Category Archives: journalism

January 13, 2010 · 2:07 am

Covering disaster on the real-time Web: Haiti earthquake

Earlier tonight, there was a major earthquake in Haiti.

Reports of seismic activity trickled online about six hours ago and then grew into a torrent.

Since then, CNN, the New York Times, NPR, WSJ, LA Times and thousands of other outlets have covered the news of the aftermath of a major natural disaster in the poorest nation in Western Hemisphere.

Tragedy unfolding in real-time.

I saw the first report of the earthquake in Haiti on Twitter, through Deb Dobson, when she tweeted a report from @WXII:

“AP: A strong 7.0 earthquake has hit the impoverished country of Haiti where a hospital has collapsed.

When I clicked over, Google real-time search for “Haiti earthquake” had already begin rolling.

No geolocated tweets had begun to show up when I did a geolocated search within 50 miles of Haiti on Twitter

That changed quickly.

Geolocated tweets from within 200 miles of #Haiti began coming in after the #earthquake‘s main force had hit. And searchers began to pick up local accounts, including overservers like @laurahertzfeld. She picked out @fredodupoux @danloprod and @futurehaiti.

Sharp-eyed picked up on the reports and put it out on the new wire – the real-time Web. After the story broke, the @LATimes reported that there had been multipled aftershock reported for #Haiti, with the initial #earthquake‘s epicenter 10miles inland. Given that location a tsunami was unlikely.

Using advanced search, I was able to find other people tweeting about the #earthquake near Port Au Prince, like @troylivesay and InternetHaiti.

I found that Andy Carvin was following the same electronic channels in real time. He created a NPR’s list of people tweeting from Haiti, adding sources as he discovered them from suggestions from his thousands of followers and his own geolocated searches. A story quickly went up at NPR.org that was updated with details as the story developed.

I heard CNN interview @Wyclef Jean soon afterwards. Wyclef was apparently on the phone with someone in Haiti when quake hit.

Not long after that,@CBSNews tweeted a statement from President Obama: “We are closely monitoring the situation and we stand ready to assist the people of Haiti.”

Within the hour, pictures of the earthquake’s aftermath began to emerge on Twitter, shared on Twitpic. @cristianrguez shared these shots: http://twitpic.com/xurlj http://twitpic.com/xurol

It’s this grainy pic, however, http://twitpic.com/xuthn, that’s on the front page of CNN.com, the LA Times and NPR.org. It’s on the image above.

It wasn’t long before more pictures of the disaster began to stream online. Marshall Kirkpatrick retweeted @RodrigoBNO, who tweeted “the first pictures from Haiti, now via Twitter: http://twitpic.com/photos/marvinady

@TroyLivesay, again geolocated in Haiti, tweeted that “Tipap made it from Carrefour – saw many dead & injured along the way – most buidings w/more than 1 story are down”

By that time, other media organization had made lists sources on Twitter that were near the disaster, including reporters and editors who were curating the stream.

CNN made a list: @CNN/haiti

And so did the @LATimes/haiti-quake

Add that to @NPRNews/haiti-earthquake and there were three columns of real-time news to watch stream in.

And then, hours after raw pictures from the real-time Web had streamed onto Twitter and into Google’s index, the New York Times posted an arresting gallery of earthquake pictures from Haiti.

Now, real-time will shift to real work, as disaster relief is surged to Haiti.

The extent of the damage will only become clear as more cameras and connectivity arrive in Haiti.

For now, the world has seen again how information can spread through the virtual reflectors of the online world. In 2010, fiber optic cables link media outlets in much the same way, connecting humans to one another in much the same way as axons connect neurons in a cybernetic brain.

Even in the worst of times, the current ability of humankind to detect harm and direct resources towards healing wounds to populations can be breathtaking. The digital tools available to nimble editors for informing the audience of what’s happening in real-time by curating online media are unprecedented. And the ways that individuals can directly reach out to help those afflicted are powerful.

How you can help:

As Britt Bravo at BlogHer shared:

• The American Red Cross is accepting donations for its International Response Fund. You can follow their work on the American Red Cross Disaster Newsroomblog, and on Twitter at @RedCross.

• U.S. Fund for UNICEF also needs donations. According to their press release:

“Funds are urgently needed to provide safe water, temporary shelter systems, essential medical supplies etc. . . . Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and has a population of 9.6 million inhabitants, of which more than half are under 21 years old.”

You can follow UNICEF’s work on their Field Notes blog, and on Twitter at @UnicefUSA.

• Mercy Corps is deploying an emergency team, and is asking for donations. You can follow their work on the Mercy Corps blog, and on Twitter at @mercycorps.

• According to their Twitter feed, Oxfam America is already on the ground in Haiti and is asking for donations. You can follow them on the Oxfam America blog and on Twitter at @oxfamamerica

• Musician Wyclef Jean, who established Yéle Haiti, tweeted, “Help Haiti Earthquake Relief Donate $5 by texting YELE to 501 501 right now please RT.” You can follow him on his blog, and on Twitter at @wyclef.

The next twenty four hours will be crucial. As Marc Ambinder tweeted, “from what I can gather, Obama is still up and working on response to the Haiti earthquake.the President was still up at 1 AM. Virtually everything I hear from folks in the know begins with “bad, bad, bad.” A catastrophe upon a catastrophe.”

Here’s hoping the digital tools that communicated the news can be used to help those in dire need.

UPDATE: Chris @Sacca has shared 6 ways that you can help in Haiti. His post and further annotations for each link are worth reading.

1) Text “HAITI” to “90999” to donate $10 to the Red Cross

2) Text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele Haiti

3) Donate to Partners in Health (click here) — PIH (@pih_org)

4) Donate to Architecture for Humanity (@archforhumanity) (click here)

5) Donate to @charitywater (click here)

6) Learn more about Haiti

UPDATE II: Brock Meeks posted the following video of the earthquake from YouTube.

UPDATE III Raw footage from after the earthquake ended. Warning: graphic images of death, destruction and grief.

UPDATE IVJournalism professor Dan Kennedy wrote thoughtfully about citizen media and the earthquake in Haiti. As he writes there, Global Voices has a posted “a compilation of tweets and photos and a digest of what bloggers in Haiti and throughout the Caribbean are saying.”

CNN’s iReport also has put together a page on the Haitian earthquake.

UPDATE V: By the end of Wednesday, the New York Times had also assembled a number of useful list of Twitter accounts related to the earthquake in Haiti:

9 Comments

Filed under blogging, journalism, social media, technology, Twitter

December 21, 2009 · 10:25 pm

Google Wave: Good for a 2009 Year in Review but is it useful for more?

Barb Dybwad over at Mashable picked up on a video by Whirled Interactive where they use Google Wave as vehicle for a clever 2009 Year in Review that breaks down the major news events.

As Dybwad writes, this video shows the potential for Wave as a “video production medium,” like the “Pulp Wave Fiction” movie that Mashable shared elsewhere. And as Adam Ostrow tweeted, the folks over at Whirled Interactive are “super talented.”

As funny as these videos may be, I’m still looking for a personal use case for Google Wave. I’ve been dipping in and out of Wave for months as new people log on and explore. I expected the network effect of having more contacts there to result in some pick up. Enterprise 2.0 is not THAT big of a deal,as Andy McAfee says: what about Google Wave?

