participate will inform more people. Similarly, the mission of roads is to enable travel/transportation, not to safeguard public transportation. (There could be unintended consequences, of source, such as pollution.) The mission of journalism is to inform, not to safeguard journalism companies. A network has infinity more connections and that requires active participation and self-informed informants.

  2. They have a moral right as an individual to participate to the extent that they do not hinder others from participating. (See individualism).

  Anti-climactic?

  So, to review:

  • Transparency is required for well-informed participation to happen.
  • Participation is needed because....
  • Journalism's end goal is to inform other people.
  • More people participating in the process of journalism means more people being informed.
  • Combine this with individual rights and ...

  The journalism industry has a moral obligation to make the practices and processes of journalism more transparent so that the larger citizenry can participate.

  Behind the lack of climax

  Perhaps I could have shortened this blog post. I made every attempt to go step-by-step and lay out my line or reasoning.

  Why?

  Too often our discussion of participatory journalism, citizen journalism, etc takes an industry or company view. Either citizen journalism is good or bad because of its relationship to a bottom line.

  Slighter better arguments are that participatory journalism is good/bad because of its quality (or lack of).

  What I'm suggesting is that participation in the media is a net positive because of its intrinsic value.

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-22

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Getting started with your Android phone (Welcome Droid Incredible owners!) | Android Central I'm working my way through this. It's a good android for newbies who have a Droid Incredible. Rambles a bit, but a useful starting point. (tags: Android mobile tutorial)
  • How to sync Android with Mac | eHow.com "Goodbye iPhone, because Android, the new kid on the block, can completely sync with Mac also. Android can sync with Mac's iCal, Adress Book, and even iTunes. So you can get all your pictures, songs, album art, calendar dates, address book, podcasts, and more.

    "This makes the need for MobileME obsolete. Because now, whatever you add to your iCal can automatically be synced with your Android cell phone, and vice versa. This also means that contacts can be changed either on Android or Mac and the other will automatically be synced. Pretty cool huh? Let's get started!"

    (tags: Android Mac tutorial integration)

  

• July 21, 2010
• 23:00

  Creating Open Space Takes Politics and Planning

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  Despite a lack of money and land, New York and other cities have created open space in the last decades. A new book looks at how urban areas can provide more green amid the gray.

• 14:54

  Jennifer Gaie Hellum on "Creating a Flickr Account Suitable for an Aspiring Multimedia Journalist"

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  Where does your personal photostream end and your professional one begin?

  If you're a journalist asking that question, Jennifer Gaie Hellum at the University of Arizona's Cronkite School has a nice post for you. Turns out, it's not as simple as you think, at least if you're new to Flickr.

  Among the items of advice, given that it's nearly impossible to "professionalize" a Flickr photostream that started off with personal items, are:

  1. Think through what you want to accomplish with your account before you set it up. If the Flickr support team comes through for me in the end, I’ll be the first to give them a thumbs-up. But I urge you to think it through before you start so you won’t go through the frustration I have in trying to make changes.
  2. Use your professional name as your Flickr web address and screen name. As much as possible, use the same name on all your social media accounts to maximize your search potential.
  3. Create “sets” of photos that address the kind of work you want to do. Journalists increasingly are responsible for shooting photos as well as gathering stories. If you are considering a particular beat, think of the kind of images associated with the stories you’d be telling and seek opportunities to take photos of people and scenes that would accompany those stories. Organize and label your photos on your Flickr page so it’s ready to be linked to your professional portfolio site.
  4. Be your own photo editor. Flickr only allows you a limited amount of uploads per month, so you need to be selective. Show your best work. [Limited uploads only apply to free accounts...but the "be selective" advice is still key -- AW]
  5. Find a separate forum for sharing personal photos. If a photo doesn’t tell a story, capture a detail or share a compelling, well-composed image, save it for Facebook or some other personal photo-sharing account.
  6. Decide what you want to say through your photostream. Perhaps you aspire to be an award-winning photo journalist. Or maybe you simply want an employer to know that you know how to compose a picture and use a photo-sharing site. Having a Flickr account will allow the public access to your work and evaluate your level of talent, so make sure it supports you career goals.
  7. If you are serious about photography, consider joining Flickr groups. Take the time to comment on others’ photos and invite discussion about yours. Actively participating in a social network of photography enthusiasts can earn you “testimonials” on the site and will highlight your commitment to the craft.

• 14:22

  How to Gauge Success Using New Metrics

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  Last week, I met with two people from a non-profit in Phoenix that looks at progressive policies to balance economic development with the environment. Land use and livable communities are two of their key talking points, so it seems logical that they should be aware of a service that encourages and enables people to use light rail to get around the inner city, right? For those unaware, that describes our Knight Foundation-funded project, CityCircles.

  As we discussed CityCircles during the meeting, the inevitable question arose: How much traffic are you getting?

  The answer, in all honesty, is not much at the moment.

  But "hits" -- or page views, or unique visits, or whatever traditional web metric you choose to use here -- is not what we're looking for at CityCircles.

  Our project is less about "how many" people are using the service and more about "how" people are using it: How they are interacting with it, with each other, and with the light rail community at-large as a result of our existence. I bring this up because it will inevitably be part of any early discussion you may have about your own startup.

  The Battle For the Top of Search Results

  Your answer will obviously be critical to how the project is perceived. For us, we do our best to follow how web usage is developing as new startups go live. One particularly interesting development is the mile-wide content creators like Demand Media, Associated Content and other related sites. (See the ongoing feature on these kind of content farms being published this week at MediaShift.)

  In general, these companies pay writers of a general skill level to write about almost every topic under the sun for an extremely, ahem, modest fee. They are essentially choosing quantity over quality as their business model. (However, that is in the eye of the beholder, as any piece of content is capable of being high-quality to a particular user if it's exactly what they're looking for at exactly the right time. It just tends to be something that won't win any major journalism accolades.)

  A really great story on this topic -- with a really great volley of thoughtful comments -- came out earlier this month on The Wrap.

  There's a lot there to contemplate, but what I prefer to ponder is a post written by FoundingDulcinea's Mark Moran in December 2009.

  He argues -- successfully, in my mind -- that sites like Associated Content and others will, over time, kill search engines' usefulness (if the search companies don't address this issue). The deluge of content from thousands of writers on multiple topics will come to dominate the top search rankings, thus diminishing the utility each user gets from that search. As some have noted, certain searches require you to wade through posts to get to the deeper results on a topic you are interested in, and this equates to being invisible in search because few users click past the first page or two of search results.

  Metrics to Consider

  Why do I bring this up for potential startups?

  The impact these sort of sites can have may force you to re-think your own metrics. If page views work for you (and you should think beyond that), then that's great. Just remember to follow developments that impact search engines, because that is where validation for your project will come from as you talk to potential stakeholders.

  If you'd like to consider other options, here are a few metrics we are tracking under our grant:

  • Number of registered users
  • Number of posts
  • Number of comments on those posts
  • Number of community improvement projects completed
  • Most frequently visited landing pages for light rail stops
  • Length of time spent on our mobile website (train schedules)
  • Interviews with users at our light rail events (anecdotal stories about light rail use)
  • Number and type of merchants participating in our light rail events

  Food for thought -- especially at a time when startups have to score millions of page views to attract a whiff of advertising money, if that's your business model. Our model is based on a deeper experience of use, not just information consumption.

  Start thinking ahead to answer that inevitable question.

• 11:30

  Writers Explain What It's Like Toiling on the Content Farm

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  "We are going to be the largest net hirer of journalists in the world next year," AOL's media and studios division president David Eun said last month in an interview with Michael Learmonth of Ad Age. Eun suggested that AOL could double its existing stable of 500 full-time editorial staffers in addition to expanding its network of 40,000 freelance contributors. Many of the jobs will be added to its hyper-local venture, Patch, while the majority of AOL's freelancers will work for the company's content farms -- Seed and the recently acquired video production operation, StudioNow.

  These two areas into which AOL is ambitiously expanding are the fastest growing sectors of the journalism market. Hyper-local networks like Outside.in and content farms such as Demand Media are flourishing. As Eun's bold prediction indicates, more and more journalists will end up working for new online content producers. What will these new gigs be like? To better understand, I reached out to people who have already worked with some of the big players.

  Life of a 'Content Creator'

  "A lot of my friends did it and we had a lot of fun with it," said one graduate of a top journalism graduate program when asked about her work for Demand Media. "We just made fun of whatever we wrote."

  The former "content creator" -- that's what Demand CEO Richard Rosenblatt calls his freelance contributors -- asked to be identified only as a working journalist for fear of "embarrassing" her current employer with her content farm-hand past. She began working for Demand in 2008, a year after graduating with honors from a prestigious journalism program. It was simply a way for her to make some easy money. In addition to working as a barista and freelance journalist, she wrote two or three posts a week for Demand on "anything that I could remotely punch out quickly."

  The articles she wrote -- all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list -- included How to Wear a Sweater Vest" and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed," even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog.

  

  "I was completely aware that I was writing crap," she said. "I was like, 'I hope to God people don't read my advice on how to make gin at home because they'll probably poison themselves.'

  "Never trust anything you read on eHow.com," she said, referring to one of Demand Media's high-traffic websites, on which most of her clips appeared.

  Although chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford has touted Demand's ability to give freelancers a byline and get their pieces published to "a great place on the web," the successful writers I interviewed made great efforts to conceal their identities while working for the content farm.

  The prospect of seeing their names in the travel section of USAToday.com or the small business page of the Houston Chronicle's website -- two newspaper sites where Demand now contributes content -- did not interest them. The working journalist who previously wrote for Demand is only listed as "an eHow Contributing Writer" on her pieces while Christopher, another Demand freelancer I spoke with who asked to only be identified by his first name, chooses to write under a pen name.

  (Note: MediaShift tried multiple times to get Demand Media to talk to us on the record for this series, but they declined, saying they were not doing media interviews due to competitive reasons.)

  Churning it Out

  Like the working journalist, Christopher cited Demand's compensation as his primary reason for working with the company. For the past two years he has written for the company to supplement the salary he earns as an adjunct professor at a mid-sized Midwestern university. Although Demand pays only a meager $15 or so per piece, by choosing easy prompts and writing them up very quickly, Christopher managed to collect a tidy sum for his time and effort. Christopher forces himself to pump out a minimum of three per hour for three hours a day. "For me it's always the hourly rate," he said. "I won't [write for Demand] if I feel I can make money doing something else."

  Christopher has tried other content farms but keeps coming back to Demand Studios. Lured by higher per-article pay rates from AOL's Seed, he wrote three pieces, only one of which was published. Unlike at Demand or Yahoo's Associated Content, which pays as little as $0.05 a piece, Seed freelancers cannot claim a given topic. So even though this actual story request for a thousand word piece on post-traumatic stress disorder among doctors and nurses in the military might earn a freelance journalist $205, they could also earn absolutely nothing for their labor.

  Seed of Hope?

  As Yolander Prinzel of the blog All Freelance Writing explained, to freelance for Seed, you must create "content on spec, without any real direction and cross your fingers hoping you didn't just waste your time ... You and goodness knows how many other writers all rush to find that magical, mystical voice that will satisfy the faceless editors."

  Unable to determine what had caused Seed to buy one of his pieces for $30 and reject the other two without any substantial feedback, Christopher told me he "just said screw it. It's so random."

  

  Other AOL contributors have had better luck with Seed. Since February, Megan Cottrell has been a regular contributor to Wallet Pop, a consumer finance site owned by AOL.

  Although Cottrell uses the Seed system to post and edit stories, her clips owe less to a mastery of SEO alchemy than to old fashioned networking: She began working with Seed after she met one of Wallet Pop's editors.

  "I haven't done Seed the way it's set up [to work for most writers]," she told me. "I've pitched stories to [the Wallet Pop blog] Money College and had stories assigned to me."

  Although Cottrell's experience is likely very different from that of most Seed freelancers, AOL's use of her writing is indicative of how the company aims to leverage the work produced from the content farm. A story she wrote about student loan debt was featured in the slidebar at the top of AOL's home page. Homegrown content from Seed can be featured or linked to on multiple platforms, all of which can earn the company valuable page views and the corresponding ad dollars.

  According to a MediaShift interview with Brian Farnham, the editor-in-chief of AOL's hyper-local venture Patch, using content from Seed "is something we're testing and exploring, to exploit if we can, and enhance the local professionally done journalism that we're doing."

  In an upcoming story this week, I will take a look at what it's like to work at Patch, as well as other hyper-local ventures.

  *****

  Have you worked for a content farm? Would you consider doing so? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

  To read more stories in the Beyond Content Farms series go here.

  MediaShift Editorial Intern Davis Shaver contributed to this article.

  Corbin Hiar is the DC-based editorial assistant at MediaShift. He is a regular contributor to More Intelligent Life, an online arts and culture publication of the Economist Group, and has also written about environmental issues on Economist.com and the website of The New Republic. Before Corbin moved to the Capital to join the Ben Bagdikian Fellowship Program at Mother Jones, he worked a web internship at The Nation in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @CorbinHiar.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 10:13

  White's Moonlight

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  After we reported on who made the most outside of City Hall last year, a reader rightly pointed out that Councilmember Tom White, who is also the executive director of Queens Village Committee for Mental Health for J-CAP Inc., made $217,000 in addition to his council salary.

  The Conflicts of Interest Board, which keeps tabs on council members’ outside income, only reports in ranges.

  According to the organization’s 2008 tax filing, White devotes 35 hours a week to his position as chief executive officer there.

  Of the $9.9 million in revenue the committee took in in 2007, more than $2 million went to management costs.

  For a closer look, the filing is below. Take a look-see.

  Committee Filing

• July 20, 2010
• 23:00

  Moonlighting Council Members

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  City Council members get a base salary of $112,000. But that job still leaves some with ample opportunity to rake in other income. Our article and chart look at who made how much.
• 23:00

  Outside Income by Member

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  How much money did your council member make outside of City Hall lat year? Check out our member by member list.

• 17:54

  Dumbing Down Test Scores

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Last year Mayor Michael Bloomberg equated school test scores with patient survival rates in hospitals. Well if one is to use that analogy, a report released by the state Department of Education yesterday made it clear that patients — students — may not be dying but they are none too healthy either.

  Testing experts conducting a study for the state confirmed what many skeptics have long argued: The rising test scores recorded in the state as a whole and in the city came at least partly from simpler, more narrowly focused tests and a scale that made it easier for even struggling students to pass the standardized math and English tests.

  Regardless of what one thinks of high stakes testing, if the goal of a test is to indicate a student’s preparedness for future academic work and even life, New York’s don’t measure up. Many students considered proficient on the basis of middle school tests lack the skills to finish, let along thrive, in high school. If they manage to get to college, they need remedial work there. (The former head of the City Council higher education committee, Charles Barron said on numerous occasion that CUNY officials had complained to him about this.)

  Reaction after the jump.
  
  As the Post put it, “Eighth graders who score a 3 out of 4 on state math and reading tests have just a 52 percent chance of graduating high school, even though they’ve been told they’re on track. ”

  Or to view it another way, as Joanne Jacobs did: “‘Proficient’ on New York’s test was equivalent to the 45th percentile on national tests in 2006 …. , the study finds. By 2009, students at the 20th percentile on national tests were being labeled proficient in New York.”

  “We haven’t been testing the right things in the right ways,” state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said in a statement. She said the state would raise “cut scores” for the different levels of proficiency, make exams longer and less predictable and test more areas. But, she continued, “More rigorous exams are only one piece of … a vision that includes a more challenging curriculum, better training for teachers and principals, and a world-class data system. ”

  The higher cutoff scores will go into effect on tests students took this spring, likely leading to greater failure rates than in recent years. Whether this will mean that some students who expected to be promoted will now have to repeat a grade remains to be seen.

  The report will not come as news to some teachers,
  said Robert Pondiscio in the Core Knowledge blog. He wrote, “For years, I saw fifth graders come into my Bronx classroom who were ostensibly on grade level yet demonstrated little command of basic arithmetic. That was plenty persuasive that all that glitters isn’t gold.”

  Some experts, such as education historian Diane Ravitch, questioned the Bloomberg schools’ success story. But by and large much of the mainstream media, many city politicians and the foundations and educators in other cities praised the Bloomberg Klein successes. The mayor rode to re-election partly on the basis of the higher test scores.

  In an editorial the Daily News professed itself shocked, shocked, by the latest findings. “Students, parents, teachers and principals “are about to learn that education in New York is not what it was cracked up to be,” it said on Sunday, adding, “Over the last four years, the number of children deemed “proficient” on standardized English and math exams has steadily climbed, particularly in the city. … There is fresh and stunning evidence that New York’s definition of ‘proficient’ has been a fraud.”

  Writing in Public School Parents, Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, a frequent Bloomberg critic, said, “What are the chances that now that Bloomberg has successfully won his battle to retain nearly unlimited control over our schools, and is in the midst of his third term, the editors of the News and the Times will apologize to their readers, and admit that the smell they’ve told us was roses was really an artificial chemical?”

  While education officials in some cities expressed concern about the move toward tougher testing, Klein said he supported it. The education department also said the city results hold up because students in the five boroughs also recorded gains on national tests. (Actually that was a bit of a mixed bag.) “We’re proud that New York City students have far outpaced the rest of the state in recent years, demonstrating undeniable progress,” said city Education Department spokesman Matthew Mittenthal.

  But one of the testing experts, Daniel Koretz, remained skeptical. “When one district shows bigger gains than another, it is not a reliable measure of anything,” he said.

• 16:05

  AOL Patch and MainStreetConnect Expand Hyper-Local News

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  It's difficult for media people to search any job site these days without running into an ad for AOL's Patch. It seems equally difficult to read media news sites without finding a feature story about Connecticut's MainStreetConnect. MainStreetConnect has appeared in recent days in both Columbia Journalism Review and Journalism.co.uk. Like Patch, the community news organization is hiring, though on a smaller scale as it expands from four sites to 10.

  The attention being paid to them isn't surprising: These two companies are leading the charge to create a new, sustainable model for hyper-local, online community news. Both are pursuing a strategy based on scale and local reporting, both are still experimenting and looking for ways to generate revenue -- and both have big national ambitions.

  "We've sort of built the car and now we're tweaking it," said Carll Tucker, founder of MainStreetConnect.

  Strategy and Some Local News History

  For Tucker and AOL's Patch, which now has 83 sites, the goal is to attract advertising aimed at local audiences. They hope to do this by providing content generated by an inexpensive workforce that has been grouped strategically to leverage resources. In that respect, the methods echo the techniques traditional newspapers used during the suburban wars of the 1980s and early 1990s.

  In those days, metro dailies fought smaller newspapers in the suburbs for advertising supremacy by providing local news through targeted zones. One of the bloodiest battles happened in Atlanta, when the New York Times bought the suburban Gwinnett Daily News and went head-to-head with the Atlanta Constitution.

  The preferred tactic at the time was to flood the zone with inexpensive local content. But in the years since, metro dailies have scaled back circulation and news coverage, leaving a vacuum of under-served businesses and local readers. Those are the advertising and reader markets that Patch and MainStreetConnect are targeting.

  "Community business is the worst-served market in America," Tucker said in a May interview I conducted with him. He noted that, "This company could not have been started five years ago" because the vacuum in the local advertising market was not as large as it is now.

  Patch executives say that local readers also feel under-served.

  "People are way more hungry for news at their local level than even we imagined," said Brian Farnham, editor in chief of Patch. "There's a lot of good sources for news existing at the national level and beyond, but at the local level the cohesive experience is missing."

  Site Design and Sharing

  Tucker has built his sites with colorful tabs that reflect the vertical advertising markets that were the mainstays of traditional newspapers: "Wheels," "Real Estate, "Food, "Wellness," and "Home and Garden." Those pages hold feature stories that almost always include a local businessperson. These stories are often shared between contiguous sites. The pages also hold business directories for advertisers. The "Wheels" sections at MainStreetConnect sites also display large auto ads.

  

  Tucker has a deep newspaper background with The Patent Trader, which he said covered 90,000 people over 10 towns before Gannett bought it in 1999. His company, which plans to have eventual affiliates across the country, began with the core of four Connecticut sites, with the flagship, TheDailyNorwalk.com, in Norwalk, Conn. Since mid-May, it has added six sites:

  • TheDailyNewCanaan.com
  • TheDailyWilton.com
  • TheDailyWeston.com
  • TheDailyEaston.com
  • TheDailyStanford.com
  • TheDailyGreenwich.com

  The other three original sites are:

  • TheDailyWestport.com
  • TheDailyDarien.com
  • TheDailyFairfield.com

  The company's current goal is to expand to 50 sites by the end of the year, with 12 in Fairfield County, Conn. When we spoke in May, Tucker downplayed any competition with Patch, even though Patch is in some of the same territory in relatively wealthy Connecticut. Norwalk had an estimated median household income in 2007 of $70,672, and the national average was $50,233 for that year, according to the U.S. Census. Patch also has sites in Fairfield and Westport, just like MainStreetConnect.

  "In no way do we compete with them," Tucker had said. When we spoke again this month, he explained that his company's focus is on covering local people, including local business owners, with the goal of attracting "Main Street moms."

  Patch's sites have more subtle design and more social-networking features, such as "boards," which are like Facebook walls and are where readers can send feedback to specific writers. Those writers have profiles that list their current stories and sometimes recent tweets, as well as bio information and a statement of political and religious beliefs.
  Patch's focus appears to be more on hard news.

  For example, a fire in early July in White Plains, N.Y., injured 33 people and destroyed seven businesses. The Patch news story ran in clustered New York Patch sites: The Rye Patch, the Harrison Patch, the Yorktown Patch, the Scarsdale Patch, and likely others, with local sidebars, video and photos.

  Advertising and Visibility Packages

  MainStreetConnect's ads are sold as "annual visibility packages." In May, Tucker said the smallest "visibility package" the company aimed to sell cost between $5,000 to $6,000.
  In our recent interview, he said the company has found ways to accommodate smaller businesses with less immediately available funds. Some advertising can cost as little as $60 to $70 a week.

  "We've widened our net for our smaller advertisers," he said, noting that the company has had local success with real estate ads, hospital ads and banks.

  "It's not about a price; it's about what you get for the money," he said.

  Tucker explained that the company's visibility packages include extra service, such as a salute to advertisers' customers in the upper right of site pages, in a feature called "Our customer comes first!" These include the company name and a photo and name of a customer.

  At Patch, Farnham said the advertising focus goes beyond banner ads to directories and self-service ads as well.

  "We think the applications that are most interesting are around our listings operation," he said. "We're sending teams to communities who will go door to door and collect data about those places, structure it in our templates, and have a really rich Yellow Pages."

  Yes, They Have Job Openings

  AOL's Patch continues to recruit editors and open sites across the country, with sites up in California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. New sites are promised soon in Illinois, Rhode Island and Maryland. The company was recruiting in early July for more than 20 editor positions in the suburbs of Atlanta and Los Angeles. Farnham, the Patch editor in chief, said the company is looking for tomorrow's journalists.

  "It's basically one full-time professional editor, who is the reporter and editor and curator of that site, and they also hire local contributors and freelancers to round out that coverage," he said. "You're not thinking about column inches, you're trying to get up-to-the-minute information out there. Should this be a video or a slideshow or some other sort of multimedia?"

  MainStreetConnect is also hiring, on a smaller scale, with ads on Mediabistro and Indeed.com. It is seeking experienced news reporters with five to 10 years of experience, preferably in local newspapers and with local knowledge.

  Top staffers get a salary of about $40,000 a year, and rookies get less, Tucker said. His wife, personal finance writer Jane Bryant Quinn, serves as editorial director and coaches journalists on writing skills and headline writing. Twenty newsroom employees produce content for the 10 sites. The stories focus on local people, and the company currently does not rely on user-generated content.

  "News gathering is a real profession," Tucker said. "Citizen journalism is a completely false rabbit. It's simply not going to succeed."

  Patch, by contrast, solicits citizen contributions for news tips, feedback and announcements and calendars.

  What Happens Next?

  Both Farnham and Tucker spoke about the move into hyper-local online sites as experimental, with adjustments along the way.

  "We're learning as fast as we can," said Tucker, mentioning his local advisory boards and social media.

  Farnham acknowledged that Patch is moving into some territory where local online ecosystems are already well formed.

  "What we do when we come into a market is certainly not just announce, 'Hey we're the only game in town,' " he said. "What we want to offer is a cohesive comprehensive experience. There is that ecosystem."

  Farnham said the company is open to working with others.

  "We are always open to exploring ways we can work with existing media outlets in communities where we are launching a Patch site. No option is closed off."

  Tucker's company was formed with the idea of franchises or affiliates, and he said partners aren't out of the question. "We have had interesting conversations with many of the major players," he said.

  For both, the focus is finding a way to make money to sustain local journalism. "There's no free press unless it's a profitable press," Tucker said.

  To read more stories in the Beyond Content Farms series go here.

  MediaShift editorial intern Davis Shaver contributed to this article.

  Andria Krewson is editor for two community sections of the McClatchy-owned Charlotte Observer in Charlotte, N.C. She posts at Global Vue and is @underoak on Twitter.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 13:01

  Nonpartisan Elections, Continued

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Once again, non-partisan elections — or top two to use the current jargon — dominated a Charter Revision Commission hearing at Brooklyn College last night. But if proponents dominated at a hearing last month in the Bronx, this time opponents made their voices heard.

  A number of people, some bearing signs from New York Communities for Change and others wearing union t-shirts, made their opposition to the idea known by waving sign, applauding and even jeering – much as Independence Party members had done for the other side in the earlier hearing.

  This even though the evening kicked off with a more than hour-long presentation by Citizens Union. Although the good government group — whose sister organization publishes Gotham Gazette — has issued a report with some 50 charter recommendations aimed, executive director Dick Dadey, said at increasing participation in elections and government decisions making, it devoted much of its time to pushing for a plan that would create one primary for all candidates in which any registered voter — party member of nor — could vote. The top two vote getters, again regardless of party would then go head-to-head in a general election.

  Although Mayor Michael Bloomberg is known to support such a scheme — and unsuccessfully pushed for in 2003 — the proposal is not included in the commission staff’s preliminary draft report. The Citizen Union presentation was an effort to try to persuade the commission to reverse its staff and put the idea on the ballot.

  In their comments Citizens Union officials cited declining voter turnout and the fact that many elections were decided in the Democratic primary — not open to some 1.5 million registered New York voters who are not Democrats. While other ideas — changing the voting calendar, for example, or allowing Election Day registration — might increase turnout — Dadey said, “Top two is the best way the charter commission can open up the process.”

  Both Dadey and Citizen Union board member John Avlon portrayed top two as a way to loosen the grip of special interest, including union and the Democratic Party. Dadey described Democrats as having “a stranglehold” on the city.

  Others who spoke, though, saw the wealthy as the ones wielding power. Citing the expanding role of money and self-financed rich candidates, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio warned, “Nonpartisan elections would lend fuel to this already raging fire.” He called on the commission to do what I could to “stop the expanding influence of money in a democracy.”

  Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer agreed, describing top two as “a reckless proposal that leave parties vulnerable to billionaires steamrolling elections.” And a representative of the Green Party called Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s billions “the greatest threat to democracy at this point.”

  Merits of top two aside, some commissioners seemed reluctant to put it on the ballot in November, questioning whether voters would have enough time to consider its carefully. In deciding what to propose, commission chair Matthew Goldstein said, the body should consider, “do we have enough time to analyze the issue… Do we have enough time to educate the voters …, and do we have enough comfort that what we bring forward will have the possibility of success?”

  Some commissioners who said they favored a nonpartisan or top two system worried about that last point. “The perfect could be the enemy of the good,” said commissioner Kathryn Patterson. “If we have other proposals, could top two jeopardize them?”

  Noting 70 percent of voter said no to nonpartisan elections in 2003 , Stephen Fiala said it might be too risky to put it on the ballot now. If, he said, special interests and the political parties prevail and again defeat the idea “then we will have lost for certain the opportunity … to really push this as an issue.”

  Both Dadey and Avlon, though, said much had changed since 2003. This time around, they said, that the measure, as part of a package of other ideas, could win voter approval.

• 10:53

  Real Names – The View Shared with BBC Radio 4 and more

   » ‎ Steven Clift

  The other day I had the privilege of participating in a debate on BBC Radio 4’s You and Your’s program about anonymity in online commenting. Have a listen.

  At the Guardian’s Active conference I asked, why major online news sites are so content with empowering the angriest people in society with the design of their online news commenting systems. I am personally most interested in the local level where I see the mainstream media with online news commenting essentially promoting division and discord by intent online in local communities. They are not reflecting a conflicted society, they are giving mega phones to the 1% on the extremes and allowing the other 98% of us to be driven away. At some point I hope media sites begin to survey their communities on the damage to their own reputation for poor stewardship of online interactivity. Our own experience is that simply promoting real names as the default (and I recommend pre-moderating those unwilling or unable to stand behind their words with their real name) deals with 80% of the incivility problem.

  While I certainly oppose government requirements that people must use their real names online, I strongly encourage democratically spirited organizations to promote real names because it gives people far more power and influence not to mention making online spaces more attractive with greater civility. Facebook is eating the interactive lunch of online news sites stuck in the 20th Century of “no one knows you are a dog” online. That said, I don’t care if World of Warcraft uses aliases or real names (link to Guardian article that tipped off the BBC).

  Share/Bookmark

  

• 8:11

  Ninth Circuit Weighs In On Internet Anonymity, Consumer Griping At Risk

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision last Monday in Inre: Anonymous Online Speakers, No. 09-71265 (9th Cir. July 12, 2010), a case that could be influential for future courts deciding whether to order the identification of anonymous or pseudonymous Internet speakers.  In the course of a primarily procedural ruling, the appellate court suggested in dicta that an expansive category of "commercial speech" is entitled to reduced protection in anonymity cases.  As explained below, the decision could have negative consequences for consumers' ability to remain anonymous while speaking critically about products and services online.

  The case is part of a long-standing business dispute between Quixtar, Inc., successor to the Amway Corporation (which has since returned to that name), and Signature Management TEAM, LLC, which sells books, seminars, and motivational speaker appearances to the Independent Business Operators ("IBOs") that sell Quixtar's products.  In this action, Quixtar sued TEAM for tortious interference with contracts and business relations, premised on the allegation that TEAM carried out an online "smear campaign" aimed at inducing IBOs to terminate their contracts with Quixtar.

  In a deposition of a TEAM employee, Quixtar sought information about the identity of five anonymous Internet speakers, and the employee refused to answer.  Quixtar then moved to compel testimony about the authors of four blogs and a video that were critical of Quixtar management: “Save Us Dick DeVos,” “Q’Reilly,” “Integrity is TEAM,” “IBO Rebellion,” and “Hooded Angry Man." According to Quixtar, statements appearing on these sites were linked to TEAM and therefore supported Quixtar's claims of tortious interference, including: "Quixtar has regularly, but secretly, acknowledged that its products are overpriced and not sellable"; "Quixtar refused to pay bonuses to IBOs in good standing"; and "Quixtar currently suffers from systemic dishonesty."  Slip op. at 9911-12.

  After applying the Doe v. Cahill standard to the statements in question, the district court ordered the TEAM employee to disclose the identity of three of the five speakers. Both sides petitioned for a writ of mandamus seeking to overturn the ruling. The Ninth Circuit decision denied both of the mandamus requests on procedural grounds, emphasizing that mandamus is an "'extraordinary' remedy limited to 'extraordinary' causes." Slip op. at 9914.

  In the course of its decision, however, the appeals court characterized the statements at issue as commercial speech, which is afforded less constitutional protection than other types of expression. See generally Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Public Serv. Comm’n, 447 U.S. 557 (1980) (holding that truthful, non-misleading commercial speech is entitled to constitutional protection, though less than other constitutionally guaranteed expression).  The Ninth Circuit wrote:

  The Internet postings and video at issue in the petition and cross-petition are best described as types of "expression related solely to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience" and are thus properly categorized as commercial speech.  The claimed disparagement goes to the heart of Quixtar's commercial practices and its business operations.

  Slip op. at 9913-14.  Having made this determination, the court distinguished Cahill as involving political speech and reasoned that, when dealing with commercial speech, "Cahill's bar extends too far." Slip op. at 9920. The court offered up the following general principle:

  [W]e suggest that the nature of the speech should be a driving force in choosing a standard by which to balance the rights of anonymous speakers in discovery disputes. For example, in discovery disputes involving the identity of anonymous speakers, the notion that commercial speech should be afforded less protection than political, religious, or literary speech is hardly a novel principle. The specific circumstances surrounding the speech serve to give context to the balancing exercise.

  Id. In formulating its approach, the court relied on two federal appellate decisions, NLRB v. Midland Daily News, 151 F.3d 472 (6th Cir. 1998) (involving a government agency's motion to compel a newspaper to answer a subpoena identifying an anonymous advertiser), and Lefkoe v. Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Inc., 577 F.3d 240 (4th Cir. 2009) (allowing deposition of an anonymous speaker in a securities fraud class action).  The court also relied on the Supreme Court's recent decision in Doe v. Reed, 09-559 (U.S. June 24, 2010), which held that signatories of referendum petitions generally do not have a constitutional right to keep their identities secret, but that courts should consider in individual cases whether a particular referendum presents sufficiently unique circumstances so that anonymity is required.

  While the Ninth Circuit is correct that the First Amendment generally extends less protection to commercial speech, its decision is troubling for a couple of reasons.  First, the court's sense of what qualifies as commercial speech seems unduly broad. It is hard to draw a principled distinction between the derogatory statements here (e.g., "Quixtar currently suffers from systemic dishonesty") from some of the more extreme statements that might appear on a consumer review site or gripe site. Certainly, it would not be too difficult for a business plaintiff to characterize an outraged customer's commentary on Yelp, Consumeraffairs.com, or a free-standing gripe site as "related solely to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience" and going "to the heart of [the plaintiff's] commercial practices and its business operations." As Wendy Davis succinctly put it last week: "If criticizing another company's business operations is 'commercial speech,' then every post on a gripe site couldbe considered commercial."

  Relatedly, Paul Levy points out that the Ninth Circuit seems to have simply accepted Quixtar's theory of the case in characterizing the speech in question as commercial: 

  To be sure, it is commercial on Quixtar’s theory of the case (derogatory comments posted by a rival for the purpose of stealing business), but the same could be said in any Cahill-type case – on the plaintiff’s legal theory, the Doe’s speech is unprotected by the First Amendment because, for example, it is false statements of fact made with actual malice.   Yet that has never been enough to overcome the right of anonymous speech.  Hopefully there was some basis in the record other than the plaintiff’s say-so for finding the speech commercial.

  The court's circular reasoning could tilt the scales in favor of disclosure in every defamation case, where plaintiff by definition claim that the speech in question is not entitled to any First Amendment protection at all. And as Paul suggests, the Ninth Circuit's approach will simply encourage plaintiffs to characterize all criticism of their businesses as a competitor's smear campaign as opposed to legitimate consumer criticism.  The whole point of the Dendrite and Cahill tests is to make sure that plaintiffs can support such allegations with at least some minimal factual basis before they get what they want.

  Photo "Fight the power" courtesy of Flickr user C-Monster, licensed under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic.

  

• July 19, 2010
• 23:00

  Seeking a Greener Life After Wall Street

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  Looking to an environmentally friendly future, a city program trains former Wall Street professionals to work in a green economy. Enthusiasm runs high, but will the jobs follow?

• 22:10

  From the classroom to the digital marketplace: How we got to launch

   » ‎ Online Journalism Review
  By Pamela Moreland: The team behind foodgal.com called my bluff. Well, maybe I wasn’t bluffing. Maybe I am ready to become a digital media entrepreneur. We’ll find out on Thursday (July 22, 2010). Here’s the back story. I took a buyout from the San Jose Mercury News in March 2008. I was the AME for Features when I left. My intent was to start my own digital media company. During my 20-plus years in journalism, I had supervised the creation of news and feature sections, redesigns and special projects. That was on top of meeting daily deadlines. With my three years as the Merc’s newsroom-based Online Team Leader for mercurynews.com, I had hands-on experience with news sites and felt the exhilarating rush that comes with Web publishing. I started Golden Wheel Communications (GWC), a digital news and information company. I talked a good game. I went to workshops financing startups. I attended KDMC’s Media News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. I took a Stanford night class called “Running Internet Advertising Campaigns.” But I never launched a Web product.

• 17:26

  Change the world with social networking

   » ‎ J.D. Lasica
  
  
  

  Change the world with social networking from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

   

  A chat with Deanna Zandt, author of the new book ‘Share This!’

  At Personal Democracy Forum last month I got a chance to sit down for a few minutes with Deanna Zandt, who spoke on the main stage minutes beforehand. Her new book, Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking, just came out.

  “Empathy is the building block for any kind of social change,” she says in the interview. “It’s leading us away from apathy and isolation.”

  While the new social tools are empowering, she called on people to go further and to “rearrange power relationships” and to “dismantle hierarchies.” That can be achieved, Zandt said, through “three easy tasks”:

  1. to be authentic by sharing pieces of ourselves;
  2. to diversify and cross-pollinate across barriers. For instance, tech conference speakers are generally white and male. “I want to challenge people to find people who don’t think like them or talk like them.”
  3. to take that empathy and put yourself in others’ shoes.

  Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

  AlterNet is hosting a book launch party for Deanna tomorrow in San Francisco. Details:

  What: Book launch for Share This! See invitation page on Facebook — 45 confirmed attendees so far

  When: July 20, 6–9 pm

  Where: Bender’s Bar & Grill, 806 S Van Ness Ave., San Francisco

  From the book’s site:

  As social media becomes increasingly present in our everyday lives, a major democratic cultural shift is underway. Through the power of relationships, sharing of experiences, and organizing online, previously marginalized voices are pouring into and shaping public conversations like never before.

  But serious change will not happen on its own. Despite the increasing presence of a diversity of voices and faces, the Internet isn’t fulfilling its disruptive potential; more often than not, it’s simply replicating and amplifying inequality and segregation. The good news? The fundamental building block common to every social movement is the power of the narrative. Your story… and your willingness to share others’ stories with your networks… can mean the difference between progressive change and perpetuating the status quo. We need you here, building and mapping your relationships, sharing your experience and creating pipelines of empathy and trust that will change the world.

  This book is a blueprint for understanding why and how this medium of exchange works, and how our personal stories and daily experiences comprise a profoundly political picture that leads to social action and social change.

  I won’t be able to make tomorrow’s event but I’ll be there in spirit. Good luck with the book tour, Deanna!

  JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

  Related posts:

  1. The Power To Change The World Summit
  2. Socialbrite: Social tools for social change
  3. Social media meets the real world

• 17:22

  Your Guide to Next Generation 'Content Farms'

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  From time to time, we provide an overview of one broad MediaShift topic, annotated with online resources and plenty of tips. The idea is to help you understand the topic, learn the jargon, and take action. We've previously covered Twitter, local watchdog news sites, and Net neutrality, among other topics. This week MediaShift editorial intern Davis Shaver looks at the "content farm" phenomenon.

  As traditional news outlets continue to lay off journalists, a new generation of companies is betting big on online content. Their approaches differ significantly, but are all built on the common premise that for online content to be profitable, it has to be produced at a truly massive scale. The proliferation of these so-called "content farms" -- a name the companies predictably dislike -- has raised the ire of journalists and pundits alike.

  "If you want to know how our profession ends, look at Demand Media," wrote Jason Fry, a former Wall Street Journal columnist who edits Reinventing the Newsroom.

  Of course Demand Media is far from being the first online content company built on search-driven data. Both About.com and Weblogs Inc. built content based on popular search terms, and employed large teams of content producers and bloggers to create stories to help answer common questions.

  It's easy to see why Demand Media's strategy has been replicated by start-ups and start-arounds alike. When Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt discovered that algorithmically-generated assignments could generate 4.9 times the revenue of traditional editor-generated ideas, the sheer profitability of this new content paradigm guaranteed that companies like Demand Media would be viewed as outliers in the context of a news industry facing significant fiscal troubles.

  This is the first article in what will be a full week of PBS MediaShift special coverage dedicated to next generation content companies. We're calling this series "Beyond Content Farms" and each day will see us examine different aspects of these companies and what they mean for the web and the media world. Below is an overview of the major companies that are taking a "content farm" strategy of pushing out massive amounts of content, a primer that sets out some of the key players, what they do, and what their goals are.

  AOL

  Overview: When AOL severed ties with Time Warner last year, it took the opportunity to reinvent its failing business model, which had been predicated largely on it dial-up service. Under the leadership of CEO Tim Armstrong, AOL has embraced a mission of becoming the world's largest producer of high-quality content. A corollary goal: to be the world's largest net hirer of journalists next year.

  Brands: AOL's portal, AOL.com, serves more than 59 million people in the U.S. monthly, a firehose of traffic that the company can direct at a large portfolio of editorial brands, which include major sites such as AOL News, Black Voices, and Engadget.

  Content platform: AOL operates two major platforms for freelance content production. Seed, which AOL built itself, deals largely with the production of text-based and photographic content. StudioNow, which AOL bought this past winter for $36.5 million, caters to video production. Between the two platforms, AOL has access to more than 40,000 content creators, a small army that the company hopes to increasingly utilize in the coming months.

  Algorithm: Since the inception of its new content-based strategy, AOL has said that identifying content opportunities through demand/search data would be a major focus of the corporation. But nearly eight months later, AOL's David Mason, who runs its content platforms, said told me in an interview: "We are in our early days with demand technology. The floodgates have been somewhat shut and as months go by we'll see them open."

  Local: AOL has entered the local news space in a big way with Patch, which had 83 sites live in communities around the country as of early July and many more in the pipeline. Each site is run by a professional journalist who reports, edits, and curates. "What we're looking for is nothing less than tomorrow's journalists," said Patch editor in chief Brian Farnham in an interview with MediaShift. Editors are able to hire freelancers through Seed to round out coverage, namely to populate the community's business directory with rich content. "We're sending teams to communities who will go door to door and collect data about those places, structure it in our templates, and have a really rich Yellow Pages," said Farnham. "The concept of Patch was not just to find a reporter and editor, it was to create a modern online platform to digitize the town."

