Archive - Dec 2008
December 21st
What Now for News in Connecticut
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/21/2008 - 13:20As the first snow of the year started coming down here in Connecticut, word slowly leaked out that the Journal Register Co. has shut sixteen of its weeklies in Connecticut and laid off twenty-one reporters and editors. These are different papers than the eleven weeklies and two dailies that the Journal Register had announced plans to close in January. All in all, over the course of a month, Connecticut could lose nearly thirty newspapers.
The reactions were fairly predictable. Some lamented the loss of local government coverage and the decrease in public accountability it would produce. Others suggested that the newspapers had long ago stopped providing adequate coverage of local government, that this was part of the reason for their demise, and there would be little change. Still others fretted about the loss of cheap material for wrapping fish or training puppies.
Some blamed the youth for not being more interested in the news. Others blamed the news organizations for not making their news more readily accessible where youth look for the news online. Many blamed the management of the Journal Record Co.
Some people did find bright spots, highlighting the work of CTNewsJunkie and the New Haven Independent as examples of where quality reporting still happens.
Perhaps, some have suggested, online citizen journalism can help take up the slack. I’ve often suggested this myself. However, we need to think very carefully about how this could happen.
Steve Collins has raised the concern about what happens to people that are not online, especially the elderly who are major subscribers to many of these papers. I’ve suggested that one solution is to get people to use community access television to read some of the news. Already, we have good government access broadcasts of various meetings in Woodbridge. Yet getting new community channels up and running is a lot of work, and this would be a large project.
Doug Hardy has commented about the loss of institutional memory. There are reporters who have covered events in Connecticut for many years and they bring a very important perspective of how the current events relate to a bigger picture. This is a big issue in my mind. Sure there may be some Web 2.0 type ways of gathering, storing and searching a little bit of this, but that is a big project in and of itself. Perhaps we need a Connecticut News Wiki. Yet even the best Wiki fails in searchability when compared with asking the person in the newsroom who knows where all the bodies are buried.
Yet there is a greater issue; how do you get citizen journalists to cover events that matter in a fair and informative manner? People write about what interests them. You may find some good coverage of Little League by parents of star pitchers, but what about getting someone to cover local selectmen meetings or the town committee meetings of various political parties?
Here, there is a chicken and egg problem. Unless someone is covering what is going on, others may not realize that there is something important going on in their backyards. If people don’t know what is going on they may not be inclined to produce try and cover events themselves. Even if they to get motivated, it may take a while before they get proficient in writing good articles.
It seems as if this is a place where two interesting groups can and should get involved. The New England News Forum has suggested getting journalism schools in New England to help jumpstart online citizen journalism. Central Connecticut State University and Southern Connecticut State University could play key roles. It would be great to see some conferences around the state on this.
Help Fill the Local News Gap: How to be an Effective Citizen Journalist
Other organizations like the Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists would be great additions to such an effort. The IRE provides great training for investigative reporters and some of their material would be a great addition such conferences and every journalist, whether they be a professional journalist or a citizen journalist should read and adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.
The other interesting group would be local good government groups. Organizations like Common Cause and The League of Women Voters as well as people energized by the 2008 Presidential campaigns could bring energy and an important focus on watching local and state government.
Would such efforts help the situation here in Connecticut? It’s better than nothing and I would love to work with anyone who wants to help bring together people to provide better citizen journalism. If people have better ideas, I’d love to hear them to and see if there are ways I could help in that area.
In the meantime, I’m going to try to have happy holidays, and keep up my own writing about events in Woodbridge, in Connecticut, and in the media ecosphere.
December 20th
Dear Aldon
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/20/2008 - 12:33Every so often, I like to look at the keywords that bring people to my site. Usually, there isn’t anything all that interesting, but the keywords yesterday seemed like people were asking for advice, so I figured I would write a Dear Aldon blog post, after the style of Dear Abby for some of the searches I’ve received.
The most obvious question was
Does Canon SD1000 support high capacity SD cards?
