Il Fatto targato Travaglio ha scovato una fonte di spessore per parlare male di Silvio Berlusconi: The Economist, il settimanale britannico che non ha mai nascosto una certa antipatia per il Cavaliere. Il quotidiano manettaro ospita un’intervista a David Lane, definito “occhio ‘neutro’ sul nostro paese”. Bastano due battute per rendersene conto:

Bè, “Il Divo” non è l’unico caso…
No. Vogliamo “toccare” Silvio Berlusconi? Mi spiega in quale altro paese democratico un primo ministro può rifiutarsi di rispondere alla magistratura? Le rispondo io: nessuno.

Cosa sarebbe avvenuto in Inghilterra?
Escluso, politicamente finito. Gli sarebbero state imposte le dimissioni, a lui e a quelli come lui. Compreso Schifani.

Un esempio?

1963: John Dennis Profumo (di origini italiane, ndr) si dimette dall’incarico di segretario di Stato alla guerra, per le bugie su una sua relazione con una showgirl, sentimentalmente coinvolta anche con un funzionario dell’ambasciata sovietica.

A essere precisi, Lane si dimentica di aggiungere nell’affare Profumo comparivano spie, spionaggio e controspionaggio, talpe inglesi che informavano il Cremlino. Insomma: Profumo era un segretario alla Guerra ricattabile. Lo è anche Berlusconi? Al massimo potrebbe essere preso in giro per le sue abilità amatorie. Ma stando ad ascoltare le registrazioni della signora D’Addario, pare che il Cav. abbia fatto un gran figurone.

Ci sa tanto di invidia tutto questo…

ROMA – Gli anni della crisi, tra il 2007 e il 2009, segnano la generale espansione dei media gratuiti e la sostanziale battuta d’arresto di quelli a pagamento e il prezzo più alto è per la carta stampata con la crescita di quello che si può definire il «press divide», ovvero l’abbandono dei giornali a favore dei mezzi digitali. Questo nella crescita esponenziale del vero e proprio fenomeno dei social network, con Facebook in testa, un nuovo mezzo che per il 42,4% degli internauti sottrae tempo alla lettura dei libri. È lo scenario di progressiva digitalizzazione dei media disegnato nell’ottavo rapporto Censis/Ucsi, «I media tra crisi e metamorfosi», presentato a Roma. Secondo il Censis, tra il 2001 e il 2009 c’è stato un vero e proprio balzo in avanti nel consumo dei media: l’utilizzo dei cellulari è cresciuto del 12,2%, quello di Internet del 26,9%, quello delle radio del 12,4%. «Quello appena trascorso – spiega il Censis – è stato il decennio della moltiplicazione e integrazione dei media, e dell’espansione del loro impiego».

Il resto dell’articolo lo trovate qui.

With The World Blogging Forum 2009 now at an end I can finally chill out and look at everything that happened in these few very interesting days. I have to say that this is the first post that I’ve ever written in English so please signal any mistakes in the comments below. I have to mention that this is the WBF the way I saw it, the point of view of a member of the Romanian team that organized this event.

The Palace of the Parliament, a.k.a. Casa Poporului

As I’ve become more and more interested in blogging and new media the idea of the WBF sounded very interesting to me from the beginning (I have to admit that I was a tiny bit worried that we would screw something up, but that’s just my usual paranoia) and when Mihaela Draghici (ASLS’s current president) asked if I would be interested in the project I immediately said yes.

The first day (I’ve already posted a very brief article about the first day in Romanian) was more about getting the location ready, greeting the bloggers at the airport and taking them to the hotel.

Some minor preparations

Tuesday we really got into it. The location was already set up so the talks started immediately. We delegated people for every aspect so the ASLS team was covering just about anything you could think of. We really did our best to make everything as good as possible.

After Traian Basescu’s speech the media, in their traditional manner, stormed out. Basescu did not impress me personally and I cannot share any political view on this matter as I am apolitical. The foreign bloggers on the other hand seemed to be impressed with his speech and the fact that he knew anything at all about new media. Loïc Le Meur was surprised to see that Basescu is using twitter and they even shared a couple of tweets. Austrian blogger Ritchie Pettauer , who maintains Datadirt dot net said that if this happened in Austria the president would just show up, wave a bit and leave, so he was surprised as well. (Ritchie Pettauer is one of the most sociable persons I’ve ever met, really enjoyed chatting with him).

