Xark!

The #helpgeoff thing

Earlier today Janet (@xarkgirl) messaged me that our filmmaking buddy Geoff Marshall was in trouble: His 48-state documentary roadtrip had been interrupted in Greensboro, NC, by a smash-and-grab auto break-in. He lost about $6,000 in video and computer electronics, and apparently some of his material for the film (which he has been videoblogging along the way).

Janet wanted me to contact our Greensboro friends, which I did, getting quick responses from John Robinson, Sue Polinsky and Ed Cone. And as I was doing that, Chrys Rynearson popped up in my Google Talk bar:

exposur3: dude
fundraiser

let's get it going

we can raise 5k

what do you think?

A few hours later, Geoff had bloggers in Greensboro and Charleston working his case and offering help. We had a Help Geoff blog, a Help Geoff Twitter account, a new e-mail address, plus accounts at Tipjoy and PayPal.Someone suggested a #helpgeoff hashtag. We'd worked through numerous technical difficulties, all without anyone "being in charge."

The best place to follow all this? At Charleston's TheDigitel, where Geoff's former boss, Ken Hawkins, is covering this like the community story it is.

Here's what makes it all particularly sweet to me: The most influential moment in my turn toward networked media occurred in 2005 at ConvergeSouth , the Greensboro conference organized by Sue and a host of others. It's where we met John Robinson. It's what inspired Janet and I to launch Lowcountry Blogs in April 2006. At the final free ConvergeSouth in 2008, one of the largest and most enthusiastic groups in attendence were bloggers from coastal South Carolina.We owe a lot to those people in Greensboro.

As his friend, it's my duty to say that Geoff is a dumbass for leaving his stuff in the car, but as Chrys said, "He's our boy." And frankly, I just don't want want his documentary to end in a way that portrays America that way. Online communities are communities nonetheless. Let's see how well they function.

We still need professionals. Duh.

A friend kept asking me this question, and I kept not understanding it: How could the Twitter/networked media world have managed to get a reporter down to Atlanta, down to the airport, in time to ambush Gov. Mark Sanford on his arrival from Argentina?

Eventually, though, I got it: Since I'm an advocate of networked media and a critic of mass media, wouldn't I concede that there are times when a professional press has advantages? It was, to me, a good-natured form of the question, "Aren't you wrong?"

Well, I'm often wrong, but to the extent that people have projected such thoughts on me, it's time for a clarification. Professionals are important. We need them. If we're going to have them, then we must pay them a living wage.

Here's the flip side of that: To be a professional, one must work in a profession, and a profession is defined by its agreed-upon standards. To be a professional, one must deliver work that is demonstrably better than what one would expect from an amateur. To be a professional is not merely to have resources, but to be worthy of them.

The profession of journalism is in flux, and that's at least as significant as the transition from the old business model to whatever comes next. "The Audience" is now "the people formerly known as the audience," and we're all accountable for incorporating the new communications tools into our thinking. So when I bang on "the pros" for prat-falling in the face of all this change, that's not because I oppose the idea of a professional press.

I'm advocating for one.

The teachable moment passes

So The State newspaper published its account of how the Mark Sanford story went down, and it adds some useful details: Why the staff figured the Mark-Maria e-mails were sent from Argentina, how they came to send a reporter to Atlanta, the steps the staff took to make sure that Sanford's people understood they had the emails and were going to ask about them, etc.

But the tick-tock didn't cast any new light on what concerned me as a journalist: How did it come to pass that The State sat on those e-mails for almost six months? Why did The State's editors choose not to take the text of those e-mails to the governor's press office for comment months ago? And no, before you ask, this isn't a suggestion that The State should have published the e-mails if the governor's response was to deny their authenticity.

There are right and wrong answers in any profession, and then there's the grey area, which is where this decision falls. I still believe The State could give a convincing and compelling answer to the questions I've asked, but I'm not surprised that their account of their role in the story doesn't address in any way the decision-making process behind their choice to sit on their evidence. That kind of candor requires a degree of editorial transparency that most news executives despise.

I wanted to talk about that decision-making, because this was a teachable moment for journalism -- a moment for journalists to consider their processes and disciplines, but also a chance for consumers of mass media and networked journalism to explore the ethics of a tricky choice. With few exceptions, however, that wasn't the conversation others wished to have -- not about Sanford, not about the press. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre.

But let me summarize my feelings this way: The opaque gamesmanship of mass-media journalism is not aging well. We can do better.

The State's non-answer FAIL

Remember those arguments about how Americans are going to regret letting newspapers die because the digital rabble can't do the serious investigative watchdog work of professional reporters? The biggest problem with this argument is that it assumes a fact not in evidence: A widespread discipline of investigation in the professional press.

