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December 12, 2003

European leftists slime support Iraqi terrorists
: Medienkritik translates reporting from the German show Panorama exposing German "peace" groups raisign funds to support the Iraqi terrorists who are killing both soldiers and civilians.

In the spirit of peace, a number of groups have started a fund-raising campaign entitled “10 Euros for the Iraqi Resistance”. The money will be provided to the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA) a group dedicated to carrying out attacks against US soldiers in Iraq in collaboration with Saddam loyalists. The common goal is to "liberate” the Iraqi people from the evil imperialist American occupiers. On their website these groups gush with enthusiasm about turning Iraq into another Vietnam for the USA.

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Taste
: Haiko Hebig picks weblog designs he likes. I know, mine is butt ugly. I'll fix that... after I fix everything else in life.The Sims Cheat to farsi

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New
: Finally added Hoder's IranFilter and also Iran 4 Dummies to the blogroll.The Sims Cheat to farsi

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Dear Mr. Editor,
: Elizabeth Spiers responds to NYT public editor Dan Okrent:

3. I was fascinated to learn that you were a “lazy correspondent” in college, that you liked Cardinal John O’Connor and that you “hardly ever go to the movies.” As long as we’re sharing, I like long walks on the beach and candlelight dinners. And kittens. Small calico ones, particularly. (I’d elaborate, but my editors gave me 800 words less than you got.)

Tim Ruttan of the LA Times also responded and Jay Rosen responded to that response and I was going to respond to that response to the response but I think I'll have a drink instead... The Sims Cheat to farsi

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Gift time!
: I don't run a pledge campaign. I don't have a tip jar. But I do sell magazine subscriptions (for the greater good of showing how well this will work in weblogs!). The holidays are fast upon us. Buy a subscription to The Week. Stuff that stocking. The Sims Cheat to farsi

One more reason to buy: You can't find The Week on newsstands anymore. Economics of publishing: It costs too much to distribute copies given the sales. So The Week is going almost 100 percent subscription. So subscribe!The Sims Cheat to farsi

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News misjudgment
: Zeyad tells us that there were reporters all over the anti-terrorism demonstrations in Baghdad. So why wasn't the story all over our media?

When we were marching on Dec 10 I told Omar that maybe we didn't need to cover the protests after all since it looked like reporters from all the major media agencies were doing so. As you can see in my pictures there were scores of reporters and cameras all over the place. And since the rallies ended in front of the Palestine hotel we thought that it would be impossible for the media to ignore this event. I felt a bit awkward walking along reporters carrying just a little digital camera while they had all the equipment.
The last thing we expected was to be the first to publish anything about the protests. It felt both good and awful at the same time. Good for scooping Reuters, AFP, AP, and other wire services and media stations. And awful for the people that depended on these services for their news. I'm telling you there were reporters from every station in the world at the demos that day and yet only a few mentioned them at all.

: Glenn Reynolds thinks I was a little tough on the Rocky Mountain News reporter who used the demonstrations as incidental background for the story of me-me-me-in-Baghdad. Naw. The reporter found the demonstration only because his translator happened to take him there. And once there, he should have spoken with the demonstrators. This was a good story and he didn't have the nose for the news.The Sims Cheat to farsi

: See the rest of Zeyad's post. And note that I should have gotten a larger memory card for the camera.
Anyone who wants to send cameras or supplies to Zeyad and the Iraqi bloggers, perhaps we should team up on a shipment. Leave a comment....The Sims Cheat to farsi

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Domestic tranquility
: Ben makes sure that Mena gets the credit she deserves.The Sims Cheat to farsi

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The Times they aren't a changin'
: The New York Times pens a luddite editorial today decrying the spread of camera phones:

Now, among the many unnecessary features cluttering the new mobile phones are small digital cameras.... The ads suggest that the purpose of putting cameras in cellphones is to take photos and share them immediately by sending them over the airwaves to friends and relatives. But the real purpose is to sell minutes on your wireless service. Although no one really wants the return of the wall-tethered rotary-dial black Bell, there is something to be said for the days when a cellphone was just a cellphone.

Jeesh, and you call yourselves journalists.
Camera phones are, in fact, good for taking pictures of family and such and sending them to friends. Note the social trend, folks; they're selling well for a reason; it's the will of the marketplace.
But camera phones will also have an important impact on journalism as witnesses everywhere will be able to document what happens in front of their eyes. These pictures will better record news. They will find their way into newspapers. They will improve and broaden the witness of news. That is good for journalism.
Somebody go down the hall to the Times editorial board and turn over their calendar to 2003.The Sims Cheat to farsi

: They were inspired, no doubt, by this Times story about Chicago trying to ban camera phones in certain venues. TechDirt says -- wiser than The Times -- that this is going too far. Can we say, "freedom of speech?"
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Just spell the URL right
: Ain't it nice that IWantMedia makes news, getting a plug in the NY Post for its Media Person of the Year poll. The Sims Cheat to farsi

