Day 1093: Rising Tide 3 - Dénouement
August 24, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, citizen journalism, new orleans, rising tide conference
Robert Cerasoli attended our pre-party, Lee Zurik was there, we made the Times-Picayune and Clancy DuBos is one of us, one of us.
Follow up posts coming on:
* interconnectedness - why New Orleans and Louisiana are important to the rest of the nation, just as the Dakotas, California and the East Coast should be important to us.
* parallels and dissimilarities with India
* education as a lowered national priority and how that is already coming home to roost
Again, thanks to all of you who made Rising Tide 3 happen. We need to meet more often before next year. Geek dinners, anyone? I’ll bring the Indian food!
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Blogger Award
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, new orleans, rising tide conference
Time for the Ashleys! This is an award for excellence in blogging handed out by the Ashley Morris Memorial Foundation. Glass awards created and crafted by Liprap, not just a blogger but also a glass artiste (I’m impressed!).
And the winner of the first Ashley is the late, great Ashley Morris himself.
The next winner is Matt McBride of Fix The Pumps! Go, Matt!
The final winner is … KAREN GADBOIS!!!
And, with that, we’re done. Off to socialize. This was a great conference and I thank everyone for being here, even virtually!
Now watching a sneak preview of Ken McCarthy’s “The Katrina Myth: The Truth about a Thoroughly Unnatural Disaster.” Sandy Rosenthal of levees.org introduced it. 0 comments #
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Journalism Panel
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, citizen journalism, media, new orleans, rising tide conference
Back from a fine J’anita’s lunch of spicy BBQ and a Diet Coke. Thanks, Craig and The Beautiful Kim! Also back from telling a couple of people to stay calm. Me?! What’s the world coming to?
Panelists, from left to right:
· Lee Zurik: WWL-TV investigative reporter
· Kevin Allman: author, journalist, and blogger, frequent guest blogger at Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans
· Eli Ackerman: blogger at We Could Be Famous
· David Winkler-Schmit: journalist and frequent contributor to Gambit Weekly and the Blog of New Orleans
Jeffrey introduces the panelists, reads the following excerpt from David Simon’s Does The News Matter To Anyone Any More? and asks the panelists their opinion of it.
… I understand the economic pressures on newspapers. At this point, along with the rest of the wood-pulp Luddites, I’ve grasped that what was on the Internet wasn’t merely advertising for journalism, but the journalism itself. And though I fled the profession a decade ago for the fleshpots of television, I’ve heard tell of the horrors of department-store consolidation and the decline in advertising, of Craigslist and Google and Yahoo. I understand the vagaries of Wall Street, the fealty to the media-chain stockholders, the primacy of the price-per-share.
What I don’t understand is this: Isn’t the news itself still valuable to anyone? In any format, through any medium — isn’t an understanding of the events of the day still a salable commodity?
Zurik, Allman and Eli don’t think ads influence them, but Winkler-Schmit admits that it is required to keep his job going, his paper running and television stations on the air.
Kevin Allman wants us to check out Robert Smigel’s scathing animation against NBC’s parent company, General Electric. Here is the VIDEO.
Applause for Zurik’s journalism with reciprocation from Zurik. Zurik lauds the efforts of Karen, Sarah and Eli in getting the story out.
Eli suggests that internet democratizes the news more so than papers. Zurik disagrees and contends that the shrinking newspaper and cutting staff is not a good thing. Internet news and mainstream media news cannot be conflated. Mainstream media cannot do investigative journalism in the same way. Mainstream media, however, “has real power and access, but blogs and MSM can be complementary.”
Now, they’re talking about Bill Moyers’s feelings on the media of the future:
… By 2011, the market analysts tell us, the Internet will surpass newspapers in advertising revenues. With MySpace and Dow Jones controlled by News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft determined to acquire Yahoo!, and with advertisers already telling some bloggers, “Your content is unacceptable,” we could potentially lose what’s now considered an unstoppable long tail of content offering abundant, new, credible and sustainable sources of news and information.
So, what will happen to news in the future, as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely and as content programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package?
Allman says, “There’s nothing progressive about Arianna Huffington [who wants to pay bloggers nothing to write at her space]. She is turning into the faux-progressive equivalent of Drudge.” Read Kevin Allman’s posts tagged “Write for free!” to get the back story on why he is not happy with Huffington. Eli says it’s too early to say if the whole internet is going to be corporatized, but there are no Democratic candidates promoting net neutrality.
Now Jeff asks, “What is ultimately the quality of content when you’ve cut the budget to that degree?” He had something else to ask but had a brain fart so Kevin is giving us a story about Sam Zell. When asked if a paper should have advertising containing adult content, Zell is said to have stated to a number of employees, “What kind of man doesn’t want to look at pussy?” Very derogatory, very whorish on his own part. Winkler-Schmit says people like Zell want to “make sausage” and don’t care about content. Zurik comes back that it’s better to invest in quality journalism because publishing crap is ultimately not worth it. Eli says, “The cream of the crop rises to the top.”
Winkler-Schmit brings up how the NOAH story was broken. Zurik is upset that the biggest consumer reaction actually came from Nagin’s dismissive response to media questioning. He does not like that “the sex appeal of this story” comes from Nagin.
Forgot everything said in the last few minutes once Zurik said, “I read your blogs. My eyebrows are real! I don’t get them waxed!” Room almost explodes in laughter.
Q&A time. BTW, Sophmom’s blog is back up and she is liveblogging, so if you want to read another perspective on the Journalism panel, go to DotCalm.
Mark LaFlaur asks a great question: How do we take all these instances of internet/citizen journalism and have them rise to the top? How do we increase visibility? This is a question I brought up towards the end of my civic activism panel last year. Eli talks about Daily Kos diary and TPM Diary.
