My response to #motrinmoms
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 20:17The Twitterstorm dujour is about Motrin’s new online video. I’ve loosely transcribed the video:
Posting videos online seems to be in fashion.
I mean in theory it’s a great idea
There’s YouTube, Facebook, Blip.tv and who knows what else they’ve come up with
Supposedly it’s a real bonding experience
They say that customers you reach via social media tend to complain less than others
But what about you?
Do Ad execs that fail at social media cry more than those who don’t?
These things put a ton of strain on your agency.
Did I mention your reputation?
Sure, you’ll put up with the pain, because it’s a good kind of pain.
It’s for your client.
Plus it totally makes you look like you’re a hip agency.
So if you’re ads look tired and crazy, people will understand why.
Motrin, we feel your pain.
Investigative Reporters, Editors and Bloggers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 10:07Yesterday, I attended a workshop on Watchdog Journalism hosted by Southern Connecticut State University and the Connecticut Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In essence, it was two Investigative Reporters and Editors workshops combined into one full day of information.
The talk was very oriented towards people in traditional media, using buzzwords of the industry that I had times had to stop and figure out what they were saying. In addition, it was oriented towards people working in a newsroom, addressing issues about how to pitch stories to editors, how to make sure that the media companies’ legal department was properly informed of your investigations and so on.
Nonetheless, the conference was a treasure trove of ideas and hints on how to do better investigations and I would love to see more bloggers participate in workshops like this.
One idea that got me thinking was the admonition about getting organized and having a mix of quick hit stories together with stories that take longer to develop. I don’t know how I compare to other bloggers, but I’m not particularly organized. Almost all of my blog posts are ones that I write as a quick hit. Something happens, and I write a blog post. I might spend some time digging into the data for a story, doing some background work, and verifying information, but all of this is in a quick hit mode with the time between conceiving of a blog post and the time when the post is online being anywhere from less than an hour to less than a day.
In terms of doing watchdog journalism, you may need to spend a lot of time gathering data and information, watching trends develop and noting when something out of the ordinary happens. I have so many irons in the fire right now, I’m just not sure how I will incorporate this into my blogging, but the idea is intriguing and I’ll look for a way to get this done.
Another useful hint they had was that when you are working on a large investigative story, try to have a nugget of a small story inside of it so that if the large story collapses, you still have some sort of story to run with. Likewise, they spoke of the advantages of doing a “rolling investigation” where you come out with your first story, and then continue the investigation and do follow up afterwards.
This has the advantage of getting stories out the door, as opposed to working on a large story and then for some reason, never managing to get it finished. In addition, once your first installment is out, you may get more tips and you may change the course of what is happening. Follow-up stories add pressure for reform.
One of Kim’s top issues last year at Common Cause was the Citizens Elections Program. We have now gone through our first cycle with the program and there are plenty of interesting issues to follow up on. How did people spend their campaign funds? What parts of the program did not work as well as they could have? When the General Assembly gathers, how will the program affect the interaction between lobbyists and legislators?
Another interesting story to follow is ACORN. Now that the election is over, what has happened to the various cases brought against ACORN? What is happening to counter cases? Some of this will require longer term research and digging.
Another thing that was repeated frequently was that when you do longer term reports, write sections as you go. It captures the feelings of the moment better.
With this setting the tone for the day, we dug into how to do better investigative report. Neil Reisner of Florida International University spoke about making effective use of the Internet. This is something of particular interest to bloggers, and Neil’s comments started off provocatively suggesting that the Internet is Evil, that Google is the Devil and the Wikipedia is worst of all. They are too easy and the discourage reporters from being enterprising. We end up using the easiest source, one that shows up in Google, instead of the most informative source, and they may even lead us to false information.
He spoke about the invisible Internet, those parts of the internet that have not been indexed by search engines. He claimed that two thirds of the Internet is invisible to the search engines, and as an example, he noted websites that you can enter information into a form to gather information, but that the information from the results of the search is not something that gets indexed.
He provided a great list of resources faster than anyone could copy them down. Fortunately, however, he saved his presentations and will be making them available online. As I write this, the PowerPoint for his second presentation is up at betterwatchdog.wetpaint.com, and the PowerPoint to his first presentation should be up there soon.
He noted using sites like reporter.org to find resources and links to other journalism organizations and PowerReporting to find online sites for searching all kinds of data that doesn’t show up in Google.
He noted various government portals such as FedStats, First Gov, GPO’s list of databases, GAO Reports, and of particular interest, the GAO’s Official Guide to Special Investigators. I should find time to simply go out and explore these sites in much more detail. Neil noted that if you get yourself on the GPO mailing list and you’ll never be lonely again. He also talked about Census data and getting on their mailing list.
For international searches, he recommended the CIA’s Factbook, NationMaster which serves as an aggregator of various internation reports and the UN’s website.
One useful hint he mentioned was using White Pages ‘find neighbors’ search when gathering information for a story, as well as sites like Pipl for deeper searches about people online.
Later in the day, Neil taught another section on understanding the dataflow. Information online may start as a paper form filled out at a government office, or as data entered directly into a computer. It may have been aggregated and if you dig deep, you may be able to gain access to the underlying data and or documents. He encouraged people to always ask for the underlying data. He also told a great story about how he found one person by searching for tangential information. “You look for what you’re looking for, but you also look for what you’re not looking for.“
Tisha Thompson of WTTG, the Fox affiliate in Washington DC also taught two sessions. One was “The art of finding and cultivating sources” and the second was “The art of the Interview”. In many ways, the most important points that she spoke about were being respectful and honest. Treat people nicely, recognizing what they are going through and they will give you the information you are looking for. Don’t burn people. Don’t ambush them. Be careful of legal issues. Make sure you keep proper notes, yet also make sure you protect yourself and any informants you have, especially if they are a whistleblower.
It was great to hear her perspective on interviewing, about why the Palin and Couric interview was so good, why interviewers might need to appear dumb at times. She spoke about carefully orchestrating an interview, especially if it is a confrontational interview, and how some people will end up talking in the language of their profession and you have to dumb down what you’re saying and asking to get them to explain things in a way that people not in their profession will understand.
Other sessions included an attorney for the Freedom of Information Commission talking about how to get the information you need using FOI requests and complaints, a person from the Wall Street Journal talking about the importance of knowing how to use spreadsheets, database and statistical analysis packages, and Doug Haddix who is IRE’s current training director talking about how to make stories bullet proof.
It was an extremely valuable workshop which I’m glad I attended. Hopefully what I learned there will improve my blogging, and I’ll be able to get more interesting watchdog stories added to my blog going forward.
My Socialist Plan for the Auto Industry
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/15/2008 - 09:00(Originally published at Greater Democracy.)
Everyone is talking about ways to bail out the auto industry now, so I thought I would share my socialist plan.
First, I would not lend the automakers $50 billion, or $25 billion, or what they are currently asking for. It just sounds a little bit too much like the No Income, No Asset (NINA) loans, that are the current whipping boy in the housing crisis.
That said, I do not believe we should abandon the workers or the industry and we should come up with some solutions.
One of the complaints of the U.S. automakers is there larger healthcare and pension costs. So, the Government should simply take those over now. Provide every autoworker and retired autoworker the same healthcare policy that congress gets. This would most likely result in better coverage for workers in a program that is probably better run and more cost effective, and it would relieve the automakers of a major burden, giving them a chance to be more competitive.
Other companies and industries will scream, ‘No Fair!’ and ask that their employees get added to this national healthcare plan and the camel’s nose under the tent will lead to a national healthcare plan that is long over due. If, on the other hand, we allow the car companies to fail, all of the workers will end up out on unemployment and getting their healthcare, again at the expense of the government, but in less effective methods. Let’s just do it right, right now.
Next, the government should take over the pensions of the autoworkers. I’m not talking about the safety net of social security, which some people wanted tied to individual investors decisions in the stock market. With the Dow Jones Industrial Average now at 61% of its 52 week high, yeah, that looks like a good idea.
Nope, we need full pensions guarantied by the Government. Of course, like universal healthcare, we already have it. It is the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. This is the federal corporation that currently protects around 44 million Americans whose private pension plans failed. If we don’t do something about the automakers, their plans are likely to end up there, so why not move them there now, with a major infusion of capital from the government. Maybe all that bank stock that the government is buying can be given to the PBGC.
The final thing I would do is buy out the research departments of the big three. Years ago, Chrysler was bailed out by the government. Part of the argument was that Chrysler made vehicles crucial to our national security.
