| January 28, 2005 | The Danger of Grounding a Good Thing into the Hype |
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August sent me this piece from Slate to read because it relates to the Poynter seminar on "The Future of Online Journalism" which I will be attending in a few days. This is my response (that I also posted in Slate's fray bulletin board and emailed to the author of the piece in question): A long, long time ago -- OK, it was 13 years ago -- Michael Joyce and a clutch of other hypertext aficionados introduced me to chatting on a Macintosh computer using a clunky program called Interchange inside what was being called a "virtual classroom" for a "Hypertext Rhetoric and Poetics" class at Vassar college, where I was a freshman. Though Interchange was clunky, we students and the professor and visiting writers all sat at our separate Macintosh computers, typing away inside a chat dialogue box while at the same time another person might be speaking and presenting at the head of the class. At the time -- back in 1992-1993, people thought this was "crazy." How could we learn and participate in the class if we were all holding separate discussion(s) on our computers? I loved it. It was the perfect way to learn for someone who always had too many ideas at once on a variety of different topics -- some which pertained and did not pertain to the agenda in the class. It was also the perfect way to ask questions, voice unpopular opinions, and just have an outlet for your thoughts. Today I work programming news for a major internet portal, and I realize that this was hands-down *the* most valuable class I took at Vassar. It is the one class that prepared me for the work-world from 1996-2005. Today when I'm at work -- I will be choosing content for the portal, composing 3 simultaneous emails, and holding IM conversations with a minimum of 4 people at once, and occasionally posting tidbits to my personal blog. Add in the spoken conversations with my co-workers, and that's a *lot* going on all at once. Too much, some would say. And many days I agree. It's not as fun and exciting anymore now on those days when my wrists ache with tendonitis caused from too many keystrokes. On days when it hurts too much -- I turn off my Instant Messenger program, and cut out the blogging and rely on the phone instead of email. Another brand new, futuristic-sounding concept that Michael Joyce introduced us to in that class back in 1992 was the concept of writing in "Hypertext" with interlinking thoughts and ideas via "links." In less than ten years' time this concept is now almost universally understood and utilized by millions of people to communicate via websites, blogs, and comments posted in forums like this. While I appreciate Shafer's point about how he is part of the "Slow Blogging" movement. (I too, am a "Slow Blogger" myself; I enjoy processing ideas a bit before posting them.) Still, I worry that Shafer's overall tone is a bit defensive. I strongly believe that there is something to be said for the fact that the younger bloggers move faster, and that they aren't afraid to post before they think and take risks. This is what makes what they do more valuable and more interesting than those who think too long and process and worry about the details too much and worry if they should post something and slow-blog. Their speedy posting time allows them to investigate and break certain stories before the mainstream press and the slower bloggers. Of course, it also allows them to make mistakes of judgment. And that is the risk associated with their sometimes haphazard, loose-lipped posting style. Watching ABC News' internet-only subscription video channel last week during their coverage of Bush's inauguration – I was interested to see the anchormen (Hari Sreenivasen, Sam Donaldson, and Bob Woodruff) cutting away frequently and including video camera phone clips shot by amateurs -- teenagers performing in the Inaugural Parade and spectators along the parade route. Now inauguration coverage is usually quite boring, I'm sure we can all agree. But these producers and anchormen took new risks in their programming (for a major news network!). And, though they were grainy and sometimes ill-lit, the amateur video clips (documenting such mundane stuff as people waiting in line at the porta potties) definitely made ABC News NOW's 2005 Inauguration coverage more personal, real, interesting and watch-able. I can't help but think that that the folks that wrote "Guerrilla Television" and foretold about how the video Porta Pak would change everything 33-years-ago were actually correct – it just took longer than they thought and happened differently (e.g. who would have thought that they would put an affordable video recorder inside a cell phone?!) posted by Jess Barron @ 1:23 PM 
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