The Revolution Will Be Televised

At tonight’s Berkeley City Council Meeting, council member Donna Spring will ask for an urgent agenda item be added to confront the University over blocking the public sidewalk along Piedmont Ave at the Oak Grove.

SPRING: “I’m hoping that six members of the council will be willing to add it to the agenda, and there I want to make a motion to ask that we write a letter to the university telling them that we need our sidewalk back again. We need public access and to get their barriers off the public sidewalks. If they want to restrict the tree sitters they’re gonna have to do it on their own property. Not use the public right-of-way to try to restrict the tree sitters from getting food and water.

Protesters first occupied the trees in the Oak Grove more than 18 months ago in an effort to stop a planned Sports complex adjacent to the stadium at UC Berkeley. Last Monday, in anticipation of a judge’s ruling, UC Berkeley brought in a Watsonville tree service company to remove the sitters’ platforms and traverse lines.

On Sunday, police blocked supporters from providing food and water to the tree sitters. Ayr a supporter of the Oak Grove, told KPFA that he did not know how much food or water the tree sitters have left, but indicated the situation is not urgent.

Ayr:“Obviously as each day passes their rations are getting lower and lower being that we’re not able to get them any new stuff, so we’re demanding that the university allow food and water in.”

Dan Mogulof, executive director of public affairs at the university, said that the university feels it has achieved its goal of making it difficult for the tree sitters to maintain their protest.

Mogulof: “If they’re tired and if they’re hungry and thirsty then all they need do is come down and they can have everything they need. Having said that, we continue to monitor the situation on a day-by-day basis. We’re in constant contact with the people in the trees, they’re telling us that they have adequate supplies. But if we perceive, or hear about any significant change in the status quo, in so far as their health and safety and well-being is concerned, we’ll be ready to reevaluate our current position.”

Mogulof would not say whether or not the university would allow the protesters access to food or water after they exhaust their existing supplies. In a formal letter to City Manager Phil Kamlarz, the university affirmed that it is monitoring the health of the tree sitters, and will provide food and water to any protesters who come down.

Mayor Tom Bates said that he does not feel the University should take action against the tree sitters until the legal case has been completely resolved.

Bates: “Eventually this is gonna wind down, just not that far off. The future is here, so it looks like, very shortly, we’ll have a definitive answer to the question, “Can they cut down the trees?” And if they can cut down the trees in the near future, which I wouldn’t like to see happen, and hope doesn’t happen, then obviously the tree sitters are gonna have to come out of the trees. So it seems to me that, right now, that the university oughta not try to starve them out, or not allow them to have water too, in order to stay in the trees until we get a definitive answer from the judge.”

Mogulof said he did not know why the university contracted with Williams Tree Service in Watsonville.

Mogulof: “I personally have no idea where that firm is from I wasn’t a party to any of those conversations, but to the best of my knowledge we selected a firm that had had specific experience with these sorts of events and activities in the past and were adaquetly trained and experienced to manage the situation. The fact is, is that no one was seriously injured last week, that we did manage to achieve our objectives and as far as I know the only one seriously injured was an arborist who was bit by one of the protesters.”

The company has done business with UC Santa Cruz in the past. During the winter break, Williams Tree Service removed materials left near the site of a tree sit there. The Metro Santa Cruz Newspaper reports that the tree service’s activities at the Santa Cruz site led vandals to damage company property held in its service yard. Citing safety concerns the University is refusing to speak publicly about the Tree Service company.

Dennis Williams of Williams Tree Service also refused to comment on the companies operations saying that he can’t speak about the matter until he has permission from the University police department. Mogoluf said he was unaware of any orders prohibiting Williams Tree Service from speaking to the media, and KPFA was unable to secure permission for Williams by the time of this broadcast.

For KPFA, in Berkeley, I’m Josh Wolf.

         

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As the battle between tree sitters in the Oak Grove near the Berkeley stadium and arborists hired by the university to cut traverse lines and remove platforms continued for the second day Wednesday, one supporter climbed a light pole to join the protestors in the trees. This rough video captures what happened.

         

The University of California at Berkeley held a press conference to respond to a judgement by Barbara Miller of Alameda County Superior Court. In brief, the UC contends that the ruling is a victory with a few minor hurdles that must be overcome before the sports training complex can be erected.

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These notes were drafted as part of the Citizen Media and the law — freedom and risk breakout session at the Minnesota Journalism that Matters New Pamphleteers conference…

FOIA and public access:

• FOIA - the fee waiver has been expanded to include those who publish regularly, legal fees can now be recovered if you need to sue.
• There is no exclusion for FOIA under copyright law.
• Every state has something parallel to FOIA — some are good for citizen journalists whereas others are terrible
• Open-meetings act: How do they define what falls under the act? Bloggers and professional media are covered equally
• First ammendment right to criminal and civil trials and proceedings with an exemption for juvenile proceedings
• The law provides some limits; however, generally speaking you can take photos and video in public places, but not private property. The states have been very restrictive regarding ride-alongs, telephoto photos in private area.
• Public private property is treated as public space.
• As a general rule you have a right to any public place, but whenever a security personnel asks you to leave, it is recommended that you leave.

