LWV Sponsors Journalism/Internet Discussion

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You probably saw the ad in last Saturday's Claremont Courier. The League of Women Voters of the Claremont Area is sponsoring a panel discussion called "Print Journalism and the Challenge of the Internet."

The event is scheduled for next Saturday, March 21st, from 11:30am to 2pm at the City's Hughes Center. It costs $10, and the price includes lunch. The discussion begins at 12:15pm.

According to the ad, the panel includes:

• Peter Weinberger, Editor and Publisher, Claremont Courier
• Steve Lambert, Editor and General Manager, San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group
• Meg Worley, Assistant Professor of English, Pomona College
• Larry Pryor, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism, USC
• John Seery, Professor of Politics, Pomona College
• Danny Paskin, Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism, CSU Long Beach
• Eric Richardson, Publisher and Founder of blogdowntown.com
• Anand Gupta, Ace Reporter, Claremont Insider
  

Just kidding about that last guy. We all know he's really in Bangalore. Besides, no one in Claremont reads Gupta's gossip rag, or at least no one will cop to it.

In all seriousness, though, it's a shame the League didn't see fit to invite any actual local bloggers, of which there are many doing fine jobs. The list of speakers seems a little talking heads-heavy, as if this newfangled Internet thing had just now arrived and needed proper LWV-sponsored study. Panelist Eric Richardson's blog seems to be just the type of serio-communi-non-profit the LWV would like: "blogdowntown is a project of verbdowntown, a non-profit whose mission is to build community online resources for Downtown Los Angeles."

We think the event could use some local balance from writers actually doing the work. David Allen from the Bulletin, for instance. What about Tony Krickl from the Courier's City Beat, or former Courier reporter and current "To the Point" producer Gary Scott? How about Charles Johnson from Claremont McKenna College or the folks at the Metro Pomona Blog? Or Jack Pitney, whose GOV 101 and GOV115 classes at CMC maintain blogs about politics and journalism?

Print Journalism and
the Challenge of the Internet
Sponsored by the Claremont LWV

Saturday, March 21 - 11:30am to 2pm
Alexander Hughes Community Center
1700 Danbury Rd.
Claremont, CA 91711

Cost: $10

* * * * *

Coincidentally, Gary Scott wrote about the venerable Columbia School of Journalism having to come to grips late in the game with the rise of the Internet.

Scott was referring to a New York Magazine article about the fact that when the New York Times decided to try out a hyperlocal blog called "The Local," the NYT approached the City College of New York rather than Columbia for interns.

Columbia's apparently fallen behind the times when it comes to new media, not that everyone on Columbia's faculty considers this an imperative. The magazine article said:

But the push for modernization has also raised the ire of some professors, particularly those closely tied to Columbia’s crown jewel, RW1 [Reporting and Writing, an intensive journalism training class, see here]. “Fuck new media,” the coordinator of the RW1 program, Ari Goldman, said to his RW1 students on their first day of class, according to one student. Goldman, a former Times reporter and sixteen-year veteran RW1 professor, described new-media training as “playing with toys,” according to another student, and characterized the digital movement as “an experimentation in gadgetry.”

Bloggers of the World, Unite!

The Associated Press has reported that a loose coalition of bloggers is trying to form a blogger's union. The article states:

"I think people have just gotten to the point where people outside the blogosphere understand the value of what it is that we do on the progressive side," said Susie Madrak, author of the Suburban Guerrilla blog, who is active in the union campaign. "And I think they feel a little more entitled to ask for something now."

But just what that something is may be hard to say.

We posed the question of a bloggers union to a panel of former Claremont City Councilmembers, and they responded unanimously: "GET A LIFE!"

And, a bloggers union would likely result in more work for Anand Gupta, our correspondent in India.

Claremont Outsources Fastpitch To India

[Editor's Note: This space has already reported on the outsourcing by Claremont Fastpitch where they are advertsing in UPLAND, trolling for participants from that community. The sign in question has since been removed. In the meantime, it turns out, this outsourcing is even more widespread than we had imagined. Our correspondent in Bangalore, Anand Gupta, reports:]


Hellos and hosannas from Bangalore. Your servant Anand writes you to inform you that one of the greatest dailies on the subcontinent has contained the advertisement noted below for FastPitch in Claremont, CA. One of my stringers has provided to me a clipping from said daily with the pertinent information which I attach for you.



With due respect, it might be more successful in India to search for outsourced football (soccer in America) players. Football is a much more popular pastime over here. Bend it like Beckham!

It will be an exciting Saturday when the Bangalore Torpedoes take on the until-now-undefeated Black Pearl in the FastPitch 14-and-under league. That will be a game to remember.

Until later, Anand

Good News for Claremont via India

Editor's Note: We received this dispatch from correspondent Anand Gupta in Bangalore--

Hello from your faithful servant and correspondent Anand in Bangalore. Felicitous greetings. We are hearing oh yes we are of very very good news from Claremont. Very good news indeed. Congratulations to all in the community. Your fondest wishes are coming true. Happiness all around. Cheers.

News of Claremont from India

Editor's Note: The recent news that the Pasadena Now website has outsourced its Pasadena reportage to India prompted us to look into our own cost-cutting measures. Adapt or die, as they say--Claremont Buzz

--Compiled by Anand Gupta.

