Media
Media
The Future of the Newspaper, Part 2
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/20/2008 - 20:57
My blog post yesterday about The Future of the Newspaper has received a bunch of comments on blogs in several locations and I felt that it was important to follow up on them.
First, I want to make this clear that this is not intended as a criticism of Steve Collins. Before reading Rick Green’s interview with Steve, I didn’t know who he was. I suspect that while Steve and I may disagree with some of the particulars about what the effect that the closing of the Bristol Press might have, I suspect that we also agree on many aspects about the importance of journalism and what can be done to improve journalism. I especially applaud his work with The Tattoo and encourage people to check out his blog, bristolnews.blogspot.com.
One of the key differences that Steve and I have is about how quickly the vacuum will be filled should the Bristol Press cease operations. Bill Densmore, the director of the New England News Forum (NENF) posed the question about how NENF could “rally j-schools around New England to incubate local online news communities in Bristol and New Britain”.
With Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) in New Britain beginning to offer a major in journalism, there is the potential for a great center right in New Britain.
Meanwhile, David Cohn of Spot Us, has been talking about alternative ways of funding journalism projects. Spot.Us is centered in San Francisco and is an opportunity for direct funding of investigative reporting by the public. They have just completed funding The Return of the Hooverville: Car and Tent Cities on the Rise in San Francisco.
Spot.us is open source, which means that anyone can download it, modify it and run their own version. Geeks can check out the code here. David does not that the code needs further refinement before it is launched in other cities, which he is hoping to be able to do sometime in 2009. Could Spot.Us be used to fund an online replacement to the Bristol Press? Perhaps. Instead of focusing on investigative reports, it could perhaps also be used to fund a beat or other aspects of running a newspaper. Spot.Us might work well in collaboration with a project like the Online Journalism Project which Paul Bass runs.
Yet much of this is focused on how content can be created and the creators can be paid. Another issue is distribution. Steve notes that many of the Bristol Press’ readers are older and may not be online, or if they are online, may be limited in what they can do online. The Pew has found that only about 34% of people 65 or older are online, so Steve’s concern here is important.
However, I suspect that many of the older newspaper readers do have cable television and getting people to produce a public access show reading from an online news source might address a large portion of this issue. Today, in a completely unrelated discussion, I received an email from another person wanting to set up a public access television show in Fairfield County. Beyond that, I view some of this as a digital divide issue. If demise potential demise of a local newspaper could encourage people to address the digital divide, that would be another silver lining to the dark cloud.
Related to all of this are the efforts of the Journal Inquirer to better connect with other media sources online. As a result of this, I now have links to recent stories from the Journal Inquirer on my Connecticut and Politics pages. The two most recent article in my political section show on the Journal Inquirer pages. With that, I’ve been following articles in the Journal Inquirer more closely and found the story about Rell wanting her critics’ e-mails. It is a fascinating story that I would love to see get some legs and some discussion. Perhaps when I get a moment, I’ll write more about this.
Will the Bristol Press get shut down? Will online news rush to fill in the gap? Will people find ways of taking online news beyond the Internet to those that are offline? It’s hard to tell. Yet the way I see it, there are a lot of interesting possibilities and I look forward to seeing how they develop.
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Rate on NewsTrustThe Future of the Newspaper
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 19:38
The future of newspapers took on a new urgency in Connecticut when Editor and Published wrote about Two Connecticut Dailies Facing Shuttering if a Buyer isn’t Found. Those of us that follow media discussions at conference after conference may have grown a tad weary of the topic. Sure, there is a constant stream of stories about newspapers cutting back and dire predictions about the impact this will have on news coverage and our democracy, but the world continues to function. This, however, if something different, people warn me. Two newspapers may shut down completely.
I remain unimpressed. I remember when cities lost their morning or evening newspapers and continued to function. I remember when small towns lost their papers and everyone still seemed to know everything that was going on. No, the concern about the possible demise of local newspapers sounds an awful lot like the possible demise of banks or car manufacturers, and I expect that we’ll get through all of these events just fine.
Rick Green, of the Hartford Courant has an interview with Steve Collins, who is a reporter for one of the newspapers facing potential demise. Rick writes, “News blogs, which are popping up all over, aren't the answer, Collins said, because they can't possibly provide the breadth of a local paper.”