The Good

Google proposes any number of functions for Google Wave, including:

  1. Event Organizing
  2. Creation and Management of “Living” Group Projects
  3. Drag-and-Drop Photo Sharing
  4. Creation of “Living” meeting notes
  5. Interactive Gaming

The best way to learn about the software, however, is to read Gina Trapani and Adam Pash’s Complete Guide to Google Wave and to watch this (long) intro video from Google itself:

Lorraine Lawson wrote about Google Wave’s potential for enterprise integration over at IT Business Edge back in June and offered any number of potential use cases. (I have yet to hear about their transition into case studies.) Dion Hinchcliffe was bullish on the potential of the tool when he wrote about the enterprise implications of Google Wave at the end of May. He offered an excellent “first look” review there, for readers who want a more detailed breakdown of what Wave it and how it works.

More recently, Lifehacker included Google Wave on its 5 best collaboration tools, and collected an impressive breadth and variety of Google Wave use cases that range from family life to wedding planning,  disaster relief to translation for research.

The bad

For me, combining a heterogenous suite of wikis, microblogging, email, IM and Skype has continued to be more useful than Wave. As a working environment, I’ve found it to be both noisy, as I watch other contribute, and often unstable.  (I even gave it a try on my iPhone over wifi, an experience akin to pouring molasses down a snowdrift).

My colleague, Rachel Lebeaux, expressed much the same reaction when she wrote about Google Wave as an enterprise collaboration tool. (She found a CIO who is installing a Wave server in her comments; I hope to hear more on that.)

Since then, however, the reaction online has often been withering, due in part to the learning curve required of new users that don’t have the attention span to watch that video or read the manual. For good or ill, people expect to be able to figure out collaborative software without that time investment. The editor-in-chief of TechRepublic, Jason Hiner, put the software at the top of his “worst tech products of the year.” Tough year in review to make:

“After trying Google Wave when the product was released into the wild, my opinion hasn’t changed (and others such as Robert Scoble have come to the same conclusion). Google Wave is basically a super-chatty IM client, and a badly overhyped one at that. The only use I can see for this product is for geographically dispersed project teams collaborating and brainstorming on documents and product development ideas in real time.”

And as Shaun Dakin @replied tonight, “@RWW named it as one of the top 10 products failures of the year, I agree. Solution in search of problem.” To say that Jolie O’Dell was rough on Wave is an understatement:

“We have to hand it to Google’s publicity team; we don’t know one geek who wasn’t positively salivating for a Wave invite. The ReadWriteWeb back channel was a complete melee when the first invites were rolled out to team members. But once we got there and saw the new tech tricks, like watching one another type, we started thinking about use cases. And the more we struggled to understand and use this product, the more frustrated and bored we became. Blame it on the steep learning curve. Blame it on our misunderstanding the product. Mount whatever feeble defense you like, but techies know Wave was a flop.

The trouble-y

Even with all of that negativity, I still have trouble with dismissing Google Wave as a victim of hype. I’ve already read about some innovative use cases for those who can get through the UI challenges. And I’ve met CIOs and CTOs who are interested in what happens next, when Google’s engineers iterate to address user feedback.

Many media organizations are trying out Google Wave for news, as Leah Betancourt shared on Mashable and Lifehacker wrote about above. As she writes:

Additionally, as Revolution Magazine reported, Welt Kompakt, a spinoff of the German daily Die Welt, is among the first newspapers around the world to integrate Google Wave into its coverage.

When I asked if any of my followers had found a use for Google Wave, Wayne Kurtzman @replied that “Google Wave is amazing if people use it as a collaboration tool; not just e-mail. Google does not make it easy to learn how & holds it back. I used Wave to collaborate on a voice over script for a video; elements SoundFX, vid, script, etc. Goog has no resources to teach others. Security, cultural (collab) and our size are challenges. Wave can be a game-changer.”

As quoted in Forbes, Tom Mornini, CTO and founder of Engine Yard, “pointed out recently (see: “The Real Meaning of Google Wave”), the major impact of Google Wave will ultimately come from its power as a development platform for serious, distributed applications.” If you’re wondering at how far Google Wave will get, consider whether enterprise software makers like SAP are taking it seriously as a platform. As Forbes described, SAP Research  used of it in its Gravity demonstration prototype, combining SAP’s business process modeling (BPM) technology with Google Wave.

My colleague Kristen Caretta was balanced  in assessing what Google Wave may mean for IT, offering that Gravity use case. Kristin also wrote that “Salesforce.com is working on a prototype extension to Google Wave that could help its customers provide customized, documented support in their own businesses.”

Attendees at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this fall were presented with other Google Wave use cases by Google Wave product manager Gregory D’Alesandre, including Novell Pulse and ThoughtWorks. The collaboration tool is certainly part of Google’s plans for its enterprise customers. “Wave will be available as part of the Google Apps suite if you have Google Apps for your domain,” said D’Alesandre.

That might all imply that at least some techies do not, in fact, regard Wave as a flop. Google continues to add more to its development team with the recent acquisition of Etherpad, a Web-based collaboration app that may well be a boost to Google Wave.

As for this geek, caught somewhere in the intertices between journalism and techiedom, I’ll be on the lookout for more enterprise and media use cases. If you have one at hand, please share it in the comments.

Welt Kompakt, a spinoff of the German daily Die Welt, is among the first newspapers around the world to integrate Google Wave into its coverage, Revolution Magazine reported yesterday.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Leave a comment

Filed under application, blogging, journalism, research, social media, technology, Twitter, video

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

December 2, 2009 · 2:49 am

FTC workshop explores future of journalism, regulation of aggregation

Early on Tuesday morning, I walked up Massachusetts Avenue to attend the FTC workshop on the future of journalism. Ten hours later, I emerged overstimulated by the volume of ideas presented, saddened again by the tens of thousands of journalists who have lost employment and energized by the quality of the conversations I’d had.

If you look at Danny Sullivan’s impressive liveblog of the FTC workshop on the future of journalism, you’ll see why.

The event began with a video about the changing media world from Minnesota Public Media, embedded below. More about the “Future of News Summit, where it premiered, can be found at thefutureofnews.ning.com.

The FTC established a Twitter account for the conference, @FTCnews. You can see all of the participants’ tweets aggregated at #ftcnews.

Why convene the conference?

The very existence of the forum raised some eyebrows. How does the Federal Trade Commission factor into regulating journalism, after all? FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz observed that:

..the ongoing revolution in the markets for news, then, warrants serious study for at least two reasons. First, markets for public goods such as news may work imperfectly. Competition policy is well-suited to evaluate these market imperfections.

Consumer protection policy is well-suited to help us understand the privacy and data security implications of the behavioral marketing used by media companies to increase ad revenues online. Second, and far more important, this is not just any market. The changes we are seeing in journalism will affect how we govern ourselves, not just the profits and losses of various news organizations.

The full remarks of FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz on creative destruction and journalism in the Internet Age are available as a PDF. He was forthright in assessing that there was no reversing the Internet revolution. As he put it, “when Gutenberg printed the Bible, that was bad for those who illustrate by hand.” (Note: Jessica Clark argued that the FTC Should Consider Policy Reform to Support Public Media 2.0” over at PBS’s MediaShift blog.)

