OhmyNews International

Information is a powerful commodity for human rights defenders. Receiving and sharing information is at the heart of human rights work. Modern technology, such as the mobile phone, and the global distribution of the internet, provides new opportunities for citizens to actively participate in journalism. The mobile phone is arguably the most accessible form of information communication technology and a popular tool for receiving and sharing information.

via New Tactics | Using Mobile Phones for Citizen Media.

From “What is citizen journalism?” to “How do you design citizen media?” plus a growing list of resources that you can use and add to are available starting July 27 from The New Tactics in Human Rights site and its
online dialogue.

Working in citizen media can mean that you are isolated from  people doing the same kind of work. Whether you are thinking of getting started as a citizen journalist or if you’ve been working with citizen media, you can make use of the site.

This site will let you connect with a group of “featured resource practitioners” from all over the world. Ask questions, read about what they’ve been doing. You can ask questions, and offer to be featured resource practitioner yourself.

As far as what is citizen journalism, I liked what Amy O’Donnell from FrontlineSMS contributed to the online dialogue,

“I am coming to understand citizen media to begin when individuals feel compelled to share or report information which might not otherwise enter the public domain and use the media as a tool so that communities are enabled to contribute and participate in discussions which affect them.”

There’s lots to this site, and I’m going to check it out and add my views, so see you online.

Curator-in-chief’s Note: This is a speech given by Andrew Gruen, former editor of OhmyNews International.

Hello! I’m Andrew Gruen. I used to work at OhmyNews on the OhmyNews International Web site, and I am now a PhD Student at the University of Cambridge, in Cambridge England. I study news organizations — particularly those like OhmyNews that are born digital and produce accountability news. That is those news enterprises that are creating new news that helps to hold big institutions in society–be they chaebols or governments–to account for their actions.

Today I want to talk about smart work in the United States. I started my understanding of smart work during my research. One of the key questions for me has been how to structure new, born-digital news enterprises. The way we did it in the past cannot be the way forward.

It used to be that we staffed news enterprises for the end-of-the-world breaking news
events, and we did so with many generalist reporters. Even if someone was an expert
at the environment, we would often have them covering politics because we had them
on staff–and we had to make sure that big group of people had work to do. This
meant we got less expert stories.

Then as we started to see news enterprises sprout up in the digital era, we realized
there was another way to staff. A smarter way to work. And OhmyNews represents the
most extreme version of this.

Rather than putting a generalist to work on specific topics, we can hire the best,
smartest and most expert person to work on just one story–that which they know the
most about. And this can be even more economical than the old way. How can this
be? How can we be working so much smarter?

Our research has shown that the best news enterprises online are learning from the
way Hollywood and the magazine industry have operated for a long time. And the way in which pioneers like OhmyNews already do work. Rather than having a large staff of experts and not being able to use them efficiently, the best news enterprises are learning to have a very small central professional staff. This tiny core staff does create some news on their own–but also coordinates many outside experts. For years, magazines have had a small internal editorial staff and hired freelance writes for individual stories. And movie studios have managerial staff and hire out the most talented actors, directors, crews and effects companies for the particular project.

News enterprises that are doing smart work have learned from this example. Rather than making incremental cuts to news staff–the smartest of smart working news enterprises are making cuts, and then hiring back many more people to do just what they’re expert at. They may even pay each person more for a single story–but it will be what that reporter does best. And it will free that reporter to also earn that higher rate from other news enterprises.

This is not to say there are not problems. In the movie industry, there are guilds which
help individual experts get health insurance, find jobs and share best practices. There
are similar organizations for magazine writers. But for daily news workers, these
support institutions are not there yet.

Through these models I’ve already seen how people in news can work smarter.

And from here I got interested in what other kinds of smart work was already happening
in the United States.

