Yeah, it sucks that I lost my passport, my work visa and my bank card - all in the last week. But I also sat 9 feet away from my favorite actor (ohmygod!, ohmygod!, ohmygod!), Gael Garcia Bernal, at a press conference. I also had a nice interview with Yann Martel, author of one of my favorite books, "Life of Pi." My interview with Yann made it into the newspaper - but my nice little caption story on Gael did not. My editor says he wants to attract a younger audience. Hel-lo! print a damn photo of the hottest, coolest, most respectable actor out there!
Film Star and Author Host Fund-raising Event
Actor and activist Gael Garcia Bernal joined Nobel Prize winning author Jose Saramago to present Guadalajara’s Civil Hospital Association Foundation with a check for 475 thousand pesos, representing the proceeds from their joint reading of selections from Saramago’s latest work, “Las internitencias de la muerte (The Intermittence of Death),” at the Teatro Diana on Wednesday evening. The donation will be used to assist children battling cancer in the city. Bernal, who grew up in Guadalajara, said he felt honored to have been invited to work with Saramago in his hometown, and that he feels the event is a great example of what each person can do in his or her life to help others. “The Intermittence of Death” describes a fictitious country in which the inhabitants cease to die and are suspended in an eternal old age, much to their increasing despair.
Megan has started writing for the local English language newspaper and her first story came out in last Friday's edition. You can read Day of Dead market is a traditional family affair at the Guadalajara Reporter website for the next week, but when the new edition goes online this Friday the story will disappear in a subscribers only section, so here is an alternate version.
The same paper (The Guadalajara Reporter) that did a story a couple weeks ago in which I was quoted as a Apple Consultant has run one of Megan's photos of the World Cup celebrations here in Guadalajara on it's front page. You can view the article and photo online, but it will be gone in a week. So if it has been more than a week, I saved a screenshot of the page.
When I heard earlier this week that Willamette Week had won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with it's story about the 30 year secret of Neil Goldschmidt's sexual abuse of a 14 year-old girl I was very happy to hear that they got the credit for breaking this story. This is probably the most important story reported in the 10 years that I have payed attention to Oregon politics.
Since my initial reaction I have noticed a few other things that make this an important award, not just for Willamette Week, but for Oregon media and the internet.
The first is that I feel like this award is not just a recognition of great investigative reporting by Nigel Jaquiss, but also a recognition of the missed opportunity for everyone who new about this story, but did nothing. Of course this really points a finger at the Oregonian who had hints about this story for years, but never did an exhaustive investigation. This is the second major sex scandal that the Oregonian has missed and been scooped on, the first being Senator Bob Packwood's pattern of sexual harassment (a story which was broken by the Washington Post).
A second important aspect is the fact that this story was first broken by Willamette Week on their website. I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was the first Pulitzer awarded for a story which was broken on the internet. Willamette Week chose to publish the first parts of this story on their website when it became clear that if they waited for their normal weekly press time they would be beaten to the punch by both the Oregonian and the Portland Tribune. For the entire narrative of the events surrounding the release of the story on the internet, read "The Background" from the award winning Willamette Week article. Also, the original posting from the Willamette Week website is available. Perhaps in the near future an online publication will be awarded a major Pulitzer award.
Finally, I think it is important to discuss the Portland Mercury's Managing Editor Phil Busse's letter to the administrator of the Pulitzer Prize. (via the Portland Communique) In his letter Phil Busse gives two reasons he was concerned by the nomination of Willamette Week for the Pulitzer. First, he feels that the story "was not uncovered in the traditional, hard-digging investigative sense of the word." This is simply not true. While the investigation did move quickly (starting in Feb. 2004 and ending in May 2004) Jaquiss did a lot of digging and investigation of the allegations. Jaquiss may have been tipped-off about the story, but that is how many great investigative stories (including Watergate) get started. Second, he says that the story was well known and makes a connection between a founder of Willamette Week (who is no longer associated with the paper) and Neil Goldschmidt. The fact that the story was well know in political circles and not reported is part of what makes the story so important. The fact that a founder of Willamette Week had a connection to Goldschmidt is not relevant to the Pulitzer award. Also, Busse misrepresents the events leading to the publication of this story. He states " . . . both the Tribune and the Oregonian broke the story days before Willamette Week's story hit the street." In reality Willamette Week published parts of this story to their website a day before the Tribune and Oregonian. Busse knows that the reason that Willamette Week published their story in their paper nearly a week later has more to do with publishing schedules (or at least he should since he also works at a weekly paper). All in all, Busse's letter comes across as sad and embarrassing. Had I know that Busse was capable of such tactics I would have not supported him in his bid for Mayor.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the Weblog's place in the larger context of Media. Is the blog a media watchdog as seen in the CBS documents, administration paid journalist and Jeff Gannon/James Guckert scandles? Or is it just a way for random people to talk about their daily lives and personal happenings? Maybe it is a place for more traditional journalism to find a different kind of audience?
I think the answer is some kind of combination of the three. I believe that the place of the blog is to do what most new media has done. Blogs fill the gap where traditional media has either failed or simply doesn't exist. For example, recently the King of Nepal over through the democratic government and has banned the nepalese media from criticizing him or his government or reporting on any of the activities sorounding the coup. A blog has filled the void, much as they did during the U.S. invasion and current occupation of Iraq. Radio Free Nepal is providing links to non nepalese press and first hand reports about the current conditons in Nepal. This is information that is not available to either the outside world or much of Nepal at this time.
