Saturday, November 27, 2004
LOVING IT
Another reason why I love where I live: I just stepped out onto the back deck for a smoke and stood there admiring the snow-capped mountains, while on the narrow slice of bay I could see, there were sailboats and even a kayaker. Ah, late November in Vancouver. |
SOUND OF MUSICThe Eastman School of Music is the perfect subject for a multimedia presentation in the hands of photographer Will Yurman of the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle. Truly great photography is integrated with the sound of the music, and the words of one instructor and one young musician, to create a great little story.
SOURCE: INTERACTIVENARRATIVE.ORG |
DISASTER HELPThere are a lot of things I don't need my cellphone to do: play games or danceable ring tones, for instance. But here's something from Japan that's a good use of the power of cells.
Cellular phone message board service that proved incredibly useful for those caught in the aftermath of last month's Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Earthquake will be extended across three major cell phone service providers from next year, reports The Daily Yomiuri.
Within 30 minutes of a major disaster, such as a large typhoon or an earthquake of lower 6 or higher on the Japanese intensity scale, [a] message board will appear in the menu on DoCoMo cell phones. The user chooses his or her status, such as "okay" or "in a shelter," and can then leave a text message of up to 100 characters. SOURCE: PAIDCONTENT.ORG UPDATE: The major disaster message board is a great use of cellphone technology. It covers off one of the major communication problems associated with disaster: getting personal information to friends and family. It occurs to me that the power of cellphones could add something new to the media mix when major news happens. Given the rapid growth in cameraphones (still and video), there is a virtual army of "reporters" out there in times of major newsworthy events. BBC and a few other major media sites have called on that "army" a couple of times and aggregated and published the results.
It's possible, in the near future, in times of big news (good and bad), cellphone service providers or sites like Flick'r will become major sources of unmediated information (images, text and even sound), alongside the mediated sources such as CNN.com or CBC.ca. New competition for old media. |
THE REALITYThe reality of alternative journalism — blogging, online-only community "newspapers," and the like — is that so far it is largely the work of dedicated individuals. Armed with an idea, an internet connection and the drive to supplement (or supplant) mainstream media, a lot of these individuals are doing stunning and innovative things with information. The other reality is evident at Portland Communique, which may have to shut down unless it can find revenue. J.D. Lasica at New Media Musings reports:
The Communique — an experiment in amateur journalism and hobbyist reporting — has become a fixture in the local media scene, read by City Council members, City Hall staffers, local political reporters and columnists, and general local political junkies. Willamette Week (and its readers in a separate poll) named it best local weblog, and The Oregonian published a front-page profile on him and what he does with the site. The models for community-based journalism (citizen journalism, participatory journalism or whatever you want to call it) are becoming fairly well developed. What's largely missing is the financial model: how to keep it going when interest, drive and desire aren't enough to pay the bills. Ad sales, based on eyeball count, bring big bucks to individual bloggers (Andrew Sullivan, Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos, etc.) and some of the brighter stars have made the jump to big media (Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly, Anna Marie Cox at Gawker). It's tougher at the local level, or without big Sitemeter stats. "Subscription" models (bloggers' fund-raising drives) have helped some. Others are sustained by day jobs that cover the costs. This blogging thing is cheap to get into, which makes it enticing. Keeping it going is different issue, particularly when the blogger is trying to commit original journalism, a time-consuming passion. An old internet idea (if you can say any internet ideas are truly "old") that never really caught fire is micropayments: a transparent system that would track use and bill you a nickel or two at a time. Information remains almost free, while the cost of producing that information is covered to some degree. While most surfers balk at paying for information, few of us have trouble plunking down some coin for stuff we find valuable, and maybe there's the glimmer of an answer here: a voluntary, micropayment system, sort of an ongoing PBS-style pledge drive. You'd be able to visit a site and access all the content for free, and you'd have the option of signing up as a supporter (with the option to cancel at any time) and be charged a very modest fee — somewhere in the nickel and dime area — each time you signed in. (Is there a mechanism for efficiently collecting small change over the internet? Not that I'm aware of, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.)
Just a thought and maybe not a workable one. But we need a workable one if the promise of internet journalism as practiced by Portland Communique and other independent community sites is going to continue to be delivered. |
Last update: 12/1/04; 9:39:13 AM .
