Ride-Along: GoGreenNation.org

No fancy office, no bustling newsroom. No staff, no deadlines, no advertisers calling with demands. Trish Riley leads a nation from her desk overlooking the living-dining room of her 1970s cottage in North Central Gainesville. A mug filled with pens and pencils reads "Do What It Takes." A wall of sliding glass doors shines tree-filtered light onto gray concrete floors, warmed with area rugs of all sizes, patchworked throughout the cozy rooms.

This is where GoGreenNation.org first began about a year ago. It is fed and sustained by the single hand of Riley, its mastermind, and the site itself was designed and built by a hired Web designer, Alex Parkinson. It's a community-based but globally minded news aggregation site focused on environmental issues. Stories are pulled from sources such as The New York Times,The Huffington Post and Gainesville's own student-run The Fine Print.

"Part of me doesn’t feel as compelled as I once was to just report a story and put it out there," said Riley, a former travel writer, travel guide book author and freelance writer of about 2,000 stories for the Miami Herald. "I can’t write all the stories I consider to be important. I feel I can be a greater service to people by gathering that information and putting it out there."

That information is Riley's product, and the subject is something she's been writing about for over 20 years, although not always directly. Living in South Florida, she said, allowed her to take advantage of her geographical location to write much sought after travel stories and infuse them with shades of green. She would suggest visitors tour the Everglades, for example, or she would warn snorkelers not to touch the coral because doing so can kill it. Although the purpose of her writing was to attract tourists, she is wary of tourism's effects on the local environment.

This imbalance between personal beliefs and professional duties is one of the things that led Riley away from what she considers the feigned impartiality of traditional media. "The whole objectivity thing is kind of a sham," she said, citing the hypothetical example of having to get a pre-packaged, PR-ed response from the chemical company that producesBisphenol-A (also called BPA) for a story about how bad Bisphenol-A is.

GoGreenNation.org caters to a niche market and bypasses the sometimes unrealistic mission of providing balanced coverage of intrinsically one-sided stories that traditional newspapers and general news publications work to achieve. Not only is the topic and coverage narrowed to a targeted audience, but the main drive in the creation of the site was geographically narrowed to connect local community environmentalists in Gainesville and equip them with information relevant to their lifestyles or businesses, while providing networking opportunities to other like-minded local residents.

Riley first realized the need for an environmental community site during a book signing for her how-to guide, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Living," at Goering's Book Store in July of 2008. She had just moved to Gainesville because she considered it to be forward-thinking and welcoming to green ideas. Gainesville's residents do have these ideas, she discovered, and they're living green lives on their own. As she talked to people at the signing, she realized that what was missing was a unifying force between individuals that would allow for the sharing of ideas and provide a place where accurate, current environmental news could reach the people who care about it.

Thus, GoGreenNation.org was born.

Aesthetically, the site is transfixing. An artistic yet simple masthead inspires thoughts of pristine oceans and healthy forests. The prominent feature on the home page is a stream of headlines from publications all over the world, accompanied by a dek-head teaser and maybe some comments from Riley about an issue that affects Gainesville directly. Users must click the teaser, which takes you to another page from which you can access the article on its original site. On the right is a side bar with a list of local environmental events and featured links, including an icon to follow GoGreenNation.org's RSS feed. Every article is indexed in a side bar on the left with popular sections such as Business, Food and Health, and travel. A topical archive of sorts takes the form of a list at the bottom of the home page, a feature Riley's Web designer came up with that she isn't fond of, but she lacks the technical know-how to fix it herself.

"What's frustrating is I don't have Web skills," she said.

Riley has to hire people to handle the Web-based aspects of her site, and it's draining her financial resources.

"My savings have been tapped now," she said.

For all the ideals it can cater to, online media has its share of pitfalls, and a lack of "green"backs tops the list. Riley experimented with advertising, but discovered it was difficult to ensure that those who advertise with her also follow the environmentally conscious practices the site seeks to promote. It also takes time and a saleswoman's attitude, neither of which Riley has much of.

"Marketing isn't my thing," she said. "I'm so not into driving people anywhere. It's just not in me to push market. I'm not even going to hire anybody whose real drive is to market."

She has a Facebook page, which she updates when she remembers to, and a Twitter account, which tweets to her followers every time a new article is posted on the site. Although she recognizes the potential to drive up traffic and increase Web hits, Riley is reluctant to spend a lot of time on social networking sites because they come and go and change so quickly, she said.

"For me, it's got nothing to do with journalism or the importance of the information," she said.

Her stance on social media tools is "more of a personal thing than a professional thing," she said, but she knows her loyalty to her personal values is coming at a cost. She is not making any money on the site, so she plans to make it into a nonprofit with the help of a lawyer in Tampa who agreed to help her with the paperwork, who she found through the Online Media Legal Network, a program that helps online journalists find pro-bono legal help.

Eventually, Riley would like to see GoGreenNation.org expand to other cities, with former journalism colleagues -- some now laid off, and of those, some contribute articles to GoGreenNation.org -- spearheading the same community-building effort in their areas, from California to Indianapolis.

But that dream will remain far off until Riley can turn her brainchild into a profitable adolescent, especially if that means she has to change her traditional journalistic and personal standards to focus on social networking and new media tools.

But right now, the site is successful given its limited resources. Riley recently co-directed the First Annual Gainesville Environmental Film and Arts Festival, which was in collaboration with GoGreenNation.org. She admits she was so overwhelmed with festival-related tasks that promoting her site fell by the wayside. But the festival embodied the greater mission of GoGreenNation.org: to build a community of concerned citizens with a heart and a sharp, informed mind for all things green.

Blog 7

Funny how at this point in time when everything is so up-to-the-minute, we have little notion of what comes after that minute. Even among the speculation of talking heads, real future solutions to current problems rarely emerge through this constant babble of the here-and-now. Maybe such a lack of foresight is subconscious, maybe it's out of fear, or maybe it's simply because this case -- the case of the future of journalism -- has us stumped. The industry and its mimickers have been analyzed to death (the literal death of many print papers), with nothing to show for it.

Should we look to J-schools for the solution? After all, "children" are the future. Certainly teaching the next generation of journalists the right things will ensure that a more effective and better prepared work force will come out of every graduating class. But the definitions of what makes a good grad are ambiguous. One thing remains: Despite the notion that niche is more marketable, a good journalist can think critically about the connections between subjects. Every expert and his or her mother has a blog these days, so the need is for those who can offer an objective, analytical perspective and use the connectedness of the Internet to put it all together.

It seems like the relationship between workplace preparedness, the availability of jobs and job seekers, and journalism school training methods share a weird, inverse relationship. Often the most qualified professors got their qualifications in a very different media climate, which is not to say they're not keeping up with modern trends, but they are learning right alongside their students in the hustle of changing media. On a side-note, today's journalism students have developed an unhealthy dependence to Google, a counter-productive sin I myself am guilty of. In order to tailor training to fit the new way of doing things -- Google and every other new "tool" included -- with the expectation that the training is to prepare students for journalism jobs, there have to be journalism jobs out there to attract the graduates. This Advanced Editing class is a disturbing indication of what kind of talent the industry is losing to law school. In order for that to happen, the industry as a whole has to figure out the big question: How can journalists make money while information remains free?

There are micro-examples of success, strangely concentrated in the Seattle area, but unless outsourcing local news to hyper-local startups is the secret to national success, it's hard to see how that can be a sustainable model everywhere. Citizen journalists, who embody the conflict between information by the masses vs. information for the masses, work against any efforts to compensate trained professionals for work that most in the business would prefer to classify as more than a hobby or a post-retirement venture. While some outsiders see it as a way to get more information from niche areas, they, as does much of modern society, undervalue the work that goes in to creating an accurate piece of news. Traditional-leaning veteran journalists blow off citizen journalists as children playing dress-up.

This same group in question, the past-time press, is the sparkle in Charlie Beckett's eye. Father Beckett preaches the digital gospel with hope and optimism, which can often be considered naiveté and idealism. But he balances out what he calls the "fortresses" of old journalism, stuck in the ways of the past. Somewhere there in the middle lies the solution.

Or what if the solution is outside of journalism entirely? What if it's...government? Now, get that pesky "S" word out of your head. This is not a health care debate just yet. Government funding of the press has been proven successful, not only currently with the BBC, but in our own American history. A postal subsidy wouldn't quite do it these days, but something equally hands-off could keep that distance between the co-dependent entities and ensure the objectivity of the press and prevent a government grip on content.

Maybe the solution is outside of everything. It might even have to be a model that doesn't exist or that has never existed in history. If the technology that's causing this crisis in funding came from innovation and doing something that has never been done before, we're going to have to start thinking way out of the box (or the "fortress," if you will) that our ancestors spent the last 150 years constructing.

The Mark McGwire of Book Reports

Networked Journalists are an idealistic bunch. In a world that is sprinting to keep up with itself, only to get caught in the untied shoelaces of pavement-pounding traditional media, there is a population of new-minded, forward thinking journalists who see endless opportunity in technology. They have mastered the art of storytelling, they've been around long enough to remember life before the Internet, but they maintain an optimism and excitement that is bound to catch on. They are the Charlie Becketts of the journalism world. This movement will grow, and as we remember the good old days of Linotypes and afternoon papers, the hope that this rocket ship will soar to new heights instead of crashing and becoming smoldering ruins of a coherent society will keep us afloat until the former becomes the reality and the latter seems like an off-the-wall conspiracy theory.

It seems as though we have reached the final frontier of newspapers, but these changes are nothing new. Even the Golden Age of journalism in the 1970s and 80s would have been unrecognizable to William Bradford, John Peter Zenger or Benjamin Franklin: the founding fathers of American journalism. The nuts and bolts will stay the same, but the tools and the hands that use them will be constantly changing throughout time. To expect a static industry from a profession that bases its substance on what's new is a little hypocritical, dontcha think?

There are some logistical hurdles of figuring out exactly how to use new media -- for example how to "friend" someone, how to use a hash tag and what's the best way to start a blog; all things that can be taught to the older generations, albeit with a certain level of frustration, but also these are things that the younger generation is growing up with. These skills will become as basic on a resume as "knows how to read."

Just as basic literacy molded our society into a thinking, innovating one long before asnwering questions of civil rights or health care reform. In SuperMedia, Charlie Beckett refers to the new stage in accepting and making the most of what Networked Journalism has to offer as "Media literacy."

"Media literacy, in the deeper sense that I will have tried to outline here is about helping to build that connectivity. That is why I repeat that Networked Journalism will not emerge without a real understanding of its implications and potential. It is not just another label for New Media. It will require investment, imagination, and innovation." (p. 168)

Indeed, the learning curve is erratic and uneven across generations and classes. But what many analyses of new media fail to explore is its impact worldwide. For some reason, maybe because we made Google, we think we'll be the only ones to consult about any ethical questions or any major developments in the new media arena. Who would have thought a blogger in Africa could have his voice heard to correct the often faulty coverage of a place that is notoriously difficult to understand and even harder to objectively write about from a Western perspective? Doesn't he deserve a say in how Networked Journalism depicts the "plight" of Africa? While Africa still lacks even the most basic press structure, the continent's widespread corruption keeps journalists from reporting fairly about their own governments. But would every place on Earth benefit from a free and robust media? Does the West need to bring "democracy" of the press to places where it has not developed naturally already? Beware of this "exceptionalism," says Beckett. A free press has long been an indicator of a successful state, and we should not hold Africa to any less of a standard.

Throughout the book, Beckett writes extensively about the effects Networked Journalism can have on politics and vice versa. The two systems have lived co-dependently since the beginning of time. Over the years, the two have taken turns becoming warped by the influence of the other, but it might be safe to say that Networked Journalism has the power to make the playing field as even as it can be. Politicians are held more accountable than they ever have been, but at the same time they have had unprecedented access to the public and the spotlight. They have embraced this information generation, even if it could be the source of their downfall one day. Becketts repeated references back to politics, in Africa and in Europe as well, also underline the importance of making sure journalists use these new resources to make the media more reliable instead of diluting the good journalism so much that its watchdog function is forgotten in the wake of the information overload.

One "natural" development that traditional media have resisted unsuccessfully is the citizen journalist. Universal publication forums has driven untrained reporters to test out life as a journalist. Now that news organizations are taking all the cheap help they can get, (and if they weren't included in the recent New York Times article about unpaid internships, they certainly should have been), regular Joe Schmoe the plumber can contribute to the national news media. In some cases, this works, such as in Northfield, Minn., where a gaggle of local residents has created its own witty news site with hyperlocal coverage.

All of this together: new media time-saving, truth-finding gadgets vs. old media phone calls and by-hand records searches; global communication vs. local concentration; everyone can be a journalist vs. the press-pass elite; journalism as a public service vs. reporting as a trade; it all has come down to this moment in history when not only individual news organizations, but an entire population of people has to face the fact that Networked Journalism is the only way to continue the mission of providing fast, accurate news that can change policies, change minds and change lives. It's not something to be feared, but it's not something to foolishly accept without some sense of skepticism. Charlie Beckett's idealism may seem a little illogical. For example, you can't turn every story into a mediation session between two dissenting groups. But his insight into what comes after the final frontier is an exceptional reminder of the resilience of journalism, wherever it's practiced around the globe.

Sources Referenced:

Beckett, Charlie. SuperMedia. Blackwell Publishing: United Kingdom, 2008.

Tripp, Bernell. "Intro & Colonial Press." History of Journalism class PowerPoint Lecture Outlines. Accessed via e-Learning on April 13, 2010.

www.slate.com/id/2221856/?from=rss&obref=obinsite

locallygrownnorthfield.org/

Jimmy's World case study

If this story weren't completely made up, it would be considered an extreme example of a bogus trend story. Not only would this case be way out of the norm, getting statistics on drug abusing children--which is what you would need to even begin to correlate Jimmy's case with a growing trend--would be nearly impossible. Even if she were to just write a depressing feature about a child heroin addict, the looming need to take a social commentary to the next level by elevating it to trend status would have accounted for the interviews with social workers and DEA agents, fishing for that one quote that would hint at the idea it could be a growing "epidemic."

Not only do copy editors have to be on the lookout for bogus trends, but they also need to watch out for, well--bogus. The signs that this story was fabricated should have never bypassed the copy desk. It shouldn't have even gotten there. Her managing editor, who should have had some sort of involvement in the development of the story, especially given its controversial nature, should have put the brakes on this way before it got to print. The copy should have been analyzed, not just for facts but for the potential shock factor of such a disturbing image. This is no snake in the toilet feature. This story is a big deal, and it should have been given more attention before ever getting to the copy desk.

But since it did wind up in the copy editor's hands, that places him or her in the key position. The role of copy editors is more than grammar and adding up the numbers. Especially in an era of increasing competition to get the good story first, reporters will be more inclined to fake it, and the Internet makes it even easier. Janet Cooke at least based her work of fiction on what she personally heard from real people, but she could have easily done the same from information she stumbled upon on the Internet.

Wordled Speeches Case Study

Wordle is interesting to look at, but more importantly it boils down the content of a story or a speech to get to the essence of what it's about. I know I've heard commentary after some State of the Union speeches about how many times the president used certain words, and that gives the viewer/reader a better idea of the president's priorities. Personally, it's an artistic way to look at what's important to me or what's on my mind most of the time. I did a similar text analysis through a facebook application that shows the most used words in your statuses. "Rays" was number one for me, which kind of makes sense because two seasons ago, when they went to the World Series, I had a Rays related status for about a month or more leading up to the big event. It was still surprising, though.

To be honest, though, I don't really see a long-term or daily use for text analysis in journalism. It has all the markings of a fad technology that's cool for the moment, but will soon fade away. Maybe someone could come up with a use for it, but whatever results will not be simple text analysis. It will have to have a greater purpose other than entertainment. You'd have to get past the mildly interested "huh" reaction and go for the "wow."

Palin Speech Case Study

The ease with which any given human reporter can objectively cover a story fits on a scale from "piece of cake," such as a bit about the weather, to "teeth-grinding tough" like one about a White Supremacist rally on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Many times, speeches fall closer to the latter because by their nature they are meant to impart something new, important or controversial, and depending on the speaker and the purpose of the speech, they are often open to interpretation. In some ways, speeches are an easy write. After all, you just put down what the speaker said and leave it up to the reader to decide how to feel about it.

But especially with politicians, bias often appears in deciding which parts of the speech the reporter chooses to highlight, and what other details about the event he or she finds appropriate to include. A common practice of political mudslinging is to take a quote out of context and infuse it with some sort of alternate meaning that serves the opposition's agenda. Journalists are guilty of contributing to that, too, which is why editors serve as balance checkers. They can help eliminate biases, keep quotes in context and fact check background information.

Grammatically, editors make sure tenses don't confuse meaning. Present becomes past and future becomes conditional. The editor has to make sure he or she doesn't change around the tenses and give something the wrong meaning. In cases where the editor takes the transcript and makes a story out of it, the responsibility is slightly greater because it's about an even the editor didn't attend. He or she is forced to stick to the information and not try to make it an event story.

In the Palin speech, the editor had to make sure the reporter got to the meat of the story, which was that Palin was resigning. Most of the speech included a repertoire of her administration's accomplishments, which is another potential trap, but the editor had to make sure the story stuck to the point. Every politician has an agenda to serve, so the editor also had to know some background about Sarah Palin, including the fact that many expect her to run for president in 2012, which was relevant to the speech and should have been mentioned for context without presuming that was why she resigned. The editor also made it slightly more palatable to readers who might not know very much about politics or about Sarah Palin. Also, AP Style and grammar were checked, of course.

I think the editor made it better, which is no surprise because it usually doesn't hurt to have your work checked, especially if there's the chance for bias and misreported speech.

Blog 6

One of the reasons many young people list as to why they don't enjoy the company of the elderly is that they're always complaining about "hooligans" running the streets and "modern gadgets" such as computers and calculators complicating a formerly simple existence. Somewhere around the age of 65, the capacity and/or desire to keep up with such a rapidly changing world slackens while disdain for all things new--rather "not like they used to be"--increases at the same rate.

At the ripe age of 22, I've aged prematurely. I find myself reminiscing about the golden age of journalism, when newsrooms were flourishing and a press pass was the highest badge of honor outside of the military. Muckracker Mark Sullivan's 1938 lament over the gone glory days rings eerily true in a world he wouldn't even recognize were he alive today. Granted, it's hard to for me to reminisce about a time I was not alive to see, so perhaps my longing for "pure" journalism is really an uneasiness spawned from my ignorance of its opposite: today's wired media.

So as I stew in my unearned hopelessness, it's refreshing to know that not every online news upstarter is an optimistic, technology-embracing, 40-something Seattle hipster with retro black-rimmed glasses. Enter: Kery Murakami, dubbed "the reluctant news entrepreneur." Nothing but a true journalist's spirit could drive someone to essentially produce a one-man "paper" like Murakami is doing. He puts in all if not more of the shoe leather, the sleepless weeks and the more-than-occasional cuss word than your stereotypical fedora-topped reporter from back in the day. However, he recognizes that it's not the format that defines this industry, it's the purpose.

No matter how much drive you have, something green and papery has to give you the fuel you need to establish yourself as an online presence and stay that way without going bankrupt. According to Tom Mangan, it's all about audience. Finding and catering to a specific audiencecan mean the difference between a low-traffic hobby and a high-traffic, full-time blogging career. Tracking your success is even easier now with ://Urlfan.com, which ranks Web sites based on their popularity in the blogosphere.

This kind of calculated attention to detail, combined with a commitment to developing online media to include audience participation was underlined in a reporters conference, ironically held on the Google campus, our friendly search-engine-turned-world-dominator that could easily be said to be our generation's trademark. It's also vastly responsible for any feelings of information overload so nicely put into parabola to relate information intake to level of confusion.

But we can't put all the blame on Google. After all, it could secede and form its own country someday, and we already know they have global surveillance taken care of (i.e. Google Earth), and given the chance they'd make the coolest, most user friendly WMD's ever. No, the media must own up to its own role in this chaos. Whether it's treating an empty hot air balloon as if it were a Martian space craft, or saturating our minds with polls, statistics and rankings, the modern press could be its own worst enemy. And when all else fails, just make it all free!