Two weeks ago, we presented Magnify at Digital Hollywood. We met a bunch of great new people - and had one major surpise.

As i walked off the stage I was met by a familier voice who said- "I just want to introduce myself." When you spend your life in film you often recognise people who don't know you (they were in a film and you spent hours in a dark edit room staring at their face). But rarely do people know you who you've never met.

Yet instantanly i felt like knew this person.

"You changed my life" he said. Ok, clearly there's more to this story.

His name is Michael Kennedy. And he's known as "Big Mike". He's a mascot. A pro. And an announcer. Seems like from the time he told his story on MTV Unfiltered, things have gone pretty well for him. Take a look at him back in 1996 (i think). Then this thursday tune in to the MTV Music Awards. Listen to the announcer - see if it sounds familier. I'm sure you'll hear the voice - as i did in San Jose.

Big Mike is a great guy - and i'm delighted to be reconnected with him. It seems MTV UNfiltered may have had a wider impact than i realized. It certainly changed my mind about user-generated video forever.

Here's a clip from his story. I have the full version but i'll need to find it (and post it) in a few days. Enjoy!

Mascot

Posted to DocuBlogTV on August 27, 2006

View Details | Hosted At Google

My son Max has been working on a documenty about issues around being homeless in New York. When Mayor Bloomberg announced a major new plan to clear out homeless 'encampments' - Max wondered if anyone would be allowed to document the changes. He reached out the Mayor - but never got a response... so he recorded and posted this on YouTube.

I wonder if this shows up on Mayor Bloomberg's radar?

An Open Letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City

Posted to Max Rosenbaum's Videos on August 26, 2006

View Details | Hosted At YouTube

She was standing by the side of the road. We’d just picked up our younger son from his first summer at sleep away camp. It was a semi-rural stretch of road dotted with summer homes and tattered month-to-month rentals.

There she was. Too close to traffic. Too small to be near a highway. Too alone. Like the deer you see grazing by the side of the six lane highway… you know the story doesn’t end well.

We drove by.

My wife turned and looked at me. We turned the car around. Our kids were mortified. Moments later we were half pulled into a driveway… not quite guests not quite passersby. The little girl was still there. My wife walked over and crouched by her side, speaking in her mom voice. The girl didn’t seem at all concerned that she was talking to a stranger. Her name was Raven. She was getting the mail for her mom. She was three.

Wearing a winter jacket in the 90 degree heat and barefoot. My son snapped a picture through the car window. My wife talked to her, the boys and I stayed in the car. After a few moments I walked over. Up-close, what we sensed from the highway was confirmed. She hadn’t had a bath in weeks, and there were bruises on her face and arms. Differing colors, some purple some pink. I’d never seen a child who’d been abused before, but I knew instantly what this little girl was dealing with. Behind a chain link fence there were some children’s toys littered in the dirty yard.

We’d been there more than 10 minutes. No one had come out looking for Raven. No one had noticed that our car had pulled off the highway and into the driveway. We dialed 911. Raven talked quietly with my wife. A few minutes later, a boy came out barefoot and shirtless. An older brother, he seemed in better shape. He was cleaner, no bruises. We asked where his mom was. “On the computer” he answered. And then, under his breath “she’s always on the computer.” The Sheriff’s car – lights flashing – crested into view and pulled into the driveway. Three-year-old Raven looked up at my wife, betrayed. “The Cops?” she asked, disappointed. That wasn’t the help she was hoping for.

The officer was crisp, blue, and foreboding. He had a gun. He didn’t make much of an attempt to put the children at ease. We asked if we should stay. "No need" he said. He’d been here before. We’d done enough. Things would ‘change’ – he said somewhat perfunctorily. He took the two small children and headed toward the front door. Reluctantly, we got in the car and continued our journey home.

Back home, our brave camper ensconced in his upper-west side apartment, we wanted to know about Raven. What happened to her family? She was neglected, but well fed. She had good teeth. Her brother was bathed. Was it drugs? It didn’t seem like it. We dialed the upstate Sheriff’s office, asking for any news about Raven. The dispatcher knew about the case – it was a small town. “CPS” the dispatcher explained. Child Protective Services. But that was all she knew – and that wasn’t enough for us.

