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by Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
June 13,
2002 • Last
week's weblog
Imagine
and further this idea (please): Dave
Winer has a plan
for newspapers embracing weblogs:
"First,
I would offer a copy of Radio UserLand (a Weblog tool; Winer is CEO
of UserLand) that runs on your desktop. to every person on the editorial
staff (okay, I'm biased) and say "Start a weblog now if you want."
Then I'd make the same offer to the readers. Then I'd watch to see what
happens. I'd say to the staff "Read the new weblogs, and for those
of you who have your own, point to the articles you find interesting
or useful." Let this run for a few months. My bet is that the community
starts generating good news reports..."
I like Winer's
idea a lot, but think it would work better detached from newspapers.
The Federal
government classifies newspapers as "light manufacturing." Newsrooms
are factories, like giant bakeries: "We make it fresh every day"
is the slogan locally identified with The Providence Journal.
There is
no slack in this production line. There are "drop-dead" deadlines:
The presses roll at a specific time. The trucks leave at a specific time.
If the paper "goes late," it costs big bucks -- overtime for
everybody down the line.
Some reporters
still don't publish their email addresses because they barely have
time, in these days of downsized news staffs, to cover their beats. Others,
especially in the suburban bureaus, have story quotas -- a certain number
of stories they're expected to file every week in order to fill the newspaper.
"Do
you want me to write a story for tomorrow or answer email?" is not
a choice for an editor with a newshole to fill. "Do you want me to
write a story or answer email or write a weblog or read others' weblogs?"
would drive 'em to drink.
Gathering
and vetting information and writing a story someone wants to read takes
time, far more time than reacting to it, commenting on it or pointing
to it, the stuff of most weblogs. (Even this blog only exists because
I don't need much sleep.)
Mass weblogging,
as Dave envisions it, is a different animal. An animal of the future.
This newspaper's production facility -- the building and all the equipment
-- cost $60 million 10 years ago. Several hundred people work on processes
that that are unique to publishing on paper. Lop off everything that involves
outputting, printing and delivery -- hand this over to the reader -- and
publishing is no longer prohibitvely expensive. You only have to make
one copy.
In the future,
I have no doubt that all the objective data -- funerals, event listings,
restaurant menus, city council agendas, graduation lists, court calendars,
cop logs, highway repair maps, movie times & & & -- will be
inserted into the collective info stream by those who generate the information,
not by newspaper gatekeepers.
A digital
news organization might be a former newspaper, or a collective, like UPI.
Freed of the presses and paper and trucks, a digital news exchange (The
DEN!) could indeed be a collaboration of writers and photographers and
editors and readers with the hats sometimes interchanged:
If you're
writing like this -- Kesey
Affair in NYC -- you're blogging. If you're writing like this
-- The
life and death -- and struggle with death -- of Ken Kesey -- you're
practicing a sophisticated craft. (links via Jorn
Barger's Robot Wisdom)
But who pays
the full-time "content creators"?
(Dave suggests
that those who don't write weblogs leave journalism: "...the former
reporters, who now are editors, talent scouts and teachers, are also energized,
doing what they wanted to do when they got into journalism." I don't
think this will work, any more than suggesting that a former lawyer practice
law as a hobby will work. You'll end up with born journalists being bad
teachers, if they can get such a job.
And, Dave,
please don't fire the editors. We will want editors for involved stories.
A diplomatic editor can be your first reader, helping you see what isn't
going to be clear to later readers, and a valued collaborator who agrees
to stay in the left brain while you create with the right.)
I think a
bigger conversation will eventually hammer out a way to pay the rent.
We will need
new economic models and creative business tools -- easy, secure shopping
carts tied to informal catalogs created on the fly ("This arrived
today, we took a picture. We have 8 of them. who wants one?"), easy
ways for people to find and purchase the goods and services they need
without driving all over town, and delivery, besides pizza, without big
surcharges. We'll need simple software interfaces and hardware no more
complex than a basic digital camera if everybody's going to get to play.
Two-way high-speed
net access from anywhere for everyone, for cheap or for free, is essential
to deliver this digital future.
Essential
also are literacy, tools
for the bloggers, and other tools to enable musicians, artists, videographers
and playwrights to participate in the commons.
How do we
get gracefully from here to there?
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Lads'
mag editor to open new chapter at 'Rolling Stone': "Television,
movies, the internet, they're all visual mediums, and I don't think people
have time to sit down and read," says new Rolling Stone editor Ed
Needham.
What do you
think he does online? We know he's not reading.
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The end of buying a musical pig in a poke: File
sharing: Innocent until proven guilty: An economist says music piracy
should be hurting the recording industry, but it isn't -- and he doesn't
know why. At Salon.
Here's why,
according to me: A lot of file-sharing involves replacing vinyl that melted,
cassettes that unraveled. A lot more involves music you won't find at
your local chain, and probably won't find at your independent hole in
the wall, either. And still more involves music sharing by people who
weren't buying anyway, and now are listening to more music but still not
buying any.
File-sharing
brings all music to the fore: You can download a tune, listen to it, and
delete it if you don't like it. But if you do like it, you're likely to
want more by the new-to-you musician. It's not all available on somebody's
else's drive, especially tunes by musicians you hadn't known about.
So you order
a CD online and it comes in a coupla days. And you're happy: You have
new music, exactly what you wanted, something you would never have heard
on the radio, in a high-quality format, you enjoyed anticipating its arrival,
you don't feel ripped off.
