Open Media Boston Blog

I May Have Walked Into The Light

2011-12-09T08:50:00.002-05:00

Regrettably, I couldn't make it down to Dewey Square in Boston Thursday night to experience Mayor Tom Menino's midnight deadline in person.

But while working overnight on deadline for an unrelated project, something happened.

I drank the social networking Kool-Aid.

The Occupy Boston's Media Team and their live web-streaming of first the suspenseful General Assembly and then the tension leading up to the deadline followed by the palpable relief (and skepticism of some) felt by the throng when Police Superintendent William Evans announced there would be no raid held me transfixed for more than six hours.

That's more time than I've spent on Myspace and Facebook, in total, since 2004.

Kudos especially to Occupy Boston's Phil Anderson who demonstrated the technique and professionalism and personality of a seasoned journalistic observer.

As my friends and colleagues will inform you, I've never bought the idea that technological innovation trumps good writing and effective storytelling. But the coupling of Thursday night's emotional anticipation and digital capability made me re-evaluate my skeptical attitude towards social media tools.

To convey meaning and pull off anything approaching profundity you still need a compelling storyline - a thousand people standing up to prove that "freedom of assembly" is more than just three words on a dusty old scroll, for example - and a knack for being in the right location at the right time.

But the immediacy and impact of digitally delivered and archived multimedia and the ability for many to connect with many, second by second, is one genie that isn't going back into the bottle.

For those of you who have heard me rail against the notion of technology as savior however, don't get your hopes up too high. Once this caffeine induced intoxication wears off I may revert to my curmudgeonly and analog ways.

And I'm still not signing up for Twitter.

OMB Added to CJR's News Frontier Database - and Alltop.com

2011-09-21T01:40:00.001-04:00

I know we haven't used this blog overmuch. Busy, busy, busy as ever with producing Open Media Boston - and working on related projects like our upcoming Social Movements/Digital Revolutions Conference. But we like to share cool news; so here's a couple of neat updates.

First, we've just been added to the Columbia Journalism Review's News Frontier Database - which is kind of a big deal. Check out the nice entry they wrote on OMB.

Second, we also just go added to the Boston page of noted news aggregator Alltop.com. They're an aboveboard outfit - founded by former Apple "Chief Evangelist" Guy Kawasaki and friends - and they do a nice job of creating curated subject pages with info from trusted sources without ripping off source sites like ours (that last somewhat of a rarity these days). So we're now listed with all the mainstream Boston news media and a number of Boston area online community news outlets and blogs. Which is also a good thing and should bring OMB some always welcome extra traffic.

So as we work our way up the media totem pole this seems a fine time to remind our viewers that we're always looking for more talented journalists, editors and business side folks to join our "merry band of media pirates" as I sometimes put it. If you like what we do and you'd like to work with us, drop us a line at info [at] openmediaboston [dot] org and we'll talk.

We want Justice! We want Peace! Spain, Africa, the Middle East!

2011-05-23T19:12:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, May 21^st, protesters converged in Boston to support popular uprisings across the globe that are rejecting dictatorships, phony democracies, and the austerity measures they impose. Demonstrations began simultaneously at noon in Harvard Square, Cambridge, and Copley Square, Boston. The Harvard Square rally represented Iranian, Amazigh, Egyptian, Libyan, Moroccan, Syrian, Arab and Muslim community groups in the Boston area. The youthful crowd of about fifty protesters carried flags and banners representing their respective countries and movements. With the aid of bull horns and boisterous voices from the ISO, protesters chanted for people to join in solidarity with the ousting of dictatorial regimes throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

A flyer being passed out read:

What started out as peaceful demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt, has turned ugly and dangerous in Yemen, Syria and Libya. These are just three countries within the MENA (Middle East & North Africa) region fighting for their rights, hoping for a free, secure future. Iranians who have been protesting the fraudulent election of June 2009 which forced Ahmadinejad on them, have been severely suffering from the dictatorship of [the] Kahamenei regime since then.

We are protesting today in solidarity and support with the people of the MENA region; we protest here today to raise awareness, and help the voices of the oppressed to be heard. We are uniting to echo the voices of those who are living through terrible conditions but strive to have Democracy, Freedom, [and] Human Rights.

A similarly sized protest of Spaniards and their supporters in Copley Square called for solidarity with the May 15^th movement, which like many of the new uprisings around the globe, is named after the date protests began there. In Spain, daily protests are rejecting the two party system and their attacks on public services. They are also raising deep questions about the structure, values, and priorities of consumer culture. Protests have reached such a level that they are stealing headlines from the May 22^ndmunicipal elections.

Popular signs included “#spanishrevolution”, which is a also a key to following relevant discussions on twitter. Another sign read “toma la plaza” (take the plaza) which is also a Spanish language website, tomalaplaza.com, where protesters in Spain are coordinating and sharing information. Side by side in English and Spanish, the manifesto of a new broad unity formation, Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now), was read to an attentive crowd on the steps of the Boston Public Library. Included among the points made by the manifesto was:

• The priorities of any advanced society must be equality, progress, solidarity, freedom of culture, sustainability and development, welfare and people’s happiness.

• Democracy belongs to the people (demos = people, krátos = government) which means that government is made of every one of us. However, in Spain most of the political class does not even listen to us. Politicians should be bringing our voice to the institutions, facilitating the political participation of citizens through direct channels that provide the greatest benefit to the wider society, not to get rich and prosper at our expense, attending only to the dictatorship of major economic powers and holding them in power through a bipartisanism headed by the immovable acronym PP & PSOE.

• The will and purpose of the current system is the accumulation of money, not regarding efficiency and the welfare of society. Wasting resources, destroying the planet, creating unemployment and unhappy consumers.

• We need an ethical revolution. Instead of placing money above human beings, we shall put it back to our service. We are people, not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from.

On Dartmouth Street, a police truck with flashing blue lights kept an unsubtle eye on us.

The Spanish protesters then voted to wait for the MENA protesters who were en route to Copley Square in order to join forces. While many stayed and engaged in conversation, others lost patience and left. When the MENA protesters finally arrived, the combined numbers were not more than 70. But the unity chant, “We want justice, we want peace: Spain, Africa, the Middle East” re-energized everyone.

We were also briefly joined by a feminist march calling for abortion rights and the rejection of misogynistic culture. Chants of “One struggle, One fight!” briefly brought everyone together, but there was a lack of clarity about what to do next. After a few minutes the feminist group left while organizers of the merged MENA/Spain group attempted to mobilize a temporarily disengaged crowd to begin marching again. Eventually the joint MENA/Spain group crossed Dartmouth Street, marched down Boylston Street, around the Boston Common, past Government Center, ending at Fanueil Hall under the bewildered gaze of mostly tourists. With a final speak-out the rally concluded under the watchful eye of Faneuil Hall security forces.

The May 21^st action was relatively small in comparison to the earlier rallies in solidarity with Egypt before Mubarak conceded power. But politically it was a breakthrough for unity to have common demands being made by a consciously international movement against multiple regimes, and an international economic and political system.

While we met many positive responses from people in the street, and very few negative ones, most onlookers seemed confused or indifferent. Many protesters bemoaned the media blackout which has kept people unaware of international events – especially in Spain, which is a society with many similarities to the US. During the show down in Madison between massive demonstrations and Governor Walker, solidarity demonstrations in Boston and across the country numbers in the thousands, joining Wisconsin's rejection of budget cuts and in defense of union rights. At these actions a rhetorical connection was made with the struggles in Egypt and Tunisia, but a real international perspective has yet to sink into popular consciousness.

International solidarity activists have shown that they can unite and create energetic protests with a politically sophisticated agenda. If these activists can create an organizational structure to sustain their unity, there is potential for joining forces with the mass struggles of native working class people. Such unity could inspire a more global and radical analysis of the economic crisis and the failures of US democracy, strengthening our domestic movement and ultimately providing more substantive solidarity to our brothers and sisters abroad.

Video clips of the march:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn5KcvnB2jA&feature=player_embedded

Ground Rules for the Discussion Period After Public Talks

2011-04-01T04:27:00.003-04:00

We all been there. You know ... some public talk where there are great speakers and everyone is pumped for a lively discussion. And then it's wrecked by people that don't have much of a clue how to interact in that kind of situation.

So after long experience running public events, I thought I should draw up a few ground rules to read to the audience at a panel I organized yesterday evening. And even though I didn't read more then first phrase of most of the points, my message did seem to register with folks.

One of the attendees asked me to forward her the rules; so I thought I'd just post them here for public use. Add and subtract stuff to fit your own needs. Hope they come in useful.

Ground Rules for the Discussion Period After Public Talks

1) Be respectful of other people - while debate is encouraged, ad hominem attacks are not.

2) Avoid making stump speeches rather than asking questions of the panel. If you have some especially brilliant ideas, let's talk afterwards and maybe we'll do a panel featuring you in the near future.

3) Listen to what other people are saying - if someone asks the question you were going to ask, be aware of that and let someone else take your turn.

4) Do not ask two or three (or 12) part questions. And if one of our speakers asks you to respond to their answer, keep it to one response and don't start a lengthy back-and-forth.

5) And finally, let's try to keep some gender balance. I don't want to see a bunch of guys rush to speak first and suck up all the air in the room.

Think Twice

2011-02-16T15:34:00.003-05:00

What else is there to say except "think twice" before you criticize "the media." Whether so-called mainstream or alternative, we all face economic, governmental, and sometimes brutal threats to life and limb.

Radio and TV Digital News Association post on Lara Logan

best wishes for Lara's recovery.
-dave goodman-

Glory to the Egyptian People!

2011-02-11T14:54:00.001-05:00

After eighteen days of protest that must have felt like much more, the Egyptian people have succeeded in exerting final authority over their government by forcing the thirty year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak out of power.

By taking their destiny into their own hands, the Egyptian people have proven that they understand democracy better than so many of us in the west with our ceremonious elections that change nothing. By voting with their shoes, the Egyptian people have smashed the subtly racist notion that popular culture in the Muslim world prefers religious fundamentalism and dictatorship.

Renowned cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek explains, “when we are fighting a tyrant we are all universalists ...What happened in Tunesia, what happens now in Egypt, it's precisely this universal revolution for dignity, human rights, [and] economic justice. This is universalism at work.”

Another important lesson to draw from Egypt's revolution is that protest works! Every aristocracy, every dictatorial regime, depends on the hard work and silent consent of the working class. Their station in society depends on our service. Egyptians spoke with a unitary and unwaivering voice that Mubarak must go. Once they seized the streets and Tahrir Square, it was just a waiting game to see how long it would take for reality to penetrate Mubarak's mind.

Had Mubarak been replaced earlier on by a new face, the ruling class might have been able to rebrand itself and stymie the revolt. But after thirty years of dictatorship, the regime was unable to separate itself from Mubarak. What seemed stable just one month ago, proved to be brittle under pressure. There will undoubtedly still be attempts by former establishment figures to re-assert themselves under a new guise. But the difficult struggle to dislodge Mubarak has put much better possibilities on the table.

The Egyptian protests were qualitatively different from what we have in the US, where we march through cattle chutes erected by the police, and respectfully ask those in power to listen. Let us learn from the Egyptians' militancy. It is not numbers alone that make mass action so powerful. A willingness to defy authority until basic demands are met is also essential.

Accusations of foreign interference by Mubarak's government were especially ironic given that they were taking $1.3 billion each year in military aid from the United States, including the tear gas police fired against protesters. It was Mubarak's corrupt government that represented capitulation to foreign interests, not the protesters.

Obama was almost as slow as Mubarak to understand the message coming from Egypt's streets. Multiple statements from the White House essentially mirrored Mubarak's own stance of offering concessions short of regime change. Even as the corporate media voiced support for the people of Egypt, criticism of Obama and the long history of US government support for dictators in the middle east was conspicuously absent. In the US we have an essential role to play, to challenge US government policy that undermine the political independence of people in the middle east and around the world.

The brief final message from former vice-president Suleiman indicates that the supreme council of the Egyptian military will take over the country's affairs until a new civilian government can be elected. The experiences of the struggle to oust Mubarak have given the Egyptian people a taste of grassroots democracy. In the days ahead we must watch to see if the military continues to play a passive role. Now is the opportunity for Egyptians to turn regime change into a social and economic revolution, and also repudiate US-Israeli domination in the region.

Egypt has already joined Tunisia in the minds of millions of people around the world as a victory against corruption, dictatorship, and imperialism. The uplifting psychological effects of these events cannot be underestimated. Similar protests have been inspired all over the world, especially in Yemen and Jordan. Tyrants beware! We are all Egyptian now!

From Cambridge to Cairo

2011-01-29T21:56:00.001-05:00

There was a massive, energetic, and largely spontaneous march from Cambridge to Boston today calling for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, and the cutting of US support for his authoritarian regime. People began to gather at The Pit in Harvard Square, Cambridge, a space that could only hold about fifty people, given the high foot traffic and giant mounds of snow. Most people held home-made signs. A few came with Egyptian flags. There were dozens of homemade placards passed out with the Egyptian flag's colors (Red, White, Black) and the printed words "Yes We Can". Hand written with what looked like white-out was also "support democracy" and "end corruption." The rally moved to Mt Auburn Street about a block away. We remained there for about thirty minutes chanting, before we were allowed to march. We marched down Massachusetts Avenue, through Central Square, past MIT, over the bridge into Boston, took a left onto Boylston St, marched all the way down to the Boston Common, marched around the Common, up to the State House, then continued to City Hall Plaza, then finally (mercifully) finished at Faneuil Hall around 4pm. Some people thought we would be in Harvard Square until 4pm and caught up with us later. Some people spontaneously joined us from the busy streets. At our peak I think we were about 600 people. The police had a disciplined presence and redirected traffic efficiently for us. The only time they interfered what when they made us march through the Boston Common rather than the streets along the perimeter.

I just heard reports on NPR which mentioned solidarity demonstrations in Washington DC and Boston. Why is the movement in Boston able to respond so effectively? The most important reason is because of the history of organizing that we have done here. Boston organizers led powerful protests when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, and again against Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2007/2008. Boston has also held some of the largest regional antiwar demonstrations for a city of its size. Furthermore, every New Year's Eve we host a "First Night Against the Wars" which includes a muslim led vigil for Palestine. Civil rights activists have done good work with the muslim community and built campaigns around local political prisoners. Despite not having a strong coalition, all of this activity has built the personal experiences and social connections necessary for a rapid mobilization around solidarity with people in the Middle East. The crowd today was young and diverse. Some chants were in Arabic. I helped carry a large hand made banner that said "Down with Mubarak." Popular chants were:

Freedom!
Down, down Hosni Mubarak, Down down with the old regime!
Hey Mubarak you will see, join your friend Ben Ali
Not another Penny, Not another Dime, no more money for Mubarak's crimes
Free free Egypt, free free Egypt, people, power, people, power
Hey Obama don't you know, Hosni Mubarak has got to go!
Hey Clinton don't you know, Hosni Mubarak has got to go!

Folks who have been to antiwar and Palestine solidarity demonstrations will recognize many of these chants, just with new names plugged in. I don't think there were more than two bull horns on the entire march. Many voices were giving out. I nearly completely lost my voice about half way through and only recovered it toward the end.

Today's demonstration greatly surpassed my expectations. I hope news of our relatively modest action will reach the Egyptian people and inspire their strength.

We need to keep hammering at the demand of cutting US military aid for propping up dictatorships like Tunisia and Egypt as well as Isreal. NPR described our march as calling for "massive reform of US policy", which I can only describe as a deliberate muddling of our demands on their behalf. Obama and Clinton sound ridiculous calling for stability. They cannot be allowed to pose as supporting the protests while at the same time advocating against their main demand: the resignation of Mubarak. To be clear, the US needs a dictatorship in Egypt that it can bribe with military aid in order to insulate Israel from international pressure and maintain the blockade against Gaza.

A democratic Egypt would upend US policy in the middle east. For this reason in particular, I think we need to keep building the solidarity movement here in the US. The people of Egypt and Tunisia are leading the way, not just protesting against Israeli aggression or US hegemony, but putting real positive demands forward. This is an opportunity that we haven't seen in a very long time.

See photos from today's action on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=179718358733818#!/photo.php?fbid=1590198040496&set=o.179718358733818

And flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotteisenphotography/5399491950/in/set-72157625933821502/

A Very Progressive Robin Hood

2011-01-23T18:12:00.006-05:00

My wife and I have been hanging around the apartment - cowering from the bitter cold - this weekend. And, as is often the case on occasional lazy inside days like this, we find ourselves taking advantage of available technology to watch free TV via the web. Recently, she discovered a 1950s serial called "The Adventures of Robin Hood." The show was produced in the UK for distribution in the US. It was a big budget affair for the time ... shot on 35mm film, with a fairly well-known cast, solid production values, and great writing. Like really great writing.

At first I wasn't paying much attention to it, but after few episodes, I began to realize that the show had very left-wing positions on class, sex, race (via the vehicle, as with class, of dealing with the institution of serfdom), democracy, justice, liberty and state oppression. So I started putting two and two together: great writing [check], late 1950s [check], produced abroad [check] and aimed at the American market no less.

So, I thought, "I wonder if this show was written by blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters?"

I checked for background info on Wikipedia, and sure enough it was. Turns out the show's producer Hannah Weinstein had left-wing sympathies and hired a number of blacklisted screenwriters - including Ring Lardner Jr., Waldo Salt, Robert Lees, Adrian Scott and Howard Koch, - to create over 140 episodes between 1955 and 1960. Other progressive writers also created episodes, including the German socialist crime writer, jazz critic and psychoanalyst Ernest Borneman.

The Adventures of Robin Hood aired in the US on CBS between 1955 and 1958 - no mean feat considering the times - and on ITV in the UK from 1955 to 1960, commanding an audience as large as 32,000,000 viewers weekly in the UK and US at the height of its popularity.

The series is streets better than most overhyped contemporary remakes of the Robin Hood story, and all without CGI shots from the "arrow's point of view." It is a prime example of why very few current TV dramas come anywhere near some of the classic series of the 1950s and 1960s in terms of social relevance and general quality (although I'm happy to name a few newer shows that I think deliver the goods in future posts).

Check it out on Hulu anytime. They have 117 episodes ready for your viewing pleasure. Highly recommended

Making Census Of It All, Part 2

2011-01-10T11:54:00.002-05:00

Sincerest condolences to the families and friends of those killed outside the Safeway Supermarket in Tuscon, AZ.

And best wishes to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords as she recovers from gunshot wounds. Thank goodness she doesn’t have to worry about her health care or insurance coverage. And a pox on anyone who questions how much her treatments cost.

Now can we start discussing seriously the prospect of extending to all Americans the type of health coverage our elected representatives receive?

And – and this is a BIG and – real gun control in this country. If initial reports are accurate – students in Jared Loughner’s classes at Pima Community College say they sat near the door whenever possible so they could escape quickly should he arrive at school, automatic weapon blazing.

Loughner, according to news reports of the indictments brought against the 22 year old in federal court, bought a semiautomatic pistol from a Sportsman Warehouse store legally. On top of that, Arizona (among other states) allows citizens to conceal their weapons in public.

NRA pressure be damned; do we want people with grievances carrying weapons of mass destruction?

Robots On The Factory Floor

I was going to write about my experiences as a 2010 Census enumerator in this column. Thus the play on words in the headline. Under the circumstances, it doesn’t seem as important right now.

I do want to mention one other thing that has been weighing heavily on my mind.

Under enormous financial pressure to turn profits, and criticized for presenting too much news that is negative, newspapers and other commercial media outlets seem to be jumping over each other to show how the “Great Recession” is over. The Boston Globe had two stories on the front page of its Money & Careers section on Sunday for example: “After a grim year, employers are once again optimistic about hiring” and “As cloud lifts from economy, recruiter finds his mission becoming a little easier.”

In the former article, writer Megan Woodhouse says “Economists are painting a brighter picture for 2011, anticipating solid job growth in the last six months of this year and predicting an economic recovery that actually feels like one.”

Interesting that she should use the word “feel,” as most economists quoted in the paper rely on objective mathematical data to come to their conclusions, no?

Feelings aside, this is what I see: local retail outlets – from big box department stores to small neighborhood businesses laying people off in droves. Just try finding a clerk to help you in any of the cavernous warehouse stores. It’s next to impossible.

And places such as supermarkets and pharmacies switching from live checkout clerks to automated cash registers which always put people out of work.

The CVS drugstore in my neighborhood recently let go of two full time and two part time employees when the store made the transition. I’d like to introduce those former employees to Ms. Woodhouse’s economists.

Then again, we’re told constantly by policy makers and politicians that it’s better for our economy to de-regulate business because government oversight restrains economic growth. ‘Better for whom’ is the better question.

And if workers are going to be denied collective bargaining and other benefits of a union, what recourse will those laid off workers have? Is it any wonder violent crime increases during economic downturns?

I just hope those with the means to do something about worker protections will also push for much stronger gun ownership laws.

One other thing.

I don’t care what Jared Loughner is accused or convicted of doing.

I’m against the death penalty and in my opinion, it’s just as morally wrong for the state to take a life as any individual.

- dave goodman -

Making Census Of It All Part 1

2011-01-04T08:44:00.003-05:00

May I borrow you for a few minutes? I know time is money so I'll return the loan when I cash my next unemployment insurance check.

The experts say the "Great Recession" came to an end last year. Huh? The national unemployment rate is 9.8% according to the US Labor Department. In practical terms; counting those who have run out of benefits plus the severely underemployed and those who have given up pounding the pavement and banging their heads, the rate is closer to 20 percent.

Millions of families have lost or at risk of losing their homes. Foreclosures and property auctions are on the rise. Food pantries remain overwhelmed with requests for assistance.

In 2010 some people facing financial insecurity turned to groups such as the Tea Party Movement. They demanded the feds keep their hands off "guns and bibles" to paraphrase Sarah Palin in an April speech on the Boston Common. "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" I get. (The song was written as a response to the attack on Pearl Harbor). But do the TP'ers think they can shoot and pray their way out of this economic mess?

Three years ago, the bottom fell out of the global economy and private sector markets. The response: on one hand, massive government payouts in the form of "stimulus" money. The best being the subsidy for laid off workers paying COBRA to keep their health benefits, in my opinion.

