Jay Rosen

NewAssignment.net is Rosen’s optimistic plan to steer the success of open-source, community-based software development into the hands of our society in need of better journalism, and more community engagement in social issues.

It’s an interesting idea which has potential. But, as I’m sure Rosen would agree, the idea faces many hurdles. Rosen seems to be considering many of those potential problems, but some seem to have fallen through the cracks.

First off, let’s consider Rosen’s idea of building on Mozilla’s success in engaging a community of users to debug software. It’s good that he sees a correlation and wants to learn from Firefox’s successes (and failures).

But the two subjects (software and journalism) aren’t analogous.

Geeks who sit in front of their computers all day are largely a disconnected demographic almost screaming for a chance to participate in a way that makes them feel like they matter. And if they’re surfing the net anyway, how much effort does it take to log the problems with their browser? Even if it takes minutes or hours, there are a large number of people out there who have the time and inclination to do so.

But most of them aren’t going to be willing to go out into the community they’re likely already marginally disconnected with, and gather data or do reporting.

So newassignment.net will have a different user base than Mozilla. Again, Rosen would likely agree.

So who will the user base be? Rosen might say “Who knows? We’ll find that out after we launch.” But ideally, newassignment participants would be people who are looking for a way to participate in their community, yet haven’t found it. They would also need a certain amount of free time, and be computer users of some sort.

The problem, I think, is that in large part this community doesn’t exist. People who genuinely want to be engaged in their community likely already are in some form. Maybe Rosen could get the odd soccer mom who’s involved in the PTA or the community board to report back marginally. But she isn’t going to have to time to filter out the data that is useful to others from the data that isn’t. She’s got kids to put to bed, and in this economic atmosphere, probably a job to get to in the morning.

As I said before, there may be a few people here or there, but not the thousands that would be needed to make newassignment an overwhelming success. At the very least, building the user base will be an uphill battle. If the first newassignment project wins a Pulitzer or something, maybe that will pull enough people in. But will it keep them there, keep them engaged? Only time will tell.

The other major problem is who choose as the first editor. While I like the idea of Josh Marshal, the other half of the political spectrum won’t be so pleased at the choice of someone so easily pegged as partisan.

In an atmosphere where building a user base is going to be the main challenge, cutting that group in half before you project even gets off the ground is a big danger.

Sure, conservatives could counter Marshals’ project by creating a parallel of their own. But it’s more than likely they’ll just dismiss it (and newassignment) as another “liberal blog,” and only pay attention to it when it gets attacked on the Drudge Report.

It seem to me that the only solution to avoid limiting the user base and avoiding claims of partisanship, is either hire someone that most people agree is middle-of-the-road, which is probably impossible because people won’t agree, or hire two editors from the start, who are at opposite ends.

Two disparate editors would also help in that they would likely become competitive, as would their followers. That might just produce better results.

Though it could also end in a mudslinging mess.

I’d like to avoid making prognostications about what might be, and just wait and see. I, like Rosen, am a media optimist. I want to believe that something like this could work. I’ve just seen too many good ideas fail in the past, for reasons similar to the ones mentioned above.

And I also know that hard-working, intelligent Americans who spend time and effort creating something of social or economic value like to be rewarded in some way. Geeks with free time might be willing to spend a few minutes a day to debug code. But journalists, even citizen journalists, want to get paid for going out into the world and reporting.

If you can’t even offer them a byline, they’re probably going to point their Firefox browser somewhere else.

They voted.

More precisely, they came to the center on Castleton Avenue to test out the city’s new Ballot Marking Devices, or BMDs (they don’t tabulate votes, just mark ballots), which allow many disabled New Yorkers their first opportunity to vote autonomously.

Not everyone can pull a lever or read a ballot, which is why some disabled voters in the past needed assistance to vote. But with these machines, voters can touch a screen, use a keyboard with special oversized keys, press rocker paddles with their feet, or sip and puff their way through the voting process with a plastic straw.

Voters don’t even need to see the screen, as the entire ballot can be read by a computer voice over headphones, in English, Spanish, Chinese, or Korean.