Risks of publication:

• Mainly defamation
• You’re liable if you’ve done something you shouldn’t have done, or failed to do something you should have done.
• The highest standard is a public official or figure who must prove actual malice - a subjective standard that means the publisher had reason to know the info was false.
• Be consistent with whatever your standard practice is regarding notes
• Be careful of creating contemporaneous documents that you have doubts about validity of information
• The other category falls under private individuals who have a lower standard: negligence in verifying the information is accurate
• If you’re thorough in your reporting you’ll reduce your risk of lawsuits.
• Publication of private facts can also open you up to lawsuits
• Intellectual property, copyright infringement, all expressive works are automatically covered under copyright unless expressly stated elsewhere
• Communications decency act means that you will generally not be liable - even if you edit for civility and choose what comments to publish

All of this, and more, can be found at the Citizen Media Law Project. There is an entry form to improve the database of legal issues.

         

That was the subject of the e-mail I received this morning from Jeff Marks the executive producer of MobLogic.TV. He writes…

Hey Josh

Just wanted to draw your attention to today’s time sensitive Moblogic. In the spirit of the Sean Bell coverage we did, MobLogic is in Georgia this week, covering the second execution the state has carried out since the Supreme Court decided to allow lethal injections to continue.

To cover the story, we’re asking our viewers to comment, video comment, etc and tell us what aspects of the case they’d like to see covered. We’re doing our best to create an interactive journalism experience. We also gave out Lindsay’s phone number so viewers can call her directly with suggestions.

Really excited to get the word out about our little experiment, and hoping you could help us spread the word. A quick blog post about it, or a link to the show, or even just broadcasting Lindsay’s number would be a huge help. We’re trying to stir up how this stuff gets covered - it’s as much a media story as it is a death penalty story.

Here’s a link to the show:

http://www.moblogic.tv/video/2008/05/21/execution-day-what-would-you-do/

…(one unrelated line and closing salutation omitted)

Having not tuned into MobLogic for a while, I had missed their coverage of the verdict regarding Sean Bell, but found the episode in which Lindsay is arrested at the protest to be particularly insightful (I’m especially curious how exactly she managed to get a camera into her cell), and I’m really excited to watch how MobLogic is exploring new journalism.

Right now, the Moblogic crew is in Georgia where David Crowe is set to be executed tomorrow at 7PM. A Google news search turns up very little about his execution; in fact, it seems that Moblogic may be the only outlet actively covering the story. When it comes to the death penalty, or any story really, there are a lot of sides that can be explored, and a lot of questions that can be asked. In order to help navigate what Mob Logic should focus on, the show has asked people to offer suggestions by commenting on the blog, but in an effort to make themselves even more accessible, Lindsay Campbell has gone ahead and shared her number - (917)273-7212.

Sure, it’s unusual, but it isn’t unprecedented. I remember Robert Scoble talking about how he’s had his number on the internet for years, and Justin Gunn of Current TV shared his number after it was leaked with the rest of Paris Hilton’s cell phone, but it does demonstrate that Mob Logic is committed to having a conversation with their audience and pursuing networked journalism. Although others may suggest that it’s just a publicity stunt and she’s planning on switching to AT&T when the 3G Iphone comes out in a couple weeks anyhow (by the way, I making that up)…

As of right now, 12:30PM - Lindsay has received 30 calls and 20 texts… I didn’t ask, but she didn’t mention if any of them were weird stalkerish types, but I’d expect all of the calls were legit.

         

Rock the Vote recently held a call out to recruit a number of correspondents to Rock the Trail. As part of the application, I had to write a series of essays and produce a two-to-four minute video package on “Our World: My Country as I see it.”

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My 300 word essay on Sustaining young voter participation beyond 2008 is after the break… (more…)

         

Meet the Players:

Dan Gillmor - founding director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship: Seees himself as the outlier in the panel. He doesn’t work for a news publication (though he did work at the San Jose Mercury News for quite some time, and probably went off on his own at the perfect time).

Chris Rauber of SF Business Times: Mission is to break business news on a daily basis online and weekly in print. Started 25-30 years ago, and succeeded by exploiting the daily papers deficit in business coverage. Still around, making money, and doing pretty well despite the “harsh economic times.”

Troy May of ON Magainze: provide stories of the diverse lives of the LGBT community, and to give people outside the LGBT community a reason to read the magazine. His personal contribution consists of filtering through a massive influx of info in order to find the gems that he feels will connect with the audience. His workflow involves working very closely with his freelancers to cover the stories in the best way possible. Works to engage the reader.