But that subsidy is over and done and the fight to extend unemployment insurance benefits took on a "Twilight Zonesque" veneer as Republicans forced President Obama and Congressional Democrats to hand over huge tax breaks to the wealthy in exchange for a few more months of UI.

Says James Carroll:, "If a just society is defined by the relationship between the well off and the very poor, we have big trouble. US Census data for 2010 show the widest rich-poor income gap on record."

In Europe, thousands hit the streets daily to protest cuts to the social safety net. In America, on the other hand, elected officials - and many of our neighbors, my friends - can't call for public austerity fast enough.

Because all those unemployed, hungry, and disaffected people need to start tightening their belts. In order to save money and bail out corporations too large to fail.

In fact, belts have gotten so tight blood flow to the brain has been restricted. That may explain all the tea flingers and their notions about Obama being the Anti-Christ.

The President's following a dangerous economic and foreign policy path - he calls it non-partisanship; others say the "military industrial complex" has never been stronger in Washington - but he's not the son of Satan. (That moniker is reserved for several members of the GW Bush cabinet).

So what of a liberal/progressive answer to the Tea Party enthusiasts? Union leaders, along with allies in the immigrant, GLBT, and environmental movements are taking tentative steps towards a unified response.

And it hasn't yet received a lot of press, but the folks at the Backbone Campaign, the Center for Media and Democracy, the Alliance for Democracy, and Move to Amend, have begun coordinating political actions through The Coffee Party.

Make mine French Roast with a bit of 2% milk.

OMB in the CJR

2010-11-14T16:09:00.000-05:00

Open Media Boston got another nice press hit a few days ago. This time a quote in the Columbia Journalism Review in a nice piece by Lauren Kirchner on local advertising networks being started online news publications around the country.

Check it out here.

NPR Fires Juan Williams, Part 2

2010-10-22T17:02:00.002-04:00

So I've been listening to talk radio all day and I've read the most recent comments from NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard and I now think the network had a legitimate beef with their employee Juan Williams.

Writing yesterday, Shepard said, "Williams’ appearances on Fox News, especially O’Reilly’s show, have caused heartburn repeatedly for NPR over the last few years. Management said he’s been warned several times that O’Reilly is a professional provocateur and to be careful.

After other inflammatory comments on Fox, in April 2008 NPR changed Williams' role from news correspondent (a reporting job) to news analyst. In this contract position, he was expected to report, think quickly and give his own analysis – while carefully choosing his words on any given subject," writes Shepard.

William's admission that he is scared to fly with people wearing clothing he identifies as "Muslim," apparently, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

This morning, several callers to the Stephanie Miller show pointed out that those calling for Congress to de-fund NPR (Sarah Palin, Senator Jim DeMint, and Representative Doug Lamborn to name a few) because, they say, the network is too liberal and prejudiced towards right wingers, should remember that "lefties" get canned all the time: Bill Maher by ABC for his "it's cowardly to bomb Iraq" comments on "Politically Incorrect" and Phil Donohue for potentially talking peace instead of war on his MSNBC program following the 9/11 attacks (according to the organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).

I did then, and I still do now, detest those firings.

As a journalist who has spent the last 15 years expressing my opinion on a radio talk show, I want MORE freedom to speak, not less. These firings stifle communication. I loathe the idea that I have to keep looking over my shoulder for prudes and censors to creep up and slap duct tape over my mouth.

Let's look at this as an economic issue. My commentary - heard on an 800 watt community radio station - will never reach an audience the size of which is watching Fox or listening to National Public Radio. All I have is a moral and ethical obligation to be fair. Williams and others like him have a contract. It shouldn't surprise anyone that for all the money he is making, Juan Williams tailors his on-air opinions to fit whichever employer is paying him at that moment.

Maybe if the disparity in wages and benefits between reporters and pundits weren't so astronomical, there wouldn't be such stiff competition to sit (and stay) in the commentator's chair. And maybe media companies paying huge salaries to their talent wouldn't encourage them to make ignorant and uninformed statements as a way of generating ratings and buzz. Don Imus and his "nappy haired hos" comment about the Rutgers woman's basketball team is a case in point. He was vilified in public; behind the scenes, his employers were counting on the controversy to deliver ears and web clicks.

What I don't understand in the Williams' case, is why NPR allowed him to hold his post at Fox? Statements this week by NPR Executive Director Vivian Schiller reveal how she feels about Fox: the network is biased toward the political right. Other media outlets have stopped their employees from working multiple jobs in the industry; until recently, for example, the Boston Globe Newspaper would not allow its sports reporters to appear on "The Big Show" on WEEI-AM. Along the way, some of these writers lost significant amounts of money because of this policy.

I don't like it, but telling reporters and analysts what they can and cannot do outside the office is a way of life in this business. (I know, NPR's memo instructing their employees not to go to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies is a whole 'nuther can of worms).

I don't wish to turn Williams' case solely into a battle between labor and management. But there's an economic imperative that drives media workers to the very edge of prudent and ethical behavior and causes them to sometimes cross the line. And corporate managers (including the not-for profit NPR) in fact, savor that high wire act.

After all, it's the workers (reporters, writers, producers, commentators) who put their careers at risk every day, not the owners and managers.

NPR Fires Analyst/Correspondent Juan Williams

2010-10-21T16:51:00.004-04:00

For what it's worth, I disagree with National Public Radio's decision to fire Juan Williams. Of course, I say that not knowing, what, if anything else between Williams and the network led up to his dismissal. And also not knowing what restrictions NPR placed on his Fox appearances, if any.

I just think that Americans must have these conversations about our fears. We must have them in public and if they are generated by analysts or commentators or columnists so be it.

Because then folks can respond. Then folks can say "look, 99.9 % of Muslims are NOT out to commit acts of violence" or "hey, you CAN'T get HIV by shaking a gay person's hand" or as Jimmy Tingle says, "immigrants are not TAKING our jobs, they're DOING our jobs."

My point is, our task as journalists (and citizens) is to find the "best available version of the truth" - to quote Carl Bernstein - and we can't do that if we suppress dialogue.

A Spoonful Of Investigation Helps The Election Go Down

2010-10-15T12:59:00.002-04:00

I get quite a few press releases from both right and left wing groups - helps me in my journalistic work.

Just received this from Pajamas Media (affiliated with the National Tea Party):

"Democrats’ Online Phone Bank System Compromises Americans’ Identity Security" which goes on to charge that the DNC and Organizing for America (President's Obama's election campaign staff and volunteers) are exposing Americans to identity theft.

So I checked out the website they are criticizing (https://call.barackobama.com/campaigns/NC166) and found that this charge is completely unfounded. The information provided to potential phone bankers is LESS than what is routinely provided by whitepages dot com.

But it sounds much worse in the Pajamas press release because they spin it as an invasion of privacy:

"Notice that you didn’t have to put in any of your information to get real information on voters that the Democrats want their phone bankers to call. You didn’t have to tell them who you are, where you are, or anything. You can use their info to call anyone on their list, and you don’t have to tell the DNC or OfA what transpired in the conversation. Or even if a conversation transpired at all.

Now, you can put location info in there, such as your zip code to find people near you to call. But you don’t have to, and you don’t have to log in to the system to get any of that information.

This is a massive security problem for anyone whose name is on that list, which appears to include identified Democrats and Independents. And it’s caused by the Democrats and Organizing for America. With full names and phone numbers easily available, there’s probably enough there for identity thieves to go to work."

Well, there's "probably" enough information printed on the outside of my mailbox for "identity thieves to go to work."

Best available version of the truth this is NOT!

Behind the Photo: Little Girl at Chicago Greyhound Station 9/26/2010

2010-10-01T23:42:00.007-04:00

There a story behind every photograph. Many are mundane, some are interesting. The photo above is one of the latter; so I thought I'd write about what was going on when I took it.

My wife and I were seeing her mom off at the Chicago Greyhound station - a couple of days after I had attended the "Block by Block" Community News Summit 2010 at Loyola University.

After my mother-in-law had boarded the bus in the photo, a little girl and her mom (also in the photo) were denied entry to the bus by its driver. It turns out that Greyhound requires parents and guardians to buy tickets for kids over two years old, and the girl was a bit older than that. Her mother didn't have any money, and I actually was getting ready to offer to buy the girl a ticket when something very special happened. One of those moments of human kindness and solidarity that isn't supposed to occur in big bureaucracies like Greyhound.

Even as the girl's mom talked edgily to someone on her cell phone about what was happening - basically being stuck if she and her daughter couldn't get on the bus - the driver of the bus talked animatedly to one of the station crew guys and the two of them went over to the station office. A short while later, the men emerged gathered up the women and her daughter and put them on the bus.

The driver (of Bus 86300 bound for Indianapolis and Cincinnati at 1:30 p.m. on 9/26/2010) delayed the bus for about 15 minutes all told. Risking angering the passengers on board, and perhaps some kind of bad performance review from Greyhound. So, big ups to the driver and the station crew for doing the right thing.

And, fyi, the specific moment the photo captures is shortly after the mom first found out she and her little girl weren't going to be allowed on the bus. I shot the picture through the door to the bus gate. The girl stands confused. All excited and ready to board. But she can't. What will become of her and her mom? At that point in time, we don't know.

But I thought the backstory was worth recounting for our viewers.

And I'm sharing this tale because I kind of think that our planet could use more people like that bus driver.

OMB Gets Some Nice Press Buzz

2010-10-01T15:32:00.000-04:00

The work we've been doing organizing the recent Public Media Camp Boston, and going out to Chicago to attend the "Block by Block" Community Media Summit 2010 last week, has resulted in some nice buzz among academics and scholars that keep track of online community news publications like Open Media Boston - plus in the Columbia Journalism Review (wow).

So here are links to 3 articles that talk about us and/or quote us. Check them out if you have a moment - interesting stuff on their own merits to be sure ...

PBS Media Shift
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/09/a-guide-to-rising-public-media-networks-in-the-us266.html

Columbia Journalism Review
http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/money_volunteers_money_patch_a.php

Knight Digital Media Center
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/20100928_block_by_block_imagining_the_sequel/

All Jason, All the Time ... This Week on OMB ... (d'oh!)

2010-08-20T23:45:00.001-04:00

Wowzers. What a busy week. Working last weekend covering the Second Life Community Convention - and running their party/meetup last Friday. Doing that story, plus our weekly editorial, plus an audio recording and blurb on Prof. Charlie Derber's Solving Climate Change talk. Plus working on tomorrow's Public Media Camp Boston that I've been organizing with folks at WGBH and other outlets. Plus preparing a presentation for that event. Plus photos for a lot of this stuff. Plus work on the business side of our operation. Boo hoo. Poor me. [I can hear the world's tiniest violin playing already.]

So after getting all these ducks in a row, I realize that I've produced every single thing in this week's issue of Open Media Boston. Which hasn't happened in a long time. It's like a harmonic convergence of ... I dunno ... no one else filing any articles this week.

Which brings me to my point. Although I know other OMB staff will be filing pieces this coming week ... if you're a non-profit or union or nice person or whatever, please, by all means, file an op-ed for our Opinion section this week.

