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[This post originally ran in September, 2008. I'm reposting it following the death of an Army journalist in Afghanistan last month.]

When the Iraq War began, I was sitting in a small steakhouse in rural Central California, and as the television screens lit up with grainy, phosphorescent splashes of color, the people around me began clapping. We all knew it was coming; the build up to the war had been years in the making. But I was the one stunned into silence, amazed by the satisfaction and appreciation on the faces of the people around me.


Yusafiyah, Iraq, 9/7/07. Photo by Senior Master Sgt. Brian L. Boone, U.S. Air Force.

The next day, the Department of Defense released its first press photo (stock photos shot by the DoD for media outlets to use) of the war — an image of Donald Rumsfeld in a press conference. Since then, the agency’s collection of media photos has grown into the hundreds. They’re fairly uniform: Soldiers run to helicopters that are blowing up walls of dust. Soldiers with guns search homes. They stand in streets having pleasant conversations with Iraqis and they peer around brick walls with their guns at the ready. There are never any dead bodies; the smiling Iraq children are always hugging smiling soldiers — the photos are propaganda at its most transparent and banal.

And the photos are, at times, beautiful. They were shot by people with an aesthetic eye for the moment, an eye for the dramatic and powerful. The truly artistic photos are rare — only a few each year. And they’re limited in their scope: dramatic composition and lighting is the best most photographers can pull off. But the images are striking and memorable all the same. Flipping through the last four years, I find myself pulled into the DoD’s narrative of the war.


Sather Air Base, Iraq, 3/12/08. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Allen, U.S. Air Force.


Camp Ar Ramadi, Iraq, 9/3/06. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock, U.S. Air Force.

When I write that sentence I hear the echo of four-year-old applause in my words. I know the steak house diners were clapping for something different. Me appreciating a propaganda photo from the DoD is not the same as their Pavlovian response to foreigners dying along the axis of some fabricated argument for war. But it’s disingenuous to pretend the photos are independent from the government that created them. It’s like my relationship with the U.S. Army, which I despise for its role in the war, and the individual soldier, whom I respect for her service. Each one is an intrinsic part of the other, just like a photo and the events it depicts.

To like the photos does not mean I have to be an apologist of the war. But to like them brings me into a closer relationship with the powers that created this war than I would ever want. And so I try and balance on that line. I see the art. I hear my own clapping. And I remain coldly aware of what birthed these beautiful images.


Fair al Jair, Iraq, 12/16/07. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Adrian Cadiz, U.S. Air Force.


Wounded soldiers from Iraq being offloaded in Southwest Asia, 1/17/07. Photo by Staff Sgt.
Edward D. Holzapfel, U.S. Air Force.

Top photo: Near the Iraq/Syria border, 3/6/06. Photo by Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon, U.S. Air Force.

I normally don’t cross post what I (occasionally) write at ReadWriteWeb, but I think that the White House’s concern about polls and ranking mirrors what a lot of newsrooms are wondering as well: Just because a lot of unknown people like a story idea, should we take it seriously too?

“In a memo released yesterday, the White House made it significantly easier for federal agencies to use everything from social networks to online forums. But with the newfound freedom comes a surprising caveat: User ratings and rankings on those services, the new guidelines warn, “should not be used as the basis for policy or planning.”

In other words, a million Americans can Digg or retweet an important blog post, but government officials shouldn’t use that popularity as an indicator of the post’s value.

That’s not always a bad thing considering that a dedicated group of like-minded people can game a casual voting system. But the voice of a social network corresponds to real people in the real world. A recent study, for instance, found that Twitter chatter accurately forecasts box-office revenues.

As a whole, the new guidelines [PDF] were sorely needed. Social media and other online activities fell under a law that arduously dictates how agencies handle written materials. Under the new guidelines, online activities are now considered a “public meeting,” which gives agencies much more freedom to blog, hold virtual meetings or even run contests.

That freedom comes with a stipulation. The memo was written by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs administrator, Cass Sunstein. In it he explains that agencies should “exercise good judgment and caution when using rankings, ratings, or tagging” because they aren’t “statistically generalizable.”

That’s true, but it doesn’t mean they’re worthless. John Zogby, founder of polling firm Zogby International, told us last year that…”

Read the rest of the post here.

Photo by libraryman.

A coworker of mine, Marshal Kirpatrick, once wrote, “People new to social media are often frustrated when they are told to “join the conversation” – because they aren’t sure where to find the conversation.”