My wife had helped Raven get the mail, so we had the mother’s name and address. The son had said she was on the computer, so we went in search of clues on line. Three Google searches later we were deep inside a family drama. Raven’s mom, her MySpace page, pictures of her family, her husband, her poetry, her blog posts. She was 27. She had 4 children. She had a job. She lost her job. Her husband wrote lovingly of her on his blog. But something had gone wrong. She’d had drinks with her boss about her promotion. She’d lost her job. She’d developed a ‘special friendship’ with a man from Cincinnati on MySpace. He appeared to only have women as ‘friends’ on his page.

Just a year ago Raven was bathed, clean, smiling, and part of what appeared to be a stable family. But those pictures were out of date.

No one on MySpace had seen what we’d seen. Raven, dirty, alone, standing by the side of a highway in the blistering heat wrapped in a winter coat. The mom’s MySpace ‘friends’ were an assortment of strippers, players, and wanna-be gangsters. Dad was a carpenter.

Raven’s mom was a published poet, whose blog posts and poetry reflect a small town girl, drawn into a fantasy world of MySpace friends that seemed far more glamorous than the real world facing her and her four kids.

Briefly the information superhighway and the real highway crossed paths.

My wife and I considered what, if anything, we should do.

Should we contact the MySpace ‘Friends’ and tell them about what happened? Would they come to her aid? Should we contact the husband, tell him that just a year ago he and his wife had a beautiful family. That there ought to be some way to set things right? And what about Raven – all of three years old – who had to stand by the highway and hope someone would stop and help. What would CPS be able to do for her and her brothers Conner, Cougar, and Clifford.

The internet had told us a lot about Raven. It had answered so many questions. It had given us a glimpse into her life. It allowed us to read her mother’s poetry. It had made us closer . At the same time there was the words of her son “she’s always on the computer” that hung in the air.

She wasn’t addicted to drugs. She wasn’t disabled. She wasn’t a gambling addict. She wasn’t into porn. She was a small town girl who’d fallen in love with a bunch of imaginary friends. In her blog she wrote: “if I die tomorrow, will you miss me.” She posted the question to 15 people whom she’d never met except in a virtual world.

Raven’s mom went looking for a new life among her friends on MySpace. Along the way she forgotten her four children and the real lives that desperately needed her to be an average mom.

There's no doubt that social networking is powerful stuff. And i don't mean to say that MySpace is at fault for what happened to Raven - clearly not. But like all fantasy worlds, not everyone is going to be able to draw the line between real life and imaginary friends. And that isn't good news for little girls like Raven.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-08-17-voa48.cfm

Home Sought for Largest Collection of 9/11 Images
By Kane Farabaugh
New York, NY
17 August 2006

watch Sept 11 Archive report / Real broadband - download video clip
watch Sept 11 Archive report / Real broadband video clip
watch Sept 11 Archive report / Real dialup - download video clip
watch Sept 11 Archive report / Real dialup video clip

September 11 Archive
It started out as a call for footage of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. It turned into the largest collection of pictures, interviews, and videos of America's national tragedy, held on the hard drives of a computer belonging to a company that no longer exists. VOA's Kane Farabaugh reports the man who owns the archive wants it to go to a good home -- for a price.

September 11 Archive footage
They are the images of disaster... The scenes of destruction…
Moments of misery and despair…
All captured by the lenses of professional and amateur camera people around the city of New York.

Every image you see, every frame of video marked by time code, sits on the hard drive of one computer.

Steve Rosenbaum
The story of these images begins on September 11, 2001, with Steve Rosenbaum's production company, Camera Planet, on the ground in Manhattan. Six cameras rolled as the events unfolded.

"We started to edit a film from these six photographers, said Mr. Rosenbaum, ”and each one who had come back that day or the following day had done these long sit down interviews where we said, ‘Where were you, what did you see, what did you feel?’ As we edited together this film of these voices, and these faces, somebody in my office, I don't remember who it was, sat and looked at a rough cut and said, This is terrible.’ I said, ‘Yeah it's really disturbing,’ and they said, ‘No, it's a bad film.’ And they said, ‘It doesn't look like New York.’ “

So Rosenbaum put an ad out in the New York newspaper The Village Voice, looking for images or footage from that day.

"The next day the phone started ringing, and people said, 'Thank you so much. I just want to tell my story.' And from that moment on, and for the weeks after, we just had a stream of people coming through the door saying, ‘Here's the footage I have, here's my story.’ And then we had the voice of New York."

