Editorial

There’s been a lot of talk of late, both here and in much larger discussion circles, about how the erosion of urban centers has permanently changed entire industries.  The sacrifice of the corner market at the alter of supermarkets is a frequently cited example.  Simultaneously, there’s also been a sickening amount of narcissistic talk about the demise of hometown newspapers.

Yet rarely do these two concurrent discussions overlap.

To my knowledge, urban planners and journalists don’t spend much time tracing the connections between the city one builds and the city the other covers.  Yet it’s no secret that a city’s layout can have important implications on its methods of communication, so it stands to reason that newspapers may also have been affected by their urban environments.

Read the rest of this entry »

The battlelines between journalists and bloggers have long been drawn with all the old, familiar criticisms.

Journalists pshaw bloggers lack of journalistic cred, while bloggers scoff at journalists meager understanding of the online medium and all that it offers.  This furious “why I’m important and you’re not” argument is indicative of any medium in transition.   Its a fight for professional survival.

But in my opinion, there’s a much more interesting conflict out there that isn’t getting nearly enough attention.

Newspapers have long gnashed their teeth regarding the frequent blogger action of using “fair use excerpts” from their articles in postings.  At their best, these excerpts give bloggers a jumping off point where they take a recent topic discussed in a paper and use it to steer the conversation in another direction, providing a different and often more critical point of view.  At their worst, “fair use” is interpreted too liberally, resulting in excerpts that are anything but, leaving the blog reader with little reason to click-over to the actual article.

This issue has long put thoughtful bloggers on the defensive, with each having to personally reconcile this reliance on a disapproving host.   My own solution includes cutting out most “fair use excerpts” from my posts and instead I provide general summaries in my own words.   Its not a perfect, guilt-free methodology.  I acknowledge that if I “over-summarize”, I pose the same risk as the liberal “excerpter” and veer into those dangerous waters where the click-over becomes unnecessary.

But it is on this point that I wish to turn the tables on newspapers and provide a long overdue counterpoint to the “fair use” rage. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been a lot of discussion flying around the internet as of late about the future of newspapers, thanks in large part to a Time cover story by Walter Issacson that suggests a micro-payment system for papers, similar to that of iTunes. (Jon Stewart built off of Issacson’s idea and suggested making newspaper ink a narcotic)

In this morning’s NY Times, Eduardo Porter weighs in on the issue, restating many of the comments we heard about the necessity of newspapers (many of which I agree with) and makes this statement…

Some alternatives, like Politico.com and ProPublica, an investigative reporting outfit financed by philanthropy, do original journalism. But they are tiny. Cash-strapped TV stations depend on newspapers for much of their local news coverage. Cable news is increasingly commentary. And rather than a citizen reporter, the Internet has given us the citizen pundit, who comments on: newspaper articles.

Its the last sentence that caught my eye. There is a good deal of truth to this sweeping generality. Sitting at your PC and making damning statements about things read in newspapers is certainly the weapon-of-choice of most political/newsy blogs. From personal experience, let me just say that it certainly provides the most bang for the buck. Lord how we ratchet up the hits when we make outrageous comments and inspire all kinds of outrage! All without doing anything more than taking a minute (ok, 30 seconds) to reflect.

But there are some local blogs, like those here in Decatur and John Heneghan’s Dunwoody blog, that do not fit Porter’s model. These blogs often try to go beyond this basic comment philosophy, filling a gap where newspapers have certainly let us down (local news). We do the other stuff too, but we mixed it up. And I wonder, is this all that rare? Like what the $2,650 pint says about our willingness to help each other out, which seems to inspire awe in all parts of the world, does something we take for granted here in Decatur not exist elsewhere? Or perhaps Porter is just a victim of his own filters, since he lives in a major city that still has major newspapers. Why would he ever go beyond the NYC and D.C. blog critics that comment on his beat? Why would he ever click on a link that covers some random town in suburban Atlanta or central Indiana?

I though I’ve yet to personally find all that many examples of similar local blogs, I cannot believe they are all that rare. Though there are few other local blogs that fit this description around Atlanta, I must believe that there are other others out there that do their own reporting (when time permits). I wouldn’t be surprised if they tended to be in strong-community towns/cities like Decatur, where a blog or online news source is merely an extension of a larger feeling of connectedness. Perhaps someone could write a thesis on how the lack of local blogs is due to the lack of community in smaller cities and towns thanks to the makeup and design of the physical environment: like sprawl.

But I digress…too much self-reflection lately! Gotta stop wasting time on digressing and do some more actual reporting!