Al Franken interview on The UpTake

Senator Al Franken answers questions from The UpTake, some serious, some frivolous.
Some highlights: on health care: private insurance needs competition from "a public option" (we know he is a strong advocate for accessible and affordable health care for all).He repeats that he favors gay marriage and thinks DOMA will be history soon. Specifically, he emarks that we just observed the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, and 42nd anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia, saying that 40 years from now, people will find it just as incredible that there was a ban on gay marriage as we do now that there was a ban on interracial marriage. Franken quotes his friend Paul Wellstone: "Politics is not about winning, it's not about power; it's about improving other people's lives."

Progress is too slow, but it is real, and we can't drop the ball because we are impatient with the pace. We need that 60th Senator. We needed those seven months of proving that the election was absolutely clean. We need to make sure that every vote is counted.

The swearing-in is tomorrow (see this Minnesota Independent story). He says it is surreal, after seven months, after watching the coverage on the UpTake; he's pinching himself. I'm elated that he will be in office and ready to work for us; it's about time we had our full representation in the Senate. Looking at the events in Iran and in Honduras makes me grateful, even when I'm feeling cynical about politics in the U.S., because it does make a difference that we have elections, that they can be legal and demonstrably free of corruption, that people can have trust that their voices will be heard by someone whose job it is to represent them.

With Sarah Palin's resignation in Alaska, we see that she and the people who support her are not interested in the actual work of governing, of the hard work of leadership; they are more interested in demagoguery and whipping up fear and resentment to frighten people. I hope that we keep our eye on the incremental changes that are slowly happening in Washington, and keep up the pressure to make those changes bigger and better. When I read the news from Iran and Honduras, I am reminded of a more shameful side of our government's history, when it does not obey its own laws. All the more reason to persist in the often tedious but absolutely necessary work of creating the infrastructure of civial society, such as citizen-journalism of the caliber of the UpTake. I'm going to be making a donation to them, because they need the money. Since our major news outlets can't do the job, we need to make sure it gets done.

More thoughts on newmedia

I had the pleasure of attending a talk by journalist Jeremy Iggers yesterday. He has written about food, and has a PhD in philosophy. His columns about ethics and his active role in founding the Media Alliance give him a great perspective on the changes occuring in the Twin Cities media scene. The topic was, generally speaking, the future of newspapers. He pointed to the importance of newspapers is shaping an informed citizenry, and discussed the changes taking place now as the result of two forces: the culmination of decades of corporate consolidation in the dismantling of the news corps of many major newspapers in the chase after market demographics and profits, and the challenges posed by emerging digital technologies. As younger people turn to alternative sources for information and news, the corporate papers attempt to win their readership by dumbing down their news sections, but their strategies are neither successful with a younger generation, which can get better infotainment online, nor conducive to retaining their older readers who are disgusted with the abandonment of local and international political coverage.
Hence the anxiety about the future of the newspaper, and of serious journalism in general. On the other hand, both professionals and a growing number of "citizen journalists" are trying out new models of news gathering (blogs that aggregate and comment on news, for example), news production (operations like Alternet and the much-heralded MinnPost which will debut next week), news delivery (multi-media magazines, various kinds of interactivity, etc. After listening to his talk and to the questions and comments from the crowds, I came away with three thoughts: there will be some merit in finding new business models that attempt to make online/print versions of public television and pubic radio (like MPR or NPR) with greater editorial freedom and the ability to follow subjects in depth without the slavery to ad sales, although we have seen an ongoing corporatization of both of those enterprises as well); the more interesting experiment to me is the site that acts as a portal to the web presences of a variety of small specialized papers (Twin Cities Daily Planet with its 40+ community papers serving smaller interest groups or neighborhoods) because, while it aggregates and prioritizes, it is more of a portal for reader than a hierarchical virtual newsroom; we still haven't explored the full potential of blogs as a venue for public intellectuals to engage with the public, although we are seeing many experiments.

One area of profound unease over these changes has to do with the issue of expertise: whose standards will distinguish "real journalism" from amateur ranting? how to judge accuracy? how to build relations of trust between readers and writers in the absence of the culture of the craft or guild?

