My gut response was along the lines of “so this is what ‘do no evil’ means?”

I wrote about this at TheModerateVoice and syndicated the essay on Newsvine. The TMV post was featured in TheHill’s morning reads. (Blatant self-promotion.) Woot!

This morning, Verizon asserts that the NYTimes article is wrong but says not a word about the Bloomberg, WashingtonPost or Politico stories, which were the basis for my response.

Google’s Eric Schmidt “declined to confirm” the Verizon deal yesterday, but it also sounds as though he did not deny it:

“We’re trying to find solutions that bridge between sort of the ‘hard-core Net neutrality or else’ view and the historic telecom view of no such agreement,” Schmidt told reporters on the sidelines of the Techonomy conference…”

And what, exactly, does “hard-core Net neutrality” mean? In 2006, Schmidt wrote:

Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay.

But the leaked agreement describes a two-tiered system based on payment.

What do you think? A trial balloon? Someone who wanted to sabotage any potential side-deal between the two?

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It may seem like an unlikely union: an old-guard public television station paired with a small, online journalism start-up. However, the two share the same commitment to strong reporting and storytelling.

Each organization, said KCTS Senior Producer Ethan Morris via email, brings different strengths to the collaboration: “InvestigateWest’s reporters are seasoned investigative journalists who have a specialized set of skills that literally take years to develop: in-depth research, database analysis, Freedom of Information Act requests, cultivating confidential sources, etc. Our producers have a separate set of skills in visual storytelling. We build our stories around the video and audio we collect with a specific focus on story narrative and arc.”

The first result of this collaboration, a 12-minute video called “Lifesaving Drugs—Deadly Consequences,” aired on KCTS on July 9 and 12; MSNBC, the Seattle Times, NPR and PBS also shared the piece. The organizations plan to collaborate on four projects a year, with a focus on environmental issues.

Carol Smith, Senior Writer at InvestigateWest, sees the collaborative model play a role in the future of journalism: “Collaboration is a way to leverage each other’s resources and talents to get the most eyes and ears possible on stories that matter.”

Morris agrees: “This may be the future of journalism – creative collaborations that benefit all sides. Our story put a face on Investigate West’s story, and evoked more emotion than a written piece could have on its own. We aired our story first, then cross promoted and drove people to read the full story on the Investigate West site, so it was a win-win situation.”

The promise of the partnership—investigative journalism with a layer of compelling storytelling—is already evident in the heartbreaking “Lifesaving Drugs—Deadly Consequences,” the story of Sue Crump, a pharmacy technician who developed cancer after years of handling chemotherapy drugs.

Sue’s daughter approached Rita Hibbard, InvestigateWest’s Executive Director and Editor, following a conference and urged Hibbard to tell Sue’s story– a story other journalists had turned down. The details resonated with the team, who saw the potential to expose an injustice no other source was addressing. They dug deep into medical records over the course of a year, during which Sue lost her battle with cancer.

View “Lifesaving Drugs—Deadly Consequences” at KCTS 9 Connects.

Helen Pitlick is a recent MCDM grad. She works as Social Media Coordinator at LexBlog, and hasn’t quite figured out what she’s going to do with her spare time now that she is no longer a student.

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Case in point:  the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has asked the MCDM to consider hosting TEDxChange, which will take place in NYC on September 20, with live streaming around the world. TEDxChange will look at the Millennium Development Goals in particular, which are currently one of the most well known—and well debated—measuring sticks when it comes to health indicators in the developing world.

This opportunity builds well off the MCDM’s successful TEDxSeattle in April of this year. To relive some of the energy from that magnificent day, here’s a recently completed “behind the scenes” look at TEDxSeattle, edited by Aaron Seeley and Terry Short. Footage shot by Michael Bean, Scott Macklin, Xurxo Martinez, Aaron Seeley, and Terry Short. The music is courtesy of Hanson Hosein.

This is right where the MCDM wants to be. Stay tuned for more details on TEDxChange as plans firm up and I hope, wherever you are in the world,  you’ll join the TEDxChange conversation come September 20.