  Demand Media

  Overview: Demand Media seems to be headed towards a $1.5 billion IPO, proof positive enough for the many competitors who have since embraced its algorithmic approach to online content. This approach is necessary to achieve its daily production of 6,000 written and video-based pieces of content. CEO Richard Rosenblatt won't call the 10,000 people who produce content for Demand Studios journalists, but he believes Demand Media helps journalism by generating content and revenue for outlets that can "take that money to fund other reporting."

  Chief revenue officer Joanne Bradford (formerly at Yahoo) has said that the company's immediate goal is to outgrow AOL and then Yahoo, but that might be just the beginning. Rosenblatt has said that the company's true goal is to publish the world's content. The similarities with Google, whose mission is to organize the world's information, don't end there: Google was the last technology company to break $1 billion in its IPO.

  Brands: Demand Media's largest brand is eHow.com, home to 2 million "solutions" that reach more than 59 million people in the U.S. monthly. Other brands include Livestrong.com and Cracked.com. Demand Media is also the largest uploader to YouTube.

  Platform: Demand Studios is Demand Media's content platform. After titles are generated by the Demand Media algorithm (described below) and reviewed by title proofers, they are submitted as potential assignments for Demand Media's network of freelance content producers. For more information about how Demand Studios' editorial workflow functions, check out this BuzzMachine post by Jeff Jarvis interviewing Steven Kydd, who oversees production of content on the Demand Studios platform.

  Algorithm: The Demand Media algorithm, the most famous of its kind, received the fullest treatment to date in a Wired article published last fall. Kydd, the executive VP in charge of Demand Studios, explained the algorithm's purpose in a column published last December. "These algorithms help companies to predict this content will have an audience, an advertiser, and the ability to get traffic to an article or video before its creation," wrote Kydd. To accomplish this goal, the algorithm is fed data about what users are searching for or talking about on social networks, which keywords are being bought by advertisers, and what content is already available. Based on that information, the Demand Media algorithm generates bundles of keywords that are translated into meaningful headlines by a second algorithm called the Knowledge Engine. At that point, an editor proofs the headline and submits it as a potential assignment on the Demand Studios content platform.

  Local: Demand Media has not entered the local content market.

  Examiner.com

  Overview: With over 90,000 pieces of content published monthly, Examiner.com has filled out its 238 city sites and expanded its staff of "Examiners" to over 42,000. CEO Rick Blair told Forbes that he doesn't think the site is getting the respect its traffic deserves, especially when compared to less mature offerings like AOL's Patch initiative.

  Brands: Examiner.com attracts more than 13 million people in the U.S. monthly to its domain, which generates geo-targeted content depending on the location from which the user is accessing the site. Each of the Examiner.com city sites is populated with locally relevant content and filled out with nationally relevant or "evergreen" content. Much of the branding on the site derives from the writers themselves, who have titles like New York Celebrity Dog Examiner" and Commercial Real Estate Examiner". The site refers to its writers as "Examiners" and they are compensated based on a formula that factors in things such as traffic and ad clicks. The company is frank about saying that being an Examiner is at best a part-time gig for the vast majority of people.

  Platform: Examiner will soon launch a completely redesigned version of its website and content management system. It is moving to Drupal 7, and is currently training its Examiners on what to expect, and how to use the system. (More details about its training program will be featured in a subsequent report this week.)

  Algorithm: Examiner does not use an algorithm to assign content. Each Examiner is expected to generate her own content within an assigned category.

  Local: Examiner.com's main focus is local content, but Blair cautioned that, "We offer stories about the best bike trips in the city and where to go on the weekend. We're really not covering news."

  Yahoo

  Overview: Yahoo bought Associated Content for over $100 million this spring, some say as a step away from the high-cost content Yahoo was producing through a partnership with former NBC entertainment head Ben Silverman. The purchase greatly increased Yahoo's ability to produce content for its network. Associated Content had also been courted by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, an original investor in the company who was a college roommate of Associated Content founder Luke Beatty.

  Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has had trouble identifying the company's mission, but it is reported to be preparing a new product strategy that will be released later this month. Expect it to focus on four main areas of content: Premium, social, crowdsourced, and original.

  Brands: Yahoo's portal, Yahoo.com, reaches over 122 million people in the U.S. monthly. It also has popular verticals in a number of categories, including news and sports. AssociatedContent.com itself attracts more than 16 million people in the U.S. monthly.

  Platform: The Associated Content platform is home to more than 380,000 contributors. In contrast to Demand Studios, contributors do not need to complete an application process to begin accepting assignments or submitting content. The Associated Content editorial staff, which unlike Demand Studios and Seed.com is not composed of freelancers, review more than 50,000 pieces of content each month.

  Algorithm: Associated Content uses an algorithm to determine potentially profitable assignments, but hasn't said much about it publicly. However, with the influx of data from the Yahoo mothership, expect to see demand-driven content appear on an increasing number of Yahoo properties. Yahoo has already begun integrating demand data into the editorial practices of sites such as the Upshot, a new news blog run by Yahoo News.

  Local: CEO Carol Bartz has said that Yahoo users want to see more local content, adding credence to rumors that Yahoo is preparing for a major push into the local content market.

  More Reading

  In addition to the articles linked above, here are a few more stories about next generation content companies:

  Groups magnify chances of Google hits at Financial Times

  Content Farms Compete With Book Publishers, Not News Sites at Advertising Age

  Journalists Worried About Content Farms Are Missing The Point - The Web Has Always Been Filled With Crap at Techdirt

  Content 'Farms' - Killing Journalism -- While Making a Killing at The Wrap

  Jay Rosen Interviews Demand Media - Are Content Farms Demonic? at ReadWriteWeb

  Google eyes Demand Media's way with words at Financial Times

  The End Of Hand Crafted Content at TechCrunch

  Inside the Examiner.com Purchase of NowPublic - Hyper-Local Media at BNET

  To see all stories in the Beyond Content Farms series, go here".

  Davis Shaver is MediaShift's editorial intern. He is also the founder and publisher of Onward State, an online news organization at Penn State. He studies history and the intersection of science, technology, and society.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 16:14

  Dinkins for Schneiderman

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Sen. Eric Schneiderman was in Buffalo today picking up endorsements in his run for Attorney General but the biggest nod of the day came from former New York City Mayor David Dinkins.

  “I am pleased to endorse Eric Schneiderman, a man of principle and integrity, and a progressive leader for many years. Eric will be an excellent Attorney General who will work hard to ensure equal justice for all New Yorkers,”said Dinkins.

  “I’m proud to have the support of such a distinguished public servant and lifelong advocate for New York,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “As an elected official, civil rights leader, and humanitarian, Mayor Dinkins has spent his career breaking one glass ceiling after another. As Attorney General, I will continue the Mayor’s quest for progressive justice for all New Yorkers.”

  The race for Attorney General is heating up as all five Democratic candidates will spend the next two days debating. Tomorrow, City Hall will host a debate at 8 A.M. at the CUNY Graduate Center at 365 Fifth Avenue. The Citizens Union will host a debate on Wednesday at 6 P.M. at the same location.

• 14:29

  Toxic Lunch: Digesting the Latest ACTA Leak

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  

  The latest leak of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) came out a few days ago. Before we delve into the more troublesome elements of the agreement, let’s take a few moments to ponder how sad it is that our government continues to craft this agreement in secret.

  I have spilt much digital ink over the stupidity of overt secrecy. When you won’t show me what is behind the curtain, I want nothing more than to rend draped velvet. But if you just pull the fabric back and show me the fantastipotamus, I’ll quickly grow bored.

  The trade representatives crafting ACTA feigned that they understood this basic equation (openness + politics = mundane disinterest) when they finally released a draft of the long secret agreement a few months back. Granted, this release came after a series of leaks exposed the noxious text. But I thought there was a glimmer of hope that US negotiators might provide some of the transparency our current administration had promised.

  No such luck. The resumption of secrecy was all but announced when trade representatives would only show the text to the EU Parliament in camera, with the MEP’s forbidden to share the information with the public. I am happy to note that the representative from the Pirate Party, Christian Engstrom (arrgggh) walked out rather than take part in this Court of the Star Chamber.

  Thankfully this is not the end of the story. Because this agreement (which, let's recall, was supposed to be about counterfeit goods) threatens the internet access of citizens, as well as the safe harbors of Universities and ISPs, there will be no shortage of leaks to the web.
  

  The latest leak of ACTA signals that there might be trouble in overreaching-undemocratic-drafting-paradise. It seems that there is serious disagreement over Article 2.2 (Injunctions):
  

  The Parties [NZ/Mor/Mex: may] shall also ensure that right holders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe an intellectual property right.
  

  The United States and Japan seem to be considering the inclusion of this clause, while Australia, Mexico, and others oppose it.

  The clause is troubling because it could serve as a backdoor method for introducing three strikes cutoffs for accused users. One of the great fears around ACTA is that the agreement will cause ISPs to block service to accused users. This is certainly the goal of representatives of the entertainment industry. Indeed, the industry supported the three strikes HADOPI law in France (which the current regime is rethinking) and Lord Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill in England.  I don't think I need to revist why these measures are obscene. I have covered the arguments against these measures here and here.  When the latest ACTA draft was released, people cheered that the agreement did not mandate three strikes. However, the text encouraged such a method by providing a three strikes prohibition as the only example of a safe-harbor preserving ISP response.

  Article 2.2 suggests that injunctions may be served directly to ISP intermediaries, resulting in the cessation of internet access. That is, rather than serving and trying the accused pirate, the rights holders would target the risk adverse ISPs. Although it is likely that courts would not order a digital execution without hearing something from the accused, it is likely that ISPs would want to avoid the matter entirely by simply acceding to the right holder’s demands. Cf. the rampant abuse of DMCA take downs. Kimberlee Weatherall, a law lecturer at University of Queensland, voiced similar concerns for Australians and their ISPs, mutatis mutandis.

  Supporters of ACTA will claim that this doomsday interpretation is farfetched. I think that the track record of the entertainment industry and the clear push for a three strikes option counsel against that attack. However, I fully acknowledge that I tend to imagine the worst-case scenario when shadowy figures meet in smoke filled rooms and refuse calls for even the most basic transparency. If the ACTA negotiators would simply step into the light, I would no longer need to imagine secret rituals, swinging censers, and internet blocking collective punishments. So once again, I ask that this pointless secrecy cease. Be open. Be boring. Let politics be politics again.

  (Andrew Moshirnia is a rising third year at Harvard Law School. ACTA makes him a sad panda.) 

  

• 12:16

  South African Paper Uses Mobile Services to Engage Readers

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  
  In Grahamstown, South Africa, getting and sharing news is a mobile experience. Grocott's Mail, a local paper, incorporates mobile phones into many aspects of its news service -- from disseminating headlines via SMS, to encouraging readers to text in their opinions and making it a part of a Knight News Challenge-winning citizen journalist training program.

  The paper, which sells 6,400 copies each week, is a good example of how mobiles can create a richer news experience for both readers and publishers. Idea Lab contributor Harry Dugmore, is a professor at the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University. He runs the Iindaba Ziyafika citizen journalism program with Grocott's Mail.

  "The inspiration for the whole project is trying to democratize news and information and put it into the hands of more people, give people more access to it, and create more participation -- not just one-way, top-down communication," he said.

  Creating Reader Engagement

  Grocott's Mail, which published its first print edition in 1870, launched an online version of the paper in 2006. The website, now called Grocott's Mail Online, uses a customized content management system called Nika that is built on Drupal and allows for a smooth computer-to-mobile transition.

  Grocott's Mail Online has a page for SMS opinions from readers in addition to the normal editorial content; readers can text the paper with their responses to articles, tips for stories, or general information and see those texts translated into non-text speak and put online or in the paper. Nika sorts SMSs and incorporates them directly into the newspaper's system, automating what had previously been a manual process. The SMS pages let local citizens share their opinions, and see their words in print.

  Another way in which local citizens are engaged is through the paper's citizen journalist training program. However, Dugmore is quick to differentiate the citizen journalists from the general online community saying, "We think journalism and citizen journalism is quite a special thing, and we make quite an effort to distinguish it from user generated content and from community participation."

  The six-week training program teaches students how to frame a story, how to create a narrative, how to access sources, and how to interview them. (Read more about it by going back through Dugmore's posts here.) So far, the course has been taught four time and, according to Dugmore, the program has evolved to be an important part of the paper. "We've gone from getting two pieces of citizen journalism a month to one for almost every issue," he said.

  The citizen journalists use mobile phones as a supplementary tool in their work, not as a substitute for old-fashioned journalism techniques. Dugmore explained that although the students use their mobiles for sharing breaking SMS news alerts and taking photographs, they've often found it easier to take notes with a paper and pencil and then write out the stories on Grocott's Mail's computers. However, he said that they still train the citizen journalists on using the phones as cameras and for audio recording, and that the use of mobile phones is part of the curriculum.

  Getting The Word Out

  For readers who want to stay up to date on the latest headlines, Grocott's Mail has an SMS headline alert system. The free program, which users text to sign up for, sends out the paper's top headlines twice a week. (The print edition comes out every Tuesday and Friday, as do the SMS headline alerts.) The program launched a few months ago, and Dugmore said there are several hundred subscribers so far.

  In addition to SMS alerts, the paper is also developing another way to reach its readers -- using mobile instant messaging to directly send the news to their subscribers. Dugmore said this will be a good addition to the current SMS headline system because it will give subscribers a more thorough news experience, while being a cost-effective news dissemination tool for the paper (which covers the cost of the SMSs).

  "The other nice thing about IM is that you're not restricted, like SMS, to just headlines," he said. "If you want to, you can send a whole IM or the whole story "

  The paper has already developed a GoogleTalk version of the instant messaging system and is currently finalizing a MXit version; they plan to launch the tool by the end of the summer, meaning that users without high-end phones can still have what Dugmore calls a "smartphone experience."

  Grocott's Mail's initiatives show how mobile phones can be a great way to keep readers engaged.

  "We were looking for ways to create more spaces where people could get news and information about things that were useful, and [also] looking for ways that possibly people could come together to see if there were common issues or areas where they might be able to make a difference in their own lives," Dugmore said.

• 10:08

  Damn the Courts and Close the Schools

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  See it as a strength or a weakness but it’s hardly a secret that Michael Bloomberg does not like to let courts, public sentiment or dictates of other levels of government stand in the way of what he thinks is best for the city. And so it should not come as a surprise that the mayor is resisting two court rulings that have stopped the city’s closing of 19 schools Bloomberg and School Chancellor Joel Klein consider to be failing.

  Last month, the Department of Education put the schools on its list of closings for next year. And on Friday, the city released numbers showing that few city students had enrolled in the school’s ninth grades for this year.

  In his weekly radio appearance Friday, the mayor seemed to indicate these numbers could give the city an excuse to thumb their noses at the courts and begin phasing out the schools anyway,

  “Some of these schools are going to have 20 people,” he said. “And if there’s only 20 students, most of the teachers and the staff is not going to be there because the schools get funded based on the number of kids.”

  He also cast aspersions on any parents who selected those schools for their children. “If your logic is such that you want your kids to go to a bad school, you need an education,” he said.

  Certainly the numbers are low. According to the city’s figures, only 20 students have signed up for the first year class at the School for Community Research and Learning and just 22 for Paul Robeson High School. But the numbers do not necessarily reflect wholesale dissatisfaction with the schools.
  
  Only a year or two ago, many of these schools had far more students enrolled. In 2008-09, the most recent year available on the department web site, Robeson had 328 teenagers in its first year class. Norman Thomas High School, with 118 now in its class of 2014, had 899 students in it first-year class three years ago. Jamaica High School, with 58 students set to enter in September, had 422 first-year students two years ago.

  By most accounts, students this spring were encouraged not to select one of the closing schools. As Anna Phillips wrote in Gotham Schools, “This year, students who listed any of the then-closing schools as one of their top choices were matched to other schools. But after a judge’s ruling postponed the closures, the city sent those students a letter giving them a second chance to pick a high school — this time including the would-be closing schools on their list of options. To make its preference clear, the city’s letters discouraging parents from sending their children to the schools marked for closure.

  In that letter, the department referred to the March trial court decision blocking the closures and said, “We wholeheartedly disagree with this ruling and we are appealing. At this time however the court ruling requires us to permit students to enroll at these schools.”

  The city has said that, by September, it expects the numbers of incoming students at these schools to rise.

  In their rulings, the courts found the city did not comply with provisions of the new school governance law requiring the city hold public hearing on any school closing and provide information on what effect the rulings might have. Essentially, the judges found the hearings and information provided were merely pro forma.

  In comments that speak volumes, Bloomberg later conceded the city probably did not follow the law — but that it should not matter.

  “We’re playing with children’s lives, not whether the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed,” Bloomberg said on his radio show earlier this month. The judges, he continued, “should look at the context of it, and for them to think, ‘Well, you know, I’m just here to interpret the law,’ that’s not true. They are part of society.”

  Those comments grew quick — if little noticed reaction, since it was July 4 weekend. “He’s telling the judges that ‘I am so right on the issue that your interpretation of the law doesn’t matter. It’s Bloomberg law. I am the philosopher king. I know best,’” Baruch College public affairs professor Doug Muzzio told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s outrageous, but characteristic of the mayor and his attitude.”

  “So as far as Mike Bloomberg is concerned, there is one narrow set of rules for him-and a more detailed one for the little people,” the Neighborhood Retail Alliance blog commented. And when it comes to a choice between his own interests, and the rule of law itself, the mayor unhesitatingly comes down on the side of what’s good for Mike Bloomberg.

  Meanwhile the education department last week also released a plan, negotiated with the United Federation of Teachers, on where it would locate new schools slated to open in September. Seven new schools will operate from inside the schools tagged for closure with two going into Jamaica High School. In addition, two existing schools be placed in the supposedly failing schools. Originally, 13 schools had been slated for the schools slated for closure.

  As part of the deal, the city, according to teachers union president Michael Mulgrew said, would make an effort to “improve the academic experience for children in all 19 that are part of the lawsuit.” This reportedly would include extra support, including teacher training.

  But the city may already be trying to wriggle out of that. According to the Daily News, the education department now says that any extra teachers or services will have to come from the schools’ budgets — meaning, of course, it’s not exactly “extra” help at all.

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-19

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Numbers Stations: Mystery Over The Airwaves : NPR I remember friends who are HAMs telling me about this…

    "In the shadowy corners of the shortwave radio spectrum, you can often find mysterious mechanical voices counting off endless strings of numbers — in English, Czech, Russian and German … even Morse code. But who's listening?

    "The voices are coming from what are known as "numbers stations," and they've long been thought to be part of international espionage operations. In fact, the Russian spies recently captured here in the U.S. may have been getting orders from Moscow via a shortwave numbers station."

    (tags: radio international)

  

• July 18, 2010
• 10:37

  [Video] Interview with Kwanele Butana from Grocott's Mail

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  
  Click to play

  play_blip_movie_3909062();

  Kwanele Butana is a coordinator of the Citizen Journalism program of the Grocott's Mail newspaper in Grahamstown, South Africa. The newspaper was founded in the 1870s, and is now operated by the School of Journalism at Rhodes University. The Citizen Journalism program started in September 2009, as part of “The News is Coming” project funded by the Knight News Challenge, and aims to engage local residents to be part of news reporting of their community. After completing a six-week training session conducted by Elvira van Noort, the citizen journalists go out into the community to tell stories important to their daily lives. The majority of the stories appear online in the My Makana section of the Grocott's Mail website (Makana is the name of the municipality in which Grahamstown is located). However, the journalists are given the opportunity for some of their stories and photos to appear in the print version of the newspaper. In this short video, Kwanele explains about this possibility for publication and what it means for the citizen journalists to be a part of this program.

  • Download MOV Video (.mov)
  • Download Flash Video (.flv)

• July 17, 2010
• 16:03

  Creative Writing & Filming with youth in Jabaliya refugee camp, Gaza – Week 2

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  In our second week of the workshop the children and trainers in all groups began developing their story concepts and storyboards, along with acting and shooting video on-location for their films. Below is a day-by-day summary of our experiences with the workshop in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza.

  More photos and updates on our blog: http://voicesbeyondwalls.blogspot.com

  Day 6: Creative story-writing

  We began the workshop with a focus on creative story-writing; the session was lead by Asmaa Elghoul, an award winning writer and journalist in Gaza, who's been volunteering some time with our workshops.

  After a quick warm-up yoga stance and physical ice-breaker, Asmaa began the session with having everyone introduce themselves to her and describe their dream the previous night; this elicited some hilarious and touching thoughts. She then discussed what children felt were key story elements like place, climax, plot, ending, turning point, dialog, writing style, characters, context etc. We noted these points on a large sheet and referred to them often during the day as they spoke about their own narratives.

  We then broke-up in 5 groups and Asmaa handed each one an illustrated storybook to read and decompose the key story elements we had discussed. Each group leader spoke a summary of the story (often acted out in funny ways) followed by one of the children presenting key elements. We then had each group participate in a rapid story-writing game we developed as follows:

  1. Children in each group wrote a character, object and place on separate pieces of paper and threw then into 3 baskets.
  2. We shuffled each one and handed them back to children in all groups (3 for each person).
  3. Then children worked in their groups to quickly write a story comprising of these elements in 15 minutes.
  4. Trainers reviewed the stories written among the groups asking about key story elements and the narratives were refined.
  5. We collected the pieces of paper and re-shuffled them in the baskets, handing them back once again to children in all groups.
  6. Children repeated the exercise and wrote new narratives from the elements they received.
  7. After a quick review among the groups, we then collected everyone for a class wide activity called "story chains". Here we asked one person to read their story and then using elements in their narrative, someone else with similar elements (each a character, place or object) had to read their story... this continued till nearly everyone read theirs, while we often chose children who were shy or had not spoken earlier.

  The entire activity was devised by us on the fly and it went really well; it got all the groups really engaged and internalizing some of the story elements we discussed earlier.

  After lunch we watched two short films made by youth in previous workshops, Lamees Daydream and Street Lesson, to discuss story elements in the films, using the later to develop a storyboard of key scenes. This went quite well as the children understood the reasons for storyboarding, to better communicate ideas and break narratives down to the visual elements for filming.

  The final exercise was to discuss stories they wrote over the weekend in their groups; there was less time for this and given the long day I think children were less creative and energetic at this stage. The narratives they read were typical of a day in their life with few if any imaginative elements (though one was about dreaming a trip to the moon). One that struck me was about a magic stick and a couple seeking counseling from a psychiatrist... though the story was under-developed, I suggested making the psychiatrist the one needing help - visiting families in the families in his neighborhood to figure out his dilemma :-)

  Trainers felt this was the hardest activity for the children and many thought it would take a long time to get children into a more creative space. They were less optimistic but I mentioned that we've always experienced these challenges at this stage of the workshop.

  Overall, I think our creative exercises in the morning were valuable but we need to spurn the children into more imaginative thinking; we'll try a few other exercises the next day, like developing narratives from photographs, story circles where children start a story and others in the circle have to complete it, improvisational stories by acting out character roles assigned to them, and perhaps going back to their neighborhoods or a brief field-trip to activate their imagination.

  Day 7: Improvisational play - The psychiatrist and the donkey...

  Our day began with the usual warm-up; this time children lined up along a cross-bar and playing a game of swapping themselves like musical chairs quite rapidly. I could barely make sense of it all. I'm just amazing with the creative new exercises they keep devising each day.

  Asmaa and I then led our next stage of creative narrative sessions; this time we played the "story-chain" in the full circle of the group of 20 children and their trainers. Asmaa started with one example phrase "One day as I was on my way home ..." and then asked me to continue as I said "I met an elephant" .. and so on. The children at first were a bit slow to keep up the pace but eventually got the hang of it and created quite an imaginative storyline towards the end of the circle.

  I then suggested we repeat the "story-circle" and I started with a more specific context to spur a richer storyline. I said "There was once a psychiatrist in Jabaliya camp, who thought he was going crazy and wanted help ..." and then the next person said "and he ran down the street and met a donkey" ... "who told him about his problems" ... and so on... by the end we had a hilarious and touching storyline that had a rich array of characters including "donkeys who protested their working conditions (i.e. DR - or donkey rights)", "mice who stole their petitions", and "a magician on a broom stick" who tried to solve their dilemma. In the end the psychiatrist wakes up from his "dream" but as he washes his face sees a "donkey" in the mirror... and runs back into the street seeing donkeys everywhere... I think they wanted to imply that the psychiatrists' problem was inside him and only he could solve it by introspection - yet instead of a direct message, the children suggested an "open ending" - leaving that up to the audience. It felt more like a version of the "Twilight Zone" :-)

  We than asked the children to script-out and storyboard the tale they devised for practice... this worked well as we went through key details for each potential scene devising better characters and transitions within the story. We got the children to make a play with the storyline. We selected Abeer (one of our best participants) as the director and got the children to "audition" for each of the roles, rehearsing key scenes several times, with a virtual film crew. Finally, Roger decided to film the full play and it went surprisingly smoothly (after many chaotic rehearsal takes). The acting was amazing with Abeer finally playing the psychiatrist (after directing many actors to do it) and little Hammad acting as the cool donkey wearing shades. I was impressed that everyone played their roles so well; feels like many children opened up in the exercise and there's pretty good working dynamics within the group.

  We then screened the video and children got to see a complete concept to video example in less than 2 hours. It was a huge morale boost and hilariously fun to perform. They also talked about the difficult job of the director and importance of a really detailed script. We then watched another example youth video short "Mother of Palestine" (Jenin 2007) which also had a good storyline and discussed various aspects of the narrative and video shooting thereafter.

  In the last hour we broke up into newly selected groups (we thought mixing them up again would bring fresh ideas) and had them each try developing new stories for their films the next day. The groups struggled a bit at first but then after we asked some of the children to close their eyes and imagine a few key characters and situations, got them to develop narrative scripts and storyboards together.

  We plan to review the storyboards in the morning and have them act out the key scenes, before doing a sample video shoot in the afternoon. I expect many of their stories tomorrow will still be rather preliminary so they may get better refined/expanded as they shoot or they can simply develop a new one after this initial video trial. I think its best not to push the groups too hard to have coherent narratives in the first go, but let them get comfortable with the full process of concept to video and later develop better narratives as they mature their ideas.

  Day 8: Refining story ideas, animation and video tutorial

  Today the groups presented their storyboards and scripts for potential films they plan to work on. Here's a quick summary of the key ideas emerging thus far:

  1. A folk tale about a lion that harasses a colony of rabbits ("Rabbit City"), asking for one delivered and sacrificed to him each day for his meal; finally the rabbits protest and devise a way to trick the lion into thinking another lion is vying for his share. The lion sees his own reflection in a pool of water and jumps in; it’s a simple tale but the group narrated it with a lot of symbolism and metaphors about Palestinian children under occupation.

  2. A film about the "noise" in the camp from generators to street vendors selling watermelons... it was an unfinished story until I suggested bridging it with one they worked on about the deaf girl Amna. Here they story would transition from an annoying noise filled day in the life of a child in the camp to meeting Amna and transforming her world through Amna's impairment, and thus learning to appreciate the richness of the soundscape around her.

  3. A child experiences nightmares and is unable to sleep, while his parents complain about his performance in school. The story drifted a bit with an accident experienced by the boy, after which the parents are sympathetic to the boy. We suggested the issue of problems with sleep in the camp may actually be useful to emphasize in the film (as we heard it from many of the mothers in our focus groups). The children are refining their narrative (including perhaps an animated dream sequence) and may try to make the script more dramatic.

  4. A story about Ahmad and Anna on their last day in school. Ahmad is a poor child living in the camp and Anna in a more affluent neighborhood in the city. A series of events happen in their lives until Ahmad finds a jewel on the beach - a turning point in the story, after which their roles may switch after which they may both appreciate each other lives better.

  5. A story about separation among Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. It shows children walking lonely and confused in both places looking for each other, with Palestine being their mother. The film is a rather abstract performative piece with much symbolism.

  After some long and constructive critique the narratives appear to be shaping up a bit - lets see what the groups try to make of them.

  In the afternoon we watched an animated film presented by a guest speaker, Tilda, a photographer from Belgium, who worked with children in Nablus on the short. The kids got excited to try such animations for some scenes in their own films though they were well aware of the efforts needed.

  Finally, Roger conducted the video session as planned quite thoroughly with some camera demonstrations on-screen, watching scenes from shorts like the Pole, Lamees Daydream, Theater of Stones and Take it or Leave it, to reinforce camera angles and composition. The session was long and needed to be a bit more interactive and hands-on.

  By the end the children were losing steam and we ended the day with a quick review of their scripts in groups to start video shooting the following morning.

  Day 9: First day of video shooting on-location

  Today we began preparing groups for their first video shoot on-location. After revising their scripts and reviewing them with us, they had to develop detailed production plans with key characters and locations of scenes and also assign roles for the director, photo/video camera persons and actors. In some cases groups had to find extras for their films in the locations itself.

  Before leaving we also asked all trainers to conduct brief hands-on video camera trainings with all children in their groups, reinforcing lessons learned on shot framing, angles and composition in the video tutorial by Roger the previous day. Finally, we asked all groups to register themselves in a sign-up sheet with the center so we knew who was on-location and what equipment they took along. We insisted on all group members wearing their badges on-location as well. All the preparations were meant to get them to take their shooting seriously and think through their efforts more professionally as they go forward.

  The five groups managed to spend 2-3 hours on their first shoot; each seemed quite satisfied with their experience. A de-briefing discussion among all later that afternoon indicated a few points. Groups took care to shoot several scenes in multiple takes to get it right; some had a hard time getting extras on-location or other characters for their films but managed partly - though will need to go back and shoot more with other characters the next day. One group had a hard time getting the hearing impaired girl to be in the film as she was not around and they felt the sign translation would take more effort, so they may have an actor in her place.

  My group recruited half a dozen kids on-location to wear masks as rabbits and over 20 spectators (unintentionally) in the station park (apparently the only open green play-space in Gaza) where they shot their lion and rabbit tale. Most people there turned out to be quite helpful. The group managed to use many sections of the park as key locations for different scenes (but had some trouble maintaining scene continuity shooting a forest in an urban space); they generally enjoyed the shoot, despite the blaring sun.

  Getting permission to shoot in other locations was not easy e.g. a UN school and a special needs center, so these needed to be negotiated in advance; some eventually worked out through personal connections. One group wanted to shoot in an open desert area, but when they got there, many new homes were being built to their surprise and they felt uncomfortable shooting due to the police there. They finally got assistance from a popular old man in the neighborhood to get access from the community. Most did not give up easily and tried to get many of their scenes done. "Location Scouting" in advance is an important lesson they recognized.

  The groups mentioned that everyone took to their roles easily and many got to use the video camera as well, though often only 1-2 were assigned the video camera. Most said they used lessons learned in the video tutorial the previous day, though I expect many mistakes in their shots. I noted some using zoom and rapid movement too often, so I think stable shots maybe something they learn over time. We'll see how their first day of footage turned out during video reviews the following day, and whether they can turn these into their final films. I expect quite a bit may need to be re-shot or scripts re-worked, but its still a good learning exercise.

  Day 10: Reviewing Video Footage and Group Critique

  In the morning, we had Jehan, a drama trainer from Tamer, come back to conduct a drama session with the group. This was really refreshing for all after a long day of video shooting the day before. Jehan led them through a series of movements, gestures and role playing exercises. Her goal was to make them less shy, more expressive and improve their body language on-screen while acting out their stories "in character".

  We than lead a long session of video footage reviews among all groups. Roger and I had watched and compiled key scenes from the group's footage the night before and we examined these "shot selections" carefully to highlight good and poor examples of camera techniques used, along with overall composition and how the scenes actually convey the narrative intended. We were actually quite impressed with the content and composition of many of their shots (thanks to their photo training), though all noticed critical issues with camera stability and movement. One of the more powerful set of scenes was completely silent, with shots composed of the actors running and searching through a barren and destroyed landscape - almost felt like a surreal David Lynch scene or an apocalyptic Mad Max film.

  We downloaded all footage into the VideoStudio software for each group as a separate project to show an overall summary of visual footage shot, and also culled 3-4 shot selections from each for illustrative purposes into its own project folder for review. We had labeled all scenes, shots and takes for all projects and the footage selections over 2-3 hours the night before; this was very helpful during the review as we screened different takes and shots of the same scenes to demonstrate techniques used.

  This overall session went really well with much of the critique coming from the children themselves as they saw their footage projected on a large screen, with all of the challenges they encountered on-location including camera movement, shot stability, excessive zooming, sound quality, and acting. Jehan, Roger and I helped summarize key lessons learned on a poster including improving shot stability using a tripod and no zoom, breaking up scenes into multiple shots (instead of zooming midway), using cameras closer to the subjects to get more expressive features and better audio, improving overall shot composition with attention to lightning and framing of subjects, acting tips for being "in character" rather than reading out lines, not looking directly at the camera but not turning ones body to it either etc. We asked them to consider consider when and how the camera itself becomes a unintentional "character" in the film if its used with excessive movement and zooming, while POV shots need to be done intentionally to match story outcomes.

  The discussions were very lively and I think the groups loved talking about their shots and recognizing things they had simply not noticed during the shoot. We asked each to refine their storyboards for a visual summary of shots and the dialog in their scripts, before continuing shooting. We've now given cameras to all their trainers over the weekend to continue shooing as they have time to meet, and extended their shooting schedule through Sunday, after which we hope to begin video editing tutorials with them next week.

  We are generally going on-track this week and it’s been good to do a critical review of their footage before the weekend to get them to re-think their visual aesthetics and techniques. I have a feeling they'll do a great job on their next days of shooting with trainers, now that there's a higher-bar for what we expect to see. They're really motivated and psyched to work on their films...

• 14:46

  Deaf Women in Film Interview with Rhianon Gutierrez

   » ‎ SignCasts -

  
  

  Interview of Rhianon Gutierrez, Deaf Woman Director and Writer of "Transients".

  Interview produced by Jules Dameron of Deaf Women in Film and ASL Master for "Transients". Subtitles provided by Alex Lotz.

  To learn more about the Deaf Women in Film project, you can visit their blog, twitter account or facebook page.

  read more

• 12:38

  WFP Endorses Rivera and Goes to War With Espada

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Unseating Sen. Pedro Espada is on the top of the Working Families Party’s to do list this year and they have endorsed one of  his challengers, Gustavo Rivera.

  Rivera may have the support of the WFP but Rivera is way behind Espada in fund raising and there are also two other candidates vying to unseat Espada.

  Fernando Tirado and Daniel Padernacht are both in the Democratic primary. Political observers say that unless the field clears the anti-Espada vote could be split. Espada enjoys strong support in his community, despite the investigation he is facing.

  “Pedro Espada favors landlord interests over tenants every time. He cast our government into chaos for his own political gain,” said Dan Cantor, Working Families Party executive director, in a statement.  “No Albany politician makes a better case for early retirement.”

  “Gustavo Rivera is a reformer with the smarts, the leadership, and the heart to clean up Albany and stand up for the tens of thousands of tenants in the Bronx,” Cantor said of Rivera.  “Pedro Espada has bundles of landlord cash, but Gustavo will have a grassroots army and the support of a community that is sick and tired of the status quo.”

  Cantor added: “We have helped progressive challengers before, but never has there been as much at stake for the people of New York.”

  Rivera returned the love to the Working Families Party: “No one fights harder for tenants and working people than the Working Families Party. The WFP endorsement means a lot to this campaign and I am enormously proud to have their support.  This part of the Bronx consists of many working-class families that thrive because of the strong support that union membership provides them.  The WFP knows this community because the WFP is this community.  The WFP and the people of the Bronx together are demanding change, and we have the momentum and the community support we need to defeat Sen. Espada this fall.”

  Full letter after the jump.

  The WFP sent out this letter to their supporters:

  Dear Working Families supporter,

  New York’s state government is a mess, and we’re all paying the price.

  But as today’s New York Times reports, the Working Families Party is launching a major push to change that this election year — by kicking out the worst politician in Albany.1

  State Senator Pedro Espada has repeatedly blocked progress for working New Yorkers. He’s used taxpayer money for his own enrichment and switched political parties to kill pro-tenant legislation, shut down the state government, and increase his own power.

  Working Families just endorsed a great progressive challenger to Espada, Gustavo Rivera. To get politicians like Espada out and real leaders like Rivera in, we’re planning to “knock on thousands of doors and recruit leaders of religious, tenants’ and civic groups,” as the Times reports in today’s story.

  To kick off our campaign, we’re launching a major grassroots fundraising drive. We’re asking 1,000 New Yorkers who want change in Albany to donate just $5 each. Can you chip in right now and ask your friends to help, too?

  Espada’s not going down without a fight. He’s funded by Albany lobbyists and big real estate interests, and they’ll spend serious cash to keep him in power.

  But Espada’s constituents in the Bronx are sick of him siding with landlords over tenants and diverting their tax dollars to fund his personal schemes. Espada doesn’t even live in his own district, preferring a mansion in the suburbs.

  Our candidate, Gustavo Rivera, is a true community leader. He’s spent years as an educator, organizer and progressive political leader. Putting him in office will be a huge step toward making Albany work for us.

  There’s no doubt about it: if we want living wage jobs, stronger hospitals and schools, more affordable rents, lower property taxes, a cleaner environment, and a state government that actually gets things done, politicians like Pedro Espada have got to go.

  Just $5 will help us make that happen. Can you take a moment to contribute right here?

  Thanks,

  Dan Cantor
  WFP Executive Director

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-17

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • No, seriously: What the Old Spice ads can teach us about news’ future » Nieman Journalism Lab "What might the Internet-owning power of the towel-clad spokesman hint about, yes, the future of news?

    "There’s the obvious, of course: the fact that the ads are personalized. That their content is created for, and curated from, the conversational tumult of the web — “audience engagement,” personified. Literally. The videos are, in that sense, a direct assault on top-down, author’s-artistic-vision-driven, mass media broadcast sensibilities.

    "But they’re an assault on mass media in another way, as well. The real hook of the videos isn’t the OSM’s awesomely burly baritone, or the whimsy of his monologues (the scepter! the bubbles! the fish!), or the postfeminist irony of his Rugged Manliness, or any of that. It’s the fact that we’re seeing all those things play out dynamically, serially, in (semi-)real-time. And: in video."

    (tags: advertising video social+media engagement entertainment news+biz)
  • Phandroid Good Android resource/news/discussion site (tags: Android mobile resources)
  • How to manage files on your Android phone? – Tutorials – butterscotch AndroZip app video tutorial. Seems useful. march 2010. (tags: Android apps video tutorial)
  • Video: How to skip the Android tutorial: "For the seasoned pro, the Android tutorial can become a little cumbersome. If you would like ot skip this step, a short and sweet Youtube video shown after the jump reveals how." (tags: Android video tutorial)
  • Twitter Users Are Social and Political Activists "U.S. adults who use the social networking Web site Twitter are more likely than the average adult to be highly active on the Internet as well as in their communities, according to GfK MRI's Survey of the American Consumer.

    "In addition to being active online, Twitter users are also socially and politically active. For instance, they index highly for all 17 of the public activities measured by GfK MRI. They are 209% more likely to have written something that has been published, 142% more likely to participate in environmental groups/causes, 141% more likely to be an active member of any group that tries to influence public policy or government, and 103% more likely to have attended a political rally, speech or protest in the last 12 months."

    (tags: twitter social+media engagement statistics research)
  • Survey: Twitter Users Are More Active In Their Real Life Communities "Now, it’s a question of what came first: Twitter or the engagement? Is there something about Twitter that inspires people to connect with their offline communities and become more politically and socially active? Or are people who use Twitter already predisposed towards community involvement?" (tags: twitter social+media research engagement)
  • How to understand widgets on your Android phone – Tutorials – butterscotch Good video tutorial about a basic part of the Android interface (tags: Android mobile widgets video tutorials)
  • Gesture Search Home "Do you find it hard to find a contact or locate an application from a list of hundreds of items on an Android phone? Or do you find it stressful to search for an item by typing in its title while on the go?

    "Gesture Search from Google Labs lets you search your Android-powered device by drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen. It allows you to quickly find a contact, a bookmark, an application, or a music track from hundreds or thousands of items, all in one place. It is fast and fun to use.

    "Gesture Search currently recognizes the English alphabet and requires Android 1.6 or above."

    (tags: google Android mobile usability apps)
  • How to Use Android's Gesture Search and Leave Your Phone's Keyboard Behind | Fast Company "Google Gesture Search, a freshman out of Google Labs, lets you find stuff on your Android phone by drawing letters on the touchscreen as if you were jotting on a notepad. In addition to Android's existing search by voice, image, and barcode, Gesture Search is yet another keyboardless input method for your touchscreen phone. At the very least, Gesture Search is a fun proof-of-concept; at most, it will hook a few dedicated touch keyboard haters. Here's how it works.

    "With Gesture Search running, you write letters by swiping your fingertip on your touchscreen as if it were a whiteboard. With each character you input, Gesture Search live-searches your phone's contacts, bookmarks, and music and displays the results on-screen. Tap an app, contact, bookmark, or song to launch it or view the contact. (For contacts, tap the green phone icon to start a call.)"

    (tags: Android mobile usability tools apps)

  

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-16 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • Film Casts Glowing Light on Hugo Chavez | USA | English
    This could be interesting. Or at least controversial.

  

• July 16, 2010
• 18:08

  4 Minute Roundup: Apple Offers Free Bumpers as iPhone Fix

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  4MR is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  In this week's 4MR podcast I look at the problems Apple has been having with its iPhone 4. The infamous "death grip" issue meant you'd have dropped calls if your hand went over a certain part of the phone's antenna. Apple brought out Steve Jobs for a press conference today where they offered free bumpers to solve the issue, and would refund anyone for their iPhone if they weren't satisfied. I talked with Chicago Sun-Times tech guru Andy Ihnatko for his take on the press conference and Apple's non-apology apology.

  Check it out:

  4mrbareaudio71610.mp3

  >>> Subscribe to 4MR <<<

  >>> Subscribe to 4MR via iTunes <<<

  Listen to my entire interview with Andy Ihnatko:

  ihnatko final.mp3

  Background music is "What the World Needs" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.

  Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:

  Apple to Give Away iPhone Case at WSJ

  Live iPhone 4 press event coverage at gdgt

  Apple Has Verizon Cell Sites On Campus, Possibly For Testing CDMA iPhones at Cult of Mac

  iPhone 4 Press Event - You're All Getting Cases at the Apple Blog

  Apple's iPhone 4 Press Conference Disappoints at the Mac Observer

  In the end, Apple gets iPhone 4 antenna dilemma right at the Chicago Sun-Times

  Apple's Free iPhone 4 Cases Come with Pinch of Scorn at PC World

  Apple Knew of iPhone Issue at WSJ

  Also, be sure to vote in our poll about how you think Apple should fix the iPhone 4 issue:

  
  
  
  How should Apple fix the iPhone 4's antenna problem?online surveys
  
  

  Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

  

  4MR is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 15:11

  Silver Thanks Paterson

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Gov. David Paterson has signed a bill that would limit law enforcement from collecting and storing data on individuals not charged with  a crime. The move has made Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver very happy.

  Here is Silver’s statement:

  “I want to thank Governor Paterson for signing this bill into law. It is important that we protect the privacy rights of innocent New Yorkers by not keeping databases with the personal information of people who have not been charged with a crime. I applaud Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries for his leadership and dedication on this issue and for sponsoring this legislation, which strikes the proper balance between public safety and individual rights.”

  Mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly was lobbying Paterson not to sign the bill. Meanwhile, all the Democratic candidates for Attorney General came together earlier this week to ask Paterson to sign the bill.

• 14:04

  Weekly Web Wrap

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  MTA Subway Data Released
  (Spatiality)
  Chamber Refuses Espada’s Millions in Pork
  (Bronx News Network)
  Fare Box Unrest Coming Soon (Again)
  (Regional Plan Association)
  Advocates: State Analysis Purposefully Precludes Sheridan Removal
  (Streetsblog)
  Paying Tomorrow for a Hamburger Today
  (Second Avenue Sagas)
  Statehouse Boosts Working People and the Economy
  (DMI Blog)
  City’s Budget: The Buck Stops Here
  (Citizens Budget Commission)
  City Unveils Electric Vehicle Charging Station
  (Inhabitat)

• 12:44

  Councilpedia In Private Pilot, Overcoming Tech Challenges

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  Over the last several months, Gotham Gazette has made major strides on its Councilpedia project, which will help New Yorkers keep tabs on their local officials and share their knowledge with others. Over the last year, the project has evolved and -- we think -- improved from our original plan.

  Currently we have a pilot for the site with the design, the structure and information for three office holders. We are not ready to release this to the world, but if you would like a sneak preview please email me at grobinson at gothamgazette.com.

  Councilpedia Brings City and Candidate Information to Life

  Councilpedia intends to bring an array of information about City Council members and other city officials -- the bills they sponsor, background information, member items (a.k.a earmarks) -- to one site, along with campaign finance information. New York City, which has public financing of campaigns, requires a lot of disclosure on the part of candidates as to where they get their money and how they spend it, but the information can be hard to read and comprehend.

  That is one way Councilpedia will be useful. First, it sorts the donors by various categories, such as unions, major givers and intermediaries. By having the campaign finance information along with voting information, Councilpedia can help people make possible connections between money and politics. They can then comment on the site.

  The city information on donors is essentially a long list of names. Councilpedia will enable readers to identify who those people are. One example would be that John Doe, who gave to candidate X, owns a lot in the candidate's district and wants it re-zoned.

  Anyone who registers can -- and is urged to -- comment. Gotham Gazette staff will review comments, verify them and use the leads from our readers to inform our reporting. Overall, we hope Councilpedia will enrich the debate about money and politics in New York.

  Making Tools Work

  In putting this project together we have grappled with adapting two disparate -- and balky -- technical tools to our needs.

  The first was the
  Campaign Finance Board information. While the board provides a wealth of information (and has a very helpful staff to boot), the information can be hard to read and is not formatted the way we wanted it.

  After trying various techniques to import the data, we eventually confronted the cold reality: The only feasible way -- given our limitations -- to create an attractive, user friendly site that did what we wanted it to do (and what we promised Knight it would do) was to re-input the data and code it ourselves.

  This is incredibly painstaking. Luckily, we have several excellent interns this summer who pitched in to help.

  The other issue dealt with adapting the wiki to our needs. While our technical manager, JaVon Rice, has pushed the limits of the wiki, we found there were things it would not do. For example, we had hoped to flag items that have recently received comment and have the comments appear along with the item.

  Instead, we will have comment pages. We will indicate if a comment has been posted on a contribution or piece of legislation, but that also will not be automatic. Gotham Gazette staff will have to mark the item themselves.

  Keeping the site current will also require staff intervention -- to add bills, to update financial reports, to remove offensive or simply incorrect comments.

  Will it be worth it? We certainly hope so and are eager to move to the next step and engage New Yorkers in this conversation about money and politics.

• 12:42

  Media Consortium Pushes Collaboration to Increase Innovation

   » ‎ MediaShift

  Once a week, representatives from liberal publications such as AlterNet, Yes! Magazine, the American Independent News Network, the UpTake, and Ms. Magazine convene to discuss mobile strategies. The call, organized by the Media Consortium, is part of an Incubation and Innovation Lab designed to help members collectively tackle the new realities of journalism -- a landscape where traditional revenue sources are disappearing, new technologies are emerging, and media organizations must innovate to survive.

  

  The Media Consortium created the Incubation and Innovation Lab in response to The Big Thaw, a study they commissioned and published in late 2009 on the changing business and editorial structures of journalism. Collaboration, experimentation and engaging communities were key themes in the study.

  "We no longer want to talk about the death of journalism. It's thriving," said Tracy Van Slyke, project director of the Media Consortium. "We want to talk about what the future of journalism looks like."

  At the same time, the Media Consortium realizes that news outlets are struggling to find the time and resources to invest in the future.

  

  "For our members and other media organizations, the ability to do this rapid low cost prototyping is challenging," said Van Slyke. "They don't have the space and time to organize it on their own. We want to provide that by pulling organizations together to look at specific topics and research, and work together to implement and experiment."

  In order to do that, the Media Consortium is providing organizations with a space to learn, experiment and create. For a nominal fee, members were invited to join one of three Labs. "Moving into Mobile" is the first, and will soon be followed by a Lab on community engagement, and one on revenue generation in the fall.

  Jason Barnett, executive director of the UpTake, didn't hesitate to sign up for Moving into Mobile. His organization wants to use mobile to build audience and increase user engagement. He hopes that by participating, he will come away with a better understanding of the trends and requirements for developing mobile applications.

  "It is a totally new field, and it is really difficult to learn this information on your own while trying to run a small business," Barnett said. "Having the Media Consortium coordinate and facilitate discussions and the information around this topic has been a real time saver."

  Media Groups and Hackers Collaborate

  While discussing case studies and best practices is crucial, so too is the implementation of that knowledge to innovate and create. To that end, the Media Consortium will provide $5,000 to $12,000 in seed money for each of the three Labs to develop a shared application.

  To jump-start the rapid prototyping phase, the Media Consortium is raising funds to host a hack-a-thon in October. They've already begun outreach to the technology community, including Hacks/Hackers, to generate interest and participation.

  "We're mostly looking at a hack-a-thon to benefit our members, but we're open to other media organizations joining in," said Van Slyke. "For hackers it's a great way to work with organizations that can potentially use the apps you're building. Hackers have realized the need to help journalists evolve. They bring a lot of creativity and knowledge to the table."

  

  In addition to seed money, the Media Consortium is fundraising to further develop the winning prototypes. The resulting applications will be made available to all members.

  "We're hoping for projects that are easily skinnable," said Erin Polgreen, senior program associate at the Media Consortium. "Ones that can be used by multiple organizations and for multiple audiences."

  Facilitating Collaboration

  Before the prototyping phase begins, the group will undertake months of collaborative research and planning. Developing a strategy between five media organizations, with participants across the country, is no small feat. Communication is paramount to success and the Media Consortium ensures that there's plenty of it.

  In addition to the Lab's weekly call, participants are in constant contact through Google Wave. Organizations contribute relevant articles, links and resources to the Wave. They also learn from each other's experiences.

  "We have organizations with all different levels of technical fluency," said Polgreen. "This increases sharing between organizations: high-tech orgs help lower tech orgs."

  In addition to the technical experience that each organization contributes, the Lab benefits from having participants with different job functions. Each organization has two to three people on the call with an expertise in technology, editorial or community engagement. The perspective that each brings could help the Lab create a more nuanced approach to the development of its application, as well as one that has built-in buy-in across departments and organizations.

  "We are learning from the other participants," said Barnett. "The dynamics seem very healthy. Tough questions are asked, we all laugh and get along, and we are trying really hard to focus to find the core needs all the organizations share."

  While the cost to participate may be low, participation does require dedicated time. Van Slyke estimates that on average participants spend a couple of hours per week on the project.

  "When we laid out the criteria for participation, we were very clear that it was a time commitment," said Van Slyke. "People had to agree to that in the contract."

  Barnett finds that it is time well spent for the UpTake and its future in mobile.

  "Many collaborations I've been involved with are content-based and on a short time frame," said Barnett. "This one has goals of developing core knowledge that can help a diverse group of media organizations for the long term."

  While it's tempting to project what that long term might look like, Van Slyke hesitates to speculate.

  "We're not putting the answer in front of people before they start talking," she said. "This is an experiment and we'll see what comes of it."

  A public relations and social media consultant, Katie Kemple works with public media clients to build community, develop strategic partnerships, and create integrated public relations campaigns. Over the past ten years, she has held positions at WGBH, WETA, Capital News Connection, and Public Media's EconomyStory. You can find her every Monday at 8 p.m. ET on Twitter, as a co-host and organizer for #pubmedia chat.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 11:42

  Diversity 2.0: Recruiting a new, tech-savvy, generation of journalism students

   » ‎ Online Journalism Review
  By Robert Niles: I don't need to explain to journalism educators the importance of recruiting and admitting a diverse student body. Journalism educators realized, more than a generation ago, that graduating few other than white, middle-to-upper-income students would not well serve the economically and racially diverse, internationally-flavored communities that journalists are called to report upon and serve. But as journalism continues to respond to the second decade of the Internet revolution, it should be apparent to all in our field that ethnic, racial and economic diversity isn't enough any longer. Journalism education needs to accommodate, and welcome, students whose skills sets and interests range far beyond the stereotype of math-phobic storytellers. With the Internet enabling so many new ways to connect the public with information relevant to their lives, the news industry needs to bring more people with entrepreneurial initiative, community organizing skills and computer programming experience into our journalism schools. Notice that I used "the news industry" as the subject of my previous sentence. We cannot afford to leave this task to universities alone - industry, foundations and even individual news entrepreneurs must support the effort to further diversify the population of students studying journalism. Fortunately, some visionary journalism educators are showing us the way to bring students with more sophisticated technical backgrounds into the news business. Earlier this year I spoke with Northwestern University's Rich Gordon about the effort at the Medill School of Journalism to recruit and develop programmer/journalists.

• 10:50

  Appeals Court to Filmmaker: Turn Over Your Footage to Chevron

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  A federal appellate court has issued a swift ruling, in a high profile reporter's privilege case, that requires a filmmaker to surrender some of his unpublished footage to a powerful oil company.

  Last week I wrote about a brewing court battle between filmmaker Joe Berlinger and the oil company Chevron over 600 hours of outtakes from his documentary, “Crude: The Real Price of Oil” (“Crude”).  Chevron and its attorneys had argued in federal district court in the Southern District of New York that they wanted the footage because it might be useful to them in their pending lawsuits in Ecuador, which arose out of charges of widespread oil pollution in the country. Crude covers the underlying class-action civil lawsuit against Chevron.

  A day after a standing room only hearing in New York—attended by the media, filmmakers, rainforest activist Trudie Styler (wife of the musician Sting) and even a large group of high school students on a field trip—a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a tentative ruling on the status of Berlinger’s outtakes. In their 2-page ruling, Judges Pierre N. Leval, Barrington D. Parker Jr. and Peter W. Hall ruled on Thursday that Berlinger has to hand over some footage to the Chevron parties, subject to the following terms:

  • Berlinger has to turn over all footage showing (1) plaintiffs’ counsel in Chevron’s civil lawsuit in Ecuador, (2) private or court-appointed experts, and (3) current or former Ecuadorian officials;
  • Chevron can only use the material produced for litigation, arbitration or submission to official government bodies;
  • Chevron must pay for all reasonable costs incurred by Berlinger in turning over the footage; and
  • The district court below shall maintain jurisdiction to address any disputes relating to the release of the footage.

  The appellate court’s order compelling disclosure of only certain footage appears to have narrowed the ruling of the district court judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, who required disclosure of all of Berlinger’s outtakes. The appellate panel also seems to have  rejected the costly and time-consuming proposal raised in the July 14 hearing of having a special master review and process for relevance the hundreds of hours of material that did not fit into the three categories of footage identified by the court and the parties.

  Already, both sides of the controversy are claiming victory.

  In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Berlinger noted he was particularly pleased with the order because it barred Chevron from using his footage in “their public relations campaigns, a goal that was extremely important to me.” He also told the New York Times blog that he thought the order “preserved the basic standards [of protection] for non-confidential material.” Maura J. Wogan, a lawyer for Berlinger, echoed, to some degree, her client’s sentiment to the same Times blog, noting that the order “from what we’ve seen so far, is certainly a narrowing of Judge Kaplan’s broad order.”

  Meanwhile, Randy M. Mastro, a lawyer representing Chevron, said in statement to the same Times blog that he was pleased with the Second Circuit for responding “so swiftly to Chevron’s emergency need for this evidence to defend itself against a travesty of justice in Ecuador.”

  Mastro should certainly be satisfied given that, by his own calculation, plaintiffs’ counsel was in 70 percent of Crude. The outtakes could be similarly dominated by plaintiffs’ counsel’s presence, leading to a possible production of almost 420 hours of footage. Such a forced disclosure arising out the ruling must surely, in the words of Karen Hinton, spokesperson for the plaintiffs in the Ecuadorean suit against Chevron, undermine "investigative journalism during a time when more inquiry is sorely needed in the oil industry."

  Still, famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams noted to the Los Angeles Times that no victor in this case should be declared until the full ruling of the panel is published. It will be troubling if the panel merely memorializes what was essentially a settlement reached in open court without disturbing the lower court's analysis. Despite the unusual factual circumstances of this case, the lower court's opinion is arguably a weakening of the key reporter's privilege case in the Second Circuit, Gonzales v. National Broadcasting Company, 194 F.3d 29 (2d Cir. 1999). As I wrote last week, the end result could be more burdensome subpoenas on the press, which would divert their limited resources and attention. But, this all ultimately depends on what rationale the court offers for its decision in the weeks to come.

  (Itai Maytal is a media law attorney in New York and was the 2009 First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times Company.)

• 10:39

  Candidates File

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  For your perusing pleasure, here is the list of candidates, courtesy of the city Board of Elections, who made the filing deadline — midnight last night.

  Now comes the fun part — challenging petitions! For more on that process, play our ballot game: Bump!

  And, as always, check Who’s Running for What, which we are in the process of updating, to know who is running for Assembly or State Senate in your neighborhood.

  Ledgers

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-16

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • National Survey Data Indicates Men and Women Are Similar Behind the Wheel in Action but Not As Much in Perception What I want to know is, how many people try to navigate with maps on their smartphones while driving?

    "No Matter the Sex, We All Like to Text – While both sexes agreed that texting while driving should be illegal (89 percent of both men and women), it seems that neither men nor women are fully practicing what they preach. Nearly 25 percent of both male and female respondents reported sending at least one text message while driving per week. Men seem to be the most heavy texters with 36 percent of those who text while driving indicating they send an average of seven or more texts per week while on the road. In contrast, only 23 percent of women admitted to texting as frequently."

    (tags: text+messaging SMS safety research statistics maps navigation problems cn)
  • The DROID X may be your only choice | ZDNet "If you’ve been wondering when you can get your hands on the DROID X, Motorola and Verizon Wireless have both confirmed that tomorrow is the day. The DROID X will be available both online and in Verizon Wireless stores beginning tomorrow, July 15, for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in-rebate (with a new two-year agreement).

    "There was initially some concern that the DROID X would suffer the same parts shortages as the HTC EVO and HTC Incredible, but Verizon is now stating that there will be plenty of DROID X devices to go around."

    (tags: Android Verizon mobile smartphones devices)

  

• July 15, 2010
• 14:21

  Benjamin Jumps to Millman's Defense

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Ethan Taylor filed this post.

  Assemblymember Michael Benjamin is defending his colleague Joan Millman against charges that she bears direct responsibility for Albany corruption because of her role as chair of the Assembly’s Election Law Committee. On Wednesday, Gotham Gazette quoted her primary opponent in the 52nd Assembly District candidate, Doug Biviano, as blaming Millman for the capital’s ills.

  Discussing Biviano’s charges, Benjamin said candidates “tend to exaggerate certain claims in elections, but this one I found to be particularly unfair. She is one of the more outspoken liberal members of the Democratic majority conference, and I know her to be a really honest person.” He later added, “She frets about the people in her district.” Benjamin also posted similar comments on the Gotham Gazette story.

  Benjamin, who also serves on the Assembly Election Law committee, said the election process has improved over the past several years. “It’s much less complicated from when I first arrived,” he said. “It’s a lot less onerous getting on the ballot than in the past.” Benjamin also commended Millman for being “very good on campaign finance reform,” and for supporting a bill on campaign finance transparency.

• 13:21

  Kachingle Hopes 'Social Payments' Can Help Fund Content

   » ‎ MediaShift

  If advertising alone isn't going to support all the online journalism and content sites, and pay walls will just turn readers away, perhaps there's another solution, a third way: Social payments. More than just simple donations, social payment systems such as Kachingle and Flattr simplify giving money to sites you visit. Both services set up a monthly payment system, with a set amount each month, and the more sites you like, the more ways your payment is split.

  While Flattr is still in a closed invite-only beta test, Kachingle launched in February and works a bit differently. Here's the basic run down for Kachingling (yes, it's also a verb):

  1. Sign up at the site to pay $5 per month through a credit card or PayPal. No more, no less.

  2. Go to sites that have Kachingle enabled and become a Kachingler for them by clicking on their Kachingle medallion. Big Kachingle sites include the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo. and Carta.info in Germany.

  3. Kachingle will pay out your money to the sites each month based on which ones you visit the most. They begin making a payment when the site gets at least $3.35.

  4. Kachingle takes about 7% of your $5, PayPal takes 8%, and the sites get 85%.

  So far, there are less than 300 sites that take Kachingle payments, but there's been a huge uptake in Germany. Ulrike Langer, who runs the German new media blog Medial Digital, told me that she was impressed by the new social payment services.

  "I think it's a great opportunity for bloggers like me who would never make that much in advertising," she told me. "I realize that from the tiny amount of money I get from Google AdSense. As soon as I heard about Kachingle, I checked it out. The concept appealed to me because regular users of my site, who read the feed and come back regularly, would have a way to say 'thank you' that's more than just leaving a comment or clicking the 'Like' button for Facebook."

  So far, Langer's best month of income from social payments was 40 Euros from Flattr, and about $15 to $20 on Kachingle. That's not exactly going to pay the rent, but she's still impressed to get that much as these services are in their infancy.

  I got the chance to talk in-depth to Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos, who told me why she started the service, what the challenges are to get publishers on board, and how it's often more about creating a bond for users and sites rather than being all about money. The following is an edited transcript of our talk, with some video clips shot with my Flip cam.

  Q&A

  Tell me about social payments, explain to me what they are, and also tell me about your own background.

  Cynthia Typaldos: My background is all high-tech. I have a degree in computer science, an MBA at MIT, and I've worked at a number of technology companies, including Sun Microsystems. I did my first startup called GolfWeb in 1995. I'm not a golfer, by the way, but it was a great place to learn about the social aspect of the Internet, because most of golf is about being social. Then I did another startup called Real Communities, which was an earlier form of Ning, but was too early. So this is my third startup.

  As far as social payments, it's the name that's gelling now around people voluntarily paying for free content online. It sounds crazy, in a way, because you wonder why people would pay for free stuff. But we think it's a new movement that will be successful because people want to support great digital content and services they love, to make sure they'll be around. On Kachingle, they get credit for that and build a persona around what they're consuming and supporting.

  What was your motivation for starting Kachingle?

  Typaldos: I got the idea a few years ago. What happened was that my best friend got brain cancer -- it's a sad story. Her English wasn't very good and so she asked me to do brain cancer research on the Internet. So I did, I went around and got all this information, and at the end of the month I gave it to her. Afterwards I wanted to give $100 to all the sites that helped me out in my search, but it was all a blur. I couldn't remember all the sites, and didn't know how often I'd been there. It wasn't about a contribution to cure brain cancer, it was a contribution to support great information and show that I valued it.

  How have you funded it?

  Typaldos: [laughs] Believe it or not, I don't advise people to do this, but I sold my house and used the proceeds so I could work on this full-time and fund web hosting and things like that. I've also brought in some partners who have put in some money, and we have some angel funding.

  How has your growth been so far? How many sites are using it and how many users do you have?

  Typaldos: That's a good question. We have almost 300 sites ... and we have individual blogs. What's important is that we're getting the idea of social payments out there. The main thing that's important is how many times our medallion is served up. The medallion is our widget that runs on publishers' sites. And those views have peaked at more than 1 million medallion views per day.

  Typaldos explains how they are trying to create a new social norm, and will be launching new Twitter and Facebook apps:

  I'm curious what the excuse is from larger newspaper websites who won't use your service. What is their excuse? It seems like a simple enough thing to try.

  Typaldos: What it takes is there needs to be a person at the company who is forward-thinking, is willing to experiment, and has the authority and power to implement the medallion on their website. It only takes like five minutes. There aren't any integration issues. When you are talking about pay walls, those systems take time to implement. [To get Kachingle on a site] takes a champion and it takes a champion with clout.

  Tell me how it works. Does a publisher's site have to have PayPal to make it work? Can they take credit card payments?

  Typaldos: It's really very simple. A publisher pulls the medallion from our site, and posts our medallion on their site -- and they could even have multiple medallions for various parts of the site. Each medallion can have its own PayPal account. So they could have the money go to the newspaper's finances or it could even go to one journalist. It's their choice. Yes, it does go into PayPal, so they need an account to retrieve it.

  What's your cut in the equation and what's the cost with PayPal?

  Typaldos: This is an interesting question. We wanted to make it incredibly simple. We manage all the financial transactions through PayPal. So we can tell people using our system that 85 percent of the money they put in will go to the publishers' hands. We manage all the transaction fees. We went to PayPal and did a deal with them for the pay-in when people buy the $5 subscription, and we told them we had to have a better price, and we did a deal on the pay-out too. We got those fees down to 15 percent, ours is about 7 percent and theirs is 8 percent. We got them down from 11 percent but think it should be even lower.

  We're really happy with PayPal because they were willing to do this deal with us even though we're just a small startup. The reason they did the deal is that they really believe this will be a very big market, and they want to be part of that market. They improved their existing products for us, and they'll be coming out with new products to make it even better.

  It seems like a perfect fit between what you do and what non-profit news sites might want.

  Typaldos: We do think there are lots of great non-profits in the journalism field that don't have a regular source of revenues. So we're really pleased we have signed up a bunch of non-profits, including the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity, and many more. We're excited about that, but we have plenty of good blog sites doing great journalism as well. It's really up to the users to decide what to reward and what the user values.

  Typaldos talks about how Kachingle is trying to build up the user base by signing up more publishers:

  How did you come up with $5 per month, and why are you so strict about people putting in no less and no more than that?

  Typaldos: It's a really interesting question. Early adopters and bloggers love lots of choices, but our target audience is ordinary people and they don't like a lot of choices. I don't know if you've read The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, but it's one of my favorite books. He talks about how you go into a store and there are 25 types of peanut butter, and it doesn't make your life any easier. We want to send a signal to users -- they don't know how much to spend when they first sign up, they don't know what their friends are doing.

  It's like tipping. If you didn't know the standard 15 percent to pay for tips, each time you went out to eat, it would be a stressful experience. We wanted it to be $5, no thinking, to reduce the barrier for getting people to sign up. We're also saying that $5 is enough, these are micropayments, and we're not expecting people to be putting in $100 or even $30. Over time, we will start sending some signals saying that their friends are giving $10 a month, and would they like to give more. But without social signals people don't really know what to choose ... Eventually we'd like to bring people up to $10 to $12 on average per month.

  What's been your biggest compliment from people and your biggest complaint?

  Typaldos: The compliments largely come from the more than 300 sites who have got more money -- but it's not always about money, it's often more about building a stronger bond with users. We even had users write to us saying, 'please I'd like to Kachingle a certain site but they don't have the medallion -- can you make them do it?' We're trying to figure out how to make that happen. The biggest compliment is from the sites and users saying they want to connect, and connect in a monetary way.

  As far as the biggest complaint, the biggest difficulty, is in Germany -- we're big in Germany and the U.S. -- where they require a credit card just to use PayPal for a subscription, even if the credit card isn't being used. And credit cards aren't big in Germany so it's an issue for us. We're working with PayPal to fix that. It's been our biggest issue.

  One other compliment we get is on being totally financially transparent. As a user, you can see exactly where your money goes. You can track every penny. I felt that this was incredibly important because users really want to know where their money is going. I call it 'crowdsource auditing.'

  Typaldos tries to explain why Germany is such a popular place for Kachingle:

  How do you differ from the online tipping services?

  Typaldos: One of those companies, TipJoy, went out of business. A lot of these companies have way too many mental transaction costs. We're not a tipping system. A tipping system requires you to figure out how much to pay each time. For us, you just start at Kachingle and pay $5 a month, and choose the sites you want to pay once, and we do all the work in the background -- figuring out which sites you went to most, and splitting the money that way. It's a simple, fair algorithm. Most systems before required people to take action each time.

  There's a new company in the space, Flattr, and a new French company too called Rue89, so soon there will be three companies. The more, the better, because we are trying to change social norms. There's dramatic differences between Flattr and us. They ask you to click a button like a Facebook "Like" button to give money. We're very much different than that, because you only have to turn on the medallion once for a site to give money to them.

  *****

  What do you think about social payment systems? Could it help with the business model of online news and journalism? What will it take for them to break through to a wider audience? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 11:17

  Won't Someone Think of the Children! Massachusetts' Unconstitutional Attempt to Break the Internet

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  It is a good thing to want to protect children from the vulgarity of the world. Accordingly, states have adopted prohibitions on exhibiting or selling harmful material to minors. These laws make sense, in that we usually don’t want sex shops selling pornography to kids. But occasionally the legislature goes a bit insane and decides that, in order to fully protect the children, we need to criminalize or block off whole sections of the Internet.

  Massachusetts recently changed its “harmful to minors” law (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 272, § 31) to include information hosted on the Internet:
  

  “Matter”, any handwritten or printed material, visual representation, live performance or sound recording including, but not limited to, books, magazines, motion picture films, pamphlets, phonographic records, pictures, photographs, figures, statues, plays, dances, or any electronic communication including, but not limited to, electronic mail, instant messages, text messages, and any other communication created by means of use of the Internet or wireless network, whether by computer, telephone, or any other device or by any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photo-electronic or photo-optical system.
  

  2010 Mass. Acts ch. 74, § 2. The ACLU has already challenged the law. I predict that Massachusetts is about to get spanked on its inviting, taut little buns (in case the law remains in effect, I mean spanked in a non-sexual way — if you are a minor please do not turn me in). 

  This definitional expansion was not a good idea for many, many reasons:

  First off, this approach threatens to criminalize huge swaths of the Internet because there is no easy way to ensure that one's risqué material is not viewed by minors. See failed attempts to require the use of real names or other identifiers online (that is, outside of South Korea).  The only way to be safe would be to make sure that your content was rated PG (and I don’t know about you but I sometimes enjoy the occasional swear or comment on taut buns, see supra). This PG restriction of course would amount to censorship of constitutionally protected speech.

  Secondly, it seems to me that the Supreme Court already hinted in Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), that this sort of thing is unconstitutional. There, the Court struck down sections of the Communication Decency Act of 1996, which imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who:

  knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs.

  Thirdly, the Massachusetts legislature has apparently misunderstood the scope of the Internet. Whereas the previous “harmful to minors” language contemplated sex shops with physical locations serving Massachusetts minors, the new law reaches the entire country. Surely, Massachusetts does not have the right to regulate businesses located in other states, especially provided that those businesses are not specifically targeting Massachusetts residents.

  Fourthly, the law will provide another tool for bogus takedowns of otherwise lawful content, à la the DMCA. If I don’t much care for the content of your site, it would be virtually costless for me to turn you in and exclaim loudly “Won’t someone please think of the children!”

  Lastly, this law comes at a time when the United States is exerting pressure on her allies to refrain from adopting similar “protect the children” Internet prohibitions. The Australians recently delayed turning on their giant Big Brother is Watching You Internet Filter for a least one year, due in part to extraordinary condemnation from the U.S. government and businesses. (Good job not being evil Google).  

  As always, I try to ascribe these sorts of bills to carelessness or stupidity rather than hubris. The inclusion of “text messages” makes me think that this law is actually an anti-sexting law along the lines of the prohibitions in Ohio and Illinois. If this is the case, the legislature might want to withdraw the insanely swollen language in favor of a more tailored, form fitting, and supple solution to this problem. 

   (Andrew Moshirnia is a rising third year at Harvard Law School. He believes that parts of the human body, practical as they may be, are evil!) 

  

  

• 10:25

  Station Will Give Electric Cars a Charge

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  This post was filed by Bill Sweet, who blogs about energy and climate for IEEE Spectrum.

  In a press event held yesterday in a mid-Manhattan parking lot, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and U.S. housing secretary Shaun Donovan hailed the installation of an electric car charging station that’s meant to inaugurate a revolution in passenger transit. The station, the first of 100 to be deployed in New York’s five boroughs by the beginning of next year, was designed and developed by Coulomb Technologies, a California startup. It resembles a cute little gasoline pump and is featured, coincidentally, in the triennial design exhibition currently at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. (For photo of pump and background, go to IEEE Spectrum.)

  The New York City scheme is part of a national program to install nearly 5,000 Coulomb charging stations in 9 U.S. metropolitan areas, at a cost of about $37 million and with $15 million in support from the U.,S. stimulus bill. Donovan, Bloomberg’s former housing chief, made plain yesterday that the charging station plan should be seen as part of the Obama administration’s aim to create future jobs. He noted that today Obama would be cutting the ribbon at a new car battery factory in Michigan. When the stimulus bill was passed there were no mass manufacturers of car batteries in the United States, he said; now there will be nine.

  Bloomberg said that the city plans to have its 100 charging stations in place by the time carmakers like Chevrolet, Nissan, Ford and Daimler introduce electric cars next year. Daimler has just introduced an electric version of its Smartcar to the United States on a trial basis, with commercial sales slated for 2012.

• 9:30

  Horses Get Sick Time

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  In an attempt to move the stalled paid sick leave bill, advocates showed up at Central Park yesterday to point out carriage horses get time off (the result of a bill passed earlier this year), but people aren’t guaranteed sick time.

  We couldn’t make it, but they sent over photos.

  What a juxtaposition.

  

  In March, the paid sick leave bill got a hearing, but nothing has happened since. Council Speaker Christine Quinn still hasn’t taken a position on it.

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-15

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Migrate All Your Old Gmail to a New Gmail Address " Gmail's easy-to-use Mail Fetcher feature and POP3 access, you can easily import all of your old emails to your new, respectable Gmail address with a few very simple steps. Here's how it works…" (tags: e-mail tutorial process)
  • Is it possible to forward emails in bulk? – Gmail Help Short (and annoying) answer: NO

    "I'm guessing that they have some super-duper extra strength data deduplication scheme going on that allows them to offer such massive storage to everyone. It is a bit annoying, as I'm moving data backups rom a personal account to a work account for wider access. Don't want everyone poking through my personal email to find a backup file, really. And, now I will actually have two copies (three, if you count the desktop ones) on Gmail, which defeats the purpose of their scheme, really, because of the method I need to use to get the emails there. If I had been able to import from another Gmail account, or I could export to a file, it would have been much easier.

    I had to use the desktop approach to get it to work – which took forever, considering there were about 2 GB of backup data to move."

    (tags: e-mail problems)
  • NOOKstudy: Barnes & Nobles’ free digital foray into the education market lets students read e-textbooks, take fully searchable notes & highlights "The software, which will be available for the PC and Mac, gives students the ability to download and organize electronic textbooks, as well as keep all of their notes, syllabuses, and so on in one safe place. Handy. And no, you don’t need a nook to use NOOKstudy." (tags: e-books e-readers education software apps)
  • Barnes & Noble announces NOOKstudy eTextbook college program | ZDNet "NOOKstudy application that is designed to let students manage all of their digital content on their PC or Mac. This new study tool offers instant downloads to eTextbooks and academic and trade titles. NOOKstudy is also an application that takes ebook reading to the next level with support for searchable lecture notes, syllabi, slides, images, course-related documents, and more. NOOKstudy will be available starting this fall semester after pilot testing at selected 2 and 4 year institutions is complete." (tags: e-books e-readers education apps)
  • Nokia finally dumps Symbian for MeeGo at high end | RCR Unplugged "Finnish phone maker Nokia had decided to dump its antiquated Symbian operating system for future high-end smartphones in favour of its sleeker, Linux-based MeeGo mobile OS. The first phones to get the MeeGo treatment will be the new Nokia N-series, with the N8 being the very last of its kind to sport the now nearly defunct Symbian before its shoved over to cheaper Nokia devices." (tags: mobile smartphones Nokia software change)
  • It's time to backup your cloud, too | ZDNet One way to check if your e-mail has been hacked: "Once you’re done backing up everything, make sure to check the list of IPs that have been accessing your account. Gmail offers that at the bottom of the screen, but most services will offer up similar information these days, too." (tags: e-mail security tips)

  

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-14 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • Digital World Citizens: Using Youtube to expose chaotic transportation systems
    Using YouTube and the political will that comes along with the olympics to improve public transportation. [via Anne]

  

• 1:43

  Abidjan Blog Camps: Free Théophile Kouamouo

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  

  Théophile Kouamouo

  We have got worrying news from Ivory Coast. Théophile Kouamouo, one of Francophone Africa's leading bloggers, and the project leader of the Rising Voices grantee Abidjan Blog Camps has been arrested for publishing a newspaper report. Théophile Kouamouo, a French citizen of Cameroonian origin and a resident of Ivory Coast, is the Managing Editor of Le Nouveau Courrier, a new Ivorian daily launched in May 2010. On 13th of July, 2010 the newspaper published the first of a series of five articles on the “burning issue” of the coffee and cocoa sector which contained information of a recent report on the investigation of 30 people by public prosecutor Raymond Tchimou submitted to the president.

  From Theophile's blog [fr]

  It relates in great details the facts upon which the ‘barons' of the industry, including leading figures Henri Amouzou and Lucien Tapé Doh are charged of having committed incredible felonies for the purpose of diverting tens of billions of CFA francs from the sector's fund.

  Fraud, misappropriation, embezzlement, forgery and use of forgery, misuse of company assets … Le Nouveau Courrier describes in great detail the methods used, citing financial manipulations, purchases of properties in France, bank accounts in Monaco etc.

  

  Image Courtesy Jean-Christian De Irie

  Reporters Without Borders reports about the arrest of Théophile and his two colleagues [fr]

  By order of Raymond Tchimou Fehou, Prosecutor of the county court, three journalists from Le Nouveau Courrier d'Abidjan, Saint Claver Oula, editor, Steéphane Guédé, newspaper editor and Théophile Kouamouo, managing editor, were arrested by the Criminal Police. The prosecutor accused them to have published the findings of his own investigation into the embezzlement in the cocoa-coffee sector. The classified document had been handed over a few weeks earlier to President Laurent Gbagbo.

  Tuesday, July 13, the prosecutor summoned editor Théophile Kouamouo to his office to compel him to disclose his sources. The journalist declined. The prosecutor then ordered him to be arrested by criminal police, who kept him in custody after the hearing. The newspaper's premises were then searched.

  Reporters Without Borders reminds that protection of sources is a fundamental principle of the practice of journalism and demands release of the journalists.

  Connectionivorienne.net reports claiming a source that if the source was named these journalists could avoid arrest [fr]:

  Other sources claim however that things will sort themselves out, “there is nothing serious, the Prosecutor is only annoyed and he just wants to know the source, who it was that provided the top-secret file meant for the head of the state, at the Nouveau Courrier editorial staff. “

  Our attempts to contact Mr. Patrice Pohe, press secretary of the prosecutor, remained unsuccessful.

  Yoro (Israël Yoroba) of Abidjan Blog Camps informs at Avenue 225 Blog [fr] about the latest condition of Théophile Kouamouo in prison:

  The meeting with Théophile Kouamouo took place in a relaxed atmosphere. His pace and good mood are undeterred. “We're doing fine,” he reassures. The editorial director of the “Le Nouveau Courrier” is willing to go back over this imprisonment which hides some unspoken intentions on the part of Prosecutor Tchimou.

  For the newspaper's editors, it is out of the question to yield to pressure. “We remain strong and worthy of the trust of our readers and especially of our profession. The main issue here is that the prosecutor is asking us to reveal the sources of our information and if we don't, he'd put us right away in jail.” Kouamouo and his colleagues by refusing to reveal their source(s) say they want to preserve the spirit of journalism. “The stand we defend is that if a journalist has to disclose his sources to a prosecutor, that means that the profession itself has disappeared. We stand firm for our readers, for the corporation and our idea of democracy. “

  We demand the earliest release of Theophile Kuoamouo and his colleagues. Here is a petition you can sign to show your support.

  Update: Global Voices author Elia Varela Serra reports in Global Voices Advocacy site:

  The three journalists, who spent the last two nights in police custody in spite of the pressure to reveal their sources, are waiting to be taken before a judge and charged with “theft of administrative documents.” Since the news of their detention broke out yesterday they have been receiving visits of numerous colleagues and organizations who are showing their support, including the Groupement des éditeurs de presse de Côte d'Ivoire (the newspaper editors' professional association). Some colleagues have pointed out that the first article in the official Code of Ethics for the Ivorian Journalist published by the Ministry of Communications (see original in French here) states that “the journalist has the right to the protection of his/her information sources”.

  Several bloggers and journalists have shown their support to Kouamouo and the rest of the Le Nouveau Courrier team through an online petition asking for their immediate release, as well as through Twitter and a Facebook group where they have shared updates about the case.

  Global Voices author and Translator Suzanne Lehn helped us with the Translation.

• July 14, 2010
• 23:00

  Term Limits Could Throw Out Council Members

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  In the latest on term limits, some members who voted in 2008 to let their colleagues serve three terms could see themselves forced from office after only two. How would that happen?

• 17:33

  The Case for Turning Around Print Media Companies

   » ‎ MediaShift

  This article was co-authored by Neil Heyside.

  The media and publishing industry -- and print publishing in particular -- doesn't have to show up to its own funeral.

  There's still opportunity to enable profitable, desirable businesses. We're not suggesting that a recent uptick in advertising sales is a sign that publishers can go back to the old days of 25 percent net profit margins. Media companies had been so profitable for so long that eventually both owners and banks that were the beneficiaries of the cash flow from over-leveraged franchises left them needing reinvestment capital.

  Let's forget for a moment that the change brought by the digital evolution has chased off some print dollars, perhaps for good. The ugly truth that no one seems to want to face is that 1) many media companies need better and more efficient management techniques and 2) many of these same organizations are starved for capital investment and innovation.

  It is the perfect time to bring change into such companies to allow them to create efficiencies that fund their own sorely needed capital investment. Many industries would kill for a 15 percent net return, and media companies, print included, can easily sustain that into the foreseeable future.

  The Problem of Accidental Ownership

  Few industries can withstand economic downturns. It is our view that while revenues for cable, network television and radio are off, they will return to traditional levels once the economy recovers. The fastest return will be felt in online media.

  Print publishing is another matter. Newspaper Association of America statistics show that newspaper ad revenues have fallen for 13 quarters in a row as of 1Q 2010, or off 46 percent from four years ago. Moody's recently came out with a prediction that the 22 percent decline in 2009 will be followed by a 10 to 15 percent drop this year, with a possible slight increase in 2011. While local newspaper ad revenues are growing, national print advertising that departed for digital media and Internet-based direct marketing will never return.

  This has led to serious concerns at major print media outlets. During the last year alone, numerous print-based media organizations have emerged from bankruptcy or out-of-court restructuring; largely the deals amounted to converting debt to equity. Diverse debt holders such as GE Capital, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch and opportunistic debt investors Angelo Gordon and Fortress Investment Group now rest uneasily at the head of the table in boardrooms in the major media print industry.

  Still, the losses in ad revenue are slowing down and there's some optimism in the business. Management wants to reinvest capital in their businesses, believing that an improved economic environment is the answer to their problems. Management tells its new ownership it has cut costs to the bone. However, the accidental owners -- the banks and private equity groups -- are not keen or structurally capable to reinvest in these businesses. They're also not as convinced of the belief that the companies have been made as efficient as possible.

  How to Generate Investment Capital Where None Exists?

  Many U.S. print publishers have downsized their workforces in accordance with their revenue losses, but they haven't changed the way they operate. It's the same inefficient, outdated model that they operated in the past. If the industry is upside down already, how does it generate investment capital where none exists?

  The traditional way of a magazine or newspaper to make change happen is to re-launch the publication with a new look and content, but it isn't much more than cosmetic. Because of the lack of investment in technology -- sales management technology, digital and newsroom technology, accounting technology -- publications don't have the information in their hands to make decisions about resource management and where or what to invest in to improve results.

  We've taken more than 800 publications through this process and found operational efficiencies worth nearly $200 million annually in the United Kingdom and the U.S. These efficiencies have been as a result of not only reducing capacity, but also changing the way people work and changing the way they think. In most cases, the organization has used a significant percentage of these benefits to re-invest in the business, investment that otherwise wouldn't have been forthcoming.

  Publications need fewer people doing the right things to make them more efficient. Here are a few examples:

  • Newsrooms need to be reinvented and reinvigorated as a lack of investment has often resulted in poor quality of management and antiquated leadership skills in newsrooms. There are still too many editors and rewriters and not enough writers and copy clerks. Every editorial staff position needs to undergo an accountability analysis so that management knows where to employ dollars to retain and improve quality. For example, local newspapers don't need to produce content that is national by nature, a practice still prevalent in many feature sections.

  • Newsrooms must invest in new technologies that can make them more efficient, such as smartphones that can take camera-ready digital photographs and transmit them remotely. Print publications have also been slow to embrace both enterprise resource management systems to improve the quality and flow of information to management, as well as customer relationship management systems to optimize the sales force.

  • Based on "Day In The Life" studies, the sales force of many print publications are only spending 30 to 35 percent of the available time on value-added sales activities. Sales people still find themselves undertaking a lot of non-added value administrative work that wastes time and valuable resources. This additional sales capacity could instead be focused on revenue driven activities such as digital initiatives and securing new and lapsed customers.

  • Publishers historically needed those 25 percent margins to pay for the cost of printing and circulation. These functions should be outsourced. You can't just run a $100 million press for yourself anymore.

  Aligning Key Stakeholders

  All media companies -- we even include the trade show industry here -- would benefit from understanding two concepts. First, you need to understand the cost of quality in content creation. This is traditionally a subjective conversation that needs to be turned into a more objective one in order to become more effective. Companies need to undergo an analytical process, the outputs of which allow the organization to fully understand where they are spending their money and what are they getting in return in terms of value.

  The second key concept is that the organization needs to optimize its sales force across both print and digital platforms. The old media model was based on inbound order-taking and today, many media sales forces that had forgotten how to sell are struggling with the fact that media is now an outbound sale. Organizational structures have to be based around activity and performance, with sales management systems and processes that require employees to have more accountability.

  Despite the protestations of management, there are more optimization opportunities in media companies to be had to revitalize the companies. In our experience in the U.K., half of the savings the companies created were reinvested in the business: in digital, in better content and more efficient technology. One company needed $2.5 million to improve its digital product. The owners said no. But the company found the savings on the print side and moved it to digital, which the owner then matched.

  We've met with a dozen stakeholders involved with major media companies as we roll out this process who believe that there's still a significant amount of opportunity that can be generated from their portfolio companies where management says "we've taken out every dollar of cost we can." This capacity can then be redeployed and reinvested. All the parties need is better information and an objective collaboration and the time to do it is now.

  As part of New York-based CRG Partners, Michael J. Epstein (michael.epstein@crgpartners.com) specializes in turnaround, crisis management and financial advisory services activities in both middle market and large transactions, while Neil Heyside (neil.heyside@crgpartners.com) has more than 20 years of experience in process improvement, change management and operational re-engineering in the U.K., U.S., Europe and South Africa. CRG Partners was named Turnaround Consulting Firm of the Year by M&A Advisor.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 16:23

  Pilgrim-Hunter Gets Props

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter has ended her campaign for the Bronx Senate seat held by Pedro Espada and she’s getting some “dap” for doing so.

  “Desiree Pilgrim Hunter is a respected civic leader and strong advocate for some of the most important issues facing our neighbors and all residents of the Bronx,” said Gustavo Rivera, who is challenging Espada in the Democratic primary, in a statement.” Her campaign from the start always focused on making our neighborhoods stronger and better for all people now and for generations to come. I salute her dedication and commitment to our shared goal of working as hard as possible to give our part of the Bronx positive, honest and effective leadership in Albany.”

  Pilgrim-Hunter also got a shout out from Bill Samuels, founder of the New Roosevelt Initiative, who has endorsed Rivera.

  “I commend Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter for her selfless and courageous decision to withdraw from the Democratic primary to unseat incumbent State Sen. Pedro Espada. Her announcement demonstrates that she is a true community activist who is willing to put the cause of reforming Albany ahead of her own personal political ambitions. Unseating disgraced and corrupt State Sen. Pedro Espada is the first step toward bringing true reform to Albany and sending a message to his like-minded colleagues that it is time to step aside.

  “We are gratified that reformers in the 33rd district and the state are coming together to defeat Espada and his cynical and self-aggrandizing brand of politics, which has made voters lose faith in our elected officials in Albany”

  There has been concern among those who want to see Espada unseated that the anti-Espada vote could be dilluted by multiple challengers.

  Fernando Tirado is also challenging in the primary.

• 14:31

  dotSUB: Spread your message into other languages

   » ‎ J.D. Lasica
  
  
  

  One of my favorite Web 2.0 collaborate production sites of all time is dotSUB — tagline: “Any video. Any language.” I’ve been bumping into Michael Smolens, CEO and founder of the innovative startup, for the past couple of years at video and social media conferences on both coasts.

  dotSUB is a Web-based tool that enables the subtitling, or captioning, of Web videos into other languages using human translators. The videos can be subtitled through volunteer crowdsourcing or restricted to professionals hired to complete the task for a business or project.

  The genesis for dotSUB was Michael’s realization that English-only independent and documentary films, TV programs and videos could have a powerful, transformative effect if made available in dozens of other languages – and the same could hold true of foreign works shown in the U.S. with English subtitles. The service’s early years relied on the Wikipedia model of crowdsourced translations: Anyone could begin subtitling a film into his or her own language, and others could come along afterward to tidy up.

  Apart from open, collaborative uses, dotSUB more recently has been used as a closed platform where businesses, media and entertainment companies and other organizations that don’t trust the open community could hire a team of professional translators to provide captions of CEO speeches, corporate videos, training videos and marketing or advertising messages in multiple languages. And this, no doubt, is where dotSUB generates the bulk of its income, given that it can accomplish this task at a price considerably below traditional methods.

  One can easily imagine multinational corporations that use video as part of its marketing, public outreach or branding strategies turn to dotSUB as an end-to-end solution for translations into its non-English markets.

  One can also imagine the educational uses of dotSUB in the classroom from elementary school to high school, from universities to graduate level programs.

  Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

  dotSUB is helping to put the issue of access and language on the radar screens of major corporations and smaller organizations. In the last couple of years, dotSUB has partnered with TED, Pop!Tech, ICANN, Brightcove and SDI Media, among others. For example, dotSUB is powering the translations of thousands of TED videos into scores of languages.

  “Anyone in the world can volunteer to translate any TED talk into any language,” Michael said. “This is the first time these remote languages will have something like TED talks available in their own language.”

  He also cites the example of Iranian bloggers who used dotSUB to translate cell phone videos about the Iranian street demonstrations from their native Farsi into other languages, including English. And Michael said he and Wikipedia are discussing the use of dotSUB as an enabling tool for the videos starting to appear on the site.

  Amazing.

  Michael and I chatted during the last Open Video conference at New York University. Not sure if I’ll be attending this year’s event, Oct. 1–2, but anyone interested in the use of open tools to propagate video far and wide should consider going.

  Cross-posted (with different emphasis) to Socialbrite.

  JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

  Related posts:

  1. Google Docs in plain English
  2. Translating the Web
  3. A search engine to identify languages?

• 12:57

  Crash Test?

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  The Democratic candidates for state attorney general are taking a stand on stop and frisk — urging Gov. David Paterson to sign a bill opposed by the Bloomberg administration that would not allow the police to keep names of people they stop and frisk who later are not accused of any crime of other office.

  Given all the recent revelations about who’s stopped and who’s frisked, that seems like pretty significant stuff but it’s being overshadowed by a fender bender Monday involving one of the attorney general candidates — Eric Schneiderman and Rachel Kagan, a niece of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. By most accounts Kagan was driving the car that struck — as luck would have it — another vehicle owned by NY1 Executive Editor Melissa Rabinovich. After striking Rabinovich’s parked car — and causing an estimated $3,000 worth of damage — Schneiderman’s vehicle reportedly drove away. A witness, Rabinovich has said, wrote down the number. She then contacted Schneiderman and told him what had happened.

  Schneiderman has pushed back against charges the accident was a hit and run, saying he did not realize either car had been damaged. Once he learned the other car had been damaged, he apologized and offered to pay, his campaign has said.

  The candidate himself said he was not trying to shirk responsibility for what happened. “My staff member hit this person’s car, I’ve apologized, I’m willing to pay for the repairs. It was not a situation as portrayed,” in the NY1 story, he said.
  

  At a forum last night, most of Schneiderman’s rivals declined comment on the incident. Kathleen Rice, who along with Schneiderman is widely regarded as a top contender for the post, called the allegations against her leading opponent “very distributing.”

  The Albany Project faulted Schneiderman’s response. “Instead of simply apologizing and letting it drop, the Schneiderman campaign has apparently decided to get into a fight with NY1 about the reporting on this, drawing out the story and making them sound petty,” the blog said, adding later, “While this story would be bad for any candidate, I think we can all agree that for someone running to be New York’s top law enforcement official, it’s particularly bad.”

  Daily Intel wrote, “In a primary race with four other Democrats, none of whom voters really know anything about, Schneiderman is now in danger of becoming “the hit-and-run guy.”

  A Candid World disagrees. That blog observed, “Schneiderman is a talented, reform-minded, and ethical state senator. … If the incident reports stand up, Schneiderman made a mistake, but not one big enough that it could (or should) tarnish his promising career.”

  One of the strongest reactions came from State Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. who called for an investigation of his colleague, and perhaps with tongue on cheek — who knows? — called for Schneiderman’s removal from the Democratic Party. As State of Politics, notes, though, this may be more an instance of tit for tat than a serious suggestion since Schneiderman headed the committee that laid the groundwork for the ouster of Diaz’s ally Hiram Monserrate from the State Senate earlier this year.

• 12:32

  Help MediaBugs Make News Sites Track, Correct Errors

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  Imagine you're sitting at the back of a classroom. The lecture is on a fascinating topic -- the American Civil War, say. The professor has started a riveting back-and-forth with students in the front about the Union's initial motivations for fighting. The professor says, "And then Harriet Jacobs wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' which galvanized many northerners in the cause of abolishing slavery. What role do you think Jacobs' book played?"

  You cock your head. Harriet Jacobs? It was Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin." You raise your hand to ask for a clarification, but the back-and-forth between the professor and students rolls on; the students debate Jacobs' impact, reinforcing the error. The professor is not calling on you, let alone seeing you -- and Jacobs' name is now forever linked in a dozen students' minds with the wrong book.

  This is a light illustration of what can happen when errors of fact are made and reinforced, but it's light only because it's fleeting and somewhat contained. On a news website, however, an uncorrected error can be persistent, countlessly recited, and linked to by a thousand pages. It's a big problem. Error tracking and correction, as Mark Follman and Scott Rosenberg at MediaBugs argue in their new survey and report this week, is a central pillar of the public's trust in news organizations. But thus far online, news organizations are failing to buttress that pillar:

  The results of MediaBugs' first survey of Bay Area media-correction practices show that 21 out of 28 news sites examined -- including many of the region's leading daily newspapers and broadcast news outlets -- provide no corrections link on their websites' home pages and article pages. The websites for 17 of the 28 news organizations examined have no corrections policy or substantive corrections content at all.

  Sites that do offer corrections-related content frequently make it relatively difficult to find: It is located two or three obscure clicks into the site, or requires visitors to use the site's search function. Once located, the corrections content is, in most cases, poorly organized and not easily navigated.

  The Price of Uncorrected Errors

  MediaBugs has already made many corrections happen. But when you're an engaged citizen, seeing an error online and not being able to suggest a correction is like sitting at the back of a classroom, helpless, as your fellow students learn and repeat the wrong thing. You feel somehow lesser, that you're both ignored and ignorant.

  That feeling not only breeds mistrust but resentment -- a feeling that the professor or editor must think they know everything, that they don't need you. Yet all they have to do is admit they are human, that corrections are needed and should be easily submitted, tracked, and publicized. That people sometimes make mistakes.

  So help MediaBugs fix the news. Browse bugs, report bugs, and above all, bug your local newspaper editors to make it easier to report online errors directly to them.

  Correction July 14: This post originally said that "MediaBugs has already made hundreds of corrections happen," but the actual total of corrections is closer to a couple of dozen.

• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-14

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Mobile Digital Divide Gap | Negocios | Mobile, Access, Africanamericans, Digital, Internet "According to Pew spokesman Aaron W. Smith, increased mobile web usage is driven by two key factors: age and economics. A younger demo with an annual income of $30,000 or less a year has jumped in usage, and African-Americans and Hispanics are younger and have less money than the general white population.

    "Mobile is thus bridging the digital gap between the traditional distinction of haves and have-nots, and while it’s a positive trend, it’s still a gap between those with cellphone-only access and those with computers as well.

    "About 18% of African-Americans use a cellphone as their sole device for Internet access compared to about 10% of whites. That said, laptop ownership has risen from 34% in 2009 to a current 51% among African-Americans.

    "Overall, 59% of Americans now access the Internet through mobile devices as opposed to 51% a year ago. So mobile may prove to be the ultimate equalizer, at least on the digital playing field.

    (tags: mobile research digital+divide race economy trends)
  • Will WiMax ever replace traditional Internet service providers (ISPs)? – by Elizabeth M. Young – Helium "Both WiMAX and LTE are 4G mobile broadband brands, and LTE is taking the lead in attracting the wireless power players. What are the odds that 4G technology will overtake and completely replace cable or DSL for access to the internet? They are not that good, since cable and DSL can still service the currently owned computers, television and land telephone lines that people have, need and will use for years into the future. Given the current state of the economy, it may look as if there are unlimited numbers of people who can jump ship and convert to any new technology, but that is not reality. (tags: mobile wimax LTE broadband technology business+models)
  • LTE chips: A leading indicator of mainstream adoption? – FierceBroadbandWireless "It might seem as if there are enough device types available, the actual number is small and vendors are targeting specific market niches as shown from the differences in implementation and approaches. This is typical for an emerging market and new technology. The overall timeframe for widespread network deployment of devices and services based upon LTE is probably going to take longer than the service providers, equipment vendors and market hype is projecting. The chips currently available represent first generation solutions and are only beginning to be produced in large quantities for the mass market. Battery life optimization, needed for mainstream adoption, usually does not occur until second or third generation silicon. There is also the LTE standards process.

    "While there will be LTE-enabled smartphone devices available at the end of 2010 and more service provider networks supporting LTE, it will not become a mainstream technology in the U.S. over the next 12 months."

    (tags: mobile LTE technology handsets problems)

  

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-13 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • Let's make the web faster - Google Code
    Some very interesting stats about the internet from Google.
  • Aperture | Presetpond | free Lightroom and Aperture presets
    What a great website - a place to share presets for Aperture and Lightroom.
  • YouTube Video Editor
    Very useful for citizen media groups wanting to make easy videos. Wish this were around three years ago.

  

• July 13, 2010
• 23:00

  The District is Brooklyn Heights, But Albany is the Issue

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  As Downtown Brooklyn feels the effects of state budget woes, a State Assembly candidate says the incumbent should do more to protect the district. One in our series on key 2010 races.

• 16:57

  Online, news archives never die, nor do they fade away

   » ‎ Online Journalism Review
  By Robert Niles: Two state judges in Pennsylvania recently ordered newspapers to take down online stories about criminal cases after charges against the defendants were expunged. The newspapers refused, citing the First Amendment's prohibition against the government restricting the freedom of the press. Last week, the judges relented, and the papers were allowed to keep the stories online in their public archives. Do not for a moment believe, however, that this was a victory for journalism. Courts routinely expunge the indictment records of defendants, especially for relatively minor offenses by first-time defendants who stay out of trouble for a specific period of time after their arrest. Prosecutors also can decide to withdraw charges before a case completes trial. However, in some communities, the local newspaper runs stories or notices about those arrests when they happen. One of the duties in my first newspaper job was to compile the nightly "police beat," collecting and writing up arrest reports from the city, campus and state police in Bloomington, Indiana. In the past, when old newspapers went into the local landfill and newspapers' archives were available only through at trip to the paper's headquarters (or maybe the local library), few people ever ran across these old arrest reports. If you wanted to run a criminal check on someone, say a job applicant or potential tenant, you called up the court and got the arrest and conviction records from there. If a record had been expunged, there'd be no report; the person would come through clean and there'd be no problem. Today, with newspaper and many court records ubiquitous online, many employers, lenders and landlords skip the potentially expensive court records and go straight to free search engines such as Google to get the background on an applicant. And that's where some folks are finding those old arrest stories, now often published online. A defense lawyer in one of the Pennsylvania cases told an Associated Press reporter that he'd taken calls from two people who'd complained that an employer or potential employer had discovered notices on the Internet about criminal records that had been expunged. [Link above] It's easy for newspapers to dismiss this problem by saying "Hey, the story was accurate when we published it." But online, publication isn't a finite action. It's an ongoing status. Stories that were "published" in the old media sense years ago are "published" anew again each time a new reader calls it up in his or her Web browser. So a story about an old arrest is not accurate when it is published to a new reader if that story fails to note that the charges have been dismissed and expunged. This is just one more way in which the Internet has changed the environment within which the news business operates.

• 16:24

  Silver Says No

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Here is a release from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office explaining why they rejected Gov. David Paterson’s new revenue bill.

  “The roles of the Executive and Legislative branches in the state budget process are proscribed by Article VII of the NYS Constitution.  In a manner consistent with the Constitution, the Governor sent budget bills to the Legislature.  The Assembly has fully and finally acted upon such budget bills.
  The Governor is not constitutionally empowered unilaterally to restart or reconfigure the state budget process at this time.  Article VII §3 of the Constitution expressly precludes Executive submission of any additional or alternative budget bills without “the consent of the legislature” at this time.   The Assembly has not consented to the submission of new budget bills.

  The Assembly is willing to engage in discussions with the Executive and the Senate about fiscal issues.”

• 16:10

  What Working for Wikipedia Taught Me About Collaboration

   » ‎ MediaShift

  A little over three years ago, I started working as the communications manager for Wikipedia. I had just moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., and was ecstatic to hear that this quirky website, which had begun to pop up in many of my web searches, was based there. Having grown up in New York, my culture radar detected that this was a one-of-a-kind project that attracted eccentric individuals. Needless to say, my radar never fails me.

  At that time, Wikipedia's internal structure did not match the widespread success and attention it was beginning to enjoy. I found myself working in a thrifty "rent-by-the-month" office building with three other employees: An administrative assistant, a fundraiser/hardcore Wikipedian, and a CFO. I was told that most tasks, including the communication projects, were carried out by a large network of international volunteers.

  I immediately began to review the public relations materials available to me, and almost immediately went into panic mode. There was no polished press kit, press list or, dare I say, communication strategy. In fact, the majority of individuals on the communications committee had little to no public relations training, and were more intellectual and techie than the average PR practitioner at that time.

  Crisis Mode

  A few weeks into the job, with little training and a very primitive understanding of the wiki ethos, I encountered my first PR crisis. A hardcore and well known Wikipedian, Essjay, had lied to the New Yorker about his credentials. Not surprisingly, the years of crisis communication training I received was useless in the context I found myself in. For a brief moment, I honestly thought that my career as a PR specialist had come to an end. The New Yorker, in my mind, was the bible of the media world; there was no way that our online encyclopedia was going to survive the PR damage.

  In the midst of my concerns, I soon became a believer in the power of collaboration. That crisis was the moment when the new media landscape unfolded before my eyes.

  

  The volunteers took charge. They created a Wikipedia entry that documented the event in gruesome detail. It was honest, direct and, amazingly, had no PR spin. In fact, for most Wikipedia members, the biggest concern was that Essjay had used his false credentials in content disputes. It was apparent to me that there was never any malice or hidden agenda. Essjay himself had revealed his real credentials on his user profile when he was hired by Wikia, a company owned by Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales. In fact, in the months that followed, I found the community became self-correcting by encouraging the use of real names and identities. It found a way to help prevent this type of issue from happening again.

  At the time, some critics argued that the incident ruined Wikipedia's reputation. Of course, this was the farthest thing from the truth. Since then, the site has grown both in content and in language versions. (My husband is a philosophy professor, which means I regularly meet academics who are quick to point out how "surprisingly accurate" the site is, and how fascinated they are with how it has impacted how our society views information.)

  Learning From Collaboration

  As someone who identifies herself as a bicultural New Yorker who specialized in cross-cultural communication in college, I was not a stranger to collaboration. In fact, that was my biggest criticism of American culture -- we were too individualistic and not group focused enough. But nothing prepared me for the wiki world. I learned some valuable lessons about collaboration and how to make it work. Below are some of the key learnings.

  • Trust the Crowd; Its Smarter than You -- The sooner you trust the group and empower it, the sooner it can produce high quality results. The group can make up for any weaknesses you may have as an individual. The idea is to bring out the strongest skills and downplay the weakest in each person.
  • Diversity and Creativity Are Intrinsically Connected -- Creative brainstorming is significantly improved by diversity. Individuals not only challenge each others' ideas, but they also inspire each other as well.
  • Collaboration is Messy -- When Jimmy Wales said "[Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made," he wasn't kidding. Chaos, in many ways, seems to be the spark of great collaborative endeavors.
  • Be Open to Receiving and Giving Criticism -- When working collaboratively, it is important to let go of your ego. Learn to not take things personally and be honest about what you think without being disrespectful.

  Wikipedia still receives a lot of flack -- it's an easy target for institutions and individuals who are desperately trying to survive in a digital world. However, I feel grateful for having worked for a short time with the "free culture" trailblazers behind the project who are responsible for making the world a bit more open, democratic, smarter, and much more collaborative.

  Sandra Ordonez calls herself a web astronaut who has been helping organizations navigate the internet since 1997. Currently, she helps run OurBlook.com, a collaborative online forum that gathers interviews from today's top leaders in the hopes of finding tomorrow's solutions. Since December 2008, the site has been conducting a Future of Journalism interview series. Sandra also heads up the Facebook page, "Bicultural and Multicultural People Rule." Previously, she was the Communications Manager for Wikipedia. She graduated from American University with a double degree in International Relations and Public Relations.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 14:59

  Paterson's Office is Angry

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Gov. David Paterson’s spokesman Morgan Hook just issued a statement blasting the legislature for rejecting Paterson’s new revenue plan.

  “Once again, the Governor’s proposed legislation to balance the budget lies on the third floor of the State capitol, refused by the Legislature. Governor Paterson’s bill includes a property tax cap, a plan to make the State’s colleges and universities the best in the nation, and a responsible measure to address the possibility that the State will not get full FMAP funding. These are not controversial measures and they deserve full and immediate consideration by the Legislature.

  “Governor Paterson carefully reviews every bill delivered to his desk and treats each piece of legislation with the consideration and respect it deserves. It is unfortunate that the Legislature doesn’t consider his legislation to be worthy of equal treatment.

  “Is there any other state capitol in the nation where the Legislature refuses to accept legislation from the Governor, or is this the latest example of Albany’s famous dysfunction?”

• 14:50

  Paterson Proposes a Revenue Plan

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Gov. David Paterson has submitted an alternative revenue budget bill.  The Senate has yet to pass the revenue plan they agreed on with the Assembly. It has been rumored that the Senate would return this week to vote on their revenue bill if they could reach a deal with the Assembly. Paterson insisted that he was done negotiating. But now he has a new plan for them to consider. So far legislators are not happy with Paterson’s plan.

  “The Legislature has failed in its constitutional duty to pass a balanced budget,”  Paterson said in a release. “I will, once again, provide it with an option that not only generates enough revenue to balance the budget, but also includes critical policy initiatives that should be addressed. My plan also provides a responsible solution to the very real possibility that full FMAP funding will not be provided to New York. I call upon the Legislature to take up my revised revenue bill and put an end to the budget uncertainty.”

  According to the release from Paterson’s office the revenue plan would:

  • Create a contingency plan should the Federal Government fail to provide enhanced Federal Medicaid Assistance Percentages (FMAP) funds. This provision ensures State fiscal balance by reducing State agency undisbursed appropriations by up to $1.085 billion in a uniform manner and placing these savings in a contingency fund “lock box;”

  • Enact an amended version of Governor Paterson’s Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act that would allow differential tuition for certain doctoral campuses at a maximum of seven percent, annual general tuition increases at a maximum of four percent, and increase the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) ceiling starting in State Fiscal Year 2011-12 to $5,000 plus 60 percent of the difference between $5,000 and the maximum resident undergraduate SUNY/CUNY tuition;

  • Establish a school district and local government property tax levy cap that would limit tax levy growth to the lesser of four percent or 120 percent of the annual increase in the consumer price index. The tax cap would apply to all school districts other than the “Big Five,” and to all counties, cities (other than New York City), towns, villages, special districts and fire districts; and

  • Institute a three-year moratorium on new unfunded legislative mandates on local governments and school districts, providing those entities with much-needed fiscal relief.

• 12:29

  Gaming and saving the world

   » ‎ Benjamin Melancon

  I am not a gamer, this is not the perspective that i'm coming from at all, but key parts of Jane McGonigal's vision unites well with the aims of Visions Unite.

  Specifically:

  • Always being able to give a person something they, personally, can do
  • Making people the possible believable.
  • Achieving that epic win after great individual effort and collaboration with others.

  All of those mean connecting people (both into smaller dream teams of compatible, complementary talents and into a large number of supporters).

  I'm more interested in bringing what makes games satisfying to self-organizing to make things better, than to making games a vehicle to saving the world, which is the direction she goes in, but please, watch:

  http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/799

  read more

• 12:02

  When It Comes to Corrections, Most News Sites Fail

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  Because web pages are just computer files, news stories on the web can be altered at will after publication. That makes corrections on the web a little more complex than corrections in print -- but it also makes them potentially much more effective. Unlike in print or broadcast, you can fix the original. You can make errors vanish -- though not without a trace, if you're doing it right.

  So why do so many news organizations continue to handle their online corrections so poorly? At MediaBugs, where we're devoted to improving the feedback loop between the public and the press, we've just published our first survey of corrections practices at more than two dozen Bay Area news outlets. The report's top-line conclusion? Mostly, they're doing it wrong.

  Findings

  Three quarters of the 28 news outlets we reviewed provide no corrections-reporting link of any kind on their home or article pages. Even media organizations that show signs of working to handle corrections carefully fall down in various ways -- and lots of others don't look like they're even trying.

  Many bury information about how to report errors behind confusing trails of links. Some provide multiple, poorly labeled avenues for feedback without telling readers which ones to use for error reports. Others provide no access to recently corrected articles beyond a search on "corrections," which often turns up multiple stories about prisons.

  These findings are disheartening -- not simply for how poorly editors are protecting their readers' trust in them, but also because handling these matters better doesn't take that much effort.

  There's really just a small number of things any news website needs to do if it wants to handle corrections and error reports responsibly:

  • Append a note to any article that's been corrected, explaining the change;
  • Keep a list of these changes, linking to the corrected articles, at a fixed location on the site;
  • Post a brief corrections policy, with information about how readers can report errors they find;
  • Make sure that your corrections listing page and your corrections policy (whether they're on the same or different pages) are part of your site navigation -- they should be accessible by one click from any page on your site.

  In addition to our survey, we've provided a brief summary of best practices for corrections and error reporting that we hope will be helpful to news site editors and their readers alike.

  No More Excuses

  Fifteen years ago, in the early days of web publishing, it might have been understandable for editors to have a hard time figuring out how to handle corrections: This pliable medium was new and strange.

  But news on the web is no longer in its infancy, and "We're new to this" just doesn't cut it anymore as an explanation for the kind of poor practices our MediaBugs survey documents. The explanations you generally hear are truthful but don't excuse the problems: "Our content management system makes it too hard to do that" or "we just don't have the resources to do that" or "we've been meaning to fix that for a while but never seem to get around to it."

  The web excels at connecting people. That's what its technology is for. Yet when it comes to the most basic areas of accuracy and accountability, the professional newsrooms of the Bay Area (and so many other communities) continue to do a poor job of connecting with their own readers.

  It's time for news websites to move this issue to the top of their priority lists and get it taken care of. They can do this, in most cases, with just a few changes to site templates and some small improvements in editing procedures. Of course, we hope, once they've done that, that they'll do more: At MediaBugs, we want to see that every news page on the web includes a "Report an Error" button as a standard feature, just like the ubiquitous "Print" buttons, "Share This" links and RSS icons.

  MediaBugs offers one easy way to do this -- our error-reporting widget is easy to integrate on any website. You can now see it in action on every story published over at Spot.Us. But there are plenty of other ways to achieve this same end.

  As long as readers can quickly and easily find their way to report an error with a single click, we'll be happy. But before we get there, we've all got some basic housekeeping to take care of first. End the suffering of orphaned corrections links and pages now!

• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-13

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • "Zombies" crash on I-84 near Lloyd exit | kgw.com | KGW News | Portland, Oregon Police said that in their investigation they learned that the people inside the car were dressed as zombie costumes and they were headed to a party at the time of the crash.

    Sgt. Greg Stewart said people who witnessed the crash initially thought the victims' injuries were much more serious, because of the zombie costumes.

    "We're glad that everyone is alive, despite being 'undead'," Sgt. Stewart said, referring to the costumes.

    (tags: zombies safety problems)
  • The ‘Mego Factor’ and Climate Coverage – Dot Earth Blog – NYTimes.com "The “Mego Factor” (for “my eyes glaze over,” as Mel Mencher described this editorial trait at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism long ago) is just one of the many barriers impeding media coverage of many vitally important issues that hide in plain sight as they simmer, only becoming news after the pot boils over.

    "…It always makes sense to push hard to keep journalism accurate and to reveal disinformation wherever it pops up. But asserting that the bad quality of some fraction of 1.5 percent of media coverage is the key impediment to societal and congressional action on energy and emissions seems utterly silly. "

    (tags: environment journalism statistics problems)

  

• July 12, 2010
• 23:00

  City Hall's Budgetary Exuberance May Soon Fade Away

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  When it passed the 2011 budget, City Council celebrated turning economic lemons into lemonade. But for those who rely on social programs, that drink could taste pretty bitter.

• 21:20

  Charter Commission Dives Into Priorities

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  It’s a sure bet the city Charter Revision Commission will send term limits back to the voters this fall, but it’s too soon to tell what proposal will be the odds on favorite.

  Members of the city’s Charter Revision Commission met in a crowded, sweltry room in Lower Manhattan this evening to try to cull through proposals offered by its staff in a preliminary report released Friday. The report recommends myriad issues for the commission to explore — none more controversial than term limits.

  So far, the report breaks down the issue by asking whether to go back to the voters with just two terms or to offer three terms for members of the City Council and just two for the mayor, comptroller and public advocate. Tonight it appeared commissioners favored rescinding the controversial third term extension approved by the council in 2008 and going back to two terms.

  “Since the people not once, but twice voted for two, two’s what should be on the ballot,” said Commissioner Kenneth M. Moltner.

  Following the meeting, Commission Chairman Matthew Goldstein said the commission has not ruled out three terms. “There is varied views on this,” he said.

  Several commissioners also suggested allowing voters to opine on doing away with term limits entirely.

  Also at hand is the issue of who can extend term limits and when. While the issue of banning the council from acting on term limits again was initially palatable to commissioners and members of the public, several commissioners this evening said the prohibition would likely be challenged in court. The consensus tonight was to require any legislative change in term limits apply to a future class.

  Following initial expectations that the commission would dive into issues of government power (like doing away with the public advocate), land use and nonpartisan elections, Goldstein said these topics were too large to fully dissect before this fall’s election.
  
  While they may not be ripe for the commission to tackle, some commissioners expressed frustration that commission staff, headed by Lorna Goodman, did not discuss them in depth in its preliminary report.

  “To make it two paragraphs,” said Commissioner Carlo Scissura, the chief of staff to Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, regarding the discussion of borough presidents and community boards, “I’m embarrassed.”

  Just because a topic didn’t make it into the report, doesn’t mean the commission will not consider it, Goldstein said.

  Other areas in the report, including the halving of signature requirements to get on the ballot, the disclosure of independent expenditures in city campaigns and the consolidation of the Voter Assistance Commission into the Campaign Finance Board, received support from the commission.

  Next up for the commission, Citizens Union, the sister organization to Gotham Gazette’s publisher, will testify next Monday on its own report to the body. First up, Goldstein said, would be the body’s reversal on nonpartisan elections, which it had previously opposed. In its new report Citizens Union urges the commission to consider nonpartisan elections.

• 18:18

  Live Chat Tuesday: How Can Journalists and Programmers Collaborate More Effectively?

   » ‎ E-Media Tidbits
  It's oversimplified to call it a right-brain, left-brain difference, but it's clear that while programmers and journalists need each other, they don't always find it easy to work together. Differences in project needs and personal styles can add to the disconnect.
  
  Below, you can replay a chat we held about the practical ways to help journalists and programmers collaborate. Here are the folks we talked to:
  

  • Matt Waite, Senior News Technologist, St. Petersburg TImes/tampabay.com and PolitiFact
  • Rich Gordon, associate professor and director of digital innovation at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism
  • Burt Herman, Journalist and entrepreneur, Hacks/Hackers
  • Niran Babalola, Software Engineer, The Texas Tribune
    

  
  &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=2402af06b0" &amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Live Chat: How Can Journalists and Programmers Collaborate More Effectively?&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
  
  
  

• 16:17

  5 Digital PR Lessons from BP's Oil Spill Response

   » ‎ MediaShift

  Just like late night talk show hosts who salivate over a fresh political sex scandal, professional communicators can't stop analyzing and talking about BP's public relations work during the current Gulf Coast oil spill disaster. More to the point, they can't shut up about BP's inability to relate to the public, and its poor use of digital and social tools available.

  It seems a communications or social media conference now isn't complete without obligatory mentions of the "BP PR Disaster," complete with sly references to verbal gaffes by BP CEO Tony Hayward. The still-unfolding environmental disaster has already been fodder for reams of blog posts, articles and dissections.

  Everything BP has done over the past two months has been picked apart and critiqued. From the retaining of outside PR firms, to the company's (lack of) use of social channels and the hiring of a Bush-Cheney-era communicator, BP has done little to impress the critics.

  The move to hire Anne Womack-Kolton, a former aide to Dick Cheney, caused an Economist blogger to nearly blow a gasket:

  The first law of disaster-management in the United States is that you appoint somebody from the "in" party rather than the "out" party. The second law is that you avoid anybody with connections to George Bush and Dick Cheney.

  To top it off, some of the most effective critiques of the company and its clean-up are coming in 140 character bursts from the unknown acerbic voice behind the satirical Twitter account, @BPGlobalPR. The caustic and laugh-out-loud funny nature of the tweets sets off a chain of retweets, creating online waves that reach much farther and faster than the spread of the oil (or BP's message for that matter).

  The general consensus in the public relations industry is that BP ran its crisis communications in the same ham-fisted manner they've run the clean-up operation in the Gulf. But are pundits being too hard on BP? And what can we learn about conducting PR in the digital age from this example? Below are my five suggested lessons, and a list of links to 15 must-read articles about BP's response to the crisis.

  Five Big Lessons

  It's become all too easy to knock around the communicators at BP. The harsh reality is most major corporations and organizations would have reacted in the same textbook manner. This spill has changed the way communicators will plan for and execute strategies around crises of all kinds. New questions are being asked and long-held assumptions are being challenged. Here are the top five communications trends I see coming from the BP Gulf spill:

  1. Consider the ethics of social channels. BP makes a regular habit of turning off the comment function on social media channels and not allowing other views to be shared on its profiles. This is presumably to help control the message and avoid issues of liability -- but how should Facebook or YouTube react to this? Twitter said it wouldn't touch the satirical account mocking the oil company, but in early June it asked the author to make it clear they were not connected to BP. Are social networks simply platforms anyone can use to distribute a message, even if that message isn't 100 percent accurate or there is no room for response or debate?
  2. One vs. many spokespeople. How would a Zappos, IBM, Starbucks or Dell (to use a few oft-cited examples of more open and connected corporate cultures) handle a BP-like situation with their brands? Classic communications strategy suggests to follow BP's lead and anoint a single spokesperson. But these go-to models of crisis control are challenged when hundreds speak for a brand, even if informally. The Internet is an organizational tool. If an organization facing a crisis is socially connected and understands the networks they have created, they'll know what to do. The clearest way forward is to ask your online team members to follow some basic guidelines about when and how to respond in the specific situation at hand. The three main tasks for the formal and informal social media teams are: Thank people, correct facts, and share updated information. Remember to keep responses short, accurate and polite, and to link to a place where aggregated information about the crisis can be found. Remind your online team not to apologize for the incident, never to debate or engage in defense or explanations.
  3. Tactics are not directly transferable across mediums. A common refrain from many analysts is that BP ripped pages from an old playbook to use on the new field of communications. Good communicators understand that communications strategy must be tool-agnostic, but that tactics are tool-specific. In other words, BP used classic communications methods in new mediums. This dissonance was immediately seized upon by organizations like Greenpeace and the satirical BP account on Twitter.
  4. The old paradigm of broadcasting to persuade is being challenged. BP's communicators took to YouTube and created what seemed like television ads. They would have been better served by attempting to stimulate a conversation, providing a realistic portrait of the work being done, or engaging in a live, viewer-centric Q&A session. Overall, the BP website and spokespeople lacked a human or colloquial tone.
  5. Sometimes you just can't win. BP has failed to realize that sometimes trying to "win" PR battles actually results in an organization losing the overall communications war. Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image and the author of "Six Pixels of Separation" suggested in his Vancouver Sun/Montreal Gazette column that perhaps BP never really had a chance. "If the basis of social media is based on trust and credibility, how can BP be expected to engage and truly connect?" he wrote. "For now, it's hopeless. But that was probably also true long before a drop of oil ever touched the Gulf of Mexico."

  15 Great Articles About BP's Response

  In the course of reading over 100 articles about BP's PR response, I came across several pieces that offered valuable insight and information. Here are the 15 best:

  1. Why social media won't help BP: Vancouver Sun
  2. BPs woes start a the top: Globe and Mail
  3. Failures made worse by PR mistakes: MSNBC
  4. BP PR blunder carries high political cost: Reuters
  5. BP and the long tail PR crisis: SMI
  6. BP is attempting to cram the square peg of the traditional mass media into the round hole of social media: Derek Devries
  7. BP can't tweet: Merriam
  8. Adweek reports on BP's major social media push -- with disabled comments: Truthout
  9. Do social media complaints make a difference to a brand?: ComMetrics
  10. BP should fix the problem, not "join the conversation": OpposablePlanets
  11. What BP should be doing with social media: Socialnomics
  12. Review of BPs social media campaign: Bruce Clay
  13. BP's Gulf PR disaster - give them a break!: PR Disasters
  14. Social media won't help big, bad BP: Canwest
  15. BP Social Media Response to the Spill: Social Technology Strategy slide show

  Ian Capstick is a progressive media consultant. He worked for a decade in Canadian politics supporting some of Canada's most charismatic leaders. He is passionate about creating social change through communications. Ian appears weekly on CBC TV's Power & Politics, weekly radio panels, and is regularly quoted online and off about the evolution of public relations in a connected world. He describes his small communications firm, MediaStyle.ca, as a blog with a consulting arm.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 14:53

  Ushahidi Racking up Downloads, Available in New Languages

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  The Ushahidi platform's growing use has been astounding to say the least. The platform has been download almost 4,000 times. On top of that, our mobile applications (including the Android Oil Spill reporter by Henry Addo) have been downloaded more than 3,700 times.

  As an organization that is barely two years old, it is encouraging to see adoption of the platform in various countries and for diverse uses. Be it election monitoring in Burundi, Snowmaggedon in D.C., or preventing forest forest fires in Italy, it is very encouraging to the development team to see people around the world using the platform to solve local problems. That is the beauty of open source software -- it allows for greater customization and localization.

  Wide Range of Deployments

  One of the early adopters of the Ushahidi technology was Oscar Salazar and the team behind Cuidesmos el Voto; they translated the platform into Spanish. This was huge for Ushahidi and for Latin America. Since then we have seen many deployments by organizations like Elecciones Transparentes in Colombia, Eleitor 2010 in Brazil and the Chile Map that utilizes the Spanish language files that Salazar and his team helped translate. (Eleitor 2010 translated the platform into Portuguese).

  On mobile phones, Pablo Destefanis and his team translated and customized the Ushahidi Windows Mobile app created by Dale Zak to map crime in El Salvador. This is amazing: An app created by a Canadian software developer is associated with a platform that originated in Kenya and is being used in El Salvador.

  

  Multiple Translations for Download

  While all of this was happening, there was also a partial translation of the platform into Swahili. We realized that the projects in Kenya really needed a Swahili version of the platform to encourage participation and outreach whenever an organization used the platform. We reached out to the developers in Kenya who could help, and Ahmed Maawy stepped up to the plate.

  The language files will be checked into Github and made available in the next version of Ushahidi. Thank you very much Ahmed for translating this -- it will be a great help to organizations deploying the platform in East Africa.

  

  Ahmed is the gentleman in the middle. Picture was taken at a recent Developer Meetup in Nairobi's ihub.

  If you would like to download the Swahili language files directly, go ahead and click on this link: i18n_swa.zip. We also have the Polish, Russian and Chinese translations available for those who are interested.

  Thank you to Kuba of Shipyard and Jakub Górnicki for the Polish translation, to Altynbek Ismailov of SaveKG in Kyrgyzstan and Gregory Asmolov at the Berkman Center at Harvard for the Russian version of the platform.

  If you would like to help translate Ushahidi into your language, please email us at translation[at]Ushahidi dot-com. Meanwhile, watch out for the next version of Ushahidi, which will have some cool new features and the expanded plugin architecture.

• 9:47

  7th Circuit Holds Blogger Can Be Prosecuted For Threatening Juror

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  An alleged white supremacist can be prosecuted under a federal solicitation statute for posting on his blog the name, address and photograph of a juror who helped convict the "leader of a white supremacist organization" of soliciting the murder of a federal district court judge and obstruction of justice, the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held in a ruling in late June. U.S. v. White, No. 09-2916 (7th Cir. 2010).

  According to prosecutors, William White's overthrow.com site (archived here) featured racist and anti-Semitic articles, and promoted the American National Socialist Workers Party, which billed itself as "America's only organization advocating for the interests of the white working class."

  Among the topics discussed on overthrow.com was the trial of leader of the white supremacist organization World Church of the Creator Matt Hale, who was convicted in 2005 and received a 40-year prison sentence for soliciting the murder of a federal judge in 2003.

