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DAILY GRIST
20 May 2004
Environmental news from GRIST MAGAZINE


LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD GEEKS: Grist seeks an IT systems specialist and a production coordinator.



1.
JUSTICE OF THE GREENPEACE
Federal Case Against Greenpeace Thrown Out of Court

The U.S. government's unusual criminal suit against Greenpeace USA was rather unceremoniously booted from federal court yesterday by U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan. In a rare "directed verdict," the judge found the group not guilty midway through the trial, after the prosecution had presented its case but before the group's lawyers presented any defense. The case revolved around two members of Greenpeace who boarded a ship near the Port of Miami-Dade to protest its load of Amazonian mahogany. In a highly atypical move, government prosecutors sought to indict not just the individual protesters but the group itself under an obscure 1872 law -- not enforced in over a century -- that prohibits "sailor mongering," or boarding ships in an attempt to lure sailors ashore to brothels and bars. Because the decision did not go to jury, the government cannot appeal. The case, said Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando, "showed the extent to which the government will go to criminalize free speech.'"

straight to the source: The Miami Herald, Jay Weaver, 20 May 2004


straight to the source: MSNBC.com, 19 May 2004




2.
SURVIVAL OF THE WEAKEST
Humans Affecting Evolution of Other Species

Lay scientists tend to think of evolution as a glacially slow process, with changes measured in hundreds of thousands of years, not decades. However, growing collaboration between ecologists and evolutionary biologists is highlighting a phenomenon called "contemporary evolution" -- and it ain't pretty. Turns out, by culling the largest, healthiest, and most robust specimens from a species, human beings can precipitate a sort of rapid devolution, an evolutionary trend toward smaller, weaker populations that works over generations, not centuries. The phenomenon can be observed across the animal world -- for example, hunters have left mountain sheep in Alberta, Canada, shrinking, along with their horns -- but it is particularly perspicuous in the world's fisheries. Some scientists trace the precipitous decline of the cod population to fishing practices that value the largest fish; the result has been a population of fish that mature earlier and smaller, are unable to produce robust offspring, and lack the genetic diversity to breed their way out of trouble. Researchers recommend a broad rethinking of practices for protecting endangered species and managing wildlife habitats, fisheries, and hunting ranges.

straight to the source: The Christian Science Monitor, Peter N. Spotts, 20 May 2004




3.
SECURITY BLANKET
Environmental Security Starting to Get Attention

On the list of security threats facing the world's nations -- nuclear proliferation, terrorism, neoconservatives -- the environment deserves a place near the top, say a growing number of experts. Climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, and the like can lead to conflict over scarce resources and to massive waves of migration. Geoffrey Dabelko -- director of the Environmental Change and Security Project and an all-around brainy guy -- attended the recent Hague Conference on Environment, Security, and Sustainable Development, where a group of folks mainly from wealthy nations discussed troubled transatlantic relations and possibilities for environmental rapprochement. And for another perspective, he followed it up with a meeting at the U.N. Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya, where developing countries stressed that many of their environmental-security problems were the result of deleterious Western industrial and trade policies. Dabelko wrote some thought-provoking reports on the proceedings in Dispatches -- today on the Grist Magazine website.

today in Grist: Geoffrey Dabelko journals on environmental security -- in Dispatches




4.
404 ERROR: FAILURE TO RECYCLE
Computer Manufacturers Get Low Grades on Recycling

Computer makers' environmental programs generally stink, though U.S. companies -- particularly Dell and Hewlett-Packard -- are better than most, says an annual report released yesterday by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an enviro group based in San Jose, Calif. No company is recycling more than 2 percent of its products -- products chock-full of lead, polyvinyl chloride, mercury, and other hazardous materials -- a statistic which coalition director Ted Smith called "pathetic." Coalition researchers singled out Dell for particular praise. The company, which received terrible scores on last year's report, has stopped using prison labor to recycle products and launched a new recycling campaign. A number of states are considering bills that would make manufacturers responsible, to some extent at least, for electronics recycling.

