fauna corporation

the cross post helix as represented by tangled lily stamens

Just a heads-up that I posted about the Bruins’ recent trades, shipping Aaron Ward to the Hurricanes (for nobody, basically) and their pick-up of Derek Morris. You can read my analysis of these trades on Black, White & Gold.

I also put up a post on Urban Camouflage about the In B Flat project, which carries a series of YouTube videos (all tuned to B Flat Major) that allow users to create their own ambient musical pieces from triggering the videos in whatever order they choose.

Check them out!

locking dissent out, or locking frustrations in?

Italian bloggers are striking in order to challenge a newly proposed law that would hold all bloggers financially liable for “offensive” comments in their posts, according to Global Post.

The law, dubbed the Alfano Proposal (after the Italian Minister of Justice, Angelino Alfano), would require bloggers to edit or delete any post that Government officials deemed to be inappropriate. Should the bloggers not comply they would face stiff penalties - they could be sued by any allegedly defamed citizen for as much as $18,000.

For their part, the striking bloggers maintain that in a country where the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, owns the three largest TV channels, the biggest publishing house, a major advertising agency and oversees all national public television, they require the full freedom of the press that bloggers in other countries enjoy in order to express any level of dissenting opinion.

There’s a good chance that striking bloggers - ostensibly refusing to post anything to their blogs during the strike - are exactly in keeping with the spirit of the Alfano Proposal. That is to say, the proposal ultimately aims to have the bloggers simply shut up, and by striking in reaction to it the bloggers are fulfilling the proposal’s intended goal.

However, while nobody seems particularly certain of where the convergence in media is taking us, or how we can navigate the thorny issues of defamation in cyberspace, those who believe in freedom of the press would do well to put their support behind the striking Italian bloggers.

To do so means that open communication and discussion in society is actively encouraged, and provides texture to any media palette dominated by large scale, mainstream media outlets - regardless of the country of origin.

As we stumble forward in this age of multimedia information overload, I maintain it is better to keep the gates wide open and make a few mistakes along the way (defamation and otherwise) rather than scale back and try to lock out the messiness of dissenting opinion.

By making it financially untenable for bloggers to deliver a differing opinion we do not dispel the spirit of dissent, we merely frustrate its most natural voice. But human nature dictates that this voice will find another vehicle for expression, and possibly with greater vehemence, due to earlier efforts to silence it.

And that expression can sometimes involve the sticks and stones that break our bones, rather than the names that really cannot hurt us.

Last week I attended the 2009 Montreal Guitar Show, which was put on in conjunction with the Montreal International Jazz Festival. The Montreal show is well-regarded, being an invite-only event, and attracting some of the finest luthiers in North America and abroad.

Despite being a guitarist for about 20 years, I had never attended a guitar show. What I discovered (and I mean this in a good sense) is that guitar shows are basically Guitar Porn - hundreds of truly beautiful instruments, polished and buffed, and laid out suggestively for the hungry hands of the paying / playing public.

I had a great time walking around, talking to luthiers and capturing the sites and sounds of the event. Below is a short Audio Slideshow I created to share the experience with you.

Let me know your thoughts.

is this the way forward? this photo has not been retouched.

Over the last several months I’ve been reading a lot of books about professional journalism, and the many-pronged battle that journalists and media outlets are fighting in the current media climate. Primarily due to several instances of fabricated news, the public’s trust of journalists, while rebounding slightly from early this decade, is still extremely low (only 49% of Canadians say they trust journalists, according to a 2006 Leger Marketing poll).

Also, citizen-generated media is evolving from random smatterings of photos and videos into a sophisticated journalism vehicle in its own right, competing for the public’s attention and destabilizing the foundation of traditional journalism which is largely still based on an “us-to-you” model, despite journos themselves calling for and seeking out updated models.

From all I’ve read, journalists and media outlets that have analyzed the current media landscape maintain they still represent a viable information source, in congress with citizen media, with journos finding stability primarily because of their professional training, adherence to ethics, and transparency in delivering the news.

Given this, I am struck by an interesting “convergence” of issues through the New York Times LENS Blog coming to light this week.

While the NYTimes Magazine is under fire for (unwittingly) carrying a photo essay that has been proven to be digitally manipulated - counter to their own, expressed, statement of journalist ethics - the newspaper’s LENS blog is carrying a rich slideshow of citizen-generated cellphone photos, with accompanying text about how the cameras on cellies alter the image with artful effect. Some of these photos were reworked using applications that mimic older cameras (such as Holgas, Poloroids and Leicas), and post-production photo software is almost a given in the digital realm now.

The differences between the two is subtle: the NYT Magazine piece is considered photojournalism and therefore meant to be above the slings and arrows of digital trickery, whereas the citizen-generated photos on the LENS Blog are (I guess) best considered Citizen Photojournalism and therefore held to a much lower standard.

