Today I heard all about the Knight Foundation's News Challenge, "a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news and information exchange."
Susan Mernit of the Knight Foundation made it clear that the contest is for INNOVATIVE ideas. As she said, "if all of the projects we fund succeed, then we are being too safe. We want 50% of them to fail. We want to fund experiments, not businesses."
That being said, anything goes. Here are some possible pitches:
1. Some way to enable major media organizations to make money while providing free content to users.
2. Node-based multimedia news aggregator: ever notices how aggregators are purely text? This doesn't work in print, so why should it work on the net? This site would allow users to flag photos, videos, slideshows and all multimedia bits they come across on the net, linking them to each other and to a central "node" which is a story or issue area (Hurricane Katrina, for instance).
4. A GPS-based tracking service that you sign up with your GPS-enabled cell phone. It will alert you to news stories and community-based blogs wherever you are.
5. Fairtrade online marketplace: a register of fair-trade online stores by country, so that anyone who cares to can shop in a way that will benefit projects in a certain country.
I am also considering some partnerships. My colleagues have some fantastic ideas as well. I know none of these are too revolutionary, but hey - the brainstorm is just getting started...
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Subjective objectivity
Objectivity, many in the business will tell you, is a cornerstone of journalism. Reporters report, they do not analyze. Their mission is to dig up the facts of a story, without analyzing or passing judgment on what those may reveal. Judgment, in theory, is up to the reader.
True objectivity, especially in today's media culture, is an illusion that stands in the way of the media's role as a watchdog acting on the part of the people to root out hypocrisy and hold the right people accountable for injustices that occur in every city on earth every day. Journalists and news organizations seem to adhere to the idea that to be objective is merely to report, not to analyze, the news, leading them to often relay anything the Bush administration spins their way without pointing out the ways in which government spokespeople contradict themselves all the time.
Watch Fox News and you will see a clear conservative Republican bias through the thin smokescreen of its ridiculous motto of "We report. You decide.", or Bill O'Reilly's laughable "No-Spin Zone". It is not a problem that certain stations and their funders have agendas and views that they want to express, but they could at least be honest about it! At least Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is up front about his disapproval of the lies and manipulations of the Bush government.
Subjectivity is OK. Propaganda is not. Subjectivity does not mean covering only one side of an issue, but rather investigating both sides of an issue with the ability to acknowledge which side the evidence favors. Just because there are many sides to a given issue does not mean that each one makes as strong an argument as the others.
An easy example that bothers me concerns global warming and climate change, a hot hot topic (pun intended) that has gotten tons of media attention thanks to Al Gore. The truth of the matter is that scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that human activity is creating pressures on the ecosystem at rates never before seen on the planet. And this is, after all, a question whose answer lies in the realm of science and research, not politics and opinion.
So, as news programs and magazines grab onto the issue of the day, they do so in a way that they hope shows a balanced treatment of the issue, giving equal weight to alarmists and doubters. The end result is a grossly skewed coverage of climate change that treats global-warming skeptics as the other side of the coin, giving unwarranted attention - and, consequently, credibility - to loud, aggressive non-scientists with no expertise and pockets full of oil-company money to produce fancy-looking rebuttals to "An Inconvenient Truth".
Objectivity is rather impossible. Subjectivity is rather unavoidable. The happy medium is for news agencies to report based on a principle of Subjective Objectivity. Objectively presenting the arguments on any side of a contentious or newsworthy issue, while subjectively pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each. The judgment comes in the reader/viewer's determination of how much value to give each of these strengths and weaknesses.
Responsible reporting means taking a stand and having an opinion, to speak on behalf of your audience. Mainstream media have lost it, but I must believe a solution is still out there somewhere.
True objectivity, especially in today's media culture, is an illusion that stands in the way of the media's role as a watchdog acting on the part of the people to root out hypocrisy and hold the right people accountable for injustices that occur in every city on earth every day. Journalists and news organizations seem to adhere to the idea that to be objective is merely to report, not to analyze, the news, leading them to often relay anything the Bush administration spins their way without pointing out the ways in which government spokespeople contradict themselves all the time.
