Riding the Tuscaloosa Trolley, a multimedia report

Using SoundSlides takes practice. Now I think I’ve got it!
For this project, the sound was mixed using GarageBand, the photos were taken with a Canon 30D and Rebel XTI and the images edited using PhotoShop. If I want to hand this project over with my story to get a multimedia package published, I’ll probably have to re-do the slide show using the real deal instead of the demo.
I hope this can reach a wider audience, in which case this would be a sneak peak… enjoy the bus ride!
You know you remember the song…

http://bama.ua.edu/~galford/trolley/</a>

Analyzing, synthesizing news media

I’ve heard that it is now illegal to move castles in France. The law apparently came about after a Chinese man bought a French castle, had it disassembled and moved piece by piece to China, where he reconstructed the entire thing.
This is the picture that flashed in my mind when I read the title of the recent manifesto on the future of news reporting from Michael Schudson and Leonard Downey, Jr.: The Reconstruction of American Journalism
In constructing journalism online are we also just rebuilding old structures?
Incidentally, a similar castle metaphor once gave me an insight into the importance of localized community in the evolving concept of news media. I was participating in a wonderful FUNDAEC course called “Discourse on Social Action” and came to the last chapter. The text pointed out that we should not assume that the over-populated metropolitan cities will be the model of society for the future (especially in this modern age of instant global communication). Perhaps the city center, it went on to suggest, has outlived its usefulness just as the castles and fiefdoms of the European middle ages ceased to serve their purpose. Reading this I could just imagine peasants and nobles surveying their existence and believing civilization would always continue in such way.

This is why the parallels many are drawing between the early days of Television to the current developments in new media resonate with me. Human reticence to change is repeating itself. In the beginning of TV, producers simply broadcast filmed radio shows or stage plays. It wasn’t until later that society could imagine something different. Here are two blogs that illustrate this point better than I have: Newsweek and Alchemical Musings

If you are looking for some of the interesting discourse (i.e. buzz) related to the Reconstruction report, here are some other sources where I started:

Schudson and Downey’s WaPo editorial ‘Finding a new model for news reporting’

NY Times Media & Advertising ‘Online Rally May Sidestep Newspapers’

Poynter Online NewsPay’s ‘Mutualizing News about News’

CoverItLive… before it’s dead.

Speed is valued in news delivery, but not so much so that the public no longer wants information and ideas adapted to their news needs. If that were the case, journalists would really be out of a job. One could just bring in CoverItLive, the software that makes live blogging an engaging online event, and let reporters either choose to be the stenographers or find a new occupation.

Surely no one really believes the downturn in news media as we once knew them will get this far. However, it is plausible that, as the CiL Web site claims, “live blogging is going to be a critical piece of web based reporting in the future” and CiL may very well be one of the best tools in this effort.

The thing about tools is that they can shape how individuals view their work. Abraham Maslow said in 1962, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Such over-reliance on familiar tools is frequently called the law of the instrument or even Maslow’s hammer.

This point is of primary relevance to anyone learning or considering the effects of new media tools on journalism practices. There is a human tendency to subordinate social activity to technology, as if innovation is always brought about by some sacred, authoritative design, giving society no say in the matter. A common example is building highways, which forces citizens to drive cars, to commute, to live miles from the grocery store, school, family, etc.

Now we have the information superhighway called the Internet. Without detracting from the communication marvel that it is, one must wonder how cognizant journalists are of the way news is adapted to the Internet. Attempts range from mimicking patterns of old mediums (see this Newsweek must read that talks about the iTablet and more journo musings) to abandoning story-telling for social networking media. Without a framework to inform evaluations of purposeful tools, we just keep hammering at every new method as if it were a nail.

For what are the nail and the hammer metaphors? I don’t know. Perhaps commercial interests and advertisements. Perhaps infotainment and celebrity news. Perhaps Nielsen ratings and gimmicky quasi-news. It is not always best to define symbols concretely.

This goes back to my post on the purpose of media.

How, then, does one evaluate the purpose of liveblogging and media tools such as CoveritLive? How could news makers know without first assessing the needs of the community by consulting with members? The Anniston Star in Alabama provides a wonderful example in hosting a live Q&A with the mayor.