The answer is yes. I have an 8 gigabyte SDHC card in mine and it works very nicely. It allows me to record about an hour of video, and I’ve never run out of space for pictures or videos. However, if you use the Canon Hackers Development Kit, (CHDK), which allows you to do all kinds of neat extra things with the camera, there are a few complications. I run the CHDK modifications to my Canon SD1000, but I had to get an SDHC card reader for my PC and I can’t get the Canon to boot with the CHDK. Instead I have to enable it when I want to. Not a biggie. If it were important, I’d spend the time getting it to boot.
How to modify Motorola razr v3xx
When I wrote about installing CHDK on the Canon SD1000, I mentioned my desire to mod my Motorola Razr V3xx. Back in 2007 I wrote a blog post about using my Razr as a podcast client. I haven’t done that much since then, but it worked, and with some of my more recent mods, it works very nicely.
Subsequently, I have modded my Razr a little bit using P2Kcommander. It is a bit of work, and I never did write up a blog post about how I did it. Let me simply say, it is possible. It takes a little time to get the idea, but once you understand, it’s pretty easy and cool. I haven’t done any sophisticated mods, like creating a new skin for the Razr, but if you want to chat about it, drop me a note.
”net use” and IPv6
Now that I have IPv6 running nicely on my computer and some friends’ computers, I use net use to connect to various IPv6 based computers. I’ve run into two caveats. First, you cannot use an IPv6 address in the net use line. Instead, you should use a DNS address that maps to an IPv6 address. For example, if I wanted to do a net use of ipv6.google.com (not that it is possible), I would have to do net use * \\ipv6.google.com\sharename instead of net use * \\ 2001:4860:b002::68:\sharename The colons drive Net Use crazy. It works nicely between later Windows based machines. However, the second caveat is that I don’t have a patch to samba that supports IPv6, so I can’t do a net use to an IPv6 linux box with Samba. Some day. I’m having the same problem with MySQL, but I do use ssh between IPv6 machines a lot.
Drupal
I got a lot of different searches on drupal. Looking for issues like different theme, one view, theme seo customize primary link and banner and so on. I wrote a lot about Drupal years ago, mostly version 4. Too much to go into in a blog post, but feel free to contact me.
Strangely related to that, someone did a search on free range cat. I wrote about a gathering of Drupal developers years ago in terms of herding free range cats. Probably not what the person was looking for.
was there a person who brought 6 puppies in a dog pound in woodbridge ct in 2006
Umm, I don’t know. We moved here in 2007 and have never been to the pound. Other searcher were looking for dec 19 2008 woodbridge area snow. I don’t know if they were looking for Woodbridge, CT, or for a Woodbridge in some other state, but I had my Woodbridge CT Snow Cam up yesterday. Another search was for the woodbridge ct three year technology plan It is a work in progress. If you have kids at Beecher Road School, you should have received a great survey from the PTO. Please, fill it out. If you want to get more involved, please contact the school. It is still in the formative stage. I will note here, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, that every school district in Connecticut should be filling out such a plan and I would love it if more people got involved in their school’s technology plans and shared ideas.
what is quality journalism?
I’m sure that many people have lots of opinions on this. I’d say start with the Society of Professional Journalists and the Investigative Reporters and Editors as two good places to start. Another search was Stamford advocate Greenwich time. I don’t know if these two searches were related. Somehow, I suspect they weren’t.
Various People
People also came to my site looking for Brian Cohn; I worked with him many years ago, Atty Nick Paindiris; I know him through Democratic politics in Connecticut, Rev Lesley Hay; she was a priest at Christ Church Bethany and has moved to a church in Hamden, we stay in touch, Jim Amann; I don’t have much to say about him, Scott Hanley; I like it that he helps find pound puppies new homes, State Rep Scott Franz; I really don’t know much about him, but I thought he was elected to the State Senate and isn’t a State Rep.
bankruptcy and suicide
I don’t know who did this search or exactly what they were searching for. I believe that there is a correlation between bankruptcies and suicide, but I’ve only heard anecdotal information. However, I want to let anyone know who is searching on this, bankruptcy isn’t the end of the world. It can be painful. You can feel like a failure. Yet it is a chance to start over. True, starting over is very difficult, and unscrupulous companies try to lure bankrupt people into questionable deals, but it can also bring you back to things that matter, family, friends, neighbors and the simple things of life.