I appreciate Collins’ situation. He may be out of a job soon. Yet, I’m not sure that I agree that blogs can’t possible provide the breadth of a local paper. I’m not finding much in the local papers around here about the Woodbridge Board of Education meetings or the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee meetings. With the exception of the videotaping of the Board of Education meetings for the government channel, I don’t believe there is anyone besides me reporting on these meetings. As to finding news about local births or high school sports scores, I’d much rather read the blog post by a grandmother whose daughter has just delivered a new grandchild or the father who has just seen his daughter win a swim meet.
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The Tale of Three Superintendents
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 15:29
As I write this, I believe my seven year old daughter is sitting in the superintendent’s office explaining to him what she has said online. Those of you who have followed my coverage of the Doninger case might expect me to be irate. In fact, I am ecstatic. Let me explain.
When Avery Doninger was a junior at Lewis Mills High School, she was secretary of the student council. She worked hard to help organize a battle of the bands at her school and at one student council meeting was told that due to scheduling issues, the Jamfest would need to be rescheduled or moved to a different location. She, and some fellow students reached out to the community to encourage parents to contact the school administration and urge them to reconsider.
The school administration did not take kindly to being contacted by parents and confronted Avery and the other students, telling them that unless certain conditions were met, conditions that Avery did not believe were possible, Jamfest would be cancelled.
That evening at home, she wrote in her personal diary something to the effect, “Thanks to the douchebags at the central office, Jamfest is cancelled.” She went on to describe how all the calls from parents had pissed off people at the central office and she encouraged more parents to call.
The problem is that her personal diary was on Livejournal, a website where many people write there personal thoughts so their friends can see them. Some weeks later, the son of the superintendent found the diary entry and pointed it out to her mother. Her mother responded by forbidding Avery to run for re-election as class secretary. Nonetheless, Avery won the election as a write-in candidate, which the school refused to recognize.
Avery has since graduated and is spending this year as a volunteer for AmeriCorps. However, a lawsuit lingers. Avery’s mother did not believe that the school should punish children for things that they do at home. That should be the purview of the parents. Mrs. Doninger spoke with the school about appropriate punishments for using language that some find objectionable. Yet the school administration was intransigent.
Mrs. Doninger then filed a suit against the school for violating her daughter’s freedom of speech. As is typical for cases like this, they move slowly. The school argued to have the case moved from the Connecticut courts to the Federal courts. The Doningers sought a preliminary injunction to allow Avery to take her duly elected position as class secretary, but the District court did not grant the injunction. This was appealed to the Second Circuit which did not override the judges decision.
Since then, the superintendent has retired. The principal has been reprimanded for emails that she has sent violating students’ privacy. Some of these emails have been released because of Freedom of Information requests and paint a picture of a vindictive school administration seeking vengeance as opposed to protecting the school from significant disruption. In fact, it appears that any significant disruption stems not from the blog post, nor even from the email the students sent, but from the initial decision of the school administration, yet again postponing or canceling the Jamfest.
Last week, I was back in District Court, where the defense was arguing for a summary dismissal of the case. The plaintiffs presented evidence that had not been available during the hearings for the preliminary injunction and argued that the dispute of facts of the case warrants a full jury trial. The defense argued that the facts in dispute were not material and that even if they were, the whole thing should be dismissed because of qualified immunity.
The qualified immunity argument seemed especially twisted. To show qualified immunity, you need to show that reasonable people would argue whether or not the principal’s actions were legitimate. Much of this hung on whether or not reasonable people might guess that at some point in the near future the courts might overturn previous decisions that the reach of schools to punish students for what they say stops at the school gate.
Now, a reasonable school administration would probably settle this out of court, unless the school administration really wants to assert its right to reach into students’ bedrooms. So far, such reasonableness seems to have eluded the Region 10 School District.
This takes me back to Dr. Stella, who is the superintendent for the Woodbridge School District. Like many school districts, the Woodbridge District is struggling to find how to use the Internet to enhance the education of its students. Last week, Dr. Stella attended the convention of the Connection Association of Boards of Education (CABE). At this conference he attended a session entitled, “New Ways of Communicating in an Electronic Age”. The presenter was the third superintendent that I wish to highlight.
David Title is superintendent of the Bloomfield Public Schools and he spoke about his blog. As far as I can tell, Dr. Title has not used the word “douchebag” to describe people that he disagrees with. Instead, he has set an example of how superintendents can use the Internet to get the message out about what is going on at the school.
I can only imagine what would have happened if Avery attended the Bloomfield Public Schools. I imagine him telling Avery that he understands that her post was on a private diary at home and published on the Internet, which gives space for more emotional outbursts, but that he feels she should work on communicating her views in a more positive and articulate manner. Perhaps he would even have asked her to write a guest post, on his blog, about how students could better deal with their frustrations and be heard by the school administration and the public. That would have been a true example of using blogs to communicate and educate. Yet, unfortunately, Avery was not in the Bloomfield Public School system.