straight to the source: MSNBC, Associated Press, 20 May 2004


straight to the source: The New York Times, Laurie J. Flynn, 19 May 2004


see also, in Grist: Control-Alt-Recycle -- tips on greener computing -- in Earthly Possessions




5.
THE LAWN AND SHORT OF IT
Organic Lawn Care Taking Off

With the U.S. adding some 2 million acres of residential property a year, lawns are becoming a significant environmental issue. In addition to sucking up water -- the average lawn drinks about 10,000 gallons of water over and above rainfall, says the U.S. EPA -- lawns are frequently doused with fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that pollute groundwater, kill worms and other small creatures, and can slowly poison kids and pets. Add in gas-guzzling, pollutant-spewing mowers and those lawns aren't looking so green after all. Thankfully, organic lawn care is growing in popularity. Recently, a group of lawn-care and pesticide-industry groups joined enviros and the EPA to create the "Lawn and Environment Coalition," which in March unveiled the first-ever guidelines for eco-friendly lawn care. Although there are no federally established and enforced standards for what counts as organic -- a situation enviros lament -- many companies are coming out with lines of lawn-care products labeled as such. "Hybrid mowers, water-conserving sprinklers, and organic fertilizers are all potential gold mines for industry players," wrote industry analyst Don Montuori.

straight to the source: The Christian Science Monitor, Mark Clayton, 20 May 2004


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

Also in GRIST MAGAZINE:

Fowl play -- factory farms get sweetheart deal on air pollution from EPA -- in Muckraker



All bottled up -- bottled water flies off the shelves, but smart money is on filter systems -- by P.W. McRandle in Earthly Possessions



A tale of two mayors -- the improbable story of how Bogota, Colombia, became somewhere you might actually want to live -- in Main Dish


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"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make
their experiments on journalists and politicians." (Henrik Ibsen)

I suggest you look at this complete article. This is an interesting Japanese case of human rights. See you on Tuesday. Clark
OPINION
=========================

Women, heritage and holy places
Imagine if women were not allowed to set foot on Mount Fuji or Kyoto's Mount Hiei. It's hard to envisage, isn't it? Women are as natural a sight there now as birds or stones -- or men. But little more than a century ago, it would have been hard to imagine them even approaching such places. A scholar at Kansai University's Institute of Human Rights Studies was quoted in this newspaper recently as saying that, before 1872, numerous sacred sites throughout Japan were off-limits to women, not just those two famous peaks. Yet since most such prohibitions were lifted by government fiat, women have done more than approach these venerable sites. They have walked and climbed and prayed there right along with men -- and behold, the sky has not fallen.
[MORE] ->
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ed20040516a1.htm

Hi the following Newletter is sent out once a week and covers some of the underside of the news. You might want to subscribe to it to get leads on stories you are going to write. Just click subscribe and enter your e-mail address. See you next Tue. Clark

THE WEEKLY SPIN, Wednesday, May 12, 2004
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THIS WEEK'S NEWS

1. Banana Appeal
2. The Mighty Windbags
3. False Dichotomies
4. Hummer Bummers
5. Counter-Attack of the Killer Clowns
6. Free the Press!
7. The Sound of One Invisible Hand Clapping
8. Torture, Brand America and the Bottom Line
9. Putting the Bold in Diebold
10. The Power of Pictures
11. Identity Crisis at SBC
12. Disinfopedia as Part of the Smart Mobs vs. Amway
13. Real Atrocities and Faked Photos
14. Drink Up
15. Don't Read This Over an American Hamburger
----------------------------------------------------------------------

1. BANANA APPEAL
http://www.bananarepublicans.org
PR Watchers Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have finished writing
their fifth book, Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning
America Into a One-Party State. It won't be in bookstores until
late May, but you can order it now online. You can also find
chapter summaries and an excerpt from the book on our new Banana
Republicans website. Plus, we've created a section on the
Disinfopedia where you can add your own analysis, research and
insights regarding the ideas in the book.
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084334400
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084334400

