clickcaster voice recording

If this finally works I'm going to be very grateful. Getting this clickcaster to work has easily been the most time-consuming (8-10 hours, believe it or not) and frustrating experience in Digital Newsroom.

First of all, the voice recorder they have on clickcaster doesn't seem to work very well, and it dropped (that is lost into cyberspace) probably four or five of my attempts to record there.

Apparently also there can be some browser issues. Make sure you use the right one!

Then I tried a voice recording using my iriver mp3 player. Big misktake! I tried uploading my voice recording on both a PC and Mac and couldn't get either one to work. The iriver instruction booklet is about 80 pages and not very clearly presented. Don't go online for help! Ten pages of instructions that don't seem to make things any clearer. Three more hours wasted on this particular effort...

Finally I recorded using a video camera, uploaded to Final Cut Pro, exported the audio file to the desktop while converting the audio segment of the video file to an aif file, then finally (after several more attempts) got it to upload to the clickcaster site. (I had to force quit three or four more times - I don't understand what's going on with that site.)

So this is the last step! If this finally works, I'm going to have a beer in celebration later tonight...

The Earl of Sandwich

What does a news package consist of? Sound effects, use of historical footage or images, soundtrack, reenactments, internet graphics, or other innovative video techniques?

This story was based on an assigment I had to make a video segment about the subject of "sandwiches." I didn't want to go with just the obvious choice of interviewing subjects in a sandwich shop, so I tried to use other techniques.

The last shots of the turkey farm I made by super-gluing a high-tech neodymium magnet to a camera mount. The result isthat I was then able to attach a small video camera to virtually any part of the exterior of my car.

The narrative of the story is kind of anti-climactic at the end, but I think the value of the story lies in the use of a variety of techniques to help tell a story.

Can this be a viable model for what news stories on the internet will include? I think so, as along as viewers are drawn in and engaged in the story being told.

Enjoy...

Ansel Adams Photo Display

You know, I forgot that I had actually done a slide-show before. This one is a series of Ansel Adams photographs that I scanned from a large-format photography book of his then edited in Final Cut Pro.

As you'll see, it's more in the style of a historical documentary, with the use of sound effects and a music track. In addition, there's also a narration soundtrack that is somewhat like an essay, but tries to be informative and evocative without being boring.

This is one of the central questions for news packages in the brave new world of internet journalism. Can techniques from other genres, including historical documentary, be successfully adapted into this new medium? I think the answer is clearly yes, if the effect involves viewers emotionally and/or intellectually in the experience to a greater degree. Of course, paramount is the consideration that the basic integrity of the news package be respected. But more on this later...

Enjoy...

Ice Climbing in Ouray Colorado

I went with CU's Outdoor Program to the World Famous Ice Climbing park in Ouray, Colorado to shoot this segment. It's a spectacular venue for the sport, and everyone from beginners to world-class athletes go to Ouray each winter.

Again, it seems that a number of subjects translate well to video, and action sports in spectacular outdoor settings seems to be one of those.

I shot this video as more of a promo-type package, and cut it as a montage with a few soundbites interspersed for variety. Because of the music choice, the package is a little bit longer than the typical two-minute news package. Nonetheless, it seems like ice clmbing would still be a good subject choice for a story on a newspaper website in part because of its evergreen quality.

Two choices help to make this pacakge unique. First, I sometimes like to go with less-obvious music choices. In this case, for an extreme sport like ice climbing, the obvious choice would seem to be some fast-paced rock-and-roll. Instead, I went with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, which I think instead emphasizes the inherent grace and power of the sport.

Secondly, I really made a focused effort to try to edit to music, choosing shots that build in terms of imagery and drama along with the music. I also threw in a few special effects for variety as well.

Enjoy...

Roller Derby Smackdown in Denver

This is one of my favorite stories. Filming was somewhat of a challenge in a loud and unevenly lit gymnasium, but despite that, the video still turned out fairly well.

When I filmed the end-of-the-season title match in Denver, it was actually the first time I'd seen a Roller Derby match in person. As a sport, it seemed somewhat over-the-top, and so I tried to use that same tone in my narration and choice of shots.

One bit of feedback I did get on this piece was that a couple of the shots might not be right for a traditional broadcast-type news package (as you'll see - it's still PG-13 though) but in general even these shots contribute to conveying the general atmosphere of the event.