A lot has happened since the ad first went out. Rosenbaum's documentary is done, and so is Camera Planet. His production company fell on hard times in a city where television feature work was hard to come by in the months following 9/11.

Jan Ramirez
But he was left with a unique and extensive collection of one of the most recorded events in history. More than 500 hours of footage and thousands of images of the terrorist attacks on New York City. It is the largest collection of footage Jan Ramirez has seen in her work as curator with the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.

"The synchronous ability to capture these multiple perspectives from the street, from apartment towers, from helicopters, from the mountains of New Jersey, from Brooklyn Heights -- is extremely important to, I think, understanding how this event seared into the international consciousness,” she told us. “So having the ability to draw on an archive that is really preserving the compilation of these democratic perspectives in a sense is extremely important."

9-11 NY terror attack video archive
Owning the archive hasn't been easy. Rosenbaum became a de facto gatekeeper for the steady stream of requests that continue to keep coming in from companies around the world looking for footage.

"If I'm the gatekeeper, part of the reason I'm going public about the archive and the need for a home is because I don't want to be. And nor do I think I have the scholarly expertise, nor is it appropriate for one individual to make those judgments. In a perfect world, there would be a group of scholars and experts who would become the voice, the spirit, and the brains of this archive."

The archive is now on the market. Rosenbaum hopes to sell it to pay off Camera Planet's debt to the bank. He's talking with several organizations, including two television networks and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, where Jan Ramirez is already collecting other items for a museum still on the drawing board.

"Ideally, it should be held, I think, by a public institution that is committed to public education and public access,” says Ramirez. “Certainly because of the topic that it is going to document I think it would be a potentially wonderful muscle tissue to add to the World Trade Center Memorial."

The permanent memorial at the World Trade Center site is scheduled for completion by September of 2009. A memorial that will include the remnants of the tragedy, both physical and digital, collected by New Yorkers.
emailme.gif

LINK to full article

Magnify: Create Your Own Video Website
Posted in Web 2.0, Ajax by brett on the August 17th, 2006

Nowadays, video is rapidly proving to be the latest and hottest dimension to the User-Generated Content. Nevertheless, anyone who has tried to FIND a video today has encountered disappointing lists of poor quality. The good stuff is out there, all right. Finding it, however, is a whole new story.

Magnify solves a critical issue in the emerging User-Generated Video ecosystem. Video needs context, and context comes from community. Magnify platform empowers websites to launch a sophisticated User-Generated Contents experience in their existing site, or build on from scratch. Magnify is a community process of review and recommendations. It takes the power of your peers, and turns it into a fun, easy process that allows videos that are relevant to your and your friends to be discovered and shared. The result is community-validated video that is gathered from multiple sources, organized around niche verticals, and made ‘brand safe’ for rich-media advertising.

Using the Site Setup tools, you can pick a design template. Colors, page layout, and site characteristics can always be modified (You can even add your own CSS and customized header and footer). You can then enter key words, and Magnify will find videos from multiple sites and automate a schedule so your site’s content is always fresh. For sites that have active communities, and growing traffic. The Magnify Peer Filter lets the community review new submissions and help select the video that fits your site best. You can pick a monitor style, and even customize a playlist. That way, the video on your home page is always a good fit.

Magnify is a great service to build your own Video site. Take a look at Worldtechlogic’s Video page, powered by Magnify by clicking HERE! You can signup for Magnify by clicking

LINK to full article

"Google has an opportunity to push YouTube hard on video, and it seems to be finally flexing its power. When Google put video on its homepage last week, Hitwise recorded a single-day doubling in traffic to Google Video."

hmm.. doubling is worth paying attention to.

http://software.gigaom.com/2006/08/16/youtube-hunting-music-videos/

Startups Given The Floor At Digital Hollywood
Neil Kjeldsen

I was Digital Hollywood today rubbing elbows with content creators and distributors in San Jose. On the agenda were several entrepreneurial forums where local startups pitched their companies to an audience of competitors, peers and venture capitalists. Given the words “Digital” and “Hollywood” can cover a lot of ground all of the companies generally fit the themes of the conference. I saw some interesting companies, some of whom haven’t been profiled yet on this site.