It doesn’t take genius to figure out what a community needs to better its environment, but asking is even simpler than surmising. Still better yet, the Anniston Star shows that the media can just let the towns people ask and simply listen and watch. Now… what happens next?

Demo-CoveritLive

Difference between tags and categories

The tag and category “clouds” on this blog have been taken down because they were out of control.  There are way too many categories and the tags inconsistent, rendering both clouds pointless and confusing. To make this a “teachable moment” I want to share a maxim I learned recently that would have been helpful a year ago when I went through a tag-happy stage and a spree of new categories every week.

The rule of thumb with these two classifications is: if your blog were a book, the categories would be like your headings in a table of contents and the tags would be the entries in an index.

• Cool site alert: www.wordle.net is a neat destination for creating word clouds. It would be nice if the service could count entire phrases as a single entry, then I could have generated illustrations for this post of pretty clouds of my big mess of tags and categories…

Note that I still have four tags for this short post and even created a new category!? I just can’t kick the habit. However, I did make this addition a subheading under a parent category, an option I just learned about. One can in fact go back and delete or reorganize their classifications, but this will take some conceptual mapping that will have to wait.

Freedom from whom? what?

An underlying assumption about press freedom, and freedom of expression in general, is that there are factions, and that one is trying to (or could potentially) impose on the other.

Freedom discourse, then, seems fetishly concerned with partisan divides. How could it not be when freedom would not exist if there were no oppression to give it context. Just as light could not be recognized without the existence of darkness, freedom has no meaning unless there is oppression to demarcate its boundaries. Is it wise to accept that a cage tells me where liberty begins and ends? This is true only if one is content to stay inside the cage.  Why is it that individuals and societies are willing to rely on relationships with opposing forces to generate meaning? How strange, indeed, that our concept of freedom is dependant on opposition. Since the language we use to talk about freedom alludes to anything but our need for factions to make meaning of our construct of liberty, we must not be cognizant of this dissonance.

In looking deeper at this issue, we do find freedom defined by a cage. The cage is partisanship. Rather than being one, we are many parts; thus, rather than having true freedom (the kind that is not followed by “from such-and-such”) we talk about this part’s freedom from that part. It is dead wrong to talk about some unified freedom of the press, when in fact it is ‘freedom of the American press from libel suits’, ‘freedom of the Christian press from censorship’, ‘freedom of children’s public television from commercial interests’, and so many many more.

We may never have truly known what unfettered freedom looked like. Even when the First Amendment was ratified with the Bill of Rights little more than a decade after America gained independence, many were concerned that constricting such important principles as freedom of religion, the press and assemblage to a law of a few words to be interpreted by the court was a threat to its integrity, its completeness, its wholeness. Where is there evidence of ever knowing a conceptually sound, whole freedom. We only know fragmented freedoms, as it is often pointed out that the protected freedoms of some can impinge on the freedoms of others.

Purpose-driven news

PARADIGM SHIFT

If the changes taking place in news media are in fact as revolutionary as the Gutenberg press, then maybe we could all use a moment or two to take in the perspective this statement should give us.

Take a deep breath and hold off on all claims to discovering the future of news along with snazzy catch phrases (i.e. “link journalism,” “network journalism,” I’m sure there’s even a “tweet journalism” out there.)

While the components needed to build the future ecosystem of news media continue to evolve and emerge, we can take this time to think about a fundamental principle that should, anyways, be clearly defined in the minds of producers and consumers of news media.

What is the purpose of news in our lives?

For this exercise, I think it is especially important for those of us who work in media professions to take ourselves out of that frame of reference for a moment. If you don’t know the difference between normative and explanatory theories, now might be a good time to look it up (especially in the context of objectivity.)

PURPOSE-DRIVEN NEWS

Knowing the purpose of news is an important element of a conceptual framework of the press. Newspapers online and in print have been notorious for adopting new “gimmicks” to attract or retain readers, then casting the practices aside when they don’t work. This sort of erratic behavior suggests an industry that does not have the guidance and organizing theory that a sound conceptual framework provides.

