Through the referrers, I just found the video presentation for one of the Knight News Challenge innovation teams, this one dear to my heart: It pushes networked journalism. The audio dies after the first four minutes but those first minutes are a powerful argument for collaboration.
Month: October 2007
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Fox fights free speech
Incredible. Fox goes after John McCain’s campaign to cease and desist use of a clip from the last debate that has the Fox logo on it.
It would be shocking enough for Fox to go after a citizen who put this online — and we should all fight for that citizen’s right to do so. It’s all the more shocking that Fox is going after a presidential candidate. It’s triply shocking that Fox is going after Republican McCain.
This precisely why we have been fighting for the networks to assure that they would make debate footage available to all of us. When I spoke with FoxNews about their policy in May, they said they would abide by fair comment and use. Well, as Stanford’s Lawrence Lessig has pointed out often, this is the problem with fair use: you can argue about it (and have to hire attorneys to do so).
McCain, to his credit, is telling Fox to shove it.
But one way to solve this is for all the candidates to pledge that they will not appear on any network’s debate unless that network frees the footage for all candidates and citizens. It is, after all, our election.
The AP reports:
In the ad, McCain is shown at the debate saying: “A few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum.”
“Now my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,” he says. “I was tied up at the time.” It was a referance to the 5 1/2 years McCain spent in a North Vietnamese prison.
The Fox News logo is in the corner of the ad.
But Fox News bars candidates from using debate clips in ads, and officials there sent a cease and desist letter to McCain. McCain rejected the request, arguing that he is within the law’s “fair use” rights to use an 18-second clip of a 90-minute debate.
Here’s the commercial. Take that, Fox:
(Had the wrong commercial up before; corrected now.)
(Crossposted from Prezvid, where there’s lots of interesting stuff lately.) -
Hey, kids, let’s gather some data
Among the tools for networked journalism I’m wishing for is a simple one for creating collaborative data bases.
When the Brian Lehrer Show mobilized the people formerly known as its audience to find out the prices of groceries across New York, they entered their findings in blog comments, which were laboriously compiled by hand. How much better it would be if the show had a simple data tool — as simple as blogs and wikis — to set up the basic fields their reporters could have used to report back. It would also be wonderful if that data could then be searched; if calculations could be run against it (give me the mean, the average); if it could visualized in charts; and if it could be exported for mashups (e.g., plotting it on Google Maps).
I don’t know whether this is it. But looking at my referrers this morning, I saw that someone N Levels, a startup, had created a form to gather data I asked for earlier: a collaborative data base of wi-fi speeds and prices in hotels. Here’s a description of N Levels that others of you will understand better than I.
The goal of N Levels is to enable users to create their own “information networks” that overlay and complement today’s web page and hyperlink structure. By information network, we mean a set of objects that are connected by relationships, forming a directed graph.
An object is a collection of properties which represents “something” – it could be a physical entity, animal, person, concept, idea, or absolutely anything. A relationship is a label that defines how two objects are related to each other – for example parent-child, location, containment, etc. An object and its possible relationships is defined by its schema, or “object type”. By having well-defined schema, it becomes easy for humans and software to traverse, consume, and extend an information network.
I was talking about such tools for collaborative journalism I wish someone would build with Clay Shirky when he came to talk and share his wisdom with my entrepreneurial journalism class. Clay’s students could do it and we’re talking about that.
Here’s another one I want: When a reporter, pro or am, uses a camera phone to take a picture — or, for that matter, to upload text, video, audio, anything — wouldn’t it be wonderful to attach the data the device knows: time and date, of course, and also GPS. This then allows gangs of reporters to submit information that can be plotted on maps and timelines and then associated with other data. See this Dutch experiment in which reporters were given mobile phones that fed through a server that did some of this.
And, of course, once news and data is in such a system, it can also be retrieved by location. See Socialight’s brand new service in London: Text 88811 and your
GPSphone will give you nearby establishments and also fellow users’ notes.(And that reminds me of my lunchtime conversation yesterday with Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham about the big trends we’re all watching. One of them is the tying of web to real things and places. Fred took a picture of me on his phone and thanks to Dave Winer’s programming sent it to Flickr and onto Twitter. I said that photo would be so much richer if it had the GPS attached and then folks could see where we were eating and eventually who’s nearby. But I digress.)