It'll help diversify our next edition. And it'll let me take a little break.

(Woohoo!)

Jobs: The Dangerous Deficit - How to take on the "coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused"?

2010-07-05T16:33:00.007-04:00

Anemic job growth persists in June with little over 80,000 new private sector jobs created last month. Anticipating these numbers, several writers this week warned that the real deficit to address is the jobs deficit. Economics columnist, David Leonhardt, cautions that the US is cutting back public sector budgets at just the same time as the rest of the world's economies – putting us on a sure path to a double-dip downtown. Who, after all, will create the demand needed to put people back to work?

Without an obvious answer to this question, Leonhardt opens his column with a stern warning: “The world’s rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s — starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured — and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.”

Clinton-era Labor Secretary, Robert Reich believes that there is a 50/50 chance of a double dip recession: "The May jobs report shows there's not enough oomph in the economy because consumers don't have the dough," moreover, the tepid job growth (which fails to keep up with new job seekers entering the labor market) is not enough. "In a typical recovery, we would expect far better. And we've fallen into a far deeper hole than in a normal recession, so the recovery has to be much bigger." By Saturday, Reich was more emphatic: “The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession and all the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing. The odds of adouble-dip are increasing.”

Even the Economist magazine, concedes poor economic performance (although it rejects the “double-dip” thesis): “The economy already faces some headwinds from expiring fiscal stimulus (the unemployment benefits and the home-buyer tax credit are the most obvious examples), and those headwinds will build over the coming six to nine months. The test for the recovery is whether private demand will be strong enough to overcome those headwinds.”

The problem with “private demand” is that the global ruling class consensus, evidenced at the Toroto G20 meetings last week, is that it is likely the only game in town: governments everywhere are cutting back irrespective the result misery. The Economist signaled this turn with under the sharp heading: “Goodbye Keynes, Hello Hoover.”

Paul Krugman concludes his first Friday’s column by connecting the economic dogmatism with real world consequences: “what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we’re bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we’re good. And real-world policy — policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families — is being built on that foundation.”

Earlier in the week, Krugman wrote of the “Third Depression”: a long recession rather than a Great Depression: “And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world… governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.”

On Independence Day, Krugman identified the responsible party: “a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused,” by which he meant, the Republicans who refused to extend unemployment benefits. Forsaking any impact on the first part of the coalition, he addresses the “confused.” Even from his perch at Princeton and the New York Times, Krugman faces an uphill battle: President Obama’s balancing act concedes the battle of ideas to the Republicans: “Government can’t and should not replace businesses as the engines of growth and job creation in our economy.” But finds a narrow space for intervention: “there are times when only government has been able to do what individuals couldn’t do and what corporations would not do.”

History’s open challenge to Obama is to seize the opportunity to simply do “what individuals and what corporations would not do.” Journalist Andrew Reinbach—who was the first to nail Donald Trump—makes an eloquent and politically savvy case for another WPA: “Between 1935 and 1941, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs at a cost of $11.4 billion… Adjusted for inflation, that's about $144 billion today: $20.57 billion a year for seven years, $14.4 billion for ten. By comparison, the 2010 Defense budget is $663.8 billion.” Reinbach finds the political space for the program: make the 2010 elections a referendum on jobs!

Sign Petition to Free Moose and Squirrel

2010-06-30T10:40:00.004-04:00

All the hoopla surrounding the capture of a group of deep-cover Russian agents in cities around the United States this week has obscured the real tragedy - Bullwinkle and Rocky are missing. Where are Moose and Squirrel? Well it turns out they've been held near Moscow since the Cold War. And now, by signing the following petition, you and your friends can help free them. Just one click (below) can make all the difference. Won't you help?

Petition: Russia, we have your spies. Now FREE MOOSE AND SQUIRREL!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129029880469541

"A Very Deep Hole" - Call for Strong Leadership on Jobs

2010-06-08T21:02:00.006-04:00

Writing in the New York Times today, Bob Herbert reacts to the latest dismal employment data (see also our piece on the Majority Agenda Project website from last Friday). Before pointing to solutions, he writes starkly of the crisis: "Unemployment is crushing families and stifling the prospects of young people... Entire communities are going under." He continues, "The economy is sick, and all efforts to revive it that do not directly confront the staggering levels of joblessness are doomed."

Is there a solution is sight? No: "There is no plan that I can see to get us out of this fix. Drastic cuts in government spending would only compound the crisis...

"Policy makers have acted as if they are unaware of the magnitude of this crisis. They have behaved as though somehow, through some economic magic perhaps, or the power of prayer, this ocean of joblessness will just disappear. That’s a pipe dream."

So what does Herbert propose: "For all the money that has been spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to robust economic growth. What is needed are the same things that have been needed all along: a vast program of infrastructure repair and renewal; an enormous national investment in clean energy aimed at transforming the way we develop and use energy in this country; and a transformation of the public schools to guarantee every child a first-rate education in a first-rate facility.

"This would be a staggeringly expensive and difficult undertaking and would entail a great deal of shared sacrifice. (It would also require an end to our insane waste of resources on mindless and endless warfare.) The benefits over the long term would be enormous...

"Bold and effective leadership would have put us on this road to a sustainable future. Instead, we’re approaching a dead end."

This disappointment may not be entirely justified, especially from a progressive supporter of Barack Obama, but is certainly befits the author of "Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream."

For the Majority Agenda Project and others sharing Herbert's approach, a difficult political challenge remains: How to move forward in an irrational political climate. Here's how one reader responded to Bob Herbert:

"You & Krugman & other smart people have been beating this drum for a long time. But the Tea Partiers -- many of whom, ironically, have time to tea-party because they're among the long-term unemployed -- are driving the no-new-taxes, reduce-the-deficit, small-government mantra. If you don't think Republicans & Democrats alike who are up for re-election this year (which is of course ALL of the House) are buckling to the angry white people's narrow, illogical worldview, you haven't been reading the Times' political coverage.

"Don't blame President Obama. I think he'd LOVE to increase appropriations for jobs creation. But the House just nixed a hefty increase in jobs funding & the Senate is looking forward to cutting even more than the House bill allows.

"Politicians are notoriously shortsighted, but they have never been more so than since suddenly last summer when the tea party noisemakers (& their Republican backers) drowned out rational discourse, a white-out that will remain in place for at least this election cycle & likely much longer."

This blog entry also appeared on the Majority Agenda Project website.

Rodney's Bookstore is Closing - Possibly for Good

2010-05-28T10:48:00.004-04:00

Much as we're proponents of social media and digital communications in general, we're also fans of the printed word - since most of the Open Media Boston staff is old enough to remember when books, newspapers and magazines were how one got an education and regular information about everything happening on our big blue marble.

So it is with heavy heart that I mark the passing of one of Cambridge's great remaining used bookstores - Rodney's Bookstore in Central Square. They're giving up their lease as soon as they sell all or most of their remaining stock. So they'll be open at least another month. And, if I understood their clerk correctly yesterday, the degree to which they can generate cash by selling their books will determine whether or not they can reopen somewhere else in the area.

Not that I think their prospects are especially great without some sugardaddy or momma to bankroll them as an essentially profitless antiquarian enterprise - one has only to remember other efforts at bookstore relocation (witness McIntyre and Moore's bouncing around Harvard Square to Davis Square to Porter Square) to understand the cruel economics of face-to-face bookselling in an age of online sales and rising commercial rents - locations outside downtown Boston or central Cambridge are not often capable of forestalling the seemingly inevitable end of bookstores (at least independent general-interest bookstores) as many of us have known them.

Nevertheless, we are great supporters of doomed Quixote-like crusades at OMB (d'oh!), and since Rodney's is selling off really great stuff for 50 percent off, I think it's worth everyone's time to head over their and buy some books. I got a great book on the history of photography during my visit yesterday, and fully intend to head back for more.

Rodney's Bookstore is at 698 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge's Central Square.

OMB Staffer Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia Hit By Car

2010-03-11T12:36:00.005-05:00

On Tuesday, Open Media Boston Tech Editor Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia was hit by a car while riding his bike. His leg was broken and he sustained a concussion. According to his doctor, he'll be recovering at the hospital and then at home for the next 3 months.

OMB viewers can send get well wishes to our main email address: info@openmediaboston.org.

We'll add more details as they become available.

Open Media Boston Gets Nice Plugs from Noted Media Mavens

2010-02-09T23:41:00.025-05:00

When I first launched Open Media Boston in March 2008 (although I actually started preparatory work back in July 2007), I knew it was probably going to be a long time before the publication got much recognition from nationally-known media experts. That's because OMB was not only a new news outlet, but we were trailblazing a new news model - the specifics of which I will soon begin discussing more in public - that I wanted to present in a low-key way in practice over many months. Rather than in hyperbole-laden press releases. I figured that if we did a decent job, OMB would get noticed in new media circles. And it's obviously important that we get some attention if OMB is really going to succeed and stick it out over the long haul. But there was no way to know in advance if that would ever come to pass.

Then suddenly, over the last couple of weeks, we've started getting more positive attention in a shorter time span than we have heretofore. Which is certainly gratifying. We've been working hard week in and week out for almost two years now - quite a long time for an experimental social media operation like ours. So it's nice to get some validation of our efforts from people that think deeply about the promise and perils of the new journalism.

First, Michele McLellan of the Reynolds Journalism Institute added OMB to her list of "promising online news organizations" on her Knight Digital Media Center blog. That was way cool of her, so I called her up and told her how much we appreciated our inclusion.

Then, through friends at Free Press, the entire OMB staff had the opportunity to hang out a bit with Robert McChesney and John Nichols (both Free Press founders) at the Cambridge, MA stop on their speaking tour in support of their new book "The Death and Life of American Journalism." Which was a fun and informative evening from start to finish. And not only did they say nice things about us to the crowd at the Cambridge event, but they went on to plug us on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show two days later.

I don't automatically assume that either development will lead to exactly the kind of outcome that can improve Open Media Boston's chances of long term success. But it's still an excellent sign that our project is getting some positive vibes sent our way by people who are key figures in the construction of a new (and hopefully better) journalism.

Howard Zinn, Historian and Optimist, 1922-2010

2010-01-28T09:48:00.007-05:00

"No, it's not true!"

Those were my words of denial last night when I first heard Howard Zinn had died.

There's so much to say, I'm at a loss for words. He was a hero and a mentor and someone who helped bolster my belief that humanity is basically good.

"I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?)," Howard wrote a few days after the 2004 presidential election, "but I keep encouraging people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests."

He wore many hats and accomplished many things - historian, author, teacher, playwright, orator, television producer - but it was his unflappability that I hope people remember most.

In March 2008, colleague Chuck Rosina and I recorded Howard and Professor Irene Gendzier at a symposium on empire and war at Harvard Law School. During the question and answer period, a student criticized Irene and Howard as "naive and impractical" for proposing an immediate US troop withdrawal from Iraq and asking them why, after so many decades of activism, "have groups of your persuasion accomplished so very little?"

Howard seemed a little angry at this student's ignorance but kept his emotions in check. "So here's what you're saying, I think, 'we haven't changed policy, therefore we've failed, therefore there's something wrong with what we're saying.'"