Leibowitz was followed by Paul Steiger of Propublica, an “independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. “The answer is not to save newspapers,” said Steiger. “The goal should be to assure the continuation of journalism.”  He called Amanda R. Michel an “Internet genius” for her coverage of the 2008 campaign at the Huffington Post.  Steiger also cited Propublica’s investigative journalism on “hydraulic fracturing” in gas drilling as an example of the work the organization is doing.

Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute, author of the BizBlog there, presented results of 2009 State of the media study he co-authored. One of his final assessments was sobering: “Most surviving newspapers will be smaller, more expensive & targeted to older consumers.” As I replied to Andy Carvin , who wondered about the statement,  given the debt loads that Edmonds cited, waiting for hyperwired Echo Boom to “age into” newspapers might be a tough strategy.

The News from News Corporation

It’s a fair bet that the packed room in the morning was there in anticipation of remarks from Rupert Murdoch, founder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation, especially given that many of the media in attendance left to file stories once he was through.

Cecilia Kang covered his speech in the Washington Post in “Murdoch: Future of newspapers in online payment, feds should stand back.”  Jeff Bercovici offered a similar take in “Murdoch to Washington: Stay out of the way, but please help.”

The other 363 stories in Google News about Murdoch’s speech at the FTC attest to the interest in his remarks, too, including an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal, “FTC to examine possible support of news organizations.”

Why? Murdoch may have held that “a diversity of views is essential to debate” but he was crystal clear:  news organizations that don’t adapt should fail, “just like a restaurant that makes meals that no one wants to eat.”

Further, even as he argued that the feds should keep the U.S. press the most free in the world, the government should also “use its power to make sure the most innovative companies can reach customers,” a view that sounded to this writer’s ears rather like net neutrality.

He was also crystal clear in a  conviction: “online ads can’t sustain good journalism.” Murdoch intends to extend the pay model of the WSJ and @BarronsOnline to the Times UK, perhaps as early as next January.

Murdoch also suggested that the FCC‘s cross-ownership rule that prevents single ownership of both TV and newspaper in local markets was “out-dated” in the Internet age, effectively suggesting that regulators both stay out of the news business and change the market conditions.  He also observed that “for newspapers, spectrum could well prove an economic vehicle,” pointing to online convergence and  the move to a readership increasingly consuming news through mobile computing devices.

What is the state of journalism?

Following Murdoch’s remarks, a state of journalism panel began with a focus on the financial health and accomplishments of newspapers and magazines. Martin Kaiser, senior vice president of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, spoke to journalism’s essential role: enforcing goverment accountability.

Bryan Monroe, a visiting professor at the Medill School of Journalism, brought attention to issues of  diversity. His remarks were published at the Huffington Post as “Why New Media Looks A Whole Lot Like Old Media.”

This panel also raised the first – and as it turned out, only – question to the audience, in the form of a poll: How many of you know someone under 30 who reads a newspaper in print? To my eye, about 40% of those present raised their hands. It’s perhaps worth observing that very few people present were in that demographic.

One hopeful model for reporting by assignment that was cited by David Westphal, Executive in Residence, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California, hailed from my former neck of the woods at the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.

Mark Contreras, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Newspaper Association of America & senior VP, newspapers at the E.W. Scripps Co., ended the panel with an analogy to the music industry, suggesting that there are “poignant similarities” to news business. He favors ASCAP/BMI models for content protection and a B2B model for revenue generation. Given the music industry’s struggle to adapt to the Internet, that approach might merit more consideration.

Defending the aggregators

After the representatives of legacy media shared their perspectives, Arianna Huffington came to the defense of aggregators and new media, like her own enterprise, the Huffington Post.

As she dryly observed, citing a post by Mike Masnick at TechDirt, there’s some news aggregation by News Corp/IGN out there. All Things Digital, for instance,  links and  aggregates content, as does Rotten Tomatoes.

Her remarks are posted in full there, as you might expect, in “Desperate Metaphors, Desperate Revenue Models, & the Desperate Need For Better Journalism.”

Huffington didn’t mince words in her denunciation, either:

It’s time for traditional media companies to stop whining and face the fact that far too many of them, lulled by a lack of competition and years of pretax profits of 20 percent or more, put cash flow above journalism and badly misread the web when it arrived on the scene. The focus was on consolidation, cost-cutting, and pleasing Wall Street — not modernization and pleasing their readers.

They were asleep at the wheel, missed the writing on the wall, let the train leave the station, let the ship sail — pick your metaphor — and quickly found themselves on the wrong side of the disruptive innovation the Internet and new media represent. And now they want to call timeout, ask for a do-over, start changing the rules, lobby the government to bail them out, and attack the new media for being… well, new. And different. And transformational. Suddenly it’s all about thievery and parasites and intestines.

Get real, you guys. The world has changed. Here are some facts culled from one of the most popular anthems to the impact of technology on our world:

(I talked with Huffington afterwards about her comments and the transition the industry is going through. She asked if I’d like to write about it – so I did, in “Is journalism going through a Reformation?“)

Where are the readers? Whither remedies? A Yahoo! News consortium? And how does Google News work?

After lunch, media analyst Ken Doctor shared his thoughts about “where the readers are.” You can read more from him at Contentbridges.com.

Leonard Downie presented findings on the reconstruction of journalism from the Columbia journalism report:  Columbiajournalismreport.org

Lem Lloyd, vice president of channel sales at Yahoo!, shared details of the media company’s growing newspaper consortium. Lloyd said they’ve have sold 18,000 campaigns on Yahoo!, amounting to more than six  billion impressions. Behavioral targeting sales represent some ninety percent of that total.

And Josh Cohen explaining how GoogleNews works with publishers. Cohen wrote about the FTC and the future of news at Google’s Public Policy blog. A extensive interview of Cohen on paywalls, publishers and partnerships by Danny Sullivan is also available at Search Engine Land.

Emerging models for journalism

The most dynamic panel of the day featured technologists, entrepreneurs and an bonafide bloggers like Josh Micah Marsall of Talkingpointsmemo.com and Danny Sullivan, who took a break from liveblogging to participate.

Sullivan, at that point, was frustrated with offline metaphors applied online. And Jeff Jarvis, media pundit and CUNY professor, asked the FTC to “stay off the lawn,” suggesting that premise of the event was about the survival of legacy players, not journalism itself.

In considering the prospect of not finding a viable models, Robert Thomson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, observed that “the cost to society of not being able to afford specialist journalism is going to be profound.”

Chris Ahern, of Reuters, and Danny Sullivan replied to Thomson that it’s not “an either/or proposition.” Hybrid models for news are worth trying.

And in a memorable exchange, Marshall observed that “there is more of an ethic online of linking to the story that got the reporter on the track and then adding commentary” than is practiced by traditional media, alluding to stories that the AP and others have run with without linking.

Media consumption trends, the economics of news and online advertising models

For more on the final panel and preceding presentations, consult Danny Sullivan’s liveblog of the FTC workshop on the future of journalism.

Ball State professor Mike Bloxham presented on media consumption based upon data that can be found at ResearchExcellence.com. He described a need for publisher to look cross-platform for media consumption in order to meaninfully gauge a “news footprint” that included print, TV, online and radio.