The single largest employer in the U.S. is the United States Federal Government which
has about two million civilian employees–excluding the postal service–according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And this employer is getting into smart work in a very
serious way. It is sorting out how to enable its staff who work all over the country to
get things done in an efficient way and has turned to telework to get it done. And the
scale of working smartly–by working from wherever experts are, instead of bringing
them into an office or other central location–is huge. In 2009, the last year there is
data, more than one-hundred and ten thousand workers, more than five percent of
the total federal workforce, did so remotely. Interestingly, those who teleworked also
experienced a host of other advantages. When compared to those who didn’t, in a study
presented to the U.S. Congress by the Office of Personnel Management, more people
who did smart, remote working were clear about work expectations than those who
didn’t. Moreover, that same study found that those who engaged in smart work had
more control over how they worked.

There were other benefits for the smart workers. One of the biggest for government–which is also directly translatable to news enterprises in particular–was in what is
called continuity of operations planning (COOP). This is defined in a rather strict way by
the U.S. Government as:

“an effort within individual executive departments and agencies to ensure that Primary Mission Essential Functions (PMEFs) continue to be performed during a wide range of emergencies, including localized acts of nature, accidents and technological or attack-related emergencies.”

But clearly, these are some of the same conditions that news enterprises–and indeed
many other businesses operate under. Work must go on, and services must be
provided, particularly in times of hardship.

The study of the U.S. government found that seventy-two percent of government
agencies had plans to use smart-work to get their jobs done in the event of an
emergency.

Beyond planning for emergencies, smart work has also helped the government,
according to the report, by reducing costs, increasing productivity, helping to recruit and
retain people, and less need for leave time for critical employees.

Again, though, the picture of smart work at the largest employer in the U.S. is not all
pretty. For example, only eighteen percent of government agencies that have smart
workers purchase all the needed equipment for their employees. And thirty-seven
percent of agencies ask their employees to buy all their own equipment.

But if smart work has been good for the biggest of employers, can it work for smaller companies, too? My search lead me to what I think is the most interesting example of all: an airline with a huge staff of smart workers.

JetBlue is a low-cost airline here in the U.S. that started in 1999. From its start,
the airline attempted to redefine what it meant to fly. Not just as a low-cost airline
passenger, but in general. It borrowed a model from another U.S. carrier, Southwest
Airlines, of flying just one type of plane to reduce costs. It also equipped those planes
in a way never before done: putting live, satellite TV in every seat. In addition to the
equipment — JetBlue also sought to improve the quality of airline service. And one way
to do that was to enable their entire telephone staff to work in a new way. A smart way.

While many other airlines and companies offer customers a chance to call in, mostly
the workers who answer those calls are in giant call centers. A central building where
everyone goes in to work.

JetBlue found another way. All of their reservation agents work remotely, from home.
Sometimes in pajamas.

JetBlue has had agents that work from home since it started, and by two thousand-six,
more than eighty percent chose to work this way. using an internet-based reservation
system, agents can be anywhere.

And it’s been great for the agents and the company.

Agents say they like it because it saves time, money for gas, and that it is easier to see
their families.

For JetBlue, it obviously saves money by reducing the amount of office space they
need. But it has also helped to them to do a better job at one of their core aims:
customer service. If the phone lines get busy, JetBlue is a quick email away from more
workers logging on and accepting phone calls. The reverse is also true: when there
are few calls, JetBlue has people sign off, should they want to. This kind of on-demand
service has been useful for the airline.

One might think that managing smart workers is tough. How can companies know their
workers are getting the job done? And how can workers make sure their employers are
getting what they need? JetBlue has used software tools to help them in this regard.
They have special tools which help trainers listen-in to phone calls and offer tips to the
reservation agents by email. And they have tools to show when people are into the
system.

But because technology is not perfect–and because the Internet in America is no
where near as excellent as it is in Korea–all the JetBlue smart workers must live within
a 40 minute drive from the office. This way, if something goes wrong with their home
computer, etc. they can be to the office within an hour.

Moreover, JetBlue still has employees come in on a regular basis for training and to
keep their equipment in order.

Clearly, smart work can be beneficial. But how can we optimize it? I found that
years of management research offer many rules to follow for success.