That’s doubly true for journalists. We need to mine the Web for stories and sources but where do we start? The social bookmarking site Delicious is a good example. It’s filled with millions of potentially noteworthy links, but how do you filter it to find what’s valuable? To answer that question I built a simple tool for identifying Delicious users who are really interested in the same topics I am.

Last month I spoke at a conference for university admin types. The session was about the loss of higher ed reporters, and ways that a university can become their own media organization. That doesn’t just mean disseminating information, but collecting it as well. I wanted to give people at the session a simple way to get their toes wet. So I turned to Yahoo Pipes and came up with Delicious User Finder. (You can find a primer on Delicious here.)

What it does

You enter keywords. The Pipe spits out a list of Delicious users who have tagged bookmarks with your keywords — and the number of times they used those tags.

That number is the key part of this tool. Those users with high tag counts think just like you do; they see the news through the same lens you do. And now that you’ve found them, they’re your personal information mine. You can use them to find new blogs, news sources and online services. You can use them as your own news aggregator. You can use them to discover where the conversation is.

They’re not a “source” in the traditional, real-life sense; the majority of the time who they are is irrelevant. Click on their name on the Delicious User Finder search screen. That will take you to their collection of bookmarks on Delicious. You can either bookmark that page or grab the RSS feed on the bottom of that page.

What it won’t do

Some users are goldmines, but plenty of others are crap. Also, it’s a limited pool. The search will only analyze the most recent 100 bookmarks with your tags. For some searches that may go back two years, for others, two months.

Advanced

The quote from Marshall comes from a piece he did for ReadWriteWeb called “How to Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet.” It’s a little dated, but if you’re interested in getting even deeper into finding out where the conversation is, then I highly recommend it.

So it’s been a while, but I’ve got a full plate of posts that I’m working on for this spring.

Here’s what you can expect in the coming weeks: why we need to start thinking about technology as journalism; the state of magazines in Oregon (a.k.a The Oregon Magazine Deathwatch); what we can learn from stupid Internet users; and a nonfiction piece on the youngest member of the Lincoln assassination plot.

Additionally, this Thursday I’ll speaking at the CASE regional conference in downtown Portland. My session is called “We Are the Media: You and the Emerging New Journalism“.

With the contraction of print and broadcast newsrooms, the media professionals we relied on for higher education coverage have started to disappear and so has their beat. Are there opportunities to become our own media with access and cost efficiency of the blogosphere, Twitter and other social media? As the digital revolution continues to reshape the journalism landscape, how is this changing the way we do our jobs? What trends and emerging journalism efforts can we expect to turn into mainstays of tomorrow’s journalism world?

As part of that I’ll also be posting a new media how-to guide for university administrators and teachers.

We Make The Media was an intense day. As one of the sub organizers who spent the last few months helping Ron Buel and a core group of people create the event, it was both thrilling and heartbreaking to see how it played out.

Over the course of the day about 50 percent of attendees left and didn’t come back. Many that I talked to said they didn’t see value in simply discussing the problems of the industry. Several people told me they felt like the day was an attempt by OPB, which was a sponsor, to “steal” innovative ideas that were generated by the journalism community. (I think that’s completely unfounded.) By the end of the day, I didn’t feel inspired, I felt exhausted.

Two days later my mood has improved. When I spoke to the audience as part of the opening panel, I said I was amazed by how the journalism community in Portland has come together over this last year. Yes, it’s very “Portland-y.” But the ways we’ve been exploring ideas and learning from each other is fundamentally important to the future of journalism in Oregon. And we clearly saw that happening on Saturday. Because of that, I feel like the day was an overall success.

But I’m going to leave why and how it was successful to other attendees to write about. Here are two things I believe the conference failed at on Saturday.

Diversity
Uncomfortable: That’s the only way to describe the atmosphere in the conference room when the lack of racial diversity was brought up. When the organizers were planning the event, we contacted media outlets we were familiar with. We failed to reach out to community media, and to media that reflected the racial diversity of Portland. This was a mistake, one that I take partial responsibility for.

We were lucky to have KBOO come on as a sponsor a few days before the conference. But what if that had happened a few weeks before? Who else could we have invited? And how would that dialogue have shaped the planning of the event? If we’re going to create a media organization that breaks out of the old news models, we need to be including people from outside traditional media outlets.

