Two major newspapers - dailies that were more than a century old - closed their doors in the past month.

 

Newsrooms face cuts in every state. Reporters are looking for work. So who goes and starts a newspaper in this climate?
American originals like I. Rahim Harris.

 

"It's the crazy people who make the cool things happen," said Harris, the publisher of the new Street Smarts, a monthly newspaper aimed at the urban market in Southern New England.

 

The first edition of Street Smarts – Drugs, Guns and Money - hit the streets at the beginning of April, and Harris said people hungry for his content gobbled the print run of 14,000 copies. Street Smarts is online here.

 

The next edition about sex will arrive in stores and locations across greater Hartford on May 3. Harris bought a van to distribute Street Smarts, but he has no specific list of places where it can be picked up.

 

He has a grand vision for the paper, and in five years, he wants to be able to sell it for millions. To get there, he is teaching himself how to sell ads, and how to write, publish and distribute the paper.

 

I found my copy at Green Apple on Farmington Avenue. After reading it, I was astonished – I wanted to know who on earth, in the middle of a recession, enters into a market that common knowledge seems to say is dying?

 

Harris was waiting for me at Tisane on Farmington Avenue with his business manager Andre. Harris, 28 going on 29, wore a white shirt and a tie. He and I talked for 45 minutes, and his fire is contagious, his tone refreshing and his story almost unbelievable.

 

He comes from a broken family in the original Stowe Village. He dropped out of high school, and rented his first apartment at age 14. He was a runaway, in and out of the juvenile detention centers run by the Department of Children and Families.

 

"Everything was a hustle," Harris said. He doesn't know if he will write an issue about the DCF, but he has no love for the state as a parent.

 

"If it tickles my fancy, I'll write about it," he said. "Those place they put you in made me worse. I learned how to steal cars and how much crack costs in Long Lane."

 

Playing in the street game, Harris sold drugs, and rapped. He took the street name "Shock Da World." The streets were a dead end though.

 

He obtained a GED and joined the Army in 1998, when he was 18. Stationed in Fort Leavenworth, then San Antonio, he got kicked out of the Army when he smacked a white captain who called him a "nigger."

 

More on I. Rahim Harris ...

Melissa Traynor earns $1,800 a semester to serve as the editor-in-chief of the Recorder, the weekly newspaper at Central Connecticut State University (online here).

 

Traynor said she talks daily to her good friend Mark Rowan, the former Recorder editor responsible for such undergrad journalism snafus as publishing an op-ed in praise of rape and printing a cartoon that in three panels glorified racism, pedophilia, and kidnapping.

 

After these issues created a firestorm, Rowan wrote a code of ethics, based, in part, on the one crafted by the New York Times. This is the same Times whose lead national security reporter, Judy Miller, in the run-up to the Iraq war had such a high security clearance that she couldn't share certain information with her editors or readers.

 

Now Traynor's enforcement of the code of ethics has sparked a firing of its own: Traynor axed her op-ed page editor Marissa Blaszko for being a political activist. At a time when the objective model of journalism is crumbling at its very foundations with the collapse of the industry, the Recorder code of ethics prizes objectivity above all else.

 

"The newspaper does not have an official political stance, so political bias should be kept within the appropriate pages dedicated to commentary," Rowan wrote in the code of ethics, printed December 22, 2007. The next sentence prohibits Recorder editors from engaging in any sort of political activism, on or off campus, and indicates that staff members must relinquish all political affiliations prior to joining the paid staff.

 

When Blaszko first started writing at the Recorder in the Spring of 2008, she loved it. She is an art major from Rocky Hill, and she was enthralled by getting out there and reporting. She got into activism during the summer, when she met some folks whose ideas she liked.

 

Before taking the $500 a semester position as op-ed editor last fall, Blaszko said she told Traynor of her affiliation with a political organization, and was hired anyways.

 

"She said it was no big deal," Blaszko said of Traynor. "The advisor [Prof. Vivian Martin] said it was not a big deal. At the beginning of last semester, I gave a full disclosure before I signed on and they said it was fine."

 

Prof. Vivian Martin, one of two professors in Central's growing journalism department, did not return an email or phone calls for comment.

 

Traynor remembers Blaszko's full disclosure as more subdued, as an I-am-treasurer-for-this-organization-and-that's-all kind of thing. But she acknowledged that Blaszko's activities presented no issues at first.

 

More from Editor Melissa Traynor on free speech...