"Well, you have to examine what you're saying," Howard continued, "and see if it's right or wrong. I examine what we're saying about withdrawal from Iraq and I conclude we're saying the right thing. And you say, 'but our policy hasn't changed.' And I point to the fact that any time you look at any movement that is going on, before it succeeds, it has failed.

And you can look at the Black people in the South after they've been doing this and that and the other thing, and nothing has changed and you say 'see, you must do something different; must be something wrong with your tactics, you failed.'

No, the tactics of protest and resistance and spreading knowledge and agitation and civil disobedience, those are the tactics that have been used historically, and are still being used. There are no glamorous new tactics, that are required in order to bring about change. What is required is persistance and patience. Not the patience of passivity but the patience of action, continued action."

Author, social critic, and comedian Barry Crimmins agreed to come on the radio show this Sunday to help Marc Stern and I remember and reminisce about Howard. Barry's taking this very hard, noting that Howard was a father figure to him. Barry also is writing about his friend and mentor, saying that one of Howard's most endearing features was his voice: he could scold governments and sooth his audience at the same time, his words always articulate and never shrill.

After a long hiatus away from the grind of the road, Barry told me he's considering touring again, to speak-out about the issues important to Howard and to fill some of the void that inevitably will be left by Howard's absence.

"I have never felt so despondent over the death of an 87 year old man," says Barry.

Sums it up for me too.

Hang In There Baby!

2010-01-18T17:24:00.005-05:00

Like that poster cat hanging on for dear life, I’m going waaaay out on a limb to make a bold prediction: Martha Coakley will win the Senate election.

I’m not saying this is equally a sure thing as predicting Jack E. Robinson will lose any election in which he takes part.

But there’s a new paradigm developing in the minds of Republicans that their guy, Scott Brown, can turn a blue state red and I’m just not buying it.

[By the way, please read the editorial by OMB’s Jason Pramas who giggles at the way Repubs have co-opted the color traditionally associated with communists…]

Why am I prognosticating a Coakley win on Tuesday? Because I don’t believe you base a new paradigm on ONE poll.

Recently, a voter survey originating from Suffolk University in Boston put Brown slightly ahead in the race. Oh my gosh, you would have thought the editors at all the local TV and radio stations and networks such as CNN had lost their minds at the exact same moment. A collective hysteria, if you will, which gained momentum through the bloviating of pundits desperate for an upset to talk about.

After all, who’s going to win big money gambling on two great teams with close odds (the Colts and the Saints in the Super Bowl) meeting to decide the victor when an underdog (the Jets anybody?) can be elevated to the role of supreme spoiler?

Secondly, much of the discussion is being driven by television commercials for and against the two candidates and extensively paid for by political action groups from outside the state.

[By the way, congratulations to all the broadcast stations on all the revenue this election has generated for them in campaign ads. I hope we see an increase in hiring across the TV and radio industries.]

But short of Brown’s calling Coakley a puppet and Coakley accusing her opponent of being anti-choice, how much will voters remember of all the vitriol once they step into the booth? Very little is my guess.

And so we have the mythology of Scott Brown, languishing in obscurity in the Massachusetts state legislature, rising up to slay the Kennedy mystique (a bit of a mythology itself) and the “in the back pocket of the Democratic machine” state Attorney General Coakley.

The problem with this theory of Republican ascension is that the vast majority of voters in MA belong to the ranks of the unenrolled; nearly half of all registered voters in fact. And trying to predict what they will do is like figuring out what kind of a season Daisuke Matsusaka will have.

It’s true that during the 1990’s and early aughts, Massachusetts voters installed Republican Governors and in the legislature, overwhelmingly Democrats. Former Governor Michael Dukakis has said he believes this phenomenon came from voters who believed one party should keep the other in check. But in the aftermath of the social and economic devastation wrought by the Cheney/Bush administration and a Republican controlled Congress, has there been any evidence that independents are ready to vote for gridlock rather than maintain Democratic control of the Senate?

Not at all…

Are people angry at and scared of double digit unemployment, tens of thousands of foreclosures, and cuts to education, welfare, and municipal services of all stripes. Yes, of course. But are they thrilled that federal stimulus money is filtering down to cities and towns and non-profits doing all sorts of recovery work in neighborhoods, and that the cost, for example, of having COBRA – the federal program that guarantees health insurance for families of people who lose their jobs – was slashed by two thirds by the Obama administration and recently extended for another 18 months?

They should be…

In this humble opinion, voters in Massachusetts are more sophisticated than either party gives them credit for. Citizens will remember that if recent history teaches them anything, it’s that members of the party of big business (the elephants) constantly scream bloody murder about taxes and yet gainfully accept subsidized health benefits and all the perks that taxes provide them: like police and fire protection.

Oh, and the two wars the Republicans have been saying we can’t do without for the past decade.

Finally, if you live in the Bay State, don’t forget to actually cast a vote on Tuesday; regardless of the weather. And don’t fall prey to the trap into which the professional gamblers would have you stumble: that a confident “poker” face should cause you to fold your cards.

4chan vs Sharecash: Sharecash Responds

2009-12-29T00:26:00.006-05:00

Our recent article on 4chan's DDoS attack against Sharecash has garnered quite a lot of attention. As a matter of fact, it has been our most popular story so far (measured by weekly traffic). Most of that attention has come from 4chan regulars and sympathizers, but Open Media Boston also received correspondence from the owner of Sharecash and one of its more vocal (and less sensible) supporters. While these emails were not worth responding to individually, they were hysterical, and are worth sharing with our readers, who we think will appreciate them.

In the first email, Sharecash's owner, who reluctantly identified himself only as "Paul" for (justifiable) fear of retribution by the 4chan mob, took issue with Open Media Boston's reportage of the facts and our framing of the story. Discrepancies between Paul's and the 4chan community's perceptions of the weekend's events were addressed in updates to the article itself and need not be repeated here. Instead, let us focus on Paul's complaints of our framing.

Complaint One: You Say Attack, I Say Spam

According to Paul, Sharecash users who consistently posted child pornography and viruses to 4chan should not have been called "attackers." Paul wrote, "People who posted links are not 'attackers', that is a completely incorrect term. Spammers, perhaps, would be more appropriate, but 'attackers' is totally out of context. An example of attackers would be the people who attempted to flood our servers."

We used the word "attackers" because the repugnant content and sheer volume of posts to 4chan effectively shut down several of the site's most active boards. The constant flood of child pornography and links to viruses drove users out of 4chan boards, preventing them from using the services the site was designed to offer, just like the DDoS attack Paul claimed did not affect Sharecash's server prevented its users from utilizing Sharecash's services. This might not be illegal, but it is unethical.

It would be petty of me to start listing definitions of the word "attack" and explaining why so many of them are appropriate to exactly this situation. So I'll just pick my favorite and provide a link to the rest. Attack (n.): "The onset of a corrosive or destructive process." Sounds about right, no?

Complaint Two: Actually, Let's Not Say Spam

After calling those Sharecash users who attacked 4chan "spammers," Paul insisted our depiction of Sharecash as a "cash for spam" service (as was written in the article's title) is "not only derrogatory [sic] but shows a lack of understanding of internet marketing." This statement implies that Sharecash does not pay users to create spam, but in the very next sentence Paul defended those exact actions, writing that "nearly every single online income source, from Google Adwords to CPA Networks have people who spam their links to earn money," and that "these companies, too, don't ban the users, because it is not against their ToS nor illegal."

So which is it? Is Open Media Boston's characterization of Sharecash as an outlet that encourages users to spam unfair, or did it just hit Sharecash in a sore spot? We really can't say because just one sentence later, Paul wrote that Sharecash "never enouraged [sic] users to spam," but that doing so "was not against our ToS." I'm really confused now. Doesn't paying users who spam sites encourage them to do so? And if Sharecash was concerned with being perceived as a legitimate marketing service — rather than as an ATM machine for script kiddies and blackhatters — wouldn't they explicitly forbid spamming in their terms of service? I think so.

Anyone who has any lingering doubts about the nature of Sharecash's business model need only read the "Money Making" section of the site's forum. It includes topics like "Make money playing WoW," which advertises cash for (virtual) gold services, and "YouTube Commenting and Rating Service," which advertises YouTube comments and ratings for a fee. It is clear these are conversations between Sharecash users who buy and sell information and services intended to bypass other websites' terms of service agreements and spam protections.

The most telling fact, however, is that more than half the topics in this forum include referral links to Sharecash users' other sordid and disreputable sites. That's right... Half the posts on Sharecash's forums are spammers spamming spammers.

Complaint Three: Open Media Boston Encourages DDoSers

In the final paragraph of his email, Paul suggested Open Media Boston encourages organizations to utilize DDoS attacks to achieve their goals, and offered ~~a veiled threat~~ heartfelt concern that such a stance "could lead to a bad reputation" as our audience grows. The article in question briefly explains what a DDoS attack is and touches on the moral and ethical implications of recruiting users' systems into a botnet without their knowledge or consent via trojans or other malicious code. The article examines the then recent DDoS attacks against Iranian targets as an example of how such tactics disrupt civilian networks, but can potentially harm isolated targets without compromising network infrastructure or the systems of unwitting users.

It's an excellent read, I think, and broaches important issues, but at no point does it advocate the usage of DDoS attacks to achieve one's goals. To the contrary, it suggests that without clear international conventions to limit network warfare, the public Internet is likely to suffer. The final sentence warns, "The world has yet to confirm a case of state sponsored cyber warfare against a civilian network, but it seems foolish to think this critical component of a country's government, economy and culture would not be subject to attack just the same as any other."

I Can't Quit You, Dom

The second email, which came from "a very dedicated user of ShareCash," Dominick, had us gasping for breath. Here are the best parts:

First of all you claim that users have been posting and I cite: "... disgusting child porn..." I'm a regular 4chan visitor but I have never seen a post containing such content, maybe jailbait at most, or adults who look like children. As for malicious links and viruses, I cannot judge as I never click those links, I don't download from sharecash nor am I interested in such content.

The first point is just funny. Was there a reason write any of that? And then Dominick, a "dedicated" Sharecash user, reveals he doesn't download from the site and isn't interest in content hosted on it?

Also I don't see any paragraph in which the other side of the story is told apart from the two later added updates. The owner of ShareCash is a college student, as such he does not have sufficient time to cooperate as much as 4chan desires, this hasn't been mentioned by 4chan nor by your site, while it is an important factor in the matter.

Dominick didn't see Sharecash's version of events. Except for in the updates where we outline Sharecash's version of the events. Is Dominick unhappy we didn't rewrite the entire article to his liking? If so, we recommend he start his own website where he can blog about spam and blackhat marketing as much as he likes. Oh wait, he already has two such sites. Good job, Dominick!

Dominick's second point is irrelevant. 4chan's creator supposedly is (or was recently) a college student, a status many of 4chan's users likely share. Sharecash's owner has created a service that, by its nature, encourages users to propagate their links as widely as possible to large audiences. If Sharecash's users try to achieve this goal by violating other websites' terms of service agreements, Paul had better be prepared to deal with those users.

Third, a site owner can never be held responsible for the actions of their users. The only responsibility they have is cooperating with federal authorities of the country the website is based in. This has been like that since the beginning of the internet and will always be that way, again not mentioned.