  The judge, U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow, presided over a trademark case involving the name of the church that Hale purported to lead.  While Lefkow actually initially granted summary judgment to Hale's group (TE-TA-MA Truth Foundation — Family of URI, Inc. v. World Church of the Creator, 2002 WL 126103, 2002 U.S.Dist. LEXIS 1478 (N.D.Ill. Jan. 31, 2002)), she was reversed by the 7th Circuit (Te-Ta-Ma Truth Foundation Family of Uri Inc v. World Church of the Creator, 297 F.3d 662 (7th Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1111 (2003)), and then followed the appeals court's remand instructions ordering judgment against Hale's group. (Lefkow's husband and mother were killed in 2005 by a man whose medical malpractice lawsuit -- unrelated to the Hale trademark case -- the judge had dismissed.  Lefkow was also threatened by a New Jersey blogger over the Hale case; federal and state cases are pending against that blogger for other threats.)

  On September 11, 2008, a posting on the home page of overthrow.com titled “The Juror Who Convicted Matt Hale” revealed the identity; home address; and home, work and cell phone numbers of the jury foreperson in the Hale case, along with the name of the juror's significant other and the juror's cat. The site also displayed (through a link) a photograph of the juror; when the site hosting the photo removed it, the following day overthrow.com posted the picture on its own server.

  A federal grand jury indicted White on October 21, 2008, on one count of soliciting a crime of violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 373, and on February 10, 2009 returned a superseding indictment on the same charge. White moved to dismiss both indictments, claiming that his article was protected under the First Amendment.

  Judge Lynn Adelman of the Eastern District of Wisconsin -- presiding over the case after White moved for recusal of judges from the Northern District of Illinois -- granted White's dismissal motion in a July 21, 2009 order.

  Defendant’s posts regarding Juror A do not expressly solicit or endeavor to persuade another person to harm Juror A. Rather, they disclose personal information about Juror A and comment on his/her sexual orientation and attitude toward race. Although the posts may be reasonably read as criticizing Juror A’s vote to convict Hale, nowhere in them does defendant expressly advocate that Juror A be harmed.

  Scrutiny and criticism of people involved in the investigation and prosecution of crimes is protected by the First Amendment.
  

  U.S. v. White, Crim No. 08-851 (N.D. Ill. July 21, 2009), slip op. at 13-14.

  The government appealed the dismissal to the Seventh Circuit, which reversed.  The appeals court held that the superseding indictment was sufficient to allege violation of 18 U.S.C. § 373, and that the potential First Amendment concern in the case "is addressed by the requirement of proof beyond reasonable doubt at trial, not by a dismissal at the indictment stage."  U.S. v. White, No. 09-2916 (7th Cir. 2010), slip op. at 8.

  [T]he First Amendment may still have a role to play at trial. Based on the full factual record, the court may decide to instruct the jury on the distinction between solicitation and advocacy, and the legal requirements imposed by the First Amendment.... After the prosecution presents its case, the court may decide that a reasonable juror could not conclude that White’s intent was for harm to befall Juror A, and not merely electronic or verbal harassment. But, this is not a question to be decided now. We have no idea what evidence or testimony will be produced at trial.... The question of White’s intent and the inferences that can be drawn from the facts are for a jury to decide, as the indictment is adequate to charge the crime of solicitation. The indictment is legally sufficient and should not have been dismissed.
  

  U.S. v. White, No. 09-2916 (7th Cir. 2010), slip op. at 13-14.

  White's attorney said that he would seek en banc review of the decision by the full Seventh Circuit.

  

• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-12

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Zero! | Forrester Blogs "it may be best if marketers approached this question as if the answer is zero — unless and until the brand does something to create value with Facebook Fans." (tags: facebook social+networks social-media business economics marketing)

  

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-11 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • Justin Blanton | Use Dropbox to sync MarsEdit across multiple machines
    I keep coming up with new sues for Dropbox. This one is making my life much easier.

  

• July 11, 2010
• 23:00

  Will Angry Voters Throw Albany's Rascals Out?

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  Amid all the talk of dysfunction in Albany, most incumbents seem likely to hold on as few face credible challenges. What happened? We kick off our 2010 campaign coverage.

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-10 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • TEN QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT A COLLEGE (Which Aren’t On The Usual Lists)
    via Anna

  

• July 10, 2010
• 19:25

  Youth Media Workshop in Jabaliya refugee camp, Gaza – Week 1

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  Voices Beyond Walls and Les Enfants, Le Jeu et l’Education (EJE) began its first participatory digital media and storytelling workshop in the UNRWA Woman’s center in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza from July 4 – 25, 2010.

  The three-week workshop is being conducted with five local staff members from the woman’s center and 5-6 volunteers (from youth organizations like Tamer and Sharek), all of whom participated in the Training of Trainers (ToT) course previously conducted by Voices Beyond Walls at the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy from June 28-30, 2010. The workshop participants include 25 children (boy and girls aged 10-15) from Jabaliya camp.

  Another “comparison group” of 25 children are participating in a Dabke (traditional Palestinian dance) workshop conducted in parallel at the center, as part of the pilot research study led by Dr. Nitin Sawhney, examining the role of interventions supporting participatory media, creative expression, and civic engagement among marginalized children undergoing conditions of protracted conflict.

  Pre-workshop Planning and Preliminary Focus Group Evaluations

  On July 3rd, one day before the workshops began, we met with the center staff in Jabaliya camp to review all workshop logistics, working guidelines and preparations. We then conducted two preliminary focus group sessions with a small group of six mothers and eight children who planned to participate in the workshop.

  We discussed the key issues of critical concern among mothers about the lives of their children in the camp including psychosocial trauma from the war, ongoing political conflict, blockade and everyday concerns regarding the frequent power outages, health, safety and attitudes/behaviors of children at home and in the community. We discussed their hopes and expectations, evidence of creative engagement, and media exposure among their children. The mothers were more than willing to discuss a wide range of issues and appreciated our interest in better understanding these aspects of their lives.

  We then probed the group of children (two boys and six girls aged 12-15) about these issues through an exploratory exercise of having them draw their hands on a sheet of paper and noting their background information (name, age, siblings etc) and drawing out a sample daily diary of their everyday lives; this provided some background information on their routines, media consumption patterns, socialization, family life, and sleep, much of it apparently shaped by the nature of power cuts experienced on any given day.

  Inevitably, socializing with friends and family through face-to-face and online means constituted an important part of their lives, at least during the summer. When asked about a significant moment in their life over the past year, most discussed effects of the war, personal loss or challenging events at school. As for problems they faced nearly all mentioned power cuts and political situation (particularly factional fighting) as primary issues. Interestingly, children with greater media usage patterns and socialization seemed more open and optimistic – yet this remains anecdotal evidence at this early stage.

  The focus groups helped us develop a more detailed questionnaire and approach which we hoped to administer among all children participating in the workshop the following day.

  Day 1: Focus Group Evaluations and Introduction to Photography

  We began the day with ice-breakers conducted by local trainers, which energized the group of 25 children who came to attend the first day of the workshop. They later watched 2-3 short films including Nablus Tragedy, Memories of Nakba and the Pole (the funny short made in our ToT). The children especially loved the Pole, given its simple message of civic action to keep streets clean.

  Maha and Asmaa worked hard to translate the evaluation questionnaire (to Arabic) in time for our focus group sessions. We had at least two facilitators each pair up with a group of 5 children to interview and capture their responses to the questionnaire. The hand drawing exercise worked really well and the daily diary revealed a great deal, though we had to probe some children harder to be more expressive about their opinions. Some questions could be framed better and it would have been helpful to conduct trainings with our evaluators to pose the questions better. All focus groups went well, with reams of hand-written responses and drawings produced by children.

  After some home-made pizza at the center we had Jehad from Tamer lead the photo session, which went quite well. He previously had some children take a few shots with his camera over lunch and discussed them, along with youth photos from previous workshops in Jerusalem for review. The children engaged in amazingly critical discussions of photo aesthetics and narratives in the shots. I was quite impressed with their aptitude and they were no longer shy to be expressive.

  Our digital cameras arrived just in time (donated by Tamer and Sharek) to begin hands-on photo sessions in groups; with 30 minutes of outdoor shooting, they managed to incorporate many of their ideas from the photo review session. We had an informal discussion in the courtyard about their experience, which seemed both fun and productive. The best part about our first day into the workshop was the genuine enthusiasm and attitude of all the children and trainers involved.

  Day 2: Sensing and Mapping Everyday Spaces

  We started with a warm-up among the children as usual and quickly moved into focus groups to complete our hopes and expectations evaluation. Shortly thereafter we conducted a photo review of a selection of the children’s work from the previous day, which went very well.

  Afterwards Nasser (from EJE) lead a great session on smells, tastes and perceptions by having two children and one trainer blind-folded and passing around various spices and materials; this turned out to be a really fun activity and quite hilarious for all. This lead into each group conducting a mapping exercise within different rooms in the center and presenting their maps after lunch. It was too hot to send children out for fieldwork, so we decided to do some other exercises indoors (despite ongoing power cuts).

  We then conducted a session on the rights and responsibilities of children as young journalists in training. Here the children came up with a set of rules and regulations that they would place on their own "press pass". Finally, we watched 2 video shorts "Al Hakawati" (the storyteller) and “Intensive Care Unit” (which they liked most) to prepare them visually for their neighborhood mapping fieldwork the following day.

  The first 2 days have been long and tiring for all participants and trainers, but the following days will be more hands-on and fun.

  Day 3: Neighborhood Mapping in Groups

  Today's workshop was probably the most enjoyable as the teams had a chance to do some fieldwork to develop neighborhood reportage.

  We started with a warm-up as usual; I'm amazed to see how many unusual ice-breakers our Jabaliya trainers continue to come up with. Today was the "ship and the lighthouse" - where we gathered in a circle in pairs with one sitting and the other behind, as the "lighthouse" winked to call out someone else in the circle. Hard to describe but quite fun once you get the hang of it.

  We then broke out into our teams, this time rearranging the trainers into stable pairs and balancing out the boys/girls and dominant children a bit more, to plan our mapping fieldwork. The center managed to create "press badges" for our young journalists in training as they preferred to call themselves. The badges had the rules and responsibilities that they crafted the day before, on the back.

  The 5 groups went out for their neighborhood mapping trips. I "shadowed" one group that decided to examine the human rights situation in their camp through mapping. They met with the PCHR and Mazen offices and interviewed their staff. I was quite impressed with their interview skills and team coordination while some wrote summaries and others photographed. Fortunately, one of the staff at Mazen took them out to meet a family whose home had been bombed during the siege in Jan 2008.

  We met the father who lost his right hand and one of his children, while another suffered shrapnel wounds. I only learned about all this as the interview progressed and still taken aback by the warmth and hospitality of the whole family, who insisted on serving tea. The young group conducted their interview tactfully and professionally to the point where I joked with the Mazen staff member that they may make for good recruits in this organization.

  While we got back to the center, other groups were already preparing their maps on large sheets; one involved a narrative about a water pollution and a filtration facility near the camp, while another took a field-trip to a Bedouin village nearby. They presented their maps to the groups by the end of the day, which went quite well.

  Groups began trying the VideoStudio software in their groups to sequence their photography; some did a quick rough-cut but others got distracted by the software and its playful special effects (mostly due to their trainers). I tried to focus the groups back on the narrative of their neighborhood trips and challenged them to create something they might feature as reportage on Al-Jazeera. Hopefully, their ideas will get more imaginative once we've done more drama and story-writing exercises next week.

  Day 4: The Silent Beauty of Amna’s Visual Senses

  This was a challenging day for all; we started out fine with the groups going out to their sites to complete their neighborhood narratives.

  Roger Hill, a filmmaker from San Francisco who just arrived in Gaza, joined my previous group (doing the human rights story), while I shadowed another one examining special needs children in the camp. We visited a center that introduced us to a young girl Amna who is hearing-impaired. The group managed to conduct an interview with her through a sign translator, which went really well and then proceeded to give her a digital camera to shoot some photos with them to share a part of her world through the language of photography; Amna was really wonderful and the children took a liking to her right away. I asked the children to image a silent world as we walked along with Amna in the busy noisy streets of the camp.

  Roger later commented that Amna’s photos were far more engaging; the children in this group plan to work her photos into their narrative (with a silent sound track on her world). They even shot some photos of shadows of their hands doing sign language to add to their montage.

  This experience left me to think that we could organize a small workshop with our young Jabaliya team working with some special needs children on joint photo narratives where one does the photo and the other the soundscape, perceiving each differently through their own senses.

  That afternoon the children continued to work on their first photomontage using the editing software, despite many frustrating challenges due to power-outages, viruses on laptops, and a steep learning curve to master the technical aspects of the tool without much training. The day took a toll on most of us as we strove to find better ways to tackle such issues going forward.

  Day 5: Psychodrama and Screenings of Photomontage

  Our final day of the first week in the workshop ended better than expected, after all the chaos and frustration of the previous day.

  We managed to address most of the challenges plaguing us over the week regarding computers and pacing of the sessions, though power cuts and trainers out sick are hard to deal with easily.

  We started the day with an excellent two hour psychodrama session led by Jehan, a drama trainer from Tamer, who had attended our ToT in Gaza last week. She was amazing with the group, walking them through a series of exercises that helped them moving and physically expressing themselves in ways we had not seen. She eventually got children to meditate and relax to soothing music and some massage, while having them imagine and draw a scenario describing "home". The children later acted out some short improvisational plays.

  Meanwhile a group of 25 children showed up in the morning to take Dabke lessons with a team of staff trainers; they were the "comparison" group we requested. The boys were already quite good at Dabke, while the girls were making a great effort; it was rather touching to watch as one of the young trainers who lost his arm (presumably in the war) taught them vigorous dance moves.

  After their two hour session, Amani and Mustafa, lead the evaluation sessions with the children. These were conducted as one large group in the center library as we didn't have enough staff for in-depth focus groups. But remarkably the children took to the evaluation quite well and ended up drawing their hand exercise and daily dairy quite well, subsequently writing brief responses to Amani's questions. While it was not structured as key informant interviews in small focus groups, the children provided some good background info. on 2-3 sheets each.

  After lunch our groups were eager to complete their photo-montages, even before we had a chance to fully prepare all the laptops. In the morning we worked with the center staff to have all our laptops scanned for viruses, checked software and data, and labeled each one with group IDs so they had stable machines for photo editing.

  We got each group to work in a different room at the center so they could do audio recordings easily. All worked out much more smoothly this time around; the children were much more so in control of the photo editing and managed to record voice narratives for all their shorts. One group had to restart all over after the power went out and their laptop had no battery; their patience was impressive despite it all.

  Finally, we got nearly all montages ready to screen and I decided to conduct our evaluation de-briefing with them for 30 mins before the final presentations. I would have preferred a more creative focus group-style evaluation but we just ran out of time...

  The children were generally quite happy with the workshop - many remarking that this was their best day as they got to complete their photo narratives. Others felt the workshop got them out in their community getting to understand local issues in ways they never did and they really appreciated being asked to take on a responsible journalistic role. Others really enjoyed the photo reviews and editing techniques, not to mention the calming drama session earlier.

  We insisted on hearing some difficulties they encountered; the children were frank to indicate some points including their surprise at some local community folks not wanting to be interviewed or photographed (though some children found that they were able to go back the following day and break the ice with many such folks). They complained about not having enough cameras in their groups and not enough time for editing. Others indicated the days were often long and tiring.

  They also felt that the changes among children and trainers in groups (particularly in the first few days) was disruptive and with some trainers having to leave early or miss a day (due to exams or illness) lead to swapping trainers affecting group dynamics, and left the children hanging in their assignments at times. I mentioned that we really appreciated their feedback and would take that into account to improve the coming days, while encouraging us to meet us individually to offer more feedback anytime.

  We finally watched the photo montages and this was deeply satisfying for all; below are the five main narratives they produced:

  1. A photo montage on keeping the streets clean - the children visited a juice factory to ask about their practices to make better products and produced a piece that highlighted the community's responsibility.

  2. A piece about the special needs center in the camp and how the group met a young hearing-impaired girl, Amna, whom they interviewed and trained to use a camera. It was a touching story that the children themselves felt transformed their experience spending time with Amna.

  3. A detailed journalistic report on the Abu Rashed Pool, a rain-water collection facility in the camp that was often flooded or polluted. They did a great job producing a fact-filled photo essay with some imaginative writing.

  4. A piece on the human rights centers in the camp with intensive interviews of the Hamad family that was devastated during the war. The piece was really well done, especially the interviews and photos with the father who lost his arm. The words and haunting music were powerful and I think it left a mark on the children who produced the piece as well.

  5. A visit to a Bedouin village outside the camp and the traditional lives they lived, including mud homes they still continue to build. This group probably enjoyed their field-trip the most and produced the most dazzling photo transitions and music thanks in part to their artistic trainer, though we remarked that the special effects were probably unnecessary.

  Overall it was a great screening to close the first full week of the workshop in Jabaliya camp. The children here really seem to be looking forward to the week ahead on creative writing and acting out their fictional narratives.

  A selection of photos from the workshop are posted online here:
  http://voicesbeyondwalls.blogspot.com/2010/07/week-1-workshop-in-jabaliy....

• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-10

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Zoe's Incredibly Interesting Blog: Internet Royalty Math Makes My Brain Hurt "Digital service providers are only required to reported 2 weeks worth of performances a quarter. Moreover, those 2 weeks do not have to be on consecutive days, they can report any 14 days worth of performances within a 3 month period. If your performances do not occur within that period, then there are no reported performances to be compensated for." (tags: music copyright business+models problems)
  • Patch vs. MediaNews: One Little, Instructive Story | Newsonomics "On Thursday, San Ramon saw a big breaking news story, of a 24-year-old menacing police outside a 7-11. They shot and killed him, after a standoff. Take a look at the coverage and you can see that the Contra Costa Times’ story has more depth, background and nuance. Patch’s story is straightforward, but lacking in those same qualities. That quick comparison may be typical for how a newspaper responds to the big, breaking story — one of unusual suburban daily drama — as compared to AOL’s user-gen start-up.

    "As curious, type “San Ramon shooting” into Google, and on both web and news search, Patch comes up first. In addition, Patch’s story elicited nine comments by late Thursday evening; Contra Costa’s none.

    "A small sample, but therein may lay this emerging tale of newspaper vs. Patch competition. The story quality is one thing; the ability to SEO and draw community comment may be another. That’s an emerging gulf worth paying attention to."

    (tags: SEO journalism local search+engines search competition)

  

• 2:00

  Links for 2010-07-09 [del.icio.us]

   » ‎ David Sasaki
  • Why Don't More Writers Buy Books? - Signatures - GOOD
    I find this to be totally fascinating. Are writers the print version of talkative people who don't know how to listen? I'm reading Bolaño right now and one thing I do love about him is how much of his life he dedicated to reading the work of others.

  

• July 09, 2010
• 19:45

  4 Minute Roundup: Time.com Restricts Access to Print Stories

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  4MR is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  In this week's 4MR podcast I look at the move by Time.com to restrict access to its print stories online. Rather than set up a pay wall, Time shows abridged versions of print stories and asks you to subscribe to the print magazine or get its $5 iPad app edition instead. That has critics howling. I also talked with PaidContent co-editor Staci Kramer, who considers Time's strategy a "condom" between online visitors and the print magazine.

  Check it out:

  4mrbareaudio7910.mp3

  >>> Subscribe to 4MR <<<

  >>> Subscribe to 4MR via iTunes <<<

  Listen to my entire interview with Staci Kramer:

  kramer full.mp3

  Background music is "What the World Needs" by the The Ukelele Hipster Kings via PodSafe Music Network.

  Here are some links to related sites and stories mentioned in the podcast:

  Time's big new paywall at Reuters

  Time Magazine putting up a paywall to protect print? at Nieman Lab

  Time Magazine Dons An Online Condom at PaidContent

  Time magazine remains free online, but offers less content at SFNBlog

  Time Takes a Step Away From Free Web Content at NY Times Media Decoder

  In Which Time Inc. Rides on the Wall of Death One More Time at Newsweek

  Time Magazine Walls Off Its Web Site: Will You Pay Up? at MediaMemo

  Time Inc.'s Web Paywall, Explained at MediaMemo

  Also, be sure to vote in our poll about which pay walls you think will succeed (if any):

  
  
  
  Which pay wall has the best chance to succeed?survey software
  
  

  Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

  

  4MR is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 19:35

  Weekly Web Wrap

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  The Making of Manhattan’s Elite Welfare Farmers
  (New York Press)
  Federal Money for Transit Construction, but Not Operations
  (Second Avenue Sagas)
  Against Charter Mandated Budget Formulas for Some Agencies
  (Citizen Budget Commission)
  Class Size Matters Only When Teachers Do Everything
  (The Innovative Educator)
  Getting the Bureaucracy to Respond Through Tech
  (Urban Omnibus)
  Recommended Charter Reforms
  (Pratt Center)
  Negotiating Land Use
  (DMI Blog)
  Escape from Rising Sea Levels
  (Inhabitat)
  Census Bureau Education Finance Data Trends
  (Room Eight)
  Verizon’s 4G Wireless Tech to Launch in November
  (GoingWIMAX.com via NYConvergence)
  New York’s Global Place in Expensive Cities
  (Forbes)

• 17:10

  N.C. Judge Unmasks Pseudonymous Blog Commenters

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  A North Carolina trial court recently ordered the editor of the local community blog Home in Henderson to turn over the names and addresses of six pseudonymous commenters who allegedly defamed former Vance County commissioner Thomas S. Hester, Jr. As the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press noted, the court used a lower standard in determining whether to order disclosure than is common in cases of this kind. In a June 28 order, Superior Court Judge Howard E. Manning, Jr. determined that six of out of twenty anonymous comments about Hester were actionable and therefore concluded that Hester's interest in proceeding with the case overcame those commenters' qualified First Amendment right to speak anonymously.

  Judge Manning's reasoning is somewhat difficult to follow. He praised the standard set forth in Dendrite International v. Doe, 775 A.2d 756 (N.J. App. Div. 2001), the leading case on this issue. Yet, he also qualified this endorsement, saying he would only use "some" of Dendrite's test in making his determination. In reality, Judge Manning simply tested the legal sufficiency of Hester's allegations, considering a testing of the evidence "way too stringent and premature." This is at odds with Dendrite, which clearly requires that the plaintiff support his claim with a prima facie evidentiary showing "[i]n addition to establishing that [his] action can withstand a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." Dendrite, 775 A.2d at 760 (emphasis added). In essence, the court simply applied a motion to dismiss standard, reminiscent of that articulated in older cases like Columbia Insurance v. Seescandy.com, 185 F.R.D. 573 (N.D. Cal. 1999).

  One of the noteworthy aspects of this case is the blog editor's argument in his motion to quash that the identities of the commenters were protected by North Carolina's shield law, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8‑53.11. Unfortunately, the court never directly addressed the issue in its decision and so didn't decide whether Home in Henderson's editor qualified as a journalist for purposes of the law.

  In recent years, courts in Montana, Oregon, and Illinois have considered whether news sites can invoke state shield laws to protect the identity of anonymous commenters. It's too bad this court did not weigh in on this question from the North Carolina perspective.

  (Marina Petrova is a rising second year student at UCLA School of Law and a CMLP legal intern.)

  (Photo "Anonymous #16" courtesy of Flickr user JacobDavis, licensed under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-No-Derivs 2.0 Generic license.)

  

• 16:29

  Charter Commission Puts out a Preliminary To Do List

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Those hoping the city’s Charter Revision Commission will consider term limits, instant run off voting and the consolidation of the Voter Assistance Commission (which we report on here) with the Campaign Finance Board are in luck.

  But if you were banking on a boost to borough presidents’ power or rescinding the authority to oversee lobbyists from the city clerk, better luck next year.

  The preliminary staff report from the commission was released this afternoon, which outlines recommendations for how the commission should proceed.

  On term limits, the staff recommended the commission get more comment from the public on whether the charter should limit terms to two, possibly three for City Council members and prohibit council members from extending their own terms.

  To increase voter participation, the report suggests the commission get more pubic comment on instant run off voting to select party candidates in primaries for citywide offices. The report floats the possibility of putting the issue on the ballot in November (We have covered this issue extensively here and here and here). This system would require voters rank their three top candidates during a primary election, and it would eliminate the need for runoffs.

  Also to bring out the vote, the report recommends cutting the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot in half to 3,750 signatures for citywide candidates, 2,000 for borough-wide candidates and 450 for City Council candidates.
  
  To preserve so-called government integrity, the report recommends increasing the penalty cap for a single conflicts of interest violation from $10,000 to $25,000, incorporating into the charter a ban on sponsoring budget items that benefit council members personally and requiring the disclosure of independent expenditures (we report on that here).

  The report states that staff will explore other voter turnout issues, including allowing same-day registration and voting on the weekends, in its final report to be released later this summer.

  While the report discusses nonpartisan elections, it makes no promise to revisit the issue in its final submission. It has been widely reported that the issue is off the table for this year.

  The report also declines to opine on any changes to the land use process and whether the public advocate and borough presidents should be abolished.

  “At this point we believe it is more fruitful to focus attention on term limits and the other issues discussed in Parts I-IV of this Report. We recommend reserving consideration of substantial structural changes for further study and discussion.”

  Here is the report in full.

  Preliminary Report FINAL

• 15:02

  Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  Students who dream of a career in journalism are entering the profession at a time when the question of who is a journalist, and even what is journalism, is open to interpretation. The function of journalism is still to provide independent, reliable and accurate information considered vital to a vibrant democracy. But defining who is a journalist is much harder.

  The Oxford English Dictionary defines a journalist as "a person who writes for newspapers or magazines or prepares news or features to be broadcast on radio or television." The definition is less about what a journalist actually does and more about whom they work for. It reflects how the profession of journalism developed in a mass media system, based on the production of news by paid professionals who decided what the public needs to know, when it needs to know it and how it will know it.

  The media industry is going through a profound transformation that is disrupting just about every aspect of the business. Journalists are at the center of a transformation that is challenging norms and routines that have remained, until now, highly consistent. It all amounts to, in the words of media scholar Mark Deuze, "one of the biggest challenges facing journalism studies and education in the 21st century."

  The new journalist needs to learn and understand how news and information works in a digital world, instead of simply applying established norms and practices that may no longer be effective.

  New Technologies, New Mindset

  Studies show that journalists have been reluctant to give up their traditional gatekeeping role. BBC News executive Peter Horrocks has described this mindset as fortress journalism (PDF) -- seeing the profession as a practice to be defended. As a result, journalism as a profession largely considers the media environment to be the same as before, only now more technologized.

  New media technologies do not just offer journalists new ways of doing their old job. A newspaper online is not the same as a newspaper in print. On paper, the newspaper delivers a bundle of stories, ads and amusements, such as the crossword puzzle. On the web, the newspaper package is unbundled into individual fragments. The stable, hierarchy of information in the printed newspaper falls apart online.

  

  Scholars Colin Lankshear and Michelle Knobel have researched what they describe as the shift from a physical-industrial mindset to a cyberspatial, post-industrial mindset. They write that "the world is being changed in some quite fundamental ways as a result of people imagining and exploring new ways of doing things and new ways of being that are made possible by new tools and techniques."

  Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. New literacies generally refer to new forms of literacy made possible by digital technologies, such as blogging, uploading photos or sharing videos. According to new literacies, media is collaborative, distributed, and participatory nature.

  Participatory and Collaborative Journalism

  Let's look at one of the ways this applies to journalism. Traditionally, journalism has been about producing finished products by designated individuals and teams, based on individual expertise and intelligence, operating in a shared physical space. However, new literacies research suggests that the changes taking place challenge fundamental norms, conventions, and routines of journalism.

  One example is the ability of the audience to report and distribute the news in photographs, videos, and text, which undermines the monopoly on reporting that journalists traditionally enjoyed. Anyone can do an act of journalism, from sending a tweet about a G20 protest to uploading a photo of police and demonstrators.

  Seen through the lens of new literacies research, digital media is more participatory, collaborative and distributed, and less finalized, individualized and author-centric than previous forms of media. The journalist still matters. But as Tom Rosenstiel has suggested, they shift from being the gatekeeper to being an authenticator of information, a sense-maker to derive meaning, a navigator to help orient audiences and a community leader to engage audiences.

  Both those taking their first steps into journalism and those who have already followed a well-trodden path need to figure out where they fit in. The role of the journalist is being determined by the complex interplay between media technologies, professional practices, and societal factors.

  Journalism developed as a relatively closed culture for the production of knowledge, based on a system of editorial control. Yet new media are characterized by their connected and collaborative nature. The challenge for journalism, and the journalist, is to find a place along the continuum between control and connection, and between a closed and a collaborative media culture.

  This piece is adapted from a chapter appearing in The New Journalist: Roles, Skills, and Critical Thinking, a new textbook for journalism students.

  Alfred Hermida is an online news pioneer and journalism educator. He is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism, the University of British Columbia, where he leads the integrated journalism program. He was a founding news editor of the BBC News website. He blogs at Reportr.net.

  

  Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 13:36

  Will the Senate Return Next Week?

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  A number of Senators have mentioned that they expect to get official word later today about returning to Albany to pass the revenue part of budget.  There has been talk that they could return next week.

  According to Austin Shafran, spokesman for the Senate Democrats, things are still being worked out.

  “Still working to resolve outstanding budget issues and will return when the issues are addressed,” Shafran said in an e-mail.

• 12:49

  Egypt: The Cultural Side of a Blogosphere

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  According to a Berkman Center for Internet and Society study, Mapping the Arabic blogsphere, the Egyptian blogsphere is by far the largest cluster in the Arabic blogsphere that includes several distinct and active sub-clusters. The study notes that almost half of the bloggers are women, and also half of bloggers are in the 18-24 year-old range. These bloggers are often engaged in supporting various campaigns, such as for freeing jailed bloggers, calling for reform, or promoting social issues such as combating HIV/AIDS stigmas or street sexual harassment. At other times they are keen to discuss poetry, literature, and art, as well as human rights (civil and political rights) or Women’s issues (rights, status, hijab, feminism, etc.).

  As early as in 2005, Mohamed, a prominent Egyptian blogger, commented on the rapid increase of blogs at that time and the makeup of the blogosphere:

  The great thing about the Egyptian blogosphere is that its being able to present our culture as a diverse and multi-dimensional one, which is usually considered a monolithic one. […] That is the most interesting thing I find about that blogosphere, its diversity and individuality, and that is a main benefit I see that is not as easy to have on the ground. […] In real life its healthy to interact with different people in the society. The blogopshere makes that much easier to do, you can sit infront of your computer and interact with the world. Interaction comes in various forms, and fighting is sure one of them.

  Online Campaigns

  It always puzzles me when researchers or journalists focus only on the political aspect of the Egyptian blogosphere, despite the rich social and cultural side of it that has been active and evolving over the years - providing new channels for citizens or giving voices to minority viewpoints.

  One of the earliest campaigns I remember was called “This is Not Egypt“. It was triggered when a group of bloggers felt offended from a governmental tourism advertisement that was portraying Egypt in a way they did not feel comfortable with, for example, stereotyping the country as a place for belly dancers and without stressing the historical sites for tourists. The bloggers thought the ads did not represent their country in the right way. These bloggers then decided to create a collective blog, where everyone could write about Egypt as they know it.

  The same was repeated against another advertising campaign for a non-alcoholic beer that was encouraging men to drink to “be a man”. The advertisement has triggered outrageous waves within the blogosphere. Bloggers started writing condemning posts on their blogs, and created a group on Facebook criticizing the ad campaign.

  Another religious campaign appeared when some Baha'is resorted to blogging to claim their rights to create their ID and register as Baha'i, which is according to Egyptian laws is only restricted to the three religions Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. And as the number of Baha'is blogs have been increasing in number, and non-Baha'i bloggers -both secular and others of Islamic inclination- expressed their solidarity with their rights. In 2009. after many years of being denied the right to legal documentation, Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court removed any grounds for preventing Baha'is from receiving proper official identity documents.

  Another interesting campaign was called “Have a Voice Campaign” started when a group of bloggers worked on a Facebook group and a short film to promote the idea of asking people to obtain their election cards, in preparation for the coming presidential elections in 2011. Egyptians must obtain an election card in order to cast one's vote. Until the beginning of 2010, people could only apply for their election card for 2-3 months of the year, which discouraged many from obtaining the card. However, at the beginning of 2010, Egyptian courts ruled that people could register for their election cards all year long. The initiative was a huge success, and many people published a photo of their election cards on the group or on their blogs.

  One of the most controversial campaigns that took place was when bloggers advocated the right of return of a 27 year-old Egyptian woman, Heba Najeeb, whose father held her in custody in Saudi Arabia, and denied her the right to travel back to Egypt for three years. Many bloggers geared up to give her a louder voice, which in return attracted traditional media attention and hence represented a form of pressure on her father who at the end had to let her return to Egypt on her own.

  Culture, Books and Writing

  The relationship between blogs and culture started long before the practice of bloggers who review books they read, or those who recommend cultural events taking place. As time went by, blogs started to become an indirect form of advertising books.

  A new book published by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) titled “Blogs from post to tweet“, Ahmed Nagi, the writer argues:

  دافعٌ أساسيٌّ من دوافع إنشاءِ مدوَّنة والكتابة فيها، هو حب الكتابة نفسه ، لهذا كان من الطبيعي أن تظهر لدى العديد من المدوِّنين ملامحُ مشروعٍ أدبيٍّ ما ، كما أثارت بعضُ ال

  One of the fundamental motives behind starting a blog and writing it, is loving writing itself, and therefore it was natural to find some blogs are leaning more towards becoming a literature project. The was especially after the controversy caused due to trying to find out the categorization of the artistic forms of writing published on blogs between diaries, Short stories, texts or a new genre still in formation.

  

  Photo under creative commons by Mohd Tarmizi.

  One of the important stops in the Egyptian cultural blogging scene happened at the start of 2008 when Dar El Shorouk (A famous Egyptian press house) adopted the trend of transforming blogs into books. They started by 3 books “Rice with Milk” by Rehab Bassam [Ar], “This is my dance” by Ghada Muhammad [Ar] and “I want to get married” by Ghada AbdelAal [Ar]. These books were huge success that motivated other bloggers to open their own small press houses - some of them dedicated only to transforming and publishing blogs into books. The coming year, in 2009 more than 15 new titles, Egyptian bloggers took the 2009 Cairo International Book Fair by storm.

  On the other hand, two important campaigns were initiated on the blogsphere, one against to blogs plagiarism, due to newspapers using bloggers posts without their permission and editing experts they quote, and the other was a campaign against abusive publishers, where bloggers decided to make their work available online for free download in reply to the abuse they have faced from some press houses.

  Such vibrancy in the cultural scene of the blogsphere was one reason behind ANHRI to publish one of the first independent magazines for blogs named “Wasla“:

  The name ,Wasla, (link) was chosen for this weekly newspaper, now issuing monthly as a soft run, to state its role in attempting to bridge the gap between the young bloggers and the older generation of politicians, media and national figures through quoting blogs on paper. Thereby the older generation will have a window on the bloggers’ realm so that they would communicate , support and even challenge bloggers objectively.

  The non periodic magazine, Wasla, which is under creative commons, can be read and downloaded for free from their website.

• 12:20

  Where Did We Go Right? How to Be a Successful Entrepreneur

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  Imagine a well-known Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Wanting to repeat his success, he scrutinizes all his articles and discovers they contain the letters "E" and "R" 10 times more frequently than any other letters. In his next article, he focuses on increasing the use of these letters, and then plans on teaching his new-found secret during his journalism seminar next fall.

  More than likely, his success as a reporter is due to a combination of talent, hard work, circumstances, personal relationships and some luck. Which means that evangelizing the benefits of proper letter frequency is irrelevant at best and probably harmful to his journalism students.

  Entrepreneurial Mortality

  Successful entrepreneurs make this same mistake. New ventures are born every day and the sad fact is most die young. Yet the causes of startup death are predictable: Lack of cash, lack of funding, arriving too early or too late to market, insufficient experience or talent on the team, or just plain bad luck.

  In a startup, you may not be able to avoid death, but at least you'll know what killed you. Triage is easy on a corpse; it's a lot harder to dissect a healthy Olympic athlete to understand what makes them a champion.

  Entrepreneurs who experience failure usually have lots of time to ponder the question "Where did we go wrong?" in order to learn from and avoid making the same mistakes. It's much harder for them to figure out "Where did we go right?" so success can be repeated.

  Success As Poison

  Before becoming entrepreneur-in-residence at the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, I spent my career as a serial entrepreneur. I was surrounded by entrepreneurs who had worked on as many successes as failures. Some of these entrepreneurs are very well known and have achieved legendary status, while others are just starting to become the next generation's Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Failures, fizzles, flameouts and near misses are the norm -- and in Silicon Valley they are rites of passages for every entrepreneur.

  Experience gained from failure is more valuable than an Ivy League M.B.A. and can serve as a passport for long-term success. Misinterpreting prior success factors can doom the entrepreneur, as well as infecting all other ventures they mentor. Yes, early success can be worse than failure -- just ask any child star.

  Many entrepreneurs who taste success attribute it to their own intelligence, vision, creativity or business savvy. They ignore the critical influences of timing, circumstances and luck. In many cases I've seen people ignore an inheritance, an influential relative or a family name when they take stock of their success. This brush with success poisons future attempts.

  Snake-Oil Success

  Far more dangerous are former entrepreneurs who have one success to their credit and spend the rest of their career imparting (or worse, selling) their secret to wide-eyed aspiring entrepreneurs everywhere. The books and seminars shout, "Be like me! Use more E's and R's than your competition and you'll be successful."

  Being an entrepreneur is often like driving a half-built race car 200 mph in a thick fog -- and not being sure if the steering wheel works. There are lots of voices in the crowd telling you which direction to drive, but who can you trust? Even if one of the voices belongs to an experienced racer, they have not been successful in these exact same circumstances -- so their advice could be fatal.

  Success is Simple. It's Just not Easy

  Mark Zuckerberg's path to success was different than Steve Jobs' path. They are different people with different backgrounds and situations, so trying to copy their path and methods is probably futile. A more reliable way is to look at the majority of success stories and find out what they had in common, and apply the lessons to your own situation.

  Great entrepreneurial success often looks like a combination of luck, timing or brilliance -- or sometimes sheer genius -- but when you dissect it, there are really just two groups of entrepreneurial success factors:

  1. Personal Factors:
  

  • Hard work and commitment
  • Sufficient intelligence
  • Interpersonal skills/relationships
  • Location and proximity to resources

  2. Circumstantial Factors:
  

  • Economic and business situation
  • State of technology
  • Social trends
  • Customer wants/needs/behavior
  • Competition

  When looking at these two groups, notice that all the personal factors are within your control, and the circumstantial factors are the same for every other entrepreneur. So what's the catch? The best entrepreneurs play to their strengths on the personal factors and develop a particular clarity on the circumstances and leverage them to their advantage. Most successful entrepreneurs actually have one key personal factor and one key circumstantial insight that makes all the difference in their success.

  Now we can better understand what appears as luck, timing and brilliance:

  • "Luck" is when any of the personal or circumstantial factors are stronger without any extra effort. Recognize it, embrace it and use it -- but don't count on it.
  • "Timing" is when several circumstances are aligned with the entrepreneur's interests. Wait for it, recognize it and move fast when it happens.
  • "Brilliance" is when you are aware enough to take advantage of luck and timing.
  • "Genius" is when the entrepreneur overcomes the personal and anticipates the circumstantial.

  Where Did You Go Right?

  As an entrepreneur, what can you do to make these success factors work for you? First, take a look back on any success you've had in the past -- no matter how minor -- and ask, "What did I do right?" Think about which personal factors were your strengths, how you can use them again, and which personal traits need more work.

  Next, take a look at the circumstances surrounding your prior success. Which of them were you able to foresee or even predict? Perhaps you have a special gift or insight in that area. Are you particularly observant as to customer needs, or can you understand technology or spot trends better than most? These are your success factors, and they don't come out of a bottle sold by someone else.

  All entrepreneurs, and potential entrepreneurs, have the necessary success factors -- personal traits and circumstance. The key is being aware of which are your own relevant success factors, and which ones are someone else's snake oil.

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-09

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Change Flickr login details in iPhoto? – Mac Forums useful if you want to change the Flickr acct you post to directly from iPhoto (tags: photos sharing mac social+media tips)
  • HTC adds new features to its Droid Incredible Smartphone | TopNews Singapore "HTC Droid incredible faced few problems like Battery backup issues, Bluetooth pairing issues etc. In case of battery issue, it was reported that it drained away from 100% to 85% in a span of a few minutes. But with this recent firmware update the solution has been discovered for its battery's life.

    "While, the problem of Bluetooth pairing arises due to the inability of HTC to load full version of Bluetooth because Droid Incredible needs full version of Bluetooth."

    (tags: mobile Android handsets devices problems)

  

• 3:54

  From Open Mics to Buzz Brokers, 'Content Farms' are Not all Created Equal

   » ‎ E-Media Tidbits
  They are called a variety of euphemisms, from "content mills" or "content farms" to "content creation houses" and the Fifth Estate, but make no mistake: sites that specialize in the production and distribution of user-generated content are influencing the news industry and journalism.
  
  The evergreen content produced by Demand Media, Helium.com, and Associated Content finds its way from these platforms to a variety of media partners, including newspapers, magazines and online news providers seeking to add local or evergreen content to their sites.
  
  These partnerships generate low-cost content for publications and revenue for the content provider. And for some writers, these opportunities provide them with credibility and a small amount of regular income.
  
  In a recent webinar hosted by Poynter's News University, Mitch Gelman, Vice President of Special Projects at Examiner.com -- a relatively recent addition to the stable of content creation houses -- discussed the differences between these sites.
  
  Gelman introduced three basic models that describe the writers drawn to the sites and the content that they provide.
  

  • Open Mic sites have their roots in the "Speaker's Corner." People drive the content production on these sites. Both Associated Content and Helium.com have Open Mic components to their content production models. Demand Media may be adding this to their offerings in the near future as well.
  • Buzz Brokers analyze search trends and put out calls for stories. Associated Content has incorporated this model, and this is the primary content model at Demand Media.
  • Pro-Am sites reach out to people in neighborhoods who can contribute. Its roots are in the stringer model of local newspapers, and these models seek to develop their contributors' skills. Helium and Examiner.com make use of aspects of this model.

  The three pieces in this series touch on elements of each model. The partnership between Demand Media and USA Today for travel content reflects some buzz brokering. The purchase of Associated Content by Yahoo! may demonstrate the value of a local open mic. And Helium's strategy of credentialing writers underlines a distinct pro-am influence.
  