I hope that everyone finds what they are looking for this holiday season, or perhaps, something even better than they were looking for. Happy holidays everyone.
December 19th
Woodbridge CT Snow Cam - UStream Version
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 12/19/2008 - 13:39The snow has finally started here in Woodbridge, CT. I sent a message out on Twitter to see if people wanted a snow cam, and if so, what format.
@sheilamc7 suggested UStream, so here it is as an embedded stream (Hopefully):
@AlanGayandStr suggested veodia.com, and I may try that next.
Update:
After streaming for a while, I cleaned the window and adjusted the settings, so the video got a little better later in the day. It is now dark outside, so I've stopped streaming, although if it is snowing in the morning, I may try to restart the stream below.
Above the fold, I replaced the live stream with one of the videos that I captured.
Updated 2:
In the evening, I switched over to Fire Cam, using the Adobe Flash Media Encoder. Now that it is day time and snowing again outside, I've restarted Snow Cam.
Here is a clip from Fire Cam
December 18th
Bowling Again; Rebuilding Our Civic Infrastructure
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/18/2008 - 09:54In 2001, Robert Putnam published a seminal book on the decline of civic engagement. Entitled Bowling Alone, it traced the decline in participation in a wide range of community organizations, from voting and church attendance to bowling leagues. The election of Barack Obama with massive citizen involvement and the hope for more involvement during his administration may end up being viewed as a key turning point returning our country to greater civic engagement. However, it is useful to look at issues that may affect such involvement.
My own re-energized community involvement started with Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid. We held parties in our homes, met in local restaurants and traveled the state and beyond. Afterwards, Kim ran for State Representative and we started getting involved with the local political machinery. We were not always welcome.
Perhaps some of this is understandable. People who have been toiling away in various organizations when no one else seemed interested may be distrustful of new people with new ideas and new enthusiasm. They may be dubious that this new energy goes beyond one or two new people. After years of trying to bring in new people, they may be reluctant to reach out, yet again, for new activists.
Yet many that became involved in Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid have remained involved. They have played important roles in President-Elect Obama’s campaign. They have worked on other campaigns and run for office themselves.
Much of this can be attributed to the use of the social media tools on the Internet to help connect people. However, people have asked, can this ePolitics energy be transformed into good eGovernance? Will people that have been involved via the Internet in national campaigns become involved face to face on local issues? The Obama transition team is working hard to help facilitate this by naming the day before the inauguration, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2009, a National Day of Service.
Local organizations would be wise to actively reach out to Obama inspired volunteers. Yet I fear that the same reluctance that local political organizations showed to newly energized political activists after the 2004 election may happen with civic organizations this time.
I have run into a little bit of this myself as I have attempted to become involved in the technology planning committee in our school district and to encourage others to participate.
The State of Connecticut requires each school district to prepare three-year technology plans and every school district in the state should be embarked on that effort right now. It would seem as if all of the energy and knowledge about technology that people gathered from the 2008 elections could be used to move this process forward. Yet it is hard to find out how to get involved.
In the current process, last summer each superintendent was contacted by the Commissioner of Education about the new technology plans. There have been meetings in each of the Regional Education Service Centers to talk about the plan, and they were well attended. However, as best as I can tell, this has done little to increase community involvement or sharing of ideas between committees.
A key objective that is often talked about in education is whether or not standardized test scores are increasing. While this is a laudable goal, it is also a bit short sighted. Yes, higher scores on standardized tests are a good thing, but they are but one result of other factors. Independent of standardized test scores, we need to look at students’ abilities to innovate creatively and cooperatively. Technology could help in this area, but there are other important factors. One of the most important factors is the level of parental involvement. Discussions with parents about how technology can be used to facilitate education might even be more important than the technology itself.
So, what is your involvement in your school district? If you live in Connecticut, are you aware of the technology planning process going on right now? Are you aware of the school budgets being considered right now? Are you going to be involved in the National Day of Service? If so, what projects are you going to work on?
I do hope that we are at a turning point in civic engagement. I do hope that those who have been so involved for so long will welcome the newly engaged. I do hope that they will see this as a great time to reach out, yet again, to the broader community and help rebuild our civic infrastructure.
(Cross posted at Greater Democracy.)
December 17th