As the for-profit model of news collapses, envisioning and effecting new models of news and information delivery becomes essential, an activity of the highest priority.

 

Educational models hold some promise, and merit consideration. Historically, they have worked to provide communities daily news, like Kurt Vonnegut's high school newspaper, the Echo, served as the local daily newspaper for Indianapolis, Indiana. He was on the Tuesday staff at the Shortridge High School paper.

 

American history holds other models of well-funded newsgathering organizations, such as the political party organ. I'm not certain that this is the answer to our woes, but our nation's past shows that political parties are stable institutions.

 

The dangers here are many. Just as the quest for profit taints the independence of certain news voices, the quest for power could destroy the credibility of a newspaper run by a political party.

 

Yet the idea is hardly far fetched, and the benefits could be great. The Courant at one point was so pro-federalist that Thomas Jefferson sued it. While American newspapers seemingly grew away from their roots political party mouthpieces, other former British colonies maintained a press connected to political power structures. Nothing prevents a resurgence in America towards openly political newsgathering operations.

 

While in the United States we profess that our First Amendment press remains independent, a fourth estate of government, as it were, the clear truth is that both right and left wing press flourish in the mainstream dialogue today, though they may attempt to camoflauge their leanings with labels like "objective."

 

Every news gatherer has a subjective approach. They may try to approach the story with detachment, as the hypothetical reasonable observer who has judged a million tort cases.

 

Those who acknowledge their political bias up front make it easier to process the speaker's message. Knowing that the Waterbury Republican-American comes from a Republican point of view very much tells us what to expect in terms of their opinion, and on some level, their newsgathering philosophy in what deserves coverage.

More on political party organs...

 

Before I write about the fall of the New Britain Herald and the Bristol Press, I must fully disclose that I worked as a freelancer for the Herald in 1997, and worked full-time for its sister paper, the Register-Citizen in Torrington, CT for a year from mid-1997 to mid-1998.

 

When I left the Register, I filed a complaint for unpaid overtime with the federal Department of Labor (because the state D.O.L. promised to take three years to deal with the complaint, while the feds said they could do it in 18 months). We won the lawsuit against the Register.

 

Reporters and photographers, including me, got thousands in backpay, and this prompted a number of other overtime-recovery suits against papers owned by the parent Journal Register Company, whose policy it was to violate federal wage and hour laws.

 

That being said, the fall of the Herald and the Press are easy to understand. The JRC, like its peers, abused the First Amendment as a profit center, paying reporters practically poverty wages. Reporters used the papers for a year or less to get better jobs. Without a stable newsgathering staff, the papers could not sustain connections to the communities.

 

JRC execs were greedy, overextending debt, and buying more properties than it could manage, a direct result of the Reagan-Clinton policies of relaxing rules on media ownership.

 

By 2000, JRC had colonized a significant number of Connecticut media properties, among them the New Haven Register, the Middletown Press, Connecticut Magazine, the Litchfield County Times, the Imprint weeklies in the Farmington Valley, the Shoreline Weeklies and the previously mentioned dailies.

What to do with the closing dailies in Connecticut...

 

Has it really been five years? I remember the immediate dissociation upon hearing the news: "No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no."

 

It's not something I ever imagined I would have to confront - we are immortal, right? Car accidents don't happen to my friends. No no no no. The agony seared, burned, hot iron on pale flesh.

 

The bonds connected then severed. No no no. I don't want to deal with it ever again. But I know death will knock at my door again, taking someone I love.

 

Time heals all wounds, but it can't close massive gaping holes left by the absence of a close confidant. One lesson I have learned: don't ever take a good bye for granted.

 

When I part company with friends, when I'm leaving a bar, a restaurant, or their house, when I'm leaving work, and I say, good-bye, I mean it. I recall what I can when we part ways, as if it were the last time I might see the person.

 

Because if the next time I see them is when they are laying in a casket, I don't want to have left anything undone.

 

So until next time, loyal readers, godspeed and arrive safely.

Link ...

 

WFSB-3 news team, congrats! You've gotten John Rose, Jr., Hartford's Corporation Counsel, to show his true stripes on camera.

 

Not only that, little old blogger me will be on Face the State, Sunday, August 24 on Channel 3 at 11 a.m. Hooray! Dennis House invited myself, Kerri Provost of Real Hartford and Amy Bergquist of the Greater Hartford Real Estate Blog.

 

We talked about violence, poverty and educational issues in Hartford. And we graded Eddie Perez. I gave him an "F."

 

My favorite thing, though, is that Len Besthoff in the above clip reveals that the Perez grand jury investigation has called Kelvin Roldan, state representive and pig at Hartford's taxpayer trough for his cushy job at the school system.

 

Summer, boys, means the heat is on. And in full disclosure about John Rose, Jr., I should note that I am suing the city of Hartford in federal court for that arrest thing last year, and Rose, Jr. is listed as counsel of record on the lawsuit.

Link...

 

Guns, guns, guns. Two stories about guns, with differing results. I completely missed the connection. Lucky thing we have Helder:

While trolling The Hartford Courant's website today for information regarding yesterday's primary results, this was the way their front page was organized. While I was at first shocked by the image of one of the young boys shot during the incidents this past Saturday, I was then outraged at the share stupidity and thoughtlessness of placing a headline about a shooting range's problems next to it! Look, I'm all for the second amendment - even as misappropriated by gun lobbyists. Frankly, guns should be used on a firing range, not on our streets. The powers that be and the media whores can blame the violence on the youth, the police, the drugs, the parents, immigration, unemployment, each other, whatever... the guns in the wrong hands are what injured innocent bystanders. Be realistic and honest about that and deal with that issue if you want to deal with the violence.

Link...

 

T he Wayback Machine at Archive.org has chronicled and saved at least a portion of the online morgue for the Hartford Advocate.

 

Does a term like morgue, a dusty old room where newspaper clips sit catalogued in files by subject, by multiple indexes, fit in new electronic media?

 

The stories I wrote for the Advocate almost 10 years ago still seem relevant to me, but then again, anything I write or have written has relevance to me.

 

Since it is pretty clear Sam "I am your Viagra" Zell won't be resurrecting the Advocate archives anytime soon, let's hope that the folks at Archive.org keep up this global service that can have local impact.

 

Like what exactly was Hartford 10 years ago online and in real life (at least through the eyes of me)?

 

Green Power: 1998 Earth Day feature about the Swedish experiment in closed-loop manufacturing and environmental capitalism - The Natural Step. Their mantra of low hanging fruit has started to take hold. Not the wave we thought it might be...

 

Branded: A look at the brainwashing experiment that is modern marketing. Corollary to today: in this age of global warming, how long is it going to be before we determine that we should not waste precious resources on lighting billboards at night?

 

We must create a market, or limit the market, for the use of media at midnight, when no one is looking anyways. Cut down on light pollution, etc.

 

But I digress, Branded is well-researched, and one of my all-time favorite pieces that I have ever scribbled.

 

Huskymania - A four-story pre-season preview package of the eventual 1999 national champion men's UConn Huskies team.

Cheerleaders or Reporters?: Homers, anyone? Do reporters who cover the UConn basketball beat act like fans and cheerleaders, or are they trying to be objective? Is it a natural tension in sportswriting? A first-person piece.

 

Riding the Pine : A solid narrative about life as a walk-on.

 

Republicans seek Latino Vote: Umm, Obama anyone? And what in the world was I doing writing about GOP attempts to woo minorities. I should have been thinking like Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas?

 

Pot Politics: I couldn't find the Scoop item about Drug Czar Barry McAffrey so angry about the questions I asked him in an interview that White House press secretary and best name ever for a government official Bob Weiner called editor Janet Reynolds to complain.

 

This cover opus is about the fractured Drug Policy Reform movement, circa May 1999. I think it has coalesced much more effectively now.

link...

 

L ife is good. My friend Chill Will from beatbikeblog called me Friday afternoon and said "Hey, I have a pair of tickets to go see Salman Rushdie at 5:30 at the Wallace Stevens Theater at The Hartford. Do you want to go?"

 

Hell, yes. Rushdie is a genius, at least according to State Representative Andrew Fleischman, who we ran into at the Hartford. Rushdie has been in movies, written a song for U2, converted one of his many novels into a play, and survived a fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini.

 

And last night, Rushdie, on his first stop promoting his new book The Enchantress of Florence, was funny, despite his interviewer. Chill Will asked why he never listened to moderator Diane Smith on her morning show on WTIC 1080-AM. That's why, Will.

 

RJ Julia Booksellers out of Madison, highlighting the need forindependent booksellers, teamed up with the Connecticut Forum to bring Rushdie to town.

 

The highlight of the evening: Rushdie told a true tale from Persian history about an emporer who chopped up his enemy from his eastern frontier. He literally sent pieces of the vanquished foe's body across his empire. His servants boiled the skull clean, and encrusted it with jewels and gold. The conqueror drank wine from the skull, and enjoyed it. One day, he got an idea that he would send the skull to the Ottomans, his enemies on his western frontier, to show them how powerful he was, and to remind them of their fate. The Ottomans wanted none of it, and they soon invaded and our skull-cup drinking king met a similar devlish fate.

 

Rushdie simply concluded, "This is the kind of species we are. These are the kind of things that we do to each other."

Link...

 

My four year old niece caught a pigeon in Bryant Park last week. Does anyone know of anyone who has ever captured a pigeon? Witness Auntie Rubi described it thus:

"She refused to let the pigeon go, claiming she won it, she was the fastest, it was too slow and as she had been chasing birds for years this one was her prize to keep. Any attempts to ply her with ice cream and carousel rides, or to appeal to her sense of humanity wouldn’t get her to release the struggling bird from her tiny glorious fist. Threat of bird poop, however, was enough to get her to unhand her victory."

Race humor: Stuff White People Like: Bumper Stickers. Grammar. The Wire. The Ivy League.

 

I'm taking a summer class at QUSL called The American Legal History of Race Relations, taught by CT Superior Court Judge Barry Stevens.

 

This past week, we discussed how the Founding Fathers not just acknowledged but perpetuated and sanctioned slavery with Constitutional protections at the founding of the nation.

 

The first week, we talked about racism. When the political debate in America focuses on racism, it often means many different things to many different people. But if we all agreed on the definition, perhaps we could move forward with the issue.

 

For the record, Random House Unabridged:

Racism: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

Why am I in law school? Not just because I like learning, but because years ago, I and many others foresaw doom in the newspaper industry. I heard at the CT Society of Professional Journalists' annual dinner the other night that people lamented a downturn in submissions for awards. Geez? I wonder why.

 

Paper Cuts is a handy map of the United States, showing what newspapers are responsible for what portions of the more than 3,000 journos who lost their jobs this year. It might help explain the problem for SPJ. (Note: it does not count the exit from the news industry of one very heroic friend who walked out of his job at the Hartford Courant because management gave him an ultimatum.)

 

Thus, real reporting is now done online. For instance, Andy Thibault at the Cool Justice Report continues to make life difficult for the Douchebags at Lewis Mills High School who dared mess with the free speech rights of Avery Doninger.

 

This round, Thibault won a Freedom of Information Act complaint, and he now has the right to see how much money the school system and the taxpayers are shelling out for lawyers to defend the administrators.

Link...

 

Mass media personalities have a responsibility to hold people in positions of power accountable. WPLR morning show hosts Chaz and AJ continue to land great interview subjects, yet they continue to grant deferential treatment to these public officials.

 

And the big picture - particularly on transit - flies right by. Let me say that I think Chaz and AJ have the best morning show in the state. But they still don’t meet the standards that our democracy should demand on its airwaves.

 

Consider this critique of their 50,000 watt press releases not just in the interest of deflating hot air bags, but in the interest of improving what is already good to become better.

 

For example, Tuesday morning, Chaz and AJ gave outgoing Speaker of the House Jim Amann at least 30 minutes of air time, where he answered live listener calls.

 

Compare that to the time they gave my attorney, Norman A. Pattis, last week. Not only is Norm funnier than any politician I have ever met, but he actually attempted to discuss a potential ethical lapse of a state cop who landed his fiancé by getting her phone number in exchange for not giving her a speeding ticket.

Link...

 

Life is change. We can embrace it. We can ignore it to our detriment. Or we can question it in the hopes that we can alter its inevitable march.

 

When pondering the changes proposed by the Quinnipiac University administration for the Chronicle, I want to see the proposals as fruitful and courageous, but I see the changes more as an abdication of duty.

 

The University has proffered a seemingly rational plan to cut the Chronicle free of its institutional support. This way, the Chronicle can finance itself and join as a full-fledged member the venerable Fourth Estate, with all the obligations attendant the First Amendment.

 

The exact funding mechanism is a bit of a mystery, but the University is giving itself more than a year to confront the budgetary concerns and logistics of the divorce.

 

QU won't send the Chronicle out into the big bad world by itself. If QU severs all fiduciary ties with the Chronicle, and then this 79-year-old student paper fails, the Bobcat will wear egg on its face.

Link...

 

Sweet Jesus, thank you! To the god of the Old Testament who said he would punish those who stood by and watched acts of good and did nothing, thank you for acting! Justice flows like a mighty river!

 

Or maybe its just publisher Josh Mamis coming to his senses and realizing that dumping editor Alistair Highet is a smart move. Yes, the Hartford Advocate is undergoing some major personnel changes, starting with the forced departure of Highet, according to sources deep inside the Tribune Company walls. Apparently, Reporter Jennifer Abel and photographer Nick Lacy are being shown the door, too.

 

The day of reckoning when they all leave is apparently April 11, from what I've been told.

More...

 

The last week and a half has been full of law school (labor law paper due on how the National Labor Relations Board deals with e-mail - not to the employees' advantage, I assure you). But I have been mulling some stuff over that you might be interested in, and will have a column tomorrow.

 

In free speech world, Avery Doninger's lawyers argued before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan yesterday. Both Aldon Hynes and Andy Thibault have the goods.

 

Based on the questions I read from the three-judge panel, I fear they are leaning toward agreeing with the school douchebag and upholding the censoring of Doninger. It should go to the Supreme Court, where Doninger will probably lose. How much can we gag and blindfold kids and count on a Constitutional republic in the future?

 

UTC wants to buy Diebold. Gasp. Like George David needs any more money or influence.

 

Upcoming Civil Rights Events: Love Makes a Family will be having an organizing meeting at Asylum Hill Congregational Church Tuesday, March 11 at 7 p.m.

 

"Now is a critical time to be a part of the movement for Marriage Equality in Connecticut. Come join Love Makes a Family's Field team for an exciting discussion of:

* The status of the statewide campaign for equality
* The positions of local legislators
*Upcoming Events and Actions in the area

RSVP to Gannon at Gannon@lmfct.org or 860-525-7777 x314

Link to more stupendous student speech news...

 

If Gabriel Ruiz was going to high school this year, and not five years ago, the following inspirational tale would not be possible.

 

That’s because Echoes from the Streets youth newspaper, the vehicle for Gabe’s growth, is being put on "hiatus" by Our Piece of the Pie, a Hartford anti-poverty agency, according to former Echoes youth business manager Doug Hardy.

 

In the efforts of full disclosure, I started Echoes, and Doug is a friend and colleague of more than a decade.

 

But let’s get back to Gabe, because his story is what Echoes is about.

Link...

 

Hartford native Elizabeth Torres is a solid human being. She is a survivor, and she is only a college student, attending Central Connecticut State University. She is a journalist and an activist.

 

I’ve known Elizabeth since 2002. And last spring, I was eating lunch with my mom and my niece at a restaurant in Watertown when Elizabeth called my cell phone.

 

She could barely contain her outrage with the “satire” rape story in the CCSU weekly newspaper the Recorder. She wanted the editor fired, and she was passionate about justice here.

 

We discussed how the staff at Echoes from the Streets, where Elizabeth and I worked together, might have handled the problem of printing stories like that one. She calmed down, and looked for a more reasonable, than emotional approach.

 

Editor Mark Rowan stayed on. But I am sure Elizabeth’s Boricua blood is boiling right now over the cartoon that Rowan and the Recorder just published that suggests sexually abusing a kidnapped pre-pubescent Latina.

 

Since I am in Bermuda right now, I can’t phone up Elizabeth and ask her what she thinks of the cartoon. If I know Elizabeth, though, she is at the front lines of the controversy. And I hope she has less mercy on the editor now than I counseled her to have back in the spring.

 

Clearly, as far as student journalism goes, the CCSU Recorder is stirring the pot, but in the wrong way. I read at CTLocalPolitics.com that the problem is not just bad editorial judgment, but a recruiting issue.

 

The Recorder can’t find good students to work for it, the argument goes, so it relies on “less talented” students to fill space, and thus the stupid stuff gets into print.

 

Yes, staffs are thin at college papers, what with students having to work six jobs to pay for their education. But the recruiting issue at the Recorder is a symptom of the larger problem with scholastic journalism: lack of support and vision for the school news missions at all levels of education in state.

Link...

