Category: Uncategorized

Open Web, closed sites

If you were online in the early 1990s, then today’s New York Times story on MySpace‘s entry into politics will seem familiar. Back then, Prodigy users couldn’t send e-mail to friends on America Online, who in turn were walled off from folks on CompuServe. We were still a few years away from the Internet being expanded so that all online services — and their customers — could talk to each other.

Well, here we go again. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain are just a few of the presidential candidates who have deep, useful Web sites. But apparently that’s no longer enough. Now candidates have to have separate sites on MySpace and Facebook. Up next: Second Life, an alternate-reality site explained last summer by Camille Dodero, then of the Boston Phoenix, now of the Village Voice.

At least MySpace and Facebook are free — it’s not like having to pay monthly subscription fees to Prodigy, AOL and CompuServe in order to stay in touch with all of your online friends. (Not that anyone could actually afford to do that.) But it strikes me that politicians, by setting up shop on such social-networking sites, are moving backwards. The interactivity of the Web is being broken up into chunks. Content on MySpace and Facebook can’t even be Googled. You’ve got to register and log on to each site if you want to keep up.

Here is Obama’s MySpace site; here is his Facebook site. (You can access the MySpace page without an account, although you won’t be able to do anything but look. To view the Facebook page you’ll have to register.) Any reason these couldn’t be integrated into his main site? Of course not. And I honestly don’t think it’s me who’s being the Luddite here. I remember how frustrating the online world could be before everyone was connected. Why are we moving back to the bad old days?

A few months ago Lisa Williams got me to sign up for yet another social-networking site, LinkedIn, which I guess is supposed to be like a Facebook for grownups. I do want to explore it when I get some time, as it seems to have some pretty neat features. Ultimately, though, it’s yet another walled-off community that I’ll need to log on to on a regular basis.

No doubt Hillary, Barack et al. won’t be far behind.

Looking at media ownership

Tonight I’ll be moderating an hour-long panel discussion called “How Media Ownership Affects Content,” part of the “Critical Focus” series on media issues produced by Somerville Community Access Television. The program will be shown live at 8 p.m. in Somerville and Cambridge, and should be webcast here. Joining me will be:

Do credit

A few years ago, when I was working for the Boston Phoenix, I called Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz and suggested he look into why the Boston Globe had run with a story broken by one of my Phoenix colleagues without giving the Phoenix any credit.

I don’t have Kurtz’s exact quote, but this is pretty close: If I investigated every complaint I got about reporters who didn’t think their work had been properly credited, I’d never do anything else.

Indeed, and it’s a line I ended up using myself a few times — including the day that I was simultaneously fielding complaints that the Globe had not credited the Boston Herald, and that the Herald had not credited some other paper. It’s endemic, and there are no generally agreed-upon rules for when you should and when you shouldn’t.

All of which is a long way of saying that Adam Reilly’s treatment of the credit issue in this week’s Phoenix is among the more thoughtful analyses of this sore subject that I’ve seen.

Conflicting accounts

Wouldn’t you think that before Gov. Deval Patrick put forth his latest account of his interactions with federal officials prior to the New Bedford immigration raid, he’d make sure he wouldn’t be immediately contradicted by two members of his own administration? The Globe’s Yvonne Abraham has the details. And the Massachusetts Liberal has a smart, deep take on all this.

“Shift Happens”

One of my students passed this along:

Shift Happens – Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

I don’t know where this is from, nor have I verified the facts contained therein — although it seems that they’re directionally correct, even if a few details could be disputed.

In any case, it’s about six minutes long and well worth watching.

The truth about the New Bedford raid

Two Globe columnists today come up aces today in the ongoing controversy over last week’s immigration raid in New Bedford.

First, Eileen McNamara fills in the details of something that’s been out there from the beginning: that Gov. Deval Patrick was informed of the upcoming raid even before his inauguration, and that Department of Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence was involved in planning at various stages — right down to a phone call he received the night before “to coordinate law enforcement and child protection aspects of the raid.” (Spence, as I’ve observed previously, is the grand master of avoiding blame.) McNamara writes:

So, enough with the breast-beating pretense that the Patrick administration was blindsided by the stealth tactics of shadowy federal immigration officials. This is political grandstanding of the most transparent kind.

Read it all — otherwise you’ll miss the priceless comment from Patrick’s communications director, Nancy Fernandez Mills.

Next up is Jeff Jacoby, with the first of a two-parter that examines the real problem with illegal immigration:

[I]f hundreds of thousands of immigrants come here illegally each year, is it realistic to conclude that we have a massive crime problem for which a ferocious crackdown is the only solution? Perhaps it is the case instead that America’s immigration quotas are simply too low for the world’s most dynamic economy. And perhaps the persistent influx of industrious workers is not a plague to be cursed, but a blessing to be better managed.

Buttressing both McNamara’s and Jacoby’s arguments is a profile by the Globe’s Irene Sege of Barthila Solano, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador whose tenuous family situation has been thrown into chaos following the arrest of her husband, Valencio Salas, last week.

“I don’t understand what harm we’re doing,” Solano tells Sege. “We work so hard.”

Budget cuts for the blind

Best wishes to Diane Patrick. Depression is a serious illness, and the fact that Gov. Patrick felt the need to make such a public announcement suggests that he and his family have been struggling with this for some time.

But while the governor helps his wife recover, let’s not ignore the public’s business. Today, Boston Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis reports that Patrick’s proposed budget would cut $118,000 for Braille and audio books for the blind.

If Patrick promised to do that last fall, I missed it.

Update: Here is Jessica Fargen’s news story on the cuts.

Two for the Globe

Media Nation joins Jon Keller and Adam Reilly in congratulating the Boston Globe for its two (according to Editor & Publisher) Pulitzer Prize nominations. The Globe has reportedly been nominated in Local Reporting for its “Debtor’s Hell” series, on unscrupulous bill collectors, and in National Reporting, for its stories on President Bush’s promiscuous use of presidential signing statements to negate the will of Congress.

Each is an example of public-service journalism at its best, and it’s a demonstration that — for all the angst that has enveloped the newspaper business over rapacious ownership and declining circulation and advertising revenues — large metropolitan dailies like the Globe, as well as national papers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, remain the places where most important journalism gets done.

The “Debtor’s Hell” series was headed up by Walter Robinson, who is now a colleague at Northeastern. The signing-statement story was reported by Charlie Savage.

“Debtor’s Hell” is also a fine example of how the smart use of technology can enhance a story that, no matter how good, would have ended up as day-old fish wrap just a few years ago. The electronic version goes way beyond “shovelware” — that is, print content thrown online with little regard for the Web’s strengths and weaknesses.

The main page offers podcasts, offsite resources and the all-important tip line for follow-ups. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find a message board, audio Q&As, interactive graphics like this, the transcript of an online chat with Robinson and source documents, such as this, filed by Peter Damon, in which he informed bill collectors that he was in the hospital being treated for the loss of both arms in Iraq.

My guess is that the Pulitzer judges will only be looking at the clips. Someday, though, when the winning team is honored, it ought to include the Web producers alongside the reporters, photographers and editors.

The Pulitzer winners will be announced on April 16.