Steve,

It takes real chutzpah to ask Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of craigslist to help newspapers salvage their classifieds businesses and thus save democracy, or at least the part of it that newspapers presumably foster.

Your clever open letter to them, at the same time congratulating and blaming, misplaces responsibility. It assumes they have the authority to solve a problem that the news industry inflicted upon itself: how to replace a subsidy predicated on controlling and authoritarian business practices.

Steve, I can’t decide if your modest proposal is naive, self-serving or tragically poetic.

Craig Newmark never set out to disrupt the newspaper industry. Motivated only by helping people out, he created a simple list for his friends, initially distributed through email, and later on the Internet when one friend showed him how to create a Web page. Their trust in him, as well as a passion for serving others through technology, gave craigslist its authority.

You miss the magic of craigslist. It is Craig’s “friends” — a community that has grown to 40 million people a month in 500 U.S. cities and 50 countries (larger than all news sites combined by several factors) — who disrupted newspaper classifieds. Call them users, customers, an audience, a market, or marketplace, they discovered that through craigslist they could do for themselves what others charged excessively in order to handsomely subsidize their businesses.

Trust in Craig, still craigslist’s chief customer service representative, remains at the heart of it. So are democratic, open markets: the right of the people to conduct commerce and journalism among and between themselves.

Meantime, newspapers charged premium prices for access to an arcane classification system that published a few, annotated lines of shorthand in very small type at the back of a dense product with limited, daily distribution. The hard-to-find, hard-to-read, one-way advertisements were distributed to parts of a relatively small geographic region for sellers and buyers to discover, at least those who happened to buy the newspaper and read the classifieds section on the very day they were prepared to make a transaction.

For a lousy experience, newspapers in growth markets such as Dallas, Denver and San Jose made hundreds of millions of dollars that drove margins of 30 per cent or more with these high-yield liners.

The experience was not significantly improved by importing this business to the online version of the newspaper. What didn’t work in print didn’t work online.

Newspapers used their profits not to expand their social mission, but rather to drive the stock price of the companies that owned them, to finance acquisitions, to reward management, and to acquire additional wealth through cost-management: death by acquisition accelerated by cutting their way to profitability.

Financing news operations has never been much a part of it; ask any editor who has asked for budget increases or additional staff to cover a society growing increasingly complex and competitive. The moral imperative is a myth perpetuated by editors and journalists, not by the publishers you (Steve) are asking Craig and Jim to help.

Now, other forms and systems – a collaborative, more democratic Fifth Estate, if you will — are emerging to replace an institution that is broken. Almost anyone can deploy the simple technology that craiglist uses. Anyone can participate in its journalism and commerce.

Publishers would be better served by implementing enlightened business strategies with a passionate consumer connection at its core. Until then, they will continue to be cast in a survival drama of their own making.

Newspapers are like a broken satellite falling of orbit. The technology is failing; the mission may soon be scuttled. To stay in orbit, the engineers must repair and update the technology systems. More importantly, the flight controllers must restore trust in the mission and its results by relinquishing control. Otherwise, Satellite Newspaper – classifieds and all — will burn up in the atmosphere.

Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster may be talented astronauts, but they shouldn’t go down with the pilots of their competitors’ obsolete ships.

Adrienne Ammerman, the organization’s media and communications organizer, attended We Media Miami 08 – and she came home inspired to take action. She’d like to launch a Bread for the City blog “to create dialogue and action around the issues we address every day: hunger & poverty, food & nutrition, access to legal services, medical care, and affordable housing… to name a few.”

Adrienne is looking for help from bloggers, techies, electronic and social marketing experts, journalists, and other media makers. The first step will be a tour and brainstorming meeting on April 11. I’ve been there – it’s a humbling place and a startling setting for a conversation about the role of media in society, and opportunities to inform each other and change the world through our stories.

For this first meeting capacity is limited to about 15 people, so if you’d like to attend, please RSVP. Also contact Adrienne if you can’t attend but would like to help,
Details:

When: April 11, 10 am

Where: Bread for the City: 1525 7th St. NW, Washington DC (Green Line to Shaw, Howard University. Street parking available.)

