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!

Journalists today have to promote the visibility of their own brands, stories and beats. They must

eschew old biases and embrace the reality that public relations and marketing are about more than spinning the mayor’s latest policy or hawking beauty products.

I increasingly cringe when I see newspapers writing great stories (like this one, on meat safety) and then doing little to foster public campaigns to rectify the issue. Once a journalists and editors have informed themselves on an issue (like federal and state-level ground beef regulations) why not somehow team up with thought leaders to share information or get a blogging campaign going? I see loads of possibilities along those lines that would fully leverage the investment the news publication has made in institutional knowledge about the subject - without compromising transparency.

Moving tangentially on with this topic, two concepts I think journalists could actively promote with no qualms are public transportation and active lifestyle choices. These two realms are, in my view, much intertwined. They’re realms about which the public needs to be educated in order to ensure a better future for society (hence, subjects about which journalists should get involved).

Here are a few campaigns about healthy living and public transport that I’ve enjoyed lately. Each tries to advance either a healthy lifestyle and/or public transportation:

1. The Hot Chocolate Run: A 5K and 15K run in Illinois. With its cute log and apparel, how could you not want to sign up? The cozy concept of this run could easily lure indoor types out onto the pavement for a walk or run.

2. Skirt Chasers! Nope, it’s not a cocktail. It’s another 5K run, this time in Savannah. The company that puts on the skirt chaser offers runs around the United States. The concept? Give all registered women running skirts and then release them from the starting line a few minutes before the men. Then the chase is on! Hilarious and definently a concept that could interest non-runners in turning up for a day of fitness.

3. The Guardian’s Bicycle Blog: This post is a top-10 list (which readers (and Rob Gordon) love) about how to winterize your bike. These kind of stories appeal to readers (because of the format) while promoting a positive concept (biking as a regular, realistic means of transport) and enabling discussion (see comments on this article). What’s great about this is a standing bike blog within a mainstream publication (it’s a sustainable effort).

4. Streetsblogs: This publication, which is syndicated across four cities, shows that it is possible to craft a “beat” out of public transportation news and issues. As someone with legacy media experience I have to ask: Why isn’t the (sickly) San Francisco Chronicle (or Chicago Tribune or Savannah Morning News) doing this?

The other night, after I poured some red wine out of a bottle whose cork had been pounded in rather than out, I made an incoherent remark about feminism.

As the bottle was passed around and shared in tiny plastic cups at an intimate gathering of about 100 random Europeans and an amateur DJ, my friend Ruth followed up with a perhaps more coherent remark.

She suggested that that the ongoing Internet revolution (the Web 2.0/ “make your own way with your own network” idea) is perhaps ‘for feminism’.

After all, she said, so many tools and concepts - RSS, social networking, tagging, hyperlinks, viral content - enable you to break free of mainstream thought. You can really experience news and content in whatever way you’d like. Nothing is dictated.

And, advancing the discussion in another direction, it also seems like the “freelance culture” that’s popping up because of all the layoffs in the MSM, is particularly good for women content producers (er, journalists… Such a 1.0 word, eh!). We can work online from anywhere, which enables all kind of offline adventures, be they travel or reproduction related.

I agree that Web 2.0 can be for feminism. Point, Ruth.

But am I a feminist? Do I want to rock some Web 2.0 feminista action? I don’t know. And in a world where even Wikipedia makes feminism seem confusing, how can I know?

I dig sports, for example. I dig women’s sports. I will even pay to watch women play sports. I’m psyched that there are more women in a lot of universities than men. I also think women should have equal pay for equal work (and often don’t get this). I think it’s good to have women CEOs and managers. I think it’s possible that Sonia Sotomayor will bring something extra to her job because she’s a woman and a Latina. And I think that’s wicked awesome. I sometimes hate that a women’s looks are so much more important than a man’s. I hate the fake dichotomy between “working” and “career” women and the idea that I should be one or the other (but would be of course the highest form of women if I attempted and was successful at both). And I think people who do developing work in third-world countries can get further by teaching a women to read than a man (she’ll teach her children (read: daughters) what she knows, a man would not be as likely to do so).