There have been a number of documentaries and programs that have chronicled the return of this sport in recent years, attesting to the popularity of roller derby as a video subject. The reasons seem fairly obvious: action and larger-than-life characters come across particularly well on video. A few of the shots are a little bit rough, but the atmosphere of fun still comes across farily well.

Enjoy...

News Report on Prairie Dogs in Boulder Colorado

Since the blog portion of Digital Newsroom is due on April 20th and I won't have all of my Dailycamera.com video segments done by then, I thought I'd post some of the other video segments I've done for News Team Boulder.

This package is in more of a traditional news package format, with a standup and traditional interview, but it takes a look at the controversy around not only prairie dogs, but competing interests of development and wildlife. I spoke with both Debra Flanders, a restoration ecologist and Julie Johnson, a spokesperson for Boulder's Open Spaces Program.

Prairie dogs can carry plague, and there have been outbreaks in Boulder County over the last several years. Different people present various perspectives on whether prairie dogs are a threat to humans, or whether they're an essential part of Colorado's ecology.

Grace Falls Rocky Mountain National Park

This is the third in a series of snowshoeing videos at Rocky Mountain National Park that I've done.

One of the challenges of making multiple videos on a similar topic - like showshoeing - is that they can all look alike, despite the fact that each trail and each experience in the mountains is different. So I try to include a number of different features, in filming and editing, in each one.

The beginning sequence in this Grace Falls video I created with "Motion," one of the programs in the Final Cut Pro Suite. Basically it allows you to create a pretty wide range of video effects with objects (videos, stills, parts of images, etc), text, and what they call behaviors. In this one, there's an animated sequence behind the words "Grace Falls" that's supposed to look a little bit like falling water. Somewhat basic, I know, but this is my first effort with Motion, and I think it's still more interesting than just a blank title screen with text on it.

I also included a couple time-lapse shots, some different angles and edits as well.

Enjoy...

Jamming Out at The Reef

This was a video assignment I shot on spec recently for the Dailycamera.com. It was shot in a local Boulder bar called The Reef, and shows two musicians, Brian Juan and Mike Cappo, playing piano and drums respectively.

I used three different cameras for this shoot, something I normally don't do. But because it was in a bar, I plugged one camera into the soundboard, then used the other two to supplement video footage that I could then sync up with the clearer soundtrack.

Syncing up video is a difficult and time-consuming task. Other difficulties that I encounted besides the high level of ambient noise in the bar included a very contrasty setting. The performers were in bright spotlights, and everything else was much, much darker.

Despite these difficulties, I think the video nonetheless turned out fairly well. Enjoy...

2007 Antiwar Protests in Denver

This was a video I shot of the Antiwar Protests in Denver this past Saturday on the Fourth Anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

By far, this was the most controversial video I've shot. I interviewed a few of the Pro-War protesters who were in attendance, in particular a group that calls themselves the "Gathering of Eagles," but didn't include any footage of their interviews, in large part because their opinions didn't seem very coherent or rational.

Nonetheless, the group was apparently very upset that I didn't include them, and so ended up having a little protest outside the Daily Camera offices to this extent.

It seems that some issues are extremely contentious by their very nature, whether you include some individuals or not.

Community Table Food Program

This is a video I shot of a food distribution program at a church in Boulder for homeless and low-income people.

The challenges of shooting this were two-fold. Some of the people at the program were very adamant about not wanting to be on video. Some were even angry that I approached them, though I didn't start taking pictures of anyone until I had asked their permission.

The second challenge was the audio quality. This was shot in a noisy church basement of tile floors and low ceilings - the makings for a veritable echo-chamber. Nonetheless, by getting close to the subjects, the audio worked well enough to get a fairly good sound recording.

Snowshoeing Finch Lake RMNP

This is another video I shot entitled "Snowshoeing Finch Lake RMNP" that I will hopefully have linked to the interactive map in the near future.

One of the reasons I include the car driving sequence at the beginning of each video is that often these trailheads are difficult to find. Some, but not all, of them are found down unmarked and twisting dirt roads. If anyone's ever gotten up bright and early to head up into the back-country and then spent the next hour-and-a-half looking for a trailhead, then they know how frustrating that experience can be.

So hopefully a few shots at the beginning of each video will make it much easier to find some of these trailheads. I shot this Finch Lake video before the Cub Lake video below.

