Interesting.<br><br>Welcome Bob, to the library list. We are glad to have you.<br><br>How do you feel about blogs as reporting? There have been a few discussions about setting up a multi-user wordpress installation for the purposes of journalism, and being able to upload their stories to the web.
<br><br>I am interested in journalism as well. I used to run my college newspaper in fact, so I have a bit of experience on the management side of journalism and copy-editing *groan*. I try to help coordinate volunteers for OLPC, so if you have any questions feel free to drop me a line privately or to just ask on any of the list-servs. We tend to be friendly people here. :)
<br><br>Also, keep in mind that when content is created, we need to a mechanism for translation as well. We have many dedicated translators who do this for us via our Pootle server.<br><br>Seth<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Jan 9, 2008 1:05 PM, Edward Cherlin <<a href="mailto:echerlin@gmail.com">echerlin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Jan 9, 2008 10:21 AM, Bob Stepno <<a href="mailto:robby@stepno.com">robby@stepno.com</a>> wrote:<br>> Hi all,<br>> I'm new on the list,<br><br></div>Welcome, Robby.<br><div class="Ih2E3d">
<br>> owner of a G1G1 XO,<br><br></div>Us haz teh bestest toyz, yah.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> interested in contributing<br>> as an editor or writer for content related to "doing journalism" --<br><br>
</div>An interesting topic. Journalistic ethics are much in the news today,<br>and the children will have to have their own version of this<br>conversation.<br><br>* What is news? New information about recent events, certainly, but
<br>selected because it is important to somebody for some purpose. It is<br>essential, therefore, to use multiple news sources for multiple<br>purposes. Sometimes the only effective way to report the news is to<br>give the historical context, particularly when it is about changing
<br>people's opinions.<br><br>* How should news be reported? Provide the facts, certainly, but how<br>about helping the reader to find more information? Give some<br>indication of what the news means to stakeholders, but don't presume
<br>to know what it *really* means.<br><br>* What about bias? Every news source has a purpose. That isn't bias,<br>by itself, unless it isn't acknowledged. Or unless the purpose is to<br>promote a certain view and suppress others. Which it almost always
<br>unconsciously is.<br><br>"It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know<br>that just ain't so."--Confidently attributed to four 19th century<br>humorists, and to many others.
<br><br>* How do we separate fact from opinion? That's easy--badly.<br><br>In fact, according to philosophers of science, there isn't any such<br>thing as a fact apart from a theory of the universe that gives it<br>
meaning. Even if it's just the theory that we see things that are<br>really there, and we aren't dreaming all of this, or hallucinating<br>some of it. What we accept as fact depends on our scientific<br>knowledge, and also on our cultural bias, our notions of economics,
<br>and a multitude of other factors. Was Martin Luther King a Communist?<br>That followed from certain widespread theories of the time. Is the XO<br>a toy? Some theories of education would say so. Our theory says that<br>
those theories have been discredited, but people haven't given them up<br>yet.<br><br>What do you think, Sirs?<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> both writing and fact-gathering, as well as using whatever<br>> text-editing, media recording and content management tools are
<br>> developed for the XO environment.<br>><br>> I've started out by looking at the journalism-related activities<br>> mentioned in the wiki, and reading about related topics at<br>> <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Journalism" target="_blank">
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Journalism</a><br>><br>> I added some comments to the journalism tutorial/notes olpc has<br>> inherited from an earlier MIT Media Lab project...<br>><br>> <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Learning_activities/Journalism" target="_blank">
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Learning_activities/Journalism</a><br>> <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Learning_activities/Journalism" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Learning_activities/Journalism</a>
<br>><br>> To get used to the wiki itself, I've added some notes about my<br>> background and XO experience here:<br>> <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Robby" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Robby
</a><br>><br>> Please pass along suggestions -- and any related links I've missed --<br>> so I can take a look before I get completely submerged in the January<br>> semester at my own university.<br><br></div>
If at some point you would like to coordinate a new Free journalism<br>textbook project, make a page for it and put a link on the OLPC<br>Publications page on the Wiki. Note that I said coordinate, not write.<br>This is a collaborative education venture. We will need to hear about
<br>the problems of journalism on the ground in the target countries.<br><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Bob Stepno<br>> <a href="http://stepno.com" target="_blank">http://stepno.com</a><br><br></div><font color="#888888">
--<br>Edward Cherlin<br>Earth Treasury: End Poverty at a Profit<br><a href="http://www.EarthTreasury.org/" target="_blank">http://www.EarthTreasury.org/</a><br>"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay
<br></font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">_______________________________________________<br>Library mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Library@lists.laptop.org">Library@lists.laptop.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library" target="_blank">
http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/library</a><br></div></div></blockquote></div><br>