To the first point, as mentioned just above, Paul created a service that encourages users to widely distribute referral links. If those users violate other sites' terms of service in the process, he can expect some phone calls. He might not be legally required to take action against those users, but by virtue of incentivizing and enabling them, he is responsible and should accept that. By banning posts to Chan sites, it seems Paul has accepted responsibility. Good on him.

Dominick's last point here sounds like dogma. "The Internet has always been, and will always be..." That's nonsense and is again irrelevant.

At the end of his email, Dominick wrote, "As you might be able to see my English isn't too proficient, not everyone has English as primary language." I simply don't believe this. Up until the dropped indefinite article ("a") in this sentence, Dominick displayed a perfectly correct — if somewhat simplistic — understanding of the English language. Moreover, Google searches for Dominick's full name and email address revealed only English language content. This language disclaimer just sounds like an excuse for what Dominick knew was a baseless argument made with slipshod reasoning.

Want Open Media Boston to Make Fun of Your Complaints?

Email us your comments and complaints. If they're as stupid as these two, we'll put them on our blog.

Random Ruminations On Radio

2009-09-25T13:39:00.002-04:00

Reporters writing about WGBH’s bid to buy classical music WCRB Radio, turning 89.7 FM primarily into a news/talk station, and thus competing with NPR powerhouse WBUR are missing the point.

It’s not about who wins the ratings battle; the folks at ‘GBH understand they lost that battle a long time ago.

Earlier this year, WGBH forged a deal with WBUR to collaborate on a new project funded for at least two years by the Corporation for Public Corporation establishing what is being called a “Local Journalism Center.”

According to the original call for funding proposals, station groups will be expected to investigate and report on a particular topic, such as the economy or immigration. CPB bigwigs consider these collegial efforts between regional public radio stations (and TV stations and possibly websites such as Open Media Boston) a part of a crucial effort “to expand local news gathering and digital platform reporting capabilities.”

To be sure, making WGBH nearly all news is an extension of this and other initiatives that recognize the potential audience magnet that news, talk, and public affairs formats can be.

In the Boston metropolitan area sports talk and right wing leaning talk shows originating at WEEI-AM, WRKO-AM, WTKK-FM, and most recently WBZ-FM, The Sports Hub, are proof positive that conventional over the air listeners as well as internet users will flock to these sort of broadcasts.

And while ‘BUR only reaches 4 percent of Boston area listeners according to the Arbitron and Nielson research firms, that figure (plus their fundraising successes) make them a flagship station within the NPR universe.

All of which is being counted upon by WGBH management to help make their radio station relevant again. 89.7 FM, the ratings companies tell us, is being listened to by less than 1 percent of Boston area ears.

Which is remarkable for a station that has a 100,000 watt transmitter and reaches New Hampshire and Connecticut on a bad day.

Further evidence that both stations will be acting like friends rather than fiends towards each other comes from a recent internal station memo from WBUR General Manager Paul LaCamera.

Apparently leaked to the Boston Globe, LaCamera criticizes WGBH for “overreaching” in that station’s attempt to buy WCRB.

But he could have said much worse, and in a remarkably conciliatory tone, points out that at one time WBUR itself was guilty of what some have called a smug and holier than thou approach to all aspects of their internal and external operations.

WBUR, based at Boston University, will lead the Local Journalism Center project, along with WGBH and WFCR in Amherst and possibly other stations. Sources tell me that WBUR has decided to pursue the immigration angle as its two year reporting arc.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Speaking of WGBH and WBUR, I bumped into former TV and radio public news and talk show host Christopher Lydon on the Boston Common on Thursday.

In a rush and walking past the site of the Alan Khazei Senate Campaign kick-off, Lydon asked when the event would start. Not soon enough to allow him to listen a while and make his train. He politely declined an offer to take some of my audio recordings from the event. (Always on the look-out to make a buck and expand the network, eh David?)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And speaking of radio, this report just in from the watchdogs at business publication Crains New York, ""RADIO: It Ain’t Dead Yet".

The gist, according to Nielson Research is that young people ARE listening to music, talk and other types of programming the old fashioned way, on traditional radio sets. If accurate, I have one thing to say to all you new-tech aficionados and media doomsayers: raspberries!

One caveat: Nielson is new to the world of radio ratings and this release may be their way of getting lots of attention from station owners and managers. According to the story in Crains, Arbitron “did not respond to a request for comment.”

Et Tu, Bernstein?

2009-09-10T17:00:00.005-04:00

David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix saw fit to trash the At-Large Boston City Council Candidates Forum we held last night at Roxbury Community College in his Talking Politics blog today, saying "Man, I do love me some political theater. I went looking for some at an at-large Boston City Council forum earlier this evening at Roxbury Community College, but the poorly-promoted event had more candidates on stage than voters in the audience (this may actually have been literally true, once you subtract the press and candidates' aides from the audience). Yeesh."

First of all, Bernstein couldn't have stayed overlong at the event because there were over 70 attendees to the forum - although people were predictably slow to show up. Second, there were certainly aides and supporters present, but we estimate that those folks made up perhaps a third of the audience.

What Bernstein doesn't know - and likely didn't stick around to find out - is who the other attendees were ... and more to the point, what organizations they represented. Major community organizations like Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Chinese Progressive Association, and the Boston Workers Alliance.

Also, the event drew 11 out of the 15 candidates. Some ducked out to other events before the forum concluded, but a majority stayed to the end and spent a healthy chunk of time giving thoughtful answers to audience questions.

Finally, and most germane to this discussion, Bernstein slapped the forum down before bothering to ask the editors of Open Media Boston why we decided to do the event, how much lead time we had to work with, and why we held it at the RCC Media Arts Center instead of a smaller venue on campus.

Our answers are simple. We decided to do the event only two weeks ago when it became evident that there were very few opportunities for the at-large candidates to gather for a media-sponsored forum - compared to the number and quality of the mayoral race events.

We did it in a short time frame because we thought it was important that such a forum should take place before the primary later this month to give the full field a chance to hold forth, and get some extra publicity from our publication and the other community publications present like the Bay State Banner and the Dorchester Reporter.

We did it at the Media Arts Center because it's a very nice facility in the heart of the city right off the T and it was available for a very reasonable rate. We knew it was going to be too big for the crowd we thought we'd manage to pull in a few days, but the excellent a/v facilities there make it a very easy place to get good audio, video and photographic records of the proceedings - which we could then make available to our audience, and to other community publications (our event coverage will be up on our main site later this week).

The big question that Bernstein doesn't ask is the very one we asked ourselves before going to the trouble of overextending our very small staff and financial resources to pull the forum off in 2 weeks. That is, why don't larger publications like the Phoenix, Metro, Globe, Herald and others use their still-not-inconsiderable resources to put together a much bigger forum for the at-large candidates? Why just focus on the mayoral candidates? Aren't the council races important - especially the at-large races? Don't they have a critical impact on city politics in the near term?

We don't think that Bernstein's snarky tone was warranted or especially public spirited in this case. We did what we did in the public interest - which we believe is very much a critical part of being an urban publication of record.

In that spirit, we extend the hand of friendship to Bernstein and the Phoenix and enjoin them to work with us do a bigger and better event (with several weeks lead time) for the final 8 At-Large Boston City Council candidates in advance of the November elections. We would naturally hope that the Phoenix will see their way clear to bankrolling the event.

If the Phoenix is uninterested in staging such a public forum with us, we understand, but would say that it speaks volumes about their level of concern about the sad state of democratic discourse in Boston politics in particular and American politics in general.

MA(ck) The Knife?

2009-09-08T18:11:00.007-04:00

All this talk of tagging sharks has me really creeped out.

As an Aquarius, I ought to love the water. But the image of Great Whites leaping out of the pounding surf; sharp teeth gleaming with blood and bits of seal entrails, has me tangled up in fear and loathing.

(I know they haven't done that off Chatham yet; I'm just can't resist Discovery Channel and "Shark Week.")

Also, I've never gotten over the sight of Robert Shaw being consumed toes to head by "Bruce."

But let me assure you there is deeper political meaning to all this carnivorous fish activity.

They say "when sharks circle, there must be blood in the water." So let's think about what's happening right now in Massachusetts.

We've lost a revered (by most people) elected official in Edward Kennedy. And his nephew Joe has declined to run for the office. That means it's open season on the Senate seat with representatives and lawyers galore coming out of the woodwork. First Coakley, then Lynch, and Brown, now possibly Capuano. (Maybe even Curt Schilling, and his bloody sock is sure to attract other meat eaters!)

The sharks - and I refer to them as such beasts with love in my heart - sense the blood of the Kennedys in the water and are preparing to engulf and devour.

Over at the State House, things look fishy as well. He has a fine new hip, but Governor Deval Patrick's approval ratings are approaching the Marianas Trench. (Folks, that's the deepest part of the ocean!)

Carcharodon Carcharias and their toothy brethren have their sights on Patrick's office. Tied to people's perception of President Obama as much as he is, the Governor better hope the outcome of the health care reform debate leaves the Democrats singing "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" and not "Big Eyed Fish" by the Dave Matthews Band.

And speaking of health care: all over this nation, lobbyists for the insurance industry are salivating over tasty morsels of "we told you the Commonwealth Connector and health insurance mandates would be too expensive to sustain and would never hold up as models for national reform."

Of course, the hungry fish are not all of the right flipper variety. "People before profits" lefties from organizations across the state are banding together like schools of piranha to take bites out of such titanic whales as Deutsche Bank and Bank of America.

Hmmm, all of these fish tales are making me hungry. Now I just need to find some mercury free, organically raised, Massachusetts bay harvested, CSF approved, cod.

Or some supermarket-purchased, scroddy fish sticks. Politics has lowered my expectations, you know.

We Must Have Two Senators

2009-08-28T17:34:00.003-04:00

Some pundits and politicians would spin Ted Kennedy's request to change the state law and allow Governor Deval Patrick to choose a replacement Senator rather than hold an election in 5 months as a left wing vs. right wing affair. Or Democrat vs. Republican.

I disagree. I think it's about "no taxation without representation."

We must have two Senators representing Massachusetts in Congress. The issues before that much maligned legislature are too important.

So here's my prescription: the Democrats who blocked former Governor Mitt Romney from appointing an interim Senator when John Kerry ran for President in 2004 must apologize profusely for changing the law. They need to hang their heads and beg forgiveness. Then they should change the law back to the way it was and give the Governor the power to pick someone to fill the vacant seat as long as that person agrees not to run in the eventual election next year.

The Republicans will get their chance. (Even if they nominate Kerry Healey). In the meantime, Massachusetts needs full representation.

Turning Point for Open Media Boston?

2009-08-14T16:27:00.002-04:00

The Weekly Dig reports this week that the New York Times Company - owner of the Boston Globe and Boston.com - will start charging people to view the on-line content. Earlier, the Associated Press quoted a Globe spokesperson as saying, "the Globe has been conducting market research to determine what readers would be willing to pay, and weighing that against any potential loss of advertising."

Whee doggies!

This could be Open Media Boston's moment in the sun.