Ed. note: Bisbort was concerned that no one else in the state would publish this. I have great respect for Kathy O'Connell's vast repertoire of knowledge, and long ago I adopted her motto of journalism in the headline. KK

 

The last time I saw her, three months ago, she was in despair, having been forced by a change of circumstances — a Jane Austen-like locution she'd have appreciated — to leave the state she loved, Connecticut.

 

It was obvious, at this coffee encounter, a semi-regular event since Kathy O'Connell left the Advocate more than six years ago, that more than just despair was at work. She was divesting herself of worldly goods, giving away 30+ years' worth of videos, books and albums that she'd accumulated, a mound of cultural diversion that would house a small library all by itself.

 

To me, she gave all of her lavishly inscribed copies of books by William Manchester, a friend of hers from her days at the Middletown Press. She knew I revered Manchester, believed him to be one of the few American giants of letters, up there with Edmund Wilson and Joseph Mitchell in my pantheon, and she had come close on a couple of occasions of convincing the stroke-addled but proud ex-Marine to give such a longtime fan an audience at his Middletown home.

 

I had this fantasy that we would instantly bond, this great man and I, and that he would then let me ghost-write the third volume of his Winston Churchill biography, a gig that went to some other lucky but (of course!) fully undeserving freelancer.

 

About the Manchester books, I told Kathy, "I can't keep these. I'll just hold them until you get settled," partly to play into the delusion that she was not as bad off as we were pretending. Only a year or two older than I, she was barely ambulatory without a cane, she had colds she couldn't shake, her body trembled and her mind wandered like an ancient aunt's.

 

Again forced by a change of circumstances, Kathy was having to drive all the way to Birmingham, Alabama from her longtime rented home in Portland, Ct., to live with her 92-year-old mother. As the joke goes, the mother had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

 

I didn't know it was Kathy who was about to step on that banana peel, but it did not exactly surprise me to learn that she did. Kathy O'Connell, longtime Connecticut journalism critic, columnist and writer, died this past Sunday, May 13. So sad, so much talent, so much more to give.

 

I prefer to remember the better angels of Kathy's complicated character, the person who energetically came to the Advocate after her beloved Press was bought by a newspaper chain. The one who, without complaining, took the job as a receptionist, what some of her stature might deem too far a fall from grace to accept.

 

The one who had lived and worked in a group home with Mitch Snyder in Washington, D.C., rubbed shoulders with the Berrigan brothers and did good deeds for the homeless masses, in the process probably saving a number of lives.

 

She eventually left the Advocate and took a job at the Meriden Record-Journal, where she won several awards for her semi-regular columns and reviews. She was kind to my son, who loved her stories about her youth in Philadelphia, and lavished him with little carefully chosen presents. She was a good person, deep inside all that lifetime's worth of hurt. She will be missed by her readers and her friends.

 

R.I.P. K.O.

 

OKAY, anyone who visits this website today absolutely, positively must, 100 percent go to Current.tv and greenlight the "To Be Green" documentary. If we can maintain our number one ranking, we get on national tv.

 

You have to register to vote on the site. Like in real life. It's no big deal. But please, do this one for Cliff. And me. And the struggle. It only takes a minute.

 

University of Hartford grad and current Hartford resident Dave Pond and his company Little Tree Media produced the short documentary, which is on the verge of being aired nationally on Current.tv.

 

Thornton for Governor hired Dave to do the commercials for our campaign. He got an inside look at the campaign, and with this footage, he produced this film after Nov. 7.

 

As of right now, we are ranked #1 on Current.tv. If by Monday, April 16 at 6 pm we maintain our first place ranking, Dave's video gets aired on national TV. Please go vote.

Link...

 

At the risk of damaging my personal freelance writing career, but for my property tax pride, I can’t let this one sit. This is one place where Mayor Eddie Perez and I agree.

 

Perez and I bumped into each other Saturday in front of City Hall at the St. Patrick’s Day parade. He was jovial (everyone is friends on St. Patrick’s Day), putting his arm around me, squeezing me tight, asking me why I never write anything positive about the city.

 

I disagreed with him. I write positive things about the city – I publish hopeful visions, offer solutions, seek accountability and provide constructive criticism.

***

UPDATE 3-30-07: Dan D'Ambrosio is no rookie, who sources tell me is a seasoned environmental reporter. D'Ambrosio apparently spent time in the hallowed Waterbury train station, aka the Republican, where I cut my teeth as a cub reportern.