The coffee and lunch breaks were a welcome pause in the terribly poor moderation of Dumitru Borțun. I repeat, this is my personal opinion, so if you liked the way that mister Borțun uttered his loud viewpoints that’s fine with me. Still, wtf?

Me and Val Vladescu

The discussions took a very different turn with the guest speaker from the Netherlands, Ramon Stoppelenburg who shared with us his very inspiring travel story. You can find more details about Ramon from his English blog and his travel website. As I said before, I was sitting at the round table so I had a microphone in front of me so I thought “Hey, I should totally participate” so I waited until Ramon was finished so I could talk about the amazing blog Mongolia.ro, which has a very unique story of a Romanian photographer that traveled from Romania to Mongolia and back using his beloved motorcycle and money he got from selling off the story of every 500 km that rolled under his wheels (I’ve followed his journey in Romanian and became a huge fan). American blogger, David Sasaki picked up on this, liked it a lot, and included it into a post on his blog. (David really impressed me with his speech in the second day, so his blog and website is a must-see)

Ramon - the grandfather of couchsurfing

After this, the focus went back on the social side of things with more talks about citizen reporting. Excepting some minor periods of down-time, not more than 10 minutes long, the wireless connections that were especially set up for the forum were remarkably fast, chiefly on upload. The bloggers had positive feedback on this aspect as well. Come to think of it, the minor complaints (some needed more power sockets to plug in their devices) were resolved in decent time. Don’t get me wrong, the technical set-up could have been better – a lot better. The projector was kind of a mystery to me in the beginning but we got it to work half of the time . Sorry for any technical setbacks, next time we’ll try to be better prepared.

Tuesday evening, after leaving the Palace of the Parliament the VIP guests were taken to Carul cu Bere for some traditional food and music. They had a good time but when I arrived, much, much later, it was almost time to go back to the hotel. I managed to have a nice chat with Petru Terguta, the journalist and blogger from The Republic of Moldova, nice guy. This just meant that I got a few more hours of sleep, welcome rest indeed.

The second day of actual discussions was Wednesday. The focus shifted to a different side of new media, the future of blogging. Guest speakers included the blogger from Hungaria, Dobó Mátyás, an IT expert. Ritchie Pettauer, who told us about the monetization of blogs, had a very interesting presentation. I really was interested in what they had to say so from the very beginning I found a spot at the round table between Ramon from the Netherlands and Erkan Saka from Turkey. Just as I was about to ask a question, the moderator Dorina Guţu (who did a pretty good job, by the way) rushed the speakers for the lunch break so I didn’t get to ask anything. No matter, I got my answers during the lunch break in the hallway. The catering was to my taste on both forum days, the coffee was strong and the fruit fresh, the staff friendly, nothing to complain from me.

The translation was pretty good. I went around and asked a few of the participants to rate the translations. Feedback ranged from good to very good. Kudos again to the translation team (the team was not made up of professionals, but of students and fresh graduates) that managed to do a good job even with really bad English, fast talking, difficult subjects and a lot of non-native speakers. For the next forum (can’t wait for the next one) we really need to get people to help out on more of the languages (Chinese blogger was really hard to understand due to bad English, sorry for that).

WBF translation team

On Wednesday I got to ask questions twice. First was after Helge Fahrnberger’s presentation. It turns out that blogging under the cover of anonymity is illegal in Austria. From what Helge told us, every blog needs to have a contact page by law. Most of us were intrigued by this and it got tweeted a lot afterwards. Twitter was actually a big part of things. My allies were ipod touch and Twitterrific, so I followed most of the tweets on wireless and didn’t have to carry around heavier devices. The ipod had an unfortunate accident. It slipped out of its leather case with force and slid about 3 m on the marble floor after crashing loudly. I am amazed that it still works and that it only got a few scratches on its screen, tough device. The bloggers turned twitter red hot and the #wbf2009’s were flying back and forth. Behold the power of microblogging that I’ve only started using a couple of weeks ago….starting to get the hang of it.