If the progenitors and prognosticators are right, internet users expect their web content to be free. To the extent that on-line viewers go to Boston.com for their daily dose of news, sports and weather happening right now, but will be prevented by a wall of subscription fees, I'm betting they will turn to well-written, independent, story rather than ego driven, local publications.

Just like Open Media Boston.

So why wait? Browse over to our site NOW before it gets so crowded, the pages are as cramped as an elevator at Fenway during a Yankees series.

We only ask you do one little bit of homework. While you're enjoying the arts, news, and techie coverage, can you please figure out how we're going to pay for this little slice of journalistic heaven?

Cheers,
Dave "your friendly neighborhood news editor" Goodman

Jason's Favorite Photos: Special Near-Infrared Film Edition

2009-08-12T00:20:00.020-04:00

Hi folks! It's been a couple of weeks since I posted my latest fav pics ... but as previously promised, I just got a bunch of shots back from the photo lab that I took using Ilford SFX 200 near-infrared film on my old Pentax ME Super with an Osawa 49mm Red 25 filter onboard. Even though the lab's scans of the prints I got have come out a bit foggy (quite different that the nice sharp prints themselves), I still think these scanned images are worth displaying here. The near-infrared spectrum that the film and the filter create very interesting high contrast photos with a hyper-real feel to them. Best on very sunny days, the film also makes plants and bright surfaces show up as very light or white - which also makes for neat effects. Anyhow I very much like SFX 200, and if you shoot 35mm film I highly recommend that you check it out. [And if anyone can find it in their heart to donate me a professional high-quality film and negative scanner, I will inscribe that person's name onto the Open Media Boston Honor Roll of the Chariots of Fire.]

Reflections

Children at Greenway Fountain

Building on Bright Day

Sometimes People Look Like Cutouts

Windows and Shadow

Hidden Fountain

Ghost Building

Modernist Christ Statue

Burning Bush

Chimney and Sky

Tasty Gelato

Church on Bright Day

Tunnel Redux

This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

"You Can't Handle The Truth"

2009-08-10T00:09:00.003-04:00

It's a reporter's nightmare.

A source knowingly gives you false information in order to subvert the search for truth or hides their identity as a way of masking less than honorable agendas and motivations.

And you publish or air that false information - usually in good faith, because you think the source is honest - thus perpetuating lies and misinformation.

At best, you look silly for not realizing you were "being played."

Something like that happened to me recently.

A man on the street, who gave his name as "Phil Davis" of Westwood, MA, agreed to speak with me briefly following a Veterans for Peace / International Socialist Movement protest against Egyptian attempts to stop an aid convoy from crossing the border into Gaza. He was very angry at the protesters; in fact anyone who would support helping the people living in Gaza, because the elected leadership of that territory come from Hamas. And Hamas, according to this man, (and frankly the governments of Israel and the United States as well) is a terrorist organization.

Now, we can debate endlessly what constitutes "terrorism:" from the plagues bestowed upon native North Americans by European explorers and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, all the way to the Katyusha rockets fired across the Gazan and West Bank borders towards Israel.

The point, I believe, is that in order to have an effective, meaningful conversation about differences in political opinion we have to trust each other.

However, "Phil Davis," rather than engendering trust acts like a bully, and goes way beyond the point of ever engaging in rational conversation.

"Phil Davis" it turns out, is Hillel Stavis, former owner of Wordsworth Books in Harvard Square, an active member of the political correctness pushing organizations CAMERA and The David Project, and self-appointed crusader on behalf of all things Israel.

I know this, because three sources came forward, after listening to my recorded interview with this man (www.openmediaboston.org/node/796) to say that "Phil" sounded just like "Hillel."

It's true, and the following video (http://tinyurl.com/mtcysy) convinces me that it's the same person.

Why am I spending so much time on this? Because Hillel Stavis goes from one event to another; from the Cambridge Peace Commission one day to a Harvard lecture the next, trying to impose "righteous" thinking on anyone with whom he disagrees.

Except, it turns out, the truth is much less important to "Phil/Hillel" than his pro-Israel agenda. So how can anyone believe anything he says, ever?

Sometimes, all we can hope for, in the words of Carl Bernstein, is the "best available version of the truth." However, Hillel and his ilk are manipulators, bending reality to fit their political world view.

Hmmm, sounds awfully like a recent former president and vice-president and their policy towards the truth.

If I were leading any discussion at any forum on any topic and Hillel Stavis raised his hand to speak, I would immediately ask him to declare his fealty to veracity; then take everything he says with a grain of salt.

So I've got egg on my face. I got duped by a professional sheister. But in my own defense, I did everything I promised. I published his quotes and aired our entire conversation on the radio.

The same integrity can't be ascribed to those who would lie and cheat to get their way.

The Zen of Brick and Mortar

2009-07-30T17:34:00.003-04:00

So, I was buying printer cartridges and paper in my local neighborhood "mega" office store (that's sarcasm folks) the other day, having a discussion with the store clerk about the true meaning of "100% recycled;" offering that I enjoy speaking to a live human I can look in the eye and with whom I can make human contact, when she expressed the idea that "most people don't like to come into the store to shop; they like buying on the internet."

Setting aside the fact that the preceding is an awfully long run-on sentence, my colleagues at Open Media Boston (and a good chunk of the under 30 population) think I'm a Luddite because I refuse to Facebook and Twitter. I do all my audio editing on a computer, blog, text on my cell phone (somewhat reluctantly - ask my wife), instant message, and post to the website, but to some people that's not good enough.

No, I'm required to surf and search, google and bing, and hunt down my quarry (in this case a tri-color cartridge for an HP deskjet printer) like a leopard caught between the cross hairs of a Browning A-Bolt. (ok, I admit, I googled "big game hunting rifles." Hey, I never said it wasn't cool to have a library sitting on your desk!)

Who are all these virtual people, buying notebooks, blotters, office furniture, and paper clips, sight unseen, off the web? Are they chained to their desks?

Or are they at best shy and at worst misanthropic; so much so that the thought of being in proximity of other shoppers makes them cringe like a liberal at a Republican candidate's pledge for "no new taxes."

I have to admit: what the clerk said the other day can be observationally verified. A new mega-chain office supply store opened in Roslindale earlier this year, and the place is a mausoleum. Two city blocks wide and deep, there's hardly anyone shopping there. Not enough staff either. But how can you blame the corporate owners for keeping the workforce low, given the diminshing traffic of shoppers? What this accomplishes, of course, is an ever-widening spiral of low expectations on the part of consumers, stressed out workers, and capitalists who continue to live for the moment instead of thinking of the long-term ramifications on communities.

But I digress.

What a I wanted to say is that I like going to a brick and mortar stores with shelves and cash registers and (hopefully) customer-service minded employees and other citizens. I always try to engage people in conversation especially those that look like no one has spoken to them for ages without criticizing their work performance or the supper they burned last night or denied them insurance money for a pre-existing medical condition.

A little joke here, a nod of agreement between folks when some other customer embarrasses themselves with a silly question or complaint there...this is all missing from the internet buying experience. Convenient sure; but totally devoid of community.

Now don't go reminding me that I was in the store to begin with to buy stuff to feed the computer beast.

Life, like politics in Massachusetts, is messy.

Jason's Favorite Photos - Week of 7/26/09 (plus 7/27)

2009-07-30T00:51:00.005-04:00

Here are my latest favorite pics. I actually didn't shoot that many last week; so I ended up adding a couple from Monday just to round things out a bit. I like the first three a bit more than the second two. I like the light towards sunset ... especially in the summer - although watching Boston's retail economy fall apart ... capitalist or not ... is pretty painful as storefront after storefront is covered in brown paper. Not a good sign.

Aveda No More

Summer Dusk

Summer Dusk #2

What Shall We Call This? Hmm ...

2192

Unless otherwise noted, all photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Jason's Favorite Photos - Week of 7/19/09

2009-07-21T02:49:00.004-04:00

Hi again! Here are my latest favorite pics. I found this week's shoots especially challenging because of a lot of interplay of light and shadow on the bright days we've been having lately - and some indoor work, which can be tough.

Tunnel and Sky

The rest of this set I think could have been better, but I think they're close to being good shots ... the bird shot was particularly tricky because I was standing in the middle of the street trying not to freak it out ...

Cambridge University Storage

Baker at Hi-Rise Bakery

Cousin at Family Reunion

Dodgeball at Family Reunion

Robin on Fence

Unless otherwise noted, all photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Jason's Favorite Photos - Week of 7/12/09

2009-07-13T01:30:00.013-04:00

Hi folks! Here's another batch of my photos for your comment/critique. I chose them either for technical merits or because I find them interesting in one way or another. In coming weeks, I'm planning to scan in some of the film photography I'm doing. For example, this past weekend I was shooting the near-infrared Ilford SFX 200 black-and-white film on my old Pentax ME Super. Can't wait to see what those pics look like.
[Note: Click photos to see them displayed at full size.]

Window Pots

Antique Window

Friend at Party ... Late Night, Dim Light
(shot handheld at low speed, high ISO, and
wide-open aperature - which generally doesn't
work very well - I did a corrected version, but
I like the feel of this picture as shot ...)

Man Through Fountain
(using Phoenix/Samyang 500 mm f/8 super-telephoto
reflector lens on a monopod from around 150 ft. away - not
a great shot by any means, but I'm surprised I got it on a low-end
older film lens without a tripod)

Unless otherwise noted, all photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Jason's Favorite Photos 7/4/09-7/5/09

2009-07-06T22:06:00.010-04:00

I do a lot of photography every week that never gets seen by anyone; so I thought it would fun to start to post some of my favorites to this blog. I figure it might also encourage me to start posting more extracurricular writing here as well. I've been a very naughty editor/publisher - setting up this nice blog like 3 months ago and hardly using it at all. D'oh! Anyhow here are some pics for your enjoyment (or constructive critique ...). [Note: Click photos to see them displayed at full size.]

Boston Fireworks 7/4/2009 #1

Boston Fireworks 7/4/2009 #2

Boston Fireworks 7/4/2009 #3

Cambridge Building Reflection

Ladybug Shadow (at a North End Cemetery)

All photos shot on a Pentax K200D and a Tamron 18-200 mm telephoto lens with a Marumi 62 mm sky filter. This blog post and all photos are published under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2009 Jason Pramas.

Steve Jobs Reportedly Felting Better

2009-06-05T23:54:00.004-04:00

As a socially responsible nerd, I consider it part of my duties to find cool software and share it with you all, uncover big business' security lapses, and help friends and family out with their personal computing problems. It was in this last capacity that I found myself spending a few days remote accessing a computer that belonged to the parents of an old and close friend, reinstalling software, replacing lost (but fortunately backed up) files, and setting up a security plan after Dell's stellar, one-size-fits-all-problems advice to simply reformat and reinstall Windows.

Knowing I spent a lot of time on their computer, they tried to compensate me, but I refused (as any self-respecting nerd would, for friends). A week and a couple problems later, though, I decided I could reasonably ask for a favor in return. My friend's mother, Marguerite, produces the most exquisite needle felted dolls and I've been dying to ask her to make one for me for ages.

