February 28th, 2010, 1 Comment »
It’s always great when I discover a succinct essay or lecture that summarizes the state of the union for a particular industry, art form or research topic. The other day I watched this half-hour talk by Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse Schell discussing trends in casual gaming. He starts a little slow but gathers steam:
Here’s a kind of response to Schell’s lecture, specifically discussing this idea of external rewards.
February 26th, 2010, 2 Comments »
Chatroulette is a kind of serendipity engine for discovering strangers with whom to video chat. It’s also one of the first web memes that made me think, “I am way too old for this.” Here’s a great six-minute movie describing what Chatroulette is:
Everybody’s talking about Chatroulette at the moment. There’s a good piece from New York magazine–I like their description of what you might find when you join the site:
A guy from Sweden was reportedly speed-drawing strangers’ portraits. Someone with a guitar was improvising songs for anyone who’d give him a topic. One man popped up on people’s screens in the act of fornicating with a head of lettuce. Others dressed like ninjas, tried to persuade women to expose themselves, and played spontaneous transcontinental games of Connect Four. Occasionally, people even made nonvirtual connections: One punk-music blogger met a group of people from Michigan who ended up driving eleven hours to crash at his house for a concert in New York…I sing the body electronic.
I don’t have a lot to say about Chatroulette at the moment, beyond these three thoughts:
I find nothing about Chatroulette appealing. I’m obvious not opposed to superficial wastes of time, but the process just seems kind of joyless to me. Am I wrong?
February 24th, 2010, 59 Comments »
This morning I had breakfast with some American friends who have been up in Vancouver for the Olympics. We discussed this Tim Horton’s ad that tells the story of the reunion of an African family in a snowy Canadian airport:
It’s pretty touching, in a corporate coffee commercial kind of way. In a minute, the ad explores those two pillars of Canadian culture: the immigrant experience and Tim Horton’s.
Tim Horton’s is, of course, a much-loved Canadian brand. It’s also an incredibly mainstream brand–there’s nothing edgy about the Timmy. So this ad isn’t meant to provocatively appeal to the coasts–it’s a commercial for every Canadian watching the Olympics. And I think it’s probably appealing. We are, of course, nearly all immigrants to this land.
My American friends explained that this commercial would never, ever air in the United States. They said that there’s simply too much ill will and anger around immigration. It would mean corporate suicide for a big company to run this piece in the States.
I can’t say that I was surprised by their observation, but it’s a little sad. It’s also a reminder of how, in certain respects, we’re so different from our neighbours–spelled with the ‘u’–to the south.
UPDATE: John sent along this Globe and Mail story which explains that:
This should come as a shock to no one.
February 23rd, 2010, No Comments »
Just a quick heads up that early bird tickets for Northern Voice went on sale this morning. And they’re selling fast.
One of the ongoing challenges of the conference is managing demand. In the past, we’ve always sold out very quickly, which disappoints a lot of people. This year we’ve taken two steps to try to ameliorate that phenomenon:
February 22nd, 2010, 14 Comments »
“Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism.” –Graham Greene
This weekend I received an email from a local arts organization that began:
We appreciate your work as an active citizen journalist and would like to invite you…
“Hang on,” I thought, “I’m not a citizen journalist”. I am often a curator, sometimes an editorialist and occasionally a critic. I rarely ‘cover’ something, inasmuch as I attend an event and report on it, but I don’t really self-identify that way. That arts group isn’t alone, though–I’ve heard plenty of others equate “blogger” with “citizen journalist”.
For me, it’s about intent. I don’t think “I’d really like to go report on that concert”. My thought process is pretty unexamined, but it’s more like “I like Cat Power, and I like writing about the arts, so I’ll write about my experience of attending her concert. Others might be interested in what I write.”
That email got me thinking about citizen journalism. Thanks to the Olympics, it’s an idea that’s much in the public eye these days. From groups like True North Media House and Vancouver Access 2010 to dozens of individual bloggers, Twitter users and rich media makers, these are surely the most documented Games yet.
There’s no shortage of reportage. We’re going to events and writing about them. We’re photographing the Games and the streets and everything in-between. We’re having fun.
We’re covering stories. But how often are we uncovering them?
Where is the local, investigative citizen journalism? To put it another way, who’s doing the citizen reporting that isn’t fun?