2. THE MIGHTY WINDBAGS
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/05/11/noise/
Salon.com has published an excerpt from former right-wing
journalist David Brock's new book, The Republican Noise Machine:
Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. In an accompanying
interview, Brock talks about how the conservative media's "sets a
climate and helps set parameters and helps form impressions. ...
One significant problem is that people are in denial about the
impact of conservatives in the press. They dismiss something as one
story and don't think it will snowball. Liberals don't think these
people matter; they think they're crackpots. They may well be
crackpots, but they matter. There may be a slow learning curve
about understanding that."
SOURCE: Salon.com, May 11, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084248002
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084248002

3. FALSE DICHOTOMIES
http://thehill.com/news/051104/pows.aspx
U.S. prisoners of war during the first Gulf War "are criticizing
the Bush administration for fighting their compensation claims
while planning to compensate the Iraqi victims of abuse at Abu
Ghraib prison," reports The Hill. They're responding to Defense
Secretary Don Rumsfeld's remarks last week to the Senate Armed
Services Committee that he's "seeking a way to provide appropriate
compensation to those [Iraqi] detainees... one way or another." The
former U.S. POWs won a $1 billion settlement against the former
Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. But the Bush administration has
appealed the ruling, saying it "wants to avoid draining funds from
the new Iraqi government... the money is needed to help rebuild the
country."
SOURCE: The Hill, May 11, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084248001
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084248001

4. HUMMER BUMMERS
http://news.findlaw.com/business/s/20040511/autoschryslerrecalldc.html
Chrysler "is recalling more than 326,000 pickup trucks and Durango
sport utility vehicles because of two potential safety problems,"
reports Reuters. Meanwhile, Hummer sales were down 21 percent in
April, possibly due in part to "rising gasoline prices." General
Motors is responding by "offering discounted financing on its
Hummer H2, the icon of the market for supersize sport-utility
vehicles," according to the Wall Street Journal. GM is also
offering dealer incentives "to move out bloated inventories of its
Chevrolet Suburban and Cadillac Escalade big SUVs." Declaring,
"It's time we started taxing the sins of the 21st century," one
Texas lawmaker proposed taxing major air polluters, including
"power plants, SUV owners and coal-burning industries." The
proposal was made during an emergency legislative session on school
funding.
SOURCE: Reuters, May 11, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084248000
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084248000

5. COUNTER-ATTACK OF THE KILLER CLOWNS
http://prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?site=3&ID=209884&site=3&/news/news_story.cfm&setcookie=1
As the anti-fast food documentary "Super Size Me" hits theaters,
McDonald's is fighting back. "We're responding aggressively because
the film is a gross misrepresentation," said a company
spokesperson. Helping defend McDonald's are "global nutritionist"
Cathy Kapica and the corporate-funded American Council on Science
and Health. According to PR Week, ACSH's "aggressive independent
third-party response" includes editorials on Tech Central Station,
a website published by Republican lobbyists. Also under attack is
Coca-Cola, for alleged "complicity in gross human rights
violations" in Colombia, reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "We plan to
destroy the image of Coca-Cola, for which it has spent millions to
cultivate," said the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke's director. To
"get the facts to all concerned parties," the soft drink giant
launched www.cokefacts.org and www.killercoke.com -- the latter to
"capture" people seeking the Campaign's website,
www.killercoke.org.
SOURCE: PR Week, May 10, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084161603
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084161603