(among the reviews:)

Magnify

Magnify is led by Steve Rosenbaum, who created MTV’s “Unfiltered”, so he’s a serious veteran of the user generated movement. Magnify is a scalable human powered review system for user generated video. With 70K Youtube uploads per day, they want to help narrow the relevancy of search. Volunteers become reviewers and they start to organize and tag the better material to form communities to share like content. Lo and behold, as we watched a venture video channel, they showed a video of our friend Mike Arrington. Certainly, it did seem to provide relevant content. Whether or not, human editors will ultimately be necessary to create these communities, I don’t know, but they are certainly trying to fill a glaring need in the online content space.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/16/startups-given-the-floor-at-digital-hollywood/

Video advertising revs up by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- Oliver Luckett, a Revver co-founder and senior-vice president of network development, said his company plans to open up its APIs, which connect video owners with advertising. Speaking at the Building Blocks conference. "We plan to completely open up our system. For the last nine months we have been working secret to open the APIs and give [...]

Google, Yahoo, the world and video by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- Peter Chane, senior product manager for Google Video, articulated Google's goal in the video space at the Building Block conference in San Jose today. Google will become the "one site with all videos in the world and deliver an experience that works," Chane said. "In less than a year, you can go to Google Video [...]

Gore's TV idea seems more Current
Viewer-sent content ridiculed a year ago

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, August 14, 2006

Television insiders and pundits mocked Al Gore and Joel Hyatt a year ago when the pair introduced Current TV, their San Francisco-based cable and satellite channel. Even after critics saw that the ex-vice president and Democratic Party fundraiser weren't crafting a left-wing network, few in the change-averse world of television could understand why anyone would tune into Current's programming motif: three- to seven-minute videos created by emerging filmmakers, citizen journalists and the most rank of amateurs -- the viewers themselves.

Current TV Launch

Posted to DocuBlogTV by steve on August 15, 2006

View Details | Hosted At Google

Interesting panel discussion -

Is Hollywood Afraid Of The Future? (3:54)

Posted to DocuBlogTV on August 15, 2006

View Details | Hosted At Blip

Well, it appears that Google has changed it's mind and agreed to run the my keyword ads. That said, it appears that Google hasn't read The Clue Train Manefsesto.

Rather than have a real person contact me, and actually explain what happened, instead we get a form letter from "lizzie" without a contact email address or phone number.

Here's the email 'resolution' - see what you think

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

adwords-support@google.com

Hello Steve,

Thank you for your email. I've confirmed that your ad is approved and running on Google.

Our AdWords Specialists review ads that run on Google to ensure that they comply with our advertising policies. I apologize if the prior disapproval of your ad was made in error. However, after reviewing your ad again, our Specialists have found that your ad meets all our Editorial Guidelines and advertising policies.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at https://adwords.google.com/support to find answers to many frequently asked questions. Or, try our Learning Center at http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ for self-paced lessons that cover the scope of AdWords.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

Lizzie
The Google AdWords Team

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a great video -

Official Long Tail Book Promo www.longtailbook.co.uk

Posted to DocuBlogTV by steve on August 11, 2006

View Details | Hosted At YouTube

William Murray has a very astute take in this weeks Business Week, astute - and rare. Why? Because most pundits and publishers want to believe that the explosion in User-Generated Content sharing is primarily the swapping of commercial content. But spend any amount of time on YouTube and you'll know that that isn't the case. User Content is of course of varying quality - but for content seekers 'quality' as its defined by media companies isn't necessarily the most important criteria. Context and authorship matter too - or maybe matter MORE - than the professionalism of the sound track or the crispness of the picture. This is deeply concerning, since it reflects a significant shift in media consumption patterns away from commercial content and toward community content. Murray is right to point out the significant changes that make this not a "Napster for Video" moment. It is something far more significant -and represents a shift in the creation/consumption dynamic that will have wide ranging impact.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2006/tc20060807_376446.htm

The Upside to Video Uploads
Set apart from the file-sharing rebels by copyright cooperation and ad income potential, user-created video sites will continue to flourish

Over the past six months, a new generation of video Web sites has captured the attention of Internet users, the press, and investors. Revver, YouTube, Grouper Networks, MetaCafe, and Guba—along with more established players such as Google (GOOG ), Yahoo (YHOO ), iFilm, and Microsoft's (MSFT ) MSN—are all jostling for attention in the user-created video space. Even AOL (TWX ), seldom a leader, implores its subscribers to "break out your video cam and fill us in." This explosion in user-generated video led some analysts to predict recently that the video site "bubble" is ripe for collapse.

