Kathlyn Clore

Knowing that my video journalism skills are not yet award-winning, I volunteered to make this video for the Monterey Bay Chapter of the United Nations Association. It was good practice, plus a good chance to watch Rick Steves’ travel documentary on Iran (embedded below).

(By the way, Rick Steves’ has had a pretty inspiring career. I had been downloading his podcasts for a while, but sort of lost interest. I plan to make a renewed effort to tune in, though, after learning more about Steves. Mad props to anyone who funds their travel dreams teaching piano lessons! Plus, this wasn’t his first trip to Iran - he visited there as a long-haired young adult about 30 years ago. Oh, and Steves is a spokesperson for NORML while at the same time being an active Lutheran. He seems like a pretty cool dude!)

I learned an important “VJ for Dummies” lesson making this: Don’t make interviews or take pictures in the dark. If you do, you will get home with less usable material than intended.

If my favorite Austrian videographer reads this he will probably laugh, because I should have learned that lesson by now. But anyway, this was my first “semipro” attempt at solo/DIY VJ-style reporting.

And, in more well-produced movie action…

This is a nice alternative story form… Cheeky for sure, but it gets and captivates my attention! And fairly low budget, too Good magazine has a lot of fun-to-watch, somewhat informative videos on its YouTube channel. This is a nice recent one, on water.

I’m daydreaming about what kind of news stories you could tell in such a revealing manner… Imagine if this MSNBC report somehow started out like the Good video:

A few days ago I read a Global Voices Advocacy post that has really been bothering me.

The post talks about users in Syria who have been indicating lately that their Linked In profiles are inaccessible in Syria.

One user got frustrated and wrote to Linked In. He was told that Linked In is “… ’subject to export and re-export control laws and regulations. This includes the Export Administration Regulations maintained by the United States Department of Commerce and sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under the User Agreement, LinkedIn Users warrant that they are not prohibited from receiving U.S. origin products, including services or software. As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.’”

A snipped from Linked In’s user agreement verifies this:

On the one hand, I get it. The United States does not allow its citizens do business in certain places. That’s just part of being a business operating from the United States.

But obviously, that Linked In has not registered/based part of its business in another country in a way that would legally circumvent this policy is an endorsement of the idea that people in some nations should not, in fact, be linked in.

Isn’t a big part of this World Wide Web thing all about bringing people together to network and discuss ideas? And isn’t a big part of Linked In about making professional contacts? I don’t see why professionals working in Syria or Cuba are not worth contacting.

Even understanding that business can choose to do business in whatever way they see fit, this still does not sit with me. After all, we as consumers have just as much right to decide where to bring our business. So the big question is: Are Linked In users OK with being “linked out” of some places?

Another question: How does Linked In handle users who are not citizens of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria but happen to be traveling in those areas when trying to log in to Linked In?

UPDATE 23 April: Facebook has updated its terms of service and will also block countries the U.S. has embargoed. Obviously, they read questions and comments made during the ongoing period of Facebook community voting on the terms of service. Their response to quesitons about blocking certain countries was, “As we state in the Principles, our principles are constrained by limitations of applicable law.”

Here’s a clip from their “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities”:

I just saw the banner headline on the Huffington Post: HELP IS ON THE WAY

I can’t wait to tune into C-Span on 6 May to watch the Senate Hearings. Who knows if U.S. lawmakers are the best people to help the newspaper industry, but at least we’re going to have a discussion. They’re doing the same thing across the pond, by the way.

On the docket: A Maryland senator’s plan to allow newspapers to be nonprofits.

Hey, it works for The Guardian!

Right now on my alumni e-mail listserve from university a discussion is raging about whether or not to encourage young people to attend journalism schools.

It started with a posting of this TechCrunch article, which argues not against practicing journalism, but against outmoded journalism education.

Seems fair enough. Why go into debt (typical of the American collegiate experience) to learn outdated skills? Why prepare to enter an industry in peril?

Then again, there are benefits to a practical liberal arts education. Certainly journalism schools provide degrees more practical than, say, English departments. Although a journalism degree is not, by comparison, as practical as one granted by science, law, or medical faculties.