One of the things that's easy to forget when you've been doing something like snowshoeing in the backcountry for a number of years is that information that you take for granted may not be obvious to people who haven't done this sort of thing before. Therefore, in the Cub Lake video below, I tried to include much more "orienting" information such as trail length, elevation gain, overall difficulty, etc. that I didn't include in this video. I also made a few sylistic changes and improvements as well.

Enjoy...

Snowshoeing Cub Lake RMNP

This is a video I made for the Dailycamera.com entitled "Snowshoeing Cub Lake RMNP." At present, I and another person at the Daily Camera are creating a Flash application for a map of Rocky Mountain National Park so that by moving your cursor over different parts of the map, a thumbnail image will appear of the video along with a text-box that explains what the video is about, as well as providing a link to another page that contains text about the trail, including length, elevation gain, trailhead location and elevation, and other relevant information.

In addition to this video, there's also a "Snowshoeing Finch Lake RMNP" video that I shot and produced (above). The idea is to be able to link a number of these videos together in an intuitive interface.

This is a slideshow I created recently using some photographs I took in New York a couple of years ago. I posted it to Youtube and then embedded it here on blogger.com. I created the slideshow in iPhoto using royalty-free music I got on garageband.com.

Perhaps there's an easier way to do this, but I'm not exactly sure how yet.

The Video Revolution is Arriving

This is a video I recently made for the Dailycamera.com (where I am currently interning) on the 2007 Cross Country Championships recently held here in Boulder at the Flatirons Golf Course.

Video is going to play a HUGE part in the future of on-line media. While it will not completely supplant other forms of information, including print, a picture is in fact often worth a thousand words. Furthermore, if as Bill Gates says (see post below) the internet, television, and computers are all going to morph into one information portal within the next five years, video will undoubtedly play an increasing role in people's busy lives.

The future is almost here. Once a viable business model is connected to internet video (see post below) user-generated content will revolutionize the media landscape. And once that happens, things will never be the same again.

YouTube Posting on "Free Speech Zones"

This is a video I posted on YouTube of what happened when I left a so-called "free speech zone" set up in connection with a Presidentail visit last Fall when George W. Bush was campaigning for Bob Beauprez.

One of the interesting things about this was that only people who were critical of George W. Bush were forced to stand in this "free speech zone." Those who had signs that were supportive of the President, or those who just happened to be in the area but otherwise had no connection with the Presidential visit, were allowed to wander freely outside the free speech zones.

All of this is patently and blatantly illegal. The Secret Service claims that they do not discriminate on the basis of the content of protesters' signs - pro or con. This is a clear falsehood.

One of the reasons that this is such a hot-button topic is that there were wide-spread and numerous violations of protesters' Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly at the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. (See posts below.)

Does this video lend support to the contention that what we'll see in Denver in 2008 for the Democratic National Convention will be a replay of thse kinds of massive Constitutional violations? Watch the video and decide for yourself...

Demonstrations in NY City in 2004 - Parts I and II

This is an article I wrote for the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn about the protests in NYC in 2004:

NEW YORK CITY—The crowd of several thousand that marched down Sixth Avenue past the CBS Building on 52nd Street and the Time Life/CNN Plaza on 50th before stopping in front of the Fox News Building on 48th was loud but
orderly. Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and Code Pink had organized this “March on the Media” on the evening of September 1 in New York City as a counterpoint to the slickly presented Republican National Convention.

Chants of “Shut the Fox up!” and “Whose media? Our media!” arose from the
multitude as they voiced their loudest disapproval for Bill O’Reilly and his cohorts in Rupert Murdoch’s Fox media empire. Standing in the middle of this crowd, I couldn’t help but be struck, though, by the quixotic quality
of the demonstration.

Perhaps the reason it seemed so was the fact that the throng of protestors,
video camera-lances in hand, was so completely dwarfed beside the modern megaliths of the corporate media giants. The only thing these skyscrapers seemed to be missing was the creaking arms of a turning windmill.

This juxtaposition perfectly illustrated the challenges that protesters
and their allies in the alternative media face, especially in our post-
9/11 world of heightened security concerns. Police presence in the city
was extreme, which some viewed as an attempt to limit free speech by
Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg and his allies in the Bush administration.

But the complete lack of mainstream media coverage of the event may
have been even more effective than police barricades in limiting the impact of
their message, demonstrators were quick to point out. They claimed that as a
result of this collusion between government and corporateowned media, a biased view of world events is being force-fed to the American people.