While this segment will undergo consolidation and specialization, a mini dot-com implosion is simply not on the horizon—and especially not for the reasons being cited by some pundits. Predictions about this collapse have focused on two issues: the lack of a business model and persistent problems with copyright, as many of these sites—even the esteemed Google—have run afoul of content owners by hosting copyrighted content without permission.

First, this segment is being driven by multiple factors that are fundamentally growing the capacity for everyone to create video content. While the online revolution began with music, it still takes talent and hard work—or at least a lot of fancy engineering, overdubs, and a hefty marketing budget—to create music that attracts and holds the interest of a substantial audience. Your boss may want to hear himself sing in the shower and maybe even his kids and mother like to hear him belt one out, but the rest of us could probably skip owning the MP3, even if his shower has great acoustics.

PAYING THE PROVIDERS. Video, on the other hand, is different. A video clip of your boss singing in the shower might be one of any number of well-known genres of entertainment—farce, tragedy, comedy, or horror—with the fewer rehearsals, the better. (And, for those who prefer drama, when the board of directors sees the clip, it might be career-ending.)

Not only is amateur video often captivating in a way that music is not, but the means of video production and distribution are spreading. A surge in broadband connections, the widespread availability of video editing software, price declines for lower-quality video cameras, the increasing availability of high-definition video cameras, and the rise in media-centric PCs are putting the tools of production in the hands of those with the time, inclination, and patience to expose their ideas, quirks, and talents to the world.

arab israeli war
Disapproved

Disapproved

beirut
Disapproved

future lebanon tv
Disapproved

haifa lebanese singer
Disapproved

hamas
Disapproved

hamas and israel
Disapproved

Google removed my entire AdWords campaign yesturday.

Not a single ad. Everyone of them. I'm not sure why - and i think the decision is deeply troubling. Google seems to think so too, because they sent me a rather long explanation about free speech and search and such.

I'll tell you the story of what happened, and you decided if you think the ads should have been pulled.

On July 18th - as the conflict in the middle east was heating up, i began to search the web for videos shot by real people of the conflict. I wanted to hear real voices. I found plenty. And so i created a channel to aggregate those videos - organize them - in a central place where people could see them and share their own.

There was no spin. No pro Israel bias. No Pro Lebanese agenda. Not that opinion and perspective should be censored. But in my case, i wanted to create a place with room for people of all persuasions to post and share opinions.

Then i set up a Google Adwords account to let people know the site existed.

==================

Israel/Lebanon War Video
See real video. Post Your Own
Comments and Opinions.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

==================

Israel War Video
User-Generated Video from the
Front Lines. Uncensored.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

==================

Hezbollah War Video
Uncensored User-Generated Video
from the Front Lines.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

==================

Lebanese War Video
Uncensored User-Generated Video
from the Front Lines.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

==================

All four ads came back: "Disapproved"

What's happening between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon is on one level very complicated, and on another quite simple.

The media is treading gently - trying to make sure that they don't show any side favoritism.

At the same time - real people are anxious to tell their stories - and that would seem to be part of the way to find a solution.

Here's the email i got from Google:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

adwords-support@google.com
Subject: Your Google AdWords Approval Status
Date: August 3, 2006 7:06:32 AM EDT

----------------------------------------------
Campaign: 'WarZone,' Ad Group: 'israel/lebanon'
----------------------------------------------

AD TEXT:

Israel/Lebanon War Video
See real video. Post Your Own
Comments and Opinions.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

AD TEXT:

Israel War Video
User-Generated Video from the
Front Lines. Uncensored.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

AD TEXT:

Hezbollah War Video
Uncensored User-Generated Video
from the Front Lines.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

AD TEXT:

Lebanese War Video
Uncensored User-Generated Video
from the Front Lines.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

SUGGESTIONS:
-> Content: Due to the sensitive nature of this matter, we are not able
to run this ad at this time. As noted in our advertising terms and
conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when
it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.

---------------------
POLICY DEFINITIONS:

Unacceptable Content: Google believes strongly in freedom of expression
and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without
censoring search results. Please note that the decisions we make
concerning advertising in no way affect the search results we deliver.
Please note that both your ad and keywords have been suspended at this
time.