I, on the other hand, am fortunate. I went to the Board of Education meeting last night where the CABE conference and Superintendent Title’s presentation was discussed. After the meeting, I had an opportunity to talk with Dr. Stella about the issues of making sure that the Internet is used as effectively as possible to further students’ education while at the same time, not putting students at undue risk.
I mentioned Fiona’s Radio Show which she does every Sunday evening at 6:30. Fiona and I talk about the events of the week. It provides a great opportunity for some quality father-daughter time, and is building an archive of recordings that Fiona will be able to go back years hence, to find out what her life was like when she was seven. I suggested that perhaps some Sunday, Dr. Stella could call into Fiona’s radio show.
Dr. Stella was intrigued. He suggested that Fiona should find a time to come down to his office and tell him about her radio show. That is why my daughter has gone to the superintendent’s office this afternoon and why I am pleased about it. Dr. Stella and Dr. Title are examples of superintendents working hard to use new communication tools to improve their schools. I’m sorry that Avery didn’t have a superintendent like that to deal with, but I hope that this story, and others like it will be an encouragement to superintendents across Connecticut to move into a Twenty First Century that teaches and encourages intelligent use of new communications media.
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The Woodbridge Strategic School Profile
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/18/2008 - 12:40
Every year, the Connecticut State Department of Education issues Strategic School Profiles, which get discussed at the Board of Education meetings for the schools across the state at their November meetings. Last night, the Woodbridge Board of Education discussed the Strategic School Profile for Beacher Road. Unfortunately, the new strategic school profiles are not yet available online either at the State Website or at the Woodbridge Board of Education Website.
For a data hound, it was a great meeting. There was all kinds of little tidbits. 3.1% of the students are classified as talented and gifted. 8.8% are listed as participating in special education. 17.4% are from minorities, with Asian American students making up the largest group. Board members asked questions about trends and further details to determine if the policies and budgets of the school were having the desired effect. Some of this became fairly detailed and the superintendent, Dr. Stella, spoke about the need to prioritize which areas of additional research the board would like his staff to pursue.
As I listened to this, my mind wandered back to the workshop on Watchdog Reporting that I attended on the previous weekend. All of this information is available online and any board member, blogger, member of the press or citizen of the town can easily go out and to their own research.
Some of the data is in PDF files which are harder to extract data from. Some of the data is in a database that can be queried from a web page. There is also a summary of much of the data available as a spreadsheet. An enterprising researcher would contact people from the State Department of Education to see how much of the data could be obtained in a raw format that could be loaded into spreadsheets and databases.
One statistic that people expressed concern over was the percentage of students passing all four fitness tests. In 2005/6, 41.1% of fourth graders completed all four fitness tests. The number was unchanged for 2006/7. I don’t have the numbers for 2007/8 but I seem to recall them as being about the same. Yet for schools in the state, it was only 33.6% in 2005/6 and 33.5% for 2006/7. It may be that there is something wrong with the tests. For sixth graders, the numbers were different in 2005/6 36.6% passed all four tests, but in 2006/7 climbed to 62.6%
As the economy falters, people will be looking even more closely at the money spent on our schools and how effective the money is being used. In addition, there may be more demands on the school as more students need free or reduced price lunches and more students need after school care through programs like extended day as more parents need to work to make ends meet.
While the school appears to do a good job of analyzing the data to make sure that our students needs are met as fully and cost-effectively as possible, having school board members and members of the public go out and analyze the data is useful to help find other ways that our schools can be improved.
This leads to another part of the report. In Woodbridge there is one computer per 2.9 students. This is slightly better than the one computer per 3.6 students which is the state average. However, as of the 2006/7 report, only 67.3% of these computers were high or moderate power, compared to 89.5% on a statewide basis. The school continues to refresh its computers, and I suspect the number is much better now, but it is an area that needs vigilance. Beyond that, we need to make sure that besides having good computers, we have teachers that can help the students make the best use of these computers and, ideally, that this learning gets brought into the parents homes so parents can make better use of the Internet as well, like being able to research strategic school profiles.
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Investigative Reporters, Editors and Bloggers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 10:07
Yesterday, 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.