RSVP: To Adrienne Ammerman via email: AAmmerman [at] breadforthecity [dot] org. Or, connect with her in the via the We Media Community [profile]

Phone: 202-380-7848

Location: Storer Auditorium at 4:15 pm

Session Chair: Hal Straus, Interactivity and Communities Editor, Washingtonpost.com

Robin Miller, Editor, Slashdot/SourceForge

Slashdot has a multilayered moderation system for ranking comments. “If you ever get into a content rating system, do *not* call it ‘karma’.” Slashdot moderators are selected at random, and these moderators can rank comments up or down. If you’ve posted a comment, you can’t moderate. To control for group-think, Slash-Dot has “meta-moderators” a small, selected, voluntary group of “super moderators.”

Must haves:

1. Users must be able to rate things up and down.

2. Should, below a certain threshold, should comments be visible?

3. Many users doing few moderations–spread the love.

Steve Arend, Vice President Digital media Services, CMP Technology

I saw opportunities to take “noise” away from what other people want. We are producing a virtual trade show, 2nd life, where you can go in and interact with those who create the products you’re interested in. We have had cases in 2nd life, where we’ve had semi-unanimous interruptions, where we allow interactions to happen, but with the knowledge I can literally throw them off the (2nd Life) island.

There’s noise from the sales side, the engineering side, and from consumers. In the virtual world, that’s the closest I’d seen to real life. Because you can interrupt the audio portion, just like in real life. (View video clip 1.)

Links:

http://life20.net http://howmachineswork.com

Mark Jones, Global Community Editor for Reuters

Question: What’s the worst that can happen?

We try and pull in the best of the rest of the web, what other sites are saying on various topics. Global Voices-Voices without Votes. We cover what major nations around the world are doing around elections, bringing in bloggers from around the world. For instance, you can see what global bloggers are saying about US elections. However, this skews content if the blogosphere is skewed all on its own.

How do you make it clear to users that there is a difference between blogger comments and stories, and Reuters itself? Our single biggest compliant from the public is on neutrality. We get these from users, and also our network of journalists. They feel a little hurt that we’re putting resources towards other’s work. But the last thing we want is for our journalists to feel “dissed.”

Handling comments….For an organization like Reuters, which is keen on neutrality, we have all sorts of problems with comments on blogs. We haven’t cracked the burden of moderation back to the audience. I naively thought, when I started editor’s started blogs, that when we were attacked, that our supporters would ride in and save us–and they did the first few times. But then, there turned to be some mob-rule and our cheerleaders sort of got scared away.

Finally, I really want to get the two sides–journalists and commenters–to enrich the discussion. But until we have a civil discourse, the journalists just aren’t going to engage.

www.blogs.reuters.com

Chris Tolles, CEO, Topix

The real promise of the internet is interactivity. A system that gets more people engaged (even if there are inappropriate comments), is better than a system than doesn’t get people engaged. We’re trying to get the highest number of people engaged. We have over 400,000 topics, all across the globe.

When the cartoons about the Prophet Mohamed appeared on the net, we got over 2,000 comments, when we geo-located where these comments were coming from, we found most of the comments were coming from Scandinavia and the Middle East. Over time, middle ground developed. “We look at it as, are we getting an increasing amount of people, and it’s a Darwinian product, and the one that has the most people wins”.

http://blog.topix.com

General Conversation

About journalists interacting with and within the comments:

“They’re highly skeptical about this. Getting bothered with questions from users, but they’re kinda intrigued by it. They see their job as to talk to policy makers and heads of companies.” -Mark Jones

“The San Francisco Chronicle, uses the public as a club to make a point and support what they’re saying–to use it against the people who are against them. …I think a year or two from now, I will bet you a lot of money, that journalists will take comments and publish them in their stories. ” -Chris Tolles

“At the Post, we have the need to be objective, and we’ve had a lot of our opinion writers who have gotten into the ring with our commenters. For one thing, they worry about this because they’re ‘working without a net.’ -Where they’re not editorialized.” -Hal Straus

Interaction from the audience (not all who participated, but the closest person to me that I could get info from):

Jean-Baptiste, with Le Liberation.fr, where there is a web-comment page within the hardcopy newspaper. These comments are edited and selected before being printed. http://liberation.fr/actualite/media/2293555.fr.php

Other sites mentioned as having interesting interactivity features:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/thebigblog/

PS Video of this event will be posted to this blog today, it was not available immediately.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two thirds of Americans – 67% – believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

Meanwhile, the online survey documented the shift away from traditional sources of news, such as newspapers and TV, to the Internet – most dramatically among so-called digital natives – people under 30 years old.

Nearly half of respondents (48%) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40% who said the same a year ago. Younger adults were most likely to name the Internet as their top source – 55% of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35% of those age 65 and older.

