Conferences
Live Blogging the SEEC hearing on the Citizen’s Election Program
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 10:28Today, the Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC), is holding hearings about the Citizen’s election program, what worked, what didn’t and what can be done to improve the program. The hearing started with comments about the dust settling and a chance to look back at a very successful first run of the program.
The first person to testify was Speaker-Elect Chris Donovan. He spoke about how well the program worked and his appreciation that the program brought campaigning back to the fun days that reminded him of his first campaign, with much greater emphasis on going around talking with voters.
Speaker-Elect Donovan was followed by State Representative Andrew Fleischmann. Rep Fleischmann made similar comments about how well the program has worked. He also spoke about how good it was to be able to talk with voters, and tell potential donors that he only needed $5 dollars, because he had already raised enough money, and just needed more supporters. He did suggest that candidates should be allowed to continue fundraising, after they raised their requirements and received their grants, with money going to the help fund the Citizen’s Election Program.
#nanowrimo The Week Ahead and The Week Behind
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/08/2008 - 13:11Last week was a difficult week for me to write. I spent Tuesday electioneering and then going down to the NPR Studios in Washington to blog about the election results. Since then, I’ve been trying to catch up on my sleep, fight a cold, and try to make sense of the week that was.
This coming week is going to be equally challenging. I have a tentative client visit on Monday, some personal issues to deal with on Tuesday, and some important blogging events the rest of the week.
On Wednesday, at 10 AM, in front of the New Haven City Hall at 165 Church Street, Barb and Robin Levine-Ritterman of New Haven, who were plaintiffs in the Kerrigan case will be applying for a marriage license. Love Makes a Family is encouraging people to join in the celebrations on this historic day.
Then, at 2:30 in the evening, there will be oral arguments in Doninger v. Niehoff et al on a motion for a summary judgment. It should be interesting to hear the arguments in light of emails that have been disclosed as part of Freedom of Information Requests, which the Plaintiffs claim demonstrate that one of the defendants lied on the stand.
As a side note, the link to the document listed above is only available to people who have PACER accounts. Pages accessed this way are charged $.08 per page. I include this link and a comment about it because, I believe that as part of open government, which I hope the new administration will be bringing, we should do away with fees like those on Pacer and make information about our government more readily available.
On Thursday, there will be a conference at Central Connecticut State University on Journalism-- Where We Are; Where We’re Going. Speakers include several friends from online media, and I hope to make it up to the conference.
Friday, I will be speaking in Second Life about the relationship between Second Life and other online media. Then on Saturday, the Investigative Reports and Editors will be running a workshop at Southern Connecticut State University entitled Watchdog Workshop which will combine elements of two different workshops. The IRE is a great organization and I hope to be able to attend. Unfortunately, I only heard about the workshop after online registration had closed so I am not clear if I will be able to attend.
As with last week, the coming week doesn’t leave a lot of time for novel writing. On top of that, my initial idea for my novel just wasn’t coming together. It was too close to a memoir, and too far from being a novel. I didn’t find the experience engaging, so I abandoned it. I’ve started off on a new track, but I’m several days behind now and the writing is hard. We shall see if I can catch up during a busy schedule.
Election Night Updates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 22:03It is 8:44 and I’m down in Washington, waiting to hear some news from Connecticut. Several friends promised to Tweet me when there were election results, but I haven’t received any tweets. The Secretary of State’s Site doesn’t have any information yet. News 12 has some good information that Kim called me with and The Hartford Courant has some good initial results. They’ve called the 1st CD for Larson and the 3rd CD for DeLauro.
The 2nd CD is showing incumbent Joe Courtney leading Sean Sullivan at 64 to 32 with only 8% in. The fifth CD is showing Chris Murphy leading David Cappiello 52 to 46 with only 5% in. The most interesting race is the 4th CD, where with 16% in, challenger Jim Himes is upsetting Congressman Chris Shays 63 -36. However, that is only with the large cities reporting.