I know that this post is getting waaaay to long, but hey, don’t read it!
Andrea Vascellari, the finnish-italian blogger made a very interesting presentation and at the end of it I got to ask him his opinion on consumer trends. I asked about his opinion on the development of the “prosumer” (a term I had picked up from my older brother a couple of years back and that to me, at least, means a consumer that researches a specific product or service before spending money on it) due to internet penetration. His response satisfied my curiosity.

Me and Ana Istodorescu. I don't look like a dork in this one, yeeeah!

I have to say I usually only discuss trivial stuff but that evening my throat got sore from talking and talking and talking about serious matters, mostly with one of three italian journalists (the one that spoke good english), and the american photographer they were befriending. Won’t go into details here, can just say it was really fun and interesting. Had some beer, had some delicious cake and then left with the hired bus that took a part of the guests to the hotel (the rest stayed to party some more).

Getting ready for a group photo. This pic is courtesy of Ritchie Pettauer, thanks!

I sadly don‘t know much about the last day, the day that most of them left Romania, but for a few tweets.
That’s it!

If indeed you’ve had the patience to endure such a long article I shall make a few more suggestions:

Jeff Jedras’s blog has some great articles.
Sorin Rusi’s blog has pictures from WBF
Piticu’s blog has a guestpost about #wbf2009
Oana Raluca Brătilă posted on her blog
Ritchie Pettauer also blogged about day 2 of the event here.
Romanian blogger Chinezu posted this after attending the forum.
Great reporting in French from Eric Dupin.
This is an interesting post in Romanian as well.
Pictures from Andrea Vascellari.
Pictures on Flickr from Zola.
Luca Sartoni took a beautiful set of pictures.
These are a just a few links i’ve found. For videos search YouTube.

The pictures i’ve posted are courtesy of Dana. Hope to get more as soon as possible.

If you wish to contact me, check out my contact page.

All the best,
Dani.

Fast Company blogger Brian Reich has a great critique (What’s Wrong With the Analysis of “What’s Wrong With Charitable Giving-and How to Fix It”) of Pablo Eisenberg’s op-ed from The Wall Street Journal “What’s Wrong With Charitable Giving–and How to Fix It.” He makes many great points in this article. One point that really caught my attention is

we can use [new media] tools to help organizations and address causes in ways that go well beyond donating. As a result, we simply don’t believe–and probably for good reasons–that the institutions that once offered the guidance, support, and direction for how to address the issues facing our society know best.

He also lays out some good ideas about the nature of charitable giving organizations and their relationships to cause and peers.

If you find any broken Tweets or Links, please report them in the comment section.

If you like what you see, may I recommend you start following me on Twitter to enjoy the benefits of real-time content as it materializes.

If you choose to follow @rlavigne42, please leave me a comment. I will make sure to check out your Tweets in return.

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My Thoughts Enclosed…Rb

PORTRAIT/PERSONALITY, FEATURE, & “PERSONAL VISION”  CATEGORY

Deadline:  TUESDAY,  November  10,  2009

The following is a digest of requirements for this competition.  Please consult the guidelines (sent to your department in September) for further details.  This competition awards $16,700 in scholarships and matching grants to the top ten ranking students & their schools.  The top winners qualify for the National Photojournalism Championship.  The department receives a $100 stipend just for entering.

PLEASE NOTE:  Students entering the Photojournalism Competitions no longer have to be journalism majors.  They must still be (or have been when the work was produced—see below) undergraduates attending a school with an ACEJMC accredited journalism program.

Entries in this photo competition must have been taken from September 1, 2008, through November 1, 2009, inclusively.  Each entry must consist of five images – two portrait/personality, two features, and one “personal vision.”  Each university may submit up to two entries in this competition, each by a different student. The “personal vision” single image can be (but is not limited to):  pictorial, photo illustration, fine art photography, fashion photography, editorial photography, nature photography, architectural photography.

The selected entrants must be current undergraduates at the time the entry is produced and published.  An exception is made for Spring, Summer or Fall 2009 graduates, allowing them to enter the contests in the 2009-2010 program year.  The entry must have been published, however, before students were graduated.  The Spring or Summer 2009 graduates would NOT be eligible to complete in the 2010 National Championship. The entrant must not have had more than one year total of professional experience at time of entry.

