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Category: News of News (Page 7 of 11)

News and comments about news and media

DocSouth and Jones on BoingBoing

The Boing Boing post “19th c. book: Geography for Dixie Children” from Documenting the American South
got a lot of quick attention. It should have. The book is raw history, reflecting the mind of the South. And that mind was not so pretty in today’s light. BB has excerpts (see link above) or go directly to the item at DocSouth (hosted by ibiblio). I sent Xeni a note about the context and a reference to a contemporary echo in Cary that she added to the posting. I’ve included that below.

The textbook, Dixie Children, was printed to provide “education” during the Civil War. UNC holds a lot of material from that period. People who read it are outraged. They should be. These texts are evidence of what the war was all about and of the thinking of the Confederate elite.

At a time when a church school in Cary (just beside Raleigh where the 1863 book was published) is teaching from a pamphlet titled “Southern Slavery: As It Was” which tells us that “slavery was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence”, we need to blunt force of historical evidence to impell us to face the sad facts.

See this earlier posting on the Cary school slave pamphlet.

The contemporary authors have tried to hide their book but Amazon’s “search inside” feature lets you know what’s in it.

Tar Heel on Seigenthaler issue and Wikipepdia

Just took a phone call from a Daily Tar Heel reporter, Kyle Chorpening, who is doing a story on Wikipedia and the Seigenthaler issue. He had already spoken to Seigenthaler and to Jimmy Wales before calling me. What the heck could I add after that?
Well, maybe a pointer to the video of Jimbo’s talk here at UNC in October and some talk about owning your own words harking back to the WELL and over to Brin’s Transparent Society as a tension point with the American history of anonymous pamphleteering going back beyond the Federalist Papers. A brief mention of the Hitchhiker’s Guide site at BBC as a peer-reviewed encyclopedia too.
My take is that wikipedia is in process. It will change to meet challenges and it has already begun some changes to address problems such as this one. A year ago, Wikipedia was less good than it is today. In five years, it –or it’s online successor– will be much better.
Kyle also asked if I would accept wikipedia as a source in a paper. The answer is that academic papers should use primary sources, not encyclopedias, not Britanica, not World Book, not wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great starting point and often points to primary sources. In that way, it’s great. I would even accept wikipedia as a source for one of several definitions, but not as a major source. Not because of reliability but because good research should go to the source whenever possible.
UPDATE: Kyle’s article is here. I get the last words, but not (appropriately) the most words ;->

Paul Jones, a journalism professor at UNC, said people should be held accountable for content but can’t reasonably be restricted from publishing it.

“What are you going to do? Make people get an Internet driver’s license?” he said.

As Wikipedia has grown in popularity and reliability, students often are using it as a source for research, especially for term papers.

“I use it for general ideas, but not for specifics,” said freshman Russell Johnson. “It gives me a comfortable understanding of the topic.”

Jones said Wikipedia is useful for directing students to good information but should complement other sources.

“Last semester, I returned a paper that was comprised almost solely of Wikipedia entries,” he said. “I think by the time you’re in college, you should be using primary sources.”

Cone calls on Skube about irresponsible article on blogs

That’s a long post title by my standard, but it gets the lede out. The story of the story is that Michael Skube, now teaches at Elon, wrote an article on the badness of blogs for the Greensboro News and Record. In the course of the article–according to Cone–(the article is unposted), Skube admits not ever reading blogs (who has time? he asks. perhaps some one who writes about blogs should make time, says i), doesn’t differentiate between say an Ed Cone and a teenager on Xanga, and decries that bloggers aren’t professional (some are, Michael). All in all, it seems from the Cone report and the comments following that Skube rehearsed some common complaints without doing any personal research.

Cone called Skube and talked with him. Ed’s report on the conversation is even odder still. Well, not Ed’s report itself but the conversation that is reported by Ed. Skube confirmed that he didn’t know that the News and Record is nationally famous for the blogging there. He didn’t know of any bloggers by name save Andrew Sullivan. He hadn’t read any. All in all, pretty embarassing for a journalism prof at Elon and a Pulitizer Prize winner at that.

I’m hoping that the News and Record will post the article soon. In the meantime, the posts and comments at Ed’s blog will have to do.

In an interesting coincidence of timing, News and Record Editor John Robinson calls student interviewers to task for nearly the same crimes as are committed by Skube. One crucial section:

Most recently, I’ve been interviewed via e-mail and telephone by professional journalists and university students. The topic: blogging. Inexplicably, they hadn’t actually read my blog or our other blogs. It didn’t appear that they had even done the easiest research on Google.


Sue Polinsky of Sue’s Place
also had a blog article in the same edition of the News and Record. Although she calls her writing a rant; it’s a good read and she knows of what she speaks.

Andy Oram on UNC Symposium

The O’Reilly Net top story (at this instant) is Andy Oram’s report from the UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process, titled: Autumn Symposium Rakes Over Copyright and Patent Law

The teaser goes:

Andy Oram looks at the states of copyright, fair use, patent law, and more, as seen through the eyes of attendees at the recent Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity, and the Innovation Process. The conference attracted the likes of Marybeth Peters–register of copyrights, IP law critic James Boyle, open source advocate Chris DiBona, and EFF rep Cory Doctorow, to name a few of the people there who’ve planted stakes in the ground of this seeming turf war.