D'Ambrosio followed up this week with a strong effort about the MDC's sewage project. It's worth a read, and the lead really puts 1 billion gallons of raw flushes into perspective.

Link...

 

Josh Wolf has spent the past six months in a federal penitentiary for refusing to turn over video footage of an anarchist rally that injured a cop in San Francisco in July 2005.

The footage is not even needed in the court case anymore. But the Ninth Circuit court has refused to release him from his contempt of court charges.

A federal grand jury subpeonaed his raw footage, and he claimed his First Amendment rights and wouldn't give it up. So he's spent 170 days in jail.

You can watch the video here. He blogs from jail here.

The same debate fomenting over my situation - is he a journalist? is he a blogger? - has run wild in his, too.

Wolf has his supporters, like the Society of Professional Journalists Legal Defense Fund, and his detractors, like Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post.

Will Bunch at Attytood frames it like this:

In 2007, it all seems like such a big mess -- who's a journalist, who's a confidential source? -- but it's really not as hard as it looks. Good journalism is simply the gathering of information in the way that will get the most truth out to the most people. New technology has opened those tools to more people -- that's a good thing -- but the basic news-gathering practices that deserve Constitutional protection remain the same.

Link...

 

Forget any of the work that I have been doing. Kiri Davis, a high school student from Washington state, has produced a solid news documentary with great production values that puts the race issue back at the center of the debate.

Kiri interviews African-American teen women and they discuss the difference between being dark and light skinned black. The kicker, though, is the black and white doll test she conducts with black children, identical to the one done for Brown v Board of Education, the school desgregation lawsuit.

When 15 out of 21 black children choose the white doll as the nice one and the black doll as the one they don't want to play with in Kiri's documentary, we know we are still mired in racial issues.

This comes to me the same day Wendy Wallace of Poynter.org wrote a story about the Washington state legislature considering legislation to extend First Amendment protections to high school journalists. Right now, Supreme Court law limits the rights of high school journos.

Link...

 

After listening to Matt Stoller this morning, I am not so sure I want to be labeled a journalist.

Stoller, blogger extraordinaire from MYDD, excoriated the ethical shortcomings of dead tree media during the Hartford Courant Key Issues Forum panel discussion at Hartford's Christ Church Cathedral.

"To say journalists have a system of ethics is false. It is not true," Stoller said. "It is an attempt to make a larger conversation that needs to happen in journalism, not happen...[Ours] is a corrupted and corroded media system."

Link...

 

My neighbor's Sports Illustrated arrived yesterday with a picture of Super Bowl victor Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts on the cover.

I love the photography in SI. The high quality images always tell stories from interesting angles, especially the three-page spread in the front of the book.

But something struck me yesterday as I inspected this double truck Canon ad of all 11 SI shooters at the Super Bowl: they are all white. Yet most of the people they photographed in that game were black.

Yet for the first time in NFL history, both coaches in the big game were black. Thus, it is apparently easier for an African-American person to win the Vince Lombardi trophy as a coach than it is to be an African-American and have your photos of that coach be published in the nation's leading weekly sports magazine.

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CONTACT:
Christine Tatum, President, (303) 881-8702
Beth King, Communications Manager, (317) 927-8000, ext. 211

link to SPJ's release

 

The Society of Professional Journalists, which works to improve and protect journalism, urges Connecticut law enforcement to drop its charges against Ken Krayeske, who was arrested while trying to take pictures of a public event while standing in a public place.

Krayeske, an independent journalist, was arrested Jan. 3 during the inaugural parade of Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell. He was standing on a street median when officers stopped him.

Krayeske, who is charged with breach of peace and interfering with an officer, is scheduled to appear in court March 2.

“It’s not too late for Connecticut police to stop this fiasco and embarrassment to law enforcement,” said SPJ’s National President Christine Tatum, an assistant business editor at The Denver Post. “Police officers should not be faulted for stopping Mr. Krayeske and inquiring about his actions if they believed he may have been a threat to the governor. But it shouldn’t have taken almost 12 hours and a trip to a police station for officers to determine that a man who identified himself as a journalist and who was carrying a knapsack containing little more than his camera meant no harm to Gov. Rell.”

Too much debate has focused on whether Krayeske, who has worked on political campaigns and urged political activism on his Web site, was acting as a journalist at the time of his detainment. Was he acting as a journalist? It doesn’t matter. Krayeske was acting as a citizen of the United States and exercising the First Amendment rights guaranteed to everyone in this country.

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