Andrew Fitzgerald - Manager of the Collective Journalism department at Current.com: developed VC(Squared) because the first two letters in UGC start like “ugly” - Starting from the premise that we should be in more platforms as opposed to a single platform. — The station invites its viewers to take part in making content.

Kourosh Karimkhany - Vice president of development for CondeNet - His job is to figure out how to make money from the online side of the business. Has experience with the acquisition of Wired.com and feels it has been going well thus far.

Dan sees this to be an incredible time for young journalists despite the fact that the career paths he followed as a journalist are greatly diminished. The reasons include the fact that the barrier to entry to trying something is essentially nothing beyond time and a good idea (though I’d contend that essentially nothing is still out of reach for much of the working class). He points out that most projects will fail, but that the small percentage that succeed is still a pretty big number. Dan’s excited about the enormous number of experiments, and points out that failing is a learning opportunity and that people will eventually get it right.

When asked by Tom about time being a valuable commodity and when people must resort to getting their money from Starbucks. All Dan’s efforts are focused on people who want to take risks, it’s not easy to do this if you are 48 with two college kids and a mortgage. He hopes that people who are still employed, will think about some niche product that good journalism can find an audience for. “There’s never enough people to do good journalism at the niches.”

Troy was working for a business publication before buying OutNow Magazine. It was dying at the time, but through surveys, focus groups, and a redesign he’s managed to turn it around and double his distribution. He points out that there is a market for niche journalist, but there is an inherent risk involved.

Kourosh is talking about the marketability of niches and how Nick Denton launched a series of niche blogs with Gawker and it’s been remarkably successful in that regards. Similarly when Conde Nest reaquired wired.com, they’ve followed a similar approach creating and ditching blogs

Andrew states that from a revenue standpoint, their money is coming from Cable fees. “Once you reach a certain threshold, more of the money comes from advertising. Current is trying to get away from the perspective that citizen journalism is bad journalism. The Vanguard journalism department has won many awards and critical acclaim, and they are also developing collective journalism endeavors. Current is inviting people around the world to be sources while the “work of journalism” is being done internally. In other words, the video itself is being produced within the company relying on leads and ideas from the audience.

Hal from reelchanges.org is proposing to the panel that if you ask the audience what they want, they will be more inclined to help pay for what they are looking for.

Andrew points out that they cover a wide range of topics, and says they are similar to a big newspaper with a niche of “young adults.” If they were driven by clicks exclusivelly, they’d be perezhilton.com. He feels that the audience is interested in a wide range of topics, but there are elements the audience doesn’t realize they are interested in.

What Kourosh is looking for are areas where they are making a lot of money: fashion, tech, beauty, etc. he then takes these segments that are highly profitable to underwrite journalism that may be expensive and not profitable but are in need of coverage. “It’s either the MBA’s or the English majors that are running the show.” In response, Kourosh studied the business side to get a more comprehensive perspective of the business.

         

10 ideas…

David Cohn: Aggregation is creation - newstrust.net — aggregates the best journalism and also allows users to rate the journalism they encounter. Looking to improve best practices so that we can have a better solution.

David Mathison and Jim Moore: Social, civic news, and gaming networks. Journalism as a game - what makes a game effective? Story, excitement glamour. Looking to make journalism glamourous and fun.

Mary Hodder and Bill Allison - Bringing information from multiple data sets is how stories are made. His company is working to create a search engine to save time to digging though multiple data sets.

Personalization, localization, geocoding, geotracking - Paul Lamb: “News is not just local, local is the news” he describes himself as an immigrant

Dan Gillmor on — RSS, Twitter, and Friend Feed. The viral effect is what is important though not completely understood but he knows that it is going to be fundamental in the future.

Steve Enders is talking about Kevin Sites’ project for Yahoo News where he visited every war zone in the world.

Kaliya Hamlin is talking about standardized login accounts so that people can have one username and password for all sites.

Eduardo Hauser is talking about how papers can now be printed on-demand. More specifically having users print their own papers…

Tom Stites is talking about disruption versus the eruption of new ideas regarding how we form identities that present news on the web. The most important point is that the quality of businesses is grounded in the relationship with end users more so that…

7:50PM: Mary Hodder just spoke about her work with Dabble. Now Bill Gannon is speaking about how important meta-data is towards monetization, and why Mary Hodder is an excellent resource for that information.

Gannon: “How many of you have been part of a failed start-up?” Almost every hand is raised… “Aggregation is creation”

Gannon is suggesting that this is the golden age of innovation in online journalism, but I’m unsure how much gold there is out there. Dan Gillmor points out that it’s “really cheap to try,” and that’s true, but the monetization is not quite there yet.

Dan Gillmor points out that if you don’t point to others who are doing important work, you are doing yourself and your audience a disservice.

8:07PM: Bill Gannon concludes their trio presentation by suggesting that the folks in the room try buying internet ads to get a better sense of what it’s all about…