EACH COMPLETED ENTRY MUST CONSIST OF:  Submit entry on a CD with five scanned jpeg images.  Scan the images at 200 dpi resolution, with the longest dimension not exceeding 10 inches.  It is the responsibility of entrant to verify that the images will open and are readable.  Please use a CD with no other images but your Hearst entry. Or entries may be emailed to:  photoawards@hearstfdn.org, and must be sent by 11:59 pm PST on November 10.  It is the responsibility of the sender to verify accurate transmission of email. Entrant name, university name and category must be included with the images.  Please label your files!

Ex:  Smith_SJSU_Feature_1.jpg.  Please print entrant name and university name on the CD as well.

A Photo Entry Blank must be signed & sent via regular mail or faxed or scanned as a PDF and emailed as an attachment.  Fax: 415-243-0760.  Email: jwatten@hearstfdn.org The caption information should be included under the “File info” category in Photoshop.  Four copies of the caption sheet must still be included with the entry and sent via regular mail or faxed or scanned as a PDF and emailed as an attachment.

One of the five photos must have been published during the time period designated in the competition.  One tear sheet of this image – or a copy – must accompany the entry. If the photo was published in an off-campus publication, a letter from the editor is required verifying authorship of the photo.  This letter may be faxed or emailed to us as well.

Late entries will not be accepted. The entry must arrive at the Foundation by the deadline date.

Questions? Check our website, www.hearstawards.org, or call: 1-800-841-7048 ext. 4560.

Send entries to: Hearst Journalism Awards Program, 90 New Montgomery Street 1212, San Francisco, CA 94105

BBC

• BBC to upgrade sign-in service with a move to ‘a shiny new one’ called BBC iD. This appeared on a number of BBC blogs from what I could make out including this Cycling the Americas blog. Let’s hope this guy isn’t blogging while he’s cycling – that would be plain dangerous.

Blogging

• More key findings from the State of the Blogosphere survey 2009 via the Online Journalism Blog. Though OJB missed a couple of key stats (IMHO) on blogs as sources which I covered the other day. But then I missed loads they covered because I didn’t cover it all…

• More interesting blogging research at LabforCulture.org.

Journalism

• Power to the (Twitter) people and the rise of mob journalism. What does Twitter’s role in the Jan Moir and Trafigura stories point to in the future? Thought-provoking as usual from Adam Tinworth.

Twitter is finally doing something about people who follow more and more poeople. For some of them, who follow really lots of other users it’s almost impossible to truely read other twits.
Creating lists, sounds like one of the good approached who can help sort this out.  I find it especially useful for journalists, who can now group people into specific sub-streams.

Check out those two example lists:
http://twitter.com/kosmopolish/eyp – members of European Youth Press
http://twitter.com/kosmopolish/caucasus – Georgian bloggers

And from here, Twitter does not have to do much to take us into group-list feature, which will allow more than single person to create specialised streams in which many people can contribute.

Can’t wait!

//This feature is currently rolled out to 5% of Twitter users, should not be long before all have it.

Via Switched:

Austrailia’s Griffith University has added a mandatory course on Twitter to their journalism student’s curriculum. Though it may sound like a joke, the school feels that some young writer’s “tweets” are not as in-depth as they could be. Referring to the journalistic role of Twitter in matters like the recent Iranian protests, the University officials believe that up-and-coming journalists need training in the art of brevity while conveying news.

Hmmmm.

Poland: At my university it would be hard to get beamer into class, not to mention professor who would know/use/understand what Twitter is. Or any other social media service.  There’s no discussion on  impact social media makes on journalism so it will be long time before we introduce course specifically about this.

Pity.

What’s the situation in your countries? (I will add here from the comments)

Los Angeles Times has published a small piece about how Google Wave could influence journalists and their work. Keypoints are:

Collaborative reporting

We’re not going to e-mail our co-writers with every new lead and minute detail we dig up. But if we’re sharing a virtual notebook, we can scan through …

Record and archive interviews

If Google connects its Voice calling service to Wave, we might be able to easily insert call recordings, voicemails and text messages into our notes.

Lived editing

Google Wave clearly marks updates to documents and lets you view a timeline of changes. Eventually — once Google adds the feature — users will be able to revert to a specific point in time.