The protestors, though, suggested that their type of grassroots organizing could change the media, but would require new and innovative techniques to succeed. Ultimately, they claimed, which side prevails will depend on the resources and determination each brings to the battle.

Scores of police, some already fully garbed in riot gear, including Plexiglas-visored helmets and wooden truncheons, surrounded the demonstrators. Metal barricades squeezed the protestors into a shoulder-to-shoulder
camaraderie, and police supervisors studiously scanned the crowd with handheld video cameras. Behind them, Secret Service agents with prominent earpieces unsmilingly watched for troublemakers.



Because a permit had been obtained, the protestors were not restricted to a twoby-two marching formation. Rather, half the sidewalk and one lane of the street had been cordoned off for their use. Another lane on the other side of the street had been roped off as well, but not for the protestors. Occasionally, black SUVs with darkly tinted windows would speed by, escorted by police cars and motorcycles, blaring sirens and flashing an array of blue and red lights.

The government functionaries inside gave no indication of awareness of the protestors, though many on the street carried signs and some even wore bright or theatrical costumes.

Mark England explained why he had decided to demonstrate with his daughter, Mariva.

“I think [the mainstream media] is owned by too few people, and too few points of view are represented. So if the guy who owns Fox, if he has captured the audience of three quarters of the world’s population, then that’s a bad deal. He’s pushing one agenda. He doesn’t speak to what I believe at all.”

Behind him, another police-escorted motorcade screamed down the canyon of Sixth Avenue.

Also using these “Republican lanes” was an unending flow of chartered buses, as they transported delegates from posh, midtown hotels. Just a couple blocks away, outside the Sheraton, dozens of cops lined the steps down to the sidewalk, providing a secure door-to-door channel for delegates, many of whom wore distinctly uncomfortable expressions.

Just outside this area, SWAT team members in black combat helmets and thick flak jackets, carrying M-16s with scopes atop, provided a further layer of security. Nearly every delegate had clad him- or herself in a flag of one sort or another—lapel pins, neckties or stars-and-stripes scarves jauntily flung around necks. Once on board each chartered coach, an armed and uniformed police officer occupied the first seat of the first row, and the Republican delegates would be whisked securely away.

At the other end of this route, Madison Square Garden had been transformed into a fortress, and was alternately surrounded by phalanxes of media trucks with satellite dishes and even more cops, concrete barriers and new, metal barricades that rose up to form a ramp-in-reverse, apparently beefy enough to sheer off the undercarriage of even a speeding dumptruck.

The organizers at FAIR had managed to get a permit for a small sound system. In contrast to the bright media lights that surrounded the multimillion-dollar stage inside the convention center, Robert Greenwald, the director and producer of Outfoxed, a documentary exposé about the Fox News Channel, climbed up on a small stepladder. He was greeted by loud cheering from the crowd, who held signs aloft that variously read, “Six Corporate Giants Control Your Media” and “Corporate Media: Unfair and Unbalanced.”

Greenwald soon hit his stride.

“If we continue, through the hard work that you’re doing, we will create the kind of media we want. I’ve worked in the film industry and television for many years. And one thing I can tell you, the sponsors behind these shows are not known for risk taking, they’re not known for their courage. And it’s extraordinary, really extraordinary what a letter or a phone call can do. The right has done it for years. Eric Alterman calls it working the refs. We’ve been late coming to the table, but we’re getting there now.

“And I urge all of you, you’ve got to give us five minutes a day, an hour a week—whatever you have—whether it’s writing a letter, making a phone call, raising hell, getting involved with FCC issues, there’s something for everyone to do!”

The crowd applauded in approval.

The next speaker was Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR, who began by talking about the biased coverage his organization found at Fox News, before turning his guns on General Electric’s NBC.

“I was also the senior producer on the most watched show on MSNBC, which was Phil Donahue’s primetime show. We were given orders in the last months of that show that every time we booked a guest that was anti-war, we had to book two guests that were pro-war.”

Boos from the crowd.

“In one meeting, one producer said that she wanted to book Michael Moore, and she was told if you do that, you have to have three right-wingers for balance. I had considered proposing that they put NoamChomsky on the air.”

Loud applause from the crowd.

“I knew it would be rejected because our studio could not accommodate the 83 rightwingers we would need to be balanced!”

Laughter and cheering.

“Now, if you watched MSNBC after Donahue was fired, if you watched it in the run-up to the war and during the war, you know that no one waved the flag more than MSNBC, not even Fox. And if you’re so busy waving the flag, you don’t have any energy to do what journalists are supposed to do in a free society, which is ask tough questions of the powers-that-be before the bombs start dropping!”