----------------------------------------------
Campaign: 'WarZone,' Ad Group: 'israel/lebanon'
----------------------------------------------

AD TEXT:

Israel/Lebanon War Video
See real video. Post Your Own
Comments and Opinions.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

AD TEXT:

Israel War Video
User-Generated Video from the
Front Lines. Uncensored.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

AD TEXT:

Hezbollah War Video
Uncensored User-Generated Video
from the Front Lines.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

AD TEXT:

Lebanese War Video
Uncensored User-Generated Video
from the Front Lines.
Warzone-video.magnify.net

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision
Ad Issue(s): Unacceptable Content
~~~~~~~~~

SUGGESTIONS:
-> Content: Due to the sensitive nature of this matter, we are not able
to run this ad at this time. As noted in our advertising terms and
conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when
it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.

---------------------
POLICY DEFINITIONS:

Unacceptable Content: Google believes strongly in freedom of expression
and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without
censoring search results. Please note that the decisions we make
concerning advertising in no way affect the search results we deliver.
Please note that both your ad and keywords have been suspended at this
time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The problem with this answer, and the idea that they 'censor' advertising but not search results is that search results are based on popularity - and without exposure no one will know that this site exists.

Also, what is strange is that Google is delivering ads like these:

Hezbollah vs Israel
Hezbollah capture 2 Israel soldiers
Will this lead to Israel-Iran war?
vanrcook.tripod.com/nextwar.htm

War in the Mid-East
Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah.
Read the Latest News.
www.RealTruth.org/SpecialReport

I'm hardpressed to know what the difference is between my ads, and the ones above. (except that they point to text, not video, and not UGC).

My little boy slept in this morning. Camp is over, and he doesn't have plans to late morning. When i when in to wake him he was sleeping soundly. Dreaming.

Of what? Yu Gi Oh? Cartoons? Adventures? His friends. Something appropriate for an eight year old with an active imagination.

Then i thought about last night. We were sitting in our living room, the heat wave of the past few weeks had broken. But it was still hot. Then - for a moment - the lights flickered. Went Dark, and came back on. My wife said "it's a Brown Out". And my son - who's not afraid of dragons or swords, or evil villains - was shaking. His heart was racing. He was as scared as i've ever seen him.

Why? Because the lights flickered? Or because somewhere he connected the darkness with the pictures he's been seeing in the newspaper of war.

He asks about it a lot. In particular if he sees pictures of children scared or crying. I try and keep the paper from him, turn the page, or hide the cover. He's only 8. But the news is everywhere - and he sees it.

So today - I'm thinking about other children. Children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon. Children who have seen terrible things. Things they'll never forget. Children who's dreams must be filled with terrors that they can't forget. Do they wake rested - or has that innocent peace of an 8 year olds dream been taken from them forever?

My son saw the lights flicker in his apartment -- and was taken to a place he doesn't want to know exists. This morning, he was talking a again about the 'brown out' and how it 'freaked him out.' He's over it - but warily.

And i can't help about the children who's night terrors are only bound to get worse.

Nick Leamon - the Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism - came out swinging with a barbed criticism of Bloggers in the New Yorker last week titled "Journalism without Journalists."

While the article itself is worth a read, his core points were -

- Bloggers Don't create much original content
-They're not professionals
- They're adding clutter and noise

Leamon is the Dean of an extraordinary institution, one that I have a very long history with. Columbia has in my mind always attracted terrific students and an extraordinary faculty. And students who arrive to get an accelerated Masters Degree in Journalism are far from dilettantes - they are by and large individuals with a driving passion to explore the world, expose injustice, and make change.

Nick leads and institution of thought leaders and passionate professionals.

But the entire "Don't Try This At Home" argument is deeply flawed and comes more from the Registrar's office than the classroom. The attempt to create an "us and them dichotomy" between "Journalists" and "Amateur Bloggers" discounts both the natural root of storytelling and the drivers that are roiling the old world rules of conventional media creation and distribution.

Here are - in my mind - the changes agents of storytelling.

TRUST.

It no longer exists. The paternalistic, authoritarian, 'voice of god' era of Journalism is over. Good riddens. Blind trust, like religious extremists, or hard line political thinkers, replaces intellectual exploration with thoughtless acquiesces. A hungry, curious, critical populous is far more likely to form its own ideas than a slack-jawed tv news coach potato. This should be good news for Columbia, as complex and noisy environment invites clarity.

