Accept no substitutes

Internet and Journalism to Jordanians

This morning I did a talk about “Internet and Journalism” (in PDF about 10 pages) to visiting Jordanian journalists as part of The Role of Print Media in Forging Press Freedoms: An Exchange Program Between Jordanian and American Journalists program through the University Center for International Studies and the School of Journalism and the Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists in Amman, Jordan.
It was my first time using Keynote as a presentation platform and it worked fine. I’m not sure how it compares to PowerPoint since I don’t use PPT, but it’s not that different than doing WWW pages really. Of course I tend to give pretty vanilla presentations as far as the slides go — no sounds, waddling ducks, video, etc. Even then I do and did tend to break out of the show to go to a WWW site to illustrate my points.
I spent most of my talk going on about Dan Gillmor’s We the Media book. The idea here is to give the visitors a good reference to take home which they may read at their own pace and translate as slowly or as fast as needed.
Listening to me if you at not an English listener poses several problems: I speak too quickly, I have a Southen accent, I slur words on top of that, I often overuse technical and slangy jargon. Other than that I am a perfect speaker.
My slides can be gotten from the link above in PDF format, but I particularly want to get down the measures of social capital for blogs that I’ve been thinking of lately (after hearing some comments from Fred) which are not in the slides.

  1. Is the blog updated regularly? If so more social capital.
  2. Are there a lot of comments? The more the more SC.
  3. Are the comments mostly intelligent and on-topic?
  4. Does the blog have a high Technorati ranking? Crosspostings, references, etc.
  5. And the final and acid test:

    1. Does the blog have at least one “open thread”?
    2. And does that thread have a lot of intelligent comments?

2 Comments

  1. Peter Durand

    Paul, I was inspired by this entry to write about my experience with the suppression of the press in Poland, circa 1991. I linked to your post as well. Was there any sort of documentation that came out of the Jordanian visit? I originally found your post via a search for “social capital”.

    It seems that “social capital” is exactly what increases in conjunction with political pressure. And, as you know, those who put their necks out to get the “real” story in places like Jordan, China, Zimbabwe, are gambling not only with their reputations and livelihoods, but with their lives and the lives of their families. It is a way of living completely alien to the American journalist or artist.

    I’d be honored as a budding blogger, if you had time and inclination to add some social capital to my post.
    http://www.alphachimp.com/clients/2004/11/cheap-talk-aint-free.html

    I am intrigued by your work. I am originally from knoxville, lived in E. Europe from 1991-95, and now have a career listening to fascinating ideas at conferences and turning them into visual sysnthesis. Check out some recent ideas and visuals from Pop!Tech, http://alphachimp.com/poptech/index.htm

    Including a panel with Joe Trippi on “Connected Politics”. http://alphachimp.com/poptech/pages/34_Connected-Politics.htm

  2. Miles

    I like these factors that contribute to a blog’s social capital… Paul, do you know if this issue has been studied/published on (SC in blogs, not SC in general)?

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