Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Navigating the CT Media Ecosphere
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/28/2009 - 11:32Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the future of journalism here in Connecticut. Back on September 14th, Colin McEnroe talked about the decline in local news coverage, and asked about whether or not local bloggers are filling the gap. Then, on September 22nd, Tom Brokaw spoke about the Future of Journalism at Yale. Two days later, Where We Live ran a segment on Hyperlocal journalism, which was followed by a panel, “Hyperlocal: News In My Back Yard." sponsored by PRSA-CT.
These discussions have become more common and fairly predictable. No, bloggers haven’t filled in the gaps. Some will say that they aren’t even journalists, and the discussion will turn towards how journalists can make a living these days.
I do agree that bloggers have not done enough to fill the gap left by the decline of traditional news organization and I have a few suggestions for bloggers interested in this. First, for the time being forget about whether some representative of the waning wing of the fourth estate considers you a compatriot. Get out and cover the news. Cover the stuff that others aren’t covering. Go to local school board meetings and provide information that doesn’t show up in your local papers and that you can’t get simply by watching the recordings of the meetings on your local government access channel.
Beyond that, go out and get some training in journalism. I strongly recommend courses that the Investigative Reporters and Editors provide. In their commitment to investigative reporting, they welcome bloggers to their organization and their classes. While you’re at it be sure to take the online course Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Online Publishers at NewsU developed by the Media Bloggers Association, the Citizen Media Law Project and the Center for Citizen Media. It is a free online course that I believe everyone doing online media should take. Then, get out and collaborate with other news organizations. I am fortunate that various traditional news outlets pick up and carry some of my blog posts.
The legal issues are important for bloggers and citizen journalists. Recently, a fellow blogger in North Dakota received his first subpoena to turn over information that he considers protected under North Dakota’s shield laws. It illustrates why the NewsU course is so important and why the question about who is a journalist is so important.
I made a comment on Where We Live about volunteer and paid journalists. I believe it is useful to look at journalists in a manner similar to how we look at firemen. Large cities have fire departments staffed by professional firemen. Smaller cities will have fire departments with professional firemen, which are supplemented by volunteer firemen. Small towns have volunteer fire departments where professionals only arrive if there is something really big going on. Yet even with that, the volunteer firemen often receive great training. We should be looking at this model for news organizations.
The issue of how journalists get paid is very significant. A recent article in Editor and Publisher reports that journalists are losing jobs at three times the rate of other workers. There has been recent talk about what can be done to address this, including President Obama expressing concern about the future of journalism. At the PRSA panel, I mentioned Spot Us which is a great organization to raise money to fund investigative reporting.
Yet there are other important issues that need to be considered in the future of journalism that too often get overlooked. Recently, I received an email from the Waterbury Republican American. This is not a paper that I typically consider leading the way on journalistic reforms. However, a note at the bottom of the email caught my attention. It urged readers with questions, comments or wanting to advertise to contact Kevin Johnson, Online Sales Manager.
I was curious about how many papers have ‘online sales managers’ and what sort of experiences Mr. Johnson had had to make him a successful online sales manager. It seems like too many news organizations simply take their print sales managers and ask them to sell online ads as well, without really understanding the differences between print and online advertising. Indeed, there is little about the Republican American site that would make you think they have made any great progress with online advertising, with the exception of the peel away ad for their dining guide.
The peel away ad and the dining guide are good examples of what can be done to improve online advertising by local papers. I spoke with Mr. Johnson who acknowledged that he had grown up in the world of print advertising, but has spent considerable time learning about online advertising. When he came to the Republican American, he came in as the Online Sales Manager, and besides spending time finding advertising he spends a lot of time mentoring print sales managers so that they can be more effective in selling online advertising. It seems to have worked since the Waterbury Republican American has had a substantial and impressive growth in online advertising revenues.
It is not only sales people and advertisers that are having difficulty connecting in this new media ecosphere. As more and more people leave traditional news organizations, it becomes harder for public information officers, communications directors, public relations staff and others to find the right people to pick up their media advisories and press releases and write about them. To address this problem, I’ve created CTNewsWire. This is a Google Group where local and state officials, candidates, agencies and other organizations can send press releases and media advisories about things of importance in Connecticut to bloggers, citizen journalists, and anyone else who wants to subscribe to Connecticut related releases. The list has been going for several months and continues to grow.
The media ecosphere around Connecticut and around the world is changing. There are lots of great opportunities to sit around and discuss these changes. However, here in Connecticut we are seeing some interesting efforts to move beyond the discussions and actually take action on ways that we can keep the media ecosphere vibrant in our state. If you’re a blogger, I hope you spend more time covering local events, and perhaps get some training in reporting and join the CTNewsWire. If you’re an advertiser, I hope you press the local news organizations to provide better and more innovative advertising opportunities, and if you are a newsmaker, I hope you find ways, like the CTNewsWire to reach out to some of the new players in the Connecticut media ecosphere.
The Cider Chronicles
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/25/2009 - 15:02Last year, we bought eleven gallons of cider which we made into hard cider. We have now started our second year of making hard cider, and I thought it would be useful to recap where we are with the process.
Of the cider we made in 2008, we still have about a quarter of it. Mostly, these are the sample bottles that I will check to see how well they came up after sitting around for a year and after I’ve had more of a chance to experiment with different approaches. We probably used about half of it ourselves, either for drinks with dinner, or sometimes in cooking. The other half we gave away. Often this would come in the form of bringing cider to a party, and we’d have some of the cider at the party.