As recent events have shown, however, Citizen Journalism is often more newsworthy than traditional media because of its immediacy, ubiquitousness, and ability to get stories from shadowy areas that journalists (despite best efforts) are not allowed access to.

On the whole, though, I have a great deal of respect for the New York Times in carrying both of these pieces on the LENS Blog, and see their actions as a great example of where traditional media can stake a claim as media models evolve.

Ironically, by highlighting the controversy facing the photo essay in their print magazine, and updating the public on their own and the photographer’s reaction to the public outcry about the manipulated photos, the NY TImes are displaying the transparency and ethics they must rely on to maintain public trust (ie: admitting to mistakes, however inadvertent they may have been, despite how this may further erode credibility).

To do so while also carrying the photo essay of citizen-generated cellphone photos on the LENS Blog, the Times are showing an openness to public reportage and highlighting their search for a hybridized style of news gathering - one that grows in the grassroots, finds wider broadcast upon the pillars of the Fourth Estate, and seeks that discussion with the public about what is manifest and what is latent is the shadows between the two.

In my opinion, by being transparent in admitting the errors of their traditional, print magazine, while also carrying a vast array of public reportage, the Times do not undermine their journalistic credibility, but rather strengthen their relevance as a media source as we all try to find our footing in the shifting media landscape. It is really the only way forward.

And perhaps this is merely another step toward bringing public trust back to journalists - at least edging closer to 50% of the public trusting journalists again.

the cross post helix as represented by playground equipment

Just a quick note to say that I’ve put up a post on Black, White and Gold about the Bruins’ recent Free Agent signings, and two posts on Urban Camouflage - the first about Elliott Smith’s car, which is for sale in Austin, Texas, and the second about Beck’s new initiative to interview people he digs, starting with Tom Waits.

I have been reading GlobalPost for a little while now. The news outlet has carved out a niche for itself by being an online-only, rich-media heavy site staffed by trained journalists. Their focus tends to be explicitly in the Foreign Correspondent camp (GlobalPost is an American news outlet), and I find their international coverage to be rock solid - especially when read in conjunction with coverage in traditional (ie: Print and broadcast) news outlets.

Just a day after commenting on the lack of citizen media coming out of Honduras, I found this piece on GlobalPost, posted today, discussing the situation around exiled President Zelaya’s attempted return to Honduras yesterday. Several media outlets reported that the pro-Micheletti military fired live rounds into the pro-Zelaya crowds, but GlobalPost correspondent Ioan Grillo (and photojournalist Trevor Snapp) paint a very vivid and visceral picture of what is happening on the ground in this tumultuous crisis.

After seeing so many articles in mainstream news outlets celebrating the level of citizen journalism coming out of Iran, I am surprised by how little coverage I am seeing of events in Honduras.

The coup d’état is basically seven days old, and it is widely known that the mainstream non-Micheletti news outlets have been stifled, but I am not seeing the same depth of citizen news carried in the mainstream outlets as I did with Iran’s recent election protests.

I am wondering if the story of the Iranian protests (for the Press at least) is the explosion and immediacy of the citizen journalism itself. Once that story has been covered there is, again, less urgency to fully regard citizen news as a viable layer to breaking news journalism.

Or it could just be that there is just a lot less citizen news coming out of Honduras, due to differences in personal technology use / availability, or economics.

But either way, it seems that the mainstream news outlets could be building toward more fully integrating the two journalistic forms to offer the best of both worlds, learning from the impact of Iranian coverage to offer media consumers the rigor and expertise of professional reporters with the immediacy and context of citizen journalists.

I think that news consumers are not only ready for this, they expect it.

And I am surprised that traditional outlets are not more willing to integrate these emerging information sources for fuller context, given how fresh the lessons of Iran are.

I have seen a few really tremendous multimedia pieces recently, focusing on the recession and its impact on different communities.

I thought I’d post today about two stories I was directed to via the excellent multimedia journalism site, Interactive Narratives.

The first is called Waiting Topless, produced by Natalie Conn, Peter Smith, Briget Ganske for The Sunday Best. It tracks two waitresses at a topless cafe in Maine, who both took their jobs due to the realities of the economic downturn in their area, and shows the unexpected realities of struggling to make ends meet when other jobs are not available.

The second piece is a three-part video article by Pierre Kattar and Sarah Sampsel for the Washington Post, called Voices of the Recession. This piece tracks three different groups: new clients of a local food bank, various people bidding on homes in an auction of bank-foreclosed properties, and finally, people newly enrolled in bar-tending school, which has seen a 25% increase in students in the last few months.

Both of these pieces primarily highlight the extraordinary lengths that people have to go to in tough economic times to simply pay bills, make rent and take care of their families. However, the larger theme in these pieces and others on the same topic is that the economy is changing, and few have any idea of where we will all end up when - and if - our economies stabilize.

We live in uncertain times and seem to be heading for increasing uncertain futures, and the tension of navigating through it all is evident in nearly every piece I’ve seen recently - whether it is about the recession or not.