In the State Senate races, there aren’t a lot of results yet, but a couple interesting developments. The 22nd State Senate Race with 19% in has Anthony Musto taking back Bill Finch’s old seat from Robert Russo 66-34. Even more striking is with 17% of the votes counted, Democrat Mark Diamond is leading Republican Scott Franz in the 36th State Senate District. This is a district that had been held by Republican State Senator Bill Nickerson for ages. There had been some in fighting between Stamford and Greenwich Democrats about who should be the candidate and Mark Diamond did not qualify for public funding. It is worth noting, however, that the only districts reporting are from Stamford where Mr. Diamond lives, and none of the Greenwich Districts where Mr. Franz and Mr. Nickerson live have reported.
Update: News 12 is reporting "Voters at Reed Elementary School in Bridgeport were told by a poll worker that they could not vote unless they had ID".
Republican Registrar of Voters, who filed a complaint against ACORN "says he will try to get to the bottom of why some voters were misinformed."
#DPAC - A Narrative
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/28/2008 - 08:53I wandered through the caverns of Grand Central Station after walking the canyons of New York City. I’ve seen a constant stream of billboard and people. I have engaged with none, and as the train leaves the station, soon all that will be left will be a blur of them. Perhaps it provides a good framework for understanding the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference I have attended today.
The first session was about simplifying social media for agencies and publishers. Like food that is too highly refined, it felt like any nutritional value had been simplified out of the presentation. The woman speaking seemed to be selling her platform for hosted white label social media sites. People asked their questions about to how make sufficient revenues and how to quantify the results. The discussion came and left like the constant stream of people on the street.
The second speaker was Len Lauer, Executive Vice President of Qualcomm. He spoke about Qualcomm’s vision of the future; WiMax, GSM, Fourth Generation communications and the role of chips in all of this. He spoke about the convergence of computers, cellphones and consumer electronics. He described items available in Japan that should become available in the states in twelve to eighteen months.
He described the embedded chips that would handle a multitude of communications protocols, the goal of low powered chips and moving from TFT/LCD based screens that draw a lot of energy to new reflective screens using significantly less energy. He spoke of competing with Intel and various acquisitions Qualcomm has made.
I am not a Citizen Journalist
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 06/29/2008 - 09:53Lowell, MA – Saturday, the New England News Forum convened a gathering of professional journalists, journalist educators, bloggers, citizen journalists, and others interested in the future of journalism to discuss ‘Sharing the News’. The most important thing I learned from this gathering is that I am not a Citizen Journalist.
There were many ways in which the phrase or idea of Citizen Journalism was challenged. Some wanted to see it broadened. Why ‘Citizen’? What about people who are not citizens? Do not people visiting from other countries also have a say? Should we instead use the word ‘Resident’, instead? Yet others spoke about journalism as a civic duty, similar to being called to serve on a jury. From their perspective Citizen Journalism has everything to do with citizenship. Everyone is likely at one point or another to report about what they have seen in a journalistic manner, and people need to understand that and how best to do it.
The word journalism received even more challenges. Some people recognized that not everyone who writes something online, even if they are writing in a journalistic style, even if they are writing for an organization that provides news created by professional journalists, such as people that participate in CNN’s iReports project, consider themselves journalists. This is compounded by the issue that many journalism professionals seem to think that if you don’t have a journalism degree, aren’t a member of a professional journalism guild, and aren’t getting paid for what you do, then you aren’t a journalist.
Various other names were presented, such as ‘resident correspondent’, which seems to fit much more nicely, especially for those resident correspondents that are corresponding with a traditional news organization.
Doug McGill led a fascinating discussion about discussion about the ‘Journalism in a Day’ workshops that he has been leading. One of the ideas that he presented is that it is unethical to write “I went to a meeting” type reports, listing out what happened in chronological order and expecting the readers to make sense out of it. I’m not sure that I agree with that. There are times that what is needed is simply for someone to document what happened, without trying to make sense out of it or present it in an easy to read, coherent story.