How much of all this, though, would actually get through? How much of what was happening here behind the scenes, unscripted, could reasonably be expected to pass through the filter of the corporate media and into the homes of Mr. and Mrs. America?

The absence of mainstream media cameras provided the answer: Little, if any, in fact would. In addition, the massive police presence reinforced the protestors’ message that free speech was being squeezed into smaller and smaller zones.

Only time will tell whether these protestors’ fervent fight against the giants of corporate media succeed or their message be successfully ignored by the media and restricted by the government.

Until then, Cohen advised the gathered crowd to circumvent the mainstream media by heeding alt-news sources, such as “DemocracyNow!”, Commondreams.org and FAIR’s website.

“The good news is, we now know how to reach millions of people around the corporate media,” he said. “Join the movement that’s restructuring this media, and let’s bring about fundamental change in this country.”

MoJo Means Mobile Journalist – Part II

Chuck Myron, a Mobile Journalist working for news-press.com, the website of the Gannett-owned Fort Myers, Fla. News-Press, says, “Technology has made people more mobile, and journalism has to react. It’s a necessary step in the evolution of our craft, and it’s not up to us whether we want to go along. The readers have the power, and if they want to drag us from the comforts of the print world into the uncharted expanse of the Internet, they will, and it’s obvious they’re already doing it.”

Myron describes the frustrations of being on the cutting edge of much of this new technology. Chief among these is internet connectivity, which he accesses through his cell-phone’s Sprint wireless card. He says that using the wireless card allows for connectivity in a greater range of areas than a traditional WiFi connection, but that the transfer rate is still maddeningly slow.

“The connection is somewhere between dial-up and high speed, which means photos take about two or three minutes to upload.”

Obviously, this connection is still painfully slow, and the current state of technology would probably make it impractical to upload video using this method.

But technology is changing at an ever-increasing rate, and it is foreseeable that within a few years, this issue of wireless connectivity will have improved to the extent that mobile journalists posting video footage will be a real possibility.

What does this mean when considered in light of Bill Gates’ recent statement that within five years the internet, your computer, and your television will all be one and the same? (See "The Changing Face of Information Architecture in the 21st Century" below.)

In the coming weeks, I will address some of the implications for the current news media of this developing technology. If correct, my predictions are that the results will prove to be nothing short of Revolutionary.

The full text of part I of Myron’s article can be accessed here and part II here.

MoJo Means Mobile Journalist– Part I

In the 1960s when the Doors lead singer Jim Morrison wailed out “Mr Mojo Risin,” people wondered what these mysterious words meant until somebody figured out that he had created an anagram for his own name in one of his songs.

In the decades since, “Mojo” has meant a number of different things, including in some circles Motor Journalism as applied to writing about Ford and Chevy’s new model year offerings. I tend to think of that as Automotive Journalism, though, and as the kind of thing you’d see in Road & Track, for example.

More recently, Mojo as Mobile Journalism has come to apply to a new form of journalism enabled and empowered by new and often more portable technologies. These include everything from laptops with WiFi connections to cell phones to GPS receivers to internet applications such as Google Earth that allow you to bring up satellite photos of practically any square inch of the earth’s entire surface.

Of course, journalists have been using cars for almost as long as there have been cars. But the introduction of these new, portable technologies hold the promise of empowering journalists in ways that were previously so expensive that only those employed by corporate media behemoths could afford to do it.

In the second part of this entry, we’ll take a look at how some people are already beginning to apply some of these technologies, and raise the question of what kind of new possibilities are beginning to appear on Journalism’s near horizons.

a simple table

This is a really simple table

This is a simple table

Column Head 1	Column Head 2	Column Head 3
This should be in A1	This should be in A2	This should be in A3
This should be in B1	This should be in B2	This should be in B3
This should be in C1	This should be in C2	This should be in C3

New Methods in Journalism - Part II

Planespotters are people whose hobby is to stand around outside of airports, sometimes in cold or blustery weather, and write down the tail numbers of planes they see taking off and landing.

Not your idea of a good time? Well, mine either, to tell the truth. But these people with their – ahem – unusual hobby have been at the center of an international controversy they have helped uncover that involves kidnappings and disappearances, secret prisons, and torture.

Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson are two journalists who have followed the planespotting story, which they have related in their book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights.