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#nanowrimo The Week Ahead and The Week Behind
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 11/08/2008 - 13:11
Last week was a difficult week for me to write. I spent Tuesday electioneering and then going down to the NPR Studios in Washington to blog about the election results. Since then, I’ve been trying to catch up on my sleep, fight a cold, and try to make sense of the week that was.
This coming week is going to be equally challenging. I have a tentative client visit on Monday, some personal issues to deal with on Tuesday, and some important blogging events the rest of the week.
On Wednesday, at 10 AM, in front of the New Haven City Hall at 165 Church Street, Barb and Robin Levine-Ritterman of New Haven, who were plaintiffs in the Kerrigan case will be applying for a marriage license. Love Makes a Family is encouraging people to join in the celebrations on this historic day.
Then, at 2:30 in the evening, there will be oral arguments in Doninger v. Niehoff et al on a motion for a summary judgment. It should be interesting to hear the arguments in light of emails that have been disclosed as part of Freedom of Information Requests, which the Plaintiffs claim demonstrate that one of the defendants lied on the stand.
As a side note, the link to the document listed above is only available to people who have PACER accounts. Pages accessed this way are charged $.08 per page. I include this link and a comment about it because, I believe that as part of open government, which I hope the new administration will be bringing, we should do away with fees like those on Pacer and make information about our government more readily available.
On Thursday, there will be a conference at Central Connecticut State University on Journalism-- Where We Are; Where We’re Going. Speakers include several friends from online media, and I hope to make it up to the conference.
Friday, I will be speaking in Second Life about the relationship between Second Life and other online media. Then on Saturday, the Investigative Reports and Editors will be running a workshop at Southern Connecticut State University entitled Watchdog Workshop which will combine elements of two different workshops. The IRE is a great organization and I hope to be able to attend. Unfortunately, I only heard about the workshop after online registration had closed so I am not clear if I will be able to attend.
As with last week, the coming week doesn’t leave a lot of time for novel writing. On top of that, my initial idea for my novel just wasn’t coming together. It was too close to a memoir, and too far from being a novel. I didn’t find the experience engaging, so I abandoned it. I’ve started off on a new track, but I’m several days behind now and the writing is hard. We shall see if I can catch up during a busy schedule.
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#nprbloggers - postlude
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 20:23
Twenty-four hours ago, I was sitting at NPR Studios in Washington DC with a group of other bloggers waiting for the election returns to start coming in. It was a mixed group in many ways, male and female, white and black, young and old, conservative and liberal. We all sat with our hopes and fears as we waited for the first polls to close.
The evening went by. We talked amongst ourselves. We took tours of NPR studios. We made snide comments about some of the gimmicks the major networks were using to fill the time before the results were known.
The storyline proceeded as expected and the story about a substantial win by Sen. Obama wasn’t really unexpected news. The bigger news, the bigger story, is what our reactions have been. The conservative bloggers morosely closed up shop soon after Sen. Obama was declared the winner. The liberal bloggers, many of them adjusting to the new moniker President-Elect Obama, hugged one another, and then sat transfixed as he addressed our country. When the speech was over applause erupted amongst the bloggers.
On Twitter, I had received news that U Street was awash with jubilant Obama supporters. The Metro stops running at midnight, and there seemed to be no available cabs, so I walked a mile and a half from NPR studios to a friend’s house on T Street. As I walked, I heard endless horns honking and innumerable shrieks of joy. I ran into my friend on the street as he and some of his other friends were heading from one celebration to the next.
As I got closer to U Street, the cacophony of horns and shrieks as compounded with the sound of fireworks going off. It felt like New Years, a time when everyone celebrates a chance to start over. It felt like being in Little Italy years ago, when Italy had won the World Cup, one of those long and hard fought battles where people wondered when victory would ever be grasped. It felt like St. Patrick’s Day on Fifth Avenue, when everyone is at least a little bit Irish.
Yet before I had left the studios, I had spoken with a few of bloggers. Two mixed race couples were part of the group and they noted how as we talk about racial issues in our country, and have made a significant step forward, the issue of mixed race couples has been avoided. We talked about the many difficult challenges that face President-Elect Obama and our country over the coming days.
I, too, have been overwhelmed by joy at this momentous turning point. Yet I remain keenly aware of the difficulties making ends meet and I wondered about all this jubilation.
Today, I spoke with my daughter who has a friend from Japan that has been confused and frightened by all the jubilation. No, this isn’t normal. This is a unique election. It is the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech. It echoes Nelson Mandela’s election as President of South Africa. It is a profound change of course from the last eight years. It is a triumph of hope over fear. Perhaps it is the response to September 11th that we have been waiting for, for so long.