First, research shows that it is important not to be totally isolated. Setting a routine to
see your co-workers can be supremely beneficial. Even just one meeting a week helps
to keep teams working well together, and helps to build trust. Moreover, it helps for
discussing sensitive issue. Neurological research shows that seventy-six percent of
language is non-verbal. That is how you make facial expressions, and change the tone
of your voice make a big difference in delivering information. Because very few people
are able to write as expressively as they speak, making sure teams meet from time to
time is critical.

Second, setting up a good working space–even if it is at home–is also important.
While there are some notable exceptions–the author Jack London wrote twenty-five
hundred words a day at his kitchen table–most of us need a quiet, separate place forworking. Many smart workers found that they made a space–even if it was in an atticor a garage.

Also: to optimize, smart workers should set a schedule. While it seems like smart work
could be done any time, setting a clear time offers two benefits. First, it helps to build
a routine and keep work out of your personal life. Second, it helps to coordinate with
other smart workers: by setting a time, other people know when they can expect to
reach you.

Smart workers also find big improvements in their quality of life when they share tips
using online message boards. Because people no longer go to an office, it’s harder
to share life-related tips. For example, where is a good place to get a haircut? Or get
something dry cleaned? or get a healthy lunch delivered?

Then there are some recommendations of what the company must do for smart
workers. And primarily, it is essential for the company to create non-work social events
for them, both online and in person. Building community–MT–is totally critical to
getting team dynamics running. Moreover, companies would do well to let the smart
workers choose these events — if everyone wants to go to a Circus, then the circus it is.

From my look around the United States, it’s clear that smart work is here to stay.

It’s better for us as human beings. It’s better for companies because it’s more efficient.
And it reduces travel and thus carbon in the atmosphere–something that’s critically
important for our environment. It will be important to news enterprises of the future.
It’s already proving to be useful in the biggest of big employers: the U.S. Federal
Government. And it works for start-up organizations that grow big, like JetBlue. And
with some planning and reading of relevant research, it can be optimized.

I just posted this on ZenKimchi. It occurred while we were broadcasting our morning show live.

At around 8:40 a.m. Korean Standard Time a landslide it the EBS studios in Umyeon-dong in Seoul on Wednesday. The studio was evacuated and no one was injured. Water and mud flowed through the building and down the street, uprooting trees, washing down concrete blocks and damaging cars. Residents are working together in clearing debris and removing storm drain grates.

It hit in the middle of broadcasting “Morning Special” on EBS FM. A rumble was felt in the studio and was assumed to be thunder. A few minutes later, a call came in from the news anchor Peter Binn, who had just left the studio, that a landslide had occurred. During the break, the order was given to evacuate the building, which was already flooded with water and mud.

View more pictures here.

UPDATE: More citizen photos and videos around the web.

Photos

Video

Death is perhaps the one certainty in life. Most of us think that our eventual demise will be in the distant future.

This wasn’t to be the case for the soulful, bluesy and angst-ridden young singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse.

The news that the undoubtedly gifted 27-year-old award – winning Brit had died, alone in her flat in trendy Camden, northwest London and probably from a lethal cocktail of drugs and alcohol sounds like the dismal and clichéd end of life experienced by many immortalised rock stars like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix .

Amy’s physical and mental decline in the last few years has been the subject of intrusive reporting by the tabloid press in the UK and abroad. Drug and alcohol addiction, eating disorders, self-harming and a disastrous marriage to co-dependent substance abuser Blake Fielder-Civil led to a number of spells in rehab clinics. Paparazzi – published photos of her near emaciated frame, covered in unsightly and meaningless tattoos, staggering out of pubs and nightclubs in the early hours of the morning were splashed across the pages of celebrity obsessed magazines. No one needed a clairvoyant to predict the probable outcome of this tragic story.

However, like many others including fans and her contemporaries I’m shocked by the brutal suddenness of Amy’s death.

The immediacy of access to news and the sharing of information on the internet has made large sections of the public feel like participants in the lives of famous people like Amy rather than voyeurs. By following the minutiae of Amy’s turbulent life on newspaper websites like Mail Online they feel a connection with her which is beyond a simple appreciation of her music.

