VanPortlander

I haven’t entirely abandoned this site but it’s taken a back burner to a few other side projects at the moment. My expectation is that when I’m back, it’ll be in a bigger, better way. Stay tuned…

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?

Now that the site has been up and running for a few months, I figured a reminder about how to subscribe can’t hurt.

You can have VanPortlander “delivered” to you electronically either via an RSS feed or e-mail. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and if you use Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo, Newsgator, or any other feed reader, you’ll want to grab the RSS feed from this link.

If you prefer to have content delivered via e-mail, that’s simple as well. On the left side of the website there’s a box called “Subscribe via E-Mail” - just enter your e-mail address and click the button. Your address won’t be used for anything other than sending you the content of this site.

Now that things are running smoothly on the new server, I’ve made some changes to the display and function of comments on the site. I appreciate those of you who comment and participate in the discussion. These changes should make the process even better.

• I’ve integrated the Gravatar service. Gravatar allows you to sign up (free) and associate a small icon/avatar with your e-mail address. When you leave a comment on any Gravatar-enabled blog, your icon will show up next to your commend. For an example, see my icon in the comments on this post.
• When you leave a comment, near the submit button there is now an e-mail notification checkbox. If you check that box, you’ll receive an e-mail when other people leave comments on that post.
• I made a few other formatting changes to make comments easier to read, especially on posts with multiple comments.

I hope these changes make the commenting and participation process easier for everyone… if you have any feedback on the changes, don’t hesitate to, heh, leave a comment!

If you’re seeing this post, you’re seeing VanPortlander on the new server and things have moved successfully.

I’ll be doing some software maintenance and moving VanPortlander to a new server on Thursday evening starting around 20:00. Expect things to be back to normal by Friday morning.  I’ll make a post on the site once the work is completed.

If you use LiveJournal, I see that some kind person has setup a LiveJournal feed for this site.  LiveJournal users can go to the Syndicated Account page for VanPortlander to add this site to their friends list.

Since my list of Portland blogger profiles is growing, I created a page that will list all of them.  Astute readers will notice the Meet Portland Bloggers link at the top of the page.

I’m not really the type who gets worried about numerology, but on Tuesday this site had 666 visitors.

On September 5th, I put up a few posts, intending to soft-launch the blog. Instead, I got noticed, which is just fine with me. Here are some random bits of trivia about the first month on this site:

• Two of the most popular posts have been about sexual issues involving adults and children, the first being Portland’s Pedophile Blogger and the second being a gymnastics coach charged with rape.
• The most popular search term leading to this site is “neil finger” (the gymnastics coach) followed by “visionpdx.”
• I’m pleased that so far, 19 folks have left comments.  I’d love to see that number increase.
• How are folks getting here?  Other than subscribers, the biggest referrers are Google and ORBlogs
• The “Meet a Portland Blogger” series is proving very popular, even after just two profiles (Chris Smith and Lelo).  I’ve got several other folks lined up already with interviews scheduled to run on Wednesdays.
• A bunch of you subscribe to the site via RSS.  Hit that link to find out how.

Overall I’m pleased with how things are going.  I’m always open to feedback.  If it’s related to a post please leave a comment, or you can always drop me an e-mail.