  Key to how each of these develops will be the evolution of their contributor communities. Their respective page views make it clear there is a huge demand for the content produced. And if contributor participation and collaboration continue, maybe these upstart disruptors will begin to replicate a virtual newsroom experience while expanding their business models.
  
  
  
• 3:51

  Helium Hopes Credentialing Sets it Apart from other Social Content Producers

   » ‎ E-Media Tidbits

  For those who are concerned about the future of news, the notion that a "content mill" could produce quality journalism seems to be anathema.

  But Mark Ranalli, CEO of Helium.com, has been working towards building the kind of online community that could do that.

  In a recent conversation with Ranalli, he explained that since its launch in 2006, Helium has been growing as both a content platform and community in many different ways. One of the significant changes is Helium's Credentialed Professional Program.

  As more professionals have come to Helium, some via its partnership with the Society of Professional Journalists, Helium needed a system that brought their offline credentials into the online community.
  

  For example, a journalist or SPJ member can apply to Helium's credentialing board with all the necessary information, and the board will check those credentials. If the writer is credentialed as a journalist, then he will receive the appropriate site badge, and a four-star ranking.

  A paramedic who is writing on health issues might apply to be credentialed as a medical professional. Credentialing and badges let others know that the writers are people who have substantial experience in particular fields and that their work can be trusted.

  Helium has also assembled a credentialed Editorial Team. Potential editors must apply for a position, and pass what Ranalli describes as a very stringent test of their editorial skills before being considered for the team. "I know that the people on are editorial team are top-notch," Ranalli said, "because even I can't pass our editor's test."

  Since the implementation of credentialing and the introduction of the Editorial Team, Ranalli noted that more magazine and online publishers are turning to Helium's content rather than to freelancers. The pay, however, is lower than what freelancers may once have made. Ranalli sees a downward trend for wages: "People might not get paid the same amounts as in the past, but they will be paid and published."

  Credentialing may also be important as Helium considers doing investigative journalism. In December of 2009, Helium News was introduced to encourage more news-style reporting, as well as collaboration between contributors. Ranalli believes these changes begin creating an online newsroom experience, where seasoned reporters mingle and exchange ideas with new writers.

  This "virtual newsroom" community does not fast track publishing on Helium. All articles, whether or not they come from a credentialed writer, are submitted first to a blind peer-review process. This process has always been part of the Helium model of editorial oversight, partly because it can lessen the likelihood stories will be approved based on a writer's popularity.

  Ranalli also consider the blind review process an important way to bring forth new voices that might otherwise never be heard and have the potential to make a strong contribution to journalism.

  Helium, over the years, has created partnerships with prestigious organizations in order to raise the profile of it writers. A partnership with the National Press Club has opened the doors of that 100-year-old organization to Helium contributors who have earned a five-star ranking.

  And an ongoing relationship with The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting brings the Global Issues/Citizen Voices essay contest on under-reported topics to the Helium community. The current and ninth contest is focused on global maternal health.
  

  	RELATED
  	The New Content Providers and the Media This hourlong NewsU webinar describes the new content providers, the costs in developing these network, the type of partnerships they're entering into with media organizations, and more.

  This partnership and others have lead to the Citizen Journalism Awards, which cover a broad range of topics and are sponsored by organizations as diverse as The Sunshine Foundation, the Knight Center for International Media and ITVS (for the 1H2O Project), and PETA.

  Helium hopes these partnerships and its editorial processes elevate it above other content-creation companies. At least some believe it has. The Massachusetts firm was recently named one of the "Hottest Boston Companies."

  
  
  
  
• 3:44

  How Associated Content Helps Yahoo Go Local

   » ‎ E-Media Tidbits

  Since 2004, Associated Content -- "The People's Media Company" -- has grown a stable of over 380,000 loyal content producers who have contributed over two million pieces of text, audio, video, and photographic content to its distribution platform. In mid-May, it was announced that Associated Content had been sold to Yahoo! for a little more than $100 million, and has plans to shut down the Associated Content website when the sale is complete in the third quarter of this year.
  

  How will Associated Content continue to court the loyalty of its contributors while the sale and shutdown are pending? And what -- beyond the obvious advantages of loyal contributors and a huge cache of money-earning, evergreen content -- does Yahoo get? I posed these questions to Patrick Keane, CEO of Associated Content.

  But first, here's how it works now. Associated Content's writers create self-selected and assignment-based content. Most of what is produced is evergreen content, but there are also personal essays, product reviews, and the like. While some content is paid at scale or "upfront," Keane explained that various types of content are often valued individually, according to the form (text, video, etc.) and potential earnings.
  

  Since monetization happens over the lifetime of an article, and articles are considered annuities for both Associated Content and the producers, potential earnings are determined by a number of factors, including Web search results and Ad Sense metrics.

  Content contributors have a number of options to help them distribute and promote their work across social networking sites and blogs. Contributors can also rely on the site's search engine optimization and how-to guides for creating headlines and leads with search-friendly keywords. The combination of self-promotion and search engine optimization helps producers maximize what is available to them beyond the upfront payment system.

  Keane said that "no immediate changes" would be made to the payment process. He elaborated: "We remain committed to the people that produce content. The acquisition by Yahoo! brings a great deal of opportunity for them and this will increase our contributor base. Contributors will continue to create and upload content onto Associated Content's platform. They will now be supported with a much larger distribution -- 600 million unique monthly visitors.

  "There may be tweaks and changes to the process of content creation in the future," he continued, "but both Yahoo! and Associated Content are committed to maintaining the standards our contributors are used to in order to produce the most useful, original content by the people, for the people. Yahoo! plans to leverage content from our contributors across its leading media properties including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance."

  Contributors will also have the opportunity to produce for Shine, Yahoo! Movies, OMG, and most of the Yahoo! network.

  Associated Content currently partners with media organizations, including Thomson Reuters, Cox Newspapers, CNN. Keane said the sale is viewed positively by them. "Yahoo! partners and collaborates with publishers and they view the acquisition of Associated Content as an opportunity to extend those partnerships," he told me. "We envision that this agreement will open new opportunities to partner with other companies that share the same mission of producing high-quality original content at scale. No specific changes have been made at this point."

  There may be a battle brewing over who will produce fresh, news-style content, though. Even though its focus until now has been on the production of evergreen content, with less than 10 percent considered "news," there are a number of seasoned journalists who contribute news-style content to several of AC's verticals, including Sports and Society.
  

  Prior to the sale, I had asked Keane about the potential for Associated Content to create local news. "Using the virtual assignment desk, we can activate any audience in any ZIP code," he responded. "So, then, we could potentially have someone follow the story of a plane crash. We can activate people in any community to create news stories if we'd like to do that. But that's not our focus."

  Yahoo!, however, will now be able to throw its hat in the ring, alongside others such as AOL, in the fight to produce content for local portals.

  	RELATED
  	The New Content Providers and the Media This hourlong NewsU webinar describes the new content providers, the costs in developing these network, the type of partnerships they're entering into with media organizations, and more.

  When asked after the sale whether Associated Content might begin to produce more locally-focused content, Keane responded: "The local section on Associated Content's site already has a library full of locally-focused content across several topics. Yahoo! intends to leverage the Associated Content platform to generate content across their properties, including local content. This deal will help Yahoo! provide useful local content, as Associated Content has the unique ability to tap 380,000 'man-on-the-street' contributors who are experts in their locale and can produce high-quality content in real time from any DMA."

  
  
  
  
• 3:37

  Why USA Today Partnered with Demand Media

   » ‎ E-Media Tidbits
  As more news organizations begin to consider integrating user-generated content into their daily offerings, several traditional news publishers (Hearst) have started using various forms of user-generated content from content production sites like Helium.com and Associated Content. Demand Media is the newest and perhaps most closely watched of the content production sites.
  
  Concern over Demand comes not just from its 2008 merger with blog syndicator and aggregation software developer Pluck, but also due to its proprietary algorithm that is said to help content producers generate keyword-rich content that increases reach into the first pages of Google and other search results.
  
  In the deal between Demand Media and USA Today, Demand provides 4,000-plus keyword-rich "Travel Tips" articles and other types of content that will be cached in USA Today's Travel Section. Demand Media will also provide keyword-rich advertising to accompany the content. While the article content will be free to USA Today, the revenue generated from the ads will be split between the news organization and Demand.
  
  Recently, I had the opportunity to correspond with Victoria Borton, General Manager of the Travel section at USA Today, on the decision to partner with Demand Media and the benefits.
  
  Tish Grier: Were other content outlets considered before Demand Media was chosen?
  
  Victoria Borton: USA TODAY had a long-standing relationship with Pluck through our integration of their social media tools on USATODAY.com, enabling community as part of our Network Journalism launch in 2007. Pluck introduced us to Demand Studios about extending our relationship around their search optimized content model, we agreed travel was a category where creating a co-branded section using their approach made sense.
  
  ... We've had a positive relationship with Pluck since the launch of Network Journalism on USATODAY.com in 2007.
  
  How important was Demand's ad production and placement plan to the deal?
  
  Borton: Demand Media's system to create content based on search trends and the corresponding advertising model provided a strong business case for entering into this relationship.
  
  Why was the Travel section chosen over other USAT sections that feature evergreen content? Is there an expectation that Demand's content will help the USAT Travel section become a "destination site" known for its travel info?
  
  Borton: Travel is an area where consumers are always looking for functional, actionable tips and information around a wide variety of topics. It's an ideal area to offer travel tips. USA TODAY Travel is already a popular destination site for original, trusted travel information, and the addition of Travel Tips is one way to broaden our overall content offering.
  
  What might be expected earnings from the travel section now that this deal is in place?
  
  Borton: We are most excited about the demand-driven, search friendliness of this content, and its ability to bring new users to our site. As traffic increases over time, advertising revenues will follow those traffic increases.
  
  Are there any plans to extend Demand content to other sections in USA Today, or to use them for any news or investigative reporting?
  
  Borton: We will watch the performance of the section over time and make further decisions on whether to extend to other areas if it makes sense for both our audience and our business. While Demand Media's co-branded content expands our overall offering to our audience, there has been no thought that it would replace our existing content coverage, news and investigative reporting in any way.
  
  Much has been made of the possibility of Demand's content not meeting with prevailing journalistic standards. Could you comment on Demand's standards and how those standards relate to the journalistic standards maintained by USA Today?
  
  Borton: We worked with Demand Media to share our overall editorial guidelines, and they selected their top writers with existing travel experience for our project. USA TODAY reserves the right to remove content we don't feel is up to our standards. For this type of consumer service content, we are happy with the quality to date.
  
  How might you describe the relationship between "content" and "journalism"?
  
  

  	RELATED
  	The New Content Providers and the Media This hourlong NewsU webinar describes the new content providers, the costs in developing these network, the type of partnerships they're entering into with media organizations, and more.

  Borton: Journalism is core to the USA TODAY brand -- it's our unique investigation and reporting around timely events and items of interest. Content can be anything consumed by a user: data, information, listings, photos, videos, maps and so on.
  
  Note: On June 14, USA Today announced a partnership with location-based social network Gowalla. I asked Borton if any of the Demand Media content would be served on the three Gowalla applications. She responded: "All three of the USA TODAY content features appearing on the Gowalla application are written by USA TODAY staffers and freelance columnists."
  
  
  

• July 08, 2010
• 23:36

  A new production model for news reporting: Outsourcing

   » ‎ Online Journalism Review
  By Jason Stverak: When your cell phone breaks or your computer crashes you no longer expect to speak to a call center in the United States. Numerous companies have outsourced parts of their business operations to contractors in other countries in an effort to improve their bottom line and increase productivity. Regardless of the public perception of outsourcing jobs, there can be financial benefits. However, a domestic form of outsourcing now is reaching the struggling news industry. It was the topic of a recent Washington Post column by Howard Kurtz. In The age of journalistic outsourcing, Kurtz argues that while traditional print media struggle, new journalism organizations, mostly non-profits, are “giving the restless and the jobless a second lease on life.” But why has it taken so long for the legacy media to realize the untapped potential of online non-profit organizations? Many online non-profit news organizations have been around for decades. They produce quality investigative articles about a range of topics. They have been responsible for breaking news, exposing scandal and reporting stories traditional media miss. A new non-profit journalism organization seems to be appearing daily, and with that comes innovative reporting and a new approach to journalism.

• 23:00

  As Voter Turnout Dwindles, Some Look to a Tiny Agency for Help

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  As advocates and officials seek ways to increase meager Election Day turnout in the city, some say the solution could lie with a little-noticed and sparsely funded commission.

• 16:51

  City to Host High Speed Rail Confernece

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Advocates say the momentum for high speed rail in New York is building and the US High Speed Rail Association hopes to seize on it with a two-day conference in the city, this November.  The HSRA expects to have representatives from across the North East appear to discuss building a high speed rail corridor.

  The HSRA say they plan to works closely with high speed rail aficionado Sen. Malcolm Smith on getting a number of important New York politicos to the event. Smith recently introduced legislation that would create a commission to look for proper was to fund high speed rail and recommend a creation of an independent entity to oversee its construction.

• 16:18

  Kendall Unltd

   » ‎ SignCasts -

  Kendall Unltd promotional video to be shown at Las Vegas Expo.

  Film editing and equipment was provided by Vriezen Photography

  Starring
  Kendall Kail
  Breanna Murray
  Shawn Vriezen

  Special Thanks to Jessalyn Frank and Sarah Houge for providing emotional support.

  Casa de Frank provided by Jessalyn Frank

  Kendall Unltd
  www.kendallunltd.com

• 15:51

  The Influencer Project Showcases 60 Speakers in 60 Minutes

   » ‎ MediaShift

  

  Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  The world is flooded with multi-day web marketing conferences and other educational opportunities aimed at teaching people how to use social media. But this week the shortest social media conference ever lined up 60 thought leaders to speak for 60 seconds each.
  
  
  The Influencer Project was streamed live on Tuesday, and each speaker was given the opportunity to tell listeners the most important thing they should do to grow their influence within the next 60 days. Headliners included Guy Kawasaki; online wine critic and co-founder of Vaynermedia, Gary Vaynerchuk, who I interviewed for my last post on social media training; Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger.com,; Mike Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com; Marshall Kirkpatrick, the vice president of content development and lead writer at ReadWriteWeb.com; and many others.

  Some of the advice included tips on how to get yourself interviewed in order to build your brand, discussing what you truly know, and focusing on a niche in order to dominate it. Guy Kawasaki advised people to repeat their tweets in order drive clickthrough rates throughout the day. Marshall Kirkpatrick discussed getting involved early in the news cycle. Stelzner told people how to open up a Facebook fan page.

  

  "Facebook has extended their feature capabilities to third parties," Stelzner said. "You could put stuff on your website, like your blog, and it allows people to click a button that reads 'Like,' and all of a sudden on their Facebook personal page there will be a link back to your blog."

  That link will be spread to that person's list of friends on Facebook. Such exposure has helped Social Media Examiner's Facebook page get "Liked" by over 9,000 people. (Stelzner only launched the page in February of this year).

  He has also written about how he has leveraged Social Media Examiner's Facebook page to grow its community.

  The Power of Story

  Brian Clark of Copyblogger argued that people need to know how to tell their story. And they also need to learn from other people's experiences.

  "We need to learn from what worked in old media," he said. "Don't ridicule it or think that they're out of touch because sooner than you think the big guys are going to figure all this stuff out and they're going to be dominating social media."

  

  People respond to narrative content, according to Clark. He argued that media producers, meaning everybody with an Internet connection, need to have a solid understanding of human psychology and what can influence us. He has built his blog to over 100,000 RSS subscribers by employing narrative pieces, and he'll soon be expanding to offer multimedia.

  "We have this incredible technology to build websites, to do video, to do audio," he said. "You've got to really pay attention to quality and production values even while you bring a more personal and authentic touch that this social media thing is for."

  Enterprise brands only see the use of social media as one part of their complete media marketing campaign. Large corporate brands employ radio, TV, and billboards, which Clark says is now all social because people will keep documenting their experiences with marketing messages on the Internet. However, he contends that smaller publishers, such as bloggers, can use social media to grow their businesses to the level where they can also communicate through mass media channels.

  "It's not like mass media," Clark stated. "You don't have to reach the whole world, but you could still reach enough people to build a good business."

  Attracting Speakers: A Case Study in Influence

  Sam Rosen is the CEO of ThoughtLead, the online media and marketing company that organized the event. His use of social platforms to recruit speakers and help market the Influencer Project serves as a mini case study of how media companies can succeed in a digital environment.

  

  Rosen worked with people in his organization's sphere of influence to help reach out to other people, thereby expanding his reach and attracting the participation of those from outside his immediate sphere. He invited up-and-coming marketers who are just starting to build their digital influence and then had them reach out to people that were influential to them and to whom they had a connection. As a result, more and more influential people signed on to speak. By communicating that this first batch of influencers were speaking, Rosen was able to attract even more influential people.

  "The more speakers we got, the more other speakers were like, 'I have to participate in that, so and so is in that, I've got to be up there too,' " he stated. "It started to create a peer environment."

  Liz Strauss, who runs SobCon, was enthralled with the idea. Strauss already featured a number of Rosen's targeted speakers at her event. So she had Rosen choose which speakers he wanted to speak at the Influencer Project. She emailed those speakers. Her influence helped attract additional speakers.

  "In some cases we couldn't convince them to do it, but when the people who they considered to be influential and who they trusted said, 'You have to do it,' one person became the source of multiple contacts and a couple of those are really big names," Rosen explained. "We added those names to a roster used to attract bigger names."

  Getting the 60th Speaker

  Having some of the most influential names in the social media marketing space allowed him to also attract sponsors and media partners. He also had some speakers email their subscribers to let them know about the event. Email recipients had a link with an auto-populated tweet which allowed them to communicate that they were going to listen to the event. Then on Thursday, July 1, 2010, they sent out an email announcing their contest.

  "We sent out an email that said, 'Will you be the 60th speaker?'" Rosen said. "'Tell us your thoughts about what it means to build digital influence, and we'll choose the best tweets.'"

  They had their speakers send out the same email to their lists, too. People began to tweet what they thought was the best way to increase digital influence using the hashtag #influencer. There were a few hundred tweets posted using the hashtag. As a result Rosen says that most of the 3,500 registrants came from Twitter; 750 people viewed the podcast. They expect over a thousand more to read the PDF with the transcript of the event and listen to the MP3 recording. They have a similar marketing plan in store working with their existing media partners and speakers.

  However, regardless of how efficient they are tactically, Rosen argued that content producers should have a good understanding of how to format a message so it can be easily shared by people. A lot of that came by coming up with a format for a conference never launched before to create what he calls an "idea virus."

  "Repetition, upending convention, taking something we have an idea about already that means something to us then flipping it on its head," Rosen explained. "And then describing it in a way that's really catchy and in a way that people can pass on to others."

  Neal Rodriguez vlogs on social media marketing tactics he has employed to his and his clients' monetary benefit on nealrodriguez.com. Subscribe to Neal's feed to stay abreast of his updates.

  

  Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 15:14

  News Organizations Must Innovate or Die

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  People in news don't generally think of innovation as their job. It's that old CP Snow thing of the two cultures, where innovation sits on the science not the arts side. I had my own experience of this at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in Washington a couple of months ago.

  After one of the sessions I spotted an editor whose newspaper had adopted hNews (the Knight-funded news metadata standard we developed with the AP). "How's it going?" I asked him. "Is it helping your online search? Are you using it to mark up your archive?"

  Before I had even finished the editor was jotting something down on his notepad. "Here," he said, "Call this guy. He's our technical director -- he'll be able to help you out."

  Technology and innovation still remain, for most editors, something the techies do.

  So it's not that surprising that over much of the last decade, innovation in news has been happening outside the news industry. In news aggregation, the work of filtering and providing context has been done by Google News, YouTube, Digg, Reddit, NowPublic, Demotix and Wikipedia...I could go on. In community engagement, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter led the way. In news-related services (the ones that tend to earn money) it has been Craigslist, Google AdWords and now mobile services like Foursquare.

  Rather than trying to innovate themselves, many news organisations have chosen instead to gripe from the sidelines. Rupert Murdoch called Google a "thief" and a "parasite." The U.K.'s Daily Mail has published stories about how using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer,, referred to someone as a "Facebook killer" (as in murderer), and runs scare stories about Facebook and child safety. And let's not even start to take apart various news commentators' dismissive attitude towards Twitter.

  When they have seen the value of innovation, news organizations have tended to try and buy it in rather than do it themselves, with decidedly mixed results. Murdoch's purchase of MySpace initially looked very smart, but now, as John Naughton wrote over the weekend, it "is beginning to look like a liability." The AOL /Time Warner mashup never worked. Associated Newspapers in the U.K. have done slightly better by making smaller investments in classified sites.

  Most news organisations do not see innovation as a critical element of what they do. This is not that unexpected since they spend their day jobs gathering and publishing news. Unfortunately for them, if it doesn't become more central to their DNA they are liable to become extinct.

  Speed and Unpredictability of Innovation

  At last week's Guardian Activate Summit, Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, was asked what kept him awake at nights. "Almost all deaths in the IT industry are self-inflicted," Schmidt said. "Large-scale companies make mistakes because they don't continue to innovate."

  Schmidt does not need to look far to see how quickly startups can rise and fall. Bebo was started in 2005, was bought by AOL in 2008 for $850 million, and then was sold again this month to Criterion Capital for a fee reported to be under $10 million.

  The problem for Schmidt -- and one that is even more acute for news organizations -- is the increasing speed and unpredictability of innovation. "I'm surprised at how random the future has become," Clay Shirky said at the same Activate summit, meaning that the breadth of participation in the digital economy is now so wide that innovation can come from almost anyone, anywhere.

  As an example he cited Ushahidi, a service built by two young guys in Kenya to map violence following the election in early 2008 that has now become a platform that "allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline." It has been used in South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Pakistan, Gaza, Haiti and in the U.S.

  He might also have cited Mendeley, a company which aims to organize the world's academic research papers online. Though only 16 months old, the service already has over 29 million documents in its library, and is used by over 10,000 institutions and over 400,000 people. It won a prize at Activate for the startup "most likely to change the world for the better."

  The tools to innovate are much more widely available than they were. Meaning a good idea could be conceived in Nairobi, Bangalore or Vilnius, and also developed and launched there too, and then spread across the world. "The future is harder to predict," Shirky said, "but easier to see."

  That's why Google gives one day a week to its employees to work on an innovation of their choice (Google News famously emerged from one employee's hobby project). It is why foundations like Knight have recognized the value of competition to innovation. And it's why Facebook will only enjoy a spell at the peak.

  Some Exceptions

  There are exceptions in the news industry. The New York Times now has an R&D department, has taken the leap towards linked data, and published its whole archive in reusable RDF. The Guardian innovated with Comment is Free, its Open platform, and the Guardian Data Store. The BBC developed the iPlayer.

  The Daily Telegraph had a go, setting up "Euston Partners" under then editor Will Lewis. (Although setting up an innovation center three miles away from the main office did not suggest it was seen as central to the future of the business.) The project was brought back in-house shortly after Lewis left the Telegraph in May 2010 and has been renamed the "Digital Futures Division."

  But mostly people in news don't really do innovation. They're too focused on generating content. But as the Knight Foundation has recognized, doing news in the same old way not only doesn't pay -- it doesn't even solve the democratic problems many of those in news are so rightly concerned about. For some people FixMyStreet.com or its U.S. equivalent SeeClickFix is now more likely to give them a direct relationship with their council than the local newspaper.

  News and media organizations have to realize that they are in the communications business, and being in that business means helping people to communicate. Giving them news to talk about is a big part of this, but it's not the only part. The sooner they realize this and start to innovate, the better chance they have of surviving the next couple of decades.

• 14:23

  Quinn Mails for Schneiderman

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  City Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent out a message in support of Sen. Eric Schneiderman’s campaign for attorney general this afternoon. Quinn highlights Schneiderman’s recent endorsement by NARAL Pro-Choice New York and Council member Tish James. Here is the message:

  Dear Friend:

  Over the past few weeks, the race for New York’s next Attorney General has been heating up. In this critically important election, we need to elect an Attorney General who will work to ensure progressive justice in our state. Without question, that candidate is Eric Schneiderman.

  I am supporting Eric because his commitment to the issues of importance to me, as a woman, as a member of the LGBT community, and as a New Yorker, has never wavered.

  Christine Quinn

  This has been quite a week for Eric’s campaign, with women from all across the state rallying behind his campaign. On Tuesday, Council member Tish James threw her support behind Eric, citing his superior record on women’s equality. And just yesterday, NARAL Pro-Choice New York today endorsed Eric’s bid for Attorney General. NARAL joins the growing list of over 90 elected officials, labor unions and progressive organizations that are supporting Eric’s campaign for Attorney General.

  Eric is a lifelong progressive Democrat who has been on the front lines fighting for equality for decades. He has led the fight for women’s rights in Albany, from sponsoring legislation requiring equality of medical coverage for contraception, health screenings, and infertility treatment to protecting a woman’s right to choose under any circumstances. Eric was a true leader in the efforts to pass marriage equality in New York, and he was the driving force behind repealing the draconian and ineffective Rockefeller Drug Laws.
  July 11 marks the next major campaign finance filing deadline in this race – and Eric needs your help. If you have not yet donated to Eric this campaign cycle, please consider doing so now. If you have already given to Eric, I hope you will consider supporting him again.

  With your help, we will fight for a progressive, equal and independent vision for the Attorney General’s office to deliver justice for all New Yorkers.

  Best,
  Christine Quinn

• 12:22

  The story of Intelpedia: A model corporate wiki

   » ‎ J.D. Lasica
  
  
  

  
  The home page of Intelpedia, Intel’s corporate wiki.

    Other companies should take a page from Intel’s collaborative workspace

  Wikis are the poor cousins of social media. Seldom loved, often feared, always unsexy, a wiki is simply a collaborative website that can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. At its heart, a wiki is an online space for building collective info banks. (I’ve created more than a dozen wikis over the years, for Ourmedia, the Traveling Geeks and other organizations.)

  In recent years, wiki software has entered the workplace, with companies like Socialtext, Atlassian, CustomerVision, MindTouch and Traction rolling out business-friendly versions, and a good number of Fortune 1000 companies, including Microsoft, Disney, Xerox and Sony, now using wikis. Wikipedia, natch, lists some of the features of enterprise wikis.

  

  Josh Bancroft at Intel: ‘Imagine that you could have all the features and functionality that Wikipedia has on your own internal wiki.’

  But one early success story hasn’t received the attention it deserves: Intelpedia. I can’t link to it because it’s a private wiki, but I did spend an hour on the phone interviewing its creator, Intel engineer Josh Bancroft. In November 2005 Josh decided that his co-workers should have quick and easy access to a raft of company information, from internal projects to historical background. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to Intel and a member of the Intel Insiders, and I met Josh at Gnomedex 2006.)

  Like so many successful projects, this one bubbled up from the bottom, and the idea quickly caught on inside the company. By April 2008, the wiki had grown to about 25,000 pages and received 100 million page views. About 500 changes to the wiki take place each day, and more than 8,700 people have contributed to it.

  ‘In the four-plus years that Intelpedia has been up and running, I have had exactly zero reported instances of an unwanted edit — of someone spamming or vandalizing or doing something inappropriate.’

  “In the four-plus years that Intelpedia has been up and running, I have had exactly zero reported instances of an unwanted edit — of someone spamming or vandalizing or doing something inappropriate,” Josh said. I’ve heard the same from other companies, which should allay the fears that some corporate executives still harbor.

  What about the traditional corporate culture of locking up information? “By necessity, a lot of sensitive information needs to be controlled,” Josh said. Only information that couldn’t hurt the company if it leaked out to the public could be posted to the wiki.

  “We haven’t had an example of sensitive information being shared outside the company,” said Ken Kaplan of corporate communications.

  At its outset, there were handfuls of evangelists saying on an almost daily basis, “Hey, we should put this on Intelpedia!” The wiki got covered by Circuit, Intel’s internal online newsletter, which brought in a big influx of users. Josh and some of his colleagues then formed a voluntary group, the Intelpedia Distributed Editors, to help steer the wiki with a mailing list, a weekly meeting and to by helping to “garden” content contributions by newcomers. “No funding or resources from the company has been needed, and it probably never will be,” Josh said.

  How Intel employees use Intelpedia

  Intelpedia doesn’t serve every business purpose, of course. Wikis are good for knowledge sharing, but other tools — blogs, forums, email, instant messaging — are better for communication and short-term collaboration.

  One of most popular pages on Intelpedia is devoted to company and industry acronyms. Another page is devoted to employees providing self-help guidance to Firefox, which Intel’s IT department doesn’t support. But employees quickly got past the idea that only encyclopedia-type articles should be eligible for inclusion, so you’ll see information about the Intel Sailing Club, the Intel Classic Car Collectors Club and neighborhood pickup football games. In recent months, employees have been using Intelpedia to share their Twitter handles, from personal accounts to product and business group accounts.

  Intelpedia was built on on MediaWiki, the open-source wiki software that powers Wikipedia. “It’s a world-class wiki platform — easy to set up and amazingly powerful,” Josh said. “Imagine that you could have all the features and functionality that Wikipedia has on your own internal wiki.” Though Intel is a global company, Intelpedia pages are written entirely in English, just as most corporate communications are. A widget installed early last year allows people to embed videos on the wiki.

  All in all, Josh deserves kudos for helping to enable collaboration and information sharing across departments and national boundaries.

  Production note: I recorded my conversation with Josh and intended to produce it as a podcast, but the files became corrupted in Audacity, so I’m writing this post from notes I took during our call.

  Related

  • Screenshots of Intelpedia on Flickr

  • Intelpedia Grows Up (Intel internal newsletter — PDF)

  JD Lasica works with major companies and nonprofits on social media strategies. See his business profile, contact JD or leave a comment.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

  Related posts:

  1. Users skeptical of corporate blogs
  2. A wiki — and documentary — about wikis
  3. Wiki journalism: are wikis the new blogs?

• 9:00

  links for 2010-07-08

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Mobile Web Use and the Digital Divide – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com "Shireen Mitchell, the founder of Digital Sisters and a consultant on social media campaigns focused on women and minorities, said that the way in which people access the Internet should remain a part of the conversation about the digital divide.

    “The quality of what is available through cell only is limited access,” she said. “We are moving in a positive direction about true cellphone usage and it’s relevant to online access, but there are still some challenges ahead.”

    "Ms. Mitchell said organizations or government agencies that are eager to move everything online should consider that some cellphones might not be able to take full advantage of the Web."

    (tags: lean-mobile mobie mobile-web Digital-divide research statistics race class economics)
  • News organizations need mobile-first strategy « Pursuing the Complete Community Connection "Web-first meant content would be published online before in the print edition, and that the organization should start thinking first about the web, though most didn’t, regardless of what they were saying. When I say we must shift to a mobile-first strategy, I’m not talking about where content appears when, but about the priorities of the organization: what you place first in your thinking and acting.} (tags: mobile news+biz strategy business+models history future options)
  • CHART OF THE DAY: Android Used By More Developers Than Apple "Vision Mobile, an analysis and advisory firm, surveyed 401 mobile app developers, and found that developers have more Android experience than Apple iOS.
    Visible says Android has passed Apple with developers because Google's developers kit costs less, and because Google has done a good job marketing its open source model. Further, Android phones are selling well now, so there's plenty of customers.
    The gap between Apple and Android isn't that great, so Apple should hold its lead in apps for a while to come. And, most developers say they are developing for more than one platform at a time." (tags: Android iphone development mobile statistics)
  • Prince – world exclusive interview: Peter Willis goes inside the star's secret world – mirror.co.uk About the views Prince espoused in this article, George Kelly says:

    "and the Internet is dead because it's a problematic platform that doesn't encourage the scarcity, control and mystique that he operated under with his Warner Brothers record deal back in the day."

    Indeed.

    (tags: entertainment music publishing mindset problems dumb business+models)
  • Lone Star Trailblazer : CJR Typical CJR pooh-pooing of anything new in journalism: "The databases have been an unexpected hit — so popular, in fact, that the site’s biggest initial splash has been not as a fountain of authoritative reporting and analysis, but as a resource for readers to do their own exploring. While that fact may be humbling for reporters, it’s part of a “data-as-journalism” mentality that has become the Tribune’s most far-reaching calling card.

    "The Tribune’s idealistic stance toward data has the whiff of a familiar claim: if we give the public raw information, people will take the initiative to make sense of it and put it in its proper context. In effect, they will do what journalists have historically done for them. But the scale on which this in fact happens is uncertain, and the inherent journalistic value of raw data remains unclear."

    (tags: journalism databases government info+access criticism)
  • Mobile Journalism – The Journalist's Toolbox "This is a collection of mobile resources from Mike Reilley and the Poynter Institute's Regina McCombs, Dave Stanton and Damon Kiesow, as well as many others. A list of mobile reporting tools appears at the end of this page. Most apps are tailored to the iPhone but have versions available for many other smart phones, too.
    Mobile Industry Reading" (tags: mobile journalism resources)
  • Time Magazine putting up a paywall to protect print? » Nieman Journalism Lab "this is a paywall without a door: There appears to be no way to buy access to the magazine from within a web browser — either an individual article or the full issue. The push is all toward print and the magazine’s iPad app. Is that a temporary shortfall, while Time figures out the best way to charge for web access? Or is it a sign publishers are concluding that the web is so problematic a platform for news-as-paid-content that they’re better off using it as a simple promotional platform for iPad apps and paper? Or to ask the zen question, is it really a paywall if there’s no way to pay?" (tags: magazines publishing print business+models paywall dumb problems)

  

• 6:29

  Rising Voices And World Cup

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  “Soccer is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening–it is without doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented” - Unknown

  People say that the World Cup soccer (football) is a truly International event. The bloggers of many Rising Voices projects across continents have written about it to show their passion.

  Ariniaina from Madagascar writes in her blog Dago Tiako how Malagasy kids are inspired by the World Cup:

  Last saturday, while waiting for the ICE Club meeting, in the playground of EPP (Public Primary School) Analakely, I was attracted by children’s shouts of joy. They were 5 guys and 1 girl playing football. Their ball was special. They made it by themselves. They winded a rope  round some used plastic bags and pieces of rag and that’s it. They seemed to have their own rules but repeated from time to time , I guess, words they could hear on radio or TV ‘corner’ and ‘penalty’. They were so cute:

  

  

  Lova Rakotomalala writes how Africans are coping with Ghana's loss against Uruguay ending all hopes for an African nation from reaching the world cup finals.

  Despair city, a whole continent gasping in disbelief.

  Pablo Flores from Uruguay uploaded some stunning pictures of the world cup football craze in Uruguay as fans gathered to watch the Ghana Uruguay game in big screens:

  

  

  

  Jonathan Alvarez from Blogging Since Infancy project is delighted:

  Uruguay among the top four in the world!

  From Bolivia Hugo Miranda comments on the loss of Brazil in the hands of Netherlands:

  This is football

  Brazil played beautifully the first 12 minutes, with a touch of ball, with turns, to the attack. Robinho was disallowed a goal which was a warning that the goal came at 10 minutes, Robinho made him an excellent filtering before Felipe Melo.

  Then started another game, many faults, very nervous, Brazil lets it go, many complaints, though it made some good moves, but not topped.

  The second half we saw another Netherlands: Robben, Van Persie, Sneijder, finally and played a large stand, Robben failures, win, rush and Brazil fell in the game ..

  Netherlands 0-1 Brazil
  
  Simão | MySpace Video

  Read the Global Voices special coverage to learn about the impact of World Cup 2010 across the world.

• 5:24

  How to be a social climber on the digital ladder

   » ‎ E-Media Tidbits

  There are a variety of ways to participate in or experience news via social media. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla... the list goes on. But in what ways should a journalist utilize social technology?

  A few years ago, Forrester researchers Charlene Li (a Poynter National Advisory Board member) and Josh Bernoff created the Social Technographics Ladder. This graphic (below) defines the behaviors and interactions associated with social media by placing users into overlapping categories. Each rung on the ladder represents a specific set of behaviors, and people can move up and down these rungs. (The most recent addition to the ladder is the "Conversationalists" category.)

  Forrester Research

  How many of these rungs should today's journalist climb? I say every rung above "Inactive." Why? Because while there may be a learning curve for using specific tools, these categories describe behaviors that defined journalism before social media became the "it girl." Here's how each rung relates to journalism, from the top of the ladder to the bottom.

  • Creators author a story.
  • Conversationalists talk to people about stories, find sources, break news.
  • Critics review, offer opinion pieces.
  • Collectors research, create contacts and read publications on a regular basis.
  • Joiners are part of a community, professional or personal group.
  • Spectators keep up with competitors and other publications.

  I am a Creator, Conversationalist, Critic, Collector, Joiner and Spectator. But, I'm not all of these things on every social network. I focus on the networks that I see being used heavily in my Lawrence, Kansas community: Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Gowalla.

  LinkedIn, MySpace and FriendFeed are not used as often by our audience at the Lawrence Journal-World, so I'm more of a Joiner/Spectator when it comes to those. But our websites have an active presence on them all.

  Being an active part of these networks keeps us in touch with a tech-savvy, information-hungry portion of our audience. They're willing to participate in and share our content on a daily basis. On Twitter alone, if a handful of people retweet a link, it could reach hundreds of thousands of users new to LJWorld.com.

  Where are you on this ladder of social interaction today? Have you been a social climber over the last few years?

  Hint: If you're reading this, you're at least a Spectator. If you have an account on Facebook, you're a Joiner. If you leave me a comment, you're a Critic.
  
  
  

• July 07, 2010
• 23:00

  Claims of Dysfunction At City Clerk's Lobbying Bureau

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  Four years after the city revised its lobbying law, efforts to cast light on who lobbies for what remain mired in delays, confusion and allegations of mismanagement.

• 16:20

  Court Battle for Filmmaker's Footage Spurs National Debate on Reporter's Privilege

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  A filmmaker's fight against an oil company seeking his raw documentary footage has spurred a national debate on the reporter's privilege, pitting media organizations and filmmakers against powerful corporations and criminal defense attorneys.  At stake is the breadth of the protection given to unpublished newsgathering materials and, ultimately, the basic trust between journalists and their sources.

  On July 14, lawyers for filmmaker Joe Berlinger will go before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to appeal an order requiring Berlinger to turn over to the Chevron Corporation 600 hours of footage collected for his 2009 film, "Crude: The Real Price of Oil" ("Crude"). Chevron sought disclosure of the footage in connection with an ongoing class action suit against it in an Ecuadorian court. The lawsuit revolves around oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon, allegedly caused in the 1970s and 80s by Texaco. Chevron absorbed the legal liabilities of Texaco after it merged with the company in 2001. The oil company believes the Crude footage will shed light on a corrupt legal process in Ecuador and help in the defense of two of its lawyers facing related criminal charges.

  "I do believe they think there is some kind of smoking gun there that will somehow help them," said Berlinger on a panel in Manhattan, following a recent screening of Crude. 

  Hollywood guilds, documentarians, media companies and professional groups have rallied in support of Berlinger in two amicus briefs filed recently. These amici ask the Second Circuit to overturn the lower court ruling, which they say "made it far too easy for Chevron to obtain far too much."  As part of their argument, they invoke the reporter's privilege, which allows journalists to withhold from a court confidential or non-confidential information they learned in their professional capacity. Meanwhile, the Dole Food Company and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed two separate amicus briefs on behalf of the Chevron parties. These amici argue that the reporter's privilege was not intended to withhold “outtakes to interviews of persons who voluntarily appeared on camera” from litigants facing disputes as serious as those facing the Chevron parties. 

  As the significant amicus participation suggests, the appeal presents a number of issues with important implications for the future of the reporter's privilege, a privilege that is relevant to online media, documentary filmmakers, and mainstream media organizations alike.

  Background of the Film and Controversy
  
  In 2003, lawyers acting on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorians filed a class action lawsuit against Chevron in the town of Lago Agrio, Ecuador, alleging violations of a 1999 Ecuadorian environmental law. The Ecuadorian plaintiffs allege that the oil giant is liable for polluting waters in the Lago Agrio area and ask for up to $27 billion in damages and cleanup costs. Also in 2003, the Ecuadorian government filed criminal charges against two Chevron attorneys, alleging that they falsified public documents and violated environmental laws.
  
  According to court papers, in 2005 one of the plaintiffs' lawyers in the Lago Agrio case solicited Berlinger to produce a documentary depicting the litigation from the plaintiffs' perspective. For the next three years, Berlinger shadowed the plaintiffs' lawyers and filmed "the events and people surrounding the trial," compiling six hundred hours of raw footage. Crude premiered to critical acclaim in 2009 at the Sundance Film Festival, and was shown at more than 80 film festivals, receiving praise for its even-handedness by reviewers. According to its own press package, the film "captures the evidentiary phase of the Lago Agrio trial." 
  
  Following the film's premiere, Chevron and the two attorneys facing criminal charges filed applications in a New York federal court seeking Berlinger’s raw footage for Crude. They pointed to scenes in the film showing interactions between plaintiffs’ counsel and an expert witness, a judge, and Ecuadorean government officials, respectively.  They asserted that outtakes for these and other scenes are "highly likely to be directly relevant" to their class action lawsuit and to the criminal proceedings against the attorneys. They also argued for access to the remaining footage on the basis that Berlinger, according to his own press statements, was given "extraordinary access to players on all sides of the legal fight and beyond." Berlinger opposed the applications on the grounds that the footage was protected by the reporter's privilege and that compliance with such subpoenas would be a burdensome intrusion into his editorial process.
  
  "My sources expected that I was going to protect them and use their footage to make a film," Berlinger said at the previously mentioned Manhattan screening of Crude. "They never would have assumed that the information they gave me would be just handed over to the other side, to be used without any limitation."

  District Court Decision
  
  On May 6, 2010, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York issued an order granting the applications of Chevron and its attorneys in their entirety. The district court's order permits the Chevron parties to obtain all 600 hours of footage, without granting Berlinger's request to prohibit disclosure of the footage to third parties or even the public-at-large.
  
  As an initial matter, Judge Kaplan found that the qualified reporter's privilege applied to Crude, because Berlinger investigated "the events and people surrounding the Lago Agrio Litigation, a newsworthy event, and disseminated his film to the public."

