BlogHer - A blogger's love letter to newspapers - Comments

Thanks!

LeeNYC — Wed, 21 May 2008 09:51:47 -0500

Thank you! I didn't know about Alltop but I'll check it out.

You may be right

Kim Pearson — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:27:55 -0500

About 15 years ago, Kevin Barnhurst at the University of Illinois published a book called Seeing the Newspaper, about the newspaper as a physical object. His argument was that the design conventions of the American newspaper gave the citizens of an ascendant empire a sense of coherence and mastery of the world around them. Although he did not anticipate the impact of the Internet, he did say that newspaper design was changing to reflect the flattening of structures and foundational narratives that cultural theories describe as part of post-modernism. Indeed, Johndan Johnson-Eilola has described the close connection between post-modernist culture and the emergence of hypertext itself.

If Barnhurst and Eilola are right, then it makes sense for newspapers to shift to helping people order and reflect upon the small narratives of their immediate lives. It would also make sense that there would be the parallel phenomena of massive aggregators and blogging communities in which people take apart and bring together information and ideas and deliberate upon their multiple and shifting meanings. This changes our idea of the way democracy functions, though, and that, I think, requires more conversation.

Thanks for all of your great thoughts!

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Best of luck with your project

Kim Pearson — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:03:14 -0500

Aggregation project such as yours and Alltop.com are great ways to get smatterings of news from around the globe. Thanks for letting us know about your project.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

new site for 24/7/365 news junkies

LeeNYC — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:53:35 -0500

Dear Kim,

Since it sounds like you like the news as much as I do, I wanted to share some info on my family's new project. We designed a website with for 24/7/365 news junkies. Because we are a small business with no advertising budget, I am trying to get the word
out about our site:

MostEmailedNews.com

Most news websites have that little box somewhere on the first page
telling you the top stories that people are sending to each other.

MostEmailedNews.com takes those boxes from a bunch of different news sources
(ranging from sites such as The NY Times, BBC, Times of India and CNN) and puts them all together for you. It
gives you a nice cross section of what people are emailing.

It's not yet finished but I thought I would share it with you. It's quite addictive since
I'm on it all the time now. Check it out and If you like it, please tell your friends!

Lenora Brennan
MostEmailedNews.com

Newspapers: Last bastion of hope

amcreynolds — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:28:42 -0500

Professor Kim,

Newspapers have returned to hyper-local coverage of their backyards -- connecting us again to our next door neigbhors. Community journalism celebrates ritual and routine -- and rekindles our love of storytelling. Above all, newspapers retain the visual impact of photojournalism.

In the future, will we sit on the front porch with our laptops at daybreak to see game highlights -- and relish in our sons' and daughters' triumphs? Can you scrapbook blogs? Or will we self-publish photobooks from snapshots captured by point-and-shoot digital cameras?

A.M. McReynolds

info@backyardbeacon.org Backyard Beacon www.backyardbeacon.org

Important words

Candelaria Silva — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:05:38 -0500

Kim, I've been working on a blog about why I still read the news-paper. Thank you so much for this post.

I realize that I don't know everything I want to know or learn about. Browing the paper cover-to-cover like I do in Boston and in other cities when I travel, helps me discover connections with other people and places, information I can use and pass on (I either send clippings or forward articles electronically), and truly earth-shattering stuff that doesn't show up on the electronic versions of the news.

Newspapers are important. You are so right. Thanks for posting this.

Candelaria - Good and plenty!

I'll take you up on that!

Kim Pearson — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:44:34 -0500

Hi Kalyn!

I would love to take you up on that. And if you are in New Jersey, call or e-mail me and you can have your pick of my favorite places for Indian food, soul food or American bistro cuisine. :-)

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

It is a beautiful place

Kalyn Denny — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:29:42 -0500

Utah has so much scenic beauty. There are the mountains for skiers in the north and Lake Powell and all the national parks in the South. I do get frustrated with the politics, but you're right, it's such a good place to live around nice people.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

I discovered Utah too and it rocks!

TCMom — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:49:25 -0500

I'm an easter coaster too and discovered SLC and Utah on a cross country college trip. A unique place to be sure but I was pleasantly surprised by its diversity and real connection to the environment. And WOW are the ppl nice there. Anyway, I ventured out to all the parks in Utah and have since been back with my husband and will take my kids someday too. Its heaven on earth out there and can see why maybe a community settled down and felt close to God in that state.

Caroline

http://morningsidemom.wordpress.com/

That's my town!

Kalyn Denny — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:19:59 -0500

Most people don't know that the actual city of Salt Lake is less than 50% Mormon. It's actually a pretty nice place to live (although I could take a pass on winter.)