These oldest adults are the only age group to favor a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38% of these seniors who said they get most of their news from television. Overall, 29% said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11%) and newspapers (10%) for most of their news and information. Just 7% of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17%) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information.

Web sites are regarded as a more important source of news and information than traditional media outlets – 86% of Americans said Web sites were an important source of news, with more than half (56%) who view these sites as very important. Most also view television (77%), radio (74%), and newspapers (70%) as important sources of news, although fewer than say the same about blogs (38%).

The Zogby Interactive survey of 1,979 adults nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-21, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points. The survey results were announced at this week’s fourth-annual We Media Forum and Festival in Miami, hosted by the University of Miami School of Communication and organized and produced by iFOCOS, a Reston, Va.-based media think tank (www.ifocos.org). This is the second year of the survey.

“For the second year in a row we have documented a crisis in American journalism that is far more serious than the industry’s business challenges – or maybe a consequence of them,” said Andrew Nachison, co-founder of iFOCOS. “Americans recognize the value of journalism for their communities, and they are unsatisfied with what they see. While the U.S. news industry sheds expenses and frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present.

“Meanwhile, we see clearly the generational shift of digital natives from traditional to online news – so the challenge for traditional news companies is complex. They need to invest in new products and services – and they have. But they’ve also got to invest in quality, influence and impact. They need to invest in journalism that makes a difference in people’s lives. That’s a moral and leadership challenge – and a business opportunity for whoever can meet it.”

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.

Republicans (79%) and political independents (75%) are most likely to feel disenchanted with conventional journalism, but the online survey found 50% of Democrats also expressed similar concerns. Those who identify themselves as “very conservative” were among the most dissatisfied, with 89% who view traditional journalism as out of touch.

Further Details: Zogby Methodological statement

Go here for details on how to apply: www.newschallenge.org.

Technorati Tags: journalism, philanthropy, investment, socialentrepreneurs

Across campus, freshman Bryce Carter was hiding in his dorm room. When word reached him that fellow students had been shot, he went online. After assuring friends that he was alive, he wrote these works on Bryce’s Journal, his blog: “My friends could be dead.”

Over at the business school, computer science-business technology major Kevin Cupp was locked down, distanced from the computer servers he manages as webmaster of Planet Blacksburg. So he sent an instant message on his cell phone to Twitter, the new digital network where people describe what they are doing at the moment. His first of many posts that day: “Trapped inside of Pamplin, shooter on campus, they won’t let us leave.

What we experienced about the horrific events on a black day in Blacksburg owes to a savvy, social generation connected emotionally and technologically to its media. Their eyewitness descriptions, photos, video and reporting from a remote, rural Virignia town – one of the world’s first connected communities — made a story visceral to the world.

The ability to instantly capture and disseminate information at a time when it was most needed, as well as to communicate with each other across time and geography, has not only helped unite a community but has become a real-time example of how personal media empowers and defines communication in today’s connected society.

Watching events unfold, the shift in the power of media was perceptible. Traditional broadcasters and publishers competently covered the tragic events in Blacksburg. But the story belongs to Virginia Tech students. They were at once reporters, witnesses and subjects of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history. It was like watching a new kind of reality show where the stars used their devices, their social networks, and their wits to survive and to cope.

News organizations responded by plundering material posted on the web and pumping their own content into the online ether. The Internet encouraged a collective expression of emotion that was faithfully reported by traditional media outlets. As if the world outside newsrooms didn’t already know, CBS News ran this story a day after the shootings: Students turn to web in time of tragedy. The Los Angeles Times went with: Students Trace a Tragedy Online.

So, too, did adults. While social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space became an integral part of the story, millions turned to the sites produced by mainstream news outlets for the latest from Blacksburg. But the Internet had done more than create a distribution center for news and information; it became a place for news to happen. An online community emerged around the story. The immediacy of the medium helped to relay both the scope of news as well as the full emotion of the event. Once again, citizen journalists armed with mobile phones supplied invaluable material, including pictures and video footage of the shootings, to established news organizations.

Newspapers lost more hallowed ground in the media war for immediate attention and influence. An editor for The Washington Post lamented the “dead-tree” limitations of covering a breaking story that made newspaper editions the harbingers of yesterday’s news tomorrow. A day late and many breaking developments short, the mighty Post was relegated to this headline on Tuesday, April 17, a full day after the shootings: “Gunman Kills 32 at Virginia Tech In Deadliest Shooting in U.S. History.”

