PROTECTING ART

Derek Powazek is a San Francisco photographer who shares his art through his web site ephemera.org and I bring him to your attention for a couple of reasons.

The first is that he is a very good photographer who appears to post new images daily, so for all of you who love good images, he's worth putting on the bookmark list.

The second reason is his use of what he calls a "widget" to try and prevent his images from being stolen and displayed on other Web sites without his permission. For each of his images, like the one above, Powazek has provided snippets of HTML code that you can copy and paste into your Web site. The code display a small-scale, cropped version of his photo. Click on the photo, and you're taken to ephemera.org where you can see the full-size original (and buy a copy if you'd like).

That's smart. It won't stop those who have no qualms about theft of copyrighted material, but it does give the rest of us a way of sharing his images with the world and drawing attention to the works of a talented photographer.

My source for this item: J.D. Lasica's New Media Musings.

5:48:59 PM    

SEEING THE COMMUNITY

Here's a link that fits in with one of the ways I want to see journalism practiced -- seeing the whole community.

Stories1st. org has an interview with Nyguyen Qui Duc, a radio host and producer, about how Asian communities are covered.

He says:

The lanterns, the Asian food, Asian traditional dance. It's the same way we look at books. Asian Americans who get on bestseller lists have titles with words like "sorrow, red silk, kitchen, heaven, willow, sorrow, dragon blossom." Where are the professionals? Teachers and lawyers and people in the corporate world? We still have the samurai and the geisha and the poor Vietnamese woman who left the village and made it in America. In May, we have shows on PBS about Asians and do a salute. It's not about saluting us but making sure they cover our stories rather than trooping us out like monkeys.

...and...

It's not just on Pacific Time [his radio show], it's NPR [National Public Radio], too. Suddenly we have to understand the Islamic world, but then we bring in a person and to play the "oud" for us. It's exotic only because we don't know that part of the world. I've made those kind of mistakes too but we have to check ourselves. It's about getting out and understanding the changes in the community. It's thinking beyond the immediate cute thing, this bowl of noodles, or here's a blonde person cooking sushi -- "wow that's a big story!"

The sooner media gets this, particularly in regions such as this with large "ethnic" communities, the sooner it starts becoming relevant again. No matter how often a publisher or editor tells us that his/her goal is "to hold a mirror up to the community" or "to explain the community to itself," it just ain't true when people who are visible in that community are invisible in the media other than as tokens.

5:28:14 PM