Technology
From the beginning of the day, the smartphone- and laptop-using crowd congregated in a back corner of the conference room. True, that’s where the power outlets were. But like minds found like minds — and they were in the minority. I’m not inferring that the rest of the attendees were Luddites. That clearly was not the case.

But the attitude of some of the core organizers was that technology, like the printing press, is simply a method to deliver the news. Wrong. Technology is journalism — from the code that creates new projects, to the tools we use to report and communicate, to ideas we are only now discovering. The cavernous gap between those two mindsets created an us-vs.-them mentality that drove some of the Twitter crowd into a frenzy. I’m not being critical of it; the heavy flow of snark on Twitter was hilarious and absolutely spot on.

But remember how I talked about a journalism community that’s coalescing? “The corner” wasn’t feeling it. And the project they gravitated to — an incubator for journalism startups — had little or no outreach or communication with any of the other final projects.

It’s two days later and I’m asking myself, “Now what the hell am I supposed to do?” I know I’m not the only one asking that. Over the next few days I’ll gather together answers from some other participants — and try and come up with one of my own.

–

Photo credits:
Binary: Carsten Mueller
Wrench: Davide Guglielmo

I spent the better part of last weekend at the University of Oregon’s journalism school. On Saturday I was a panelist at the Building a Better Journalist conference, and on Sunday I took part in the Redefining J School barcamp. I don’t have a journalism degree. In fact, I don’t have a college degree at all. But this weekend I learned this: Professional journalists and their news organizations need to start thinking about how we can help students get the training they need.

It was a weekend of contrasts. I came away amazed by some sessions and depressed by others. The conversation during the barcamp was so fast and sharp at times it was almost impossible to take notes; the new media sessions at the conference had a great range in topics as well.  Of course, there were also a few tedious veterans yabbering about “change.” I get cynical and bored with people who wave the word “digital” around like it’s some kind of healing wand without ever examining what has actually changed in our industry. Journalism students need answers, not aphorisms.

If there was one thing I took away from those two days it was this:

There are j school students out there who want more than what their universities are providing. And we may be loosing some damn good journalists because of it.

That’s not a crack at the U of O. In fact, they’re probably the most proactive university I know of. They recently changed their curriculum so that students get more hands-on training earlier in their studies. Several professors and instructors — including Ed Madison, Michael Werner and Suzi Steffen — were an integral part of the barcamp. Additionally, the university’s journalism department has been a strong supporter of community events like the Digital Journalism Camp and We Make the Media conferences. (Disclaimer: I am involved with organizing both events.)

But the reality is that as easy-to-use blogging, video, audio, programing and other digital tools increases, the number of students entering college with some type of skill is increasing as well. That doesn’t mean that a university can teach all incoming students at a higher level. It means the university has to serve a broader spectrum of students. With, of course, limited resources. Some students, like entrepreneur Daniel Bachhuber for instance, aren’t being challenged enough and they’re dropping out. That’s a tragedy not just for the school, but for the j school students who could be learning from their advanced-level peers.

One solution is to improve existing internship programs. Challenging, real-world work experience isn’t guaranteed to keep students in school, but it’s a significant start. Students at the barcamp had plenty of suggestions: Give us opportunities to add things to our portfolios, training that reflects what’s actually happening in journalism, and work that respects our time. But new journalism startups also need to start creating internship programs. J school interns are not just a source of cheap labor — they’re the talent pool you’re going to be drawing from as you grow.

--Members of the White House News Photographers' Association, circa 1922-1926--

As journalists, the future looms so large that it feels like we’re constantly on new ground. But we’re not. Whether we tell stories with words, audio, video or a combination of all three, there are a surprising number of lessons to be found in the past. A 115-year-old slice-of-life story about a sick man falling down on a city street has the same emotional power we’re looking for in our own stories. A 28-year-old story about engineers designing a computer has a staying power we’re hoping for in our own tech reporting.

There’s another lesson that’s buried in these stories from the last two centuries. It may be the most important. If you want to create quality journalism, the most important thing is to stand up from the keyboard, walk outside with whatever tools you like best, and start reporting.

1: You can report on technology in a way that it remains compelling — and relevant — for decades afterward.
“The Soul of a New Machine,” Tracy Kidder, 1981 [Google Books]

In the late 1970s, Kidder followed a team of engineers at a company called Data General Corporation as they frantically tried to design a new computer model. It’s a topic that could easily be confusing and dry. And 30 years later it seems like ancient history. But it’s not. The story is still a great read. Kidder took great pains to keep the technology understandable. And while the equipment is now quaintly archaic, the story around it — a crushing race to build a product that appears doomed to fail — is fascinating. “Soul” went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award.