Are there overarching principles that could construct such a framework, one that is impervious to powerful forces of change like the Internet has brought about? For starters, knowing the purpose of the social interaction that we call news-sharing would lay the structure of the public sphere on a firm foundation, giving a very different shape to, incidentally, both the news outlets and the community. A lot of social imagination is necessary for this mental exercise, and in such a world we may not even find ourselves in the predicament we are in now, but since we’re considering new perspectives, we should not limit ourselves. How a community conceptualizes its media is just as important as how it conceptualizes its government, its schools, its agriculture and so on. After all, its communication systems count as social institutions, even if they have been commodified. Perhaps if we prioritized the institutions, mass media would not rank at the top, but there is a strong argument as to why we should not fragment our mass media from the rest of our social concerns.

MEDIA ARE THE MESSAGE

The assumptions behind the saying, “the media are the message,” point to a high degree of coherence in what communicators do. Think about how often recently the news has been the story. Mass communications are both the public sphere (the media) and conduits of the public sphere (the messages). It’s like reading a page of letters rearranged from a Shakespeare sonnet. Without the message to give the medium meaning, the latter is useless. It works the other way, as well. Without some tradition of communication, whether through the medium of oral stories or a staged play, the content could not travel from sender to receiver.

It seems, then, that the purpose of media is to transmit meaning. And since negotiating meaning is the very definition of community, mass media is essential in society.

This is the obvious juncture to talk about whether media are controlled by social interests or commercial interests. When discussing the content of mass media, many are quick to point out that certain content sells more than others, and media simply supply what is demanded. I would ask whether the current media corporations actually supply demand. On this note, further down I do talk a little bit about how media have the power to create space in public discourse. We could go off on a tangent here and explore how the practice (opposite to media’s purpose) of developing content to deliver a medium is becoming increasingly popular, but let’s save that for another day, or maybe someone could explain to me how exactly an audience buys into that.

VIRTUAL TOWN HALL MEETINGS

The purpose of the news media could be likened to the function of a town hall meeting, a role these meetings played to an even greater extent before mass communications. People gathered together to be informed and make decisions. This process of consultation among neighbors and citizens built consensus within a population, which built community. As populations grew, newspapers, and now online news sources, eventually took on this mass communication process.

As communities grow, their need for information and decision-making is organized into formal government; yet, the consensus factor cannot be given over to an elected body. I’m not talking about some propaganda-induced, superimposed, monolithic, bipartisan meaning of consensus. I’m talking about the agreement that comes when a group has consulted on all viewpoints and decides together on a course of action with the confidence that none of the members will set out on a mission to discredit the decision or sabotage the efforts to carry it out. That is true interactive media, taking place in the minds of each citizen. This complex, yet natural, process of community is diminished as citizens lose access to information and become disempowered in collective decision-making. The need for newspapers to facilitate consensus in the community likewise fades. In concert, mass media and community become hollow, sometimes even meaningless, or message-less, like a scrambled Shakespeare sonnet.

NEWS MEDIA: A COMMUNITY SPACE

There is a creative power in mass communications. It creates a space that then must be filled. The space is not necessarily determined by specific social or economic needs of a community, just its primal need for making meaning of the world around it; so, if it is not clear to a community how to use its media, then corporations, interest groups, retailers and political factions fill this space with meaning-making that fits their needs. This is why it is so important for media professionals to know the purpose of news, and of course, for media producers and consumers to be aware, to think about it.

IF NEWS IS IMPORTANT, IT WILL FIND ME

The thoughts in this post were triggered by an article I read today on this idea that if news is important enough, a person will know about it eventually. The assumptions underlying such a statement seem rooted in a consumerist worldview, which is dependent on a complete lack of a sense of purpose, except that of consuming. This is related to the direction that news media seems to be headed—I guess now we can go back to theorizing on the future of journalism—the path of civic or participatory media. The community members are engaged producers of news again, much like they were in town-hall meetings, empowered to share information, make decisions and reach consensus to build up their communities.

Benjamin Franklin, his ode to press liberty

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

ON THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

• HILE free from Force the Press remains,

  Virtue and Freedom chear our Plains,

  And Learning Largesses bestows,

  And keeps unlicens’d open House.

  We to the Nation’s publick Mart

  Our Works of Wit, and Schemes of Art,

  And philosophic Goods, this Way,

  Like Water carriage, cheap convey.

  This Tree which Knowledge so affords,

  Inquisitors with flaming swords

  From Lay-Approach with Zeal defend,

  Lest their own Paradise should end.

