The Future Of News In Clinton?
Both on the blog and in my professional life I talk a lot about how technology doesn't just allow us to make huge transformations in our economic and social circumstances, technology demands those changes. The modalities of these changes center around a few central theories and movements:
Each of these ideas on their own are subjects worthy of books and journal articles. And they exist. Next to each is a link providing a Wikipedia entry as a place to begin. I'll continue to write and speak on them. But I think it is time for action.
One of the hallmarks of 21st Century Technoculture should be strong, participatory communities not only at the global and/or special-interest level, e.g. MySpace and say, model railroaders, but at the local level as well. After all, what good does it do one to have rich, interactive, global, technologically-mediated experiences and relationships if one’s meatspace existence -- the place of living and breathing -- are devoid of any cohesion, organization or community spirit? Better to bring to bear the tools of the global macro- technoculture to bear on the needs of the microculture of Clinton, Iowa.
Now, Clinton has at least two or three pretty active discussion forums. One is hosted by The Clinton Herald and the other by a private person at www.clintoniowa.com. These forums allow for all sorts of discussion on local topics and sometimes even expand on and add to news stores and allow people to build on shared experience. But one of the drawbacks of bulletin boards is that they often descend into bickering and name-calling.
The bulletin boards could be home to original reporting but by their very technological structure they lack cooperative editing tools and a friendly display format for articles.
The local newspaper, The Clinton Herald, as are all newspapers today, a holdout of a previous technoculture. The idea of a news organization that painstakingly crafts its stories once per day and then manufactures and distributes them on dead trees, frozen in that printed form until the paper molders is totally inappropriate on many levels for the 21st Century.
News is slippery stuff. The idea of a news story, frozen for all time on ink on paper is a product of the 18th Century manufacturing processes that brought us the newspaper in the first place. News stories insist by their very nature that they be annotated, corrected, added on to, and collaboratively assembled.
So, in the spirit of brining 21st Century technoculture to bear on the needs of Clinton, Iowa I propose the following little experiment, an open-source news portal for Clinton powered by Wikinews. Behold the Clinton Wikinews Portal!
Okay, it’s not much. But that’s where you come in. For everyone who has ever bitched about the local news coverage in insert name of media organization here, now is your chance. Know the whole sordid back-story of whatever is going on at the Humane Society? Want more meat on City Council goings on? Need an excuse to go to all Clinton High School basketball games?
Then go forth and report. Gather some facts. Facts, for certain of my bulletin board friends, are provable assertions backed up by more than one source and documentable. See the Wikinews article on Writing An Article. Talk to some people, write a story, check your spelling and grammar and post it.
Only have a few facts to contribute? Post a story in development and let other people put meat on the bones of your story. Find a factual error in a story, correct it yourself.
All of this and more is possible through the technology of the Wiki, the software platform running behind Wikipedia. It is a signature of our early 21st Century technoculture; open-source, transparent, shapeable by the masses.
This is an experiment. Is there enough interest and ability for people to report and analyze the goings on in a town of 27,000? Can it be done in such a way to provide additional information and quality that is not available from the local newspaper? Theoretically, because of space and financial constraints the Clinton Herald will never be able to have the breadth and depth of an active user-generated news site. But the question is, can people be motivated to create their own local news in a town the size of Clinton?
That’s what I aim to find out. I think this project is the perfect vehicle for journalism students and teachers at all levels. No longer chained to budgets for ink and paper, budding young muckrakers are free to go forth to write and report and practice their craft. In the coming weeks, I’ll be reaching out to those of you in the business of teaching writing and journalism. If anyone is going to fully embrace this tool from the get-go it will need to be young aspiring writers.
Later in the week, I will post some links on tips for getting started with Wiki news. It is pretty straightforward and there is a minimum of coding needed in order to post stories. Many of the functions can be accomplished with the press of a button in the editing window.
In the meantime, anyone who is interested in contributing and helping with this project should feel free to contact me at cman@cman.cx
Until then, I’ll close this last post of 2006 with Hunter S. Thompson’s famous tag line: Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.