Kim, next time you get stuck in Salt Lake give me a call (or e-mail) and I will take you to the best Mexican restaurant in the U.S.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

I like reading stuff from other cities...

nelle2nelle — Mon, 19 May 2008 05:48:01 -0500

and used to do more of it than I actually do now, sigh.

My news is organised by local/regional/national, with subsets for lgbt and women (women's enews, Women's MediaCenter, SheSource, Feminist Weekly News, and Bitch Magazine.) This helps when putting forth new disccusion material on other places...

anyway, my regional folder used to have quite a few papers from around the country. After my last computer crash maybe 2 years ago, only one remains, SFGate, which always appealed to me.

You can really get a nice feel for an area - even from your own home - by checking out their local newspaper online.

nelle

A blogger's love letter to newspapers

Kim Pearson — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:37:27 -0500

A funny thing happened on my way to help BlogHer pull off its exclusive interview in Oregon with Sen. Barack Obama -- my plane from Newark arrived in Salt Lake City too late for me to make the connecting flight. As a result, I got to spend the night in a place that was completely new for me. And when I visit a new place, I love to look at the local newspaper to supplement the impressions that I'm getting from the sights and sounds around me.

Being in Salt Lake City and reading the Salt Lake City Tribune made me aware of a blind spot that this Easterner didn't even know she had. Geography is one of five fault lines identified by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education as a potential impediment to fair and accurate news coverage. Other fault lines include race, gender, class and generational difference. It was not until I found myself in Utah that I realized how many preconceptions I had in my head. I expected it to be heavily Mormon, white, wealthy and conservative. Salt Lake City conjured up Donnie and Marie, Sen. Harry Reid, former Gov. Mitt Romney and the Mormon Tabernacle choir. And oh yeah -- a really good basketball team. The earring worn by the very polite and helpful agent at the Delta counter should have been my first clue.

But reading the local paper really made me wish I'd had time to explore the town. I love blogs, and I love reading news online, but spending time with a great paper like the SLTrib reminded me of so much of what's special about newspapers. Since I've come home, I've also spent time reading some local blogs.

The big story on Saturday, of course, was the heartbreaker loss The lead story was the Jazz's heart-stopping three-point loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA playoffs. You can see the great writing on the web, but the huge front-page play of the story, along with the gorgeous game photos on the front page and in the sports section are best experience by holding the broadsheet in your hands.

The other story above the fold on the front page was also an eye-opener: a report from a conference at the University of Utah on research into special germs that mght neutralize mercury pollution in the Great Salt Lake. Below the fold there was a new story on the FLDS, the polygamous Texas-based sect whose children were removed because of accuations that children were being sexually abused. Online, the SLtrib's got a special section with ongoing FLDS coverage. On the web, there's also a special section on the Mormon church.

The faith section featured an amusing, but instructive column on the controversy over the Mormon practice of sending up baptismal prayers for the dead members of other faiths. I hope you don't mind if I share a bit with you:

Several weeks ago, a woman sent me a list of all the reasons I was going to hell for being a Mormon. It was a long list.

I get damned a lot. Mostly it comes from God's winged monkeys.

I get it from fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Jews, faiths
I never heard of before, and other Mormons who don't think I'm Mormon
enough.

But the lead story in that section was about an interfaith annual "Blessing of the Hands" ceremony at St. Mark's Hospital. The ceremony included a femaile episcopal priest, an imam, a Buddhist priest, an Arapaho healer and Bryce, the therapy dog.

Other stories caught my eye as well -- especially the business section, where there were stories abotu green development and the privatization of the city's wirless network infrastructure. Crime coverage wasn't nearly as prominent as I'm used to seeing back east. National news wasn't all that prominent either, and came mostly from the wires.

Overall, the paper piqued my curiosity about the town. A blog search turned up some unusual and interesting items:

The Weber County Forum accuses the Salt Lake City Republican Party of filing a "flakey"[sic] IRS complaint against the local chapter of the NAACP after an officer of that organization reportedly urged the defeat of a Utah state senator who made remarks that some have seen as racist. The local GOP chariman said that the NAACP violated IRS' rules against political activities by non-profit tax-exempt organizations.
an enraging story about a stray kitten that had been burned
Sydney thinks it's wrong for Mormons to baptize the dead of other faiths:

I hate the idea of Baptism for the Dead because it takes away the
person's rights. It's immoral. If they lived their life as a Catholic,
or a Jew, let them stay how they were. It's not up to the Mormon faith
to decide what is right for everyone else.

I'll continue to love reading my news online and scanning the blogs of people whom I trust. But there is stil nothing like a newspaper to give you a panoramic view of a community. The vicissitudes of the economy and the development of new technologies will likely hasten the collapse of many venerated old newspapers. That would be a tragic loss for those of us who are concerned with sustaining and promoting a well-informed and civically-engaged public.