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Courage under fire
: Glenn Reynolds points to the story of the selfless courage of Time correspondent Michael Weisskopf, who grabbed the grenade thrown into his humvee and threw it out, saving the lives of the others in the vehicle but costing him his hand.
Whenever you dismiss the importance of reporters out in the field, whenever you impugn their motives, whenever you think this whole news thing can happen without them, think of Weisskopf and of Danny Pearl and of the other reporters who have been killed and injured reporting this war and the many more who put themselves at risk every day.
They are doing it for you and me.The Sims Cheat to farsi

: Tom Mangan sends us to remarkable photos by the James Nachtwey, the photographer injured in this incident. The Sims Cheat to farsi

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The devil is in the details
: Microsoft has an oops:

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday that its latest version of Office software inadvertently contained a font featuring two swastikas, and said it would offer tools to remove and replace the offending characters from the program.
The swastika, which was made infamous by Nazi Germany, was included in Microsoft's "Bookshelf Symbol 7" font. That font was derived from a Japanese font set, said Microsoft Office product manager Simon Marks.
"It was discovered by one of our customers a couple weeks ago," Marks said, adding that there was "no indication of malicious intent."

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Citizens media meets bulldog journalism; finds the future of news
: I'm witnessing the future of journalism unfold over at DailySummit.net.
There, a bunch of webloggers sent there by the British Council (can someone explain them to me?) are covering the U.N. World Summit on Information Society with a vibrancy, immediacy, passion, imagination, doggedness, and openness you simply won't find in big media.
They saw a rant I wrote about the conference -- and the U.N.'s audacious talk of taking over the Internet -- and turned it into a question for the U.S. ambassador to the session.
Then they asked for questions from the audience for the president of Iran -- and they asked them and got surprising answers.
Next the webloggers from Iran who know what is really going on will answer him.
OK, you know where this is going. Cue the theme music. Cue camera 1. Roll teleprompter. And repeat after me: "News is a conversation."
It reminds me of that great scene in Broadcast News in which Albert Brooks (networks producer) gives a question to Holly Hunter (fellow producer) who whispers it into the ear of anchor William Hurt and suddenly it comes out of his mouth. Except now you're the ones whispering into the journalists' ears, telling them what to say. And better than the movie, you're getting answers back and starting a dialogue that will keep hammering until it gets to truth.
This is what journalism is meant to be.
This isn't some new form of journalism. This is the result of a few centuries of the evolution of journalism.
We, the readers, get to ask the questions we want to ask of those in power and we get answers. That's what it's all about, isn't it?
Now, it helps immensely that the people in Geneva for DailySummit know their stuff and also ask the right questions at every opportunity.
Give the chance to interview the man in charge of the Iranian Internet, they got to confront him and ask about the arrest of weblogger Sina Motallebi (the frightening event that first introduced me and many of us to the Iranian weblog revolution). The mullahs' bureacrat lied and shuffled away from the point. But the confrontation tells them: The whole world is watching, boys. You can call that advocacy journalism or bulldog journalism or just good reporting. It's all that.
The reporting at Daily Summit is smart and lively and up-to-the-minute like no other medium and it is also guided and influenced by what readers are saying in comments and on weblogs.
Compare that to the metronome-dull coverage of big media. In fairness to big media, this is not a really big story; I'm not suggesting that it deserves the kind of blanket coverage (or in TV terms, team coverage) of the summit.
But by not digging down or simply reading the weblog of those who are digging down, big media is missing some great stories. There's a great story in confronting the president of Iran on Internet censorship (and finding out that he follows weblogs and even brags about how many his country has). There are lots of other good stories. So maybe it's better to forego the roundup and piggyback on the reporting of these bloggers (just as bloggers always piggyback on the reporting of big media) and report something new, something interesting. This doesn't have to be competitive.
The Sims Cheat to farsi

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Whew
: I'm glad I didn't even know about the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Seeing a picture of Ken Burns on the list of many speakers is enough to scare me away (or, actually, put me to sleep). Having pissed off (after having been pissed off by) the Nieman Reports, I doubt I'd be welcome anyway.
The opening speeches: "Keynote: David Halberstam -- The Pleasures of What We Do
Ken Burns and David Halberstam -- 5 Ws AND AN H -- WHY... The Very Unscientific Art of Telling Baseball Stories."
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I'm amazed -- shocked, even -- that I don't see any presentation from a weblog writer. This is, after all, the ultimate in narrative writing: a nearly live narrative of life and news. It's a new form of narrative. I'd think this crew should at least be curious about that. The Sims Cheat to farsi

: UPDATE: Poynter, to its credit, started a weblog for participants in the conference. This is the start of the first entry I read (and I post it now that I've awoken):

The wind whipped the snow around in swirling miniature tornadoes that lashed the trees and piled angled drifts against the windows that looked like forgotten sails. I found myself distracted by the drama of the weather, my eyes wandering to the windows to watch the endless rounds of the snowplows trying to keep the hotel drive clear.
As a Floridian experiencing her first Nor’easter, I was fascinated. Between sessions, I walked through the snow, picked it up, sifted it through fingers swathed in Lands End polartech gloves purchased online shortly before my trip north.

Narrative gone mad! Make it stop! Make it stop!The Sims Cheat to farsi

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