Despite the somewhat macabre title, the book provides a down-to-earth perspective on how planespotters helped break the story of the extraordinary rendition program.

While “spotting” planes and writing down their tail numbers is the basic idea behind this unusual hobby, not surprisingly it has in recent years acquired some high-tech twists.

Among these are the use of “virtual radar” systems, such as the Kinetic Avionics SBS-1 system that can be attached to a laptop with a USB cable. It can then “watch” air traffic within about a fifty mile radius by listening to call signs and other basic information about the planes. By scanning for something called ACARS, which stands for Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System, planespotters can download into their laptops the digital identification signal emitted by modern planes as they fly through the air.

But this is just the beginning of the story. From there, the hobbyists post their photos and other information to websites like Airliners.net or Planespotters.net, where the flight histories of specific planes can be pieced together.

The most enterprising of the hobbyists then begin to flesh out their understanding by comparing planespotting records against copies of the CALP, or Civil Air Landing Permits, a document that lists which civilian airline companies have clearances to land at military installations, and the names of the specific installations they’re cleared to land at.

Add to this further database and internet searches, perhaps some calls to journalists and public affairs officers at military bases and airports, and the beginnings of an outline of a secret program of substantial proportions begins to emerge.

One of the most interesting parts of the book relates how Paglen and Thompson follow a planespotter, whom they call “Ray,” as he practices his hobby out in the deserts of California and Nevada. There, Ray surveils a couple of remote desert airstrips called Base Camp and Desert Rock Airstrip that have hosted planes that have subsequently been seen in some of the most unsavory parts of the world, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan that sits adjacent to one of the most notorious of the CIA’s secret prisons, infamously known as the Salt Pit.

But perhaps the most intriguing part of the book relates a theory that Paglen and Thompson propose that states that in order for the secret overseas network of CIA prisons, aircraft, and airstrips to be able to operate, there needs to be a corresponding support infrastructure here in the United States. While this relationship does not need to be one-to-one, there nonetheless needs to be a supporting bureaucratic infrastructure of front companies as well as physical facilities like the Nevada Base Camp and Desert Rock Airstrip in the US for the whole system to be able to function.

While this is an interesting theory, the authors do not really explain in detail how this infrastructure might work, what it might look like, or most importantly, what advantage might be gained from understanding some of its inner workings.

Nonetheless, this idea of a corresponding domestic infrastructure being necessary to support government facilities overseas is one we will return to in greater detail in this blog within the next several weeks.

Journalism occurs in many different ways. But if the revelation of the extraordinary rendition program by journalists and hobbyists (among others) all using high-tech and often networked means illustrates anything, it is that we are entering a brave, new world where information – and those who purvey it – will have within their grasp unprecedented abilities to influence events and reveal what had previously remained hidden.

Torture Taxi is available at amazon.com.

New Methods in Journalism - Part I

New revelations about the Bush Administration's extrordinary rendition program continue to emerge. In Italy, 26 CIA agents have been named - including Robert Seldon Lady, the reputed CIA station chief - in a case that continues to have wide-ranging implications both in Italy and in the U.S. In Germany, a similar case involving extrordinary renditions by CIA agents is also coming to fruition. And both Poland and Romania continue to deny having hosted secret CIA prisons despite overwhelming evidence that points to their active collusion in these illegal activities.

The extrordinary rendition program was designed to abduct suspected terrorists and then transfer, or render, them to third countries - like Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and Thailand - whose police often have established reputations for employing torture on interrogation subjects. The problem - aside from moral considerations and questions about the reliability of information obtained under torture - is that transferring people to countries where there's a likelihood that they will be tortured is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. The U.S. Senate long ago ratified these treaties, meaning that those who participated in these renditions would be guilty of breaking international law.

While the outlines of this story are generally well-known, though, the story of how this information originally came to light is just as interesting but is itself far less well-known.

One source of this information came from investigative journalists like London-based Stephen Grey, who has recently written a book, Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program, that details the means by which this story was slowly uncovered.

In order to transport terrorism suspects, the CIA bought and operated a number of airplanes, including a Gulfstream V and a Boeing 737 Business jet, that could fly into small airports far more inconspicuously than a military plane could. The problem with using civilian-registered airplanes, however, is that each time these jets fly, they have to record their flight plan with the FAA in the U.S., or similar agencies in other countries around the world.

