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When a new phenomenon shows up, like Wikileaks or OccupyWallSt, or the web itself, my immediate impulse is to try to get my arms around it. To get enough input flowing into my brain so I get a feel for the story. Following a hashtag on Twitter is useful, but it isn't what I'm seeking. CNN or MSNBC is a substitute for it, but they aren't really covering this stuff, and aside from that, I know that they are giving me a superficial story. I want something less processed, with less MSM judgment. Something more raw. What I'm looking for, of course, is a river. So yesterday I took a look around to see how many of the Occupy sites had feeds. My algorithm was simple. I got a list of the top cities in the United States from Wikipedia. And I typed into Google, one after another: Occupy <CityName>. And about half of them came up hits. An overwhelming majority are planning events. But it seems most of them are using Facebook to plan the events. Since Facebook doesn't reliably produce feeds for its groups (if they do I don't know how to find them) I can only use blogs. And I don't really want to go into Facebook, since I feel strongly that it's as much a part of the problem as the culture of Wall Street. I want to produce a "green" river. Anyway -- it's here! Flowing slowly, but there are stories there. I hope that by spreading the news it will attract more readers, and thereby more new feeds, and more news in the feeds we already have. And of course the OPML reading list for this river is publicly available. |
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