Watch Fox News and you will see a clear conservative Republican bias through the thin smokescreen of its ridiculous motto of "We report. You decide.", or Bill O'Reilly's laughable "No-Spin Zone". It is not a problem that certain stations and their funders have agendas and views that they want to express, but they could at least be honest about it! At least Jon Stewart of The Daily Show is up front about his disapproval of the lies and manipulations of the Bush government.
Subjectivity is OK. Propaganda is not. Subjectivity does not mean covering only one side of an issue, but rather investigating both sides of an issue with the ability to acknowledge which side the evidence favors. Just because there are many sides to a given issue does not mean that each one makes as strong an argument as the others.
An easy example that bothers me concerns global warming and climate change, a hot hot topic (pun intended) that has gotten tons of media attention thanks to Al Gore. The truth of the matter is that scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that human activity is creating pressures on the ecosystem at rates never before seen on the planet. And this is, after all, a question whose answer lies in the realm of science and research, not politics and opinion.
So, as news programs and magazines grab onto the issue of the day, they do so in a way that they hope shows a balanced treatment of the issue, giving equal weight to alarmists and doubters. The end result is a grossly skewed coverage of climate change that treats global-warming skeptics as the other side of the coin, giving unwarranted attention - and, consequently, credibility - to loud, aggressive non-scientists with no expertise and pockets full of oil-company money to produce fancy-looking rebuttals to "An Inconvenient Truth".
Objectivity is rather impossible. Subjectivity is rather unavoidable. The happy medium is for news agencies to report based on a principle of Subjective Objectivity. Objectively presenting the arguments on any side of a contentious or newsworthy issue, while subjectively pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each. The judgment comes in the reader/viewer's determination of how much value to give each of these strengths and weaknesses.
Responsible reporting means taking a stand and having an opinion, to speak on behalf of your audience. Mainstream media have lost it, but I must believe a solution is still out there somewhere.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
What am I and why am I here?
The amazing thing about the evolution of the internet is the blurring of the line between private and public, between individual and society, between access and accessibility. It is an organism that reaches everyone collectively by being constantly available to anyone with a browser, but that reaches everyone personally by interacting with one screen, one pair of eyes at a time.
I am here to take part in the revolution, to help figure out what to do with it in a way that is not just passive and self-serving. If people want to read anything I write, that is great, and if you want to comment and debate, that is even better. I believe that the only way to go about solving our society's problems is to TALK ABOUT IT. To exchange ideas and informed opinions about the things going on around us every day that are making the world worse for our children.
This is a reason why I am a writer, and beginning a program at the Columbia University Journalism school. Even in the completely open-source free internet, there is a need for professional journalism, with fact-checked claims and real sources that go beyond the simple ranting and raving of some active web personalities.
So this blog, this forum, is about politics and the media. Or is it about the media and politics. Each subject is a blog in itself, and the areas in which they interact could fill so many more gigabytes. I am interested in all three, so depending on my mood, I will speak about politics, the news media, and the relationship between the two (starring Karl Rove as master puppeteer).
I think it's interesting, but maybe I am a nerd. If you want to know my thoughts on the more mundane, go to myspace.
Welcome, and bear with me as I try to keep to a schedule of regular posting...
I am here to take part in the revolution, to help figure out what to do with it in a way that is not just passive and self-serving. If people want to read anything I write, that is great, and if you want to comment and debate, that is even better. I believe that the only way to go about solving our society's problems is to TALK ABOUT IT. To exchange ideas and informed opinions about the things going on around us every day that are making the world worse for our children.
This is a reason why I am a writer, and beginning a program at the Columbia University Journalism school. Even in the completely open-source free internet, there is a need for professional journalism, with fact-checked claims and real sources that go beyond the simple ranting and raving of some active web personalities.
So this blog, this forum, is about politics and the media. Or is it about the media and politics. Each subject is a blog in itself, and the areas in which they interact could fill so many more gigabytes. I am interested in all three, so depending on my mood, I will speak about politics, the news media, and the relationship between the two (starring Karl Rove as master puppeteer).
I think it's interesting, but maybe I am a nerd. If you want to know my thoughts on the more mundane, go to myspace.