Susan Athey, a professor of economics at Harvard, presented on the economics of news, particular the trend toward “multi-homing” in consumption and the growth of online advertising. Her presentation addressed the salience of potential FTC regulation more directly than any other, aside from the chairman himself, predicting competition in online ad networks and between aggregators that would require oversight.

Law professor David Evans, following Athey, said that “the one thing I do worry about is mixing up market failure with nostalgia.” His paper on  economics of the online advertising industry is available online.

The final panel of the day, addressed the important of behavioral advertising to future business models. Jeff Chester of Democraticmedia.org asserted that “the news media industry should embrace fair information principles.”

Conclusions?

As I look back over the day, it’s not clear to me yet what the FTC intends to do, other than listen. I look forward to returning to the FTC tomorrow to learn more.

3 Comments

Filed under blogging, journalism, research, technology, video

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 1, 2009 · 3:57 pm

Is journalism going through its own Reformation?

Is Catholicism to the old media view of journalism as Protestantism is to new media?

To be clear, this isn’t an exact metaphor, nor does it in any way reflect my opinions of any branch of organized religion (or those of my employer). It’s a tricky metaphor, to be sure, and one I’m on dangerous ground to entertain.

The notion was suggested by a conversation I had with Steve Waldman and Arianna Huffington at the FTC’s workshop on the Future of Journalism today in DC, where she gave a fiery (and funny) defense of new media, aggregation, and the shift to a more social news experience online. (Talking with Waldman about the future of journalism had its own resonance, given his new role as a media advisor at the FCC.)

As Huffington put it, “with so many traditional media companies adapting to the new realities, it was ridiculous to engage in an us vs. them, old media vs. new media argument.”  Her remarks followed those of Rupert Murdoch, whose speech was ably chronicled by Danny Sullivan in his liveblog of the FTC’s journalism workshop.

Students of history recall that Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church after his efforts to reform it were balked. That break resulted in a schism that roiled Europe for centuries. The metaphor may be apt here because of the way that readers are consuming the news has become more social. Protestants, particularly Quakers and Unitarians, embrace a personal relationship with a higher power that is not mediated by a priest. Historically, Catholics have relied upon priests to guide worship and intermediate their relationship with the deity. In medieval times, priests read the Latin in the Bible that illiterate parishioners could not.

The traditional “high priests of journalism” — newspaper and magazine editors — controlled what was covered, which letters to the editor were published, and where and when stories were run.

No more, or at least not in online news.  Increasingly, readers have formed a more direct relationships with the sources.  Even if the editors at the New York Times or Wall Street Journal choose not to cover a story, if someone uploads video from, say, an ACORN office, a campaign event in Virginia or a street in Tehran, the world can view it, share it and discuss it.

The very existence of this post is evidence of how the tools for production of news have been democratized. I’ve written about the trend before, when I blogged about NPR and PBS’s unconference or asked how, if we are the media, it changes society. And folks like Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor have been writing about the transition to grassroots journalism for years.

It’s not at all clear yet what the The Ninety-Five Theses of this “Reformation” in journalism will be. Online journalism ethics still pertain, and viable means of subsidy for production of that journalism will have to be tested and refined.

Today’s FTC hearings contrasted disparate views from Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington, a contrast in both belief and model, along with a panel of newspaper executives who frequently focused on newspapers’ past, not journalism’s future.  “The Reconstruction of American Journalism,” authored by Len Downie and Michael Schudson, points to business models and challenges alike.

Huffington’s speech, published simultaneously at the Huffington Post as “Desperate Metaphors, Desperate Revenue Models, And The Desperate Need For Better Journalism,” led off with her belief that:

…the future of journalism will be a hybrid future where traditional media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism).

Perhaps 2010 will be the year that a reformation of journalism will find a workable medium between leaner, traditional news media, the growing flock of distributed contributors, and the higher power – civic good – that its audience expects and needs.

1 Comment

Filed under blogging, journalism, technology

November 8, 2009 · 8:09 pm

When “we are the media,” how does it change us or society?

The changes that smartphones with camera and an Internet connection are wreaking in society have been both thoughtfully reported upon, relentlessly evangelized and ruthlessly derided, depending upon the angle or intent of the commentator.

The past days will occupy a few lines in the history books. Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a milestone healthcare bill. And earlier in the week, a soldier killed fellow servicemen and women at Fort Hood.

Today, Paul Carr wrote that “citizen journalists can’t handle the truth at TechCrunch.

I agreed with him on a few things. The video from “This American Life” (below) that Carr embedded was deeply affecting on this point, in terms of what becoming an observer can do to our involvement in what we are filming.

Changing an avatar to green or changing a location to Tehran did not, despite good intentions, prove to substantively help students escape repression. I gather from reading accounts from journalists that the solidarity demonstrated by doing so was both noticed and appreciated there. And there was a tipping point in terms of the use of the platform to bring attention to a political cause.

Where I was left frustrated is in Carr’s suggestion that those who are watching should be doing something more, whether in the hospital or, in the case of Neda, on the streets of Tehran, instead of documenting events with the digital tools at hand.

Mathew Ingram posted a thoughtful response about this notion on his blog, “Citizen Journalism: I’ll take it, flaws and all.” David Quigg wrote   a thoughtful reply to Carr’s post as well. Dave Winer was less charitable.

I found the example of Neda to be unworthy of the point I think Carr was trying to make.

It also brushed off two key factors: the effect that the release of that video had in revealing the death of a protester and that of the bullet’s impact itself on her heart.

As Suw Charman-Anderson pointed out in her detailed critique and debunking of Carr’s post, “Killing Strawmen,” (which I won’t repeat here), there was a doctor on-site, who was unable to do anything because of the massive trauma to her chest.

In my limited experience, you provide the standard of care to which you are certified and are able to deliver, ceding primary responsibility to others more able as they arrive on scene. As an EMT couldn’t do much more, for instance, than to gauge consciousness, stanch bleeding, stabilize injuries, provide oxygen and transport people. Your choices must change if someone is in the wilderness but in most scenarios, that’s accurate. Paramedics, nurses, doctors and surgeons each have progressively more expertise and responsibility.

In all of that, communication with the nearest hospital and ER docs available is crucial. Transferring information to both medical professionals and law enforcement is something a bystander can and should do.

And to some extent, communication and documentation is precisely what a member of the public equipped with a cameraphone can contribute, despite the vigor with which Carr has chosen to deride that role.

I don’t doubt that seasoned correspondents, armed with an understanding of the ethics and laws that pertain to reporting, are needed to convey information from the battlefield or to analyze the meaning of the trends that confront us.

In fact, Brock Meeks, one such trusted newsman, made a comment on my post about Twitter lists that emphasized just how important getting the facts right is to both the audience and media.

I was left wondering about other situations where the “citizen journalists” Carr derides are providing an important function in the newsgathering ecosystem, whether in reporting national disasters, disease, voting irregularities or consumer sentiment.

A more calm approach might consider whether models of “hyperlocal” journalism that marry traditional media to online platforms might have a chance of success.

My intention is not to suggest that observers couldn’t play a useful role in a crisis. It was to say that when there are qualified staff on scene, documenting what is happening in the absence of mainstream journalists may be useful for those that follow – including news outlets that may use video or audio gleaned on site.

I agree with Paul that running images shouldn’t occur without a full understanding of the ethics or privacy rights involved.

