#redoingmedia

  This week I took a little time out on my DJ show at House of Sound to talk about an observation I made Sunday night while watching the Mars Curiosity rover landing and reading the flood of tweets coming from those I follow. As with anything, there was the typical 140 funnies, the best from Curiosity itself when it tweeted: I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!! #MSL  Apparently science, or in this case a cheeky planet exploring robot, has a sense of humor. :) But my attention on Twitter was caught by a swell of media criticism in the midst of this historic event, that prompted this tweet from me: People griping about not getting timely #nasa news from the news media is like griping about not getting good music from record companies. So I decided to take a quick 8 minutes to discuss my thoughts on this criticism and why I think it holds no merit. First, I discuss NBC and The Olympics(TM). Fat chance that you'll be able to change the financial model of one of the biggest media events that only comes around once every 4 years, and hope to crowd source that coverage. But many other great events like the 3 day Pickathon concert in Happy Valley, Oregon is available to you on a free, high definition quality live stream. You're very very lucky. So lucky in fact, that while you sat in front of your laptop watching the Mars Curiosity rover's successful landing via a live stream video, you chastised your local affiliate TV stations for not airing this top story on the 11 O'Clock News. Why? You already have the story unfolding live in front of you in HD and you're following real-time commentary (even from the rover itself) on Twitter, therefore you're not missing anything from the story that your affiliate has and you don't. Quite the opposite, in fact. You're voting with your eyeballs by watching ustream.tv and their ad roll rather than theirs. If that's a problem for them I'm sure they'll attempt to address it at some point. They are a business after all. We do not live in a time of media scarcity. We have great riches, and more to come. Podcast Monday August 6th 2012 (Right Click to Download)

Backgrounding Sources

Over the weekend, as Japan's nuclear crisis rapidly unfolded in the wake of the Tsunami that damaged critical cooling systems at the Fukushima Daini and Daiichi reactor plants, detailed and accurate reporting of the breaking news was severely lacking online from major news sources in the US. Even though an earthquake is a localized problem, we know that a resulting Tsunami can cause problems across the ocean and any growing nuclear crisis could possibly have health and environmental impact outside the reactor zone. After watching the news of the progress of the Tsunami and it's impact on the Oregon coastline, my attention was quickly drawn to early reports from Fukushima Prefecture. Failure of the power systems used for critical cooling of the reactor cores was cause for grave concern. In simple terms, a typical result of overheating and overpressure in a plant failure would be to release steam into the atmosphere. Depending on the working status of the systems within the reactor at the moment,  such a release could contain byproduct radioactive gasses that travel through the atmosphere causing serious health concerns, which is something that has happened in past accidents. It raises a lot of maybe's and what-if's during this type of serious failure and even though failsafes were in place, it's clear this wasn't a typical operating scenario at Fukushima. So I combed the net for accurate and up to date reports on the problem. Unfortunately, early press conferences from the Japanese government and TEPCO the company that operates the plants, sent a clear message: we have the situation under control. What followed through the weekend were efforts to use seawater to cool the reactors and then explosions and destruction of some the outer buildings that house the nuclear reactors. Clearly the situation wasn't exactly under control as we had been initially told. Now this is a complex crisis with many variables requiring a need for timely and accurate information. If in the worst case situation radioactive gasses would be released into the atmosphere, we need to be fully informed to protect ourselves and loved ones. That's not an overreaction, that's just common sense. Just as a Tsunami evacuation warning makes sense. But we can only rationally act on good and timely information. So what did I see in the US news media this weekend? Simple. A lack of English translations of live Japanese press conferences. A lack of investigative reporting questioning what we were being told about the incident. What did I see instead? A debate about nuclear power (pro and con) and whether or not this crisis merits comparison to the Russian Chernobyl crisis in 1986. Who cares about those issues right now? This week we have a growing problem that might impact the US and certainly is impacting people living in Japan and all we need is good journalism and facts. Although it appears the world media finally woke up and is doing some decent reporting now, here are the resources I've been following since the weekend to try to piece together just exactly what the heck is going on at Fukushima. My go-to twitter news feeds. These guys get it first: http://twitter.com/BreakingNews http://twitter.com/RodrigoEBR A simple Google News search feed: http://news.google.com/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&topic=h&ncl=dZE3K3b1O0gHBXMGdykGvq4_RC67M&scoring=n This guy is the "citizen journalist" hero of this crisis, providing Japanese press coverage summaries and translation when no one else was covering the press conferences and news reports. He is very balanced and hasn't questioned or editorialized the information. KABC radio in Los Angeles has been going to him for reports. His site description says that "Yokoso News is the online website to introduce Japan in English" and "…is an online social media about travel, lifestyle, study and entertainment in Japan" but of course, events have turned Yokoso News into a breaking news source: http://YokosoNews.com http://www.ustream.tv/channel/yokosonews Katz has also provided (or linked) to his live news dashboard. If you speak Japanese, you too can get updates as quickly as he does: http://www.ustwrap.info/multi/nhk-gtv::tbstv::yokosonews I do wish the best to Japan and the Japanese people throughout the world. My heart is with you. Don't forget, you can provide assistance by donating here: https://www.mercycorps.org/donate/japan  