Do these things make me a feminist?? Who knows. But I do find a lot about these topics online - and I find myself sharing articles about these ideas with female friends. And I’m more exposed to these ideas because of my friends.

Because, I also think this stuff is complicated. Should women change their last names when they get married? Seems like a question for feminists. I think no — it represents a massive loss of identity.

And findabilty! Try and find a married women in the phonebook, for example. You’ll quickly realize it’s a hellofa lot easier to find her husband, especially if she has a common family name.

Also - As a 20something female who is a heavy Facebook user, I find myself more and more often confronted with status updates from women whose names with which I’m unfamiliar. Those old friends from high school are now called something else, which totally confuses me when I’m quickly looking around my Facebook network. I actually sort of increasingly despise these acquaintances for changing their names, for some reason. It’s like they abandon their old selves, or something.

I also hate that most of these women will create more confusion for me as they inevitably fumble around and end up changing how they list their last name. It’s just all too contrived.

But on the other hand, what happens to the children of women who don’t change their last names upon getting married? Does the child of Jane Smith and Doug Jones become Jennifer Smith-Jones? Maybe - but now Jennifer Smith-Jones is in a real bind if she wants to keep her hyphenated last name and have children with her future husband. Because if Jennifer Smith-Jones makes babies with Kameel Johnson, it would be somewhat absurd for the child to be Susan Smith-Jones-Johnson.

See? Not so clear cut.

I wonder if I have to know if I’m a feminist to use Web 2.0 to explore feminism…

As my current boss would say “This would be a great Ph.D topic”.

IF YOU’VE MADE IT THIS FAR: Enjoy!

Does DailyPerfect know me better than my own grandma?

Nani, after all, the No. 1 regular reader of KathlynClore.com. She’s known me since I was born and has the photos and embarrassing stories to prove it. She took me on a shopping day for my 13th birthday, attended my college graduation and once bought me neon plaid pants (it was a phase). We share a deep-seeded love of shoes, Nordstroms, handsome men and watching 24-hour news channels. She even came to visit me in the Netherlands earlier this year - making her first trip to Europe at 70 plus (I’m so proud!)

But could she tailor-make a newspaper magazine for me? Mine Magazine already does; I couldn’t help but sign up for a free trial subscription. But it often includes stories I’ve already read online. Plus, it tries to sell me Lexus. Nani only bothers me with news about my cousin Alexis. Advantage: Nani.

Now DailyMotion says it can best Mine Magazine. It says that all I have to do is tell it my name and it makes an up-to-the-moment newspaper for me. It also promises to suggest some books I should read.

Now, don’t go writing Nani off too quickly. In case you don’t know… Nani did work in journalism for a few years before “having her babies.” And it was a daily-Sunday! And she had to layout her own pages by hand! With a society page! She knows her stuff.

She’s even down with new media. She has her own Facebook page and everything!! She Googles. She creates personalized content herself. She tells me things to do and read all the time!! She even has made a series of lectures specifically for me and my siblings and cousins! Truly: Lecture No. 1 is (as we all know) “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot”. Lecture No. 5 is: Donald Pliner makes the best heels.

But much as I love my Nani, though, I have to say… I think she’s a bit busy keeping libraries across the Chicago area in business (she sells property and casualty insurance. She helps Girl Scouts, too! Some of her family members think she only continues to work so she can “happen to pass by a sale on her way from work.” But I am sure she works because she loves libraries and Girl Scouts.) to keep me updated the way DailyPerfect can.

It works pretty simply: If your name is recognizable enough, it can troll the Internet to see other things you like. Then it suggests news content based on this record.

I’m not unimpressed with what it gives me. And I like how easy it is to vote for or against various themes.

But I agree with Martin over at the Neiman Journalism Labs - it’s a little creepy! I don’t know if I want the Internet to know me as well as my grandma.

Here’s the books it says I should read: