Shield Laws
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 04/10/2007 - 08:23Last May, Connecticut passed a reporter’s shield law, and the law came into effect on October 1st. There are now over thirty states with shield laws in effect and Massachusetts is currently working on a shield law.
At the New England News Forum conference on Saturday, shield laws were a hot topic. The panel, “Does journalism--or blogging--merit a shield?” explored this is detail. Jeffrey Newman, a lawyer at Prince Lobel Glovsky and Tye has been leading the charge to bring shield laws to Massachusetts and moderated the session.
Even the Costa Ricans want universal broadband
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 04/10/2007 - 07:52Back in March, Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont addressed the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington, DC. I wrote about his talk briefly in a previous blog post. David Weinberger, Tom Evslin, Steve Smith and others have all written about the talk. It was a pretty geek audience and Gov. Douglas showed that he could keep up with the geeks.
At lunch at the New England News Forum conference, Gov. Douglas spoke to a crowd much more interested in the implications of his initiative to media and politics. Lynne Lupien live blogged some of his talk, and I want to add my own insights here.
Back in 2003 and early 2004, I followed around a previous Vermont Governor as he spoke about his vision for our country. My wife and I heard the stump speech so many times that we could recite it pretty well, ourselves. So, it was no surprise when I heard Gov. Douglas speak about the four doctors from Boston. They needed to be able to get back to their hospital within four hours of an emergency. They went up to Sugarbush to ski, only to find that there wasn’t cell phone coverage there. They said they could not ski there again, until that problem was fixed.
He told the story of a business in northeastern Vermont where there was no broadband access that was now being required by its suppliers to place its orders online. To these stories he added the public safety aspect, mentioning the story of a Brooklyn, NY man who froze to death when is car went off the road in the Adirondacks in an area where there was no cell phone coverage. He spoke of the ‘creative economy’, noting that Vermont has more authors per capita than any other state. Yet artists living in Vermont suffer from having to send images of their paintings to galleries over dialup connections.
For Vicki and John
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 21:23For all of you that know Vicki Cosgrove and haven’t heard, she and her husband are facing difficult times and prayers and financial support are sorely needed. Please read this diary on DailyKos, recommend it, pass it on to your friends and do what you can to help.
Beyond that, please think about lighting a candle for Vicki and John.
(Cross posted at Howard Empowered People)
Seeking clearer political thinking and speaking
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 20:03Back in February, I received an advanced copy of Jeffrey Feldman’s book, Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation (And Win Elections). I started reading it and really enjoyed it. I wanted to find the best time to sit down and write up my review.
In March, I wrote a blog post about how the Edwards family is dealing with Elizabeth’s cancer. The blog post went up a few hours before the news conference where they announced that Sen. Edwards was staying in the race, despite the return of Elizabeth’s cancer. I started off by talking about Feldman’s book.
It is a great book that I hope anyone interested in politics spends some time reading.
We would do well to spend more time reading speeches of former leaders. The first speech analyzed is George Washington’s first inaugural address. He spoke about being called by “the voice of my country”. Feldman talks about the “humble servant” frame, of great leaders responding to a call by the country and a recognition that they it takes much more than just a great leader to solve our country’s problems, it takes the strength of the American people.
Inviting the public into the newsroom
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 16:07On Saturday, April 7th, the New England News Forum held its first conference in Lowell Massachusetts. After registration, coffee and initial networking, the participants headed off to several different breakout sessions. The first session I attended was “Letting the Public into the newsroom: Joining, shaping the conversation.”
The panel was made up of Steve Fox, who is working with newassignment.net, Rory O’Connor and Mike LaBonte who are hosts on NewsTrust and Jon Greenberg of New Hampshire Public Radio.
I’ve been a volunteer host on NewsTrust for quite a while and have been doing some paid freelance programming for them, so I’m well acquainted with NewsTrust. I had a wonderful discussion with Jon about what NHPR is setting up for covering the New Hampshire primary during the networking prior to the session, and while I hadn’t met Steve Fox before, I’ve been following newassignment.net very closely. I’ve written about it on my blog, in particular about their planned collaboration with Huffington Post.
The session started off by going around the room and everyone introducing themselves. There were editors, producers, professors, and wonderfully wise group in the audience, the sort of audience that is a good reminder of why it is so important to invite the public into the newsroom.
During the introductions, Arnie Arnesen, of Political Chowder framed the discussion very nicely with the question, “How to raise the level of curiosity in our public discourse?” Jon Greenberg spoke to this a little in terms of touching on how news is relevant to the lives of the readers.