Unfortunately, many tabloids have shown a poor grasp of either historically.

The fact that technology changes behavior doesn’t make it inherently bad. We’re all struggling to make sense of exactly what living in a modern panopticon created by one another will mean. It changes news, our conception of privacy, and even our perception of self.

The traits for good character and decency that the Greeks described millennia ago remain applicable, however, just as the ethics taught in journalism schools pertain to modern reporters armed with Flip cams, iPhones and a direct line to YouTube.

There will continue to be moments when war correspondents are confronted what choices about how covering conflict, versus participating in it, will mean.

Similarly, people driving by an accident will need to be thoughtful about “playing paparrazzi” as opposed to making sure that those involved are receiving the aid they need. Anyone who has a conflict about whether to “tweet or treat” might to do well to consider what basic human decency means to them, personally.

Does an event need to be documented? Or does calling 911 and then moving to help trump rendering assistance?

Citizens are looking for truth, honesty and facts, where ever we can find them.  That need was frequently the subject of discussion during Public Media Camp, after which I wrote that “2009 is the year of We, the Media.”

Perhaps, as news organizations and citizens alike contribute to the body of knowledge online, a new model for collaborative journalism will emerge that serves each better.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

4 Comments

Filed under blogging, journalism, social media, technology, Twitter, video

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

November 7, 2009 · 6:58 pm

Twitter Lists: We are informed by those we follow. We are defined by those who follow us.

“The power of Twitter is in the people you follow.”-@nytimes

You’ll find that quote at NYTimes.com/Twitter, where the New York Times has built a page of Twitter lists curated by its editors, its writers and, presumably, the help of its considerable audience.

As this feature has rolled out, I’ve read knee jerk criticism, thoughtful analysis, wild evangelizing and observed “lists of lists” be collected as sites like Listorious and Listatlas.com spring up to rank them.

Tech pundits and, rapidly, news organizations have all created lists that offer apply new taxonomies, imposed human-defined categories onto the roiling real-time tweetstream.

Readers are defined and informed by the diversity of the information sources that they consume. In a user-created Web, we are defined by those who choose to follow us, including any lists or tags that they associate with  our names.

It’s been exciting to watch. And if you’re a reader of David Weinberger, author of “Everything is Miscellaneous,” you might recognize this emergent behavior as a familiar phenomenon. Twitter users are using lists to organize one another into understandable taxonomies. Folksonomies, to use the term coined by Thomas Vander Wal.

Users have some control over which Twitter lists they appear upon. If you block a user, for instance, you can remove yourself from that user’s lists, if for some reason you don’t want to appear on it.

What we can’t control, once we make ourselves public there or elsewhere on the Web, is how others tag or list us.

This goes back to what Weinberger (along with Doc Searls, Rick Levine and Christopher Locke) wrote about in “The Cluetrain Manifesto” ten years ago. “Markets are conversations.”

I suspect that in the weeks ahead, both companies and individuals may find themselves on lists that they perhaps would not wish to define as part of their brand identities.

“I would not join any club that would have someone like me for a member”

As I quote Groucho Marx, today, I feel fortunate, for two different reasons.

First, to date, I’ve been included on 176 lists, none of which I’m embarrassed or insulted to be on. You can see all of them at “memberships,” which is a friendly way of describing inclusion.

Thank you. I’m humbled.

Second, most of the lists are being used by an individual user to categorize others for providing particular sort of information.

Overall, I’m most closely associated with technology, journalism, security and media. That’s  a good sign, given my profession! I was glad to see that the account I maintain at work (@ITcompliance) has been added to 33 lists, primarily compliance, information security, cybersecurity and GRC.

I’m talking about the right things in the right places.

Certain lists, however, have meant that many more people reading me than would have otherwise because of the hundreds or thousands of people that have chosen to follow them, due to the influence of their creators.  I’m thinking about lists like these, some of which have gone on to become popular at Listorious.com.

@palafo/linkers

@palafo/newmedia

@kitson/thought-leaders

@jayrosen_nyu/best-mindcasters-i-know

@Scobleizer/tech-pundits

@Scobleizer/my-favstar-fm-list

Thank you, fellas.

Like any other tools, lists will no doubt be used for good and ill. An outstanding article by Megan Garber, “Fort Hood: A First Test for Twitter Lists” in the Columbia Journalism Review, shows how news organizations can leverage the feature to curate the real-time Web for the online audience.

The lists—which offer a running stream of information, updates, and commentary from the aggregated feeds—represent a vast improvement over the previous means of following breaking news in real time. In place of free-for-all Twitter hashtags—which, valuable as they are in creating an unfiltered channel for communication, are often cluttered with ephemera, re-tweets, and other noise—they give us editorial order. And in place of dubious sources—users who may or may not be who they say they are, and who may or may not be worthy of our trust—the lists instead return to one of the foundational aspects of traditional newsgathering: reliable sources. Lists locate authority in a Twitter feed’s identity—in, as it were, its brand: while authority in hashtagged coverage derives, largely but not entirely, from the twin factors of volume and noise—who tweets the most, who tweets the loudest—authority in list-ed coverage derives from a tweeter’s prior record. Making lists trustworthy in a way that hashtagged coverage simply is not.

Garber goes further in exploring what role lists may play in journalism’s future, as organizations collaborate with both their audience and one another in curating user-generated content. It’s a great piece. Pete Cashmore, of @mashable, has written more about this at CNN in “Twitter lists and real-time journalism.”

Individuals and news organizations alike can create lists as needed. For instance, as the House debates a historic health care bill here in Washington, you can follow the discussion at @Mlsif/healthdebatelive

As Cashmore points out, in the social, “people-centric Web,” we use our friends as a filter. As Paul Gillin observed,  everything that you’ve learned about SEO may be useless in a more social Web. Google’s new Social Search shows how, if we choose, our search results can be populated with content from our circle of friends.

On Twitter, we can now use the lists from trusted friends and news organizations to curate the real-time Web. That makes them useful, immediately.

And after a week full of public grief here in the U.S., that’s good news.

21 Comments

Filed under blogging, journalism, social bookmarking, social media, technology, Twitter

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

October 19, 2009 · 11:48 pm

At the NPR and PBS unconference, 2009 is the year of “We, the media”

John Boland at Pubcamp

John Boland at Pubcamp

“TV, radio and pro journalism still matter in this new ecosystem”-John Boland, PBS.

This past weekend, I attended Public Media Camp, an unconference at American University in Washington, D.C.

I came away from the two days of sessions, talks, informal discussions, random encounters and rapid-fire information exchange inspired, exhilarated and a bit exhausted. That last is why it took a day to get a post up. By its nature, I couldn’t go to everything. What I did attend, I tried to take notes upon and livestream to Livestream.com and uStream. When it comes to the archiving that video, unfortunately, I endured two crashes and suffered from the lack of a decent mic. Happily, much better video will be coming online from other sources over the next week. What follows are my thoughts, links and video from “Pubcamp.”

Citizen Journalism and public media

The first session of the day remains one of the most memorable. Citizen journalists and local bloggers have much to learn from – and about – one another. “We the media” is a theme I pick up later in this post. Suffice it to say that democratization of the tools for information sharing has taken some producers unaware and left many stations understaffed, at least at the level it takes to effectively engage with those in the community creating the content. That said, many NPR editors and writers are doing quietly effective work in finding, engaging and collaborating with bloggers in the community. I mentioned Universal Hub in Boston, although I’ll leave it to Adam Gaffin, Radio Boston and WBUR to relate exactly how well that relationship works.