  The Press from her fecundous Womb

  Brought forth the Arts of Greece and Rome;

  Her offspring, skill’d in Logic War,

  Truth’s Banner wav’d in open Air;

  The Monster Superstition fled,

  And hid in Shades in Gorgon Head;

  And awless Pow’r, the long kept Field,

  By Reason quell’d, was forc’d to yield.

  This Nurse of Arts, and Freedom’s Fence,

  To chain, is Treason against Sense:

  And Liberty, thy thousand Tongues

  None silence who design no Wrongs;

  For those who use the Gag’s Restraint,

  First Rob, before they stop Complaint.

“On the Freedom of the Press” is reprinted from Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1757.

Writing samples from San Diego U-T days

Thinking back to the year I spent working at the San Diego Union-Tribune, it seems like I wrote much more than just 73 stories for the paper! A search of the Web site’s archives, however, turned up eight in 2005 and 65 in 2006. What a year. I had so much fun.

Find the search results at http://find.signonsandiego.com/?q=gigi+alford&Submit=Go!

The first 20 that are displayed, in reverse chronological order it seems:

1. The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER The beat-up pair of…
   Friday, January 12, 2007
2. La Costa Canyon High athletes share a passion for hard training workouts | …: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER October 8, 2006 CARLSBAD…
   Saturday, October 07, 2006
3. Kids’ game | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER September 24, 2006 When…
   Saturday, September 23, 2006
4. Eager to tri | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER September 17, 2006…
   Saturday, September 16, 2006
5. Family of Bruins | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER September 15, 2006…
   Thursday, September 14, 2006
6. Body language | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER September 10, 2006…
   Saturday, September 09, 2006
7. Polo pals | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER September 3, 2006 Had…
   Saturday, September 02, 2006
8. Volleyball vibes | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER August 27, 2006 Three…
   Saturday, August 26, 2006
9. Model of success | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER August 20, 2006…
   Saturday, August 19, 2006
10. North Coastal Athlete of the Week: Shawn O’Gorman, masters swimmer | The …: …Contact Gigi Alford at (619) 293-1829 or gigi.alford@uniontrib.com…
    Friday, August 18, 2006
11. Albion Boys Under-16 White Team Roster | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER August 13, 2006 When…
    Saturday, August 12, 2006
12. North Coastal Player of the Week: Blake Hylen, Del Mar Carmel Valley Sharks …: …Contact Gigi Alford at (619) 293-1829 or gigi.alford@uniontrib.com…
    Friday, August 11, 2006
13. Youth is served at Surf Cup | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER August 7, 2006 DEL MAR –…
    Sunday, August 06, 2006
14. High tide for Surf Club | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER August 6, 2006 If it…
    Saturday, August 05, 2006
15. Just sign of the times for Kansas-bound girl | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER August 6, 2006 DEL MAR –…
    Saturday, August 05, 2006
16. Moving on | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER August 3, 2006 Hallie…
    Wednesday, August 02, 2006
17. California commanders | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER July 30, 2006 After each…
    Saturday, July 29, 2006
18. Tall order | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER July 23, 2006 Matt…
    Saturday, July 22, 2006
19. Round-Tripper | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER July 19, 2006 Ouying…
    Tuesday, July 18, 2006
20. Cleats to fill | The San Diego Union-Tribune: …By Gigi Alford COMMUNITY SPORTS WRITER July 16, 2006 Known for…
    Saturday, July 15, 2006

Media: window to the world or mirror of the world? (Vote in a poll.)

In my theory of mass communications class this week we talked about Walter Lippmann’s notion that newspapers give people a window to the world. (Naturally, this was in the context of framing theory.) Then, in my producing community journalism class, we discussed the idea that a mirror could represent the role of the press in reflecting community. (Hey, some mirrors have frames, too.)

The images that each metaphor evokes help us construct valuable models as we try to discover the nature of the transformation taking place in journalism.  One, however, gives the impression of the media being apart from the world it is revealing to its audience (the window), whereas the other claims media are the very part of social reality that we can see (the reflection in the mirror). I would have to go with the latter, because media are not simply floating above or outside their communities. In fact, they are more than just shaped by society; shaping them is the very process of negotiating meaning of our social reality. I’m glad to come to this realization because it means that I am engaged in something that is fundamental to human advancement.