  Under the controlling reporter's privilege case, Gonzales v. National Broadcasting Company, 194 F.3d 29 (2d Cir. 1999), if the information sought is confidential, civil litigants have to make "a clear and specific showing" that the "information is highly material and relevant, necessary or critical to the maintenance of the claim and not obtainable from other available sources." Id. at 33. If the information sought is not confidential, civil litigants need only show “the materials at issue are of likely relevance to a significant issue in the case, and are not reasonably obtainable from other available sources.” Id. at 36. The burden is diminished when the party seeking discovery is a criminal defendant. Id.
  
  Judge Kaplan rejected Berlinger's argument that the footage was confidential, discounting Berlinger’s affidavit that he had confidentiality agreements with his sources because he did not identify any source, subject, or scene covered by such an agreement and did not explain whether the confidential footage was in the outtakes or already published in the documentary. Berlinger also did not explain how his assurances of confidentiality squared with his standard release forms, which granted him carte blanche to use all of his footage in the production. As a result, Judge Kaplan deemed the footage non-confidential and found that the qualified privilege protecting the footage was overcome under the less demanding two-part Gonzales test.

  On the relevance prong of Gonzales, Judge Kaplan found that any interactions captured in the footage between plaintiffs’ counsel and a supposedly neutral expert would be likely relevant to “whether the expert is independent and his damages assessment reliable.” Likewise, footage of plaintiffs’ counsel interacting with the Ecuadorian judiciary and government officials could show that the Chevron parties were denied due process in the civil and criminal matters in Ecuador. Although Judge Kaplan did not review all 600 hours of footage, he was persuaded of their relevance by excerpts of the published film shown to him at an evidentiary hearing. 

  Judge Kaplan also found that the material sought by the Chevron parties from Berlinger was not reasonably obtainable from other sources, because Berlinger “is in sole possession of the Crude outtakes.” The Judge dismissed Berlinger’s argument that his outtakes were cumulative or duplicated decades worth of scientific reports and analyses, as well as his argument that Chevron recorded all phases of the case covered by Berlinger. What seemed most pertinent to Judge Kaplan was that Berlinger, according to Crude’s own press package, was given "extraordinary access to players on all sides of the legal fight and beyond."

  Amicus Curiae Positions
  
  The Media and the Filmmakers
  
  The media amicus brief, drafted by leading First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, focuses on application of the Gonzales case to non-confidential information. The brief, submitted on behalf of The Washington Post, The New York Times Company, The Associated Press, Dow Jones & Company and 11 other news organizations, argues that the district court's ruling violates "both the letter and the spirit" of Gonzales and threatens to "severely undermine[] the continued validity of a journalist's privilege with respect to outtakes and unpublished newsgathering material."

  The media brief argues that the district court misapplied the two-part Gonzales test. First, it shifted the "likely relevance" burden away from the Chevron parties by accepting "the sweeping assumption that all 600 hours of tape—nearly 350 times the footage that appeared in the final film itself—contained material 'of likely relevance to a significant issue in the case' even though there was no basis in the record for this assumption." Amici argue that the difficulty involved in reviewing the material in its entirety does not justify disregarding a legally-recognized, First Amendment-rooted privilege. Second, the media coalition argues that the district court misapplied the “reasonably obtainable from other available sources” portion of the test by focusing on the footage itself, rather than the information contained in that footage.

  Alongside the media, a group of filmmakers filed their own amicus brief.  The filmmakers' coalition includes the International Documentary Association, the Directors Guild of America, the Tribeca Film Institute, 12 other filmmaker organizations and nine individual filmmakers. The filmmakers’ brief included similar arguments on the misapplication of the Gonzales standard. In addition, they develop more fully Berlinger’s confidentiality argument, contending that outtakes should be protected under the more demanding three-part Gonzales test for confidential information, given "the implicit understanding of confidentiality that existed between Berlinger and his interview subjects." (emphasis added)

  The Dole Food Company and the Defense Attorneys
  
  The Dole Food Company, itself facing legal battles in Latin America, argues in its brief that Crude is part of a "growing trend of plaintiffs’ lawyers using a supposedly factual documentary film in a public campaign seeking to discredit the targeted defendants." The fruit company notes that it was the subject of a similar documentary film, "Bananas!*," which chronicles lawsuits filed against the company in the United States. Dole used outtakes from the film in its own defense and filed its amicus brief to help ensure that "legal rules applicable to privilege claims, whether asserted by parties or non-parties such as filmmakers who have teamed up with plaintiffs’ lawyers, [are] applied in a fair and balanced way." Turning to Chevron’s dispute, Dole asserts that the district court properly applied the less demanding Gonzales standard for non-confidential material and that Berlinger's definition of confidentiality would blur the dividing line between different privilege tests.
  
  The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ("Association") also filed an amicus brief. It argues that the circumstances here—non-confidential information sought from a filmmaker who allegedly colluded with a plaintiff’s attorney—present a particularly weak case for upholding the common law reporter's privilege. With respect to the Gonzales test, the Association first reminds the appellate court that the standard for overcoming the privilege is less stringent for criminal defendants. It then argues that the district court correctly held the Chevron attorneys met the standard, “given the importance of their interests as criminal defendants and the relative weakness of Berlinger's asserted interest.” Citing to the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 709 (1974), the Association emphasizes that, in criminal cases, "only the strongest of societal interests justifies foregoing ‘every man's evidence’ and thus distorting the truth-seeking process."

  What is really at stake here?
  
  Where Hollywood and the Media Got It Wrong: Precedent, Confidentiality and Misuse
  
  Much has been written about the potential catastrophic consequences to journalism if the Second Circuit affirms the district court’s ruling in support of the Chevron subpoena. Aside from the amicus briefs filed in this case, and an open letter sent to Judge Kaplan from the documentary community, media and film luminaries like actor Robert Redford and journalist Bill Moyers have published separate opinion pieces in Berlinger’s defense. Yet, some of these concerns may be overstated.

  I. Limited Precedent
  

  First, an adverse ruling for Berlinger in the Second Circuit would not spell trouble for journalists across the country. While it is an influential appellate court, the Second Circuit’s decisions are only binding in federal district courts in three states, New York, Connecticut and Vermont. Other circuits, some of which  seem to have stronger protections for journalists than the Second Circuit, could decide future such privilege cases differently. See, e.g., Shoen v. Shoen, 48 F.3d 412, 416 (9th Cir.1995); Zerilli v. Smith, 656 F.2d 705, 714 (D.C. Cir. 1981); Riley v. City of Chester, 612 F.2d 708, 717 (3rd Cir. 1979).  Plus, state courts deciding privilege issues under state shield laws can interpret state law in their own fashion.

  II. No Impact on Privilege of Traditional Confidential Information
  

  Second, if the Second Circuit were to rule against Berlinger, it would have no legal bearing on access to information obtained by journalists through an express promise of confidentiality. In a recent press release, the International Documentary Association and dozens of big name filmmakers noted that they feared that an adverse ruling for Berlinger would devastate the ability of documentary filmmakers "to not only acquire the statements they need from confidential sources, but also to protect through anonymity those who do come forward to tell their stories." But use of the term "confidential" seems strained here given Berlinger’s public statements about his outtakes, his option to publish all the footage he collected, and his failure to provide the court with even redacted versions of his confidentiality agreements. Moreover, the record does not show the existence of sources who were granted anonymity in exchange for providing information or who gave Berlinger information on condition that he could publish it only if sourced elsewhere. Thus, fears about the impact on collection of confidential information are likely misplaced.

  III.  Unwarranted Fear of Misuse            
  

  At a recent screening of Crude in Manhattan, Berlinger expressed concern that if he lost his case, one of the largest U.S. oil companies would likely use the footage not only for the courts, but also for public relations purposes on the Internet or elsewhere. “If you scour 600 hours of footage and take things out of context, you can do anything, you can spin any story,” he said. His concern is understandable, but the Second Circuit can mitigate the problem by issuing a protective order, previously denied to Berlinger by the district court, that limits the Chevron parties' use of the outtakes to litigation. Even if no such protective order is granted and the Chevron parties uses the outtakes outside the litigation, Berlinger still has the option of releasing more outtakes to give the Chevron release the necessary context.
  
  Where Hollywood and the Media Got It Right: Non-Confidential Information
  
  Despite the important qualifications mentioned above, the concerns of the media and the filmmaking community are warranted when it comes to the district court's treatment of non-confidential information. A wholesale affirmation of the district court ruling would signal a dramatic weakening of the privilege in the Second Circuit. It would essentially reduce the two-factor Gonzales standard into a single-factor "likely relevance" test, because a reporter's actual unpublished material could never be obtainable elsewhere. And this “likely relevance" test, as interpreted by the district court, would seem to allow litigants to acquire large swaths of unpublished material by merely showing the relevance of a small portion of it. As the media brief notes, this interpretation effectively "shifts the burden of alleged unfairness onto the [journalist] rendering this Circuit's requirement of a relevance showing meaningless."  Such an attenuation of the reporter's privilege would carry enormous costs for the press, and, by extension, the public seeking access to information.

  First, a weakened standard would encourage more—and more burdensome— subpoenas in federal cases. The significant additional burdens of responding to and defending against such subpoenas could chip away at the already dwindling resources of the press and divert time and energy away from important newsgathering activity. Second, a weakened reporter's privilege, even just for non-confidential information, may leave journalists with fewer forthcoming sources. As media and filmmaker amicus briefs explain effectively, even non-confidential sources expect journalists to be independent chroniclers of events, not investigative functionaries for private litigants and the government. Still, whether this presumed expectation for journalists will convince a Second Circuit panel to protect Berlinger's outtakes from forced disclosure remains an open question.

  An update on this case is available here.

  (Itai Maytal is a media law attorney in New York and was the 2009 First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times Company.)

  

• 15:04

  How Immersive Journalism, Games Can Increase Engagement

   » ‎ MediaShift

  The average reader spends 25 minutes a day reading the newspaper, while the average online user spends 70 seconds a day on a news site, according to data from Hal Varian, Google's chief economist. (JD Lasica has more on this presentation.)

  As a journalist, I'm not satisfied when people just scan my headline and then move on. As a citizen who also wants to discuss certain developments in the world, I would like to participate in online venues where people have an attention span longer than 70 seconds.

  Of course, enticing people to hang out longer on your site or blog has financial value, as advertisers value that kind of engagement. In this post, I'll suggest a few ways to encourage people to interact for a longer duration and with a higher level of engagement. I'll start out with a few fairly traditional ways to achieve this, and end with a new approach: immersive journalism.

  Five Ways to Increase Engagement

  1. Provide context. One interesting experiment is Google's Living Stories. This model helps provide context to news articles, which increases how much people understand the topic and better engages them. Matt Thompson, one of the participants in the Future of Context panel at this year's South by Southwest interactive conference expressed the importance of context this way:

  Hundreds of headlines wash over us every day. And part of why many of us engage in this flow is because we have faith that over time, this torrent of episodic knowledge is going to cohere into something more significant: a framework for genuinely understanding an issue. And we live with it 'cause it sort of works. Eventually you hear enough buzzwords like "single-payer" and "public option" and you start to feel like you can play along.

  But mounting evidence indicates that this approach to information is actually totally debilitating. Faced with a flood of headlines on an ever-increasing variety of topics, we shut off. We turn to news that doesn't require much understanding -- crime, traffic, weather -- or we turn off the news altogether.

  It doesn't require any new kind of design or technology to provide context -- giving background information or providing links to relevant material is a good start.

  2. Ask people for their take. In other words, don't just write another article; try to create and foster a conversation. People are more likely to be engaged if they have an opportunity to become part of the process, to share their views and knowledge.

  3. Live-stream your newsroom. I covered this idea in a previous post for MediaShift. This is a way to open up and let people get an inside look at how things work. It could spark their interest.

  4. Use video. Video-sharing services are a great resource, and video itself is hugely popular online. Don't be afraid to use smartphones, Flip cameras and other quick-and-dirty ways of shooting video. Do it as long as it helps to tell your story and moves people to interact. Also invite people to send in their video footage.

  5. Use video collaboratively. Have a look at Stroome, a collaborative video editing platform with great potential for community journalism projects.

  The Future

  This may prove to be the more controversial part of my post. It's about how journalists and bloggers can use the rapidly growing ecosystem of virtual objects, casual games, games on social networks and virtual environments to increase engagement.
  This is what some call "immersive journalism." I also think that augmented reality presents many opportunities for increasing engagement.

  

  Nonny de la Peña, a senior research fellow focused on immersive journalism at USC Annenberg, is one of the people leading the way in this field. In this context, immersive journalism is a novel way to utilize gaming platforms and virtual environments to convey news and non-fiction stories.

  It's a bit hard to explain, so let me show it in action using a video. The below video is about the Cap & Trade immersive journalism project, a collaboration with the USC Annenberg School of Journalism and the Center For Investigative Reporting, and is based on the PBS Frontline World story Carbon Watch. This machinima showcases the proof-of-concept Second Life experience:

  De la Peña uses other techniques for immersive journalism. There was a game about Darfur and a PC game about John Kerry's Swiftboat battles, all of which are showcased on ImmersiveJournalism.com. It's a great place to learn more about this concept, and to see what's possible with it.

  In terms of augmented reality, a company such as Layar provides a platform where you can build layers of digital information and then superimpose them on a physical reality using a mobile phone. It can also be combined with location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

  Using this kind of platform, you could superimpose facts and narratives on structures and places within a neighborhood, and invite your community to add their own comments and notations. You could create location-based games using reporting and other information. You can even have your layer behind a pay wall (for those who find that of interest).

  Challenges and Opportunities

  The possibilities are seemingly limitless, but it's difficult to know where to start, and what to watch out for. As much as I'm thrilled by augmented reality, gaming applications and virtual environments, I'm also aware of the dangers. Here are ten points to reflect upon before and while engaging in these new media from a news perspective.

  1. Keep a close eye on costs and benefits. Realize that virtual environments are, at least for adults, a niche activity. People in general don't like to download stuff and to go through technical hassles.
  2. Ask and answer some basic questions. Who are your community members? Is access to wireless broadband Internet ubiquitous? Do they have sophisticated smartphones? Your strategy will depend on the answers to these and other questions.
  3. Choose your game format wisely. Developing even a simple game is time-consuming, and not every game will be appreciated by your community. An article by Nora Paul and Kathleen A. Hansen in Nieman Reports about news-focused game playing reports on the results of their tests of different approaches. This is essential reading for anyone thinking of building a news game.
  4. Look for collaborative platforms. Try to get help from educational institutions, for example, or others in the community. It's not just about you and your organization.
  5. Don't forget that the developers of your new media experiment need guidance. You have to provide facts and you should be able to help create storyboards and deliver a philosophy and goals for the project.
  6. Don't hesitate to use relatively low-tech solutions. Developing a full-fledged game can be expensive. Maybe a Flash-based game is okay as well (sorry Steve Jobs!). Or even organizing a quiz or a scavenger-hunt related to the kind of news you're covering could be an interesting way to animate your community.
  7. If you're not a gamer, familiarize yourself with games and virtual environments. There are lessons to be learned. For instance, did you ever think about the use of audio in the context of a game?
  8. If you start exploring games and virtual environments, you will soon find out that there are very different approaches. In some games participants follow a relatively set rule structure. Other games or environments offer a framework, a theme, and people are encouraged to respond by telling their own stories.
  9. Capture your experiments on video so you have something to show the people who chose not to participate. (And those who did participate should of course be asked for feedback.)
  10. Don't forget your ethics and best practices. These should be part of your development and execution.

  *****

  If you're already trying any of these strategies to increase the attention span and the engagement of your community, I'd love to hear about it. What challenges and opportunities do you see? How can we practice "affordable immersive journalism"?

  Roland Legrand is in charge of Internet and new media at Mediafin, the publisher of leading Belgian business newspapers De Tijd and L'Echo. He studied applied economics and philosophy. After a brief teaching experience, he became a financial journalist working for the Belgian wire service Belga and subsequently for Mediafin. He works in Brussels, and lives in Antwerp with his wife Liesbeth.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 14:35

  Vetoes "Disappoint" Silver

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Gov. David Paterson’s staff delivered 6,681 vetoes to the legislature today making it official that his rejection of funds they added was not just a negotiating ploy. The vetoes are official.  The legislature can attempt to override the vetoes but it is unlikely the Senate can muster the votes to do so.

  Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver issued this statement:

  “My Assembly Majority colleagues and I are deeply disappointed that the Governor does not share the Legislature’s goal of sparing our schools from the most devastating cuts and ensuring that our higher education system remains accessible to all New Yorkers. We are saddened that the Governor also chose to renege on commitments of funding support from prior years to non-profits and community-based organizations that run free clinics, care for children and the elderly, offer counseling for crime victims and provide other vital services to New Yorkers throughout the state.”

  The budget remains incomplete as the Senate has yet to pass a revenue bill that was negotiated with the Assembly. Senate Democratic Majority Conference Leader John Sampson is said to be trying to negotiate with the Assembly to address some of Paterson’s concerns. Sampson and Paterson want to allow SUNY and CUNY to raise their tuition independent of the legislature and develop a contingency plan to address a possible Federal Medicaid funding shortfall. There is talk the Senate could return next week to pass the revenue bill. Its not clear that any negotiating got done.

• 14:14

  Objectivity as a Form of Persuasion: A Few Notes for Marcus Brauchli

   » ‎ PressThink
  "Reporting can be trusted if it is cured of opinion. Reporting can be trusted if it is dusted with opinion. Or even completely interwoven with opinion. It can lead to conclusions. Or the conclusions can be left to others."

• 14:00

  Lining Up on Nonpartisan Elections

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  Now that its forums on key issues have come to a close, the city charter revision commission will hold a public meeting on Monday at which the members will “discuss the next phase of the commission’s work.” While the commission ponders its options about what, if anything, to put before the voters in November, it certainly has plenty of advice it can take — or ignore.

  Last week, Citizens Union (whose sister organization publishes Gotham Gazette) weighed in with its recommendations. Amid all the advisers, Citizens Union might have a bit more heft than both, given its long history as a good government group and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s endorsement in March of the group’s creation of its own charter task force.

  Among its 50 recommendations, Citizens Union called for instituting nonpartisan elections, term limits, providing the public advocate and borough presidents with independently funded budgets and giving the Civilian Complaint Review Board the power to prosecute cases.

  In backing nonpartisan elections, Citizens Union reversed the stand it took in 2003 when it opposed a proposed charter revision, overwhelmingly rejected by the voters, that would have created open primaries. The mayor backed the idea then — and reportedly still does. Some other civic groups, such as the Women’s City Club, still oppose the idea.
  

  Under the plan believed to be under consideration — and adopted by California voters last month — all voters would cast ballots in a primary open to candidates from all parties. The top two vote getters would then go head-to-head- in a general election.

  This system, Citizens Union said in a statement, would “provide that the voice of the 1.5 million voters, who are now effectively shut out from choosing many of the city’s elected officials because they are not affiliated with the Democratic Party that effectively determines the vast majority of the city’s elected officials in a closed partisan primary, is heard.”

  Opponents argue the nonpartisan primaries could be a boost to wealthy self-financed candidates like Bloomberg. Citizens Union endorsed Bloomberg in all three of his mayoral elections.

  The proposal also has the enthusiastic backing of the Independence Party, Bloomberg gave $1.2 million to party the last year and — not surprisingly — its endorsement, and line in the mayoral election last year.

  At a Democratic Party press conference, last month, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio –a Democrat — was among those condemning the nonpartisan election idea. “Nonpartisan elections undermine our democracy,” he said. “They create a system that is dominated by wealth, suppresses voter turnout and makes it harder for minority candidates to compete.”

  About three quarters of U.S/ cities now have nonpartisan elections, according to a study of them by George Mason University law professor David Schleicher. Schleicher told the Wall Street Journal the system has left voters even less informed than they were under the old party-dominated system.

  Like it or not, party labels provide information. And so, Schleicher said, nonpartisan elections “take a situation where you know little and reduces it to zero. All evidence shows that voters in nonpartisan election behave as if they have no idea what’s going on and they turn out in far smaller numbers.”

  But most accounts the charter commission will put term limits before the voters but predictions vary as to whether nonpartisan elections will make the cut in its draft recommendations, expected in September. The commission — and mayor — have been careful to avoid a replay of the 2003 election when the commission made it clear it would follow Bloomberg’s bidding and put the issue on the ballot before it held even a single hearing.

  As to back channels, who knows? After all, as City Hall noted, “most of the staffers … are either current or former city employees, and several split time between the Bloomberg administration payroll and the commission.”

  On the other hand, the article said, “Staff and commission members insist that they have had no contact with anyone inside the Bullpen about the mayor’s preferences.”

• 13:34

  Highlights and Pitfalls of Virtual Street Corners Project

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab

  We're just winding down my Knight News Challenge project, Virtual Street Corners, and haven't had time to sort through all the recorded materials and debrief the participants, but I wanted to share some initial thoughts and reactions.

  The most encouraging takeaway from the project was the enthusiastic response it received. It seems to have struck a nerve and could be well worthy of further investigation. The piece is widely accessible without being overly simplistic, with the potential for opening up complex social interactions. On the other hand, there were also various aspects that fell short of my expectations.

  

  The project aimed to connect the Boston neighborhoods of Brookline and Roxbury through citizen journalists' video newscasts that were projected on life-size screens to enable real-time interaction between citizens.

  It seems funny in this era of technology, but people treated the idea of seeing another street corner across town appear in the window as something magical. They laughed and many people just found it very entertaining to connect in this way. I had many requests to set the installation up in other places -- including the MBTA, Boston's public transportation system -- and we attracted a wide range of willing participants. We also received excellent media attention, ranging from wide coverage in the blogosphere to substantial pieces in the Atlantic, the front page of the Boston Globe, CBC Radio, and WGBH (PBS) TV.

  

  Local politicians -- from city councilors to former presidential nominee Michael Dukakis -- joined with artists, educators and activists to take part in street corner dialogues on a range of issues. Electricians, carpenters, web conferencing experts, community organizers and commercial designers all stepped up to donate services. However, one of my biggest lessons is that free is never completely free. As one person on our team was fond of saying, "Out of fast, cheap and good quality -- you can get two but never all three."

  

  Tech Issues

  In the end, I underestimated the amount of resources needed to carry out the project on the scale I had envisioned. My biggest pitfall occurred in the tech department. We went into the project with tremendous momentum -- an article on the front page of the Boston Globe on opening night, a great team of journalists, an exciting lineup of participants to carry out the street corner forums. I put the majority of my time and resources into community organizing, outreach and design, wanting to make sure that I moved the conversation from simple greetings into important and unique dialogues that this particular installation had the potential of achieving.

  Having experimented with the installation before, I expected the tech piece to fall into place without too much difficulty. Getting a high-speed internet connection, videoconferencing and recording it all to a hard drive seemed like it should be pretty straightforward -- but that was not the case.

  The combination of the various components, and getting them to operate for extended periods in environments other than what they were designed for, created endless problems. The issues were compounded by working in a community like Roxbury, which has a relatively underdeveloped infrastructure. Things as simple as acquiring high speed Internet became major hurdles. Comcast assured me that they could easily provide the connection but when they arrived for the installation told me it was impossible to do. So we actually had to spend three days rewiring a historic building to acquire Internet access.

  I was donated a myriad of high-end equipment, which saved me a lot of money; but it also cost me dearly in time and functionality since I was not familiar enough to troubleshoot problems when they came up. We had many dropped calls and dropped audio, meaning the system was often not functioning.

  Furthermore, as I was running the entire tech myself, I had to run back and forth to reset the audio and video each time it went down. This was obviously very frustrating, but the biggest problem was that it discouraged participation. Profound interactions, both planned and spontaneous, were interrupted repeatedly, or had to be rescheduled or cancelled.

  Intense Committment Tough to Sustain

  Tech problems also posed a major obstacle to the journalism piece of the installation. Our plan was that journalists from each neighborhood would file reports every day, and the reports would run simultaneously, allowing pedestrians to share the same experience and generate conversation between the communities. For a good part of the project, however, the videos would only show at one location or the other. So it was news to only half of the observers, and it interfered with my goal of a mutual experience. This was a huge disappointment and was very demoralizing for the journalists who worked so hard on their pieces.

  The other significant problem we encountered was that our staff found it difficult to sustain such an intense commitment over a short period of time (one month). For example, the journalists were hired to file reports five days a week for three weeks. We had three people quit less than two weeks before we started because other longer term and higher paying jobs took priority. No matter how enthusiastic folks were when they were hired, we could not compete with full-time employment and family commitments.

  Final Thoughts

  We are excited by the potential of the project and how it was embraced by the communities where we installed it. We were also inspired by the relationships that were developed through the piece, and by the number of requests we had to install it permanently or set it up in other locations.

  However, I would never again work with equipment I wasn't able to test extensively for months in advance, and would make sure I was able to pay enough money to retain skilled labor despite the length of the project.

  Those are my inital impressions, and I'll share more thoughts soon.

• 9:55

  Public Engines to World: Look, But Don't Touch the Crime Data

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -

  Earlier this spring, Public Engines, Inc. sued ReportSee, Inc. in federal district court in Utah. Both companies maintain websites that publish local crime statistics and information gathered from law enforcement agencies. Public Engines gathers crime data by contracting with law enforcement agencies across the country to provide software and data management services. In contrast, ReportSee primarily gathers its information from public data feeds, police departments and, according to allegations in Public Engine's complaint, by scraping Public Engine's CrimeReports.com website. The complaint alleges breach of contract because scraping violates the terms of service of the website and hot news misappropriation, among other claims. (Techdirt has a good outline of the claims in the complaint and our legal threats database entry on this case has more background along with links to the complaint and other legal documents.)

  This strange case got another wrinkle on June 24, 2010, when both parties stipulated to a preliminary injunction that bars ReportSee from any further scraping activity, making any commercial use of crime report data from Public Engines websites, and from contacting or communicating with law enforcement agencies for the purpose of obtaining Public Engines' data feed.

  
  Hot news misappropriation -- Everyone wants in on the action.

  The case is a little bizarre because from the outset, the facts aren't a great fit for a hot news misappropriation claim. While Utah hasn't had a hot news misappropriation case, Public Engines pled facts in the complaint that track the elements of the now-familiar test laid out in the influential case NBA v. Motorola in the Second Circuit, 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997):

  (1) plaintiff generates or gathers information at a cost; (2) the information is time-sensitive; (3) a defendant's use of the information constitutes free riding on the plaintiff's efforts; (4) the defendant is in direct competition with a product or service offered by the plaintiffs; and (5) defendant's free-riding behavior would reduce the incentive to produce the product or service that its existence or quality would be substantially threatened.
  

  Why is the hot news misappropriation doctrine a stretch here? For starters, while Public Engines argues that "[o]ne of the main purposes of the CrimeReports.com website is to make information about crimes available in near real time," it's not clear how the information is time sensitive. What makes this crime data "hot"? And hot to whom? In the recent case Barclays v. FlyOnTheWall, the financial information was hot because it ceased to be valuable after a short period of time and customers were purportedly paying to have early exclusivity. In this case, the crime data is made publicly accessible on a website - for free. Public Engines claims that the data is made available "in near real time," by which it means it updates its database at least once every 24 hours. But is the nature of the information "hot" enough to really be time-sensitive? Just how "hot" is "hot" anyway?

  The bigger problem for Public Engines' hot news claim is its assertion that competition from ReportSee will "reduce Public Engines' incentive to produce this product or service, and the existence or quality of the information reported on CrimeReports.com will be substantially threatened." However, Public Engines is being paid by government agencies to compile the data and display it on its CrimeReports.com website. As its own complaint points out, "each law enforcement agency pays a fee for the CrimeReports.com service" because "[w]ithout Public Engines' technology, few law enforcement agencies would be able to make this information available in this form." The agencies pay Public Engines for these services because they "have a keen interest in making available to the communities they serve current and accurate information about crimes and criminal activity in the communities they serve[.]"

  In the classic fact pattern for hot news misappropriation, a provider of news is paid by consumers of news only after the investment in newsgathering has been made (thus competition that undermines consumer demand through free-riding would negatively impact upstream incentives to invest in newsgathering activities). The Public Engines case has that fact pattern turned inside-out and backwards. The consumer in this case pays nothing. The information is available on a public website that does not charge a fee for anyone to use its site, does not advertise and does not solicit business from users.

  So what's Public Engines' business model? It's paid upfront for its services by a party interested in investing in the very newsgathering activities at issue, irrespective of consumer demand. So where is the threat to the incentive in putting the data online? Even Public Engines' complaint underscores how it serves the agencies' interests in paying for newsgathering activities. Indeed, in its complaint, Public Engines brags that "CrimeReports.com is able to serve as an ‘official' crime information portal for the law enforcement agencies."

  
  What, you thought making public records available online meant better access to government information?

  What makes this case really crazy interesting however is that the "news" at issue is government data. Public Engines contracts with police departments and law enforcement agencies in order to get crime information out to the public. Open government data initiatives generally promote the use of government data to improve reporting, transparency and accountability. Access to data feeds is the point of websites like Data.gov and similar websites for state and local jurisdictions. 

  But those initiatives may be in tension with the fact that government agencies often pay third parties to collect, compile and maintain public records data in useful formats, and who may retain rights over the data. This isn't the first time a third-party data contractor has stepped in the way of a commercial use of data feeds. In the Bay Area a few years ago, Routsey's iPhone app making use of data feeds with bus and train arrival times got in a jam when the contractor providing the data to MUNI, the public transportation agency, asserted its rights to the data.

  Under the terms of the license agreement between Public Engines and law enforcement agencies, the agencies own all of the raw crime data, which Public Engines was contractually bound to keep confidential. Public Engines however, owns the data generated from removing sensitive and identifying information that was not suitable for release to the public, what it called "De-Identified Data." Furthermore, the law enforcement agencies were "prohibited from disclosing the intellectual property associated with the [software] . . . as well as the ‘De-Identified Data.'"

  Third-party ownership of processed government data, like in Public Engines' case, probably doesn't raise a public records issue because other parties (like ReportSee) in theory can still obtain public records from government agencies themselves. Their rights would not have been abridged by the existence of a separate contractual arrangement with a third party. Parties like ReportSee would have to cull through voluminous crime reports and blotters, just as they would have in the old days. In practice however, there could be a problem if the agency denies public records requests and instead directs requesters to third-party contractors, who then stand in the way of access.

  The bottom line is that this sort of dispute could be avoided if government agencies are more proactive and farsighted when negotiating terms with third-party providers of data management services. In particular, government agencies should maintain control over the resulting data, or at a minimum, require that the contractor permit a wide range of uses of the data. It's not just in the public interest of promoting government transparency and accountability. It's also in the agencies' interest to streamline its public records requests. The agencies are already paying for the data management services anyway, why spend even more government resources in order to respond to redundant public records requests?

  

• 9:31

  Announcing Round Two of the Technology for Transparency Network

   » ‎ Rising Voices

  Transparency International's 2009 Global Corruption Barometer found that citizens around the world are increasingly worried about corruption in both the public and private sectors. People are often hesitant to speak out against corruption, and see traditional complaint mechanisms as ineffective. A growing number of citizens, however, are beginning to use online technology to make their voices heard.

  The Technology for Transparency Network, a Rising Voices project to document and map projects around the world that use online technology to promote transparency and accountability, enters its second phase this month, thanks to continued sponsorship from the Transparency and Accountability Initiative. The Transparency and Accountability Initiative is a donor collaborative that includes the Ford Foundation, Hivos, the International Budget Partnership, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Institute, the Revenue Watch Institute, the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

  Between January and May 2010, the network's team of global researchers mapped nearly 40 case studies in Central & Eastern Europe, China, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia and anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa. These case studies are all available on our website, along with regional overviews of the technology for transparency movement and additional chapters on the main thematic issues that emerged across the projects. We've also compiled and presented the information in our final report from phase one.

  

  Researchers from the Technology for Transparency Network present at the 2010 Global Voices Summit in Santiago, Chile. Photo courtesy of FabsY_ on Flickr.

  While we were able to analyze a wide variety of projects during the first phase of our research, more work is needed if we are to draw confident conclusions about these organizations, how they operate and which of their aspects might be successfully applied to future technology for transparency initiatives. By collecting a sufficiently large sample of projects from a variety of regions and a variety of thematic categories, we can begin to make statements about their strengths and weaknesses and their role in the larger accountability ecosystem. We believe that doing so will inform future research on how these projects can be evaluated for their impact on government and private sector accountability and transparency and how they affect the communities they were created to serve.

  

  The Technology for Transparency Network maps projects around the world that use online technology to promote transparency and accountability.

  New research and new partners

  During the next phase of the project, we will expand our research to include projects from the Middle East & North Africa, the former Soviet Union and francophone Africa. We are thrilled to welcome Hazel Feigenblatt, the Media Projects Director at Global Integrity, as our Editorial Advisor. Hazel will be working with us to help choose the most innovative and exciting projects to document.

  We will also be partnering with a team of researchers from Harvard University, led by Transparency Policy Project co-director Archon Fung, who will be documenting six of our case studies in depth to explore the technological and organizational design of each case and to attempt to gauge the effect of each project.

  How to help: give us a hand!

  As David Sasaki wrote when he introduced the first phase of the Technology for Transparency Network, this is a collaborative research project, and we welcome your participation. If you have an idea for a case study, let us know! We currently welcome suggestions in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

  You can subscribe to our RSS feed for newly published case studies and to our podcast for interviews with leading doers and thinkers in the field. Please follow us on Twitter (in English or Spanish) to receive extra news and information related to technology for transparency. Finally, if you would like to engage in debate and discussion about the application of technology to improve governance in countries outside of North America and Western Europe, please subscribe to the Transparency for Technology mailing list.

  This post was co-written by Renata Avila.

• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-07

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • Auto detect mobile browser (via user-agent?) – Stack Overflow Tutorial: "How can I detect if a user is viewing my web site from a mobile web browser so that I can then auto detect and display the appropriate version of my web site?" (tags: mobile development resources tutorials devices WAP lean-mobile)

  

• July 06, 2010
• 21:59

  Help Us Develop the Junkyard Jumbotron

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  The Junkyard Jumboron is a really quick, web-based way to combine many people's laptops (9, 12, 20...) into a giant, eye-catching display.

  It's useful for...
  ...when you're organizing a rally, and you wan to draw the interest of passers-by.
  ...when you've assembled a cool collection of people, and you want to capture a unique photograph of the event.
  ...when your organization has a storefront, and you want to call attention to your cause.

  All it takes is 3 steps to set up a Junkyard Jumbotron

  1. Collect people's laptops, smartphones, etc and arrange them in a grid (on a table, in people's arms, etc). Any device with a web browser will work.

  2. Point each device at a special url

  3. Take a picture of the screens and the special "glyphs" that show up on them (thanks to the special url) and send it to a special email address (see left image below)

  Now anyone can send arbitrary images to the Junkyard Jumbotron via email (see right image below)

  We need your help.
  * Do you have an old laptop that you'd be willing to donate to help us test the Junkyard Jumbotron software? It just needs to be able to get on to the web and to have a power cord.
  * Do you have an occasion where you'd like to try out a Junkyard Jumbotron to call attention to your cause?

  Please get in touch with me at borovoy@media.mit.edu

• 17:55

  Flunking with a C

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  A week and a half ago, with school all but closed for the summer and many New Yorkers thinking about the summer weekend ahead the Department of Education announced another round of school closings. By the time the weather gets cooler, it’s almost a sure thing the list will be at the center of the increasingly acrimonious debate over how to deal with poorly performing schools in the city.

  (Meanwhile the department would prefer you not notice. The announcement is not on the list of pres releases for the end of June, and as far as I can determine –and I might have missed it — I never got the press releases, though I did hear about how much Joel Klein likes the state’s application for Race to the Top and his frequent appearances on Morning Joe. )

  Some 23 schools considered “persistently failing” by the state, will probably be phased out. These include the schools the city tried to close this year until the teacher union and the NAACP filed a successful suit to stop it.

  As has often been the case, the list also includes some well know names such as Boys and Girls High in Bedford-Stuyvesant. And the city has introduced a new strategy, selecting 11 schools it says it will try to “transform” by hiring specially trained teachers and new principals, funded with federal stimulus money.

  The list once again begs the question: After eight years of Bloomberg-Klein, why does the city still have so many schools it itself considers failing? And where will the students who would have attended these schools go?

  “A disproportionate number of students in the schools targeted for closure are among the most educationally disadvantaged and vulnerable students in the city: English language learners, students with severe learning disabilities, students who are academically behind when they enter high school. Several studies have shown that an over-concentration of these students in particular schools has significantly increased the likelihood that they will be labeled failing and targeted for closure,” Pedro Noguera and Ben Meade of the NYU School of Education wrote in City Limits last week.

  The closing list also casts doubt on the system’s own grading system for schools. May of the schools slated for “transformation” got B’s on the city’s vaunted progress reports, also known as report cards. These include Flushing High School, Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn, and Cobble Hill School of American Studies. Admittedly, the city considers 59 percent a B for schools — a break its students don’t get.

  Schools with C, including John Dewey High School in Brooklyn and Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, got Cs. Dewey got a C. You wonder why that’s considered failing except that in the Department of Education’s system C means a score of around 50 percent.

  The high grades awarded by the department last fall quickly became the subject of derision. “Suddenly, New York City looks like Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average — or like the Ivy League, noted for grade inflation that makes, say, a B-minus seem like the new F,” the Times commented as the grades were leased. (Mayor Michael Bloomberg, though, may have had the last laugh since the grade inflation, winning 97 percent of school A’s or B’s, came during the run-up to the mayoral election.)

  With that least some of the closings sure to meet opposition next fall, it seems inevitable that supporters of the endangered schools will use the grades as ammunition to keep them open. As the appellate court ruling last week made clear, the administration. For better or worse, can no longer simply ram the closings through.

• 15:45

  An Ounce of Prevention: Protecting yourself against online retaliation

   » ‎ Citizen Media Law Project -
  

  Last week I discussed recent news stories highlighting the dangers of online retaliation. At worst, this form of retaliation chills speech and threatens critical reporting. But short of that, it can harm journalists in a number of ways, including third-party harassment (in the case that your personal information is published) and reputational damage (through fraudulent profiles, posts, defamatory comments, etc.).

  The fear of retaliation should never prevent you from covering a story. By taking some precautionary measures, you can significantly reduce the chance that the subject of your criticism will harm you online. I have compiled some practical tips to help you avoid online retaliation(please feel free to contribute your own tips in the comments section below):

  • Practice good journalism. Among other things, this means doing your research and giving the other side a chance to respond or comment. Certainly even the most cautious reporting isn't enough to stop some people from retaliating, but it reduces the chance that tempers will flare. See our Legal Guide for resources on good journalism skills and practices.
  • Before you write, know your limits. Our Legal Guide section on the risks associated with publication provides an excellent primer on the legal boundaries for publishing online. Knowing your rights and privileges is important for avoiding not only legal trouble but also retaliation.
  • Don't overshare. Consider leaving private contact information such as your personal phone number off of online correspondence, unless absolutely necessary. 
  • Communicate through email when possible. This is especially important when you are responding to a complaint about your content. Communicating online provides the benefit of a record, which is invaluable in a he-said-she-said dispute. It also forces you (and the other party) to think before responding.
  • Offer an explanation. When responding to complaints about your reporting, explain your decision to publish the disputed content. Although you may feel like you don't owe the other party an explanation of your journalistic choices--and you probably don't--a respectful explanation can go a long way in resolving the dispute and in setting a cooperative tone. 
  • Be alert. Start a Google alert for your own name and contact info--that way you'll know of any fake Craigslist ads soliciting sex in your name before your potential customers. 
  • Protect your name. If you know that your reporting is controversial and is likely to rub some people the wrong way, you might even consider buying yourname.com to prevent a gripe site being put up in your name, and thus highly visible.
  • Tell your side. If you are a blogger who has been retaliated against, consider writing a blog post describing the details of the event--much like Kashmir Hill did in her piece on True/Slant. A post telling your side of the story can delegitimize the attack and provide context in the event that the attack is not removed. Follow this advice with caution: writing such a post can aggravate the tension. I would suggest writing such a post only when (1) you are confident that you have done nothing wrong, and (2) the retaliatory content is not likely to be removed. Also, should you choose to write such a post, think about the tone of the post. You want to explain rather than insult or ridicule.

  There's no question that online social media tools have made retaliation easier and in some cases more harmful than the retaliation of old. On the other hand, the same tools have immensely benefited journalism and the free flow of information. If nothing else, the recent accounts of online retaliation have called attention to the fact that engaging in journalism today requires extra steps to protect against the harms of retaliation. 

  (MarshallHogan is a rising second-year law student at Columbia Law School and a CMLP legal intern.)
  

  

• 12:39

  6 Key Lessons From NewsHour's Coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill

   » ‎ MediaShift

  The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has lasted more than two months now. It is the worst spill in U.S. history, and it is likely to continue until at least August. And in covering it, PBS NewsHour has broken every traffic record it ever had thanks to great reporting, our live video feed of the spill and the ticker showing the number of gallons released.

  So what have we learned? Below are some of the insights we've gathered so far. (Quick note: A lot of the thinking behind this post comes from a debriefing at work with my colleagues Vanessa Dennis, Travis Daub and Katie Kleinman, and from conversations about the spill and our coverage with other people in and out of the newsroom. Just so no one thinks this is all coming out of my head. Now then...)

  1. Embrace the Uncertainty

  New York University professor Jay Rosen recently wrote:

  It's incumbent upon journalists to level with people. If that means backing up to say, "Actually, it's hard to tell what happened here," or, "I'll share with you what I know, but I don't know who's right." This may be unsatisfying to some, but it may also be the best an honest reporter can do.

  
  

  Portraying conflicting accounts or clashing interpretations is an exacting skill, which does require a certain detachment. But there is no necessary connection between that skill, or that kind of detachment, and the ritualized avoidance of all conclusions, such as we find in He Said, She Said and the View from Nowhere.

  Rosen is talking about political journalism, but I think it applies very well here (and there are plenty of political facets to this story). As I said in my earlier post on the spill on my personal blog, part of what made me hesitant to make that now-famous ticker that tracks the spill was having to choose a flow rate when there were so many conflicting reports.