Happy New Year.
Each of these ideas on their own are subjects worthy of books and journal articles. And they exist. Next to each is a link providing a Wikipedia entry as a place to begin. I'll continue to write and speak on them. But I think it is time for action.
One of the hallmarks of 21st Century Technoculture should be strong, participatory communities not only at the global and/or special-interest level, e.g. MySpace and say, model railroaders, but at the local level as well. After all, what good does it do one to have rich, interactive, global, technologically-mediated experiences and relationships if one’s meatspace existence -- the place of living and breathing -- are devoid of any cohesion, organization or community spirit? Better to bring to bear the tools of the global macro- technoculture to bear on the needs of the microculture of Clinton, Iowa.
Now, Clinton has at least two or three pretty active discussion forums. One is hosted by The Clinton Herald and the other by a private person at www.clintoniowa.com. These forums allow for all sorts of discussion on local topics and sometimes even expand on and add to news stores and allow people to build on shared experience. But one of the drawbacks of bulletin boards is that they often descend into bickering and name-calling.
The bulletin boards could be home to original reporting but by their very technological structure they lack cooperative editing tools and a friendly display format for articles.
The local newspaper, The Clinton Herald, as are all newspapers today, a holdout of a previous technoculture. The idea of a news organization that painstakingly crafts its stories once per day and then manufactures and distributes them on dead trees, frozen in that printed form until the paper molders is totally inappropriate on many levels for the 21st Century.
News is slippery stuff. The idea of a news story, frozen for all time on ink on paper is a product of the 18th Century manufacturing processes that brought us the newspaper in the first place. News stories insist by their very nature that they be annotated, corrected, added on to, and collaboratively assembled.
So, in the spirit of brining 21st Century technoculture to bear on the needs of Clinton, Iowa I propose the following little experiment, an open-source news portal for Clinton powered by Wikinews. Behold the Clinton Wikinews Portal!
Okay, it’s not much. But that’s where you come in. For everyone who has ever bitched about the local news coverage in insert name of media organization here, now is your chance. Know the whole sordid back-story of whatever is going on at the Humane Society? Want more meat on City Council goings on? Need an excuse to go to all Clinton High School basketball games?
Then go forth and report. Gather some facts. Facts, for certain of my bulletin board friends, are provable assertions backed up by more than one source and documentable. See the Wikinews article on Writing An Article. Talk to some people, write a story, check your spelling and grammar and post it.
Only have a few facts to contribute? Post a story in development and let other people put meat on the bones of your story. Find a factual error in a story, correct it yourself.
All of this and more is possible through the technology of the Wiki, the software platform running behind Wikipedia. It is a signature of our early 21st Century technoculture; open-source, transparent, shapeable by the masses.
This is an experiment. Is there enough interest and ability for people to report and analyze the goings on in a town of 27,000? Can it be done in such a way to provide additional information and quality that is not available from the local newspaper? Theoretically, because of space and financial constraints the Clinton Herald will never be able to have the breadth and depth of an active user-generated news site. But the question is, can people be motivated to create their own local news in a town the size of Clinton?
That’s what I aim to find out. I think this project is the perfect vehicle for journalism students and teachers at all levels. No longer chained to budgets for ink and paper, budding young muckrakers are free to go forth to write and report and practice their craft. In the coming weeks, I’ll be reaching out to those of you in the business of teaching writing and journalism. If anyone is going to fully embrace this tool from the get-go it will need to be young aspiring writers.
Later in the week, I will post some links on tips for getting started with Wiki news. It is pretty straightforward and there is a minimum of coding needed in order to post stories. Many of the functions can be accomplished with the press of a button in the editing window.
In the meantime, anyone who is interested in contributing and helping with this project should feel free to contact me at cman@cman.cx
Until then, I’ll close this last post of 2006 with Hunter S. Thompson’s famous tag line: Res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.
Happy New Year.
Labels: Clinton, Media, Technology, Transparency
posted by -cman- at 12/31/2006 05:54:00 PM
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