So, please take a quick second to answer the poll. It will interesting to see the different thoughts out there.

Window or mirror?

I’ve shared parts of the following quotes before. They are some of my favorites and offer insights into the meaning and usefulness of the media-as-a-mirror metaphor.

Quote No. 1:

“In this Day the secrets of the earth are laid bare before the eyes of men. The pages of swiftly appearing newspapers are indeed the mirror of the world. They reflect the deeds and the pursuits of divers people and kindreds. They both reflect them and make them known. They are a mirror endowed with hearing, sight and speech. This is an amazing and potent phenomenon.”

(This next part makes me think of cleaning the mirror…)

“However, it behoveth the writers thereof to be purged from the promptings of evil passions and desires and to be attired with the raiment of justice and equity. They should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.”

-Baha’u'llah, Tablet to the Times

Quote No. 2:

“The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education. It is inconceivable that any nation should achieve prosperity and success unless this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried forward. The principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples is ignorance. Today the mass of the people are uninformed even as to ordinary affairs, how much less do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex needs of the time.

“It is therefore urgent that beneficial articles and books be written, clearly and definitely establishing what the present-day requirements of the people are, and what will conduce to the happiness and advancement of society. These should be published and spread throughout the nation, so that at least the leaders among the people should become, to some degree, awakened, and arise to exert themselves along those lines which will lead to their abiding honor. The publication of high thoughts is the dynamic power in the arteries of life; it is the very soul of the world. Thoughts are a boundless sea, and the effects and varying conditions of existence are as the separate forms and individual limits of the waves; not until the sea boils up will the waves rise and scatter their pearls of knowledge on the shore of life.

“Thou, Brother, art thy thought alone,
The rest is only thew and bone. [Rúmí, The Mathnaví, II 2:277]

“Public opinion must be directed toward whatever is worthy of this day, and this is impossible except through the use of adequate arguments and the adducing of clear, comprehensive and conclusive proofs. For the helpless masses know nothing of the world, and while there is no doubt that they seek and long for their own happiness, yet ignorance like a heavy veil shuts them away from it.”

-Abdu’l-Baha, Secret of Divine Civilization

Where to get news is asking the wrong question

The top search engine phrase that leads people to my blog is some configuration of “how do people get their news.”  The question is usually couched in terms of how this process is carried out in 2009 or specifies getting good news, and it is being asked a lot. I probably wouldn’t get traffic to my blog if it weren’t for the few posts in which I was smart enough to blog about this obviously pressing issue. Instead I keep blogging about issues interesting to people inside the industry, which points to another realization that media pundits are missing the point… but that is, for this post, beside the point.

I’ve remarked about this persistent search in a previous post and on my Twitter on a couple of occasions, but I feel the need to write about it again because of a realization I had tonight.  I was at a Society of Professional Journalists Web workshop tonight given by Justin Thurman from Consolidated Publishing Co. He was walking us through some of the elements of the Anniston Star’s new Web site design. Usually these presentations raise more questions than they answer because finding the best way to bring newspaper publications to the Internet is so complex. This time however, there was one aspect of the operations that I felt gave insight into the greater schema, and that was the community calendar.

Focusing the online news media question on the simplest of functions, the calendar, reduced the noise and gave me a brief moment of clarity. Let me first explain what Justin said. On the new Web site design, he pointed to the calendar and said very casually that it is given prominence on the homepage because they want members of the community to go there and tell the paper what’s going on as well as find out what other people in their community contributed. Immediately I thought about the repeated question on so many people’s minds: “Where can I get good news?” The Star is reshaping the news experience. Now, the community has to think about their site as where they can go to give news, too. They can even make news there by winning a contest or other interactions.

The reason I am so excited about this development is because I truly believe that human beings are meant to be producers of their life experience and not just consumers of it. As every part of society is becoming more global, more integrated and more mediated, we get to decide on new ways of doing things. If we make these decisions thoughtfully then we get wonderful outcomes like community calendars that can be more complete and reach more people than ever before. Of course, we have seen the outcomes of just letting changes happen to us… and those are not sites where people in 2009 go to get good news.