Category: Media

Names, faces and anonymous comments

Click on image to visit "Greater Boston"

Have we reached the final days for anonymous news-site commenters? Probably not — that’s more hope than reality. But there’s no doubt the tide is shifting away from the anonymous and pseudonymous insults, libel and hate speech that comprise the majority of comments at news sites.

This past Sunday, the Boston Globe Magazine posted a feature by Neil Swidey on the anonymous commenters who waste electrons on the Globe’s website, Boston.com. Except that Swidey didn’t quite succeed. The truly anonymous whackos with whom he hoped to connect refused to crawl out from under their rocks. Instead, he ended up with a highly entertaining profile of two men who didn’t mind revealing their identities and to a female Red Sox fan who all but identified herself. Swidey writes of his quest to interview the worst of the worst:

[H]ere are the people I didn’t hear back from: the screamers, troublemakers, and trolls (Internet slang for people behind inflammatory posts). Not a single one. The loudest, most aggressive voices grew mum when asked to explain themselves, to engage in an actual discussion. The trolls appear to prize their anonymity more than anyone else.

The story is accompanied by a video starring the two men. Also, last night Swidey talked about the story with “Greater Boston” host Emily Rooney on WGBH-TV (Channel 2). I couldn’t find a direct link, but you’ll find it easily enough if you click here or on the image above.

For much of the year, the news business has been growing increasingly uneasy over anonymous comments. Swidey himself discusses some of the problems — legal challenges that could force news organizations to help potential libel plaintiffs expose commenters they want to sue, and the bizarre situation at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which outed a judge who had apparently been commenting on her own cases under a pseudonym. (For what it’s worth, Media Nation started requiring real names earlier this year.)

As Rooney points out in her interview with Swidey, just yesterday the Buffalo News announced that it would soon banish anonymous comments. And American Journalism Review editor Rem Rieder has called for an end to anonymity, pointing out that the same newspapers that allow them customarily ban anonymous letters to the editor and do not allow unnamed sources to level personal attacks. Rieder writes:

Comments sections are often packed with profanity and vicious personal attacks. The opportunity to launch brutal assaults from the safety of a computer without attaching a name does wonders for the bravery levels of the angry.

One alternative, which I’ve mentioned before, is to use Facebook as a commenting system. Nearly everyone on Facebook uses his or her real name, usually accompanied by a photo. The Globe itself is among newspapers that posts links to some of its stories on Facebook, where you will find a far more civil conversation than what’s on Boston.com.

Anonymous commenting is an idea whose time has come and gone. Whatever hopes early Internet visionaries had that anonymity could be compatible with community have long since proven to be wrong. I hope Swidey’s story serves as an inadvertent spur to the Globe — and to other news organizations — to end this failed experiment.

Sarah Palin’s disgraceful tweet

The last thing I thought I’d be writing about this morning was Sarah Palin. But there are times that the former Alaska governor is so out of touch with reality, and so self-righteously obnoxious about it, that she needs to be called out.

Here’s why. On Sunday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on ABC News’ “This Week.” As you might expect, Emanuel had some fun at the expense of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who had apologized to BP chief executive Tony Hayward for the $20 billion “shakedown” to which President Obama had subjected his poor, suffering company. Republican leaders later forced Barton to apologize for his apology.

Emanuel told “This Week” host Jake Tapper that Barton, far from being an outlier, was expressing mainstream Republican thought:

That’s not a political gaffe, those are prepared remarks. That is a philosophy. That is an approach to what they see. They see the aggrieved party here as BP, not the fishermen.

Fair? Good lord, yes. Because even before Barton planted his foot firmly in his mouth, the Republican Study Committee, comprising 115 House members (about two-thirds of all House Republicans), had referred to the fund as “Chicago-style shakedown politics,” as Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and many others have pointed out. (Here is the committee’s full statement.)

In other words, you will not find a stronger case of a politician’s nutty utterance being tied to the clearly expressed views of his party.