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June 12,
2002
Renaissance
City -- or a city for sale? The
jury is now deliberating in the trial of Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci
and two others on 26 counts, including bribery, mail fraud and extortion,
racketeering and conspiracy charges.
Link
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 Stunning
scanned flowers: Katinka
Matson has developed the art
of scanning flowers directly: "For the past several years I have
experimented with non-photographic techniques for creating images by utilizing
input through a flatbed CCD scanner. No photographs are employed in the
process." The results -- Twelve
Flowers and Forty
Flowers -- are way beyond photorealism. via
Traveler's Diagram
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Calling
all pithy writers: Coing-Boing
blogger Cory Doctorow is also Outreach Coordinator
for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. He posts,
"EFF
is going to do a new round of stickers (laptop-sized; bumper stickers
are a little too big for most purposes). We're looking for suggestions
-- any ideas?"
The samples
seem aimed at the choir:
* Fair
Use Creates Culture
* Copyright: A Carrot, Not a Stick
* Free the Spectrum 2.4!*
* Fair Use Has a Posse
Can you come
up with some your neighbors might understand?
To post them
where EFF will
see them you need to pick a login and password at QuickTopic.
If you'd
prefer not to register there, you may email
your bumper poems to me -- make the subject "EFF" -- and
I'll publish them here and then post them all together where EFF will
see them.
*(If
you're curious, here's an explanation
at PC Magazine of the "Spectrum 2.4" in standard English.)
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Monday's
Partial Eclipse Over the Golden Gate Bridge, a
time-lapse sequence of 18 moons in a row, some with bites out of them,
credited to Gerard Barkats. via Robot
Wisdom.
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Outing
myself: I came across an old (April 28 ) blog item on Blog
the Organization! that links to this blog and adds, "Lennon's
not a journalist but part of their web team. She evidently writes the
blog in addition to her other duties."
Awp! I emailed
Griff Wigley, "Ouch! I've been an editor at The Providence Journal
since 1985... Since Google never forgets, would you mind deleting that
'not a journalist' part -- I've earned the scars and wrinkles."
Griff investigated
and found my
mini-bio here on projo.com, and linked to it. I've added a permalink
link below my passport photo. Now ya know...
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June 11,
2002
Today's
Boston Globe: R.I.
shooter said to have felt harassed
Nearing
middle age, Carlos Pacheco was overweight, still lived with his parents,
and was frequently the subject of locker room humor by his colleagues
at the Providence Journal production facility, according to accounts
from family and friends.
They needled
him about his weight. They teased him for not having a girlfriend. After
20 years on the job, he often felt harassed for not joining the union.
But, determined
to end the ridicule, Pacheco had been working out lately and had shed
at least 30 pounds. He upgraded his wardrobe. He even treated himself
to a new car.
Just as
Pacheco, 38, seemed to be emerging from the cocoon of a quiet ''homebody,''
the pressures he appeared to be overcoming suddenly consumed him. He
apparently tracked down and killed two of his colleagues at the Providence
Journal and turned the car he'd saved for months to buy into his own
fiery coffin...
Today's
Providence Journal: No
report of harassment before slayings A
former Journal employee said that killer Carlos Pacheco had once complained
to him about harassment, but company and union officials say they have
no evidence to support such a claim.
June 10,
2002
It is
another sad day here at the Providence Journal.
• Today
's Providence Journal (this link will catch updates)
•
Current projo story: Disturbing
discussion on eve of shooting
•
Providence
shooter may have sought 3d victim (Boston Globe). Additional details.
•
First
reaction Saturday on this blog
The world
has changed for us.
Reporters
and editors gather in little knots, trying to piece together a story that,
on the face of it, doesn't make much sense. A widow holds a press conference
at her home. She worked in the same building as her husband, at the place
where he died.
"We're
supposed to protect you," an unarmed security guard says sadly. From
a familiar face with a passkey, a .45 and a plan?
Details,
rumors are emerging that may change the motive, the hearsay, the sketchy
history in the final version.
But I'm not
going to blog them. An idle speculation might stick, and when the truth
emerges it might not dislodge the misinformation. We can wait.
Susanna
at cut on the bias
blogged the breaking AP story, and nailed
what matters: "He could have made many other choices, none of
which involved killing others. He wasn't shooting in physical self-defense.
The blame for these deaths rests squarely on his shoulders, no matter
what the provocations, no matter what the means."
Tonight is
new moon, a new beginning.
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You may
say I'm a dreamer, but...
Responding
to David
Bowie, Tom Poe at PubDomain
Bread blogs a vision of a noncommercial Internet.
...just
maybe, there will be a global economy that thrives under the auspices
of our Internet3, providing music, literature, science, art, and just
plain good 'ol communication among the world communities. Any "tag"
that doesn't have Public Domain in it, will be relegated to the original
Internet. The commercialized one in Disney's dreams. The "Taxed
to the Max" one in the RIAA's dreams. Those who just wish to use
the Internet3 for creativity and innovation will have "tagged"
content that is machine readable, and FREE. So, David, you're right,
but maybe there's another way. Let's hope so. . . . .
Also from
Tom, Hollywood
backpedals in response to the suit by ReplayTV users:
"This
complaint mischaracterizes the nature of the case against SonicBlue
and ReplayTV. Our lawsuit is against SonicBlue and ReplayTV - not individual
users."
From Ye
Olde Phart: "A
Proposal to American Labor - A great idea, sort of an Open Source
union movement. Sure hope someone is listening."
No permalinks.
I've added nothing of value. Please go to the original sources and link
to them.
Peace.
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
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