the reality tunnel

Over the last few weeks I’ve spoken to a number of reporters about reporting outside of their neighborhoods or experience.  One common theme that I’ve heard is the importance of using people’s own language to describe places and institutions in their communities.  Patrick Barry, a senior scribe working with LISC/Chicago, said journalists documenting community development [...]

Someone, presumably who knows who I am because of Defiance, Ohio asked me what I thought a good strategy to stay informed and conscious about what’s happening in the world without being inundated with biased or incorrect information. This question was strangely aligned with things I had been thinking about and speakers and readings in [...]

While those looking to discover neighborhoods across racial blind spots would certainly benefit from a broader set of geographically discoverable neighborhood social media, it is ultimately up to individual neighborhoods to decide if they benefit from voicing neighborhood identity and experience on the web.

I don’t really like the idea of sites that I contribute content to having a ton of banner ads.  However, I’ll often mention a book or a record, something that, even if I’m not pushing it for a sale, I would feel pretty good about people buying.  It would be nice, if they buy it [...]

Someone e-mailed Defiance, Ohio with some questions for a school project that produced this brain dump on the Britney Spears, the band, digital distribution, and media-based economies. They wrote: I know that big artists (for example Britney Spears??) are angry because of course they want the money, but I was wondering, do you think it’s [...]

The Allied Media Conference just released their website for the 2009 conference and opened up their session proposals.  If you have a great idea for a session for the 2009 conference, you can share it on their Submit Sessions page.

It’s dangerous to oversimplify what are ultimately complicated policy issues, like immigration, not to mention the huge variety of experience that immigrants face, but most of the public debate on this, and many other issues, seems founded on information, that, even at a basic level is pretty misinformed.  This diagram about different pathways to legal [...]

If I ever need to check my tendency towards being a know-it-all or talking over people, I’m just going to watch this video. The gender dynamic is insane as well.  I can’t imagine getting talked down to in this way by a colleague, especially when I was well researched, seemed to share the same political [...]

This is a response to Patrick’s response to my posting of this analysis of the Stuff White People Like blog. I think that the language in the blog post is strong and frustrated and I’ll grant that the statements about the heftiness of the book deal probably don’t have much statistical support. Still, I think [...]

Lupe Fiasco on sexism (from masculinities in media blog). I heard about Lupe Fiasco when someone brought ihis music up in the Q&A after the MED lecture last month. I heard a really great song called Kick, Push about skateboarding by Lupe Fiasco along with a lot of other great music on the Pandora Radio [...]