By Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Jan 2, 2003 - (Last
week's weblog -- actually two weeks ago, with vacation in the middle)
My interview with American Journalism Review: Barb
Palser, online news editor at the Poynter Institute, interviewed me recently.
The resulting column (Every
Last Word: Sources who publish transcripts of their interviews? It’s
becoming more common) was published today in the January issue of
American Journalism Review.
The topic was my having published the
entire text of my email interview with David Gallagher for his New
York Times story about blogging in September.
Fittingly, Palser published
a partial transcript of our email exchange as a sidebar.
Sample:
Palser: Is it a reason to be more self-conscious of what is said?
Lennon: Self-conscious is always good when you're on the record with
a reporter!
I'm surprised so much fuss has been made about that NYT transcript. The
web offers an unlimited newshole, and links can go anywhere. "Volunteer"
sidebars to all sorts of stories pop up like weeds in blogosphere.
It's the future...
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80211hotspots.com
bills itself as "The Definitive Source For Wi-Fi Access Points."
The only listing for Rhode Island is Brewed Awakenings coffee shop, 5
Memorial Blvd., Providence, 401-421-2058 (in the courtyard with the Capital
Grille and Union Station brewpub). Email me if you know of others.
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Bloggies:
2003 Weblog Awards site is accepting nominations until 10 p.m.,
Sunday, Jan. 12. (If you can't wait, the best leftish blogs were announced
today by P.L.A.
- A Journal of Politics, Law and Autism.)
The best thing to come out of these popularity contests is a list of
blogs you've never heard of and might just like.
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A
new piece of Jerry: N.C. blogger/journalist Ed Cone writes,
I found a tape of a brief interview with Jerry Garcia, made backstage
between sets at a Grateful Dead concert in Irvine Meadows, California,
on Easter weekend 1987. I was a 24-year-old reporter for Forbes...
Garcia quotes Borges.
Go read it.
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What
Should I Do With My Life?
The real meaning of success -- and how to find it. Extremely well
written piece by Po Bronson at Fast Company, adapted from his new book,
What Should I Do with My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered
the Ultimate Question. hHard to quote without quoting it all, but
here's a snippet:
Your calling isn't something you inherently "know," some
kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed
found their calling after great difficulty. They had made mistakes before
getting it right. For instance, the catish farmer used to be an investment
banker, the truck driver had been an entertainment lawyer, a chef had
been an academic, and the police officer was a Harvard MBA. Everyone
discovered latent talents that weren't in their skill sets at age 25.
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Ticketstubs:
"Ask yourself why you saved the ticketstubs you did, and when you
see them again, what do you remember about that experience?
"If you have some stubs lying around and you want to share the stories
behind them, feel free to submit
an entry today. "
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Family
turns grandma into diamond: Irresistible headline on this AP story,
TORONTO, Canada (AP) -- The cremated remains of 80-year-old Edna MacArthur
from Alberta have been presented to her family in the form of a diamond
stone, the first delivery of this kind in the world, a funeral services
official claimed Tuesday.
"This is the first presentation of a synthetic diamond made in
this way," Brian Crawford, president of Edmonton-based Fountain
Garden Funeral Services, told The Associated Press.
Crawford said MacArthur's remains were compressed into a 3-gram sample
and flown to Italy where an Italian firm uses intense heat to incorporate
the remains into carbon used to craft a diamond.
The 1/4-carat diamond was presented Monday to MacArthur's granddaughter,
Tracey Somerville, and Tracey's mother, Teresa, who used to keep the
cremation urn in their living room, Crawford said.
The family planned to have the stone placed in a golden ring, he said.
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2002-->2003: I'm not a huge fan of year-end
wrapups -- except for two:
-- Dave
Barry's, but I'm a fan of almost everything Miami Herald humor columnist
Barry writes. (I have no idea if our having been born on exactly the same
day has anything to do with it. It didn't make me as funny as him).
-- Good photos, such as Time's
Best Pictures of the Year , Editor
& Publisher's Photos of the Year.
I have more patience for year-ahead quizzes that contain predictions,
though, and Bill
Safire and Dan
Gillmor have done two good ones. What elevates them: in each case,
they offer their own answers to the quizzes at the end.
Gillmor is especially upbeat about the good guys (aka you and me) beating
the bad guys (those who would restrict you and me) this year.