Jones taped for 22

Ric Swiner and Brian his camera came by and we did a little chat outside Manning Hall about filesharing systems. I explained how bittorrent has many legal uses just like your car or Brian’s camera — even though folks can use any of those things for evil. I explained briefly how Grokster was found in violation of the law but that BitTorrent should not be. Grokster was even marketed as an inducement to illegal behaviors while BitTorrent is a content neutral protocol (I was simplier than that).

In no way did I advovate illegal behavior or illegal sharing, but I did point out examples of legal behaviors using BitTorrent.

Probably I’ll be on a few seconds. But I’ll likely not be watching tonight; it’s election night in Chapel Hill and I leave for DC early tomorrow morning.

N and O responds and responds to bloggers

Both Ted Vaden and Melanie Sills have kept up the conversation with bloggers that began just after the ConvergeSouth conference.
Ted’s column from Sunday’s News and Observer, Blogs challenge newspaper standards, is located in two places on the NandO site. One (linked above) that allows comments and trackbacks and one that is located at the print version of the paper’s online location which allows neither. A bit confusing — and non-standard practice for bloggers I might add ;->
Melanie’s Frame vs. Filter attempts to further clarify her take on Jay Rosen’s comments at ConvergeSouth and in comments on her blog after.
No comments on either article as of this posting on Monday afternoon.

Converge fallout in NandO

I blogged a little about the sessions that I attended at the ConvergeSouth conference on Saturday. After seeing the discussion at the News and Observer Editor’s blog, I wish I could have made it over on Friday too. There NandO editor Melanie Sill opines on the filtering role of newspapers based in part on her reaction to Ted Vaden’s blogging about Jay Rosen’s talk at Converge (got all of that? good because there’s more).
But Sill hears back from Rosen in the comments (and others). There’s also a broken Trackback to Ed Cone’s blog.

Now that’s blogging for you.

[This post is also on the JOMC191 site]

Jimmy Wales – Oct 5 -ibiblio speaker series

ibiblio.org Speakers Series

Who: Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales
When: 3:30 Wednesday October 5
Where: Freedom Forum Conference Room
305 Carroll Hall UNC-CH
209 Manning Hall
What: A talk about the world’s most popular encyclopedia and news source,
Wikipedia and Wikinews by the man who invented and sustains them.

More about Jimmy and Wikipedia

Sponsors: ibiblio.org
School of Information and Library Science
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Scholarly Communications Working Group

Poster in PDF form here

Rich News at least in Features

This morning’s News and Observer is full of stories, features and articles on or by some folks I know and some I love.

Artist Jane Filer (we own one of her paintings) whose show will open next Sunday at Jane Tyndall’s Gallery at University Mall is the subject of a longish feature in which both Janes are quoted.

Bob Moog and theremins are part of a feature story on the Ether Music 2005 (in Asheville) and are subject of another feature as well as a photo and audio slide show. Steve Burnett, who has commented here, is the Rasputin lookalike in the fifth picture.

Susan Gladen’s short story which won the Doris Betts Award is featured in the Sunday Journal section. Susan and Peter Kramer let me write in their chicken house occassionally.

Sam Ruby and Michael Teiman talk about corporate blogs in the Business Section. (I was deep background on part of this. So deep that Jonathan Cox may have forgotten he even spoke with me ;->).

My favorite real life pirate, Captain Horatio Sinbad, is Tar Heel of the Week. Besides leading raids on local to Beaufort and Morehead City waterfront restaurants and tourist cruises, the relatively good captain won a sailboat race and as part of his prizes, he will be bringing sailing ships to Beaufort. Great profile of a man who never grew up — in th every best way.

Remember that Bob Moog is undergoing cancer treatment at Duke. You can sign his guest book and leave him a message.

Target-ed advertizing in New Yorker

Target logo
You’ll have to pick up the current New Yorker (August 22) to see the spate of illustrations featuring various imaginative uses of the Target logo; you can’t see them online unfortunately. The amount of page space dedicated to the illustrations by various artists all with the red Target as part of them. The company name is never mentioned. There is very little text in any of the illustrations. Each of the images does have something to do with New York though. Some of buildings as flower petals with the center of the flower being the Target logo. A dog fetching a Target logo frisbee. A worker at the coffee counter with a white rag hanging out of his pocket — and a red Target logo on that rag.

USA Today to publish tech mag

I had read the headline as “USA Today to punish Tech Magazine.” That what I get for being at a middle school orientation all morning. At the middle school, detention is now called “Break” which stands for something about getting your act back together.

The AP article says that USA Today Now Personal Technology will be 80 glossy pages and will be released on October 17th.

Rain and Netscape IPO

August in Chapel Hill is usually dry. I recall several summers in the past decades when we were under water restrictions. Today we are simply under water. When I walked in this morning, water wasn’t rushing out of the grates; it was shooting up out of the grates! I had on a poncho and was carrying an umbrella but from the knees down I was soaked. Megan reports that Franklin Street was/is flooded down toward Panzanella (and the Wicked Burrito).

This week is the 10th anniversary of the Netscape IPO. Some people are claiming that should be the anniversary of the Internet or the Web, but of course things were longer in the making than that. Kevin Kelly has a good essay in Wired this month on the subject with an amusing projection into the next decade.

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