While the machines may be just what disabled voters are waiting for, many have been waiting for decades.

“Since [former Mayor Ed] Koch’s time I’ve seen different machines come in and out,” said Dorothy Doran, the Independent Living Center’s Executive Director, “and then they never materialized when you went to the poling places.”

Just how these particular machines did materialize is a story all its own.

In 2002, the United States Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which required all states to provide voting equipment that can be used by people with disabilities.

But according to Pej Azarm, a consultant working with the State Board of Elections, New York State missed the deadline to purchase the machines in January of 2006, and so didn’t get the federal money to buy all the machines.

“Then, the Federal Government, and the Department of Justice specifically, decided to sue the State of New York…,” Azarm explained to the group, “to make sure they were going to be complaint this year. The City then stepped in and worked with the Appeals Courts and the Department of Justice to come up with an interim solution for 2006.”

The interim solution, in the form of the Ballot Marking Devices, were first used in last month’s primaries by 580 voters, according to Azarm.

“Everything went over very well…” said Azarm. “One constructive criticisms we got from CINDY (the Center for Independence of the Disabled, NY) was that when people actually came to vote, poll workers were so excited to help them they would sometimes kind of hover around them and make sure and ask them ‘are you OK, do you need assistance?’ and so on.”

Azarm says the poll workers have been asked to give voters more space in November, so they can better enjoy their newly acquired voter privacy.

But everything hasn’t been solved for the City’s disabled voters. As Azarm mentioned, this is an interim solution. As such, these machines won’t be available in every polling station, but only at the “super-polling” sites located at the Board of Elections office of each borough.

According to Azarm any voter, disabled or not, can come to their borough Election office and vote on the machines.

But for disabled New Yorkers who have to travel miles from their normal neighborhood polling places to vote, travel becomes a serious issue.

“[The Board of Elections] is providing eight accessible handicap spots specifically intended for people who are going to be voting, in front of each building.” Azarm explained. The City has also been working with Access-A-Ride, a bussing service that provides transportation for people with disabilities.

“Although they haven’t been able to commit to having a shuttle service…,” Azarm said. “they are going to do as much as they can.”

Time and congestion could also be a factor. According to documentation released by the City Election Board, voting with these machines can take more than three minutes using the display screen and touch response, and up to 45 minutes, depending on the length of the ballot, for voters using audio. There are no legal time limits for voters using these machines.

According to John Ravitz, Executive Director of the New York City Board of Elections, Staten Island will have three machines at their Elections office on November 7. The Bronx will have four; Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn will each have five.

Still, as interim solutions go, after a non-eventful primary roll-out, these machines seem poised for success. Though no one can be sure what will happen on election day.

As Lawrence Norden, Chair of the Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security, said at a recent public discussion of New York voting machine issues, “Right now there is no perfect voting system…But having a system voters can easily use is extremely important.”

And the BMDs have at least met with anecdotal success.

At the Staten Island Center for Independent Living, a disabled voter had nothing but good things to say after spending a few minutes with the machine.

When the device printed out her , she had practiced voting completely on her own, her eyes opened wide and she smiled.

“I love it! I Love it! I love it!” she said.

Thanks to Jose’s free ticket, I spent early Sunday afternoon at the Javits center surrounded by gadgets and games and gizmos at Digital Life, Ziff Davis Media’s consumer electronics and entertainment event.

The Slide show is here, becuase I couldn’t figure out how to embed the flash file into this post. I got the ambient noise and everything. This education really is paying off.

There was a whole lot a’ gaming going on: lan parties, console games and previews, and even a Namco booth trying to breathe new life into retro-arcade games for your cell phone. Whatever works, I guess, but I wasn’t really there for the games. I will admit to spending a few minutes watching the Final Fantasy XII demo. But there’s no time for that in J School. So, moving on.

Miscellaneous gadgets were pretty much everywhere. A couple booths were hawking tiny combo video/still cameras. But “Supacam” kicked the ridiculous meter up a few notches, not only with their stupid name, but by hiring two guys in lab coats to talk up their $299 bland piece of plastic. If that wasn’t enough, at least one of the guys had an Australian accent. I guess it’s better than Billy Mays, but this doesn’t seem like the best way to sell you gadget to anyone with half a brain. Then again, there were quite a few people flocking around them and the camera. Maybe they know something about the intelligence of your average American that I’m not quite ready to admit.