Welcome, and bear with me as I try to keep to a schedule of regular posting...
Monday, April 16, 2007
Getting over green
First off, let me say that I believe that the global drive for consumption has led to dangerous conditions for climate change that may end in catastrophe in some uncertain future. Let me say also that I believe that we, both people and governments, can take some major steps to start reducing our negative impact on the planet and possibly avert some of that catastrophe.
As a believer then, I must be happy about the fact that the issue is getting so much press, creating a buzz that will surely lead to serious action finally being taken to be more responsible with the environmental side effects of consumer capitalism. And I am. I am happy to see a “Green Issue” of a newspaper or magazine focusing on the state of the planet, raising awareness everywhere, making the issue positively trendy.
There are two problems, however: the issue is being trivialized and commoditized, and the second evolution of the debate has not yet occurred. By the first point, I mean attaching the word “green” to anything as a marketing strategy. Magazines promoting a special “Green Issue” to show how pioneering they are by publishing a story about a salmon spawning ground that has been dried up just trivializes the whole subject. Green, environmentally-friendly, ideas are fundamentally important to ensure a better future for our children, and must be permanently in the public debate. Making them the subject of a “special issue” implies that one issue of a magazine can present the whole debate, and also suggests that such stories do not belong in the regular circulation. If a magazine really wanted to show how green it was, it would take a month off, saving the thousands of trees that are destroyed to create one installment of a major monthly magazine.
The second point is, I think, the most important: critical analysis of the green movement in all its forms, a necessary precursor to begin expanding on workable solutions to the world’s environmental problems. What these “green issues” have done is brought climate change into the mainstream, generally alerting people to the undeniable fact that there is a problem with the way we treat the Earth. Ok, the ball is rolling. We no longer need to convince everyone of what is happening or praise anything that can be given an environmental spin.
What we need now is to focus the debate on the serious issues, looking critically at the green movement. What green strategies actually work to reduce pollution? What strategies and initiatives really make a difference and which ones are just for image or marketing purposes? We need to answer these questions in order to make sure that the “green” label is not co-opted by any misanthrope looking to cash in on the global trend towards environmentally-friendly production. Because if that is allowed to happen, then all we can expect is stagnation, procrastination, and ultimately failure in addressing the problems that we have already created.
As a believer then, I must be happy about the fact that the issue is getting so much press, creating a buzz that will surely lead to serious action finally being taken to be more responsible with the environmental side effects of consumer capitalism. And I am. I am happy to see a “Green Issue” of a newspaper or magazine focusing on the state of the planet, raising awareness everywhere, making the issue positively trendy.
There are two problems, however: the issue is being trivialized and commoditized, and the second evolution of the debate has not yet occurred. By the first point, I mean attaching the word “green” to anything as a marketing strategy. Magazines promoting a special “Green Issue” to show how pioneering they are by publishing a story about a salmon spawning ground that has been dried up just trivializes the whole subject. Green, environmentally-friendly, ideas are fundamentally important to ensure a better future for our children, and must be permanently in the public debate. Making them the subject of a “special issue” implies that one issue of a magazine can present the whole debate, and also suggests that such stories do not belong in the regular circulation. If a magazine really wanted to show how green it was, it would take a month off, saving the thousands of trees that are destroyed to create one installment of a major monthly magazine.
The second point is, I think, the most important: critical analysis of the green movement in all its forms, a necessary precursor to begin expanding on workable solutions to the world’s environmental problems. What these “green issues” have done is brought climate change into the mainstream, generally alerting people to the undeniable fact that there is a problem with the way we treat the Earth. Ok, the ball is rolling. We no longer need to convince everyone of what is happening or praise anything that can be given an environmental spin.
What we need now is to focus the debate on the serious issues, looking critically at the green movement. What green strategies actually work to reduce pollution? What strategies and initiatives really make a difference and which ones are just for image or marketing purposes? We need to answer these questions in order to make sure that the “green” label is not co-opted by any misanthrope looking to cash in on the global trend towards environmentally-friendly production. Because if that is allowed to happen, then all we can expect is stagnation, procrastination, and ultimately failure in addressing the problems that we have already created.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)