Which is where Sarah Palin comes in. Here is what she wrote on her Twitter feed:

RahmEmanuel= as shallow/narrowminded/political/irresponsible as they come,to falsely claim Barton’s BP comment is “GOP philosophy”Rahm,u lie

What Emanuel said on Sunday, based on anyone’s reading of the evidence, was as fair and as true as anything he has ever said. And Sarah Palin is a disgrace.

WBUR wins $250,000 Knight News Challenge grant

John Davidow

Congratulations to WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) and John Davidow, the executive editor of WBUR.org, who won a $250,000 Knight News Challenge grant to experiment with how digital tools should be used to cover trials and other court proceedings.

Davidow tells Laura McGann of the Nieman Journalism Lab that Quincy District Court will be used as a model to come up with a consistent set of guidelines that will foster greater openness.

Issues to be dealt with include whether and under what circumstances citizen journalists can live-blog a trial, and if one of the parties may post to Twitter in real time — as former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, who faces federal corruption charges, wanted to do. Davidow tells McGann:

The courts have sort of gone further and further way from the public and public access. In the old days, they were built in the center of town. The community was able to walk into the courts and see what was going on. Modern life has done away with that. The bridge that was going in between the courts and the public was the media. The media has just less resources.

Davidow’s was one of 12 projects that will receive $2.74 million in the coming year. The others range from ideas to crowdsource the funding of public radio stories to various efforts aimed at melding mapping and gaming features with news presentations. Here is the complete list.

The Boston Globe, too. The Knight folks have announced that the Globe will receive a contract for more than $130,000 to develop and test a widget based on EveryBlock, an automated, hyperlocal aggregation platform, as part of a $450,000 program called OpenBlock.

Carly Carioli named editor of the Boston Phoenix

A little more than a month after a shake-up on the business side, the Phoenix Media/Communications Group (PM/CG) has announced some major changes in the newsroom. The most significant: Carly Carioli is the new editor of the Boston Phoenix, replacing Lance Gould. Carioli had been editor of thephoenix.com, which will now be integrated with the rest of the company’s media properties.

Carly tells me he’ll be running the three Phoenix newspapers (Boston, Providence and Portland) and the biweekly glossy magazine Stuff, and will have some responsibilities at WFNX Radio (101.7 FM) as well. He’ll work alongside Peter Kadzis, who moved up from editor of the Phoenix to executive editor of PM/CG in 2006.

Most readers of Media Nation know that I was on staff at the Phoenix from 1991 to 2005, and that I continue to be a member of the extended Phoenix family. So consider this a personal note. I care about what happens at the Phoenix.

Gould came to the paper after I left, but I have worked with him on several stories during the past few years — including just a few days ago. He’s a good editor and a good guy, and I’m sorry that he’s leaving. Kadzis, in a statement, describes the reason for the change this way:

The changes we are making will not save any money. This is about rethinking and re-engineering how we deliver content to our audience — or, I should say, audiences: we have readers devoted to the printed paper, we have users who use nothing but online, we have our audience of WFNX listeners and we have people we are trying to engage via mobile. Our future sits with fashioning these groups into a coherent audience. Not every editor, or every executive, has the skill to help move this forward.

Carioli, now 37, is a rising star both at the Phoenix and on the Boston media scene, and I’m glad he’s getting a greater opportunity to show what he can do. He’s highly regarded in local music circles, and he knows a lot about news — and journalism — as well. He reminded me today that I was among the first people at the Phoenix to urge him to jump onto the management ladder.

Carly has been a leader in figuring out how to bring print, online and social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare together. He started at the Phoenix as an intern in 1993 and joined the staff in 1994. His first job at the paper was the all-important but thankless task of putting together the listings section. His goal as editor, he says, is to reinvent what an alternative news weekly can be in an era when the very term sounds like an anachronism.