6. FREE THE PRESS!
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/05/10/ap_miss_newspaper_sue_over_tape_erasure/
The Associated Press and the Mississippi paper Hattiesburg American
filed a lawsuit "against the U.S. Marshals Service over an incident
in April in which a federal marshal erased reporters' recordings of
a speech Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave to high school
students" about the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit alleges the
marshal "violated due process and the constitutional protections
from unreasonable search and seizure." Saying "the government's
power is overwhelming," Associated Press President Tom Curley
announced plans to form a "media advocacy center to lobby in
Washington for open government." Curley said the Reporters
Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Society of Professional
Journalists and others would be invited to help "seek better
statutory guarantees for more accessible government information."
SOURCE: Associated Press, May 10, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084161602
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084161602

7. THE SOUND OF ONE INVISIBLE HAND CLAPPING
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108414149947006210,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
Jackie Calmes writes: "Over the past four years, Mr. Bush has swung
from free-market candidate to sometime-protectionist president and
back again." But lately, on the campaign trail, "he has re-emerged
as a full-throated free trader," even in "the most hotly contested
states... with the biggest job losses." Why? "Advisers have made
optimism a hallmark of the re-election campaign and argue that an
upbeat message trumps pessimism every time, even on trade and even
in hard-hit Midwestern manufacturing states." According to The
Hill, 37 House Republicans urged Commerce Secretary Don Evans "to
continue highlighting the many benefits of foreign-based companies
choosing to 'insource' work here in America." Industry groups
(including the Coalition for Employment through Exports) "are
leading an informal group formed to fend off outsourcing-related
measures" like Independent Bernie Sanders' Defending American Jobs
Act.
SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084161601
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084161601

8. TORTURE, BRAND AMERICA AND THE BOTTOM LINE
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&e=1&u=/ap/20040510/ap_on_re_eu/red_cross_prisoner_abuse
In its damning report, the Red Cross states that "physical and
psychological coercion were used by [U.S.] military intelligence in
a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and
other forms of cooperation" from Iraqi detainees. But look on the
bright side: "American companies that sell globally say that they
have so far experienced little if any disruption from discontent
over the war in Iraq," reports The New York Times. "In a display of
the growing sophistication in marketing... many people see products
originating from the United States as firmly rooted in their own
home nations." But "one of the world's largest market research
organizations" found the opposite in their annual 30-country
survey: "Diminishing respect for American culture is having a
detrimental impact on American brands around the world."
SOURCE: Associated Press, May 10, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084161600
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084161600

9. PUTTING THE BOLD IN DIEBOLD
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/business/8625251.htm?1c
California's secretary of state said "they broke the law," called
their conduct "absolutely reprehensible," and banned their machines
in four counties, but maybe the news isn't all bad for e-voting
company Diebold Election Systems. "It could affect the stock for a
week or two," said corporate branding executive Clayton Tolley, but
"generally, it's a passing fad that will fade within six months."
Diebold spokesperson Mike Jacobsen pointed out "we're a
business-to-business firm... not a consumer company," so negative
public opinion doesn't hurt as much. To make sure, Diebold Election
Systems just hired a second national PR firm, Edward Howard & Co,
to work with Public Strategies Inc to boost the company's
reputation. Tolley also suggests the Diebold parent company
distance itself from Diebold Election Systems: "I'd try to insulate
the business units."
SOURCE: Akron Beacon Journal, May 9, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1084075200
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1084075200

10. THE POWER OF PICTURES
http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010346.shtml
"By many accounts, the horrible treatment of Iraqi prisoners by
U.S. soldiers and mercenaries has been going on ever since the end
of the invasion," notes Dan Gillmore. "The Red Cross warned U.S.
officials a year ago. Yet it took those appalling photographs to
turn this into the huge story that it's become. Which raises some
questions: Suppose the Americans hadn't bothered to take pictures
of each other in that infamous prison? Suppose they'd just gone on
abusing the prisoners without cameras? Does a story exist without
pictures?" And Tim Porter makes an interesting observation about
the vanishing role of the mass media in unearthing the story. "The
two biggest recent stories to emerge from the Iraq - the
administration's don't-show-don't-know policy toward the
photographing of military caskets and the puerile abuses by Army
reservists inside Abu Ghraib prison - were based on digital
photographs not made by journalists but by participants in both
stories." According to the Associated Press, this reflects "a
defining fact of 21st century life," as "the pervasiveness of
digital photography and the speed of the Internet make it easier to
see into dark corners previously out of reach for the mass media."
SOURCE: Dan Gillmor Journal, May 7, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083902400
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083902400