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This fact speaks to India’s breathless proliferation of mobile telephony, contrasted by their staggering gaps in basic health services. Must one come at the expense of the other? What relationship exists between the two? What are the opportunities for connectivity to elevate one’s social or economic status?

Questions like these were raised in the course I taught at the MCDM last fall, “Emerging Markets in Digital Media.” The course content was informed by my work at the UW Department of Global Health, where I was based before moving to the north end of campus to join the MCDM full-time three weeks ago. I’ll be offering the course again this fall, as the inaugural class in the new MCDM “Emerging” academic pathway, which includes not only scholarship related to emerging markets, but emerging trends in digital media.

While strategic communication, storytelling, and leadership development are my background, I maintain a firm commitment to the value of global health scholarship and reporting, and work to see synergies in all of these fields. So when Journalism That Matters contacted the MCDM in early July about a survey they were designing with the global health thought leaders in this area, I was keen to share it broadly within the Department of Communication community. In a nutshell, they are collaborating to improve global health journalism in the Northwest, and see this survey as one of the first steps at crafting reporting that is relevant, accessible, and memorable.

Please take five minutes if you’re so inclined, and check out the JTM survey. They’d welcome responses in by July 31.

- Anita Verna Crofts

Related on Flip the Media:

• Mobile Phones in Developing Countries – Is Building Social Capital Enough?

Most Commented Posts

• November 21, 2008 — Crowdsourcing: Name the New MCDM Center! (37)
• November 9, 2009 — An Ode to Contemplation (32)
• February 25, 2008 — Flip Video Vlog: Codecs and You! (25)
• November 29, 2009 — Foursquare, the next big social media thing? (17)
• November 17, 2009 — Social Networks and Video Games (16)

I just wrapped up my TV segment on Seattle KING5′s “New Day Northwest,” a couple of days after my first day of rest from digital media.

I’m not even sure what to call it. It’s not even a rest from all digital media: I’ll still carry a basic phone for emergencies, watch a DVD, listen to music, even read a book on my Kindle (with wireless signal turned off). It’s more an attempt to put the outside world at bay for at least 24 hours. I think there’s a reason why the world’s principle monotheistic faiths (there I go, reverting into my mideast TV journo talk) reserve a day for contemplation and respite from the daily grind. It’s a hope that by disconnecting from the profane, we may connect with something potentially more profound.

Such as family.  As we await the birth of our son, I’m reminded of the preciousness of time and focus when we are so starved for both.  We didn’t get a chance to play this video during the TV segment, but it says so much about the ubiquitousness of technology and a younger generation’s facility with it (I also didn’t mention that my daughter Rose recently asked me to set aside my newspaper at the breakfast table, “Papa talk only to Rosie!”):

During my own “Off The Grid Saturdays” I finished reading Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age by Wiliam Powers. In it, he speaks of  “the Vanishing Family Trick” — of his family enjoying each other in the same room, then one after the other excuses themselves and never returns — lost to their screens.

“As I watched the Vanishing Family Trick unfold and played my own part in it, I sometimes felt as if love itself, or the acts of heart and mind that constitute love, were being leached out of the house by our screens.”

I can tell his issue is hitting critical mass by the number of people writing about it, including MCDM alumni Scott Loughran in his new blog, Unplugged Sundays. And you know things are serious when a guy who makes his living off of our online activities says this (as quoted from Hamlet’s Blackberry):

“Turn off your computer. You’re actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around us. Nothing beats holding the hand of your grandchild as he walks his first steps.” [Eric Schmidt, CEO Google]

Yes, as a guy who also makes his living from digital media paraphenalia, I’m either coming across as either as a hypocrite or as someone who has seen the light. Nonetheless, I’m keen to explore this issue of balance further, and intend to do so, beginning with the classes that I teach.

[Originally posted to Storyteller Uprising]

Most Commented Posts

• November 21, 2008 — Crowdsourcing: Name the New MCDM Center! (37)
• November 9, 2009 — An Ode to Contemplation (32)
• February 25, 2008 — Flip Video Vlog: Codecs and You! (25)
• November 29, 2009 — Foursquare, the next big social media thing? (17)
• November 17, 2009 — Social Networks and Video Games (16)