Blogs
The Democratic Message
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/16/2004 - 07:22(Originally published in Greater Democracy)
Yesterday evening, several of us who write for the Greater Democracy blog received an email from Elissa Bishop-Becker saying:
“On C-Span now is a live program on the Digital Future--part of a series from the Library of Congress. David Weinberger is one of the panelists and you can email questions.”
The email turned out to be a good illustration of what David was talking about.
For those of you that don’t know David, he’s this slightly goofy guy with a weblog that I met through the Dean campaign. For those of you that do know him, he is a brilliant speaker, a Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Institute for Internet & Society, and co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto.
In his comments at the Library of Congress, he spoke about the categorization of information and how the Internet is changing all of that. He spoke about the importance of personal connections, trust, friendship, and the sharing of information.
As I listened to him, a lot of thoughts gelled in my mind.
Strengthen the Good
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/15/2004 - 09:31A while ago, I stumbed across Strengthen the Good, 'Using the power of weblogs for open-source charity. Don't just fight', which I posted about here a while ago.
Today, the New York Times has an article about it.
I was interested to find that it was set up by Alan Nelson of Command Post.
Saturday Morning
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/13/2004 - 10:47Saturday morning, 8:20, sitting on a train into New York City. It snowed last night and the ground around our house is covered with melting festive joy. Sitting at home is my email box. Last night, when I went to bed, it had over 500 unread emails. I don’t even know how many it has now.
The email box started filling up while I was in Washington for a workshop on changing media for a better world. It was a wonderful experience and I’ve written a little bit about that here, and here.
The workshop fit very well with some of my recent thinking and activities around ’Investigative Blogging’. Investigative Blogging is probably a misnomer. It was one of the first names we came up with during our brainstorming, and we are still trying to nail down exactly what it is we are trying to do and what we should name it. The bottom line is that we want to find ways to help news flow more easily. Investigative reporters need to find sources and funding for their research. Can bloggers help with this? They may even need alternative outlets for their stories in some cases. Can bloggers help there? Are there other ways people in the traditional media and the new media work together to achieve a higher level of journalistic integrity and excellence? That is what ‘Investigative Blogging’ is all about. If you have ideas about this, please let me know.
Be the Positive Media
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/13/2004 - 10:30(Originally posted as a comment on Omidyar Net)
While this group may primarily be a bunch of online people talking about what positive media or good news stories might be, I think it is important to take a step back from time to time, and following Gandhi’s advice, be the change we want to see in the world.
So, this discussion isn’t about what positive media might be. Instead, it is a positive news story about the gathering of a few dozen people brought together in large part through this network to find concrete ways of being the positive media we need to see in the world.
Changing Media for a Better World
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/11/2004 - 10:26Yesterday was the first day of the Changing Media for World Benefit workshop in Washington DC. I found out about this workshop through The Omidyar Network and it fit together very nicely with the work I am doing with ‘Investigative Blogging’.
When I first got to the conference, I checked my emails and found that between getting on the train in Stamford Tuesday and 1 PM, and checking my email at a coffee shop in Washington a 9 AM yesterday, 422 new emails had come in. I managed to whittle this down to about 250 waiting for the conference to start, and during breaks. However, this morning I’m back up to over 400, so if I don’t respond for a few days, that is why.