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!

That painfully private expression is a clip from an e-mail sent by S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford to his Argentinian mistress in July 2008 and published by The State newspaper on Wednesday afternoon following the governor's confession... six months after an anonymous source sent the paper a collection of e-mails between the lovers. To me that raised a series of immediate questions: Why did it take so long? How did The State handle this potentially significant story?

So I e-mailed my questions to the reporter who wrote the first account of The State's role in the story. His response: We'll tell our story on Sunday, and other than that, no comment.

Of course, my old friend Schuyler Kropf managed to get more out of John O'Connor, and after reading Schuyler's story this morning it occurs to me that O'Connor should have stuck to his original silence. What The State has revealed about its handling of the Mark-Maria e-mails offers a rare glimpse of the hollow state of the modern American newsroom.

Where's The State's explanation?

UPDATE: THE STATE SAYS IT WILL EXPLAIN ITS HANDLING OF THE STORY ON SUNDAY. John O'Connor sent me the following reply to my question: "Dan, We are writing such a piece. It will be in Sunday's paper. Other than that, I can't comment further." -- dc

So yeah, my friend Brian Hicks had a "Dewey Beats Truman" moment yesterday with that "Much Ado About Nothing" headline in The Post and Courier. And yes, The P&C's "National Tizzy" overline on its Wednesday morning Mark Sanford-returns-to-Columbia story, coupled with a top editorial that lifted its lead directly from SC GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, combined to make "The South's Oldest Daily Newspaper" look pretty silly by Wednesday afternoon.

But that's understandable. The P&C pulled back its resources from Washington, Columbia and politics in general years ago (it has no one in Washington and just one reporter in a Columbia bureau that once employed three full-time staffers). They're a Lowcountry paper now.

No, the newspaper with some explaining to do this morning is The State, the McClatchy-owned Columbia metro that owns political and government coverage in South Carolina. It led all the way on the Sanford disappearance story, sent a reporter to meet his plane in Atlanta and generally did the unpopular things journalists do when they think there's more to a story than official statements would lead one to believe.

Yesterday, we learned one reason why: An anonymous source had given The State e-mails between Sanford and his mistress in December. Six months ago.

Staffer John O'Connor has an account of The State's handling of the e-mail story in today's paper, but it raises as many questions as it answers. What did The State do in its attempts to verify the emails? Did it present the emails to the governor's office and ask if they were real? If so, what did Sanford say? If not, then why the decision not to present the evidence to the governor's office? At what level were these decisions made? What internal discussions produced the news policy that kept these documents under wraps until yesterday?

More to the point: Was the "anonymous source" known or unknown to editors?

It's possible that the answers to these questions could make top editors uncomfortable, but let me be clear: There are often wise and principled reasons to sit on such evidence. As a former city editor, I've been involved in numerous editorial discussions that set high, cautious (sometimes overly cautious) standards for the release of bombshell material, and I often either agreed with the decision to withhold or led the argument against publication. Time can prove evidence right or wrong, but the thinking behind such decisions matters because it speaks not only to the ethics of the news organization, but also to its relationship to powerful people.

So I'm not judging The State's actions -- I'm just calling for its editors to explain their decisions fully and candidly. There's no FOIA required, no legal charge, no lawyers required. Just walk across the newsroom and ask.

(Note: I sent an email asking John O'Connor these questions, and his reply is quoted above. In the meantime there's this New York Times piece that gets answers to some of these questions. It adds additional bits of information -- the e-mails were sent by e-mail, anonymously, editors say -- but stops short of a satisfying description).

Related articles by Zemanta

• Anonymous Tipster Gave Emails to Newspaper (politicalwire.com)
• For Press, Rumors of Straying but No Hard Evidence (nytimes.com)

Sanford's private Twitterstream

Lifted from @GuvMarkyMark, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford's personal Twitter account.

THURSDAY
Why is everybody in Columbia so freakin' stupid?
9:44 AM on June 17 from Tweetie

Havin a bad day. Hey, @SexySarahPGuv, gimme a holla.
4:41 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

You know that thing about how the GOP isn't suppose to attack another GOPer? I guess that's not true in S.C. What Would Reagan Do? #tcot
6:02 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

I've never felt so lonely.
6:03 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

Yo, anybody up for a road trip?
6:04 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

Board Certification in Social Media

(Click to see larger size)

Everyone who comes out this evening for tonight's panel discussion (6:30 p.m., Room 100, Maybank Hall, College of Charleston campus) sponsored by The Social Media Club of Charleston qualifies for one of these puppies -- YOUR VERY OWN PRINTED PROOF OF SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTISE! And it's SUITABLE FOR FRAMING!