There were three vehicles in various places around the show-floor. Shockingly, one of them didn’t even have a Best Buy logo on it.

The Treo 680 was unveiled here earlier in the week. I took a couple pictures just for Jeff.

But Sony was the real reason I was there. Not the PS3, whose basketball game demo bored me, but for their ebook reader. I wasn’t sure it was going to be on display, but it turns out they had about five at the show. I’ve been reading and writing about this thing since it was first announced in the spring. Anyone who’s heard me rant about it in class knows that I think the device, or at least the e-ink technology it uses, will be a major part of the “newspaper” of tomorrow.

There wasn’t a whole lot I didn’t know about this device when I walked through the door. But I think it really takes a hands-on experience to appreciate it. If I can manage to save up enough pennies–that’d be 35,000–in the next couple months, maybe I’ll bring one to Jarvis’s class. In the meantime, here’s some images and a video. The thing is even more svelte and sexy than I expected. And the screen is amazing. There won’t be any eye-strain from this thing, unless you actually try to keep reading until the battery runs out, after 7,500 page turns, give or take.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhy-T0Ykm_o

A watchdog group asked Wisconsin regulators Wednesday to revoke approval of four types of electronic voting machines before next month’s election.

Good.

Voter Action Wisconsin said in its complaint to the state Elections Board that the machines are inherently unreliable, open to tampering and susceptible to human error.

Yep.

The board didn’t act on the complaint Wednesday, and several members said it would be unrealistic to instruct elections officials to switch to paper ballots or optical scan machines just 33 days before the election.

Only 33 days to haul the faulty machines away and break the paper ballots out of the dusty closet? There’s no way we could manage all that in 33 days.

Maybe by the next election…

Board member Kerry Dwyer also said a switch would disenfranchise disabled voters who the machines were designed to help.

So the possibility that their vote might be lost or tampered with isn’t a form of disenfranchisement all its own? Then keep a few machines around for the disabled voters. It’s probably a lot harder to sway an election on electronic machines that only have a handful of votes on them.

Attorney Mike Wittenwyler, who represents Voter Action Wisconsin, acknowledged the board already requires safeguards, including a paper record of each vote made using the machines.

“But it still doesn’t solve the inherent flaws of the machines,” he said. “This is a system open to abuse, and it could be manipulated.”

He said the group’s complaint could turn into a lawsuit if the board refuses to act.

OK Mike, get in line.

The man who to me was the face of news for most of my life, chimed in on the past present and future of the news media last weekend on Air America‘s Ring of Fire radio show.

Dan Rather, to launch a weekly investigative news program on HDNet next month, had a lot of interesting things to say.

Definitely worth a listen, so go and check it out.

The Rather interview starts a little more than halfway through the above clip.
If anyone is interested in more of what other luminaries (Koppel, Thomas, Suskind, etc.) have to say on the subject of our ailing fourth estate, I’d heartily recommend Kristina Borjesson’s “Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11.“

Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call just broke what sounds like a doozy of a story:

House Report Details 485 Contacts Between Abramoff Team and White House Officials

Hundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates “raise serious questions about the legality and actions” of those officials, according to a draft bipartisan report prepared by the House Government Reform Committee.

The 95-page report, which White House officials reviewed Wednesday evening but has yet to be formally approved by the panel, singled out two of President Bush’s top lieutenants, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, as having been offered expensive meals and exclusive tickets to premier sporting events and concerts by Abramoff and his associates.

Seems pretty damning to me. But at this point, I can’t immagine tha Rove won’t find a way to wiggle out of this, like everything else.

The accepted wisdom is that the Abramoff scandal won’t significantly affect the election, despite the ever-growing number of Republicans involved.

So what does everyone else think? Is this going to make any difference in 40-odd days ’til the we go to the unsecured, malfunctioning, electronic voting machines?

It’ll be interesting at least to see what kind of coverage this gets.