Greetings from Bangalore to all of our new readers. The Insider has contracted with Bangalore Poom Puhar News Source PLC to having us provide news of the luscious City of Claremont to its readership and to the World by means of the World Wide Web. We hope to demonstrate by our actions and writing that news of Claremont gathered and edited in India can be as timely and hard-hitting as news gathered by your own cadres.

Without further consternation, Here is today’s news of Claremont:

Mayor Scott Pope of Claremont issued a proclamation inviting and welcoming all probable visitors in October to see the Fall Foliage in the hills and river valleys outside of Claremont town from Newport all the way to the Ascutney State Park in Vermont.

The Claremont Resort and Spa has initiated special summer Rate Plans. The Resort and Spa has a distinguished history going back to the 19^th Century a.d. and has hosted the Saudi Royal Family in connexion with the Founding of the United Nations in 1945. Excellent views of the Bay Area are to be had.

City manager Glenn Southard very recently was criticised for releasing the police records of Mr. Obie Landrum, uncle of the unfortunate motorist shot and fatally murdered by the Claremont police department.

The Claremont Colleges entertained parents and guests over the weekend at their Commencement Exercises. Pictured is the outdoor setting of one of the events. Although dampened by an unseasonable May rain, the stately Palladian mansion built in 1708 provided a magnificent setting for the graduating students.

Some churlish College Students are heard to complain that Claremont is “dead” at night and on the weekend. This entry from Wikipedia should scotch that rumour: “Claremont Main Road is regarded by many as the clubbing capital of the Southern Suburbs. The road is dotted with clubs and bars and is a lively hotspot almost every night of the week. Bars on Claremont Main Road include Lizzards, Stones and Caps. Clubs on this road include Sobhar, Tin Roof, Town, Springboks and Tiger Tiger.”

The Claremont football club squad takes on the East Freemantle Sharks on Saturday, 19 May, 2007, at the East Freemantle Oval. Come out and cheer our squad and support youth sports in Claremont.

More on Claremont College is taken from Wikipedia:

Claremont College opened in 1990 as a senior secondary Government school for students in Years 11 and 12. It provides a full range of courses, preparing students for university, TAFE, traineeships and employment. Its 900 students study either on-campus or off-campus. The college is located at Claremont, Tasmania, in a picturesque setting overlooking the Derwent River, 15 km from Hobart. It particularly targets students living in Hobart's Northern Suburbs.

This is all for now from your faithful reporter, Anand Gupta. I shall look forward to serving you again in future with choice news of Claremont.

More News from India

As long as we're on the subject of outsourcing, Harry Shearer's Le Show on 5/6 had a bit about CNN's Lou Dobbs being outsourced to Bangalore. (You need the Real Player to hear it - get it here.)

Le Show can be heard Sunday mornings at 10:00 a.m. on 89.9FM KCRW. You might recognize Shearer as the voice of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Smithers and a multitude others on FOX's The Simpsons. He was also the original Eddie Haskell on the Leave It To Beaver pilot, and has been in numerous movies, including "This Is Spinal Tap."

Long-time Shearer fans will remember his work with the Credibility Gap in the early 70's. Back then, on New Year's Day, people of a certain, hip demographic would turn down the sound on the TV broadcasts of the Rose Parade and turn up the sound of the Credibility Gap's ad-libbed radio narration.

Offshore News

As Claremont Buzz noted yesterday, Pasadena Now's decision to outsource some of it's local reporting to India sure has the e-wires humming. This really gives new meaning to the term "foreign correspondent!"

Jill at Eye Level Pasadena has done a great job of compiling links to different sites who've commented on the issue.

Sunday Observations

There's been a lot of buzz about a local news site called Pasadena Now outsourcing its reporting to India. The website advertised on Craigslist in India for people willing to report remotely on Pasadena issues.

Pasadena Now publisher James MacPherson believes that his two new Indian journalists can cover his fair city from afar by watching city council meetings online and interviewing people by email and by phone.

The Associated Press ran a story on this two days ago, and Foothill Cities picked up on it. There's been a big local response. The LA Times and Pasadena Star-News have both run articles on the matter.

Opinions have been mixed. Many comments we've seen are what you might expect--this is bad; you need local knowledge to understand issues; you can't cover the news without face-to-face interaction. Others, like Jill at Eye Level Pasadena, after the initial shock, were more open to the idea.

Here at the Insider we tend to fall into skeptics' camp. As we've noted in the past, the biggest thing lacking in local news isn't information. It's context. And unless you know the lay of the land, the personalities involved, the history of a locality, the business makeup, the community organizations, the in- and out-groups--all of what makes a community--you cannot possibly begin to accurately describe it.

And then you're just a microphone for whomever to broadcast from. Claremont has suffered in the past from just this sort of non-critical journalism, and it took serious reporters like Gary Scott and, for a short time, Chris Bray at the Claremont Courier to bring some reality to the reporting. It's not surprising that the City of Pasadena would be open to the idea of reporting from half a world away. It's much easier to spin someone whose idea of a journalist is Doonesbury's Roland Hedley.

Pretty soon, we'll have no-context news with ever-changing spin and stories being re-written on the fly. Or maybe we already have that. Remember the 2000 Presidential election and the calling and then non-calling of Florida's vote?

And then there's this reporting about the troubles/festivities in Haiti from the Onion:


Breaking News: Something Happening In Haiti