Smarter story updates

Instead of creating a new post for each piece of news that’s later uncovered on a breaking story, the blogs post an update to clarify which paragraphs have been changed or factually corrected.

Discuss while you read

Wave lets users leave comments on particular paragraphs, sentences or words. This would allow readers to discuss passages as they’re reading along and clarify which sections they’re addressing.

Transparent writing process

Maybe we can go one step further and let the observers comment throughout the writing process. Readers could help shape a story.

Instant polls

We could blast out a poll using Google’s Polly extension and instantly begin pulling in feedback.

Wiki news aggregator

allowing readers to rearrange our homepage would be an interesting experiment

Read the full blog post here.

네이버 뉴스캐스트

블로그 기반 미디어인 블로터닷넷이 네이버 뉴스캐스트에 입성했습니다.

국내의 기존 미디어들과의 대등한 경쟁이 가능해짐으로써 앞으로의 새로운 뉴 미디어의 탄생과 그 파장이 기대됩니다.
블로터닷넷의 행보가 기대됩니다! 화이팅 Bloter.net

Few days ago National Public Radio has announced special set of socialmedia guidelines for their journalists. Here they are:

NPR NEWS SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES

Social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have become an integral part of everyday life for millions of people around the world. As NPR grows to serve the audience well beyond the radio, social media is becoming an increasingly important aspect of our interaction and our transparency with our audience and with a variety of communities. Properly used, social networking sites can also be very valuable newsgathering and reporting tools and can speed research and extend a reporter’s contacts, and we encourage our journalists to take advantage of them.

The line between private and public activity has been blurred by these tools, which is why we are providing guidance now. Information from your Facebook page, your blog entries and your tweets — even if you intend them to be personal messages to your friends or family — can be easily circulated beyond your intended audience. This content, therefore, represents you and NPR to the outside world as much as a radio story or story for NPR.org does.

As in all of your reporting, the NPR Code of Ethics (http://www.npr.org/about/ethics/) should guide you in your use of social media. You should read and be sure you understand the Code.

What follows are some basic but important guidelines to help you as you deal with the changing world of gathering and reporting news, and to provide additional guidance on specific issues. These guidelines apply to every member of the News Division.

First and foremost — you should do nothing that could undermine your credibility with the public, damage NPR’s standing as an impartial source of news or otherwise jeopardize NPR’s reputation.

• Recognize that everything you write or receive on a social media site is public. Anyone with access to the web can get access to your activity on social media sites. And regardless of how careful you are in trying to keep them separate, in your online activity, your professional life and your personal life overlap.
• Use the highest level of privacy tools available to control access to your personal activity when appropriate, but don’t let that make you complacent. It’s just not that hard for someone to hack those tools and make public what you thought was private.
• You should conduct yourself in social media forums with an eye to how your behavior or comments might appear if we were called upon to defend them as a news organization. In other words, don’t behave any differently online than you would in any other public setting.
• While we strongly encourage linking to NPR.org, you may not repost NPR copyrighted material to social networks without prior permission. For example, it is o.k. to link from your blog or Facebook profile to a story of yours on the NPR site, but you should not copy the full text or audio onto a personal site or Web page. You may accomplish this through the NPR API or widgets that NPR provides to the public under the same terms of use as apply to anyone else.
• Remember that the terms of service of a social media site apply to what you post and gather on that site. The terms might allow for material that you post to be used in a different way than you intended. Additionally, law enforcement officials may be able to obtain by subpoena anything you post or gather on a site without your consent — or perhaps even your knowledge.
• Remember the same ethics rules as apply offline also apply to information gathered online.
• Journalism should be conducted in the open, regardless of the platform. Just as you would do if you were working offline, you should identify yourself as an NPR journalist when you are working online. If you are acting as an NPR journalist, you must not use a pseudonym or misrepresent who you are. If you are acting in a personal capacity, you may use a screen name if that is allowed by the relevant forum.
• You should always explain to anyone who provides you information online how you intend to use the information you are gathering.
• When possible, clarify and confirm any information you collect online by later interviewing your online sources by phone or in person.
• While widely disseminated and reported, material gathered online can be just as inaccurate or untrustworthy as some material collected or received in more traditional ways. As always, consider and verify the source.
• Content gathered online is subject to the same attribution rules as other content.
• You must not advocate for political or other polarizing issues online. This extends to joining online groups or using social media in any form (including your Facebook page or a personal blog) to express personal views on a political or other controversial issue that you could not write for the air or post on NPR.org.
• Your simple participation in some online groups could be seen to indicate that you endorse their views. Consider whether you can accomplish your purposes by just observing a group’s activity, rather than becoming a member. If you do join, be clear that you’ve done so to seek information or story ideas. And if you “friend” or join a group representing one side of an issue, do so for a group representing the competing viewpoint, when reasonable to do so.
• Realize that social media communities have their own culture, etiquette and norms, and be respectful of them.
• If you are writing about meetings and gatherings at NPR — always ask first if the forum is on or off the record before distributing information or content about it.