2: Don’t be afraid to get close to the action, whether you’re recording with a notepad, recorder or camera.
“When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers,” Stephen Crane, 1894 [PDF]
“Can’t Get Their Minds Ashore,” Abraham Cahan, circa 1898 [Google Books]

“When Man Falls” is slice-of-life reporting, not hard news. A man walking on the street falls over in what looks like an epileptic fit; a leering crowd gathers and waits for police and an ambulance. “Ashore” has a similar feel. Cahan is the invisible scribe as he follows a series of conversations at a receiving station for new immigrants in Manhattan. We’re no strangers to up-close journalism these days, whether on a battlefield or a crime scene. But Crane and Cahan are two great examples of reporting that gets close enough to see the smallest details, but not so close as to overshadow the story as it unfolds.

3: If you play with language, with storytelling, never forget the journalism at the core of the story.
The Pig, Ben Hecht, 1921 [Google Books]

“The Pig” is a brilliant example of voice done right. In the last forty years, there have been a few dozen print journalists who fall into that same category of “voice done right”: Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Susan Orlean. The examples of voice done poorly feel countless. If you allow a strong voice in your work, remember this: Journalists have been trying and failing miserably at it for more than 100 years. Do your homework. Learn how the masters got it right.

4: Sometimes you’re part of the story. Your honesty, not your ego, is what’s most important.
“How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” Lillian Ross, 1950 [New Yorker archive]
“Travels in Georgia,” John McPhee, 1973 [New Yorker archive]

The “I”, the first person, is a firmly entrenched element of modern journalism. The “I” can add a crucial character to a story, one that guides readers with an invisible hand. Done poorly it’s an exercise in vanity. Ross’ profile of Ernest Hemingway is a great example of the “fly on the wall” reporting style that made her famous. In “Travels,” McPhee hangs out with biologists as they do field work and occasionally eat roadkill. The “I” in each of their stories is a remarkably unobtrusive but essential voice.

5: Profiling everyday people will always be powerful.
“Court Buff,” Mark Singer, 1980 [Google Books]
“Watercress Girl,” Henry Mayhew, 1851 [Link]
“The Rivermen,” Joseph Mitchell, 1959 [Google Books]

Singer wrote about courtroom spectators. Mayhew wrote about a child living and working in incredible poverty. Mitchell (and his contemporary A.J. Liebling) spent his entire career writing about supposedly unremarkable people. “I actually believe deeply in the dignity of ordinariness,” Susan Orlean once said. Orlean wrote what I think is one of the best profiles ever crafted, a study of a 10-year-old boy (“The American Man at Age Ten“).

“An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain,” she wrote in 2001. “I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it. The challenge was to write these stories in a way that got other people as interested in them as I was.”

-Photo credit: Oliver Ingrouille-

I’m posting this a little belatedly. Ok, really belatedly. Over at the conference site I have a schedule for Aug. 1, as well as list of some of the presenters, panelists and moderators. I just added Carolynn Duncan, founder of the startup incubator Portland 10, to the list. Her presentation is called “Square peg, wrong hole: Why your news product doesn’t meet consumers’ needs.”

Big room:
9:30-10: Introduction
10-11: Hyper-local news: What works and what doesn’t
11-12: SEO for journalists: What, why, and unique challenges
12-1: Lunch
1-2: Digital storytelling
2-3: Licensing your work: a.k.a, What the heck is Creative Commons?
3-4: Real-world successful (and almost-successful) revenue models

Room #2:
10-11: Square peg, wrong hole: Why your news product doesn’t meet consumers’ needs
11-12: Journalism basics: Understand sourcing, fact-checking, corrections
12-1: Lunch
1-2: Video 101: cheap software and editing tips
2-3: Podcasting and audio journalism
3-4: Wikipedia for journalists

Room #3:
10-11: Unconference
11-12: Reserved for caterers
12-1: Reserved for caterers
1-2: Unconference
2-3: Unconference
3-4: Unconference

Here’s a few of the panelists and speakers you’ll find at those sessions:

Cornelius Swart, editor, Portland Sentinel
Ken Aaron, NeighborhoodNotes.com
Justin Carder, Neighborlogs
Ginger Grant, director, Creative Intelligence Laboratory, Simon Fraser University
Paula Holm Jensen, attorney, Holm Jensen Law LLC
Rachel Andersen, Anvil Media
Lisa Williams, Media Forte Marketing
Greg Swanson, former director of interactive media sales for Lee Enterprises; founder of ITZ Publishing
Alex Wilhelm, co-founder, Contenture
Michelle V. Rafter, journalist
Carolynn Duncan, founder, Portland 10
Aaron Weiss, producer, KGW
Mike Gebhardt “Dr. Normal,” producer, Strange Love Live
Ethan Lindsey, OPB journalist- Our thoughts go out to Ethan and his family. For more on his health, visit http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/ethanlindsey/journal

Stay tuned in the coming days as we announce the final list of participants and moderators.