Well, if we want national security, we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We need to fund research that will move us towards energy independence and this is especially important in the transportation sector. If the government was to create an energy independency research agency built in part from researchers gleaned from the auto industry and then start ordering cars for the Federal Fleet based on this research, we could turn around the auto industry a lot more quickly than simply giving more loans to failing companies. For that matter, perhaps the Federal government could even give loans to the State governments so they could update their fleets with much more efficient vehicles.
Instead of a $50 billion loan, how about a larger order for plug-in hybrids or other vehicles that will help our efforts to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?
So, let’s think very carefully about who we are bailing out, the auto industry, the workers, or our country. This could be an opportunity to bail out our country with some real change.
Beyond Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 08:55Today, I will be speaking to a couple communications classes at The College of New Jersey entitled Beyond Second Life. The genesis of this talk was a discussion between myself and the professor teaching the class about the relationship between Second Life and other media. I spoke about my role as business editor for the Second Life News Network and the coverage there, and other places of the financial sector in Second Life, particularly the Second Life bank failures and the turmoil in the Second Life stock markets. The description of my talk said that I “will talk about the historical antecedents to Second Life, the relationship between Second Life and competing virtual worlds, and the relationship between Second Life and other online media that reports about and supplements Second Life. A particular focus will be placed on businesses operating within Second Life.”
I am not a big fan of PowerPoint presentations, so instead of creating a PowerPoint presentation to display in Second Life, we talked about different websites that would illustrate my points, together with actions within Second Life that would help illustrate my points.
I will also try to record the presentations using Fraps which is a great video capture tool for Second Life and other online games. Unfortunately, I could not get Fraps to capture my voice, and I wanted to have a third person view of the presentation for the video anyway, so I’ll log in with my wife’s computer and avatar to record the event from her perspective.
I’m still trying to work out the display of web pages in Second Life. I hope to follow the method described in this video, and am working out the details.
I intend to pause at the end of each section to encourage some discussion with the students. I’ll give the presentation twice, but the room is small, so we probably can’t have guests during my talk. However, if you’re interested, you could try IMing Yolanda Zimmer to see if there is room at either 7 AM SLT or 12:30 PM SLT.
CT Marriage Equality Day Random Notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/13/2008 - 10:02As we waited for the press conference to start after the final order had been signed making same sex marriages legal in Connecticut, a local television station interviewed a couple talking about their wedding plans. One of the women spoke about the overwhelming joy she felt about finally being able to get married. It struck me that with all of this talk about the defense of marriage, that I could think of no better way to defend marriage than to give more people a forum to talk about the joy that they have about being able to make a life long commitment to a person they love.
At the podium, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs adopted a phrase that has now become a key part of our political lexicon. “We said, Yes We Can to Marriage Equality,” he stated, and continued, “Yes, We Did.”
He also noted what has gone on in other states and talked about sending a message of hope and inspiration to people across our country that are committed to marriage equality. He noted that Connecticut has a long tradition of treating citizens fairly.
On the walk over to City Hall, one opponent shouted out something like, “Fags on Parade”. The only other opposition I heard was from a man who compared the allowing of same sex marriages in Connecticut to the introduction of the state sales tax back in 1991. I’m not sure I understand the relationship, but I suspect it was his hope that it would bring about such a backlash that we would see a change in political leadership. Somehow, I just don’t see that sort of reaction. Even if we do, we it means we’re still likely to have marriage equality for at least the next seventeen years.
The entrance to city hall was festooned with white balloons and long stem red roses. People passed out bubbles to blow for the folks getting their marriage licenses. Inside the clerk’s office, they still had the old marriage license application forms.
Outside, one woman was holding a sign saying, “Love is Love”. The media loved it and took many pictures. When asked about how she felt about the picture of her holding the sign being show across the country, she noted that she was heterosexual, but that she felt it was important for all people, whether straight or gay, to get out and support marriage equality.
It seemed as if there were efforts by various activists to keep the proceedings on schedule, the news conference at the court house, the application for the marriage license, the individual press availabilities, and so on. Yet the media and the crowds don’t always cooperated, and people would try to herd the crowds to the next location.
One piece of serendipity occurred when Barbara and Robin Levine-Ritterman emerged from the City Hall. It was at the moment that the clocks in New Haven chime ten o’clock and many commented on the bells serving double duty as wedding bells.
Slowly, the crowds dispersed. One person asked a friend, “All right, should we go back to work now?” Off to the side radio news reporters spoke into their microphones describing the festive scene as they talked about this important day.
