VanPortlander

OregonLive has issues. Thursday night I posted about their call for neighborhood bloggers, which led to some good comments both here and when Matt Davis mentioned it over on Blogtown. The comments surrounding OregonLive always include a couple consistent chants from its defenders. One is “hey, we’re improving!” and the other is a loud chant about how technically, the Oregonian and OregonLive aren’t exactly the same entity.

On the first issue, I’d like to point you to the URL for their domestic partnership news item post yesterday afternoon:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/02/headline_goes_here.html

At the end - headline_goes_here huh? They’re using Movable Type as their blog software, which generates that portion of the URL based on what was input as the article title. Awesome. At least they realized the error and fixed the title.

On the second issue, regarding the OregonLive and Oregonian split… they don’t really act as two entities, so it’s not unreasonable for folks to think they’re one and the same. In fact, their news blog header prominently features the Oregonian logo. And a large portion of the news items on the website are posted by “The Oregonian” - so when Mr. Davis asks a question like “how do the O’s professional writers feel about this” - that seems like a very reasonable question to ask.

I don’t.

But perhaps someone does. Today while reading an article on everyone’s favorite local media site we all love to hate, I came across the advertisement shown at right.

Curious, I clicked through to the Blogger Application, and was presented with a form to give them my contact information, neighborhood, and a text area to fill out “Why you want to be a blogger”.

This is the first I’d heard of their program; I’m guessing they’re going to try to launch some sort of neighborhood blog network. Will they have any success? Maybe, but with Portland already having an active blog scene, I’d guess that most folks who want to blog are already doing it. Still, I’m all in favor of an increase in bloggers, and if OregonLive wants to try to provide the infrastructure to get this going, more power to ‘em. I just hope they can execute their local blog network in a better form than much of the rest of their site.

I wonder, will I have to enter some random birthdate and gender every time I want to read a neighborhood blog post?

For the past several months I’ve used a Blackberry to read a lot of content during my commute. One thing that has become apparent is that local newspaper websites aren’t created equal when viewed from a mobile device - some work just fine and some downright suck. A few thoughts on some of the biggies:

• OregonLive - Quite good. Despite the fact that their full version website is horrible, their mobile offerings are quite nice. No real ads/graphics to clutter things up.
• The Columbian - Sucks. Their page layout is such that on a mobile device with a small browser, generally one gets zero actual story content on the first page of an article. Only after scrolling through all the ads does one get to click through to a second page to hopefully get some content.
• Portland Tribune / Local News Daily - Good. There’s a few obnoxiously oversized graphics, but generally articles load on the first page and are easy to read.
• Portland Mercury / BlogTown PDX - Mostly good. The Merc tends to be graphics-heavy in their postings which is great on a regular client PC, but doesn’t always translate gracefully to a mobile device.

Perhaps in a future post I’ll talk about other local mobile goodies…

There is a practice amongst most of the mainstream media outlets to avoid reporting on individual suicide cases. I don’t claim to know all the reasons behind this practice but when you look at the factors such as respect for the victim’s family and a concern about glamorizing the suicidal acts, one could make a strong argument for avoiding (publishing) the issue.

On the other hand, some methods of suicide (such as jumping off a bridge) create a visible public disruption, and it could be argued that the public should be able to know some basic information. Such information could be provided or reported while still allowing the individual to remain unnamed, and with journalism that provided information without sensationalism.

I often wander the city on my lunch break, and on Monday I came across the Portland Fire Bureau’s Dive Team van parked at waterfront park, lights flashing. Further investigation revealed more emergency vehicles and a situation on the Burnside Bridge which turned out to be a potential jumper standing up on the railing.

I shot a few photos of the general scene, then wandered across the bridge, snapping a few photos along the way. The police had the westbound lanes/sidewalks shut down but eastbound traffic was moving. I shot a couple photos that included the person standing up on the railing. Based on my location and some foreground obstacles (construction fencing), you can’t identify the person at all.

I don’t know the outcome of the situation; when I left to return to work the person was still on the railing.

And so I ponder, would it be appropriate to publish the photos that include the jumper? Is there a newsworthiness value to seeing what was going on? I posed the question on Twitter. Some told me that it would be in extremely poor taste, while someone else made the comment that if the person wanted privacy, they would’ve done it in private.