Another source of unease seems to be the illusion that at some time in the past, because there were fewer TV channels, there was more of a shared group experience, in which we all saw ourselves reflected as a community (I'm paraphrasing what Iggers said, using my own take informed by Benedict Anderson's ideas about nationalism and "imagined community" but this is not what he or the audience articulated explicitly). I think that this idea of a shared community was an effect, not something that really existed for a majority, and that what we are witnessing is rather the crisis of the intellectual class, whose expertise, whether in academia or in journalism, is being displaced in favor of other forms of judgment. This is why I like the title of Cristobal Cobo's book "Planeta Web 2.0: inteligencia colectiva of medias fast food?" The new media can be both forms of collective intelligence, populated by specialists and intellectuals as well as others, and can also be incredibly banal, sleazy, silly, fun forms of infotainment. And sometimes they can be both. What excites me about some fo these new media endeavors is that new voices are gaining audiences, audiences are becoming collaborators, and the mainstream media, which has demonstrably failed in its duties to provide civic engagement as well as a vehicle for ad sales, is having to respond.

The Daily Mole, beta

If the Daily Planet is a fabulous aggregator of local new publications (neighborhood, ethnic group, labor, women, all the folks whose interests are not taken seriously by the mainstream media in this town, which is to say most of us), another new Twin Cities media venture is The Daily Mole, put on/out by Steve Perry (former editor of City Pages), Cecily Marcus, and Co. It's a very fancy Wordpress site, with a home page that bills itself as "Twin Cities", and four other categories on separate pages: pop media, talk, multimedia lounge, and listings. I've already posted some comments there as I get a feel for the content. The site is still in beta, and their really interested in responding to their readers' input.

We'll see how it shapes up as a site that can do a lot of what City Pages and VitaMN do on their sites, but better. Their banner says, "A thinky/talky approach to the news!" and "your new virtual watercooler." What I'm not sure of yet is if they will have the kind of in-depth articles that Perry used to write/edit for City Pages, that went into more of the background of local or national/international stories than the Strib did. I think that is the territory that the new MinnPost, scheduled to rollo out on Nov. 8, is staking out with its long list of eminent journalist collaborators. Since this is a daily, it may not be geared to the long read the way a weekly is, but it will bring us multiple feeds that link politics and the arts better than MNSpeak is doing currently. I'm afraid my experience of MNSpeak is of that it has devolved into a bully pulpit for a small, vocal and obnoxious set of commenters who scream at each other and insult folks who aren't members of their club. Attempts to engage their grew tiresome quickly. Maybe the Daily Mole will create a space for smarter conversations. We'll see how they handle the inevitable moment when they have to moderate comments or intervene in flame wars.

Citizen journalism on YouTube

I just learned that YouTube is more than talking cats and DTWS recaps. OK, I knew it was more, but I had't really looked carefully.
Here is a great use of YouTube for highlighting citizen journalism: CitizenTube is the vlog of Steve Grove, YouTube's editor for politics. He lives in SF, but he went to college at Carleton, the school where Paul Wellstone used to teach Political Science. I'm missing his talk today because I'll be at work, but I can catch up on his vlog.

Twin Cities Media Alliance and the future of newspapers

With the implosion of the two city newspapers and the weekly City Pages, all victims of corporate takeovers that included mass firings and layoffs of experienced journalists, the print news outlets in the Twin Cities have gone down the tubes. Sure, I still pick up copies in the cafes, out of habit, but there's nothing there any more. It's sad and frustrating because I have always loved reading newspapers. I don't subscribe at home any more because I hate adding even more to my recycling, but I would still buy a paper or pick up someone's discard every day.

But the changes in the works in the Twin Cities media world right now are very exciting. Journalists had already been exploring the possibilities of new kinds of news delivery through online formats for the last few years, and now several new groups are moving to reconfigure our media landscape. There will be a forum on Nov. 3 that I plan to attend called "life after newspapers", organized by the Twin Cities Media Alliance and sponsored by the Minneapolis Public Libraries.

One venture that has been around for a little while, that I like very much, is The Twin Cities Daily Planet, which bills itself as "local news for global citizens." It is a site that aggregates stories from the smaller papers and hosts blogs and community announcements. It has a strong component of citizen journalism, and links to a few sites with discussion forums in their Planet Cafe. Here is a list of their media partners. You can get your news in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali on this site as well. It's a project of the New Media Alliance.

The Twin Cities Media Alliance brings together media professionals and engaged citizens to improve the quality, accountability and diversity of the local media.

We envision a participatory democracy in which citizens from all segments of society and especially those who have been traditionally denied access are able to use the media as a tool to share information, hold the powerful accountable, build community, and work together for the common good.

Our community newswire and syndication service, the Twin Cities Daily Planet www.tcdailyplanet.net, features the best work of the neighborhood and community press and local independent journalists, and provides a public forum for engaged citizens. Our goal is to produce citizen journalism with professional standards, and to become a national model for other communities.