Can't make it? Well, you too can become BOARD CERTIFIED as a SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT for the LOW, LOW COST of just $50. To receive your board certification certificate, send check or money order to:

Social Media Certification
c/o Dan Conover
794 Rutledge Ave.
Charleston, SC 29403

... and then click here to download a PDF version of the certificate.

Happy experting!

House party @ Chez XARK!

 
(Click on the image to see it larger... click here to download a PDF of the party flier to post wherever...)

We've been meaning to throw a house party for a long time now, and on vacation last week, Janet got over her innate terror of guests realizing that we don't live in a Southern Living showcase and said "OK." So it's on, people: SATURDAY, JUNE 27 (from 6:30 p.m. until the cops arrive). here in lovely North Central Charleston, just up the street from the intersection of Rutledge and Grove which played such a funny role in Charlie Geer's novel Outbound.

It's not the biggest house in the world, but we've got a nice porch and a back yard and I'll open up the garage and the boys have said they'll set up and play live out back (if you feel like jamming, bring your instrument). Don't bother to dress up, remember that early evenings in June mean bug spray if you're gonna sit in the back yard, and then make plans to drop in, hang out and have fun.

Here's our house on Google.If you think you might come, feel free to let us know (helps with the shopping). We're looking forward to seeing you!

Why I joined the Digital Mob

For about an hour on Tuesday I pointed my browser to a proxy that refreshed an official Iranian government site every second. In doing so, I participated in a form of cyberwarfare called a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, and the ethics of that act are complex.

To me, though, my intention made the ethics simple. I wasn't opening a dialog or expressing a thought. I was throwing a rock. And no matter how evolved we become, it's important to remember that a rock through a window remains an effective way of communicating to the people inside that the people outside are displeased.

Constructive? Absolutely not. But it delivered the message that government repression could be confronted by other forces, and it did so in a language understood by bullies of all nationalities: Power.

We need to construct a better world, and we won't do that by violence. But our strength as a distributed network of people who care about justice and democracy need not always be hobbled by the finer points of discussion, no matter how valid those principles may be.

A rock isn't the message. It's a medium.

Civilization

There is only a snout
that breaks the cloud surface
of paint-flaking undershot glass
And it's only her tail
stirring the sky over the Institute
and rattling the ribs of the city.
You never quite see this secret Sky Lizard,
this Big Gator Mother,
only what she leaves us,
in her wake, printed in the bellowing mud,
vibrating on the rooftops and swamps
of bars and breezeways.

I went looking for The Big Gator Mother in an airplane
but then in a boat on the green concrete river, in my quinine pith helmet,
I found her.

Found her pattern like a track in wave rhythm.
Found her smile in frozen balustrade, in a window up below me,
for I was underwater and heading downstream,
looking for alligators and lily pads.

Attention, citizens: The Big Gator Mother
requires your children.
You may drop them off the bridges,
plop plop plop
before going into town.
She's a lazy old lizard, or so she seems,
lying about with her snout poking out of the street,
her eyes up below
and her slow undulation
that ripples the asphalt, rising and falling.
She is eating your children as they bob in green water
and then motoring elsewhere.

The Big Gator Mother says nothing, she is
below in the cloud, swimming, she is
one long line in the ancient mud, through Sullivan and Wright,
across the prairie sky, across the ancient lazy rivers,
where she bobs for your children like little green apples.
She is everywhere here, her beauty assured by a steady diet of children.

The children are cried out and silent
as she takes them for harvest, pulling them up
and crunching their soft bones, then
shitting them out,
fertilizing fields by the Institute,
weaving strands of their eaten dreams into iron grates,
stone blocks and steel kick-plates, stitching their beautiful sobbing
into Gothic limestone shawls that
she drapes over mounds of skulls in whimsical fancies.
Spires of skulls and dreams, paintings that boil your heart down to tallow,
tallow to spread cross the sky like a schmear,
a ravenous breakfast of children and memory,
stocked up against hunger and greed
by the secret Sky Lizard,
who stalked her way out of the ancient mud Nile
and went wandering.

I don't eat children. I grow them and sell them
and walk over children on my way down to picnic,
their soft bones crunching beneath my penny loafers,
they surround me like lattice, appealing and mocking.
Some have been there forever.
Some we just planted yesterday.

But there they are! I am staring out the window now, down to the green river, where everything beautiful is bleached white of sorrow, where joy slows down, remembered only in brick, where spines poke from the Earth like dinosaur fossils, where the Big Gator Mother presides under all,
heavy and hungry.

--May 3, Chicago