Tuesday night I had the pleasure of attending Public Media Camp at OPB studios. The organization rolled out the red carpet with helpful volunteers and an excellent buffet dinner spread that prompted my first, official event tweet: [caption id="attachment_183" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="PubCampOPB: Plate Full"][/caption] Although there were some key folks missing who have been participating in online media that I wished would have attended, the crowd was a good mix of tech folks, journos and those with a community interest. Several I spoke with knew me and I knew them by way of Twitter and blogs, even though we had never met in person. I always find it awkward to meet people in person who I've followed for a significant time online. I feel like I already know you and don't feel obliged by customary introductions. [caption id="attachment_234" align="aligncenter" width="217" caption="Twitpic by PattiPDX"][/caption] Once everyone had a chance to get fed we sat down in the main television studio, heard the ground rules for an unconference, and then passed the microphone for introductions. OPB's volunteers for the event did an excellent job of getting everyone situated and the unconference planning board updated. I decided to attend the Content and Online Communities in the North side of a large conference room called Appy. Since this was one large room, the conversation competed with the Tech for Reporting/Reporting on Local Tech (their notes here). Our discussion seemed to overlap another that was happening in the studio called Community Engagement. They posted their notes here. My take-away from this conversation is that we all still have a long way to go building healthy online communities within the context of major media sites. It seems like it's a feast or famine proposition: hot topics that lead to negative comments, flame war and moderation, or no comments on a show topic at all. My friend Nate DiNiro made a few good points about Community Managers and implementing a good CMS (Content Management System), but I felt that the problem was less about technology and more about building relationships within your online community. I kept coming back to the many live, in-person events that the Portland web tech community has created and the ongoing Beer and Blog, the Friday night mixer at the Green Dragon that finds a diverse mix of folks that may have already established ties online. Eva Schweber, formerly of tech community hub Cubespace, has written her thoughts on community here. I believe OPB's effort to reach out in person and host this Public Media Camp is a good start in this direction. It also prompted me to post this tweet: [caption id="attachment_203" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="PubCampOPB: Beer and Babble Anyone?"][/caption] During the break I mixed, mingled and said "Hi" to a few folks. I stumbled around, not finding anything of interest to me in the Appy conference room until I saw this tweet: [caption id="attachment_196" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="PubCampOPB: $3.3M !!"][/caption] Now, I don't know about you, but if someone is throwing $3.3M or even sniffing around it well, I want to be in that session. So I crammed into the small Radio conference room with some familiar faces. The conversation seemed to focus on the topic of Bridging Old and New Media which was posted on the wiki. No talk of the $3.3M though, I must have missed it. If someone comes across this funding, shoot me a DM or email, OK? :) As I got caught up on my Gmail/Twitter/Facebooks sitting in the back corner, I was startled into the discussion by a question directed to me and the room looking my way. Ooops! Pay attention in class, Mike! My contribution to this conversation revolved around the community niche content that I produce and the ability to readily produce it on the fly with the amazing production tools and capabilities we now have at our disposal on the web. Add to this recipe of technology a highly participatory community and you can do amazing things on the web in media. An interesting side-note to this, is the two discussions I had that night with broadcasters who are now starting to adopt some of these technologies to broaden their production capabilities. So it was in this cramped conference room that I gave the example of a live remote we produced at the food cart pod on Hawthorne. It was Foursquare Day and we celebrated with a live show at Whiffies, talking about food carts, listening to live music and assisting KPTV with their 10 O'Clock news remote. It's one of the best examples I can think of- dropping into a community event and delivering it live to an online and broadcast audience. As an independent web media producer, I posed two questions to this group: How do I partner with a traditional media outlet, providing them faster and nimble production capabilities? What communities aren't being represented or are underserved in the media and how can I help them? To the first question, my friend Aaron Weiss of KGW talked about broadcast video quality standards but was also quick to point out that after some experimentation, they have embraced Skype for remote interviews. He also said that a news organization will use any quality level of content that would be identified as newsworthy at the time. An example of this would be CNN airing cell phone videos of a terrorist bombing. As our session was coming to a close and we were getting kicked out of the room to make our way downstairs to the wrap-up session, I did get a chance to express my thoughts on funding media on the web directly through in-house, corporate production facilities- the deeper pockets where money does exist. We didn't have time to explore the pros and cons of such a model, because of the time constraints. In the wrap-up session I think one message was shared, that OPB should do this again. The closing thoughts are posted here from Morgan Holm. --How does OPB build a stronger online community? --How do web media producers and bloggers fit in with community and broadcast journalism? --How do we provide a voice to underserved communities? --Where does the money come from to support these efforts? Comments are open.

http://youtu.be/RDpQNwapDj4

I'm happy to announce two exciting developments for me today. First, the launch of this blog! It's been a long time coming and I'm extremely grateful for the WordPress and design help that Cami Kaos is providing to get this thing up and going. There will continue to be layout changes here, so stay tuned. I intend the content to alternate between personal observations and my professional media work. We'll see how that all goes, because like I say: "it's an experiment." Second, is the re-launch tonight of my podcast "Crazy Talk". This too, has been a long time coming. I ended the weekly show in November and expected to revive it sometime in January. Well, with me as you know- better late than never! Both my personal and professional life created obstacles for me to continue this show at the start of 2010. As a little insight into the situation, I privately commented to a friend that I didn't want to see Crazy Talk turn into "Angry Talk". The positive things that I had left to say at the end of 2009 had already been well said over on PDX Sucks, and Betsy Richter launched Redoing Media as a response to the We Make the Media conference. So, Crazy Talk needed a new direction and re-boot, and that's what I've been reflecting on ever since, and I think I'm ready...! Hello 2010! (I'm only five months late...)