[OLPC library] journalism and writing in general

[Edward Cherlin]

On Jan 9, 2008 10:21 AM, Bob Stepno <robby at stepno.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I'm new on the list,

Welcome, Robby.

> owner of a G1G1 XO,

Us haz teh bestest toyz, yah.

> interested in contributing
> as an editor or writer for content related to "doing journalism" --

An interesting topic. Journalistic ethics are much in the news today,
and the children will have to have their own version of this
conversation.

* What is news? New information about recent events, certainly, but
selected because it is important to somebody for some purpose. It is
essential, therefore, to use multiple news sources for multiple
purposes. Sometimes the only effective way to report the news is to
give the historical context, particularly when it is about changing
people's opinions.

* How should news be reported? Provide the facts, certainly, but how
about helping the reader to find more information? Give some
indication of what the news means to stakeholders, but don't presume
to know what it *really* means.

* What about bias? Every news source has a purpose. That isn't bias,
by itself, unless it isn't acknowledged. Or unless the purpose is to
promote a certain view and suppress others. Which it almost always
unconsciously is.

"It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know
that just ain't so."--Confidently attributed to four 19th century
humorists, and to many others.

* How do we separate fact from opinion? That's easy--badly.

In fact, according to philosophers of science, there isn't any such
thing as a fact apart from a theory of the universe that gives it
meaning. Even if it's just the theory that we see things that are
really there, and we aren't dreaming all of this, or hallucinating
some of it. What we accept as fact depends on our scientific
knowledge, and also on our cultural bias, our notions of economics,
and a multitude of other factors. Was Martin Luther King a Communist?
That followed from certain widespread theories of the time. Is the XO
a toy? Some theories of education would say so. Our theory says that
those theories have been discredited, but people haven't given them up
yet.

What do you think, Sirs?

> both writing and fact-gathering, as well as using whatever
> text-editing, media recording and content management tools are
> developed for the XO environment.
>
> I've started out by looking at the journalism-related activities
> mentioned in the wiki, and reading about related topics at
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Journalism
>
> I added some comments to the journalism tutorial/notes olpc has
> inherited from an earlier MIT Media Lab project...
>
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Learning_activities/Journalism
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Learning_activities/Journalism
>
> To get used to the wiki itself, I've added some notes about my
> background and XO experience here:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Robby
>
> Please pass along suggestions -- and any related links I've missed --
> so I can take a look before I get completely submerged in the January
> semester at my own university.

If at some point you would like to coordinate a new Free journalism
textbook project, make a page for it and put a link on the OLPC
Publications page on the Wiki. Note that I said coordinate, not write.
This is a collaborative education venture. We will need to hear about
the problems of journalism on the ground in the target countries.

> Bob Stepno
> http://stepno.com

-- 
Edward Cherlin
Earth Treasury: End Poverty at a Profit
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay