Archive for the ‘Writers’ Category
Citizens become world storytellers
An article in the New York Times reports that a new “citizen” journalism site is about to emerge. Wired.com is behind the deal with Jay Rosen, who is a journalism professor at NYU. Rosen’s idea is fascinating. I agree, the world is a story and who else better to write the world’s history other than citizens. Â
 My dissertation will build upon what types of thematic rhetorical strategies do citizens use to create social knowledge. Going back to the 17th and 18th century coffeehouses in England, you would find the citizens spreading the news. Stories were abundant.  Right now storytelling is changing. The global community can now participate in the storytelling process rather than just a bystander. Good luck to Jay Rosen’s web site.
Journalism has always been a product of networks. A reporter receives an assignment, begins calling “sources†— people he or she knows or can find. More calls follow and, with luck and a deadline looming, the reporter will gain enough mastery of the topic to sit down at a keyboard and tell the world a story.
A new experiment wants to broaden the network to include readers and their sources. Assignment Zero (zero.newassignment.net/), a collaboration between Wired magazine and NewAssignment.Net, the experimental journalism site established by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, intends to use not only the wisdom of the crowd, but their combined reporting efforts — an approach that has come to be called “crowdsourcing.â€
Ordinary citizens as book reviewers
Interesting article from the UK”s Telegraph: The state of Amazon book reviews.  Some people, in my opinion, and the author’s opinion, have to voice their opinion. Again, sharing one’s experience–bad or good–is an urge that many people need to fullfill.Â
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Nothing stands still on the web. There is emerging, on Amazon, a corps of regular ‘reviewers’, so called, trusted to kick up dust and move books. Dinahbitching is becoming institutionalised.
Why do the web-reviewers allow themselves to be recruited as unpaid hacks? Partly for freebies. But more because they enjoy shooting off their mouths. And they enjoy the power.
No, the book reviews on Amazon may not be the best literary reviews one can find, but they do allow what many people haven’t had in the literary world– a voice and a community venue to voice their opinions.
Pros and Cons of Citizen Journalism
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 Lisa Snedecker of Media Life Newspapers reports that citizen journalism, as it seems like a good idea to be able to cover more local news, newspapers are weary about trusting citizen journalists who might get the story, but worry if it will be a good and ethical story.
A most noble idea, citizen journalism
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Because they’re coming from the local community, these citizen reporters can bring with them alliances with local political factions, and they’ll certainly have embedded views about the mayor and council and the most recent bond issue.
So while the paper may save on reporter salaries, it will have to have that many more editors to vet the stories and rewrite them for publication. That’s going to add substantial costs to their local reporting budgets. And even then they’ll have to work that much harder to keep mistakes out of the paper.
As papers increase local coverage, they’ll simply have that many more people out reporting–and that many more potential mistakes.
Web Fueling Politics?
Interesting… does the Internet influence voter’s political decisions.  Today, more than ever, citizens are participating in the political conversation. Does this scare the political world? Maybe because they must listen to the citizens more than ever. It all comes down to checks and balances.
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Tony Blair’s outgoing chief strategy adviser fears the internet could be fuelling a “crisis” in the relationship between politicians and voters.
Matthew Taylor - who stressed he was speaking as a “citizen” not a government spokesman - said the web could be “fantastic” for democracy.
But it was too often used to encourage the “shrill discourse of demands” that dominated modern politics.
A new book favorite
Ok… I have a new favorite book that I am reading. The book is called The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Setterfield does a wonderful job mixing the present with the past that twists and turns to destinations you never expected. I highly suggest reading Setterfield’s book. It’s a quick read… not as long as The Historian and better written than the The Da Vinci Code. It’s definitely a great read for the fall.
Global Voices: Bridging the blogger gap
This article is interesting. It talks about a new web site for citizen journalists.
Global Voices Online is now a project of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in Massachusetts and receives additional funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Dutch nongovernmental organization Hivos and Reuters.
Co-founders Zuckerman and MacKinnon spent so much time finding and reading blogs that they felt there was a great need to curate the hundreds of sites, creating a hub for an international community of “bridge bloggers” who want to communicate, often anonymously, with the broader world.
Global Voices is a select guide to conversations, information and ideas appearing on various forms of participatory citizen media such as blogs, podcasts, photo-sharing sites and videoblogs, according to Zuckerman.
Paid regional editors who work 20 hours or 30 hours per week receive $800 a month to assure that Global Voices covers the world accurately, Zuckerman said.
CEA 2006 Conference
I just wanted to note that Friday April 7, 2006, I presented a paper at the College English Association for the first time about using weblogs in the journalism classroom. I have never been to a conference where 20 people showed up to a panel. The room was energized and ready to embrace technology. I found CEA to be a friendly conference that I will definitely submit to again. I found that there is an audience for my research, which makes it even more exciting.
The Da Vinci Code Trial
Dan Brown says he used the book The Holy Grail and the Holy Blood as a reference. So, does that mean that all nonfiction can not be used for writing a FICTIONAL story? What should writer’s reference? When I was doing research for a paper about The Da Vinci Code, I came across several books that were nonfiction that read like The Holy Grail and the Holy Blood–so shouldn’t those books be on trial too? Because,those books, too, are cashing in on The Da Vinci Code. Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times that I think many writer’s fear–
 Judge Asks Sharp Questions at Close of ‘Da Vinci Code’ Case
Mr. Rayner James insisted that he was not asking the court to establish a precedent. But the case is being closely watched here by copyright and media lawyers, who say that a victory by the plaintiffs could have wide repercussions for novelists, playwrights and others who use nonfiction works as background research.
“The concept that you can infringe copyright by taking what is presented as fact in a nonfiction book and weaving it into a novel could have very serious implications,” said Fiona Crawley, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and copyright issues in the London office of the international firm Bryan Cave.
“All sorts of people write novels about historical events and go to nonfiction books for research,” Miss Crawley added. She used as an example Jack Higgins’s novel “The Eagle has Landed,” based on the historical conjecture that the Nazis considered trying to capture Prime Minister Winston Churchill from his country estate in Norfolk, England, during World War II.
“If someone had written a nonfiction book about that, are you saying that when Jack Higgins uses it as the basis to write a novel, he can’t do it without infringing the author’s copyright?” she asked.
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Overall, I just hope the movie is not affected by this trial. I think many people need to realize The Da Vinci Code is fictional. Yes, it tells a story that is controversial, but it also is a good read. To me, fiction is about letting your mind expand to ask “what if” and this book did that as well as what The Historian did. The Historian story discusses the existence of Dracula. Do I believe that Dracula exists… no, but it was fun wondering–”what if…”
The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writer’s Conference of the Southwest
Register early for The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writer’s Conference of the Southwest. A weekend of lectures, workshops, panel discussions that will explore ”The Art of Narrative Storytelling”.
The conference will be Friday, July 14, 2006, to Sunday, July 16, 2006 in Grapevine at the Hilton DFW Lakes. Some of the authors that are attending:
- Gay Talese:Â A Writer’s Life
- Melissa Fay Greene:Â Praying for Sheetrock
- Ron Powers:Â Flags for our Fathers
- H.W. Brands:Â The First American
- Hampton Sides:Â Ghost Soldiers
- and many more