  Uncertainty is part of the story here. Sometimes it's a huge part. There are probably a lot of journalists uncomfortable saying so explicitly, "We don't know, and neither does anyone else," but it's what the story is here.

  2. Commit to the Story

  For big, complicated events where lots of people are watching -- where knowing what happened is easy but knowing what it means is hard -- the NewsHour has learned how to tell the ongoing story and, critically, to stick to it.

  We don't do this for most stories. There are lots of one-off blog posts and features, and plenty that can be told with one segment on the show. The stories where we can dive in and hang on, though, is where the good stuff happens.

  Also, putting it all in one place is helpful.

  3. Give Users Tools to Answer their Own Questions

  Here's what I told Poynter's Al Tompkins about creating tools for users:

  The NewsHour is a public media company, and I think part of our mission is to give the public tools to understand the news better. People see this and have different reactions, and by letting them embed it on their own sites, we allow the conversation to spread beyond areas we can think up ourselves.

  There are questions we'll never think of. That's true of the NewsHour, and it's true of the New York Times. And even if we could think of every possible angle to a story, there is no guarantee that we'll answer your particular question. Building tools our users (and reporters) can use gives us a way to catch more of those questions and find more of those answers.

  4. Build Things That Make your Reporting Better

  Here's what I'm most proud of about the widget/ticker that I didn't want to build: It made our reporting better.

  If we were going to estimate how much oil had flowed into the Gulf, it was vital that we knew what the estimates were, how they were made and what numbers were defensible. I've rewritten the JavaScript a handful of times as the situation has changed, and tracked those changes. My colleague Lea Winerman has gone back to scientists repeatedly to get their read on the latest data. We can stand by our math.

  Most of this is just good beat reporting -- but having a constant, visual reminder that we need to be right is a nice prod.

  5. Do Something New

  Probably obvious, but it bears repeating.

  6. Be Clear

  I've written a lot of blog posts about math lately. I try to make these as readable as possible -- but it's still math. And I think it's important to explain where we're coming from and how we reach the numbers and conclusions we reach.

  This comes back to embracing uncertainty. Here's what we said a week ago, as we struggled to find out whether more oil was coming out of the ruptured well after BP cut the riser pipe:

  Did the flow rate increase significantly after June 3, when BP cut the riser pipe in order to put the current containment dome in place? And if the flow rate did increase, by how much?

  
  

  We haven't found a clear answer to that question. An Interior Department official said that preliminary analysis suggested a modest increase, but that they didn't have definitive information to measure the change.

  
  

  And Ira Leifer, a researcher at the University of California-Santa Barbara and a member of the flow estimate panel, told us in an e-mail that the scientists can't be sure of whether there was an increase because BP didn't provide enough data from before the riser cut to get a good estimate of the flow then.

  
  

  Given that uncertainty, we initially left the minimum flow rate in our Gulf Leak Meter at 20,000 barrels per day, reflecting what the government's Flow Rate Technical Team reported on June 10 -- an estimate they based on data from before the riser was cut.

  
  

  But today, BP says it captured 16,020 barrels of oil and flared another 9,270, for a total of 25,290 barrels (1,062,180 gallons) diverted from the Gulf.

  (I say "we" in this case because parts of that post were written by me, and parts by Lea Winerman.)

  This is getting awfully long, so in keeping with the above principles, I'm going to open it up from here. What other lessons should we learn from covering the spill? What lessons have you learned? Share them in the comments below.

  Chris Amico is a journalist and web developer based in Washington, DC. As the interactives editor for the PBS NewsHour, he tells stories with data and documents. He built the database application behind the award-winning Patchwork Nation, along with other tools used by NewsHour reporters and producers. He blogs about news, code, China and travel at chrisamico.com.

  This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

• 11:23

  My job, let me show you it

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  Recently, C4FCM sent out a job posting looking for a new outreach coordinator. As the current outreach coordinator, I'd like to share some insider secrets about how awesome working here is. (Spoiler: very!)

  You would join a tight-knit crew of researchers and staff united around creating technology that can actually make a difference in struggling communities. But this isn't your average group of nerds: C4 researchers apply their considerable mettle to not just math and code, but also to thinking critically about the social contexts and implications of their technologies. The conversations here are friendly and full of laughs but also hard-hitting and honest. People aren't afraid to ask tough questions of their colleagues (and friends!) to help everyone's projects improve. There is a shared dedication to working closely and humbly with communities that is incredibly refreshing in a world full of problematic projects, and I can't imagine a better group of coworkers to have spent the last few years with. Beyond the core staff, the wider C4 community is an impressive assembly as well: some of the brightest and most insightful minds in the field sit on our email list and frequently attend our events and meetings.

  As the Outreach Coordinator, your main responsibility would be to make sure that the wonderful work being done at the Center reaches those who would find it useful. This means traveling to conferences to present, identifying new groups to collaborate with, and developing outreach strategies with C4 researchers.

  You'll get all the perks that come with the Center's Media Lab location: beautiful spaces to work in, an atmosphere brimming with creativity, roving robots, your very own inflatable elephant, ping pong, and, my favorite, the Media Lab Free Food Camera.

  As for me, I'm moving on after 3 years of being affiliated with the Center to learn about other perspectives in the tech for good field. I've learned an incredible amount in my time at the Center about the technical and operational needs of communities and nonprofits, and I'm taking that knowledge to help grow Breadpig, a wacky little company started by my friend Alexis that seeks to collect resources (profit + tech savvy) and give them to great nonprofits that need them. It'll be an interesting change of pace, but I certainly plan on staying a close friend of the Center.

  If you are looking for a fun job with great coworkers where you can make a difference at the intersection of technology and social impact, and if you're awesome, I highly recommend you apply for my job. I'll miss it a lot.

• 10:31

  Great Citizen Media Projects That Use Radio, Audio and Mobile

   » ‎ MediaShift Idea Lab
  Over at the Mobile Media Toolkit, we recently have been looking at voice- and radio-based citizen media projects that incorporate mobile phones. In an Idea Lab post last fall, I collected a series of examples that primarily used the voice functionality of mobile phones; however, this new set of projects integrate voice and radio with data-based services like SMS and web. Below are some of the projects we think you should know about.
  
  Projects to Watch
  
  

  • Voices of Youth in Nepal is a free text message channel that enables people to interact with a weekly radio program. The radio announcers pick a question every week and listeners can respond using SMS. The SMS posts are then put online, where youth can comment on each other's responses. Read more about the project on MobileActive.org.

  • Shubhranshu Choudhary and CGNet Swara have set up a citizen journalism service in India for tribal populations. The tribal citizen journalists call and upload content, and then that content is sent as SMS and email messages to a list of subscribers. Read about it here on the ICFJ blog; a MobileActive case study is coming soon.

  • Leo Burd and the VoIP-Drupal project are creating a voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) platform that interoperates with existing VoIP PBX implementations (Asterisk, FreeSwitch, and others) to provide Drupal users with the ability to, among other things: record, send and receive audio messages; create and manage audio groups; add audio events to a shared calendar; and organize phone-based polls.

  • In India, the BBC has started using a commercial service called Bubbly that works like Twitter, but with audio. Users can upload little bursts of audio to the service. The users' followers are then notified by SMS that an audio posting has been made.

  As a result of these and other projects, we published a new how-to for citizen journalists, "Mobile Audio Recording in the Field (and How to Get a Clear Sound from the Streets)." The how-to includes instructions for recording high quality audio on the go, as well as how to self-publish audio content on the web.
  
  We will soon publish a "State of Radio and Mobiles" white paper, as well as an article on how to deploy Interactive Voice Response systems in the near future. Keep on the lookout at MobileActive.org.

• July 05, 2010
• 23:43

  Why are people still downloading and installing applications?

   » ‎ J.D. Lasica
  
  
  

  

    Millions of downloadable app fans can’t be wrong

  Since the explosion of Web 2.0, there’s been a sense in the industry that downloadable applications for PCs and Macs are dead. Web 2.0 programming languages turned static web pages into web applications. The advantage of this now-dubbed “webware” was that you didn’t have to go through the process of downloading and installing an application, often cited as a major hurdle for usage. Web 2.0 applications could work in everyone’s browser (PC or Mac), no matter the configuration (usually).

  If it’s true that “people won’t download and install applications,” how come all of us have downloaded and installed applications running on our computers right now? And how come millions of people still download and install applications?

  I wrote about the downloadable application issue (hot or not?) on my blog, Spark Minute. I looked at the three most successful categories of downloadable applications (communications, multimedia, and malware protection) and how they drive revenue.

  I’m asking this question of myself and Socialmedia.biz readers because my company, Spark Media Solutions, has a client that’s producing and distributing a downloadable application, and I’m trying to understand what does and doesn’t work in the world of downloadable apps.

  The application is itiBiti, a white-labeled communications and content application. Think of it like a mashup between Skype and Hulu that can be branded by any company. For example, NBC distributes NBC Communicator, which is their own branded version of itiBiti.

  What makes certain downloadable applications successful?

  Looking at the most successful downloaded applications I realize they all fall into two very general categories. One category consists of utilities that enhance a function of an existing application or your computer desktop. Only hardcore geeks spend the time to download install, and configure these applications.

  The second category of successful downloaded applications is more widely used, and those are programs that solve a major issue that can’t be handled well with a web application.

  Here’s a list of those successful downloadable applications, and the problem they solve that web applications can’t solve.

  Category	Applications	Capabilities
  Browsers	Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera	Get access to the web and all its information and tools.
  VoIP applications	Skype	Call anywhere in the world for free. Chat via video. Know when someone is available to chat.
  Instant messaging	Yahoo! Instant Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, iChat	Know when someone is available to chat and chat via text. Affords another form of communications that falls between asynchronous (email) and synchronous (voice) communications. These applications now allow for voice and video, thus merging with VoIP applications.
  Instant messaging aggregators	Trillian, Pidgin	Unlike the telephone and email, instant messaging applications don’t use the same communications standard, which requires multiple applications to be open and running simultaneously, thus draining PC resources. Aggregators can handle multiple instant messenger services in one application.
  Microblogging aggregators	TweetDeck, Seesmic, PeopleBrowsr	Similarly, these aggregators let the user make sense of the endless stream of microblogging feeds across a host of different services.
  Multimedia viewers	iTunes, Windows Media Player, Adobe Media Player	A means to listen, watch, manage, and purchase multimedia content plus offload that content to a handheld device (e.g. iPod).
  Anti-Virus/Spyware	AVG, Ad-Aware, Malwarebytes, Avira, Avast, Norton Anti-Virus, McAfee	Fight off malware that enters your computer unknowingly. These programs are a requirement, because without them your computer would cease to work.

  Where can future downloadable applications be successful?

  It appears that there’s an opportunity for the merger of these different types of applications (communications, content, and malware protection). We’ve already seen it happen between VoIP and instant messaging applications. At the beginning, Skype was for voice communications and AOL Instant Messenger for text communications. Soon AOL began incorporating voice. Today, almost all the instant messenger applications allow for text, voice, and video.

  The merger options are to combine

  • A communications application with a content application
  • A content application and a malware protection application
  • A communications application and a malware protection application

  Trying to merge a communications or content application with a malware protection application reminds me of the Saturday Night Live sketch “Shimmer Floor Wax” where a couple argues if Shimmer is a floor wax or a dessert topping.

  Chevy Chase: “It’s durable, and it’s scuff resistant.”

  Dan Aykroyd: “And it’s delicious.”

  Because of the odd connection, a malware protection application mashup with a communications or content application is off the table for a mashup. The only merger option left is a communications application with a content application, which is what itiBiti does. But so much of what can make itiBiti successful is up to its partners, who distribute the product.

  

  Don’t just merge communications and content, mash it up

  The merger of communications and content is essentially “social media.” But when you bring communications to the desktop with a terminate and stay resident (TSR) program it becomes omnipresent and continuous allowing for ongoing conversation throughout the piece of content. Once again, we’ve already seen this happening as people tweet during a live event using hashtags and including links to photos, articles and videos. This is the goal of Tweetshare (a former client of Spark Media Solutions), which allows people to maintain Twitter conversations around a piece of content.

  We’re running into a situation where we need another filter to manage the combination of communications and content. Traditionally, the two filters we rely on are the wisdom of the crowd and trusted editors. The problem is the majority of content exists on the web and the majority of the conversation is happening off the web, on the desktop using the aforementioned communications tools and email.

  People rely on their conversation happening off the web. The question is can content come outside the web? We’ve already seen a little of this with photo and video viewing utilities within TweetDeck.

  That’s just the nascent stages, though. The web is fantastic at delivering content on demand, but it’s really poor at omnipresent communications. That’s been proven by the incredible success of TSR downloadable communications applications. If we’re going to have content and omnipresent communications work together more efficiently, the content is going to have to come out of the web and integrate more closely with communications apps on the desktop.

  What do you think?

  Creative Commons photo attributions CC Chapman and –jre–.David Spark helps businesses grow by developing thought leadership through storytelling and covering live events at Spark Media Solutions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen regularly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvorak, and KQED in San Francisco. See his business profile, contact David, or leave a comment below.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported.

  Related posts:

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  3. Bloggers join the media crush in Denver

• 23:00

  Charting a Better Way for Planning and Community Boards

   » ‎ Gotham Gazette: New York City News and Public Policy
  With the City Charter under review, Tom Angotti argues it has helped create a land use process often seen as a rubber stamp. He offers ideas to put some teeth in the process.

• 15:25

  The true value of social media

   » ‎ J.D. Lasica
  
  
  The True Value of Social Media

  View more presentations from Brandon Murphy.

  In Social Media, ROI = Return on Interaction + Return on Influence

  Guest post by Peter Bihr
  The Waving Cat

  How to measure the success of Social Media has been a huge problem in this industry for quite a while. There is a consensus that the number of fans/likes on Facebook or of followers on Twitter is too weak an indicator, but the alternative metrics are still rare: No golden standard has emerged yet.

  This presentation by 22squared on Return on Investment (ROI) in Social Media is the best I’ve seen in a long time. One of the few really good ones, really, as it backs up the main claims with data. Since you read this blog, the core finding won’t really be a surprise to you: Social Media engages customers and stakeholders, leads to interactions and eventually even to increased sales. (The latter part being the least important here.) It’s certainly good to have a decent study to back this up.

  The key idea is to factor in non-financial benefits of Social Media engagement, too: Return on Investment = Return on interaction + Return on influence.

  (via WeAreSocial)

  Reposted from Peter Bihr’s The Waving Cat under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 German license. Here’s the presentation on Slideshare.

  Related posts:

  1. Social media influencers’ predictions for 2009
  2. Social media think tank
  3. Social media, brands and the way forward

• 10:10

  Civic Media: A Syllabus

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  Over the past few terms, I've been sharing here the syllabi of the new courses I am developing at the University of Southern California, courses which build upon my own research interests and are intended to open up space for students to pursue their own projects. In the fall, I am going to be teaching two classes, both graduate seminars -- Civic Media for the Journalism School and Medium Specificity for the Cinema School. I am sharing my Civic Media syllabus here and will share the Medium Specificity syllabus later this summer. I am sharing these in part in hopes they prove useful to other researchers and teachers and in part because I am hoping to help spread the word to USC students who might be interested in learning more on these topics. The Civic Media class is intended, as the syllabus suggests, as a nexus between Communications and Journalism students, but I also assume it may appeal to students in Political Science, History, Education, perhaps even some in Engineering or Computer Science who want to build tools for supporting civic engagement or activism. If you know of someone at USC who might be interested in this class, please pass the word.

  SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM
  USC ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION & JOURNALISM

  JOUR 599 Special Topics: Civic Media
  Fall 2010
  3 units

  Schedule/Syllabus

  Section: 21679D
  Day/Time: Tuesday, 2-4:40 p.m.
  Classroom: TBD

  Professor: Henry Jenkins
  Email: hjenkins@usc.edu
  Office: ASC 101C
  Office hours: By appointment.
  Please contact Amanda Ford at: amanda.ford@usc.edu

  Course Description and Outcomes:

  "Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism...When we shift our attention from 'save newspapers' to 'save society,' the imperative changes from 'preserve the current institutions' to 'do whatever works.' And what works today isn't the same as what used to work."-- Clay Shirky

  Civic Media: any use of any technology for the purposes of increasing civic engagement and public participation, enabling the exchange of meaningful information, fostering social connectivity, constructing critical perspectives, insuring transparency and accountability, or strengthening citizen agency.

  This class on "civic media" is designed to provide a meeting ground between those involved in the cultural study of communications and those invested in the study of journalism as we address a common concern with the current moment of media in transition. We will start our semester by considering a series of recent reports exploring the current state and predicting future directions for journalism, public media, and the information needs of communities. What we hope to develop along the way is a functional understanding of the roles journalism has performed in American society over the past 100 or so years. We see professional journalism as both communicating core data vital for informed citizenship and performing central rituals needed to sustain a democratic culture.

  Often, we think about democracy as grounded in a rationalist discourse and shaped by structures of information, but democracy also has strong cultural roots and is shaped by what Raymond Williams would call "a structure of feeling." We may ask in the first instance what citizens need to know in order to make wise decisions and, in the second, what it feels like to be an empowered citizen capable of making a difference and sharing common interests with others. Across the trajectory of the course, we will explore a range of other institutions and practices that have similarly contributed to the public awareness, civic engagement, and social connectivity required for a functioning democracy.

  Before we can decide where we are going, though, we need to know where we have been -- we will consider everything from broadsides and ballads to wax museums, "living newspapers," underground comics, photo-shopped collages, circus parades, town pageants, scrapbooks, and toy printing presses, in search of historical models of civic media. Just as newspapers are one form of journalism, journalism is one set of practices that help us to perform these functions.

  Our expedition will be historical (looking at how these functions were performed in other times and places), theoretical (focusing on how different writers have conceived of civic engagement, public participation, and social capital), technological (understanding how the affordances and uses of different kinds of media enabled them to achieve one or another of these goals), and applied (seeking future models for how citizens, policy makers, and journalists might collaborate to better meet the informational and cultural needs of our times). We will also consider how new media practices may be altering our conception of democracy, government, citizenship, and community, seeking to better grasp what remains the same and what changes as we interact with each other via virtual worlds and social networks rather than in physical coffee houses and bowling allies.

  By the end of the course, students will be able to:

  • Define key concepts, such as "public sphere," "counterpublic," "imagined communities," and "citizen journalism," which have run through debates about the civic functions of media
  • Discuss how professional journalism fits within a larger realm of public and civic communications
  • Identify key positions in current debates about the future of news
  • Describe a range of different mechanisms through which civic functions have been performed across history
  • Recognize alternative conceptions of the role of citizens and their relationship to civic information
  • Analyze major shifts in American and global civic life manifesting through the rise of social networks, virtual worlds, and Web 2.0 practices

  Grading and Assignments:
  1. Students will contribute questions and comments to the class forum. (20 percent)

  2. Students will elect one of the white papers we will have read for Week 2 of the class and write a short five-page response, focusing on the following two questions: What do you see as the strengths and the limits of their approach? What recommendations do you see as realistic and achievable? What obstacles would need to be overcome? (20 percent)
  3. Students will develop a five-page report on a civic or activist organization they feel is making innovative use of civic media. (20 percent)
  4. Students will develop a final project that applies the broad ideas of the course. This project might be a conventional academic essay, an experiment in new journalistic practice, or the prototype for a new civic media tool. Students should discuss their project with the instructor early in the semester so we can set an appropriate scale for this project. Students will be ready to give a 10-15 minute presentation on their project by the final weeks of the class. (40 percent)

  Required Books:
  Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown V. Board of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
  Peter Levine, The Future of Democracy: Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens. Tufts (2007).
  Beth Noveck, Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better,
  Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful, Brookings Institution Press
  (2009).
  Vanessa R. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-De-Siecle Paris, University of California Press (1999).
  Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace, The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That
  Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse, MIT Press (2007)
  Rahaf Harfoush, Yes We Did: How Social Networks Built the Obama Brand, New Riders Press (2009).
  Stephen Duncombe, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, New Press (2007)

  All other readings will be available through the class blackboard site.

  Week 1: Introduction to Civic Media (Tuesday, August 24th)
  James W. Carey, "A Cultural Approach to Communication" and "Reconceiving 'Mass'
  and 'Media,'" Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (New York: Routledge, 1992)
  Benedict Anderson, "Introduction," "Cultural Roots," and "Census, Map, Museum,"
  Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006)
  Robert Putnam, "Introduction: Thinking about Social Change in America," Bowling
  Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Civic Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001)
  Handout with quotations from John Milton, John Stuart Mills, Alexis DeTocqville, John
  Dewey, Raymond Williams, Benjamin Barber.

  Week 2: Does News Have a Future? (Tuesday, August 31st)
  Paul Duguid, "Material Matters: The Past and Futurology of the Book" in Geoffrey Nunberg, The Future of the Book (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)
  Jessica Clark, "Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics" Center for Social Media
  Tony Deifell, "The Big Thaw: Charting A New Course for Journalism" The Media
  Consortium
  Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities, "Informing
  Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age,"

  Clay Shirky, "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable," March 13 2009

  Week 3: Where Publics Gather (Tuesday, September 7th)
  Nancy Frazier, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually
  Existing Democracy," Social Text, 25-26, 1990
  Tom Standage, "Coffee," A History of the World in 6 Glasses (New York: Walker, 2006)
  Richard Butsch, "The Politics of Audiences in America," The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics and Individuals (New York: Routledge, 2007)
  Mary L. Gray, "From Walmart to Websites: Out in Public," Out in the Country: Youth, Media and Queer Visibility in Rural America (New York: New York University Press, 2009)
  Paul Starr, "The Opening of the Public Sphere, 1600-1860,"The Creation of Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic, 2005)
  Handout with key passages from Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).

  Week 4: Why Media Matters (Tuesday, September 14th)
  John Fiske, "Introduction" and "Technostruggles," Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
  Hans Magnus Enzensberger, "Constituents of a Theory of the Media" New Left Review 64, 1970, 13-36.
  John Hartley, "The Frequencies of Public Writing: Tomb, Tome, and Time as
  Technologies of the Public," in Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn (eds.)
  Democracy and New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
  Kirsten Drotner, "Media on the Move: Personalized Media and the Transformation of
  Publicness," in Sonia Livingstone (ed.) Audiences and Publics: When Cultural
  Engagement Matters for the Public (Bristol: Intellect, 2005).
  Paula Petrik. "The Youngest Fourth Estate: The Novelty Toy Printing Press and
  Adolescence, 1870-1886," in Elliot West and Paula Petrik (eds.) Small Worlds:
  Children and Adolescents in America, 1850-1950. (Kansas City: U of Kansas P, 1992)

  Week 5: Rethinking the Informed Citizen (Tuesday, September 21st)
  Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown V. Board of Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
  Steve Classen, "Introduction", "Conclusion," Watching Jim Crow: The Struggle Over Mississippi TV, 1955-1969, Durham: Duke University Press.
  Michael Schudson, "Click Here for Democracy: A History and Critique of an
  Information-Based Model of Citizenship," in Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn
  (eds.) Democracy and New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
  Cynthia Gibson, "Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement" The
  Case Foundation

  
  Week 6: The Future of Democracy (Tuesday, September 28th)
  Peter Levine, The Future of Democracy: Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens (Boston: Tufts, 2007)
  Sonia Livingstone, "On the Relationship Between Audiences and Publics," and Daniel
  Dayan, "Mothers, Midwives and Abortionists: Genealogy, Obstetrics, Audiences and Publics," in Sonia Livingstone (ed.) Audiences and Publics: When Cultural Engagement Matters for the Public Sphere (London: Intellect, 2005)
  Meira Levinson, "The Civic Empowerment Gap" Defining the Problem and Locating
  Solutions," in Lonnie Sherrod, Constance Flanagan, and Judith Torney-Purta (eds.) Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (Boston: John Wiley and Sons 2009)
  Henry Jenkins, "A Person's A Person, No Matter How Small: The Democratic
  Imagination of Doctor Seuss," in Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson and Jane Shattuc (eds.) Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

  
  Week 7: A Digital Revolution? (Tuesday, October 5th)
  Anna Everett, "Digital Women: The Case of the Million Woman March Online and On
  Television," Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace (New York: State University of New York Press, 2009)
  Roger Hurwitz, "Who Needs Politics? Who Needs People?: The Ironies of Democracy in
  Cyberspace," in Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn (eds.) Democracy and New
  Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
  Cass Sunstein, "The Daily We: Is The Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy," and
  Responses, The Boston Review, Summer 2001
  Richard A. Ryerson, "Committees of Correspondence," The Revolution is Now Begun: the Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765-1776. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978)

  Week 8: Collective Action (Tuesday, October 12th)
  Beth Noveck, Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better,
  Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings Institute Press, 2009)
  Yochai Benkler, "The Emergence of a Networked Public Sphere," The Wealth of
  Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New
  Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)
  Warren Sack, "What Does a Very Large Scale Conversation Look Like?

  ," Electronic Book Review, March 7 2005.
  Jane McGonigel, "This Is Not A Game': Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play,"
  Avant-Game,

  
  Week 9: Civic Rituals (Tuesday, October 19th)
  Victor Turner, "Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative
  Symbology," Rice University Studies 60(3), 53-92
  Janet M. Davis, "Instruct the Minds of All Classes," The Circus Age: Culture and Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
  Marie Ryan, "The American Parade: Representations of 19th Century Social Order,"
  in Lynn Hunt (ed.) The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
  Paul Nadler, "Liberty Censored: Black Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre
  Project," African American Review 29 (1995): 615-622
  Lynn Hunt, "Pornography and the French Revolution," The Invention of Pornography, 1500-1800: Obscenity and The Origins of Modernity (Cambridge: Zone, 1996)

  Week 10: Spectacular Reality (Then and Now) (Tuesday, October 26th)
  Vanessa R. Schwartz, "Setting the Stage: The Boulevard, the Press and the Framing of
  Everyday Life," "Public Visits to the Morgue: Flanerie in the Service of the
  State," "The Musee Grevin: Museum and Newspaper in One," Spectacular
  Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-De-Siecle Paris (Berkeley: University of
  California Press, 1999)
  John Hartley, "Reality and the Plebisite," Television Truths: Forms of Knowledge in
  Popular Culture (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007)
  Aswin Punathambekar, "Television, Participatory Culture, and Politics: the Case of
  Indian Idol," Flow 10(5)
  Pamela Wilson, "Jamming Big Brother USA: Webcasting, Audience Intervention and
  Narrative Activism," in Ernest Mathis, Janet Jones (eds.) Big Brother International: Formats, Critics and Publics (London: Wallflower, 2004)
  Marwan M. Kraidy, "A Battle of Nations: Superstar and the Lebanon-Syria Media War,"
  Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

  
  Week 11: Democracy in Virtual Worlds (Tuesday, November 2nd)
  Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace, The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That
  Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009)
  Ian Bogost, "Digital Democracy," Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of
  Videogames (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007)
  Joe Kahne, Ellen Middaugh and Chris Evans, The Civic Potential of Video Games (MacArthur Foundation, 2009)

  Week 12: Surviving Disasters (Tuesday, November 9th)
  Eric Klinenberg, "In the Public Interest," Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control
  America's Media (New York: Holt, 2008)
  George Lipsitz, "Learning from New Orleans: The Social Warrant of Hostile Privatism
  and Competitive Consumer Citizenship," Cultural Anthropology 21(3), August 2006
  Elaine Scarry, "Who Defended The Country?," in Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin
  (eds.) Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005)
  Henry Jenkins, "Captain America Shed His Mighty Tears", in Daniel J. Sherman and
  Terry Nardin (eds.) Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005)
  Huma Yusuf, "
  ">Old and New Media: Converging During the Pakistan Emergency (March
  2007-February 2008)," Center for Future Civic Media

  
  Week 13: Social Networks and Participatory Culture (Tuesday, November 16th)
  Andrew Kohut, "Social Networking and Online Videos Take Off: Internet's Broader
  Role in Campaign 2008," Pew Internet and American Life Project
  Rahaf Harfoush, Yes We Did: How Social Networks Built the Obama Brand (San Francisco: New Riders Press, 2009)
  Ellen Gruber Garvey, "Scissoring and Scrapbooks: 19th Century Reading, Remaking and Recirculating" in Lisa Gitelman (ed.) New Media, 1740-1915 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004)

  
  Week 14: Politics, Fantasy and Parody (Tuesday, November 23rd)
  Stephen Duncombe, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (New York: New Press, 2007)
  Henry Jenkins, "Photoshop for Democracy" and "Why Mitt Romney Won't Debate a
  Snowman," Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
  York: New York University Press, 2006)
  Henry Jenkins, "How Dumbledore's Army Is Changing the Real World: An Interview
  with Andrew Slack," Confessions of an Aca-Fan, July 23 2009,

  Week 15: Final Presentations (Tuesday, November 30th)
  LAST DAY OF CLASS
  

• July 03, 2010
• 14:46

  The Need to Know

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  "The press has done an admirable (albeit belated) job with the technical complexities of MMS's (Minerals Management Services of the Interior Department) administrative failings. What is not being asked, and what the press needs to focus on, is whether MMS's problems are endemic to the entire federal government."
  From Nieman Watchdog

  Two stories in the media raised an eyebrow in June:

  One was a front-page takeout on June 10 in USA Today on adult pools in Las Vegas. A legitimate story, to be sure, reflecting the world we live in. What was remarkable, considering the BP disaster and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was that for the next five days on the top of the USA Today website the pool story continued to be No. 1 among the Top Five Most Popular Stories on the site.

  On June 15 — five days after the original pools story ran — it still led the list. The most popular stories were:

  1. Adult and topless pools make a splash in...
  2. Sand drives Army to ditch Velcro on pants
  3. 'Touchdown Jesus' statue in Ohio destroyed...
  4. Perez Hilton fires back about Miley Cyrus...
  5. Jeanie Buss on beau Phil Jackson,...

  The second story worth note concerned the dramatic drop in what is called "watchdog reporting", published in the American Journalism Review (AJR). In summary, the story chronicles the media's abandonment of coverage of many federal agencies and departments "whose actions have a huge impact on the lives of American citizens."

  What is American journalism coming to? And does the public care?

  The USA Today example suggests that the role of ratings that have watered down television and radio news coverage the past couple of decades is now becoming a bigger factor in choosing what kinds of stories should be covered in daily newspapers. Editors now have measurements of how many hits a story gets, how long the reader spends with the story, where the story is being read, etc. They also can tell if a story gets high readership beyond the day of publication. According to a mid-June Pew Research Center Report on new media/old media, "news today is increasingly a shared social experience. Half of Americans say they rely on the people around them to find out at least some of the news they need to know."

  The watchdog story suggests that downsizing of newsrooms, that resulted as much from corporatization as the internet, is depriving readers of news they need while enabling these powerful government entities to function with little oversight.

  Meanwhile, who is watching state and county agencies and departments? Citizen journalists? As valuable as they are, they probably never will fill the vacuum.

  What's at stake is the maintaining of a well-informed public.

  The media has to figure out new ways to provide right-to-know and need-to-know content, not just titillating topics. Better use of technology is part of the answer.

  On the other end of the equation, the online news consumer in the near future will have to pay something for reliable, thorough reporting with depth and breadth.

  Otherwise you gets what you don't pay for.

  Email

  July, 2010

• 9:01

  links for 2010-07-03

   » ‎ Amy Gahran
  • DROID Incredible to Receive OTA Update Adding 720p and Mobile Hotspot – Droid Life: A Droid Community Blog "Droid Incredible owners, prepare yourselves to become upgraded. According to our sources, an OTA update is readying for deployment to the DI which will add some much needed features that were missing during the device’s initial launch. Can you say 720p recording? Mobile hotspot feature? The Droid Red Eye boot animation it should have always had? Yep. All of that is on the way." (tags: Android mobile software)
  • Imagining the Internet "The 2010 Elon University-Pew Internet survey of technology experts and analysts – the Future of the Internet IV – asked participants to share their thoughts on 10 topics. The data is being released in a series of six reports delivered in various venues over the first seven months of 2010. See links to the longest, most-detailed content from the studies by scrolling down to the bottom half of this page and using the direct links to deep sets of data. Top-of-page information offers links only to the brief PDF copies of report briefings." (tags: research reports future social+media social+dynamics)
  • Feedly Firefox plugin

    Feedly delivers your Google Reader subscriptions as a magazine-like start page (including 2-way sync). Here are 5 tips for optimizing your feedly experience:
    - Re-order the categories on the navigation bar using drag and drop.
    - Influence how feedly filters articles by going to "organize sources" and marking the sources you like best as "must reads".
    - Create new categories by typing a topic in the search box and selecting the "best sources" option.
    - Customize the layout of each page using the pen icon.
    - Learn more about feedly's keyboard support by clicking on "?". "gg" is our favorite.

    (tags: RSS feeds Google tools usability aggregation)

  

• July 02, 2010
• 19:15

  Weekly Web Wrap

   » ‎ The Wonkster

  State Ranks Highest in Per-Student Spending
  (NY Fiscal Watch)
  Urban Farming as Sustainable Development
  (Inhabitat)
  PULP Funding Left Out of State Budget
  (PULP Blog)
  Is the State Budget Balanced?
  (Citizens Budget Commission)
  Closed Door Budget Negotiations Deja Vu
  (ReformNY)
  Orchard Beach Photo Essay
  (Mother Jones)
  Children Die from Injuries at Half of National Rate
  (Health Department)
  LED Screen Newsstands on Their Way
  (Lost Remote via NYConvergence)
  Albany Still Needs to Step in for the MTA
  (DMI Blog)
  MTA Announces Internal Communications Consolidation
  (Second Avenue Sagas)

• 17:02

  Participatory Youth Media Training Conducted in Gaza

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  Voices Beyond Walls conducted its first ever 3-day Training of Trainers (ToT) course on participatory digital media and storytelling with youth at the Canaan Institute of New Pedagogy in Gaza City from June 28-30, 2010. The ToT was led by Dr. Nitin Sawhney, with assistance from Asmaa Al Ghoul, an award-winning writer and journalist in Gaza, and Nasser El Sayyed, the lead coordinator for Les Enfants, Le Jeu et l’Education (EJE) in Gaza.

  While we expected around 20-25 participants, we were surprised to see around 36 young men and woman coming to attend all 3 days of the course. They all had prior experience working on creative programs with youth in local community centers including Canaan, Tamer Institute, Sharek Youth Forum, Right to Play, and the EJE woman and children’s centers in Gaza refugee camps like Al Abraj, Jabaliya and Rafah. Many even had experience with photo, video and drama techniques and contributed to the critical dialogue in the sessions quite well.

  In this blog posting I describe the outcomes of the three days of participatory media, photography, neighborhood mapping, child rights, drama, storyboarding and video sessions conducted in the training.

  To see more photos and videos visit the Voices Beyond Walls blog here:
  http://voicesbeyondwalls.blogspot.com

  Day 1: Youth Media, Photography and Neighborhood Mapping

  We began the first day with introductions among all participants, discussing the goals of the training and subsequent youth media workshops with community centers in Gaza. Participants shared their previous experiences working with youth in creative activities. We then watched 2-3 video shorts produced by youth in our program including Nablus Tragedy, Street Lesson, and Intensive Care Unit, with vigorous discussions about the visual aesthetic, humor, critical messaging, and filming techniques used by children in producing such films. These creative works served to provide a unseen window into issues faced by the children, even among their own communities indicated by the concerns brought up including preserving historical sites, violence in schools, family problems, and reflections on the occupation through poetry, photography and dramatic narrative.

  In the afternoon, the photography session was led by Mohamed Albaba, a professional photo-journalist with Agence France-Presse (AFP), which sparked a great discussion of creative photo techniques to use with children. Mohamed showed some of his striking photography from Gaza, while Nitin discussed photo examples taken by youth and by Anne Paq, who leads similar photo workshops with Voices Beyond Walls in the West Bank.

  The participants than had a chance to conduct hands-on exercises on neighborhood mapping in six small groups. Each team spent an hour or so exploring an issue in a neighborhood of Gaza City using photography, hand-drawn maps and brief interviews with the local community. They each presented exciting and imaginative ideas in their groups including a treasure hunt, finding Europe in Gaza, and a tour of the best pastry shops in the neighborhood. This ended a fun and enriching day for all the participants, turning out much better than we expected. One of the trainers, Asmaa noted that she hadn't seen this sort of creative energy among youth program facilitators in Gaza for a long time.

  With the regular electricity cuts in Gaza and intermittent diesel generators, there were only moments of power available during the sessions each day, so the rooftop room at Canaan remained unusually hot and we often struggled to run the video projector and video conferencing sessions with our counterparts in Ramallah. A brief video session with Raed, Anne and their Ramallah team at the end of the day exciting for everyone.

  Day 2: Drama, Acting and Storyboarding

  The second day began with a drama session conducted by Jehan, a professional drama trainer from Tamer (who was also a participant in the course). She led all participants through a series of creative ice-breakers using their bodies, movement and enacting funny scenarios in groups to open up their creative energy. She felt that such exercises allow children (and adults) to improve group dynamics, express themselves in new ways and open up improvisational narrative techniques. Jehan had participants perform gestural action in 4 small squares depicting emotions like happiness, sadness, anger and pain, both individually and in groups. She later gave narrative cues to each group to enact improvisational plays, which including miming (with a devil and angel), following shadows and alter egos (between 2 participants dressed in black and white), and dance performances (“dabke”) in a traditional Palestinian wedding.

  Nitin led a session on storyboarding with creative writing assistance from Jehan and Asmaa, to get all groups to develop unique narratives for their “1-minute films” as part of the training. The groups presented five main storyboards at the end, with critical discussion of the story characters, plot, unexpected climax and humor. Their stories dealt with everything from the funny life of a light post on the street, to a blind man who faked his blindness, a school kid who brought home the wrong mark sheet angering his mom, boys scared of hearing voices in an old home, and being traumatized by a stop sign (as a metaphor for the occupation). The critical review among the groups helped refine the story plots, though the groups preferred to improvise their scenes while shooting.

  At the end of the day, Nitin handed out video cameras to all five groups to being shooting their films the following day.

  Day 3: Child Rights, Video Shooting and Editing

  On the last day of the training we began with an introduction to the subject of children’s rights led by Bhassam Al-Agra, head of the training unit at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The goal of the session was to infuse serious understanding of child rights in youth media workshops to better support children in their awareness, expression and advocacy of critical issues and civic action, both in their own communities and internationally. Bassam discussed the international Convention for the Rights of the Child and the complementary Palestinian Child Law as is currently understood and enforced in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Many aspects of Islamic law were reconciled with the international agreements prior to its adoption in the Arab world. The convention included aspects related to child protection, discrimination, survival and livelihood and sharing/communication of their interests. Bassam engaged with the participants on critical understanding using a case study of a young boy in Sudan whose rights were violated in different ways.

  Participants discussed creative ways to make children more aware of their rights in the workshops to jointly develop to their own "bill of rights and responsibilities" as child journalists/videographers. They would then make "Press Passes" - IDs worn during filming, with their center info. and the rights listed in the back. This would give them a sense of responsibility and keen awareness of rights as part of the workshops.

  We then had 5 groups go out for an hour of video shooting outdoors. Subsequently, Nitin conducted an editing session for all, with the VideoStudio editing software installed on their laptops. The overall shooting and editing went far better than we expected; we were impressed that most participants picked up editing so quickly. Their final “1-minute” films were funny, smart and creative; the group screenings were hilarious, after the brief videocon with Ramallah.

  After the screenings, we had a chance to review the curricula plans for the main workshop to be held in Jabaliya camp in Gaza (from July 4-25); other trainers plan on using these techniques in their own summer programs. The enthusiasm emerging from the trainings is hard to convey; the subsequent evaluations revealed a thirst for such hands-on media workshops in Gaza. So we hope to find a way to conduct them here regularly.

  Finally, we handed out "36" diplomas to all participants and took group photos thereafter. In the end, Nitin was asked to perform a brief "Bhangra" number as promised and all participants were psyched about their short films and looked forward to conducting such workshops in their own community centers.

  The Gaza ToT was a huge success and many of the organizations involved (Tamer, Sharek and Canaan) expressed a deep satisfaction with the outcomes for their own trainers. We thank them for their enthusiastic support of the Voices Beyond Walls program in Gaza this summer.

  To see more photos and videos visit the Voices Beyond Walls blog here:
  http://voicesbeyondwalls.blogspot.com

• 16:49

  Launching the Re-imagining Project in West Bank and Gaza in Summer 2010

   » ‎ MIT Center for Future Civic Media

  Since 2006, I have been leading a participatory media program called Voices Beyond Walls in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with a local and international team of artists, filmmakers and educators. This summer our teams are launching a program of parallel workshops in the West Bank and Gaza, as part of our new Re-imagining Project.

  The “Re-imagining Project” is a program of digital video, photography and storytelling workshops that supports Palestinian children and youth in expressing their cultural identity, personal narratives, and creative visions through participatory digital media.

  This project is a collaboration among Voices Beyond Walls, Les Enfants, Le Jeu et l’Education (EJE), UNRWA and participating community centers in Al Aroub and Jabaliya refugee camps.

  The program consists of the following key activities in summer 2010:

  I. Conducting two 3-day Training of Trainers (ToT) sessions in Ramallah and Gaza City between June 28 to June 30, 2010. It will be conducted with 20-30 Palestinian volunteers from local youth centers, to provide participatory youth media training and prepare them to serve as potential workshop facilitators.

  II. Conducting at least two 3-week digital storytelling workshops between July 4th to July 25th, 2010 with around 18-24 children (both boys and girls aged 10-14), in collaboration with community centers in Al Aroub camp in the West Bank and Jabaliya camp in Gaza. Many joint activities will be conducted among children in both workshops via video conferencing and online sharing.

  III. Conducting baseline surveys, ongoing monitoring, and follow-up evaluations with all participants in the training and workshops in collaboration with EJE, UNRWA and the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP).

  IV. Screenings and exhibitions of the youth media work in Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza, as well as international festivals and venues abroad in 2010-2011.

  We have an exciting international and local team of filmmakers, artists, photographers, researchers, educators and community youth activists involved this year. The project is sponsored in part by the Genevieve McMillan-Reba Stewart Foundation and the MIT Center for Future Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  Stay tuned for regular updates on our blog and website:
  http://voicesbeyondwalls.blogspot.com
  http://www.voicesbeyondwalls.org