11. IDENTITY CRISIS AT SBC
http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0506fleishman_sbc.htm
San Francisco Chronicle reporter David Lazarus is questioning
whether Marc Bien, who he interviewed as telecommunications giant
SBC's vice-president of corporate communications (as Bien's
business cards indicate) broke ethical guidelines when he neglected
to tell Lazarus that he's actually an employee of major PR firm
Fleishman-Hillard. Lazarus, who's covering a potential
Communication Workers of America strike at SBC, notes the irony
that the "SBC spokesman" he quoted "defending the company's use of
hundreds of outside contractors" is a "nonemployee" himself.
Fleishman-Hillard senior vice-president Ed Presberg said the firm
"acted ethically and appropriately.... It is no secret that some
F-H employees represent SBC. Many of the reporters who cover the
company are aware of it. We thought David was aware of it."
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily, May 6, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083816001
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083816001

12. DISINFOPEDIA AS PART OF THE SMART MOBS VS. AMWAY
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18605
"As Howard Rheingold, who literally wrote the book, Smart Mobs,
says: 'Civilizations jump in complexity whenever a threshold for
collective action is lowered. It's not just street protestors. It's
science, democracy, markets, the way people meet and mate, the way
people use cities and the way motor vehicles use roadways that are
affected ... when mobile communication and pervasive computing
enable new forms of collective action,'" Brad deGraf writes for
AlterNet. "'Wikis' have become the participatory writing tool of
choice, and have revolutionized online collaboration. The
Disinfopedia, from the folks at PR Watch, is an encyclopedia of
disinformation that anyone can add their two-cents to, using the
'Edit this Page' button on every page."
SOURCE: Alternet, May 6, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083816000
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083816000

13. REAL ATROCITIES AND FAKED PHOTOS
http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000762.php
The photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib are bad enough,
considering that possibly 25 prisoners have died while in American
custody. However, some faked photos are also circulating, including
pictures of an alleged rape by soldiers that were actually taken
from a porno site. Independent journalist Chris Albritton debunks
the fakes and criticizes a cavalier attitude toward the truth that
"seems to have taken hold in anti-war journalism as well. I have no
doubt there are horrible things going on, and that U.S. soldiers
are doing some of them," he writes. "But I'm unwilling to report on
them unless I can get some confirmation. ... Everyone involved in
this mess, including Arab journalists, needs to write as accurately
as possible because 'a lie gets halfway around the world before the
truth ever gets its boots on.' That's what's happened with the
alleged rape photos and people will die because of them. ...
[Websites] printing them when they admit they are not confirmed
should be ashamed of themselves."
SOURCE: Back to Iraq, May 5, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083729603
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083729603

14. DRINK UP
http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/news/050504/Local/ST001.shtml
A grand jury report on groundwater contamination in Escambia
County, Florida, has been released charging that local, state and
federal agencies responsible for protecting the environment and
public health all failed to inform the public about industrial
contamination of the county's water supply, with the Conoco oil
company among the area's leading polluters. "The combined failure
meant thousands of residents were unaware that more than half of
the county's public water wells were laced with harmful
contaminants for an untold number of years," reports Steve Mraz,
noting that authorities were "more concerned about public relations
and financial impacts" of their decisions than "than the health,
safety and welfare consequences." As is often the case, the impetus
for cleanup came, not from government regulatory agencies, but from
Margaret Williams, a local grandmother turned activist, Margaret
Williams, and her organization, Citizens Against Toxic Exposure.
SOURCE: Pensacola New Journal, May 5, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083729602
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083729602