My current estimate is that it costs us about $2 for the ingredients for a large bottle of cider, and another $2 for the bottle itself. However, for the bottles we use ourselves, as well as some of the bottles we bring to parties or other events, we reuse the bottles. The small bottles probably cost a dollar each for the ingredients and a dollar each for the bottle.
Our first batch was a five gallon batch. We used champagne yeast and started the fermentation on Oct. 25th. During the fall and winter months, we keep our house on the cool side, and we didn’t rack off the cider to its second fermentation until November 18th. The yeast had pretty well used up all of the sugar and the second fermentation ended up being mostly a few days of the yeast settling out.
The first batch ended up still, dry and a clear pale yellow. It was quite good, but I think I like sparkling hard cider better. When we bottled the first batch, we added one twelfth fresh cider to provide a little sugar for the yeast to use to make carbon dioxide in the bottles. I decided to do this instead of adding sugar in an effort to keep the cider a little more pure. One twelfth fresh cider was way too much and the fizzy version of the first batch was way too fizzy. We still have a few bottles of fizzy batch one, and it will be interesting to see if it still as fizzy.
We started our second batch for the 2008 year on November 22nd. This time, we used a Belgium Lambic yeast. We started off with six gallons and let it ferment for twenty two days. With the cool temperature of our house, there was still a bit of sugar in the cider at this point. Since we were racking from a six gallon carboy to a five gallon carboy, we bottled off several bottles after the first fermentation. It turned out to be a much sweeter fizzy hard cider with a much fruitier flavor. It also ended up being a bit more cloudy.
I don’t have notes about how much longer we let the second batch go through a second fermentation, but it remains slightly cloudy, but with a nice fizz and taste.
On to 2009: On September 13th, we purchased another six gallons of cider. Unfortunately, the brew store where we like to get our yeast was closed, so we didn’t add the yeast until the 14th. This time we used a Belgian Trappist yeast. It has been warm since the 14th this cider fermented quickly. At one point, the foam was getting into the fermentation lock and we had to clean things out. Now, the fermentation has pretty much come to a stop. So, we will rack off some of the cider this afternoon and put the rest into a second fermentation. This time, we bottled about a gallon and a half after the first fermentation. We’ve added two cups of maple syrup to the cider for the second fermentation to boost the sugar content to make this a stronger hard cider. I’m hoping this will work well with the Trappist yeast. With that, I am starting to think about batch two for 2009. Anyone out there have thoughts or comments on other things to try?
“Hyperlocal: News In My Back Yard." - Liveblog
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/24/2009 - 11:55
Liveblogging Tom Brokaw at Yale
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/22/2009 - 17:07Talking about the future of media.
School Board Finances
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/22/2009 - 11:49People concerned about good government would be well advised to attend their local board of education meetings on a regular basis. These meetings are where spending on one of the largest items in a town’s budget should be analyzed and discussed. While some people like to go to annual budget meetings and complain about having not seen details of school budgets and spending, those details are available every month at Board of Education meetings.
Monday evening, the Woodbridge Board of Education met for its monthly meeting. I arrived late because of a Government Access Television commission meeting. When I arrived, school officials were providing information about the results of last year’s Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMTs). Woodbridge continues to do very well with the CMTs and the school administration continues to study the results to find the best ways of continuing to improve the quality of education provided to the students.
There were many important issues brought up during the discussion. How important are the CMTs, really? Is the school teaching too much or too little to the test? What is being done to make sure that students who far exceed the CMTs’ standards get sufficient challenges and educational opportunities? Where do other aspects, such as emotional intelligence, or traditional subject that are not on the CMTs fit in? Underlying all of this is the question about what the people of Woodbridge are really looking for in the town’s educational system.
The new committees are taking shape after May’s municipal elections. Of particular interest was a discussion about the finance committee. Thomas J. Handler has been selected the new chair of this committee, and Carl Lindskog, the former chair has decided to leave the finance committee.
There was a lively discussion about the responsibilities of the finance committee and the board as a whole. Concern was expressed that Mr. Handler is not as experienced in finance issues as Mr. Lindskog. However, board members believe it is more important to have a strong facilitator, like Mr. Handler that will involve all the members of the board as chair instead of a person with a strong finance background that may not be as effective in getting all the board members involved in their responsibilities to oversee the financial functioning of the school district.
Before I moved to Woodbridge, my father-in-law, a retired U.S. Treasury Agent, took part in a commission investigating issues with Amity High School. While I do not recall the details of the case, my recollection is that a major compounding factor was the failure of the Amity Board of Education at the time to properly review the monthly finances of the school. I do not want to see something similar happen with the Woodbridge Board of Education.
Currently, I do not expect something like this to happen. During the meeting many good probing questions were asked, including quite a few by the newly elected board member Steven J. Fleischman. Unfortunately, he appeared to be the only Republican member of the school board taking his job seriously. David Barkin left the meeting prior to the discussion of the financial reports, and the other two Republicans, Mark T. Livesay and Carl Lindskog not only failed to ask any questions or join in the discussion of the reports, but they abstained from voting on all three reports.
Perhaps they are taking their lead from the highest elected Republican official in our state, Gov. Rell who fails to take leadership or responsibility in addressing our states financial issues. Whatever the cause, they are not serving the people of Woodbridge well in their peevishness on issues of finance that the whole Board of Education needs to address.