Given the fact that the situation shut down a major bridge during the middle of the day, I’d say there’s some newsworthiness. The photos don’t disclose the person’s identity in any way. Would the publication of the photos lead to a glamorization of the event? Would they be disrespectful to the person involved, even though that person isn’t identified? How does this compare to showing photos of mangled, charred automobiles following fatal crashes?

Discuss.

edit/update: Apparently The Oregonian featured a photo of the individual on the front page of today’s dead-tree Metro section. Portland Police talked the man down. I still ask the same questions, with a further note: since the man didn’t jump, does that change the appropriateness of posting/publishing the photos?

Once again Portland’s old-school media is proving it just plain doesn’t understand the internet. In a rush to get something posted online, this afternoon they offered up this gem, which as of now says:

A serious snowboarding accident has been reported at Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort, one that was possibly fatal.

Details are few at this time, but the accident happened sometime Thursday afternoon. 

So there was probably an accident, that maybe happened today, and might’ve killed someone. Could there be any less information?

Is there any good reason that KATU couldn’t have waited to post until they actually knew something?

Yesterday, it started snowing, hard, without having been predicted by anyone. Today, pretty much everyone is predicting a few inches of snow for the Portland area tomorrow.

Will it happen? I wonder. Generally, when it’s predicted, it doesn’t pan out. When nothing is predicted (yesterday, or last year’s snow event) we get some snow without warning. From a KATU article:

Rod Hill is watching the weather models closely because there is a concern that we could see more snow Thursday morning than expected.

I’d say that if the weather guy is saying we might see more snow than expected, I wonder who he’s relying on for the “expected” part of that equation. Apparently not himself…?

I give you the official VanPortlander weather forecast: I guarantee between 0-12″ of snow will probably likely mostly happen in downtown.

This would be a great occasion to break out my three rules of snow in Portland:

1. Your 4WD vehicle does not give you the ability to drive 60mph then stop in a normal distance on a sheet of ice
2. If you don’t have some society-sustaining critical job, and you’re not comfortable driving in bad weather, stay home. Please. We urge you.
3. Although it’s fun to watch, and we could use more variety in our snowtarded video clips, don’t be this guy:

For the second time in two weeks, someone working for The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver has plead guilty in court to breaking the law while on the job for the newspaper.

First it was freelance photographer Kristina Wright who pleaded guilty to obstructing a law enforcement officer when she chose to duck under police line tape at the scene of an investigation.

In what strikes me as a much more serious offense, reporter Don Hamilton climbed inside an ambulance and tried to access a computer in the ambulance to find out information about a police officer who was wounded. He pleaded guilty to attempted computer trespass, a gross misdemeanor, rather than go to trial facing a felony charge. Allegedly Hamilton didn’t think that looking at the computer would be a problem; apparently he’s never heard of HIPAA. How does it make you feel to know the Columbian is going to go poking around, climbing into vehicles they don’t own, and poking around medical records in search of a scoop?

It’s interesting to hear old media talk about how bloggers don’t count as journalists. We’re just a bunch of hacks, ya know. And perhaps that’s right. But when I look at today’s Portland Tribune, and what I come across is a big article on something that was extensively covered last month on a prominent local blog (see here, here, here, and here - all are links to Jack Bog’s Blog), it’s hard to say that blogs aren’t on top of some issues. Names on PortlandMaps? That’s last months’ news. Unless you wait for it to show up in a dead-tree paper…

Apparently one of the central figures in the scandal with Clark County’s most famous figure skater passed away Wednesday from natural causes.

I’ve noticed something in the past few months around the Portland blog scene. Whether it’s Metroblogging, or Bojack, the Merc, or today the Notablogdamnit, there are a whole lot of blog posts being written which follow the format of “Hey (insert other city’s media here) just wrote about (something Portland/Oregon-y)!”

I fully realize that I could be in the minority, but generally I shrug. Rarely do I find some valuable nugget of information. Often I just get to read things I already know or stereotypes I’ve already heard.

Do we (the bloggers) link these pieces because we find it exciting someone else cares about our chunk of the world? Does it fill seem deep psychological need? Do we feel validated that we live somewhere interesting?