SETTING UP THE CONFERENCEJay Rosen isn't alone in posting his pre-conference thoughts as he prepares for the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference. Jeff Jarvis has published his thoughts, ideas and talking points on economics and the news in two separate posts, and here. Like Rosen, he's looking for comments. Both have interesting things to say. Go read.
TECHNORATI TAG: CREDIBILITY |
CITIZEN JOURNALISM SPREADSJeff Jarvis has posted a job opening at his web, Buzz Machine, that's also an explanation of another citizen journalism project:
Advance Internet, which includes NJ.com, MassLive.com, OregonLive.com and other fine local sites, is about to create a half-dozen town blogs in those markets -- new, group blogs (using iUpload) to which any neighbor can contribute. These will live alongside the many individuals' blogs, local forums, newspaper headlines, blogs outside the services (and their RSS feeds), and more. The idea is that -- as in GoSkokie.com and NorthwestVoices -- people may not want to start their own blog but they have plenty of news to contribute to their communities: opinions, news updates, sports reports, photos, calendar items, and so on. The hope is also that once we have a critical mass of content in a town from all these sources, a critical mass of audience is sure to follow. This means, we hope, that we can target ads down to the town level and automate them, saving the cost of sales and production, and price them in such a way that we can serve local advertisers who heretofore could not afford to market in big papers. That, I emphasize is the hope -- untested, unproven. Testing that is the job. I don't have an exact count, but the number of such experiments in erasing the line between news provider and reader seems to be growing exponentially. We're getting near the point where if local legacy media isn't planning on joining the parade, they risk being left watching from the sidewalk.
TECHNORATI TAG: REMAKING MEDIA |
THE POWER OF MOBSEvery time I figure I'm starting to get a handle on new media, somebody much smarter than I am throws in a new wrinkle. This one — mobcasting — knocked me straight sideways. Andy Carvin explains the potential:
A quick example: imagine a large protest at a political convention. During the protest, police overstep their authority and begin abusing protesters, sometimes brutally. A few journalists are covering the event, but not live. For the protestors and civil rights activists caught in the melee, the police abuses clearly need to be documented and publicized as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting for the handful of journalists to file a story on it, activists at the protest capture the event on their video phones -- dozens of phones from dozens of angles. Thanks to the local 3G (or community wi-fi) network, the activists immediately podcast the footage on their blogs. The footage gets aggregated on a civil rights website thanks to the RSS feeds produced by the podcasters' blogs. (Or perhaps they all podcast their footage directly to a centralized website, a la OneWorld TV but with an RSS twist.) This leads to coverage by bloggers throughout the blogosphere, which leads to coverage by the mainstream media, which leads to demands of accountability by the general public. That's mobcasting. In a separate post, Carvin spells out how to set up a "network" using freely available internet technologies, including blogs, audio blogs and RSS. Consumer technology (video and photo phones, digital cameras, etc.) has led to the idea that everyone can be a journalist. Online technology (individual and group blogs, RSS, etc.) has led to the idea that everyone can be a publisher. Mobcasting is one of the places where it all converges: audio and image over the phone line, delivered by RSS, potentially to a central source. What's missing is organization: all this information can be delivered to a central web site, but how do you navigate it as a user and get to what you consider the vital stuff? Add organization, and you have a potent new "container" for delivering breaking news.
Technorati Tags: MOBCASTING |
GOING DEEPChristian Science Monitor photojournalist John Nordell updates his blog with I dig the Big Dig. I'd love to see more working photojournalists do what John is doing: not just showing me pictures, but telling me stories about his work.
TECHNORATI TAG: PHOTOJOURNALISM |
EXPLAINING GREENSBOROIf you're not up to speed on what's happening with the Greensboro News & Record, MSNBC news has a great story that captures it all and puts it in context.
TECHNORATI TAG: GREENSBORO NEWS & RECORD |
JOURNALISM MIND SHIFTJ.D. Lasica takes advantage of it being his day to post at Morph to shine the light on another new voice in the mediascape. What I find most interesting isn't Lasica's latest "discovery" — The Lexington League — but his changed views on what journalism is. He writes:
A couple of years ago I might have reacted to subjective journalism like this by dismissing it as fundamentally flawed because of its imbalance, or because I didn't agree with the reporter's conclusions. Now I just marvel at the sophisticated ways in which people are joining the media conversation. That's a mind shift a lot of legacy media hasn't got to yet. There is no longer (if there ever has been) a single definition of journalism as professional, detached, uninvolved and objective. What Lasica wrote captures it as well as anything I've seen.
TECHNORATI TAG: RETHINKING MEDIA |
MORE COPYRIGHT CHILLWhen a seminal documentary like Eyes on the Prize is "silenced" because of copyright issues, it's time to take a serious and common-sense look at how the misapplication of copyright is effecting us all. Guy Dixon, in an excellent Globe & Mail article, reports:
The makers of the series no longer have permission for the archival footage they previously used of such key events as the historic protest marches or the confrontations with Southern police. Given Eyes on the Prize's tight budget, typical of any documentary, its filmmakers could barely afford the minimum five-year rights for use of the clips. That permission has long since expired, and the $250,000 to $500,000 needed to clear the numerous copyrights involved is proving too expensive. This is particularly dire now, because VHS copies of the series used in countless school curriculums are deteriorating beyond rehabilitation. With no new copies allowed to go on sale, "the whole thing, for all practical purposes, no longer exists," says Jon Else, a California-based filmmaker who helped produce and shoot the series and who also teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California, Berkeley. It is more than ironic that copyright, designed to offer limited protection against exploitation of creative work, has been turned on its head and is on its way to becoming a permanent "right" to lock up creative work and turn it into just another commodity. Beyond the irony is one of the realities that Dixon points out: the commodification of creative work is putting our history out of the reach of documentary filmmakers and others. We need to protect the rights of creators, but we also have to find a balance that allows creative work into the public arena, where it can drive other creators and creative activities. That was the original intent of copyright, allowing the original creator to benefit from a limited period of protection, before creations passed into public domain. We need to go back to that idea — and get away from the idea that a creator should have rights to creation "forever."
Technorati Tag: COPYRIGHT | SOURCE: BOING BOING |
Last update: 1/30/05; 10:22:10 PM .