“Alternative is what your dad listened to in college, news is what Jon Stewart talks about and weekly is way too long to wait to get what’s going on out in the world,” he says.

Also announced today is the hiring of a new music editor, Michael Marotta, and a new staff writer, Eugenia Williamson. Their backgrounds are described in the press release below. Also, Ashley Rigazio, the online listings coordinator, becomes events editor for the combined print/online operation.

These days, every newspaper faces financial challenges. A year ago, the New York Times Co. was threatening to shut the Boston Globe. The Phoenix, too, is a lot thinner than it used to be. My conversations with friends at the company, though, leave me convinced that they’re in this for the long haul. And I would never bet against owner and publisher Stephen Mindich, one of the smartest, toughest people in the business.

What follows is a statement from PMCG president Brad Mindich and an e-mail to the troops from Carioli.

BOSTON PHOENIX NAMES NEW EDITOR

Web chief Carly Carioli tapped to helm both online and editorial

Move will maximize alent and resources, says PM/CG Executive Editor Peter Kadzis

PM/CG President Brad Mindich sees Phoenix content flowing across multiple platforms: online, in paper, mobile, and radio

New music editor and staff writer also announced

Carly Carioli, who began work at the Boston Phoenix 17 years ago as a music critic, today was named editor of the award-winning weekly.

For the last four years, Carioli, 37, has been Online Editor, responsible for operations and content of the Boston, Providence, and Portland newspapers, WFNX radio, and Stuff magazine.

During Carioli’s tenure, the Phoenix website, thephoenix.com, was named Best Website by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN). In 2009, the New England Press Association awarded the Phoenix its top “convergence” award, for the best storytelling across print and web.

Carioli’s appointment is part of an internal editorial reorganization. Phoenix Online, which had been a free-standing department, is being folded back into the newspaper. As editor of the Boston Phoenix, Carioli will integrate and direct both the online and the editorial staff.

In a first move in that direction, Carioli named Ashley Rigazio, an online listings coordinator, to become Events Editor for the newly combined web and in-paper Arts and Entertainment operation.

Earlier in the day, two new hires were also announced:

Michael Marotta, a music writer from the Boston Herald, will become Phoenix Music Editor, replacing Michael Brodeur, who left the Phoenix for the Boston Globe. And joining the Phoenix as a staff writer will be Eugenia Williamson, a freelance contributor to the Phoenix and the Sunday Globe. Williamson has previously written for Time Out Chicago, Stop Smiling, Venus Zine, and McSweeney’s.

Carioli replaces Lance Gould, who has served as editor of the Boston Phoenix for the last two years.

In his tenure as Online Editor, Carioli oversaw the launch of staff blogs for music, pop culture, film, and politics. He also oversaw the re-launch of thephoenix.com and re-designs of both stuffboston.com and wfnx.com; the launch of thephoenix.tv, the Phoenix’s first online-video venuture, which features exclusive performances by Massachusetts-based musicians from Thurston Moore to Converge; and a podcast that partners with local bookstores, museums, and cultural institutions to record longform readings and talks by the likes of Al Gore, Ozzy Osbourne, Cornel West, and John Irving, to name but a few. For WFNX’s 2009 Best Music Poll and the 2010 SXSW music festival, he oversaw online coverage including live video, mobile blogging, and real-time Twitter updates, as well as traditional reporting that was later re-used in print. He was a panelist at 2010’s South By Southwest Interactive conference on the future of alternative weeklies.

Carioli’s music writing has been anthologized in “The Best Music Writing,” edited by Nick Hornby and published by DeCapo.

Carioli was born and raised in Philadelphia. He studied journalism at Boston University. He is married and has two young daughters.

Of Carioli’s appointment, PM/CG President Brad Mindich said, “Carly will be responsible for unifying our content across platforms: print, online, radio and mobile. This is the future — especially for our forward thinking, educated, and on-the-go audience. It’s critical that our readers, users, and listeners interact with our content in whichever way is best for them.”

