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"Fact and Friction" Interview with Jay Rosen in Volume » Page not found
Great interview with Jay Rosen (conducted by Jeffey Inaba and Talene Montgomery) that delves into (and knits together) the "pro" (professional) and "am" (amateur, blogger) divide. Rosen advocates for Pro-Am journalism. And what is "the public"?
"How do journalists decide how to tell stories? What are their responsibilities when reporting a story? And to what extent do they write in the public’s interest?"
The questions revolve around whether journalists represent or create the public.
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people involved in arts, culture, education and politics, have to figure out continually how to bring the public alive.’ It’s not just a question of information either, its also one of art. Because engaging people successfully is a social problem we have to figure out. So to me, yes, the public is there to be informed and it is something we have to bring to life. There’s no objective way of doing it; it’s an art and a commitment. I think really good journalists who care about telling the truth, who care about their stories and about having an effect are really saying, ‘I’m going to awaken the public’.
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JR: Journalists have a responsibility to tell us what’s going on and tell us the truth and that does require impartiality. We know this from our normal lives. It doesn’t require you to be a journalist. If you went to a contentious meeting – and other people who also have a stake in what you have witnessed couldn’t go and they ask you what went on – you have a responsibility to report to the other people accurately and impartially. Yet you have other responsibilities too. People want to know not just what occurred, but also how they can affect things. Their participation and their power to affect the situation has something to do with their interest in information and there’s a vital connection between those two things.
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Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses
A review of Anthony Flint's "How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City."
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Now there's a book that shows how these mythic characters shaped each other's work and reputations - a volume that leaves me wishing there was some way today to combine the best traits of both.
(...)
Make no mistake, Jacobs is the hero of this yarn. But in the epilogue, Flint addresses our ever-changing urban dynamics, where Jacobs' quest for "thoughtful citizen involvement" has morphed into "all-powerful neighborhood residents, who seek conditions to stay exactly as they are and reward politicians who agree with them."
Which sounds a lot like San Francisco, Berkeley and every other city [Victoria!] where process is more important than results. All the protections we've put into place, such as environmental reports, become weapons that can be used to derail anything that anyone dislikes.
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"Wiki Your Town Council - New effort seeks a database on all U.S. elected officials," by David Talbot (MIT Technology Review)
Article about American Solutions, "a national grassroots group based in Washington, DC, that was founded by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich but describes its Internet effort as nonpartisan, is preparing to launch a site that will, at first, allow people to enter basic contact information on all local officials. Then future users can enter their full nine-digit zip code to find the local officials who represent them."
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Over the following several months, American Solutions plans to build ways for users to rate the officials on job performance, create social-networking functions around local issues, and let users make free Internet-based phone calls to the officials.
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Existing online platforms share data about the more powerful elected officials, such as federal and state lawmakers. Congresspedia allows wiki-style editing of pages about members of Congress, while OpenCongress allows several ways for users to interact, including writing blog posts about specific bills.
And for detailed information about lobbyist activity and campaign contributions, there are sites that track such spending, including one for members of Congress and another covering major state elected officials. Such databases attempt to better organize information that is already available for public scrutiny but is cumbersome to obtain.
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Megginson Technologies: Quoderat » Blog Archive » What’s happening in Canada?
Excellent little chart that compares the Canadian and American systems.
How interesting, that in Canada the head of state is the queen's representative (i.e., the governor-general), who is not elected but rather appointed (by someone who also is not elected), and that the prime minister is also not elected by the people, since the people only elect the members of parliament but not the party leaders, and the PM is simply the leader of the party with the most seats in the house of commons.
The Westminster System of parliamentary democracy: can't say I'm a fan. This is the alpha version of a less-than 1.0 version.
The Future is Now (Joseph Boutilier): Google Maps
This is a very cool implementation of Google maps, built by Joseph Boutilier (at 18 the youngest candidate in the current Victoria municipal election). He took a map of Victoria and added geo-links to connect specific sites with specific issues (and his proposed policies/ approaches). Very nice work.
Welcome to the BC Liberals Web Site
Portal page for BC Liberal party, intended to get citizen / community feedback. Will explore later.
Joho the Blog » We. One.
I think David Weinberger says something really true here:
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Learning to hear and respond to what is good and shared in an expression we find detestable is harder. The best teachers do this routinely. We can all learn to do it. We can. Yes, we can.
It is a big part of how Obama brings out the better nature in us. It is a big reason the unrelenting and unreasoned negative campaign aimed at him failed.
It is also a task performed historically all out of proportion by African-Americans. That is a blessing we have not deserved, but could not have survived without.
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The African heritage of America is a rock, and with Obama in the White House, it's a rock to build on at last.
"making the case for intelligence in leadership," by Davin Greenwell
Davin muses on leadership, and asks readers to comment on what they think makes for good leadership. (I left a comment.) He came up with some excellent traits or qualities, some of which *seem* almost contradictory, and therefore probably are true. Leadership is complex.
"Class Politics" Richard Florida, Creative Class Blog
Fascinating (possibly scary?) piece by Florida on how Obama's win could still fan the flames of an ugly backlash from the right that may be more convulsive and destructive than the current economic / financial meltdown. Florida factors in some data around demographic changes due to the creative economy (linked to democratic/ Obama politics), to paint a picture of a potentially very divided country.
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When people like Colin Powell say Mr. Obama is a “transformational figure,” they’re suggesting that an Obama administration can somehow heal the deep divisions within the American electorate and move the country forward, the way Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression. And certainly projected Democratic majorities in Congress make that kind of transformation appear plausible.
<!-- end #inTP -->I wish that would happen. But I doubt it will, and the reason is simple: The divisions run too deep. The realignment that propelled and kept FDR in office is not happening today. American politics is distinguished today by shifting electoral coalitions, candidate-centered elections, and what some political scientists call de-alignment. America isn’t just suffering from political polarization, but a burgeoning economic divide and class war.
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Since then, 20 million jobs in the creative sector have been created, and the ranks of what I call the creative class have grown to 40 million - nearly a third of the work force. That group has become powerful in American politics, and it is squarely behind Mr. Obama. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently reported that Republicans have all but lost creative professionals working in law, medicine, and high technology.
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Loic Le Meur Blog: 10 reasons why should a politician blog
An older entry from Seesmic's Loic Le Meur, 10 reasons why politicians should blog. Very timely here in Victoria given the municipal elections still to come (Nov.15).
"Canada needs to focus its gaze on urban reality," by Christopher Hume
Excellent article by Christopher Hume, commenting on the post-Federal election blues reality in Canada. Key quote: "In an age when an 'economic tsunami' can sweep across the planet in days and hours, however, only the quick survive. But nimble we're not." Canadian cities are hobbled by the British North America Act and the subsequent cast of the Canadian Constitution (difficult to fathom how it could be written in the later 20th century), and instead of nimble, they're paralyzed.
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An election without a winner may be exactly what Canadians like. But it does raise questions about how diffident, if not skeptical, we have become about leadership. Even when we want it, we don't trust it.
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Pluralism may be Canada's new reality, entirely appropriate in a country that grows ever more urban and diverse. Diversity, of course, is shorthand for racial variety, simple ethnicity, multiculturalism, but it goes beyond that.
At the same time, traditional political distinctions – Conservative and Liberal, right and left – are less helpful today. Indeed, they have become obstacles. And though we cling desperately to outdated national myths, this is already the most urban century the world, let alone Canada, has ever seen.
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Online technology can help any website use people, not pundits, to drive public debate
Interesting poins by Robert Niles, encouraging use of online technology combined with random sampling techniques to get public opinion front and centre, vs. having pundits either create or estimate the public mood.
Here's one reason students Barack the vote: respect - Crosscut
Wow, and wow again! U-Dub communications prof David Domke describes how his citizen-journalist blogger students were treated by the politicians campaigning for president, and the difference between Hillary & Barack are astounding.
One of Domke's students, Jennifer Ware, describes it like this: "John McCain spoke in Seattle (the same day) to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5,000 at a waterfront pier (on February 7). Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics; it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race."
Domke adds, further down: "It seems that the take-home point here is this: The Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk."
Obama for President!
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And along the way we learned some important things about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn’t set out to learn these pieces — but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.
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- Because some of the students have serious political crushes on him, even though they’ve tried to keep all this in check. He inspires them — and I haven’t sought to squelch this, being a prof interested in helping students become citizens.
- Because the class is set up as a blogging class, in which politics meets alternative journalism. So their opinion shines through in places, and this was fine as long as they didn’t cross over into fan mail.
- Because the Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton campaign’s part.
In our coverage of the Idaho and Washington state caucuses, there emerged a lean toward Obama in my students’ writing about the Democratic contest. This pro-Obama frame occurred for three reasons:
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Research Groups Boom in Washington - New York Times
Think tanks are apparently a booming industry, as Elizabeth Bumiller's article shows. Richard Florida ("Tanked," see http://tinyurl.com/35apn9) observes: "A DC insider once told me these so-called think tanks don't so much create new intellectual capital as repackage and recycle it - or as he put it, they run it down. Candidly, I was shockingly disappointed during my time in DC by the inability of most think tanks to tackle big questions in an open-minded, globally-oriented (that is not American-centric) way. And while there always are individual exceptions, I was also dismayed by the quality of much of the work. My hunch is the increased giving is being fueled by partisan agendas - actually, I have been told many time this is the way think tanks increasingly are funded - as political actors seek to lend credibility and legitimacy to desired actions." Bumiller closes her article with this: "'Institutions like this don’t possess power,' said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. 'You’re one of many voices in the political marketplace. It’s up to those in the marketplace who possess power — congressmen, people in the executive branch — to run with one of your ideas.'” That's something to think about for everyone in every local context, too.
Megacity politics in shambles 10 years later (Toronto Star)
Commentary (one of several in today's Toronto Star) by Christopher Hume on the 10th anniversary of Toronto's amalgamation. Hume has previously written cogently on the problems municipal infrastructure funding in Canada, and while it doesn't come up in this article, I get the impression that he doesn't want to join in fully with the chorus of complainers who moan about the evils that amalgamation has wrought. The key sentence, I think, is "We have gone to great lengths to empower the local at the cost of the civic," and *that* is something totally applicable to (as of yet) un-amalgamated Victoria.
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Though the forced joining of Toronto and its boroughs left city council and the civic bureaucracy a mess, daily life continues much as it did before former premier Mike Harris unleashed his onslaught.
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Add Sticky Note
Then, as now, most of us remained ensconced within our own neighbourhood. Etobicokers still think of themselves as Etobicokers, North Yorkers as North Yorkers, Scarboroughites as Scarboroughites. Until we travel far enough that the finer points of residency are lost, we're reluctant to admit to being Torontonians. Go far enough, however, and even Mississaugans become Torontonians, something they'd be loath to acknowledge in these parts.
The rest of Toronto still jokes about Scarborough, or as we prefer to call it, Scarberia. We still shake our heads at the condo mayhem of "downtown" North York and can't make sense of Etobicoke politics.
Everyone else still despises Toronto – the "old" city of Toronto – for its arrogance and self-absorption. Some things never change.
- - sounds familiar! - on 2008-01-02
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Harvard Institute of Politics Poll Find Youth Favor Obama, Giuliani
- so much for the myth of disengaged youth; most are paying attention, and they're not happy with what the traditiional parties are dishing up. I think this also indicates unhappiness with the parties' neglect of urban issues.
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Add Sticky NoteAnother of the poll’s key findings shows only three in ten (30%) young people believe that the Democratic and Republican parties do an adequate job of representing the American people, with a plurality (37%) saying the two parties are doing such a poor job that a third major party is needed.
- - traditional parties consistently neglect cities and urban needs; that's probably why there's so much dissatisfaction with them among youth - on 2007-12-23
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"The most interesting aspect of the survey relates less to candidate preferences than to the indication that young people are focusing on the issues facing America, and this cohort of nearly 30 million 18-24 year-olds is substantial and likely to have a significant impact in the upcoming election," said IOP Director and former U.S. Representative (R-IA) James A. Leach.
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globeandmail.com: Harper's gallery gambit 'stagecraft,' critic says
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The cities from whom Ottawa is requesting proposals from developers this spring are Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax.
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"Now we're engaged in this distasteful playing off of one city against another," Frenkel said
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TheStar.com | entertainment | Cities fight to pay for portrait gallery
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Nine cities are invited to compete for the prize of securing the portrait gallery. Toronto is on the list, along with Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. The catch: this will be a private/public partnership.
Translation: someone in the lucky city that wins gets to pay the bills so that Stephen Harper's government won't have to.
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fascinating and inventive exercise in face-saving for a regime that, to put it mildly, lacks a vision of what investing in culture could do for this country. Despite a huge surplus, the Harperites are obsessed with pinching pennies
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CBC.ca Arts - Portrait gallery looks nationwide for new home
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The federal government wants nine cities across Canada to compete for the right to host the national portrait gallery originally slated to open in Ottawa.
"Our government has set forth the notion that national cultural institutions do not necessarily have to be located in the national capital," said Heritage Minister Josée Verner at a news conference Friday announcing what she called "a bold and innovative step."
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The competition will seek a qualified developer in "the best possible location in Canada" for the Portrait Gallery of Canada, Verner said.
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Crosscut Seattle - Green is the new gold rush? Not without government R&D
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He reframed the discussion about coping with global warming by saying it was a golden opportunity to make money. One week earlier, Seattle business leaders were hearing the same siren song at the Chamber of Commerce retreat in Vancouver. A bank president declared, "Green is the new gold."
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One big factor that this rosy scenario leaves out is the role of government. Here, the seminal thinkers are Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of a new book, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. The authors argue against the high-regulation model for battling pollution and other environmental woes, or approaches that raise the cost of dirty energy. You can read about the controversy they have stirred up with greens in this essay.
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