There can be no denying now that We Media – the ecosystem in which everyone is media – is the dominant force of communication in our culture. The digital network has changed the way we create, access and distribute news and information.

Virginia Tech’s students shined even as it they were portrayed as victims. One articulate student-witness set the record straight while being interviewed by a testy CNN reporter. “Don’t you get it?” he asked the reporter. “Its our story, not yours.”

As the student went off to awaiting cameras for a series of interviews and special reports with the other television networks, a CNN producer channeled the network’s coverage to a report on counseling services on campus.

The TV moment recalled the recent complaint by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams that the had spent a career as a journalist only to compete now with “some guy named Vinny.”

But it was not Vinny with whom Williams had to compete in Blacksburg. It was Jamal, Bryce and Kevin. They are, for the moment, the celebrated journalists of their generation, embedded correspondents reporting from a war zone with all the courage and authenticity that radio reporter Edward R. Murrow famously exhibited covering the bombing of London during World War II.

Undeniably less sophisticated than Morrow’s reporting, their citizen journalism is shown, replayed, recast, remixed and referenced over-and-over again on the Internet as well as on traditional newscasts. The unfettered, unfiltered coverage of the shootings is accepted for what it is, unapologetic for its lack of cohesiveness or for its personal perspective. The audience understands the story is personal and incomplete, a work in progress that continues long after the network camera crews and out-of-town reporters leave Blacksburg. Suddenly, the Internet looks less like a threat to ‘old media’, and more like a resource it can easily exploit.

The We Media Generation now looks to pick up the pieces, to remember their friends, their community, and to share their stories of survival with the rest of the world. It is the informing story of their lives. No wonder they asked NBC and the outside media to leave for violating their fragile community by repeatedly overplaying, then replaying over and over, the grotesque rants of a killer, once a disturbed fellow student.

The story of a generation turned quickly to coping with unimaginable tragedy, a cruel and unforeseen twist for college students living in the sanctuary of a college campus. Amid tragedy there was pathos and authenticity in the way they mourned, grieved and supported one another through public acts of catharsis.

At the Tuesday night vigil for their slain comrades Virginia Tech students lit “The Drill” with candles and the glow of screens on their cell phones. Virtual vigils emerged across the web. Happy Slip, a vlogger in New York City, posted a photo sent via a cell phone from the vigil. These words accompanied the photo: “Know that a community here in New York was on their knees praying for you tonight.” Thousands of bloggers shared similar sentiments. Technorati, a web site that indexes blogs, tracked nearly 30,000 posts about Virginia Tech the following day.

As expressions of sorrow and support, memorials proliferated on the web. West Virginia Blogger collected links to the personal web sites of victims, many on My Space or Facebook, as a way of paying tribute. “It’s one thing to hear a list of names on TV, or read them online,” she wrote, “but if you take a second to view a bit of the person’s personal life it will give you a deeper understanding of that person.”

Forums were established on sites such as VTtragedy.com and VTincident.com for students to express their condolences and grief. The creators of OneDayBlogSilence.com proposed a day of silence in the blogosphere to pay tribute to the victims. Citizens of the virtual world Second Life established a memorial for visitors to leave virtual notes and flowers.

The big news organizations did their best to compete with the raw elegance of user-generated tributes, but their stories seemed trite amid the outpouring of personal expression.

As the world tries to understand what happened in Blacksburg, the conversation should once and for all dispel the “derivative myth” spun by newspapers and news broadcasters. The myth holds that most news of value is created and owned by the newspapers who publish it or by the broadcasters who air it. While there is no denying that news organizations may add value to news by employing large numbers of specialists to gather, create, edit, produce and distribute it, the notion that they either “own’ the news or that they are the original source for it becomes irrelevant, if not absurd, when everyone is media.

Today’s news tumbles through a connected society, spiraling through media, changing as it goes, an organic story with no beginning, middle or end. What seems chaotic is actually a story arc that assumes clarity, context and meaning as it unfolds through a proliferation of sources, many accessible to anyone. The days of once-a-day publishing cycles and scheduled news broadcasts are mere supplements to a continuous stream of news and information available any time through a variety of sources and ubiquitous devices.

With their cell phones, networks and knowledge of place, Virginia Tech students were better prepared to report the events overtaking them than the swarm of professional reporters who descended upon Blacksburg following the shootings. On camera the students appeared more composed, informed and sure-footed than the confused reporters from the big cities.

Community – a word that is now used to describe the digital connections among people, as well as the social and emotional ones – was the word heard time-and-time again from Blacksburg. Extended by personal media, the Blacksburg community quickly expanded to include students on campuses everywhere, as well as a diverse, caring generation connected to each other through digital media.

“Today we are all Hokies,” student leaders proclaimed when asked by reporters how the tragic events would impact Virginia Tech. In a show of support, fellow students at universities across the U.S. created video tributes and memorials on You Tube, some remixing an audio track of Avril Lavigne’s “Keep Holding On” with slideshows of photos grabbed from Flickr. Many of the videos ended with a slide displaying the logo of their universities next to the words “today we are all Hokies.”

Powerful forces were in play in Blacksburg that week. One was the invisible infrastructure of digital networks, wired and wireless, connecting a geographically isolated community to itself and to the world. Another was the connected culture of young adults, savvy content creators and communicators who instinctively use social media as integral parts of their life. When shots rang out, the story unfolded through their devices and their networks.

A new generation of media experts provided an indelible record of what happened on a terrible day in Blacksburg. They have created a lasting tribute to and by its community. The way we are informed will never be the same.

Christine Gambito’s Happy Slip introduced us not only to her work as a performer and actress, but also to the community and lifestyle where she lives. I was definitely drawn to the series of situations she played out in her piece as well as the different ways they were portrayed. Whether she was in the rain even indoors or outside with friends and family, she was consistently engaging. We could have seen just one situation she had conceived, but instead saw a series of portraits similar to what you would expect from a one woman show. When she spoke at the end about some of her goals, it was clear the video represented just the beginning of a process that she would take with her as she moved forward.

JD Lasica took us to yet another space with his work by showing us how much could be done with existing media. Instead of always accepting what traditional media presents as the sole representation of an event or idea, JD’s piece exemplified how media mashups are already reflecting community ideas on the most serious topics. As more and more people use the Daily Show as their source of news, and embrace more comedic interpretations of world issues, the new media community needs to understand the use of the mashups and the influence they have in this participatory media as it evolves.
Finally, there were the students. Whenever we seek to know what the future may hold, we must always look at what inspires a student to create. This group from Miami University was clearly inspired by viewing a story from different backgrounds and embracing the humor that can make the even the most uneasy stories palatable. In the “Minority Hotel” two people were presented with implied stereotypes. The essence of the story begins to reveal the reality. The way they shot, organized, and structured made the piece compelling and kept me wanting to know how it would end. They only had a moment to convey their idea and make me want to follow up for more. The piece was strong enough that I will be looking for their next webisode. Curious what other identity realities and/or misconceptions they may explore.

In the end, the festival definitely reflected the most contemporary ideas being developed for new media environments today. Storytelling today through digital media on various platforms is in a similar space today as film was before Birth of a Nation. It takes one piece to tell the story and create the structure that will lead the rest of the community to longevity. I ended the video festival with more questions, ideas, and a greater understanding of the options. In the end I was humming the same tune presented by one of the pieces “We’re All in this Together” and contemplating what the next image would be.

Andy’s story:  as a kid, he was taught to read and respect what he read in newspapers, but also to question what he read–to try to find out more about an issue or story.

My story:  when I was 7, my Dad (a WWII vet–with a third-grade education–)taught me to read a newspaper.  He also taught me to take in tv news broadcasts, and to listen to the different interpretations of the different broadcasters.  He believed that an informed opinion on issues could only come from following different reports and perspectives. 

Andy and I thought that perhaps the best media literacy education actually begins in the home.  Media habits, like many other habits, might come from our parents.  It’s the way both Andy and I were taught as children to consume media with the intention to understand, not re-enforce a preconceived notion–that has made us savvy media participants, not passive media consumers.  Inquisitive minds, a passion for perspective and and a desire to participate in what we had been engaged with since childhood is what motivated us to become a part of media culture–writing and communicating with others through our blogs–not stand apart from it.

Robin Miller also talked a bit about it in this post on this blog.

So, Andy and I thought it would be nice to know stories of others who’ve taken up blogging (or working in media)–how did you learn about media?  Did you get your lessons from family, friends, or someone else? Share your experience with us. . .that’s what the comments are for!