BARRIERS.

Columbia should poll it's students. How many of them read blogs? How many of them write for blogs (or have their own). How many of them agree with Leamon that Blogs are a dangerous force that creates a fuzzy line between amateurs and professionals?

AUTHORITY.

Individuals trust in institutions is eroding. A recent poll says fully one third of American's think that our Government had something to do with 9/11. This erosion of trust extends to Newspapers, Television Networks, and Radio Networks. It's worth pointing out that this erosion of trust at a time of unparalleled consolidation and corporatization of media. As media outlets shift from having local voices to having large company priorities, it's harder and harder to feel like big media doesn't have something on it's mind other than truth telling. Blogger (!) Fard Johnmar has a fascinating post about the similarities between the Journalist vs. Blogger debate and the current debate raging within the medical community. Johnmar points out that while some doctors appreciate 'patient partners' who come in armed with data and questions. Interesting that both Journalists and Doctors have in the past described their roles as"Godlike."

Johnmar points out that some Doctors see their patients as partners, while others as passive 'clients'. I wonder if the same can be said of Journalists?

Leamon's thesis is simply all the buzz around the emerging worlds of blogging and citizen journalism don't match up to the professional or quality standards of official "Journalists." This raises the question - "What is a professional Journalist?" Well, let's hope that Leamon doesn't require a professional to have a degree in Journalism. For one thing, it would be wildly self serving. But more importantly virtually ever significant Journalist of our generation is operating without a 'license' if that's what you call a diploma from a "J" school. (in fact most major editors and publishers would tell you they find a Journalism degree to be pointless).

The simple fact is that Journalism, unlike medicine or even cosmetology, requires no license, and has a wide ranging set of standards and philosophies that can hardly be categorized or even defined. Is Rolling Stone journalism? What about Car and Driver? what about Cosmo? How about "Waste Water Treatment News". Or, for that matter Fox News. Fair and Balanced? But Leamon doesn't take aim at Fox News... instead he takes issue with Backfence and OhMyNews.

Local news is perhaps the place where citizen journalism can have the most positive impact. Because currently there is a huge gap where local radio, newspaper, and even TV used to ply their trade. Currently, local news as it used to exist is no more. In my college town i watched it happen, as a once active local paper was absorbed - downsized - merged and finally vanished. Today the masthead remains, but it is for all intents and purposes a penny-saver.

The most pointed rebuke of Leamon's article comes from Jeff Jarvis who Leamon takes issue with in his piece. Jarvis is one of the leading proponents of the emergence of internet journalism.

While Jarvis' response deserves to be read in its entirely, to me the fact that Leamon spills so much ink on what is wrong with blogging, while offering his students (and potential students) of one of the world most prestigious journalism schools no vision or path forward is troubling. Assuming if you will for a moment that the state of journalism is without fundamental issues, and blogging is an annoyance that should be brushed away - how does Leamon square his point of view with the class of 2008, who will likely arrive on his campus mid-august with Laptops, internet connections, and a blog reader chock full of links to a wide array of publications and voices. Will he confiscate the laptops? Probably not. Will he scold students who blog? (If memory serves it was a student blogger that broke the 'embargo' when Al Gore was teaching at Columbia and reported Gores public comments despite a warning that they were 'off the record').

We are living at a moment in time when our Government lies to us with impunity. Where the search for WMD's is as pretext to a war - but then never discovered. Where a former gay porn start propagandists is issued White House Press credentials. Where 1/3 of the American People believe that the Government was involved in 9/11.

And Leamon's battle cry is that only writers who work for established news organizations should be entitled to call themselves "Journalists."

If our Democracy is under siege... Journalists should be armed to the teeth to defend it. If the Columbia Journalism School thinks the biggest issue facing the graduating class of 2006 is blogging - then he aught to examine more closely the attacks on the basic freedoms that allow Journalism to be practiced at all.

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2006/07/the_audience_is.html

FROM CHRIS ANDERSON: "For the past year or so, I've been ending many of my speeches with this brilliant video by Peter Hirshberg of Technorati, and Michel Markman. They showed it first at at the D conference last year and a few times since then, such as the EG conference earlier this year. Now Michel's uploaded it to YouTube for everyone to enjoy. Some of the lines, such as "There are a lot more of them than there are of us" and title of this post, are now permanently lodged in my brain. Thanks Peter and Michel!"