Regardless… The discussion on my e-mail listserve has been about the need (or not) for journalism education in the U.S.

While following the chatter, I realized it is worthwhile to consider the vital role journalistic approaches and practices play on continents other than North America. Some of the most important (in my opinion) work the EJC does is its attempts to improve the journalism education systems in former Soviet nations. The rationale is that students graduating from universities in Eastern Europe will be far better prepared to help in the continuing transition processes if they are educated beyond old Soviet schools of thought about media.

Journalism education is also especially important in countries like Russia or Africa. Yesterday I edited an interview with a Liberian doctoral student in Moscow. He’s been in Russia for about a decade, but upon earning his doctorate will return home to practice journalism in Africa. I can imagine he will draw often on his education.

And after reading this deflating BBC update about American journalist Roxana Saberi, I am reminded that foreign correspondents are especially in need of good education.

Saberi

was arrested in January for buying a bottle of alcohol in Iran. I have wondered if she really was actually caught buying alcohol, which I understand to be illegal but tolerated in Iran. Perhaps something else happened. Because I’m surprised a foreign journalist in that country - especially a woman - would put herself at risk by purchasing anything illegal. Doing so seems unnecessarily provocative, especially for an Iranian-American journalist who has a background in both nations and could thus be seen as particularly subversive.

That’s just a question I have wondered since reading about her arrest, which has for some reason piqued my interest. Truly I hope the situation resolves itself peacefully (for her and future foreign reporters in Iran).

Saberi is now on trial - behind closed doors, scarily enough.

Granted, sometimes journalists have to deal with dangerous situations in foreign lands. But that’s precisely why they need to be educated: To understand their legal rights at home and abroad, to understand various cultures and political systems, to know languages. There is more to being a journalist than being able to communicate well on various technical platforms.

There seemed to be a major dearth of international coverage on CNN this weekend.

Granted, I don’t have a television in my apartment. But I did get in front of the tube for about 45 minutes Sunday at a local fitness center (long enough for content to begin repeating itself). I also hopped on to CNN.com Saturday afternoon to browse their video section.

I didn’t notice much of anything in-depth about the violent post-election problems in Moldova, protests in Georgia or the extreme unrest in Thailand.

For news about those events in particular, I have been relying on the many feeds in my Google Reader (is it possible to follow the news without RSS anymore?) in addition to videos from Russia Today.

The only international story happening on CNN, it seemed, was the dramatic Navy Seals rescue of an American man being held by pirates.

Yes, this is a good story… But I really find it sad that Americans cannot inform themselves about world events via national news channels. These broadcasters have really become (at least in the U.S.) entertainment platforms.

So glad to listen to this radio report: Radio France Internationale

Laws like these, working through government monitoring groups and Internet Service Providers to block users who download copyrighted material without paying for it, seem preposterous.

The laws seem to infringe on privacy rights and be impossible to enforce correctly (for myriad technical reasons).

Myself, I always waffled on the issue of “illegal” downloading - until I moved to the Netherlands.

There I realized that major news content providers, like NBC, block bits of their content outside the United States. I was unable to watch, for example, the NBC coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China. That’s because NBC only had the rights to broadcast the Games in the U.S. Outside the U.S.; a Dutch TV station bought the rights to show the Games inside the Netherlands.

So I was unable to watch Michael Phelps on demand, or any of the womens’ soccer matches I would have like to have seen.

The other programming I was frustrated to be locked out of was streaming re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy. ABC makes the shows available on Fridays after the program airs Thursday evening. It’s about the only television program I watch regularly.

I could, though, legally buy Grey’s Anatomy on iTunes. In fact, I’ve bought about two whole seasons.

Then I realized, halfway through 2008, that if I wanted to save space on my hard drive and put my Grey’s episodes on CD, I was only able to save the raw information - not the actual shows. Apple did not (until recently) make it possible to burn the shows on to DVD for viewing away from the computer.

If I download the shows using torrent files, though, I can burn them on to a DVD and watch them on a television.

I realized then that this “illegal” downloading was more useful than paying for programs.