In the past four days alone, Global Voices’ authors and editors have posted detailed reports on the conversations taking place in the blogospheres of Kuwait, Sudan, Bolivia, Libya, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Mexico, Molodova, China, and various part of South Asia, in addition to the numerous short items posted daily by our regional editors highlighting individual items of interest. As I write, for instance, an article arrives reporting on the suing of a blogger by the Bahraini government, followed by one from Turkey and another on press freedom in the Maldives. This material — which is Creative Commons-licensed — is linked to and used daily by journalists, bloggers and others, and is made available through a variety of customisable RSS and JSS feeds.

Last year Global Voices enhanced its multimedia offerings, with the addition of a branded compilation podcast and the launch of the Witness Human Rights Video Hub pilot program, a collaboration with Witness that resulted in a human rights video editor being added to the team. And an even newer version of Global Voices is rapidly taking shape.

Thanks to a grant received late last year, we’re on the verge of hiring an Advocacy Director who will coordinate Global Voices’ efforts in supporting online freedom of expression; and we’ll soon be looking for an Outreach Director to spearhead our efforts at putting the tools and skills required to create citizen media within the reach of more people around the world.

Another exciting project in the works is Lingua, which seeks to address a deficiency of the project of which we’re only too aware: the fact that the majority of the material on the website is in English. Inspired by the work of the team of volunteers who have been translating Global Voices into Chinese since June 2006, Lingua grew out of discussions that took place among francophone bloggers this past December at the Global Voices annual summit in Delhi, India. Lingua will comprise a series of foreign language pages where Global Voices material will be made available in translation. A key aspect of these pages will be a set of tools designed to connect and build the foreign language communities within Global Voices.

Lingua is one of several Global Voices projects we plan on discussing at the Global Voices breakout session, which will take place on Thursday 8 February at 5pm. Other areas we’re seeking to develop include more organised curation of citizen-created video; expanded photo coverage and the repackaging of some of the tools we’ve created for our own use.

In our open discussion on Thursday at 12.30pm at the WeMedia conference in Miami we hope to engage the community sitting in the audience in a discussion of the different ways of working with communities – without alienating them!

Who are we? I’m Nic Fulton, Chief Scientist for Reuters Media, and a self-styled black sheep who walks that thin line between radical innovation and being fired. I’ll be joined by Mark Jones, Reuters Community Editor whose task it is to make Reuters news a interactive community experience. And finally we’ll have Adam Pasick on the phone, who in Second Life is Reuters bureau chief “Adam Reuters”. Hopefully Adam will also be with us virtually if all network connectivity behaves.

What do we want from you? Questions, anecdotes, experiences and more. Who are the 1% who comment on blogs? Who are the residents of Second Life? What should the byline of a story about Second Life be?

Come along and participate – and of course feel free to post issues you’d like to discuss via the comments below.

An article in the Archives of General Psychiatry says that lonely individuals may be twice as likely to develop the type of dementia linked to Alzheimer’s disease in late life as those who are not lonely. This is disturbing when you also realize that Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, according to an article in the Washington Post.

A sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States. A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

Internet to the rescue: Online communities are in some ways helping to fill this lack of North American social networks. This growth of community can be seen in online gaming, in online media, in online dating and other emerging online communities. Certainly, communities online have been around since the days of dialup BBSes, but their accessibility and ubiquity continue to grow.

However, there will always be a need for local, physical community, which needs to be interwoven with the online.

“That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car,” said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. “There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants.”

Rhizome was founded in 1996 as an email list for some of the first artists experimenting with art online. Since that time it has grown into a dynamic non-profit organization that serves diverse individuals and communities, yet the spirit of internationalism and exchange remains at its heart. Now, Rhizome serves artists through a commissions program, exhibitions and editorial coverage. We also maintain our community discussion platforms, and archives which hold digital art and new media art-related commentary produced over the past yen years.

Currently, we are interested in enhancing and developing online spaces for collaboration, in order to maintain our vitality as a platform for emerging artists as we move into our second decade. These include tagging of our archives and simple comments on our reBlog amongst other possibilities all geared towards collaboration and discussion. For me, We Media seems like a great opportunity to connect with leaders in technology and non-arts fields, people whose work, undoubtedly, informs my own practice. Discussions related to digital tools and communities are of the utmost importance to me and the substance of my everyday labor. I believe I will have quite a bit to contribute to conversation, and know I will take ideas back with me that will fuel my own work.

Lauren Cornell
Executive Director
Rhizome.org

A community on the Internet is likewise a group of people with something in common, getting together or collaborating in a particular area of cyberspace.

Lately, this definition is even expanding. It is because an Internet community takes on a new life of its own; it almost shares the personalities of the members. Therefore, a “community” in a connected world, means an assemblage of persons who share a common stage (cyberspace) and are willing to share ideas, no matter how divergent or not their ideas may be.

I have always held the opinion that the convergence of all the media forms on the Internet will happen faster than anticipated. There is even a prediction that the last newspaper will be produced in April 2040. This may be true because many newspapers today have their online versions, which can be accessed either by paying to read them online or they are totally free. Radio stations are all thinking of or are already streaming live on the Internet (webcasting/netcasting). On a continent like the one I come from (Africa), I observe with pleasure the webcast craze among radio stations. Television stations are also not left out in the convergence equation. They are also streaming and it’s too obvious to talk about photojournalism and its presence on the Net. In my view, connecting digital services to physical communities has become a must. This convergence that will lead ultimately to real physical “community” is, however, fraught with difficulties. In Africa, the convergence is plagued with bandwidth limitations, lack of modern computers, lack of technical expertise to handle what’s available, etc.

For this community to be achieved, training is needed for media handlers to understand their unique role in ensuring a smooth and cost-effective transition. Websites must be professionally produced and managed. Interactivity must be a key feature on websites. I hope to learn more about website management, online content handling, keeping up to date with new technology and ultimately build bridges (contacts) for my professional career and that of my organization.

Isaac A. TETTEH
Web Master/News Editor/PR
Radio Gold 90.5 Fm Accra, Ghana.
(www.ghananie.blogspot.com)
(www.myradiogoldlive.com)
(www.njoyonline.com)

First Life is a 3D analog world where server lag does not exist. Find Out Where You Actually Live! Go Outside!  Membership is Free!

What’s especially notable, other than the dead-on humor, is that Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, responded with a direct anti-”seize-and-desist” letter. It’s nice to see a company that allows, even encourages, parody and derivative creativity — though given Second Life’s ethos, I’d have been surprised by any other response.

The most critical aspect of projects of using ICT to construct community is to understand what forms technology activists will find inviting and how they are likely to use this technology. I have worked most extensively with projects related to Iraq (including a three-week, in-country contract in summer 2004) where there is limited experience with using newer forms of technology. What we quickly discovered was that having access to email did not entail understanding that rapid response should be the norm, or that people would feel uncomfortable about speaking to counterparts in partner organizations without clearing every conversation with their superiors. Introducing new technology in and of itself rarely worked – although giving Iraqi University leaders access to webcams in 2003 did remarkably increase their willingness to communicate. What one needs to do is to map the technical network that one is seeking to build onto the social network of existing personal relations and activities. Our organization has found that universities in contexts such as East Timor and Iraq are the best places to start – since they are most likely to have the infrastructure and the experience – and then to build out to community groups from there. If you can establish a foothold in a university, it is then much more likely that you will be effective in building a community technology center.

I am look forward to better understanding how to construct and maintain long-term, long-distance relationships. I am particularly interested in learning more about how groups have used socially collaborative software such as wikis, blogs and collaborative bookmarking, as well as about experiences with Drupal technology to build community and mobilize folks to act. I am also curious to see how groups are using the newer forms of Web 2.0 technology. I am hoping to get both ideas that I might practically implement and those that I might use to enrich my teaching.

Ted Perlmutter, Ph.D.
Director of Information Technology and Knowledge Management
Center for International Conflict Resolution, Columbia University
Visiting Professor, Department of Sociology, College of William and Mary

 . . .You might have heard of a few of those speaking:

• Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr, USA
• William H. Gates III, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, USA
• Chad Hurley, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, YouTube, USA
• Mark G. Parker, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nike, USA
• Viviane Reding, Commissioner, Information Society and Media, European Commission, Brussels
• Dennis Kneale, Managing Editor, Forbes Magazine, USA

Here’s the description from the WEF site.

The rapid rise of online social networks is both a social and business phenomenon, the impact of which is only beginning to be understood. The consumer-powered Web 2.0 creates innovative ways for businesses to operate and people to communicate.

1. What is driving the emergence of virtual communities? Is the rapid rise in their valuations justified?
2. How are companies beginning to use social networking strategies for product and market development, as well as for communication?

“There is a broad trend for people to share their lives with as wide an audience as possible”, Chad Hurley, Co-Founder of YouTube, said. Using his own company as an example, Hurley added that, “since we are now the largest audience, even more people are choosing to share their experiences on our site.”

