Line Them Up

During my time at the Village Voice, I would occasionally hear the name Jimmy Breslin. No one told me who he was, it was just a name that would sometimes appear written on a folder or a piece of paper, hell I think the desk I would sometimes sit at used to be his… but I’m not sure about that either. Whether it was conversations with people in the break room or names written on folders, I figured out on my own that Jimmy Breslin was not just a name, he was – and is, a legend in journalism.

I had never heard his voice, until last week.

Clicking on my usual dose of On Point from NPR, the guest is none other than Jimmy Breslin talking about the mob and his latest book. Now some people talk and its just a conversation, no big deal. When Jimmy began to speak, it became very obvious that HERE was a man that is not afraid of anyone and more than that, not afraid to speak his mind no matter what people might think of him.

He comes down pretty hard on blogs, but like I said yesterday, I don’t mind, people need to stop praising blogs so much and get a grip on the reality that we face as professional journalism is starved to death. Plus if a man with the experience and independence of Breslin says it, you know you’re hearing the voice of real experience talking.

Listen to this program, it is my recommendation of the week. Pay special attention to how he handles the accusations that journalists like him, along with television and film, are only serving to glorify the mafia. And enjoy his solution for crime in New York City.

A Room of Our Own

Part of being a fairly old school blogger and very old school podcaster who calls himself a journalist, means that I get invited to speak at conferences and quite often, to give my point of view on issues relating to new media. So as much as I hate to take time out of really discussing and analyzing topics that need our attention, I’ll use this post to do a little META talk and respond to a very scathing article in Mother Jones on the topic of citizen journalism.

In Adam Weinstein’s article “Stop the Press Releases” he tears into newspapers that have cut back on staff and replaced traditional…. real journalism with bloggers who produce content for free. He slams the content produced by these bloggers as filled with fluff and often – straight up marketing propaganda. Throughout the text he refers to the transforming of newspapers to some sort of collection of user generated, mob rule, mess. As Weinstein puts it:

Content has become “platform agnostic”—making print and online versions interchangeable. The chain’s newsrooms were rechristened “information centers” and reporters became “mojos”—mobile journalists who shoot their own photos and videos (badly, it turns out) and post them to the web without editing. Long-form and investigative stories were replaced by short, searchable bursts of information.

I call myself a citizen journalist because I seek to report about issues and events unfolding in the world. Of course, I do this as an independent podcaster, so I make use, as best I can, of the resources available to me from my own experiences and contacts, as well as those I can find using the internetS. There are plenty of things that traditional journalists, full-time paid on-staff journalists, can afford to do in terms of time and resources, that I simply can’t. But then again, I have the advantage of being free of their institutional and professional limitations. (Like being able to call the internet the internetS. )

If you’ve ever heard me speak on the topic, you might have caught me at a moment of over excitement where I make a sweeping statement that I don’t mean. Something like “old media is dead, good riddance!” It is fun to say, I admit it. But the truth is, I share the criticisms of Weinstein; I’ve seen newsrooms picked apart and newspapers that slash jobs for journalists who do serious in-depth research and investigation. I’ve watched as insitutions sanction blogs, pretending that they care about the spirit of openness and candidness. The bloggers that arrive on the scene and proceed to do nothing but marketing and navel gazing, while being showered with a few perks and access to elite events.

As someone dedicated to citizen journalism, despite the fact that I don’t have any formal institution behind me nor a steady funding stream to compensate me for my work… it is not my hope that newspapers disappear. Sure they’ve done some terrible work over the years. And sure, they too should and can be accused of doing their own marketing and irresponsible reporting. They may deserve a wake up call, but once newspaper owners and managing editors decide they can fire everyone and just use free work from citizen reporters, thats when it goes to far for me.

We have our place, and I can tell you from experience, we’re fighting to earn this place within the media landscape. But newspapers and news media from formal institutions, tv, radio, newspaper, they can still serve a very important role for all of us. And if business logic, and profit margins continue to recommend they just throw it all away in favor of free labor and fluff blogging… then our world will fall even further into a destructive, corrupted, abyss.

bm250 My Mother’s Immigration Story

Over the summer I recorded podcasts documenting my parents’ lives in Portugal. In this podcast I sit with my mother here in Amsterdam and she explains what it was like moving from Portugal to Newark, New Jersey in the 70’s.

What I enjoy most about recording this series of podcasts about my family is that not only do people seem to enjoy hearing these stories, it is also great for my family as alot of these stories we haven’t told in a long time and I continue to learn details that I did not previously know.

True Magic

I have experienced few more beautiful things than the simple act of sitting next to my mom and cousin as they go through black and white photos from their past in Portugal. Hilarious stories, sad stories, political stories, mysterious stories; I try to make mental notes and the occasional audio-visual recording of each one.

Recording or no recording, being in the room while these two reminisce… that’s what I’ve been enjoying most recently.

bmtv76 Forgotten Portuguese WWII Hero

Aristides de Sousa Mendes ignored the orders of the facist Portuguese government during WWII, by helping people escape to Portugal. A diplomat in Bordeaux, he gave visas to thousands of Jewish and nonJewish refugees trying to escape the Nazi occupation. When it was discovered, he was fired, disgraced, and died poor dishonored by his country. More than 50 years later, the truth is finally coming to light of the around 30,000 lives he helped save, and the plight that he suffered at the hands of the facist Portuguese government. This screencast is me getting to know this story, which was the topic of the evening for my family here in Brussels.

Statehood Doesn’t Pay Bills

Nationalism has long been the cause of alot of pain and broken dreams in the history of the world. Yet nationalism is the force that brings about so many changes in so many places, even in this day and age.

I was working in Portugal several years ago when East Timor formerly declared it’s independence from Indonesia. Needless to say it was a big deal in Lisbon, at some level, as the nation watched a new country set out on the quest for freedom, prosperity… insert lofty goal. And of course, as I watched the ceremony in Dili, I can’t deny a feeling, based on all that I know from world history and the inequality that is the world economy, that East Timor would never really achieve much of a quality of life. For all the beauty and nobility of independence, you could spin the globe, crunch the numbers, and know that the new nation’s odds of a prosperous survival were slim to none.

Now we watch Kosovo. I know, I know, different details, different history, some different problems. But the facts still spell out the same feelings. Independence and freedom from whatever oppression, past or present, that certainly sounds good. No wonder lots of good people out there support the declaration. Yet what chance does it’s people have in this global economy and the political chess game that leaves a majority of the new nation as a bunch of expendable pawns; useful for flag waving news footage, but not worth a serious investment or some serious problem solving strategies. Powerful forces in the world of business and politics might have been salivating at the chance to use the cause and the region for their own goals, but now they can salivate even more as disorganization and internal struggles make it easy to profit.

Now you hear the whispers in different parts of the world get louder; Turkish Cyprus, Abkasia, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Palestine, Western Sahara, Aceh… places where the calls for independence grow louder now. And who would dare speak against many of those cases, where people have suffered and hoped for independence for so long.

While I don’t speak against most of these calls, I will add a question to the equation. How will they live? Will there be a way to seriously live without the threat of famine, violence, or some other terrible factor. Do they have some way to stand on their own two feet in a global economy that specializes in picking apart new nations without the luxury of lots of money or some magic resource?

Independence sounds lovely. But when calculating and dreaming of the kind of life people should have, I wish we would factor in what happens once you’ve got that independence. That’s the part that could really help make a better future for all people.