Seems like it should be on the front pages of just about everything, but it broke too late for the Friday papers.

Nothing like a story you can bury in the Saturday press.

Lets see what the TV news has to say about it tomorrow.

Update:

 The story did make it into the Times on page A18.

Seems like strange news judgement to me, but the WaPo has it on A12, so I guess the big boys are against me.

From Ben‘s comments on Dan Shernoff

listening to him I was optimistic about the future- that I could do what I want to do (once I figure out what that is) and make a living doing it.

As usual, Ben brings us the smart, optimistic conclusion. And I couldn’t agree more. Sure it’s kind of frightening to see someone as obviously passionate and talented as Dan with no clear path or job security. But to quote Robert Deniro from my favorite film of all time,
“I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there’s trouble, a man alone.”

To me, the flux of the industry is an asset. I don’t want to spend my life at one newspaper, magazine, website or whatever. I want my career to be something like Jeff’s: work a while here and there, maybe start a magazine or a website or three, freelance a bit, enjoying whatever it is I do and doing something else once it gets stale. If I could get in a Pulitzer there somewhere, so much the better.

Ben continues with his thoughts about Joe Territo’s talk:

Well, any optimism I might have had was completely shredded listening to Joe.

huh?

being a full time employee seems to be becoming a thing of the past and it’s possible that we’ll all end up freelancing, not immediately but somewhere in the not so distant future.

So I have to ask, what’s so wrong with that? If I wanted a monotonous, soul-sucking job with security, I’d hit up the government. Well, I tutor for a CUNY school and get paid by New York State, so I guess I have that already. Though it ain’t so soul-sucking.

But Joy hits the nail on the head in her usual biting style:

Today’s wearying presentations brought out the capitalist evangelist in Miss B.

Had a chance to testify to a classmate on this afternoon’s shuttle train. She asked, “Why should we bother trying for a NYT internship with all the cuts and competition?” I nodded and replied, “I’d spend my time meeting editors of mags you want to write for, pitch them ideas and do those stories FOR MONEY instead. Build your business. No one is going to hire anyone. But they’ll buy from everyone with good stuff.”

To be blunt, I think the school is perpetrating a fraud on its less-work-world-wise students.

By emphasizing traditional newspaper “craft”, CUNYGSJ feeds a belief that blacksmithing is back. The emails touting interning tests for AP, Boston Globe, WashPost only exacerbate the delusion.

The only way CUNYGSJ students should expect a living wage is by coming to the marketplace as versatile communicators ready to drum up business for themselves, by themselves.

Scary? Yep.

Liberating? You bet.

Damn. So true, it almost hurts. I too am frustrated with Craft’s approach and the lack of non-newspaper internship opportunities. Come on Jeff. Get the guys from Weblogs, Inc. or Gawker Media up in the house. What about some crazy news startups or something? If I wanted to intern at a newspaper I’m sure I could manage that on my own at the Staten Island Advance or the Jersey Journal. And if I did that, I wouldn’t have to pay for J school.

But that whole scary and liberating thing sums it up and brings me back to what I was saying about Dan. The fact that the industry is in flux shouldn’t be seen as a frightening thing. We’re journalism people. We’re supposed to live for excitement and the chance to try new things. Well, there’s new things cropping up every day for us. And believe me, the newspaper is going to be there in some form if we decide that’s eventually what we want to do.

And again, if you want job security, try the military and special ops in particular. That’s a growth industry.

Me? I’m just lookin’ for some fun with words, and a rewarding ride.

Viva la revolución de los medios!

Engadget

I’m starting to wonder if it might be a good idea for Deibold to hire Brownie to tackle these issues. He couldn’t do any worse than whoever’s in charge of this mess already.

I’d encourage everyone to read the whole thing, but I’ll put some of the better bits below.

