Kathlyn Clore

I should be writing this from the Netherlands. But instead of flying back to Maastricht today to work from the offices of the EJC, I’m home in Monterey.

Until May.

That’s because a volcano in Iceland is emitting tonnes of ash and limiting air traffic into and around Northern Europe to nearly nothing.

Probably, you, like me, have been reading or hearing about these events via whatever media you normally consume. Copy editors and announcers alike have been tormented for nearly a week now trying to spell and/or pronounce “Eyjafjallajökull”, the name of the volcano that has been puffing ash clouds into the air above Europe and grounding airplanes around the world.

The only people who have not been following this gigantic news story?

The men and women who man the phone lines at call centers of airline companies.

The people at United Airlines - which I was supposed to fly with from Monterey to Denver, on to Newark and finally to Amsterdam - seemed particularly uninformed.

Sure, I received several e-mails urging me to change my flight plans prior to my scheduled departure from Monterey. That was nice; I have never received this kind of prior notification from an airline company (then again, they’ve never had to deal with a disruption like this).

But when I called to find out about my options, I found a very uninformed group of employees. That, or I found a very good group of actors playing the part of uninformed employees.

While I could see at its website that Schiphol airport, for example, was closed at the time of my flight from Monterey, the United people couldn’t. News media like the BBC were reporting that the situation with the ash cloud was worsening. The United people had no idea what was going on. It appeared highly likely that I wouldn’t be able to go, but United’s website still said my flight was a “go”.

At the same moment, Google News was brimming with stories about airport closures.

Scotland opened its airspace, then it closed again.

The front page of Schiphol airport’s website warned travelers that the airport was not sure when it would re-open. Check with your airlines, Schiphol’s website suggested.

Ha!

United employees apparently aren’t allowed to use the Internet at work. I inquired about my options and told the United employee I reached after a half hour delay (nothing compared to the 160-minute delay I faced just three hours prior to my scheduled departure from Monterey) I figured she knew more than I did (being on the inside of the situation) and hoped she could talk to me about my options. She chuckled.

“We’re usually told last,” she said.

Great. Helpful.

Meanwhile, I was searching for information about the situation by using a number of media tools. I think my instinct to reach for these tools is reflective of the evolution and sophistication of Web 2.0 tools for enabling people to connect with each other to find out “what’s happening on the ground.”

But it’s also indicative that the “best” legacy media brands - like BBC, for example, - are still important. Their reporters are the ones with more access to the kinds of “official sources” that are making decisions about things like keeping airspace open.

I probably refreshed BBC.co.uk more times yesterday than I have on any other day. They do a great job of time-stamping their stories, which was a major help.

Other key resources I used to track the news events that impacted my flight plans:

- EUfeeds.eu: The web development team at the EJC created this tool, which aggregates and nicely displays news headlines from the newspapers of each European companies. I was able to quickly find out what Dutch media were reporting about the situation at Schiphol (the airport I was trying to reach).

-Google Translate: I can usually get the gist of articles in Dutch, but I’m not experienced enough with the language to get the details. But when I used my basic skills to find an article that seemed useful, I could pop it into Google Translate and learn more.

- Skype: Being able to instantly reach my colleagues in Europe, in particularly the Belgian web projects manager I work with, was great.

- E-mail: I could use CC to quickly inform groups of colleagues about the changes in my plans. And it’s great that Gmail automatically groups e-mails as “conversations” so that I could respond to individuals on the e-mail thread who replied to me individually.

- Smart phones: I myself don’t use one, but my colleagues do. My Belgian web projects manager was able to advise me throughout his Saturday night with his iPhone (that, or he added the “Sent from my iPhone” tag to his e-mails to convince me that he was having a night on the town rather than geeking out in front of his computer ; ).

- Twitter: I used Twitter in several ways. The people I follow linked to useful news articles and blog posts from other travelers (including a link to the Flickr pool of ash cloud photos) I searched “ash” to find out general information about the situation. Later, as it emerged, I followed the #ashtag. I also searched “Newark airport” to see what was going on there. I found several Tweets about the dismal situation at the international departures area at Newark.

I also amusedly followed Jeff Jarvis, a New York journalism professor who is well-known for his active blog Buzz Machine and book “What Would Google Do,” as he attempted to leave the re:publica conference in Berlin and catch a flight back to New York. Jarvis used Twitter and his conversation skills to hitch a ride to Munich and get on a standby flight after his Berlin flight was canceled. He Tweeted throughout the saga. Reading about his struggle to get a flight convinced me that I’d be an idiot to go to the airport.

- Radio - It’s a vintage medium, but important. When I had to run some errands Friday, I kept the car radio tuned to BBC World News. I heard interviews with scientists and engineers who talked about why planes couldn’t fly through the ash cloud.

So, did the United Airlines staff use any of these resources? No.

In my opinion, that’s a huge problem for the United corporation.

I truly believe United could have better helped me figure out my travel options - and craft better policies to help their customers - if its employees were all able to have Hootsuite or Tweetdeck open in front of them.

As for United’s totally bogus “we-won’t-give-you-your-money-back-until-your-flight-from-Newark-to-Amsterdam-is-actually-canceled-nevermind-that-you’d-have-to-plan-on-being-stuck-in-Newark-for-a-solid-week-in-order-to-do-that-because-we-wait-until-the-last-moment-to-formally-cancel-a-flight-but-you-can-have-a-United-voucher-now” policy… That’s a different and entirely more annoyed post!