AND DON’T FORGET TO SIGN UP. Space is limited and the RSVP list will be CLOSED on July 27.

Sarah Palin: Wow.

Theory 1: Since she’s not running for reelection, why not use the time to fundraise and raise support for a presidential run instead of just sitting around as a lame duck governor? A similar theory says that instead of president, she’s going to run for the senate against current Alaska senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski.

Likelihood: Possible. She’s hit a political brick wall in Alaska. She doesn’t have a lot of support from the Legislature. The economy is crashing and she doesn’t want to be a governor who raises taxes. The GOP is desperate for a national leader and she could easily fill the void; up until last week polls clearly showed she’s popular among conservatives. As for the senate, there’s no love between her and Murkowski. This was the senator’s one-sentence statement yesterday: “I am deeply disappointed that the governor has decided to abandon the state and her constituents before her term has concluded.”

Chance of success: Lukewarm. Here’s why: a) Romney doesn’t have a day job and to keep up, Palin needs to hit the 2012 trail right now. Right? Wrong. And not just because it’s possible to run a state while campaigning. It also has to do with how much experience you have when you step down to join the race. As Bruce Reed points out, ex-governors like Carter, Reagan, Clinton and George W. either termed out or had served multiple terms before running for president.

b) The Nixon argument. After Nixon lost the 1960 presidential and 1962 California gubernatorial elections, he gave a bitter, angry speech (a.k.a the Checkers Speech), and seemed destined for political exile. He spent the next six years traveling the nation and world rebuilding his — and his party’s — status as a foreign affairs leader, and went on to become president. Palin isn’t Nixon. She doesn’t have his knowledge of foreign affairs, or his brilliance as a political strategist. Or six years for that matter.

Theory 2: Rather than jumping straight into a new campaign, she’s going to turn herself into an even bigger political superstar (and make lots of money) by writing books, getting her own show on Fox, sitting on corporate boards, and traveling around the country speaking at lucrative speaking engagements.

Likelihood: Possible. The opportunities abound.

Chance of success: Unknown. She’s thrown even her most ardent supporters into a tailspin. Conservatives4Palin.com: “All of us in the Palin camp have found quicksand beneath our feet today. Nobody knows what to think.” How much will they pay to hear her talk? She’s going to have do some serious work to win them back. See also Theory 5.

Theory 3: She’s pregnant.

Likelihood: Um.

Theory 4: She’s facing a federal indictment of some kind. The rumors of an actual indictment are just that. The facts that may lead up to that indictment are, on the other hand, pretty solid. At the center of the case is a building contractor called Spenard Building Supplies. The Village Voice did a in-depth investigation last year; Max Blumenthal has a new roundup:

Likelihood: Completely unknown. This is based entirely on unverifiable comments by off-the-record sources. Yes, Palin has faced at least three separate ethics scandals in the last few years. But we’re not going to know anything about this one until the feds announce something.

Theory 5: She’s simply being her impulsive self.

Likelihood: Very high. Palin’s speech was weird. It was rambling and sometimes incoherent. It’s very likely she wrote it herself; the exclamation points (18 in all), oddly used quotation marks, and repeated ALL CAPS are not the hallmark of a professional speechwriter. Guess where her main spokesperson was at the time of the speech? New York City.

Chance of success: Very poor. Joe Gandelman: “Sarah Palin is again doing it her way — but the question is whether her way is on the same wavelength as America’s overall polity and the way the political system operates.” Friday’s announcement didn’t catapult her to a new level of politics. In fact it did the opposite. Her resignation, with all its uncertainty and caprice, has cemented the fact that this confusing and unpredictable person is the Sarah Palin we will always see, no matter how long she’s on the political scene.

To quote Nixon: “A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.”

Ink spots in image by Paulo Correa

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— Abraham

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