And a final caution — when in doubt, consult with your editor.

Social media is a very dynamic ecosystem so don’t be surprised if we continue to revise or elaborate on our guidelines at a later date. In the mean time, we welcome your feedback.

DATA: 23/09/2009
LOCAL: Centro Histórico do Mackenzie. Rua Itambé, 45 (Higienópolis), São Paulo
HORÁRIO: 9.00 às 13 horas

O evento será transmitido em tempo real através do site http://culturadigital.br/aovivo

A curadoria de Arte e Tecnologia Digital do Fórum da Cultura Digital Brasileira convida para o debate sobre o panorama da produção, disseminação, difusão e inserção da arte digital na cultura brasileira.

As questões a serem debatidas no seminário são:

- delimitação do campo: o que é arte e tecnologia digital?
- diagnósticos: quais são os problemas? quais as perguntas que precisamos fazer?
- formulações e propostas: quais políticas públicas devem existir? que ações este grupo deveria tomar?    quais pressões deveríamos fazer?

A intenção final desse encontro e do Fórum como um todo é formular um documento listando e propondo ao MinC uma política cultural para a área de Arte e Tecnologia Digital.

PROGRAMA

9h Abertura com José Murilo Jr. (Gerente de Cultura Digital do Ministério da Cultura)

9h30 Mesa-redonda sobre Arte & Tecnologia Digital no Fórum da Cultura Digital Brasileira, com Alvaro Malaguti (Gerente de Projetos da Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa), Cicero Inacio da Silva (Curador de Arte e Tecnologia Digital do Fórum), Daniel Hora (Consultor do Ministério da Cultura), Giselle Beiguelman (Diretora Artística do Prêmio Sérgio Motta de Arte e Tecnologia), Jane de Almeida (Coordenadora do PPGEAHC/Mackenzie), Patrícia Canetti (Conselheira titular de Arte Digital no CNPC/MinC), Paula Perissinotto (Coordenadora geral do Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica), Renata Motta (Coordenadora geral do Prêmio Sérgio Motta de Arte e Tecnologia), Rodrigo Savazoni (Coordenação Executiva do Fórum da Cultura Digital Brasileira), Tânia Fraga (UNB e artista).

13h Debate sobre o livro Culturadigital.BR, com organização de Rodrigo Savazoni e Sérgio Cohn (Azougue, 2009).

Direto do CulturaDigital.

De Bortoli contro Scalfari. Corsera contro Repubblica. Via Solferino contro largo Focchetti: i due maggiori quotidiani italiani affilano le lame nei giorni immediatamente successivi alla manifestazione per la libertà di stampa e alla bocciatura del lodo Alfano che finisce per tirare in ballo l’altro lodo, quello che scotta, quello Mondadori. Non è un caso, soprattutto quando di mezzo ci sono editori potenti (come le banche o gli ingegneri).

Al di là di quello che ha scritto f. d. be. sul fondatore di Rep., ecco la risposta dello stesso f. d. be alla domanda “a proposito di giornalismo libero, quanta libertà c’è oggi nei giornali?” di Stefano Natoli, pubblicata nel libro L’informazione che cambia (editrice La Scuola):

C’è la libertà che ogni giornalista sa conquistarsi. Se uno è autorevole e ha le notizie difficilmente viene bloccato. Se un giornalista va dal suo direttore con una buona storia, un buon direttore non può non pubblicarla. Diciamo che molta della libertà che non abbiamo è perché non la cerchiamo. E molta della censura che qualche volta subiamo è frutto delle nostre incertezze, delle nostre inaccuratezze e, forse, anche del nostro scarso coraggio.

Ps: ironia della sorte, il libro è stato regalato ad alcuni allievi di una scuola di giornalismo dall’ordine dei giornalisti lombardo. Si legge nelle dedica firmata Letizia Gonzales, presidente della sede milanese: “Una testimonianza da parte del consiglio dell’ordine. La Gonzales era in piazza a Roma.

On the first day of New Media Forum I have made a special presentation called “Gutenberg vs Twitter”.  Starting with impact Gutenberg and his printing press made on society, and trying to use it as a comparison to understand what impact social media are bringing. Below you can find the Prezi I made for that.

http://prezi.com/lqmv_agsytg0/

]]> http://tetchanyutaka.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/piano-stairs-rolighetsteorin-se-the-fun-theory/ Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:31:15 +0000 tetchanyutaka http://tetchanyutaka.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/piano-stairs-rolighetsteorin-se-the-fun-theory/

Giga on thematic blogs in Gergian blogosphere

Mini Social Innovation Camp

Participants of Mini SIcamp workshop

Participants of Mini SIcamp workshop

Participants of Mini SIcamp workshop

Participants of Mini SIcamp workshop

Lena, on of the New Media Forum organisers

Participants of New Media Forum - opening ceremony

Merici Vinton

]]> http://mashyul.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/on-citizens-journalism/ Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:38:19 +0000 mashyul http://mashyul.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/on-citizens-journalism/

Whatever I read or hear about citizen journalism, here in States, I constantly project it on to my home country, Russia. Although I am coming from a very developed, modernized city of Moscow, with very active, business-minded population, using all sorts of technology, I feel that the atmosphere there differs from the US North-East in many ways.
If we look at it through the lens of media development, correlation of the mainstream and citizen journalism, we will see that Russia is not such a welcoming place for the citizen journalism as the United States. Besides the issues of the relationships between the traditional and new media, media and public and all the rest, that was discussed in our DPI-659 class, and in the assigned readings, citizen journalism in Russia faces the challenge of reporting in not totally closed, but still not open society.
Couple of days ago my TV set was on the CNN international channel, the Larry King’s show. I didn’t watch it, but listened to it while doing something. Although I spent much time in States, I still was quite impressed when some King’s guest compared Barack Obama’s presidency with erection pills. “We want our president to work like erection pills – right now, when we need it,” the woman said. She, together with some other program’s guest were discussing the results of Obama’s eight month’s presidency, criticizing the president for failing to implement a single plan of his agenda.
While listening to this program I immediately imagined how some Russian public figure compares either president Medvedev or our famous prime-minister Putin (Putin, particularly) with such a drug on some popular local TV channel… I quickly realized that this was simply not possible.
One would argue that this exactly is what the citizen’s journalism can fix – make it more open, and less official and brushed – but the problem is that in Russia as in many other not developed democracies, or non-democratic, or authoritarian regimes (name it as you like), people would be severely punished for such a frivolous published or broadcast statement, either they are journalists or not.
Meanwhile, as a citizen, I don’t strive for a chance to compare the leaders of my country with some drugs, this is actually not as important for me as just to be able to criticize authorities openly, without the fear to be punished.
To be fare, many journalists and political experts do criticize Russian government. There are few independent media outlets in Russia, which regularly publish or broadcast quite sharp stories and interviews, BUT these are the media with relatively small audience/coverage, and they are not the TV channels.
Once again, one might argue saying “forget about TV, it is too traditional and mainstream anyway, let citizen journalism fill this gap in Internet and print newspapers (which are also in a bad state now, as in States)”. My answer will be the following: in Russia (and may be in the rest of the world too), the most popular and powerful media is TV, and the citizen journalism, which is still to be developed, exist on the Internet only (it probably got into some tiny print newspapers as well, but its proportion is not significant). Meanwhile, about 16% of Russian population uses Internet.
Another critical issue is the access to information. When we discuss citizen journalism in our class, we often mention town hall meetings, for instance. Once again, even in a city much smaller than Moscow, Russian authorities as a rule would prefer to meet without any media present, not speaking of some volunteers, gathering information for their stories. When media outlets want to cover some official event, they fix it for their staff reporters, calling event’s holders in advance, asking for accreditation. If some official doesn’t let volunteers in to cover his/her presentation, it may be not because he/her is not willing to disclose something, this may happen simply because Russian society is not used to such openness. This is not in our political/cultural tradition.
Reading Get off the bus: the future of pro-am journalism, by Amanda Michael, for instance, I thought it was a good idea to develop such a model of group journalism. Meanwhile, I have a number of doubts. First, I still believe that journalism is a professional skill, which normally cannot be developed in couple of training sessions. Even just to gather information you sometimes need to have certain knowledge or/and experience. Second, I guess in any country there may be an issue of authority, causing problems. If I don’t belong to some media company or organization I don’t think it would be easy to get trust of let’s say a university professor in order to make him collect and pass some more or less important information to me. If I want some volunteer to interview somebody, how can expect that this “somebody” will be happy to talk to an amateur journalist? Third, I believe we should be careful with the idea of volunteer work itself: this is one thing to get volunteers to clean the streets or collect clothes for homeless, another thing to collect information for reporting. The problem is that this information must be accurate, and we want to give such assignment to more or less educated people. I see only two potential groups of people who could do such a job – student interns and retired professionals. Who else will have time and desire to do it?
Another case will be some extraordinary event, like God forbid terrorist attack – in such cases citizen journalism is crucial worldwide.