The panelists also discussed the new and different ways to measure online success. “Page views are becoming less relevant. What’s taking their place is the number of connections that are made on your site,” said Caterina Fake, Founder, Flickr, USA.

It’s in Real Media or Windows format. Sadly, you can’t download it and watch it on your iPod. That would REALLY be Web 2.0.

I like Steve’s visions of the evolution of media, I like that he still sees newspapers as the anchors of community and journalism. I’m still a big fan of newspapers, despite the industries overall disdain for most of the new media technologies to have come along so far. The only thing I find disappointing about his visions, is that there are so few sites that are implementing the strategies he often gets asked to talk about. Which is why I guess he wins the “Innovator” award and not the “Common Sense That Everyone’s Already Doing” award.

If you’d like to see what sort of community site a newspaper can become, visit BluffingtonToday.com, which now has regular readership levels higher than 60 percent in affluent Bluffton, S.C., and penetration as high as 90 percent when occasional readers are measured, according to Yelvington.

This new digital revolution has brought even more benefits to already existing communities, which have found new means of recruiting new members and establishing links with other communities. One cannot afford to remain passive anymore; one has to be actively on the lookout for partners, colleagues, etc. I think that the emergence of social bookmarking, for example, has greatly enhanced the intellectual lives of many users, who are now trusting each other’s surfing and browsing choices. Furthermore, I have a lot of examples from my current job, where blogging and podcasting creates a huge difference in the work of the real communities.

Thus, a Transitions Online blogging project that started in Belarus allowed us to work closer with political and human rights activists, who with the help of blogging managed to raise awareness of their activities among their constituents. A similar blogging project affiliated with Transitions Online in Uzbekistan gave voice to activists concerned with women’s issues, who with the help of blogging managed to start a nationwide public debate about gender discrimination in the country. If not for the Internet, this community would have remained silent and certainly unable to speak with a loud, national voice. Raising awareness of certain marginalized communities—like the Roma in Europe—is another priority for us. Having the real Roma blog about the issues they confront in their daily lives offers the world a chance to feel the suffering of this community firsthand. It would be hard to recreate the same depth with writing an article or shooting a documentary.

In my work with Transitions Online, I’m trying to build from scratch, with the help of blogging and podcasting, new online communities around specific issues or countries. At the moment, we are also trying to launch user-driven social content websites, which would extensively rely on online communities to rank the content. For this reason, exchanging know-how with other professionals from this field at the We Media 2007 conference would be extremely important for me.

Evgeny Morozov
Director for New Media, Transitions Online (www.tol.cz)
Belarus and the Czech Republic

As a member, I believe Nosamo, an Internet-based fan club for the current South Korea president, which created a revolutionary political movement, is a perfect example of a community in the connected world. In the year 2002, the members of Nosamo shared their dreams through vivid discussion on the Internet and mobilized people using SMS services.

I think current media services in the connected world are not successful enough to enhance real, physical communities. For example, consider the November 7 election. Did the media services deliver policy information or report on the Foley scandal while considering the social conditions of voter communities? Were people in similar conditions able to communicate and create proper reactions? In this example, technologies could be used to identify and connect people who could potentially communicate. Advanced blog-search engines and collaborative bookmarking services could find people with common interests. Moreover, social network information could be extracted through web-link analysis and used to connect people.

After connecting people, certain services may automatically generate and deliver customized policy contents for connected people. Through analyzing the policy contents using text or multimedia analysis techniques, related communities may be inferred. The contents can be published to the members of community through feed subscription services.

Supporting the members of a community to generate and reproduce content will be another important usage of the technologies. By observing the democratic and social nature of the connected world, I envision content created in a much more collaborative manner. Consequently, tools and platforms that support such activities will proliferate.

I hope the conference will be a place where I can share my ideas with people. There are not many opportunities in Korea to learn from so many people of different backgrounds in the area of media. Currently, I’m conducting research aimed at developing an advanced media service architecture and technologies that make the best use of the features of the Internet. As a first step, I’ve made an Internet news service called PolyNews, which can overcome the effect of media bias, a chronic limitation of existing media services. I’m hungry for feedback and comments. Furthermore, I hope to meet like-minded people with whom I can collaborate in my future research.

Souneil Park

M.S student in Network Computing Laboratory

Devision of Computer Science, Department of EECS

KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Republic of Korea