Also, as a journalist it is hard to have much sympathy for the major artists who complain about the money they’re losing because of illegal downloading. Google and other major sources co-opt the work of news reporters all the time!

And, give a thought to what author Paulo Cohelo thinks about this issue. Perhaps “illegal” downloading can spur sales.

For more: Global Voices Advocacy.

I just read a fabulously well-considered summary of the Huffington Post’s new nonprofit investigative

arm.

Journalism.co.uk gives a good look at reactions to the $1.75 million effort to fund freelance investigative work. For sure this is creating a lot of buzz with media bloggers - much in the same way ProPublica’s launch did last year.

It’s so good to see positive solutions coming into the marketplace.There have been a number of new efforts to diversify funding sources and business models in the U.S., among them Global Post and AllVoices.

This is important particularly in the Land of the Free because of a historic lack of varied business models in the American media marketplace.

France and England spring immediately to mind when considering why the European market seems less shaken up by the one-two punch of the credit crisis and continuing proliferation of the Internet.

Many, if not most, broadcast sectors in Europe have important state-supported funding. In England, this comes from a TV tax. France has a similar audiovisual license fee. In fact, many European nations have TV taxes.

In Finland, parliamentarians are considering detaching the tax from televisions and a levying a sort of “for media creation” tax on everyone.

I see no reason why similar things could not be done in the U.S. TV tax funds go, in part, to support state broadcasters (which have become multi-media content producers, like the BBC or Deutsche Welle). It’s a funding model that makes sense: The citizens pay the taxes and the journalists produce work that (theoretically) benefits the citizens. Taking taxpayer money, I think, does not challenge the independence of content creators. Rather, it makes journalists that much more accountable to the people.

France is even going so far as to further its support for a medium with a more questionable future: newspapers.

As for newspapers in the UK, consider The Guardian, which is supported by a not-for-profit trust fund.

The European Union will begin examining newspaper models soon. This week it asked EU newspaper leaders to give feedback about the future of the industry in order to influence policies. The Commission has put out this call for feedback because it recognizes the importance a free (from government or economic influences) plays in civil society. The Barroso Commission also realizes that publishers employ a lot of people.

There is no reason the U.S. government could not do the same thing. American media managers could learn a lot from the varied approaches in Europe.

As the bloggers quoted in that first Journalism.co.uk article remark, “lump sums” are not good for the future of funding good journalism. Varied sources and approaches are the way to sustainability.

The Brookings Institution released a report Monday examining how close Americans live to their jobs:

“In almost every major industry, jobs shifted away from the city center between 1998

and 2006. Of 18 industries analyzed, 17 experienced employment decentralization. Transportation and warehousing, finance and insurance, utilities, and real estate and rental and leasing showed the greatest increases in the share of jobs located more than 10 miles away from downtown.”

I think this is a bad thing for newsgatherers. In fact, it would be interesting to study the downward trend in newspaper subscriptions to see if it lines up with this trend (of course, the proliferation of the Internet is likely to line up too, also a big contributor).

Most Americans who live more than a mile away from their jobs are likely going to work by car. And this transport time means less time in which to consume content. That’s for sure bad for newsgatherers, especially considering the ratcheted up battle for eyeballs in today’s attention economy.

There are obvious environmental (and perhaps economic) benefits to living close to work. There are environmental and economic benefits to building more public transportation infrastructure.

I would argue that these benefits would extend to content creators.

Further, after a read of the data in this report I would guess that in the past 10 years, newsgatherers themselves have become more likely to live away from the city centers of the communities they cover.

Is that good or bad? Depends on your perspective… If more of the general population is also living away from the center, I guess it’s good that the people who cover their communities also live “out”. But I also think living out of the center is a less connected experience.

I am not a designer, but over the past years I have realized the importance of layout, typefaces, fonts… and design thinking. It seems that aesthetics are increasingly important to consumers of everything electronics (think iPhone) as well as media consumers on and offline.

Tangentially, in traveling around in Europe and the US, I have become much more aware of architecture. And it seems that “design thinking” is a good way to approach many of the problems the media world is wrestling with.

So it did not surprise me that this TED Talk was given by a former architect…