#1 The New Poll Tax
Atlanta, Georgia

In 2005, Georgia state legislators passed a bill requiring voters to present either a driver’s license or a state-issued photo ID that costs between $20 and $35 and is available only from Department of Motor Vehicles offices. Supporters claimed this was necessary to keep people from casting votes in someone else’s name, even though Georgia secretary of state Cathy Cox noted that her office had no evidence of this happening. Either way, the measure is likely to have a dramatic effect on who can vote. Two-thirds of the state’s counties don’t even have a DMV office; Atlanta, the state’s largest city, has just one, where waits at the ID counters often run to several hours.In late June, the secretary of state issued a report finding that more than half a million active-status, registered voters in Georgia don’t have valid photo IDs. Fully 17.3 percent of African American voters, and one-third of black voters over age 65, wouldn’t be able to cast a ballot under the law. When the federal Department of Justice had five experts examine the ID legislation in 2005, four of them objected to it, as the Washington Post discovered. But higher-ups at Justice overruled them and the measure (pushed by conservative think tanks such as the American Center for Voting Rights) went on the books. In October of last year a judge blocked its implementation, and the law — along with another version that offers free voter IDs — remains in limbo as appeals continue.

#3 Line Forms Here
Franklin County, Ohio

Like many states, Ohio theoretically requires equal treatment of voters in all parts of the state; in practice, it frequently ignores its own requirements, especially in urban, predominantly Democratic, neighborhoods. In Franklin County, for example, more than 2,500 voters in the city of Columbus found themselves crammed into a single precinct in 2004, even though the state’s guidelines call for no more than 1,400 — apparently because officials assumed that in a poor neighborhood, turnout would be low. The state only partially reimburses counties for buying electronic voting machines, so Franklin, like many poor counties, didn’t have enough machines on hand to start with. When record numbers of voters showed up, massive lines snaked toward the handful of machines. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has sued Ohio; among the complainants was an elderly woman with arthritis who had to leave because no one could find a place for her to sit.

#5 Foul Play
New Hampshire

Intimidation, deception, and assorted trickery have long been staples of American elections, practiced with equal aplomb by both parties and by operatives working with (or without) a nod and a wink from party leaders. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2004, fliers from the nonexistent Milwaukee Black Voters League were distributed in black neighborhoods, warning residents that “if anyone in your family has ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation, you can’t vote in the presidential election,” and that “if you violate any of these laws you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you.”

#9 Suspect Students
Waller County, Texas

Prairie View A&M is a black school in the heart of east Texas, where the local leadership has, over many decades, worked to deny the students’ claims to being full-time county residents and thus eligible to vote. In 2003, Waller County district attorney Oliver Kitzman wrote a letter to the elections administrator and the local newspaper warning that any students who tried to vote could face 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The NAACP filed suit, noting that as far back as 1979 the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on a lawsuit brought by Prairie View students, held that students could register to vote in the communities in which they attended college. Students in Arkansas, Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, and Virginia have also been prevented or discouraged from registering; in Williamsburg, Virginia, William and Mary students were denied permission to register merely for acknowledging that they were going home on vacation.

#11 Politicos in Charge
Ohio

Election activists don’t have Florida’s Katherine Harris to kick around anymore, but in a system where most states’ top election officials are also politicians, there’s no shortage of other nominees for worst secretary of state. The current leading candidate must be Ohio’s Ken Blackwell, now a Republican candidate for governor, who seems intent on making sure as few Ohioans as possible are registered to vote. In 2004 Blackwell achieved national notoriety when he announced that his office would accept only voter-registration forms printed on paper of at least 80-pound weight. Blackwell had to back off that requirement, but a slew of other restrictions remain, including one under which door-to-door registration workers must sign in with county officials, and another requiring them to personally mail in the registration forms they collect. “The constant promulgation of rules and regulations keeps members of the Board of Elections jumping around like cats on a hot tin roof,” says Chris Link, executive director of the Ohio ACLU. “And this essentially hurts Democrats. Who is newly registering? People who’ve just become citizens, young people who’ve just gotten the right to vote.” Meanwhile, Blackwell’s office has done nothing to inform voters that come Election Day this year, they will have to bring photo IDs to the polls — guaranteeing that tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters will be turned away.

So, props to Sasha Abramsky, not only for writing an excellent piece that gets a reader up to date on most of America’s election problems, but also for showing us how well print journalism can accomplish just such a task.