Who’s pounding the pavement, making calls, sifting through government reports, sitting in town hall meetings and doing all of the difficult, time-consuming work that professional journalists have been doing? Because I sure ain’t.
I asked on Twitter, and received a couple suggestions. Sean Holman’s work at The Public Eye is one example, as are Linda Soloman’s Megan Stewart’s stories on toxic chemicals for the Vancouver Observer. Notably, both Sean and Linda are professional journalists.
Can you think of other examples? Has any citizen journalist broken a story around the Olympics?
I’m not trying to discredit or criticize citizen journalism. I just worry that most of it is, by its nature, lightweight and short term. Few of us have the time, resources, expertise, connections and (most importantly, I think) motivation to do the in-depth work of your average investigative journalist. On top of those discouragements, the web doesn’t particularly reward the long-form article or feature-length documentary. It’s a bite-sized medium.
If we assume that the writing is on the wall for much of the mainstream media, where does that leave us? I liked how Clay Shirky put it in a 2009 talk at Harvard:
Which leaves us with a giant hole, and a very threatening one. And in the nightmare scenario that I’ve kind of been spinning at for the last couple years has been: Every town in this country of 500,000 or less just sinks into casual, endemic, civic corruption–that without somebody going down to the city council again today, just in case, that those places will simply revert to self-dealing. Not of epic, catastrophic sorts, but the sort that just takes five percent off the top. Newspapers have been our principal bulwark for that, and as they’re shrinking, that I think is where the threat is.
Will citizen journalists step in to fill this void? I hope so, but you’d be hard-pressed to get me to sit through even one town-hall meeting. I’m happy to volunteer my time for good causes, but monitoring city hall isn’t a priority.
I know I’m describing a problem without offering many solutions. Here are a couple of ideas:
The more I think about it, the investigative citizen journalists of the 21st century are the activists of the 20th. They care enough about a particular topic to dig into it with enough effort and fervor to uncover new truths.
What do you think? Where will we find the investigative journalists of the future?
February 18th, 2010, 1 Comment »
I just watched a great TED talk by Bill Gates. He cogently explains the real threat of climate change, particularly to the world’s poorest 2 billion people. He goes on to describe the urgent demand for an energy breakthrough that can radically reduce the planet’s carbon emissions. He also discusses exciting innovations in nuclear power which, on the face of them, sound pretty convincing:
UPDATE: Thomas Friedman also wrote with clarity about climate change in the New York Times this week.
February 17th, 2010, No Comments »
The subtitled Hitler trope is a gift that keeps on giving. I don’t know why I find them so entertaining, but whether it’s the Sundin trade or problems with Windows Vista, they always amuse me. Maybe it’s because I saw the original film, and each send-up reminds me of the original’s super-serious tone?
In any case, Graeme McRanor has produced this latest example, on the Winter Olympics. Rated PG for frequent cursing:
February 17th, 2010, 7 Comments »
In which I risk being a bit of a Debbie Downer.
Watching and reading coverage of the Olympics, I’ve observed a lot of projections and comparisons involving Canada’s medal haul for 2010 and previous years (the latest example was in a Slate piece by Dahlia Lithwick). I’ve a lot of graphics showing medal totals for the previous Olympics held in Canada.
It’s a rich vein for the media, and a natural one. After all, it’s a sports competitions, where achievements are measured empirically.
I got to thinking about whether those were fair comparisons to make. Surely the number of medals has grown over the past, say, 35 years. And surely the number of participating nations and athletes has grown as well. So, I did what I always do when I wonder about something. I made a chart (click for gold medal bigness):
It shows the number of medals up for grabs at each Olympics, and also the number of nations participating. Interestingly, since 1976, the number of available medals and nations attending have grown at similar rates–they’re at 175% what they were. As you can see, the rate of medals has, recent years, exceeded the growth of participating nations.
And then there’s the number of athletes participating. In 1976, there were roughly 30 athletes per event. In 2010, that’s still the case.
My analysis is pretty rudimentary, but it seems like the amount of competition has stayed consistent over the past 35 years. It’s no more or less difficult to win a medal at the Olympics than it was when I was born.
What do you know? I wasn’t a Debbie Downer after all. Media folks, compare medal counts until your graphic designer cramps up.