And, interestingly enough, all of these FAA records are publicly available, so that industrious journalists like Grey can follow the path of a particular plane over weeks, months, or even years. And much of this information, in one form or another, then becomes available on the internet to similarly interested individuals.

Grey's book provides a fascinating look at some of the methods he used to uncover the extrordinary rendition story. By checking with the FAA’s website, not only could flight logs be obtained, but information about the plane’s ownership could be found too. This information in turn could be used as another strand for investigating the names of owners, who were then discovered to be fictitious, their names having been brought into existence around the time of the incorporation of the front company.

Furthermore, Grey took the mountain of information he obtained for the most part from on-line sources and used a computer program called Analyst’s Notebook, a tool normally used by the police to solve complex financial crimes, to piece together the story of the extraordinary rendition program.


One of the most interesting aspects of these investigative methods, though, is that many are made possible - or at least significantly easier - as a result of new technologies that weren't available 30 years ago during the era of Air America.

As such, Grey's story of helping uncover the extrordinary rendition program can be seen as a harbinger of the types of journalistic stories that are at least facilitated, if not made possible, by new and emerging technologies. Beyond that, though, Grey's story in Ghost Plane can be seen as a blueprint for other types of stories that are now, or will soon be, available that had in the past remained quietly out of public sight.

In Part II of this entry, we'll take a look at how two other journalists, Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson, used very different but nonetheless similarly high-tech methods to write their own story about the extrordinary rendition program.

Ghost Plane is avaialble at amazon.com.

Creating a Viable Business Model for New Forms of Information and Journalism

One of the most important ways in which the Internet is already changing and will continue to change journalism is through interactivity.

Interactivity has already taken many different forms. All but a few of the most staid newspapers now have options for readers to post comments as well as to rate articles. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The blogosphere has become, at various times, extremely influential through fact-checking, analysis, and spirited debate.

Furthermore, the proliferation of digital cameras, including those on cell phones that can take still photos as well as short videos, have helped change regular citizens into “citizen journalists.” From videos of the London train bombings in July of 2005 to the 2006 incident of a police tasering of a student at the UCLA library, cell phone videos have provided additional context as well as commentary on important events. Some of this commentary, explicit or implicit, has also been directed at mainstream media coverage of those events.

But what motivation is there for regular people who happen to be “in the right place at the right time” to share their videos through the internet with the world? Certainly some people are motivated by notoriety, or having their “15 minutes of fame.” (Considering the speeded up pace of our 21st century world, perhaps Andy Warhol’s famous epithet could now more accurately be stated as “15 seconds of fame.”)

Beyond that, though, what motivation is there for someone to post their video on any particular site, and perhaps as importantly, what kind of business model could be adopted so that the various involved parties can actually make money off of this new form of information distribution?

Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube and already a thirty-something multi-millionaire, thinks he has come up with one solution. Hurley proposes attaching advertising to user-submitted videos and giving their creators a cut of the profits.

The details of exactly how to do this (more revenue based on more hits? paid into a PayPal account?) have yet to be ironed out, but the overall concept itself seems viable.

Will this be yet another nail in the coffin of the Old Media paradigm of you-give-me-money-for-a-news-product-in-which-I-tell-you-what-I-think-is-important-because-I’m-the-gatekeeper-and-you-can-take-it-or-leave-it?

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all…

Click on the "YouTube to Share Revenue With Users" link on the right to see the full story.

The Changing Face of Information Architecture in the 21st Century

The Information Technology Revolution is upon us. This is hardly an original observation, but the question largely remains, what form is all of this going to take, how is it going to affect me, how is it going to affect my job, the economy, politics, society and the world in general?

While there are no absolute answers to this (we are looking at an unfolding of new technology after all), there are a number of signposts – or writing on the wall – already available.

The next version of the internet(s) is already beginning to arrive. One of the most profound developments in Web 2.0 is going to be how we receive – and interact with - information of all kinds, including news and entertainment. As Bill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft and Richest Man in the World, said at a meeting of business leaders in Davos Switzerland in January of 2007, within five years your TV, your computer, and the internet are all going to become one and the same. (See the full article at the Reuters link to the right.)

So what does all this mean? This blog will attempt to take a look at a number of different aspects of the Information Superhighway Revolution, including interactivity, business models, the rise and ubiquity of video, portable computing devices, effects on old or traditional forms of (usually) corporate media, as well as economic and political implications.

A lot to bite off, but hopefully some of where all of this is leading us will at least begin to take shape…