Thursday, September 8, 2005

'When the presses broke and the towers came down' Chris Lydon's Radio Open Source has a story of websites saving lives -- namely nola.com, affiliated with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and Craigslist.org, thought of more often as a classified-ad and conversation service. Give it a listen. Jon Donley, editor of nola.com, describes learning that people trapped in attics in New Orleans were desperately typing cell phone text messages to out-of-state relatives, who turned around and posted messages into nola's online forums, where rescue teams got the word and were dispatched to the scene. Craig Newmark of Craigslist tells a similar story -- about his crew discovering rescue requests on their site... then, later, seeing offers of housing begin to appear -- from as far away as Lowell, Mass., where Lydon's program originates. In New Orleans, Times-Picayune reporters, washed out of their newsroom, found themselves writing directly for nola.com for a change -- and seeing their stories on the Web immediately, no longer delayed by the wait for a press-run, no longer beaten by the television reporters, and no longer constrained by the amount of space available on a bundle of printed pages. Donley is convinced that journalism will never be the same again, that the process taught reporters and audiences more respect for what the Web, online dialogue and simple blogging programs can do. Equally convinced are Lydon and his guest Jeff Jarvis, both long-time professional journalists, but also long-time advocates of community journalism online. "I think something very important happened in New Orleans," Jarvis says. "Something profound happened in the news business when the presses broke and the broadcasting towers came down... It's a moment we're going to look back on from journalism schools for years hence as a moment when the news business really changed." "The best reporting in the world [~] no hyperbole, the best reporting in the world [~] this week came from the web division of the New Orleans Times Picayune, nola.com," says the Radio Open Source weblog. Radioopensource.org streamed the hour-long interview live Thursday night; it's also archived online, with blog space for comments. The "looking back" Jarvis mentioned has already begun. Watch for more links here as I get around to looking at the usual suspects, including Jim Romenesko's blog, Jon Dube's Cyberjournalist, J.D. Lasica's New Media Musings, Online Journalism Review and Jay Rosen's Pressthink.org. 12:00:03 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2008 Bob Stepno. Last update: 7/19/08; 1:08:45 PM.