@jessieX referenced the tensions in this session in her post on generational differences, “My Takeaway,” where she captures the insight she shared with me in person.

Video of the  citizen journalism session is available on-demand.

Tools for curation of audience-generated content

This was one of the best attended sessions of Public Media Camp and, due to any number of reasons, one of the best, at least in my view. The standing room-only group was organized into as a circle and shared dozens of useful tools and services that can aid stations and editors in aggregating, organizing, filtering and curating pictures, video and text generated from listeners.”We all want to open up the floodgates to UGC and crowdsourcing but there’s issues of trust,” said Andrew Kuklewicz.

My favorite metaphor from Public Media came from Andy Carvin here, in the idea of “trust clouds,” or the social network of people around us that represent who we can believe, retweet, link or otherwise invest with our own reputation. A tool for doing just that if at Trustmap.org. Newstrust.net also came up as “a guide to good journalism.”

Such tools and relationships are critical to both the use of user generated content by stations and the decision of readers and listeners to trust and, in the social media world, pass on information. As I commented during the session, increasingly consumers of media follow bylines, not masthead. To borrow David Weinberger’s phrase, “transparency is the new objectivity.” By showing readers how and where the audience was sourced in real-time, media organizations can make a stronger case for the veracity of such information.

Tools included:

Greg Linch shared the approach to curation that Publish2 takes: “Social Journalism: Curate the Real-Time Web.”

Social Media Success

The most obvious case study in social media success may be Andy Carvin himself. The impact of his efforts have been deep and far-reaching throughout NPR’s shows and staffers. As Amy Woo put it, “I feel the same way about Andy and his tweeting as I do about Diane Rehm.”

Carvin offered compelling examples of success, like an NPR partnership with content discovery service Stumbleupon to create a reciprocal connection w/Twitter. With a little tweaking, a retweet can equal a stumble.

Another site, criticalexposure.org, “teaches kids to take pics as a way to be advocates for social change,” said Carvin.

He also said that NPR’s Facebook fan page generates some 8% of NPR web traffic. Their testing shows 1 post every 60-90 minutes is ideal for audience. That connection came courtesy of a listener, at least at the outset: The NPR fan page on Facebook was created by a fan. That fan then gave it back to the organization, says Jon Foreman. Carvin’s curation of public radio content took it to the next level.

Hurricanewiki is likely to be cited as a classic case in social media success, where more than five hundred people came together, organized through Twitter by @acarvin. You can see the results  at Hurricanewiki.org. Carvin also created a hurricane resources community for Gustav on Ning, built in about 48 hours.

One example that came up in multiple sessions is NPR’s Vote Report . Jessica Clark and Nina Keim wrote a report on it: “Building #SocialMedia Infrastructure to Engage Publics.” And while Carvin pointed out where Vote Report fell short, the idea behind enabling listeners to “help NPR identify voting problems” holds some promise. The use of social media for election monitoring is spreading globally now, as can be seen in Votereport.in in India.

The was a different issue with InaugurationReport:- volume. Carvin said that there was simply “too much social media content to effectively curate.” By way of contrast, even a few hundred engaged listeners could effectively use the #factcheck hashtag by http://npr.org/blogs/politics to fact check the U.S. presidential debates in real-time.

Greg Linch shared a collection of social media guidelines curated at Publish2, including NPR’s social media guidelines. There’s a careful eye keeping watch here on the ethics that go with the new territory: the @NPR ombudsman was present (she’s @ombudsman on Twitter) and brought attention to how the public will relate to any perceived bias shown on social media platform.

A standard for conduct matters. It’s not all peaches and cream, after all, given the ugliness that online discourse descend into on many occasions. “Posting on our site is a privilege, not a right,” said Carvin regarding the scrum on comment trolls, online spammers & NPR sites.

Video of the social media success session is available online at uStream.com.

Public Media and Gaming

One of the more entertaining and creative sessions at Public Media Camp was the hour on gaming. Educational gaming can raise literacy rates in children, after all – could NPR deliver further by reaching into this interactive medium? Nina Wall (@missmodular) said, in fact, that PBS Kids will soon have available an API similar to NPR’s for educational games.

An excellent summary of this discussion can be found at AmericanObserver.net. Video of the public media and gaming session is available online at uStream.com.

PictureTheImpossible is one intriguing example of the genre. The online, community-based game jointly developed by RIT & the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.

The discussion also included  Kongregate and their “social gaming” model, which provides a platform & revenue share for developers. Could NPR follow suit?

Or what if NPR created a fantasy league for news? Points could be accrued for newsgathering, with players trading shows or writers.

It’s been done for politics – check out the case study of an @NPR fantasy league, from Julia Schrenkler: Minnesota Public Radio’s “fantasy legislature.”

My favorite suggestion, however, came from Andy Carvin: a social “Wait, Wait, don’t tell me!” game where the audience can create news quizzes and then challenge one another on Facebook or the Web.

Social Media FAIL

The first FAIL from Andy Carvin? When the hype around crowdsourcing with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk didn’t deliver. Here’s the Wired story on questions about crowdsourcing.

Video of the social media FAIL session is available on-demand. Amy Woo and other attendees offered many more examples of failures.

Apps for Public Media

The last session of Pubcamp kicked off with a description of @AppsForDemocracy by Peter Corbett. Interesting examples about:

ParkItDC helps people find parking in DC, including which meters are broken.

AreYouSafeDC shows potential threats.

StumbleSafely is a guide to bars & avoiding crime in DC.

FixMyCityDC is a web-based application that allows users to submit service requests by problem type.

And the winner, DC311, enables iPhone access (download from iTunes) to the District’s 311 city service site, coupled with a  Facebook App.

There’s more to come: In 2 years, the vision laid out by Corbett  includes “muni data standardization, open civic app ecology and the ‘real-time muni web.’ And in 5 years, the vision for includes ideas seemingly lifted out of science fiction: augmented civic reality, AI-driven civic optimization & “virtual flow working.”

What could be created for public media? Apps that enable listeners to create channels from the API for specific topics. Apps that combine real-time data feeds from government sources with local bloggers and radio stations. Apps that allow listeners to help filter the flood of information around events, like the Vote Report project.

Why develop such apps? Andy Carvin believes that  “the line between content, services & apps is blurring. To create a more informed public, it now takes more.” To not create such innovation would, in effect, be irresponsible.

More posts, eclectica and public media resources

The PBS News Hour has partnered with the Christian Science Monitor on “Patchwork Nation.”

The work of Doc Searls at the Berkman Center on “vendor relationship management” came up, mentioned by one Keith Hopper. More details at http://projectvrm.org.

FrontlineSMS.com is a free group text messaging tool for nonprofit that is useful in disaster and crisis response.

Swiftapp.org was shared by @kookster: free, #opensource toolset for crowdsourced situational awareness.

Plenty of social media application develop is going on at PBS. Their social media guru, Jonathan Coffman,  pointed to the tools at PBS.org/engage.

The Participatory Culture Foundation has launched Videowtf.com.