What other tools of networked journalism do you wish for?
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In the wings
I like this shot from the Networked Journalism Summit. More shots here .
njs009.jpg
Originally uploaded by CUNY Graduate School of Journalism -
Leaving the union
Roy Greenslade, a fixture of British journalism — former newspaper editor, now journalism professor and newspaper columnist and blogger — writes a powerful post today submitting his resignation to the National Union of Journalists there. Posts by Shane Richmond of the Telegraph and me appear to have been the last two straws. Roy writes:
. . . I still believe journalistic skills are essential. I also believe that there is a future for professional journalists – people employed by media outlets whose daily job involves them in reporting and transmitting text, photographic and video content. But I also recognise that the so-called profession of journalism has to adapt to vastly changed circumstances. In effect, every citizen is now a journalist.
Richmond rightly points to the NUJ’s underlying assumption that the net is a threat to journalism when, of course, it is much more a threat to the union itself. Why? Because the union, as with the print unions of old, cannot possibly adapt to meet the revolutionary demands of a new technology.
There is a difference, of course. The skills of compositors and linotype operators were eradicated by computer setting and on-screen composition. Journalistic skills are not entirely wiped out in an online world, but they are eroded and, most importantly, they cannot be confined any longer to an exclusive élite group. Secondly, the union’s internal demarcations – such as reporter-photographer, reporter-sub, reporter-camera operator – are now utterly irrelevant. All of us must be multi-media journos from now on.
Then we come to the preservation of jobs, which has been the union’s 100-year raison d’être. I cannot, in conscience, go on supporting this crucial plank of NUJ policy when it is so obvious that online media outlets will require fewer staff. We are surely moving towards a situation in which relatively small “core” staffs will process material from freelances and/or citizen journalists, bloggers, whatever (and there are many who think this business of “processing” will itself gradually disappear too in an era of what we might call an unmediated media).
But that’s only part of the problem. It is also clear that media outlets will never generate the kind of income enjoyed by printed newspapers: circulation revenue will vanish and advertising revenue will be much smaller than today. There just won’t be the money to afford a large staff. . . .
Holding these views, which are completely divergent from the union’s current policies, means that I should resign from the NUJ. After a membership stretching back 42 years, this is a painful decision. But I think it would be hypocritical to remain inside when I am now so opposed to the union’s central aims.
I do believe, most sincerely, that journalism matters. I also think the act of journalism matters. But the brave new world opened up by the internet makes protectionist organised labour on the lines of the NUJ outdated.
: In the interest of balance, here is a link to a piece Donnacha DeLong of the NUJ wrote as the union’s multimedia commission commenced the survey that resulted in the report that sparked this reaction. Snippet:
Recent technological advances are changing the landscape of the media. This has been predicted for many years, but the past year has seen technological convergence finally take root in all parts of the media in the UK and Ireland. Video on local newspaper websites, broadcasters blogging, press officers with cameras, magazine podcasts.
These developments present huge challenges for the NUJ. The union is separated into sectors for broadcasting, newspapers and agencies, magazines and books, PR, freelance and new media – divisions that are increasingly uncertain and may soon be obsolete. The union needs to change – but how much, and in what ways? . . .
The question is – have the industrial divisions of the union been an obstacle to communication in the union? Journalists in different disciplines have often had a tendency to focus exclusively on things in their own disciplines and ignore what’s happening elsewhere. The NUJ’s structures may only have institutionalised these tendencies. The NUJ is often criticised for resisting technological advances – portrayed unfairly as Luddites by employers who are unwilling to provide adequate training or decent pay. The existence of the union’s New Media Industrial Council shows that, on the contrary, the union is engaged with the new technology sector. . . .
: LATER: Neil McIntosh joins in.
: LATER: Adrian Monck pipes in.