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Debunking MAVAV.org:
(Mother Against Videogame Addiction and Violence): Some bloggers
are railing against this, but it's a joke. The
idea -- a class assignment at NYC's Parsons School of Design -- was to
start a hoax. It worked. The creator is David Yoo. Go back to sleep.
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The
Art of the Bonsai Potato Kit:
Zen — Without the Wait! You may buy a kit ($14.95)
that includes a black plastic base for the potato, black gravel, a surrogate
potato (till you get your own) and a book. You provide the potato.
The book
is excerpted here; anything could be a base, here's a
gallery of others' starchy koans, a
FAQ. You provide the potato.
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New
Brazil President Vows to Fight Hunger:
May we have one of those?
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Area
51: Bush Exempts Secret Base From Environmental Laws. Guess it's
not secret any more, now that the government admits it exists.
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Hat cult? In an essay entitled Our
Quality of Life Peaked in 1974. It's All Downhill Now, George Monbiot
writes this sentence that stopped me: "Capitalism is a millenarian
cult, raised to the status of a world religion."
Millinery is the hat department, isn't it?
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Dec 31, 2002
Peace vigil New Year's Day: A New Year's
Day Fast and Vigil for World Peace and Reconciliation will begin at midnight
tonight and continue throughout New Year's Day on the Rhode Island Statehouse
lawn. More info: endwar@earthlink.net
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A
Government Gig for Brazilian Pop Star: From NYT (reg. req.)
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec. 30 — It is as if Bob Marley had been appointed
Jamaica's minister of culture or Bruce Springsteen were put in charge
of the National Endowment of the Arts. When Brazil's new government
takes office on Wednesday, its culture portfolio will be held by one
of the country's biggest pop stars for the last 35 years, the singer-songwriter
and guitarist Gilberto Gil.
Gil has actually released a Bob Marley tribute album called Kaya
N'Gan Daya.(Amazon's listening links for this are broken, unfortunately.)
(Review)
In a story
about the appointment from Malaysia, Gil, 60, a 1998 Grammy Award
winner in the World Music category, is quoted as saying, ``My first task
is to listen inside myself and listen outside'' Gil said
Listen
to Gil's music, check out Gil's
site (in English).
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Roses
of the Blogosphere: Blogs by women. via Travelers
Diagram
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Albert
Einstein's Theory of Relativity In Words of Four Letters or Less
via BoingBoing
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Browsers
go back to the future: Programmers redesign button that
accounts for 40% of all Internet clicks.
Computer scientists have redesigned the way the back button works so
that it really can retrace your Internet steps. They have replaced the
current stacking system, which only records index pages, with one that
records every page in the order it was visited.
"The main problem with the current back button is that recently
visited pages disappear," says computer scientist Andy Cockburn
of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. "'Back'
would more accurately be labelled 'up'," Cockburn says.
Cockburn and his colleagues reprogrammed web browsers so that their
back button was based on the order of pages, not their hierarchy.
Useful improvement.
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The
Future Is … Then: Federal report that takes a page from 1930s
science fiction. Wired reports,
Who needs science fiction? Federal tech and science wonks this summer
went wild in a 400-page assessment of what nano, bio, info, and cogno
might do for humanity. Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance
— a joint effort by the Commerce Department and the National Science
Foundation — looks forward to a new age in federal science procurement.
Consciously or not, the report echoes classic science fiction from 70
years ago at almost every turn. Too bad the prose isn’t as good.
A comparison chart follows.
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Spam game:
SPAMWARS,
a Flash game that pits you against the evil Sid the Spammer in the ultimate
spam battle!
Sid is intent on spamming you to death, but you can fight back with
a handy array of weaponry!
Shoot the spams before they reach your computer, and try to get Sid
at the same time. Watch out for the occasional virus, too!
This game requires the Flash 6 plugin or later. PIII 500MHz or faster,
or G4 Mac or faster recommended. 800x600 or bigger screen size recommended.
