Archive - 2008
July 2nd
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/02/2008 - 07:39
July 1st
More on Xenia
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 07/01/2008 - 13:59Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. As the month of July starts, I worry about what and how much I’ll write. I’ll be on vacation. Will I manage to keep my blog up to date during that time? What will happen to my traffic?
I imagine that I’ll have some posts, pictures of Fiona playing in the ocean, or perhaps simply of the waves crashing. Yet I won’t be interacting substantially on the Internet and that will take a hit on the materials I have to work with.
Yesterday, I wrote about confronting the blank page, and my friend Lars pointed me to a couple of articles in the Financial Times of London. One article was about Bloggers bringing a new reality for politicians, where politicians need to be careful about honestly presenting who they are, lest an unscripted moment derail them. Yet perhaps this isn’t a new reality for politicians. Perhaps this is returning us, back to the old reality for politics. We need politicians that are going to be real, authentic, not only when they are in front of a camera, but are authentically presenting their views all the time.
The other article was about one-time online outsiders going mainstream at Personal Democracy Forum. This reflects something I’ve written about from time to time here, and one of my big concerns. As the one-time outsiders become insiders, will they continue to talk with those on the outside? Will they build bridges where bridges have been missing? In a phrase, will they practice the ‘xenia’ that was talked about at ‘Sharing the News’?
It turns out that this lack of xenia is not limited to the realm of journalism or politics. Today, I read a blogpost entitled Cliques: They’re What’s Wrong With the Christian Blogosphere. It has spawned quite an interesting discussion there. Perhaps it is time to queue up Dar Williams “Christians and the Pagans”.
June 30th
The end of the first half of 2008
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 06/30/2008 - 20:51I stare at the blank page. I’ve put up a blog post every day for the first half of this year. Some days have been harder than others, and today seems particularly hard, especially after the two posts yesterday.
In politics, my mailbox is getting flooded with the end of quarter fundraising appeals. In technology, I’m looking for a chance to explore several sites in my queue. I have been exploring RocketOn for a while, and will write up something about that sometime. I’m also hoping to update this site to a newer version of Drupal so I can play more with integrating other social media sites.
I glance at Twitter, Plurk and Friend Feed looking for inspiration. I was glad to see a few old friends show up on Twitter today.
June 29th
Lightning hits Transformer in Harwinton
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 06/29/2008 - 19:51Sunday afternoon, I drove up to a graduation party for Avery Doninger, the young blogger who was disciplined for her criticism of the school administration at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, CT. On the drive up, my daughter and I saw lightning hit a transformer, and we captured various parts of this trip with pictures, videos and audio messages from my cellphone.
Leaving from Woodbridge, it was a sunny, pleasant day. We drove up Route 8. After passing Waterbury, we saw large storm clouds gathering in the west. I was struck by how picturesque they were, so I took two photographs.
I also recorded this message on Utterz:
I noted the ominous feeling of the coming storm, without knowing what I was really about to encounter.
As we approached the Harwinton exit, the rain started coming down, hard. After I left the highway, I found an opportunity to put the cellphone on the dashboard and get a brief video of driving through the rain. By then, the rain had slowed down a little, but it was still substantial.
We were driving along Route 4, almost in Burlington when I started seeing lightning. I wondered if I could find a good way to set up the cellphone to capture some of the lightning. All of a sudden, in my rear view mirror, I saw lightning strike a telephone pole. I pulled into the next parking lot and prepared to take another video with my cellphone. Just as I started taking my video, the transformer exploded and the power lines came crashing down, almost hitting the car we were in.
I called 911 to report the explosion and the small fire the downed power lines had started. Then I drove down the road across the street from the downed power lines. I hopped out of the car and took this picture of the smoldering grass and the downed lines.
Soon the emergency crews showed up.
I recorded a quick commentary:
I also posted a quick update via Twitterfone. Twitterfone transcribed the voice and sent it on to Twitter which in turn sent it to Facebook and FriendFeed. At this point, I continued on to the party.
It was a good party, but we had to leave early for Fiona’s Blog Talk Radio show. Needless to say, we talked a bit about the party and the transformer explosion on the show.
On the way home, I posted one final comment via Utterz:
Mobile post sent by ahynes1 using Utterz. Replies. mp3
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.