The collective sharing of grief on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter at a life spoilt and cut short resonates with the personal experiences of those who have had an “Amy” in their lives: an alcoholic, neglectful parent or an abusive, addict partner. This outpouring of emotion should not be ridiculed.

I had an overwhelming feeling of sadness and underlying frustration when I heard about the final chapter of Amy’s life. It was the same sense of waste and futility I experienced on learning about Michael Jackson and even Paula Yates 11 years ago.

A while back Amy obtained an injunction against paparazzi photographers.  The court order banned a leading paparazzi agency from following her. Photographers were also banned from following her within 100 metres of her home and photographing Amy in her home or the home of her friends and family. According to a newspaper report, sources close to the singer said legal action was taken out of concern for the safety of Amy and those close to her.

Amy’s seemingly devoted father Mitch will be devastated I thought. Why wasn’t he with her or why wasn’t anyone with her? Why was she left on her own? I asked myself. She was weak and vulnerable.

A friend commented that if he was Amy’s manager he’d have kept a watch on her 24/7.

What could I have done to help Amy? The answer is nothing. The reality is I didn’t know her.

*A blog post written by Deborah Hobson and reproduced with permission from The-Latest.Com.

Russia Today has posted a video by a citizen videographer on the after effects of the Osla bombing. The video is a little graphic, so view with caution.

Solana Larsen of Global Voices breaks down the activity online since the explosions and shootings in Norway, which killed at least 85 people. Citizen investigators found a manifesto he uploaded while also pointing out he plagiarized from the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. Others have been trying to figure out more about his personality and motives by hunting for clues in online forums he frequented.

Norway: The Online Traces of a Mass Murderer (Global Voices)

In the “Handbook for Citizen Journalists,” co-author Ron Ross and I included a section on 15 core values that we believe should be upheld by professional and citizen journalists alike.

In light of the recently reported unethical practices involving Rupert Murdoch’s publications, it seems like a good time to discuss some of those core values.

Perhaps especially poignant is core value #15: Integrity. The following is how the handbook describes its importance.

“One gets a sense of the importance of integrity to the journalism profession by this powerful sentence found in the Preamble of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics: ‘Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility.’

“Unfortunately, journalism’s cornerstone of integrity has been crumbling in the last few years. The profession has suffered because of widely-reported and well-documented examples of journalistic bias, fraud, plagiarism and fabrication. The cornerstone needs to be restored.

“Citizen journalists must join the many serious professional journalists who still adhere to the ethics and standards that made journalism a valuable and honorable profession. It all begins with integrity.

“Integrity is the virtue of basing all of an individual’s words and deeds on an unswerving framework of personally-held, well-developed principles. This means one must know what is right and wrong, good and evil, helpful and hurtful, and then act accordingly, even at personal cost. Integrity could be called the virtue of all virtues.

“Journalistic integrity suffers when reporters allow their bias to dictate which story to cover and what facts to reveal or hide. Journalistic integrity suffers when stories are made up and presented as real, when phony evidence is offered as authentic and when made-up quotes are repeated as real. The biggest challenge is that once integrity is lost, it is difficult to re-establish.

“Integrity starts from within. Those who live and work with integrity will be empowered and respected by all. Those who act with integrity will bewilder those who are deceitful and enlighten those who are sincere; it’s a wonderful thing.”

Susan Cormier is the co-author of the “Handbook for Citizen Journalists,” which can be purchased as an e-book at http://www.citizenjournalistnow.com/.

This video by a citizen videographer in Montreal shows flood waters causing a manhole to explode with so much force it moves a car.

It was only a matter of time for this advancement in agriculture, from plow to cotton gin to motorized tractor to–robots.

Merinews reports on Mexican student Eduardo Rodriguez Hernandez’s robot prototype that can grow corn. So far it can do most of the work from seed to feed in many types of terrain, but it needs to be attached to cables at the moment.

I, for one, welcome our robot corn-growing overlords.

Mexico to grow corn with the help of a robot

The LA Times posts some videos taken by citizens showing what the mainstream media is unable to do firsthand.

SYRIA: Videos said to show violent clashes in Damascus suburbs (LA Times)