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Bowl games On New Year's Day:
Outback Bowl, 11 a.m., ESPN
Tampa, Florida
Florida (8-4) vs. Michigan (9-3)
Cotton Bowl, 11 a.m., Fox
Dallas, Texas
Texas (10-2) vs. Lsu (8-4)
Gator Bowl, 12:30 p.m., NBC
Jacksonville, Florida
Notre Dame (10-2) vs. North Carolina State (10-3)
Capital One Bowl, 1 p.m., ABC
Orlando, Florida
Penn State (9-3) vs. Auburn (8-4)
Rose Bowl, 5 p.m., ABC
Pasadena, California
Oklahoma (11-2) vs. Washington State (10-2)
Nokia Sugar Bowl, 8:30 p.m., ABC
New Orleans, Louisiana
Georgia (12-1) vs. Florida State (9-4)
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Dec 30, 2002
Cartoon
brings in thousands of threatening e-mails: Jim
Romenesko's MediaNews reports,
Doug Marlette's
latest controversial cartoon depicts a man dressed in Middle-Eastern
garb driving a Ryder truck bearing a nuclear missile with the caption:
"What would Mohammed drive?" Kathleen Parker notes: "Anyone
half awake understands that the cartoon plays off the 'What Would Jesus
Drive' campaign against gas-guzzling SUVs and other recent events, namely
that fundamentalist Islamists have hijacked their religion to justify
murdering Americans."
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Dave
Barry: 2002 in review
If you had to pick one word to describe our national mood in 2002,
that word would be "wary." We went to sleep wary, and we woke
up wary. We wallowed in wariness. We were wabbits.
This was partly because bad things kept happening. But it was also
because government officials kept issuing alarming, yet vague, warnings.
"We have received reliable information," an official would
say, "that something bad might happen. We don't know what, or when,
or where. But it is very, very bad. Also we are seeing the letter 'E.'
So we urge all citizens to continue leading normal lives, while remaining
in a state of stark, butt-puckering terror. Tune in tomorrow and we'll
see if we can't ratchet this thing up a notch or two."
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Bah, humbug: Jets fan JD
Lasica writes, "God bless you, Adam Vinatieri. Enjoy the Jets-Colts
game Saturday. This is our year for miracles."
Easy for him to say.
The Patriots woke up in the last three minutes of regulation yesterday,
and played like the 2001 Super Bowl champs they were, scoring 11 points
in 107 seconds and beating Miami 24-21 on a Vinatieri field goal in overtime.
Had the Jets lost to Green Bay, both Miami and New England would be in
the playoffs. But mighty Green Bay barely showed up.
Neither the Patriots nor the St. Louis Rams, their opponents in Super
Bowl XXXVI, made the cut. Super
Bowl XXXVII will be an exercise in detachment. After this disappointing
season, it will be a relief not to care.
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Off with their heads: In a Wired story
last week (Blogs
Make the Headlines),
"Bloggers are navel-gazers," said Elizabeth
Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California's
School of Journalism. "And they're about as interesting as friends
who make you look at their scrap books."
She added, "There's an overfascination here with self-expression,
with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources,
without reporting."
Strangely, Ms. Osder's sweeping dismissal of bloggers also seems to be
"opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting."
What most appeals to me about blogs is that they report what mainstream
media ignores, bring stories to light that mainstream media later pick
up, flesh out and elevate (e.g. Trent Lott's slip re Strom Thurmond),
and offer readers links to such stories.
Newspapers are pitched to a 10th grade vocabulary level, and concentrate
heavily on politics, government and crime. The far broader range of human
concerns, from technology to music, art and cooking, are better served
by the net, and bloggers who volunteer to track such news offer a service
to the rest of us.
But I confess I have little patience for those blogs that deal only in
hot air. The link's
the thing.
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Study
Tracks Americans' Internet Hopes: AP reports on the latest results
from the Pew Internet
& American Life Project:
A study released Sunday finds that most Americans who do not use the
Internet still have high expectations for getting information online
— with those online having even greater expectations.
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The
Peanuts Tarot Deck: Lucy is the High Priestess, of course,
Snoopy dancing in the rain atop his doghouse is The Fool, and Charlie
Brown is Strength. It's a virtual deck only, not for sale. It's a non-commercial
art project, says author "Valerian" at Martin Azevedo's Temple
of Dominoes site.
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Segway
scooter hot seller online: "It's selling better than many
of our digital cameras," says Steve Frazier, vice president of electronics,
tools and kitchen goods sales at Amazon.com.
At $4,950 -- 10 percent down, March delivery -- these are pricey hotcakes.
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EarthCam's
New Year's 2003: Live coverage from dozens of countriesincluding
eight cameras trained on Times Square, New York City.
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Madmonkey.net
: independent game network: Free and indie games and developer
resources.
via Cogworks
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Address change: This blog has switched directories,
to http://www.projo.com/blogs/shenews/
You might adjust your bookmarks, although there are so many links out
there to the old address that there'll be a permanent redirect page.
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
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