Is the threat of climate change what legacy media brands needed to finally implement innovative new media strategies?

Starting with a syndicated editorial that ran in 56 newspapers, the international press have demonstrated far more collaborative spirit in coverage of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen than the politicians who have been sent to Denmark to take action.

The editorial, penned at The Guardian, notes:

“If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.”

In addition to 16 newspapers from Asia, 20 European countries ran the editorial. The 1,113 words - in English - of the editorial were translated into 20 languages.

Indeed, COP15 has been a boon for syndication, distributed coverage, interactivity and aggregation.

On Facebook, a group called The Climate Pool has become a second home for the content of 11 different news publishers, including: Agence France-Press, ANP (the Netherlands), APCom (Italy), RIA (Russia), dpa (Germany), Lusa (Portugal) and The Associated Press (United States).

The group accumulated more than 5,000 fans as of the start of COP15. Participating agencies have posted articles relating to Copenhagen coverage, opening these up for comments. The group also includes discussion forums, on which - impressively - journalists from The Climate Pool have engaged with other Facebook users.

According to its own press release, The Climate Pool was initiated by a global media network called MINDS International. Based in Germany, MINDS began its life as European Commission-funded project in 2004; it now operates with funding from its members.

The group represents a departure from the isolated positions of news agencies like the AP, which distribute content to paying members but act as vertical silos online, unwilling to share content. An executive from the AP told Journalism.co.uk that participating in The Climate Pool is an experimental project “to help the agency better understand what tools are best used for covering certain events and answer questions about social media newsgathering and distribution.”

For netizens who want to comment on COP15 proceedings as they happen, enter the OneClimate Channel.

Thanks to the free video-sharing platform Justin.TV, the is running an interactive livestream of the meetings in Denmark. Viewers are able to watch live meetings, in English, while discussing with other viewers in real time alongside the video.

Live broadcasts are available on the COP15 site itself, but the UN site does not offer viewers a chance to comment.

In between official briefings, interviewers from the OneClimate initiative host discussions on various climate change themes with other activists. These too are open for real-time reader comments.

The Channel, which is live during business hours, can be embedded across the Internet.

“OneClimate.net has always been in the business of producing free digital spaces and tools for amplifying the voices of thousands of climate action groups around the world,” a press release from the initiative said. “Its new interactive TV channel is based on the same philosophy.”

OneClimate is part a UK nonprofit called OneWorld Network, which began in 1995 and is now a distributed network of activist sites.

Finally, thematic blogging platforms like the EJC’s ThinkAboutIt campaign and Global Voices Online have been active for months.

Both offer netizens a portal to blogs of citizens from all over the world; they’re reliable sources for authentic voices speaking from countries like Brazil, India, the US and the EU27.

The question is: Will the politicians at Copenhagen listen?

New media strategies like syndication, distribution, aggregation, social networking, curated lists, real-time discussion and search do provide entry points for more voices. But is it all one big echo chamber?

Communications staff in charge of compiling media briefings for their respective politicians each day of the COP15 have no excuse not to have their hands full of material.

I think most Europeans will cringe as they watch this.

Why? The citizens of Europe who I know just can’t - for whatever reason - ever seem to just surrender to the tacky but warm embrace of sweet, tinkling music playing beneath images showing patriotic moments. This is in stark contrast to their star-spangled, American friends who tend to get teary anytime they hear Ray Charles croon America the Beautiful.

One Greek tweeter I am following referred to this video as “touching but contrived.”

In my opinion this is a very well-done video montage. It might be a little tacky, but the images and theme don’t seem to me at all contrived. It shows the life of a young family living alongside defining moments in recent history about which Europeans should be proud, especially those working toward a pan-European identity.

The interactive timeline here is also nice (and less cheesy).

I think some of the reluctance on the part of EU citizens to embrace moments like this as positive developments toward a pan-European identity stems from a generational gap. But from what I can tell, the Erasmus movement and the emergence of English-language publications around Europe - many of them cooperative efforts - indicate a growing EU identity.

Some media products conveying a pan-European mentality (and of which I’m aware) include:

Th!nk About It (Europe-wide blog platform on sociopolitical issues)
Cafe Babel
PressEurop
Spiegel Online
The NRC Handelsblad (Dutch) partnership with Spiegel and PolitikenDK (Danish)

Bernd and I produced this video for Crossroads, an online magazine the EJC publishes for expatriates living in Limburg. I’ve wanted to make a video about this ever since my boyfriend and I took some shoes to this guy’s shop a few months ago. He just looks like a shoemaker. I love it.

Also, the poshy Maastricht woman we interviewed was great… I love watching these kind of ladies walk around Maastricht.

One thing I realized while doing this video is how easily we could have done it in different ways. I like that about reporting: You can make so many products out of the same material. It’s like a puzzle with no real correct answer (especially when it’s a feature story, like this).

I really wanted to get some comments from the local municipality about why we have these stones. How do they maintain the quality of the stones? I’ve heard they have to bring people in from all over Europe to maintain the stones. And why are the stones a good idea when they wreak havoc on everyone’s shoes?

But that will have to be a different video, because we just were not getting our calls returned and wanted to get this off to the Crossroads editor. So mainly it’s just a sweet shoemaker story. Enjoy!