Citizen Journalism, Day 1: Fillng gaps
| | Betsy Devine, is Jimmy olson here. 
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| | stumbled into a story about phone jamming in NH, where I'm from. Blog about it every now and then. Kept being interested while the majors were not.
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| | When you're Jimmy Olson, you can live with a story. When you're having dinner, at the car dealership. I would encourage you to turn on the enthusiasts.
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| | Jack Abramof is a disgraced lobbyists. Tom DeLay is a disgraced legislator. ... those are the actors here. Back in 2002 two of Jack A's indian tribes kindly sent $5k each to the NH GOP. Same with Tom DeLay. Thjis got sent to D.C., which went to Idaho. Then all the NH democratic phones were jammed by calls from Idaho.
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| | The major press treated this as a tiny NH story. Even though hundreds of calls came to the white house. which cleared the effort.
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| | Betsy has been following this since 2003.
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| | Made lists of who did what to whom.
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| | On sunday there was another little story in the WaPo. NE chair for Bush's campaign, james Tobin... getting money in maine... other person, sommers, gave surprise testimony in 2006 that in 2002 the phone jamming thing happened. All ties together.
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| | Lisa Williams: Betsy's work was not derivative. She was actually at the trial.
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| | collecting local blogs for newscribblers.net. Want to open up the conversation to more than the usual suspects. what happens when you take a look at the broad view of what they're doing, and how often they're doing it. they're wonderful and hilarious and they're sharing it with everybody.
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| | Tom Stites:
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| | My stupid pet trick act... (with the audio thingies, tangled with glasses).
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| | Worked with Dan, NYT, KC Times... have been in the margins of this group. Watched with fascination, not taken part as a blogger, yet.
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| | thing that strikes me most deeply about dan's thought is its humility. 'the idea that his readers know more than him is relatively rare. Not commonly held in newsrooms. Dan has a strong and healthy ego, and is able to step back. he is really strong with me now.
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| | Dan runs a center for citizen journalism. Lt's talk about the word citizen. It has many layers of meaning. The political meaning of the work that goes on this room, for example, as it applies to power. How much do we have, how much do we want, how do we use it? Keep this in our minds as we have the conversation.
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| | I am in the path of Neil Postman. Concept that the medium is the metaphor, rather than the message. A metaphor for the way we think. The government of the U.S. is based on literate thinking. The written word excites reason and thought and image media bypass critical thought. Which is why the manipulators are so good.
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| | The word "reader" has fallen on hard times. I am here with this understanding. Jounalism is not just what editors write, but what we can take part in.
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| | I care deeply about democracy. If we don't care about quality journalism, we don't care about democracy. What can we do to engage lote of people, and market penetration, that would be the ezuivalent of a weekly in a rural setting, or facebook in the college setting. these are definable communities.
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| | To Lisa: what can we do to get more people engaged?
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| | How do we get more and more quality journalism to them through digital media?
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| | There is a speech, on Dan's blog, under Recent Comments. there are numbers that dissect the loss of readers from the daily newspapers.
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| | Asked them to cut the readership change data by household income rather than educational attainment. Among upper middle class folks there is a belief that these are the same, but they are not.
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| | Many degreed people work for hourly wages.
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| | Numbers. Between 98 and 04, if you lived in a 50-75K household, more people read newspapers in 04 than in 98. People who make 75K and up, modest decline. But those surveys didn't inquire about online reading.
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| | From 40 to 35%. Similar falloff of more than 25%. Less access to quality reporting.
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| | Not many sources of quality reporting.
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| | TV does present some quality or serious reporting. Based on verified fact and passed thorugh mature pro judgement, had integrity, engages readers, appeals to their capacity for reason. this is the info that people need to make good life and citizenship decisions.
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| | The base of decision sources have been shrinking. this discards them as citizens.
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| | What they have left is TV, which manipulates their opinion. This is a bifurcation by class.
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| | Let's look beyond hyperlocal, carefully presented journalism.
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| | How do we move emergijng media forward to where it can be helpful to people in a growing democracy.
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| | ___: offer two possibilities. Joan Blades, founder of MoveOn, is doing MomsRising.org. group called oneeconomy.org, publishes beehive.org, in 5 languages. Info about health care, language, literacy, targeted to working people, low income, immigrant.. widely used, yet not well known, to us anyway. 'they have a philly portal. San jose. beehive.org. Moving to a 24-hour portal. Not sure about political discourse. 
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