Economystory.org is a cooperative effort of public media producers to provide financial literacy.

Check out Radio Drupal and Radioengage.com for open source public netcasting information.

Session notes for @PublicMediaCamp are going up at the wiki at PublicMediaCamp.org and are being aggregated under #pubcamp on Delicious.com by Peter Corbett.

My Takeaways

There a lot of smart, savvy, funny geeks in public media, passionate about delivering on the core mission of education, media literacy and good  journalism.

This same cadre is pushing innovative boundaries, whether it’s engaging the audience, creating new technology platform or expanding the horizons of computer assisted reporting. Database journalism is alive and well at NPR – just look at this visualization of the U.S. power grid.

Vivian Schiller said during her keynote that “2009 was the year everything changed.” Out of context, that statement drew raised eyebrows online. In person, there was more clarity. The massive disruption to the newspaper and traditional media industry is now resulting in significant layoffs and a seachange in how people experience events, share information and learn about the issues. Despite the issues presented by ingesting a torrent of new sources of information, the concept of “We the media” has deep roots, given that so many more people now have the ability to contribute news and help analyze it now that the tools for communication have been democratized and often made freely available online.

What’s missing in that fluid mix of updates, streams and comments is trust in veracity. As we all move into the next decade of the new millennium, the central challenge of public media may be making sense of the noise, taking much the same approach that it has in the past century: report on what’s happening, where it happened, who did it and why it’s important, with a bit more assistance from the audience. Given the loyalty of tens of millions of listeners, “we the media” might just have some legs.

Mark all as read
Refresh
Feed settings…

Oct 17, 2009

digiphile: Next up from @acarvin’s presentation of #socialmedia successes: @VoteReport: “Help NPR Identify Voting Problems” http://j.mp/1fysxf #pubcamp

from Twitter / digiphile
digiphile: Next up from @acarvin’s presentation of #socialmedia successes: @VoteReport: “Help NPR Identify Voting Problems” http://j.mp/1fysxf #pubcamp
Add starShareShare with noteKeep unreadAdd tagsSend to
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

7 Comments

Filed under blogging, journalism, social bookmarking, social media, technology, Twitter

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 25, 2009 · 11:12 am

Supreme Court preview for the 2009-2010 session from ACS

The Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States

What cases coming before the Supreme Court will be the “most interesting and have the most impact” on the American people? That’s a matter of considerable interest before the Justices hold their opening conference next Monday.

According to the lawyers assembled for the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy yesterday, the court will consider the constitutionality of life sentences for juveniles, free speech, campaign finance and corporations, revisit  elements of Miranda rights, and hear a case on antitrust on the NFL.

Quite a docket.

The Supreme Court will also, in what Michael Carvin called the “most important separation of powers case in 20 years,” take a hard look at the Public Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).  Is the PCAOB, established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX),  a “5th branch” of government?

Michael Carvin was just one of an estimable collection of legal minds on the panel, moderated by one Thomas C. Goldstein. Goldstein, along with arguing some 21 cases before the Court, is principally responsible for SCOTUSblog. Goldstein and Carvin were joined by Pamela Harris, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at the Georgetown Law Center, Doug Kendall, founder and president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, Lisa Kung, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, Deanne Maynard, partner at Morrison & Foerster and Paul Smith, partner at Jenner & Block.

In the spirit of legally-inspired disclaimers on accuracy of interpretation, I should note before I go any further that, while I have a parent who is a lawyer and am romantically involved with a law professor, I have no formal legal training and came to panel as a journalist and observer.

Campaign Finance

Up to until now, says Doug Kendall, the rule has been to limit corporate participation. The court upheld election communications rule before hand within 30 days. The case before the Court is one that has attracted gallons of media ink, due in no small part to the involvement of a well-known citizen: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Consideration of campaign finance is already underway and received additional attention given that it was the first that newly-sworn in Justice Sotomayor has heard.

Doug Kendall brought up the 1990 precedent of “Austin v Michigan” as way of exploring the issue of free speech by a corporation vs speech by an individual. The argument that he put forward goes back to the language of the U.S. Constitution, which refers to persons and people – but not businesses. Kendall argued that the distinction is consistent with first principles. If Austin is overruled, he said, it would unleash corporate campaign expenditures.

Mike Carvin, in a rebuttal that evidenced his considerable experience in courtroom oratory, brought up the example of corporate media outlets like MSNBC or the Washington  Post endorsing a candidate. He questioned whether that would be any different than corporation buying advertising space endorsing a candidate. “Doesn’t think eliminating core political speech rights is consistent,” he said.

Carvin asserted that  26 states don’t regulate speech in this way and don’t operate any differently.  “It would be one thing if we were eviscerating rights for free speech,” said Carvin. “Are we doing this in the name of preserving McCain-Feingold?” He strongly suggested that free speech rights should not “be sacrificed on such slim evidence.”

Kendall observed that the “First Amendment also includes something about the freedom of the press” –  different than, say, Exxon Mobil. “This case raises fundamental questions about what at its core our constitutional protects,” he said, positing the analogy of  “We the people vs We the corporations.”

After that exchange, the substantive issues of whether video depictions of animal cruelty are protected under the First Amendment or national monuments on private land felt positively quotidian, despite the rigorous analysis of the precedents and relevance of the matters.

Miranda,  separation of powers and revisiting federalism

Harris explained that two different cases will be relevant to revisiting Miranda, one of which will address whether a citizen has the right to counsel during questioning. As she pointed out, these cases are “the first real cuts” for Roberts and Alito at the issue.

Another case will visit the question of whether you “deprive employer of honest services” by using business equipment – like, say a computer – on the job for personal or family business. That’s a serious question, given  both the open language and vagueness of the law in question and the way it could impact millions of people who conduct personal business online daily.

Harris also indicated that the case raised questions regarding the separation of powers – classic federalism issues.

Another case, Melendez v Diaz, will focus upon the 6th Amendment, involving the Confrontation Clause. At issue is whether  lab reports represent testimoniasl, which goes to the question of their introduction in trial. Is it enough for a defendant to call the analyst as his own witness? Or does the state need to do so? It “seems like the question is answered,” said Harris.  “What’s different?” The answer is practical: a new Justice. The practical concerns of bringing in analysts each time lab results are presented are significant – doing so would slow process. Given her self-identification as a legal pragmatist, will Sotomayor be more receptive than Souter was?  Harris doesn’t think so.

Separation of powers is also at issue with regards to the Public Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), as referenced above. The PCAOB, said Carvin, is “outside of government and presidential control” – that’s a  separation of powers issue.  The defense of agency is “unprecedented in American history,” he said.  The President can appoint or remove chairmen from institutions within the so-called “4th branch,” like the  SEC, FCC or Federal Reserve. In Carvin’s view, PCAOB is a 5th branch,”  with the SEC holding limited ability to influence regulations coming from it.

Criminal matters

According to Lisa Kung, Troy, Alabama has the highest number of capital convictions in the state. The case  of Hollywood v. Allen has raised issues around a  “cut & paste” judicial process at play there, where decisions are showing up with typos from drafts, like “proposed” making it through or misspellings of judges’ names. The question of the case? “What kind of deference does a federal court pay to this kind of judicial…nonsense,” said Kung, focusing less on the minutiae of mistakes and more on the quality of decisions.