Yet, I too, have wondered about this outpouring of exuberance. What does come next? Will this energy be focused into a new type of civic service? What will happen when the problems we face are not fixed as quickly as some would hope? What about all of the conservatives who are disappointed, bitter or angry at the results? After all, over fifty million Americans did vote for Sen. McCain. One conservative activist encouraged his friends online stating that the 2012 campaigns start today.
Back home, I have read through a smattering of the emails that have piled up while I was gone. I was struck by the raw emotion without a lot of reflection by many of my friends who are group psychotherapists. It seems everyone is caught up in the moment. It is a very special moment, and I hope everyone savors it, but I also hope that we can reflect on what all of this really means and what we need to do next. What are your thoughts?
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#nprbloggers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 20:08
I'm down in Washington DC with a bunch of bloggers who are covering the elections returns.
Here is a list of many of them, including their blogs and their Twitter addresses.
- Faye Anderson - Anderson@Large twitter = @andersonatlarge
- Casey Lartigue - The Casey Lartigue Show
- Laurie White - BlogHer twitter = @lauriewrites
- Earl Dunovant - Prometheus 6
- Birdie Jaworksi - Birdie Jaworski twitter = @littlebirdie
- Aldon Hynes - Orient Lodge twitter = @ahynes1
- Clarice Feldman - Just One Minute
- Danae Jones - Bearing Drift
- Vivian Paige - Vivian Paige twitter = @vpaige
- Jill Zimon - Writes Like She Talks twitter = @Jillmz
- Shireen Mitchell - Women Wired In twitter = @digitalsista
- Megan McArdle - The Atlantic
- Julian Sanchez - Ars Techica
- Jill Foster - Utterz.com (mobile podcasts)
- Andrew Turner - High Earth Orbit twitter = @ajturner
- Kaitlin Foley - Inside Islam twitter = @blogislam
- Cheryl Taragin - Spewker/Baltimore Examiner twitter = @spewker
- Mary Katherine Ham - Washington Examiner
- Julie Schwietert - Matador Pulse
- Andy Carvin - NPR twitter = @acarvin @nprpolitics
- twitter = @guardianus08
- technosailor.com twitter = @technosailor
(Tag: nprbloggers)
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Election Day - Prologue
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 06:59
It all boils down to this. Over the next eighteen hours, or so, voters will stream to the polls across our country to select our forty-fourth president. All ready millions of votes have been cast in early voting. Nearly two million people have voted already in Georgia, a state where 3.3 million voters in total voted in 2004. The early voting lines in Florida where so long that the Governor ordered the polls be open an extra four hours each day. In all thirty-one states currently have early voting and many are reporting record turnout and long lines for the early voting.
Shortly, the polls will open in Connecticut, a state that does not currently have early voting. As soon as I finish this blog post, I will go and vote. I plan on Videoing my vote, and Twittering my vote to Vote Report. I will then stand at the polls to talk with incoming voters about the state legislative candidates as well as the ballot questions in Connecticut.
A lot of attention has been placed on the Presidential election, yet there are also congressional elections, and state legislative elections. Here in Connecticut, the state legislative races should be especially interesting to watch. Last year, our state legislature passed a bill enabling public funding of state elections. You can get details about the program at the State Election Enforcement Commission’s Citizen Election Program website. It has certainly livened up the races here in Connecticut.
My wife is working for Common Cause, which is partner in the 866-our-vote voter protection project. She will be tracking and dealing with voter suppression issues in this election.
When I finish my poll standing, I will hop on a train to Washington DC, where I will be joining a group of nprbloggers to report on election returns. While I expect to write a little on the nuts and bolts of the Connecticut results as well as any issues with voter suppression, I intend to write a bit about the larger issues, the issues of narrative and if and how this is changing our country.
Stay tuned. Leave me any thoughts you have. No matter what happens, it will be an historic day.
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Fiona Interviews State Rep Candidate Marc Garofalo
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 09:29
Every Sunday evening, Fiona and I do an Internet based talk radio show on BlogTalkRadio.
Last night, Marc Garofalo, who is running for State Representative called into the show and talked a little bit about the campaign.
You can listen to the whole show on BlogTalkRadio. I've also extracted that part of the show where Fiona interviews Marc, which you can listen to here.
We've been doing the show for a few months and have been developing a great archive of discussions. Hopefully, this will help Fiona take it to a new level as she works on interviewing skills and hopefully it can provide a little boost to Marc in his campaign.
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