Although she had never felted the realistic likeness of a human before, Marguerite took on the task of felting me a beautiful Steve Jobs doll from this well-known portrait of him. And boy, was it a task. Marguerite told me, "Steve took me 50 hours, 30 of which were spent on his face. Roland [in the first photo above] took me about 17 hours, so much less because I didn't need to make him look like anyone specific. I could more or less go with whatever he turned out to be." All that time certainly shows in these photos. Thanks, Marguerite!

View more of Marguerite's felting.

Stepping Up and Out

2009-06-04T08:14:00.008-04:00

Yesterday, Jeanne and I attended a graduation-like ceremony for our son Benjamin - a junior at Fenway High School. The event, called "Stepping Up," took place in the Tower Auditorium at MASS College of Art. His class consists of about 70 kids so the size of the room seemed just right.

As is the tradition at this 25 year old Boston pilot school, graduating seniors line up opposite their junior colleagues, offer a bit of advice, and hand them a candle. It's a torch passing ritual that harkens back thousands of years. Because modern fire codes don't allow for lit torches in college auditoriums, the students used battery driven candles.

The senior's advice centered mostly on "working hard" and "being yourself." Juniors were warned to meet their senior project deadlines as early as possible. "Uh oh," I thought, my family has turned procrastination into an art form.

I was impressed by one student who quoted Leonard Peltier: "You don't have to be perfect to be holy..."

For a while now, I've been impressed also by Ben's ability to maintain his individuality and ideals in a culture that prizes - and often demands - conformity and obedience. It's not just the mohawk and earings; the kid has progressive values. I suppose his parents have something to do with that.

Roots and wings. That's what we give our children. The skills to fly the nest AND the keys to the condo, just in case.

We've also talked about not feeding him so he won't grow so big, but it's too late. He's reached six feet tall already and can look straight into my eyes. And when I look, I see me and my father and Ben's grandfather in there. Weird, huh? (Ed. Uh, that's the same person twice. I think he meant his grandfather, not Ben's.)

Best of luck to the rest of the graduating classes and the soon to be seniors, all of whom are going to have to re-evaluate their ties to corporate America and its wasteful, destructive appetite.

And start behaving as though community and kinship means something more than who's on the MySpace/FaceBook friend's list.

Love & Hate

2009-04-01T00:51:00.005-04:00

I am tired of working, but not sleepy. Damn my wrecked sleeping schedule. As I finish the night's tasks, I reflect on what I recently discovered and have started to love:

Mike Milosh
Dropbox (full review in OMB's tech section this Friday)
Homemade bread
Milagro Tequila (didn't know you needed to be 21 to view images of alcohol)
Twitter's new AJAX-ified "more" button

...And things I have started to hate:

Favicons (why aren't you working, you little .ico bugger?)
April 15th
Being unable to complain about how bad Battlestar Galactica has gotten

How was your Tuesday?

On the (Sometimes) Unbearable Weirdness of Reporting

2009-03-30T23:35:00.016-04:00

Sometimes as a journalist, you go to events and your plans to cover them just don't work out. Yesterday was one of those times. I went over to the Pierre Menard Gallery - a very nice and rather public-spirited Cambridge art gallery that I have been to on a few occasions - to record a sort of minimally-advertised "conversation" between feminist icons Kate Millett and Catherine MacKinnon that I found out about by the old-fashioned method of seeing a flyer on a lamp post.

So I got there and there were about 25 people spiraling around towards some folding chairs set up in the front of the gallery space - the kind of nicely-dressed bohemian academics and artists that one comes to expect to see at these sorts of things. In the back were Millett and MacKinnon, who were just arranging themselves in their seats. Millett was fiddling with an old tape recorder and seemed a bit preoccupied with it, but MacKinnon was more or less unoccupied. I went up and introduced myself to both of them and and said I would be recording the event for Open Media Boston.

Even though I had just seen a guy from WMBR introduce himself and set up a recorder next to MacKinnon, she seemed a bit taken aback by my statement, and we chatted about creator rights for a couple of minutes. I explained that if they didn't want me to record I didn't have to, and that I'm active in the National Writers Union and quite understanding of the need for people to control their own work. MacKinnon, for her part, sort of argued with herself - recognizing that it was a public event, and that I technically had the right to record them for broadcast. The event moved towards getting started; so we never really finished the conversation.

German artist Heide Hatry, who was curating the exhibit of Millett's artwork that was the reason for her conversation with MacKinnon, got things started shortly after helping convince Millett that she was recording the event on video and would get Millett a copy, and that there was therefore no need for continuing to try to coax life into the old tape recorder.

So I started recording - not sure if I'd be using it or not for anyone other than myself - and taking photos. And the hour that followed unwound strangely. Millett alternately engaged and attacked the audience with a series of near non-sequiturs and rambling anecdotes. Having just written a piece about the Battlestar Galactica finale, Millett reminded me of no character so much as one of the Hybrids in that TV series - half-human, half-machine oracles that spouted seemingly nonsensical bursts of verbiage that occasionally focused like lasers into incredibly useful insights into the nature of existence and the universe.

Unfortunately, the purpose of the conversation was to have MacKinnon lead a guided theoretical exploration of Millett's artwork - which seemed to be the one subject that Millett had no intention of talking about.

Around 45 minutes into Millett's dialogue/diatribe on subjects as diverse as laws against second-hand smoke (which she opposed), the subordinate position of women in Iran (which she also opposed), her dad and mom (both of whom she seemed to like), her desire for a Viking funeral (which I vocally agreed with), and the war in Iraq (which she was against), Hatry finally said in a level but firm tone that Millett needed to answer MacKinnon's inquiries in one sentence before launching into verbal flights of fancy. Millett basically assented, and gave a more or less straight answer to one of MacKinnon's last questions - with some interlocutory help from MacKinnon and Hatry. And then they wrapped up the talk a few minutes later.

I waited for about 5 minutes near MacKinnon to try to talk to her again and finish figuring out if she cared about my running the audio recording I'd made in Open Media Boston. But MacKinnon was surrounded by 3 women who seemed to be Harvard students - and it became clear they'd be talking for a while. So I went over to the gallery owner, gave him my card, asked him to put me on his press list, and split.

Upon leaving, I mused about all the things I dislike about such events. The speakers and the curator and the owner were all fine - however odd the conversation. But the rarified "Art" with a capital A environment is always difficult for me on a class level. I mean it's hard to know people's class backgrounds in that kind of scene, yet it's a pretty sure bet that a lot of them come from money and/or privilege of various types. In that vein, the idea that I had to even discuss rights issues as a poor reporter (from the kind of working-class striving to middle class family background that I share with the vast majority of Americans) from a poor non-profit publication with a tenured professor from a powerful family with a bunch of successful books made me kind of sad. And was kind of representative of the feelings I get in crowds of such people.

Then I spent the past day dithering about whether I should run the audio after all. And finally, after discussing the matter with my wife (a feminist activist herself) and a couple of friends, I decided it would probably be a disservice to Millett to run the audio and that I didn't want to inadvertently disrespect MacKinnon. So I just bagged it.

There's no special moral here. Just another day in the life of a turn-of-the-millennium journalist dealing with famous and rich people in the rarefied air of one of the world's intellectual powerhouses. Just another choice about what to cover - up or down, move on to the next person/event/demonstration/whatever, and try to tell the truth or something like it to whomever is interested to hear. But thanks to the invention of blogs like this one - I get the luxury of discussing my otherwise internal process with a random audience. Which is nice because then I can get it out of my head, into print, and move on to the next story. Kind of like life that way, when all is said and done.

OMB Editor/Publisher Proclaims Self "Lord of the Battlestar Galactica Geeks"

2009-03-24T14:04:00.013-04:00

SPOILER ALERT: Any Battlestar Galactica geeks who haven't seen the series finale yet should read no further ...

But for all other fans ... you may begin setting shrines up to me now (preferably made of sweet sweet candy) ... for I now anoint myself "Lord of the Battlestar Galactica Geeks!"*

Why, you may ask, would the mild-mannered editor (kinda) of a major (minor) metropolitan newspaper (news site) say such a thing?

Simple. I correctly predicted how the series would end - saying that since the new BG has followed the story arc of the old BG more closely than most people realize it only stood to reason that we'd see the appearance of "higher powers" in the show before its conclusion.

You can read my two comments yourself toward the bottom of the comments to this article ... and note the dates of the comments are currently listed as "9 weeks ago" - just after the original piece was published on 1/18/09

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/01/18/tv-review-battlestar-galactica-season-45-premiere-what-did-you-think/

Or check out screenshots of my comments here

http://screencast.com/t/vsL4ppUas

and here

http://screencast.com/t/py0bnAiJ

Now I didn't predict the exact ending - that is, I didn't realize that they'd actually make the conclusion of the last episode match the statements of the opening lines of the original series fairly closely: "There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens ..."

So maybe you all will have to build slightly smaller shrines to me given that fact.

But I'm feeling pretty smug nonetheless.

Kidding aside, I might go to the trouble of reviewing the last episode in the Open Media Boston Arts section because I actually think the producers kind of screwed the pooch - even though the last hour featured some of the most powerful dramatic moments in TV history.

*DISCLAIMER: May not be the actual Lord of the BG Geeks. Arena battle with other contenders to the throne TBA.

Renting Makes a Comeback

2009-03-23T14:34:00.006-04:00

For years my wife and I have dreaded getting grilled by well-meaning relatives at family events with the same blunt question "when are you going to buy a house?" (naturally, the question "when are you going to have a baby?" always comes close on its heels).

But a nice piece by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in yesterday's Boston Globe shows that the financial crisis is causing many economists to join forces with progressives like myself that have been saying for years "what's so great about owning a house anyway?" Looks like there's some data coming in to back the usual retorts my spouse and I would level against the relatives (including amusing/sad data showing that people who own houses weigh 12 pounds more than those of us who don't on average).

What the piece misses though is a focus on vastly increasing government spending on public rental units. Renting will become a more attractive option to the extent it is decoupled from the private market ... and the extent to which more, better and more reasonably priced rental units are made available ...

I think pushing for more public money for public housing - together with instituting rent control and other needed housing regulations - is an important way to break the weakening stranglehold of a market mentality on those millions of us for whom markets like the housing market simply don't work. So it's worth having much more public discussion and debate on this issue on that merit alone.

Welcome to the New OMB Blog

2009-03-22T16:46:00.009-04:00

For a while now, the other OMB editors and I have been dissatisfied with our initial blog solution on the main OMB website. It required us all to log into the same account, and we're not thrilled with the blog interface in Drupal out-of-the-box. We found ourselves mostly not making much use of it - which has been a drag because we all have the impulse to whip off a paragraph or two about stuff on our minds on an ongoing basis.

So we decided to just move our blog over to Blogger, but to host it on our own server on a subdomain of our main site. This is good for a variety of reasons, but one of the best is that it makes this blog part of a huge blog social network ... and that network is part of Google's Borg-like complex of annoyingly useful and responsive web tools (annoying because they're a huge corporation and we're a bunch of left-wingers).

This makes it possible for us to invite some of our friends to easily join in this effort with us and make this blog a much more lively place than it has been heretofore. Plus people with any kind of Google or OpenID account will be able to post here; so the discussions will be a bit more uninhibited than they are on our main site.

OMB viewers should check this blog out frequently, and chime in regularly. We expect we'll have a good bit of fun with this offshoot of our main project.

Enjoy!