It was a real shock to be invited to New Media Forum in Tbilisi, Georgia. When I was going to Bratislava for Social Innovation Camp I thought I will be back with few more FB friends, but this time it was much different. Hatia from OSGF approached me with a very nice proposal which was impossible to say no to.

Stay tuned for daily updates form the Forum and other new media related stuff.

(My post about SICamp is coming in next few days).

Dando continuidade à reflexão sobre o impacto da cultura móvel na sociedade, o Instituto Sergio Motta, em parceria com o Espacio Fundación Telefónica de Buenos Aires, realiza o simpósio “Nomadismos Tecnológicos“. Organizado por Giselle Beiguelman, diretora artística do Prêmio Sergio Motta, e pelo professor titular da Universidade de Buenos Aires e curador, Jorge La Ferla, o simpósio acontece nos dias 19 e 20 de outubro, no Espacio Fundación Telefónica, em Buenos Aires, Argentina. O objetivo do encontro é o de “oferecer uma abordagem crítica sobre a comunicação portátil e a cultura da mobilidade, considerando a noção de nomadismo contemporâneo em sua história, focada na criação conceitual e artística, além de suas relações com o desenvolvimento científiico e tecnológico”. Durante os dois dias, especialistas internacionais discutirão a questão da cultura da mobilidade em suas variáveis estéticas, ecônomicas e de vigilância. Além dos debates, o Espacio Fundación Telefónica realiza a mostra Geografías Celulares, com a participação de artistas brasileiros, que discutem a interseção entre arte e mídia locativas.

Zhang Ga é um dos maiores artistas do campo das novas mídias na China. É também professor da Academy of Art and Design of Tsinghua University de Pequim. Foi o curador em mídia arte do National Art Museum da China, e diretor/curador da mostra Synthetic Times-International New Media Art Exhibition, dentro do Beijing Olympics Cultural Project, realizado em 2008. Um de seus trabalhos mais conhecidos é o People´s Portrait, de 2004, que mostrava retratos de pessoas tirados em Nova York, Singapura, Rotterdam, Linz e Brisbane. O trabalho foi exposto simultaneamente em painéis eletrônicos de larga escala, como por exemplo, o da Times Square, e em outros painéis de grandes centros urbanos do mundo. Além da exibição nesses espaços publicitários a obra também foi exibida on-line para dar idéia de que esses espaços se transformam cada vez mais em lugares translocais e globalizados. Zhang Ga será um dos palestrantes do Fórum A&T – Perspectivas Críticas em Arte e Tecnologia do Instituto Sergio Motta, a ser realizado nos dias 3 e 4 de novembro, em São Paulo.

Continuing thoughts based on last post.

Sketching out ideas; overlapping concepts between westerns and crime novels (not very evident by this clip).

Hanno già trovato il colpevole per l’acqua scesa dal cielo.