PM/CG Executive Editor Peter Kadzis said, “As a music critic, as an editor, and as the architect of the Phoenix’s online growth, Carly has for more than ten years lived his professional life at the intersection of technology and popular culture. For a paper like the Phoenix, that’s the ultimate sweet spot.

“What once were considered challenging circumstances have now become standard operating conditions. But all Phoenix media are heading into the summer on an extremely strong footing. Carly’s appointment together with two new hires is an unmistakable expression of the Mindich family’s commitment to strong journalistic values and the vibrant journalism that results,” said Kadzis .

The Phoenix Media/Communications Group is a private, family-owned business, which began in 1966 as Boston After Dark, a four-page arts-and-entertainment weekly. Today the Boston, Providence, and Portland (Maine) Phoenix newspapers cover a wide range of subjects from politics to the arts to lifestyle.

Below are the contents of an e-mail Carioli wrote and sent to subscribers of thephoenix.com’s various e-mails. It should give you a flavor of what his leadership style will likely be:

From Carly Carioli

Carly Carioli here. As of a few hours ago, I’m the new editor of the Boston Phoenix. Feel free to drop me a line: I’m @carlycarioli on Twitter, or shoot me an e-mail at editor@phx.com.

If you didn’t already know and love the Phoenix, you wouldn’t be getting this e-mail. Whether you signed up for our free sneak-preview movie screenings, or to get the first word on this week’s Phoenix headlines, I want to thank you for supporting local, progressive, independent journalism. I came to the Phoenix over 15 years ago and never left, because I believed — and continue to believe — in what the Phoenix stands for: writing that’s passionate, skeptical, intellectually curious, unconventional, and engaged with its readers.

I’ve been thrilled to write for and edit a newspaper where some of my early heroes got their start: Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Susan Orlean, writers who were by turns innovative, irreverent, and irascible. (Thanks to a new partnership, you’ll soon be able to read all 40-plus years of our back issues — right down to the vintage concert ads — through Google’s News Archive project.)

It’s even more thrilling to be editing today’s Phoenix, because this is our moment: the mainstream media is crumbling, corporate boardrooms are losing their choke-hold on popular culture, and new technologies are empowering all of us to be more creative and to build stronger communities. This isn’t the apocalypse; this is the promised land. Our readers have always been early-adopters and forward-thinkers. Unlike other media companies, we don’t think our readers are competing with us. We think you’re one of us. And we’re excited about what we can create together.

If you haven’t checked in with us lately, I urge you to take another look — and to tell us what you like as well as what you don’t. I think you’ll find a voice that rings true. It’s David Bernstein’s nationally recognized political coverage (not to mention his must-read Twitter feed) and Chris Faraone’s gutsy, street-smart reporting. In a city that has pillaged its arts coverage, we’ve got Peter Keough, Boston’s toughest film critic, and Jon Garelick’s award-winning jazz writing. There’s also former Something Awful columnist David Thorpe’s brilliant skewering of the music industry, erstwhile Rolling Stone correspondent Matt Taibbi’s sports-crime blotter, and Maddy Myers’s flame-war-inducing feminist video-gaming critiques. And stay tuned: we’ve got some fantastic new talent coming on board.

We know you’re busy, so for those of you who spend all day on Facebook and Twitter, follow or friend us to stay in touch. See you on the internets.

Best,
Carly

A political speech that fell short

I wasn’t sure why President Obama decided to deliver his first Oval Office speech on the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I’m even less sure now. If he had been in the habit of giving regular White House news conferences, this would have been an ideal occasion for him to make a 10-minute statement and take questions. Instead, he raised expectations and failed to meet them. It was an entirely political speech, driven by perceived political need.

Understand that I’m talking about rhetoric, not reality. In fact, I don’t have a huge problem with the way the federal government has responded for two simple reasons: It didn’t cause the explosion, and it can’t stop the gusher. Those are the facts. Everything else pales in importance.