Kung also discussed the case of Sullivan vs Ford, where the Supreme Court will decide on the issue of juvenile life without parole. The young man in question was sentenced at 13 years old to life in prison with no chance of parole. “Will it extend Roper?” Kung asked. That care is relevant  to the application of the death penalty under 18. Will Kennedy’s reasoning apply?

Kung brought up a case in which prosecutors were caught acting badly in Iowa by fabricating evidence. The relevant question is how much immunity should the law give to a prosecutor?

Business Docket

A case involved the NFL and antitrust law is coming up, specifically the use of the NFL’s intellectual property by others. The decision and  reasoning behind it could apply to any sort of joint venture down the road.

There’s also a patent case, examining what represents an eligible process. At issue in the Bilsky case is a business method, specifically a theory of hedge fund risk management.

Merck is also on the docket. That’s “part of trend where court taking cases cutting back on plaintiff’s bar,” said Deanne Maynard. “At what point does the plaintiff know enough that it should file?” In this case, the issue is over the troubled pain reliever, Vioxx.

Finally, there’s an issue over property, a case of “classic takings mode,” says Carvin. In Florida, if you own a beach house, the law says that you own the sand down to the high water mark. Like many coastal communities, Florida’s beach homes have been losing land due to erosion. Local governments have tried shoreline replenishment on the beaches in the state, which added 75 feet.  That’s the crux of the issue; the state then asserted that land is public. Home owners disagree.

Carvin, who argued  Bush v. Gore in front of the Florida Supreme Court, pointed out that this case may be memorable, in terms of how that court might change the law.  In essence, he said the court seems to have changed property rights by reinterpretation.

Parting thoughts: SupremeCourt.gov and finding information on cases

I was lucky to hear this preview of the cases coming up. I’m hopeful that the ACS will be releasing video of the session to the public. My observation after some searching online is that, despite SCOTUSblog and other watchers, resources that enable citizens to easily find out what cases are being heard aren’t easy to come by. The court’s website, SupremeCourtus.gov, provides information on recent decisions but the docket page is out of date and relies on the visitor knowing case numbers. Hearing lists are blank. The calendar page is a PDF that doesn’t indicate when individual cases are being heard.

I’m far from the first person to feel some angst over this issue. According to Fast Company, the court’s staffers know the site can use a redesign. The Sunlight Foundation’s Daniel Schuman confirms that in a post on redesigning the Supreme Court: “The Justices appear to agree. They’ve recently asked Congress for money to move control of the site in-house, taking over responsibility from the GPO.”

You can see the Sunlight Foundation’s mockup of what such a redesign might look like, below. The Foundation’s other suggestions, if implemented, would go a long way to making the Court’s cases, decisions and operations more transparent to the American people. I hope they are taken up, along with the long list of cases above.

The Sunlight Foundation's mockup of a new Supreme Court website

The Sunlight Foundation's mockup of a new Supreme Court website

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 Comment

Filed under article, blogging, journalism

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 18, 2009 · 4:06 pm

Cloud computing and DC, OpenID, privacy, cybersecurity, 3121, CongressCamp, Gov20 and the US CIO

Fall came and with it a torrent of news and events. I’m still sifting through news, ideas and encounters from the Gov 2.0 Summit last week. I’m still smiling after meeting Clay Shirky, Craig Newmark and Vint Cerf. The “father of the Internet,” below was  a kind, gentlemanly presence at Google’s offices after the Gov 2.0 Expo.

Vint Cerf at Google

Vint Cerf at Google

Following up on Gov 2.0, I wrote about how D.C.’s CTO found both compliance cost savings benefits to cloud computing and reported on the OpenID federated identity framework set for .gov authentication pilot.

In a snarky moment, I caught the Twitter fail whale surfacing during a discussion on cloud computing.

fail-whale-cloud-computing-gov20
Ironic animal.

I recorded a half hour of video with Chris Messina and David Recordon discussing OpenID authentication and .gov websites.

I wrote a short piece that sized up U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra on Data.gov, OpenID and government transparency.

I blogged about how U.S. CTO Chopra focused on transparency and outcomes at Gov 2.0.

After I made it through that writing, I summarized new research from the IAPP that showed privacy policy success lies in collaboration with IT and synthesized the expectations of Center for Democracy and Technology analysts regarding federal technology policy here Washington.

And I managed to get a post up about how 3121 brings social networking and security challenges to Capitol Hill that included an interview with the CTO responsible for getting this new professional network for Congressional staffers working properly.

At the beginning of the week, I also wrote three posts on Congress Camp, including:

I visited the FCC for the first time, where I watched the panels on broadband and healthcare.

And on one pleasant fall night, I also visited the National Press Club, where the DC Social Media Club hosted a panel that discussed  how mainstream media is using social media tools.

I think I like living in the District.

I know this is a lot of “I” but hey, this is my blog. Thanks for visiting!

I can’t wait for the weekend! BBQs with friends and family, bike rides, plenty of time outdoors.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Leave a comment

Filed under article, blogging, journalism, technology

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 17, 2009 · 12:38 am

MSM using social media tools at the National Press Club

I went to the Washington, D.C. Social Media Club‘s fall kickoff meeting tonight, which featured a terrific panel on Mainstream Media Using Social Media Tools. The moderator,  Jeff Mascott of Adfero, facilitated an excellent discussion with three journalists from traditional print publications:

I livestreamed the event through the digiphile channel at livestream.com. I couldn’t get the video from livestream to embed below correctly, so you’ll need to watch the session on demand at livestream.com. I wish I’d had a better mic and found a seat in the middle for a closer view. That said, the Social Media Club recorded a high quality version of the panel that will be available soon, so you won’t have to rely on my artifacted stream and low sound levels. Nota Bene: forward ahead to 6:30 or so, when the panel actually begins!

My insights for the night?

Challenges for the @Washingtonian include retaining a traditional editorial “voice” online and yet adding some  irreverance and snark on social media platforms. Apparently, the editors want stories to be published in print first and then the  Web second. That may be a  tough balance to strike.

Social media “enables me to compete with NFL and ESPN,” said @Cindyboren of the @WashingtonPost. Twitter levels the playing field for her.

The toughest challenge for  for @RickDunham? Time management, given the need to keep up with updating the Houston Chronicle’ digital outposts and the conversations . Community moderation is unending and necessary.

Rick also made a fascinating point about #journalism ethics and #socialmedia: keeping ideological balance with subscriptions to fan pages for politicians on Facebook is important in the digital age to maintain balance. Reporters need to follow everyone on their beat.

I asked a question about sourcing, as you’ll see if you watch the video. The panel provided good answers. Both @cindyboren and @rickdunham apply classic standards of #journalism to confirm the truth of statements, usually by calling people or  “@’ing the source.” Pick up that phone!

Rick also made a fascinating observation: the Chronicle is  realizing real adverstising revenue by livestreaming confirmation hearings and Congressional town halls to interested readers. Er, viewers.  By carrying such news events on their websites, newspapers have become in effect independent Internet TV stations. Hello, convergence.

As an aside, I learned Helen Thomas is @frontrowhelen on Twitter. @IkePigott made her an account.

Great event. Many new faces, with others now becoming more familiar as I get to know the local DC new media community.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 Comment

Filed under blogging, journalism, social media, technology, Twitter, video

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,