Fox News Channel's Brigitte Quinn had Vanity Fair contributing editor Judy Bacharach on to talk about Bush's inauguration festivities. When Judy started criticizing Bush for having a lavish inauguration during a war in which many US soldiers are dying Quinn couldn't handle it. She towed the party line and looked like a shill. See for yourself.
Fair and Balanced my ass.
via OR Blogs > Basie! > Oliver Willis
UPDATE: Read the transcript from a boy and his computer to save Oliver Willis on bandwidth.
Webcomics are getting larger and larger and now they are starting to crossover into traditional media. Mac Hall and many other comics are offering their comics in a printed collection. Penny Arcade has held a fan convention. Many comic creators now make a living off of their webcomic.
Now Player vs. Player (PVP) is offering it's comic to any newspaper who wants to publish it for free. The idea is to drive more people to the website to generate more ad revenue. This is pretty smart idea that really turns the print comic publishing world's strategies on their head. My guess is that a comic like Dilbert publishes in print for hefty syndication fees and has a website mainly to drive people to the print version and to gain some online ad revenue.
Predictably, PVPs syndication idea and the general rise in prominence of web comics has some of the traditional comic artists a bit defensive. Take this Non Sequitur. Now I like this comic, but I think it is pretty clear that the artist (Wiley) just doesn't get it.
First, some of these webcomics are doing very well for themselves (as pointed out by Penny Arcade's Gabe). Second, there is no real reason that the next "Great American Novel" won't be posted to a personal website in PDF format so that people can print it out. It wouldn't even surprise me if the next "Great American Novel" was released on the web under the Creative Commons license. The web is changing people's views of publishing and there is nothing about printed content that makes it inherently better than web content. The sooner traditional content creators understand this, the sooner they will prosper in a digital environment.
Also, just because I believe that the current copyright laws aren't working doesn't mean I'm a communist, regardless of what Bill Gates says.
Webcomics are getting larger and larger and now they are starting to crossover into traditional media. Mac Hall and many other comics are offering their comics in a printed collection. Penny Arcade has held a fan convention. Many comic creators now make a living off of their webcomic.
Now Player vs. Player (PVP) is offering it's comic to any newspaper who wants to publish it for free. The idea is to drive more people to the website to generate more ad revenue. This is pretty smart idea that really turns the print comic publishing world's strategies on their head. My guess is that a comic like Dilbert publishes in print for hefty syndication fees and has a website mainly to drive people to the print version and to gain some online ad revenue.
Predictably, PVPs syndication idea and the general rise in prominence of web comics has some of the traditional comic artists a bit defensive. Take this Non Sequitur. Now I like this comic, but I think it is pretty clear that the artist (Wiley) just doesn't get it.
First, some of these webcomics are doing very well for themselves (as pointed out by Penny Arcade's Gabe). Second, there is no real reason that the next "Great American Novel" won't be posted to a personal website in PDF format so that people can print it out. It wouldn't even surprise me if the next "Great American Novel" was released on the web under the Creative Commons license. The web is changing people's views of publishing and there is nothing about printed content that makes it inherently better than web content. The sooner traditional content creators understand this, the sooner they will prosper in a digital environment.
Also, just because I believe that the current copyright laws aren't working doesn't mean I'm a communist, regardless of what Bill Gates says.
I made the above graphic after seeing the top story at Cnet's News.com was "Fur flies over first pooch". So let me get this straight, this was the most important technology story that they could come up with? What the hell! I mean, forget just for a moment that there are U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians dying everyday and that millions face death in the Darfur region of Sudan. Let's just look at more important technology stories. How about the fact that an independent study of Florida's e-voting machines show that they likely favored President Bush with couple hundred thousand extra votes? How about the story that the Congress is likely to pass a bill continuing the moratorium on Internet taxes? What about Microsoft's Steve Ballmer warning Asian governments that they better not use Linux or they'll get sued?
How is a story about the fight to webcast the president's stupid dog's stupid Christmas video more important? It's a f*cking dog in f*cking Christmas video, for Christs sake! How the hell is this "High Impact"?
I am not linking to the story and I'm not linking to News.com. They can suck me!
A big story broke in Portland yesterday. Jim Francesconi lost the endorsement of the Portland Police Association partially because of two negative, untruthful and misleading adds he was running about his opponent, former police chief Tom Potter.
Reading the Portland Tribune this morning I came across a story about this development in th Portland mayoral campaign. The story makes a huge mistake. It repeats the false accusation from the ads, and then does not refute them. In fact, it gives the last word on both charges to the Francesconi's campaign manager. Here are the choice quotes:
"McLoughlin’s demotion should have stuck, Armstrong said."
"Armstrong said a more severe penalty of the earlier complaint might have prevented the second shooting."
Last night the KOIN 6 News at 11 reported on this story. First they tried to spin the story as a tale of two negative campaigns. Since Tom Potter has not campaigned negatively this is not true. Then they made the biggest mistake. They stated as a fact something that one of the Francesconi ads had only falsely implied.
Now it is a good thing that I read the Portland Communique. If I didn't I may never have seen the full press release from the police union where they step by step refute every claim of the Francesconi ads. I also wouldn't have heard about the KOIN screw up. Also I wouldn't have got to see b!X get justifiably upset and repeat the word "Wrong" 13 times.
Just for the record, I fully support Tom Potter for mayor and that definitely influences my writing in this posting.