I’ll be rounding up media reaction for the Guardian tomorrow morning. No doubt the right will hammer him. Based on the initial reaction of Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman on MSNBC, it looks like liberals are going to hammer him as well. It’s going to be an interesting morning.

Go Celtics!

Last call for Clark Hoyt

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt signed off Sunday after three years as head of the paper’s internal-affairs division.

I thought he generally did a good job. Though he was less stylish and controversial than the first public editor, Daniel Okrent, he was always serious and thoughtful. He also re-established the importance of the job after his predecessor, Byron Calame, let it slide toward irrelevance.

Hoyt points to the Times’ shameful, unsupported 2008 report that then-presidential candidate John McCain may have had an affair with a lobbyist some years earlier as his “disagreement of greatest consequence” with executive editor Bill Keller. I would also point to it as his most significant contribution.

Hoyt’s departure also gives me an opportunity to link again to this fine profile by David McKay Wilson, a classmate of mine at Northeastern during the 1970s.

Free speech in Kazakhstan: An update

The campaign for freedom of speech in Kazakhstan continues.

Yevgenia Plakhina
Yevgenia Plakhina

In April 2009 I met a remarkable young journalist, Yevgeniya Plakhina, during the Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Using techniques generally associated with the West, such as flash-mobbing, she and her fellow free-speech activists protested restrictions on the Internet then being considered by the Kazakh parliament. Several were arrested, though they were quickly released. (I wrote about the activists for the Guardian and for Media Nation.)

Despite hopes that President Nursultan Nazarbayev would not want to sully Kazakhstan’s image on the eve of assuming the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), he signed the restrictions into law last July.

In early April, Plakhina, now 25, came to Washington to participate in a forum organized by the Open Society Institute in order to talk about freedom of the press in Kazakhstan. She traveled with two colleagues: Vyacheslav Abramov, executive director of the MediaNet International Center for Journalism, and Anastassiya Knauss, who’s with the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights.

Plakhina works for the newspaper Golos Respubliki, which is Russian for “Voice of the Republic.” The paper is the successor to Respublika, where she was working when we met in Almaty. Respublika, she says, was closed following a court order to pay a $400,000 libel judgment to BTA Bank. According to Plakhina, the court found that the offending article caused a deposit outflow of more than $40 billion. “The trial was held with many violations of Kazakh law,” Plakhina says.

She adds that no one in Kazakhstan is willing to print Golos Respubliki because of its opposition to the government. The paper is printed using risograph technology, and is also published on the Web. It has a Facebook and Twitter presence as well. The paper also offers a free e-mail service.

What follows is a transcript of a recent interview I conducted with Plakhina by e-mail. She answered my questions in English; I have have edited her answers slightly for syntax.

Q: You recently visited Washington as part of your campaign against Kazakhstan’s increasingly restrictive laws on Internet use. Could you please explain the current situation in Kazakhstan and what you hoped to accomplish by coming to the United States?

The restrictive Internet law which our campaign, For Free Internet, fought against was signed in July of last year. This law equates all Internet resources, including chats and blogs, with mass media, and allows Kazakh authorities to block certain Web sources upon a court ruling. However, even having legal mechanisms to block the websites, Kazakh authorities do not bother to use them. They just block certain resources containing criticism of the government and President Nazarbayev without filing any lawsuits.

For about a year and a half, the popular blog platform LiveJournal has been blocked within the territory of Kazakhstan. For about half a year, Google’s Blogger.com was also unavailable (today, surprisingly, I opened it). These blogging platforms contain personal pages of opponents of President Nazarbayev. For example, on LiveJournal there is a page maintained by President Nazarbayev’s former son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, who publishes mudslinging information about Kazakh officials and exposes corruption cases. Since the end of April the Respublika Web portal (a joint project of the Kazakh newspaper Golos Respubliki and Russian journalists) and the Golos Respubliki newspaper website are also unavailable. Kazakh authorities are blocking websites to filter important political information.