Varg brings up how one can’t be taken seriously when leaving anonymous comments. Much derision for the unmoderated, bigoted cesspool that is the Comments section of NOLA.com blog posts. Read my post on mainstream media blogs for context. Eli says, “If you’re too racist for talk radio, you turn to the NOLA.com comments section.”
Adrastos tells Zurik that the bloggers are going to start a band called “Lee Zurik’s Eyebrows.”
Clancy DuBos, “reborn as a blogger,” reiterates Simon’s question, “Does anyone give a shit about real news any more?” The panel says that people generally tune out when the news is too heavy. Allman says, “What people want are hard local complicated news and Saints football.”
Day 1092: Live From Rising Tide 3 - Education Panel
August 23, 2008 - Filed Under blogistas, education, new orleans, rising tide conference
Panelists, from L-R:
* Clifton Harris - concerned parent and blogger
* Dedra Johnson – professor and blogger, author of Sandrine’s Letter to Tomorrow
* Leigh Dingerson - Education team leader of the Center for Community Change, editor and contributor to Keeping The Promise?: The Debate Over Charter Schools
* Christian Roselund - UTNO Communications, blogging at Dirty South Bureau
* Jeffrey Berman - teacher, Booker T. Washington High School and Schwarz Alternative School.
Links at the RT schedule page. Coozan Pat moderates.
Look, I don’t pretend to know anything about the intricacies of the educational system in New Orleans. Neither do I have children nor does the history and complexity of the system make sense to a five-year veteran of this city like me. What I know, is like Christian Roselund says, the system is thoroughly Balkanized and that I am on the side of concerned parents like Cliff Harris who live here and want to do good by their children in getting them quality educations without taking out a second mortgage and selling organs. New Orleans cannot afford more poorly-educated children, especially during its recovery. From Cliff’s blog:
… I am going to be representing those parents that are confused, concerned, angry, frustrated and hoping they made the right decision when it comes to where their child is going. I’m going to represent the hard working people who don’t want to have three jobs, or lie about their situation in order to be in a better situation. I’m going to represent three generations and the parent of a fourth generation of family to go to public schools in the city. That is important because there is no way anyone can reform the system and ignore the last 40 years.
I’ve always hated public education in the United States because the quality of education is generally low and the system attracts bad teachers. This is not an excuse to kill public education or let it fester. Dedra Johnson says, “The prevailing notion is that public schools are bad because they are public, that private education is good because it’s private and that the privatization of schools will get rid of a union that removes bad teachers.” Dedra continues that this is just an excuse to foist conservative, anti-union ideals on the nation.
Leigh brings the problem home for me: “What New Orleanians lost after Katrina in terms of schools is the right to make their own decisions. This is now a market system explicitly. It changes the paradigm … it is now less about community and more about a consumer-based, individual escape model. What’s been lost is the sense of public education as a community institution. It is now endemic across the country, these market-based reforms.”
Cliff counters that members of his community are suspicious of the continuation of the public schools. “We don’t want to have anything with the RSD schools. I went there and was an honors student and when I got to UNO, I hadn’t seen half the stuff up there … I don’t want to go to the same schools, I don’t want the same education … A large part of the population doesn’t care [whether kids are educated well or not].”
Jeff comes back that “only in New Orleans is public education a bad word” and he wants to get rid of that. (Not true, really, this a prevalent opinion all across America and the world.) Cliff comes back that there is distrust, anger, bitterness that has lasted for forty years and was exacerbated after the storm, and what he wants is better schooling for his daughter.
Christian slams RSD’s actions after the storm, including dismantling a program that promoted arts and music for “kids from the ghetto.” Tiny word to the wise: A neighborhood is not a “ghetto.”
Leigh and Dedra (and everyone else on the panel) argue that the school board should not be dismantled. Leigh mentions promoting an order that was rescinded by the governor - I’m unaware of what’s going on there, so help me out with explanations and links. Cliff brings up the example of Ellenese Brooks-Sims and the usefulness of a school board that steals and lives on patronage. He asks, “Why isn’t there a sub-board under the board that is different from the status quo, which is bad?” New Orleanians with kids agree more with Cliff than with the reinstatement of a school board; they are not in the minority.
Closing remarks - can’t quite concentrate because a mosquito just bit my left arm and it hurts like a MF. Patrick asks each panelist their key to changing the system. Jeff beseeches parents for total involvement - he sees a handful of parents at meetings, but wants to see more involvement from parents and the community. Cliff says, “The only thing that sets me apart from my friends who are incarcerated or deceased are my parents. Those parents are isolated - they won’t know that we had a conference here today, what’s going on in the Times Picayune. Go to these parents and ask what we can do to help … Until, as a city, we get to the point of thinking as a whole.”
Patrick has all parents of kids in the New Orleans school system stand up for a round of applause. Hats off to the teachers, too, I say. Q&A time, and I smell J’anita’s BBQ back there.
“More so than test scores, we need to socialize these kids. What’s the point of high test scores when they’re kicking in your door?”
Comment on woeful lack of adult education programs in New Orleans. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for a mother who reads at a fourth-grade education. What the bloggers can do is ask yourself about adult education in your neighborhood, write about it and talk to your politicians about it. Adult education gets forgotten, they keep running to me at the library and I’m strapped.”
I close out the Q&A session with a comment to Jeff Berman, “Public education is not just a bad word in NOLA. It is all over this nation and the world considers American education, in general, woefully inadequate. Education has to become a national priority, New Orleans is just the tip of the iceberg.” Jeff agrees, but states that he grew up in California and that the system here is especially disturbing. I get it, but this only adds fuel to my argument that education going to hell in New Orleans follows the downward spiral of American education in the past half century.
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