The law was promised to eliminate pornography and interethnic hatred in the virtual space. But none of this was done. Kazakh authorities created the Center for Computer Incidents, which is supposed to undertake the responsibility of implementing the restrictive law on the Internet. But still there are no visible results of the work of the center. I suppose the law on the Internet can be used in case of presidential or parliamentary elections or during mass demonstrations in Kazakhstan if they take place.

As for my visit to the United States, of course, we are trying to attract the attention of the international community to the violation of human-rights issues in Kazakhstan, especially in the light of Kazakhstan’s chairmanship of the OSCE. Of course, we would like the United States to raise human-rights issues, including problems with freedom of speech, during meetings at all levels with Kazakh authorities. But at the same time we understand that the international community will not solve our problems. Only civil activity, the civil initiative of Kazakhstani citizens, can make a difference. That’s why our campaign, For Free Internet, continues our work. To fight with website blocking, our activists have filed more than 120 lawsuits against the Ministry of Information and Communication for its criminal failure to act while the right of Kazakhstani citizens to obtain and disseminate information is being violated.

Q: How has the Nazarbayev government reacted to your campaign? Have you or your colleagues been arrested? Are you afraid of being arrested?

A: Basically, there is no reaction from the president himself. The biggest attention we get is from the police and the prosecutor’s office, who regularly come to our flash mobs. Our activists were arrested, as you remember, for intending to organize a flash mob. At the end of April 2010, we organized a flash mob in front of the national Internet provider Kazakhtelecom. None of the seven activists was arrested, but two of our activists, Zhanna Baytelova and Irina Mednikova (co-founder of the campaign), were brought to court and accused of participation in an unsanctioned demonstration. Zhanna Baytelova has to pay a $200 fine. Irina Mednikova received only a warning. This is a method which authorities use to prevent people from participating in any civil activity.

We are not afraid of being arrested. We are not doing anything illegal.

Q: Has the political upheaval in Kyrgyzstan led to greater repression in Kazakhstan?

A: Of course. Law-enforcement bodies are trying to prevent any massive gathering of the regime opponents (for example, as happened on May 1). The lower and upper houses of the Kazakh parliament passed a bill that grants Nazarbayev the status of “Leader of the Nation” and exempts him from any liability in accordance with Kazakh law, including criminal liability. After the Kyrgyz events, Kazakh authorities first blocked the forum of Respublika, where Kazakh citizens shared their support with their neighbors. Then they blocked Respublika itself.

Q: Is the military relationship between Kazakhstan and the United States, recently solidified by Presidents Obama and Nazarbayev, popular or unpopular among the Kazakh people? Should the United States change its approach toward Kazakhstan? If so, how?

A: There are rumors that President Obama agreed to carry out the OSCE summit in Astana [the capital of Kazakhstan] in exchange for constructing the U.S. military base in Kazakhstan. But these are only rumors. Kazakh civil society wrote President Obama a letter asking him not to support the idea of holding the summit in Astana because human rights are violated in Kazakhstan.

Of course, the U.S. often criticizes the Kazakh government for violating human rights. After the Kyrgyz events there was lots of criticism of the United States for keeping its military base at Manas, Kyrgyzstan, and of the White House for ignoring human-rights violations in Kyrgyzstan. In future, this may be the case with Kazakhstan.

Q: What are your hopes for Kazakhstan? How would you like to see your country change over the next five to 10 years?

A: Fair elections, a fair judicial system, respect for freedom of speech. These are the principles we want our country to follow not only in five to 10 years but NOW. Unfortunately, we have little hope for that – especially taking into consideration the bill “On Leader of the Nation,” which president is about to sign. Kazakhstan is slowly turning into a monarchy. Our authorities should look at neighboring Kyrgyzstan and avoid their mistakes.

Photo (cc) 2009 by Dan Kennedy.