15. DON'T READ THIS OVER AN AMERICAN HAMBURGER
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/05/DDGFL6EUPN1.DTL
Recently the Center's John Stauber had lunch with journalist Laurel
Wellman to discuss the Center's prescient 1997 book by Stauber and
Sheldon Rampton, Mad Cow USA. The resulting column in today's San
Francisco Chronicle notes that in the month after December's
discovery of a mad cow in Washington state, 80,000 people
downloaded Mad Cow USA for free off of our website. Meanwhile, the
US government continues to cover-up the threat of mad cow in
America. For instance, on the meat-industry website
meatingplace.com, reporter Dan Yovich today breaks the outrageous,
shocking news that a United States Department of Agriculture
official ordered that a suspected Texas mad cow NOT be tested for
the disease. Instead, it was sent to a rendering plant and
destroyed, probably to become food for other animals, which is how
the disease is spread.
SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 2004
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/May_2004.html#1083729601
To discuss this story in the PR Watch Forum, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/forum/discuss.php?id=1083729601


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THE NEW JOURNALISM
Here's a comment on the co-called "New Journalism" by editor, writer
and publisher Michael Korda:
"After the New York Herald Tribune closed its doors in 1966, Clay
Felker, then the editor of the newspaper's Sunday magazine, reconstituted
New York as an independent enterprise and eventually made it a home for the
practitioners of what was then called 'the new journalism,' including Jimmy
Breslin, Tom Wolfe, Gail Sheehy, Nick Pileggi, and 'Adam Smith.' The new
journalism was hard to define, but in practice it meant writing nonfiction
as narrative, with a clear-cut story line, strong characters, and as much
pizzazz as possible. In the 'old' journalism, typified by the newspages of
The New York Times, the writer was ideally invisible -- he or she reported
the facts as objectively as possible. In the 'new' journalism, the writer
bullied his way into the story, sometimes overwhelming the people he was
writing about, inevitably blurred what had once been the fairly rigid
distinction between nonfiction and fiction -- a distinction that had in any
event been eroding under the influence of books such as Meyer Levin's
Compulsion (which presented fact as fiction) and the nonfiction of Norman
Mailer (in which fact and fiction were indistinguishable). In keeping with
the zeitgeist, the new journalism was almost by definition overheated, full
of sound effects, and occasionally shrill. The people who were good at it,
such as Wolfe and Breslin, were journalistic exhibitionists, media stars
whose specialty was making even the humdrum and the insignificant seem
important and, above all, exciting. Even the restaurant reviews had to be
written like narrative stories, with a beginning, a middle, and an end,
which probably explains why the celebrity chef appeared as a culture figure
then, since a writer could hang a story on him, as opposed to simply
reporting whether the food was edible and the service good or bad."

'IN THE NAME OF WOMANHOOD AND HUMANITY...'
Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
What is now widely viewed as a sentimental tribute to
family -- Mother's Day -- was originally a call for women
to wage a general strike to end war.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18623

Hello all, I apologize for having told you to put Write3 on your e-mails. It should be ThurWrite. My mistake. Hope you all have a great Golden Week. Please send your stories again with the Subject Line "ThurWrite". Also take a look at this:NON-SNARKY BLOGGERS GIVE MAINSTREAM MEDIA NEWS THEY CAN USE
In his Internet Newsletter Frank Barnako notes that "the nation's
broadcasters and newspaper editors this week drew extensive online coverage
of their annual meetings from three independent reporters using Web logs
and cell phones." He cites coverage by buzzmachine.com and lostremote.com
and describes their work as "straight journalism, with none of the snarky
comments so common in blogs. It appears all three were motivated by nothing
more than the desire to prove they could do what they set out to do using a
cell phone and a network connection. No financial backing, no overhead, and
no wires." (CBS Market Watch 23 Mar 2004)
http://www.capitalvenue.com/FrankBarnako.htm

Hi hope you all have a good Golden Week holiday. I have recieved some of the reports from the last assignment- writing about some problem you seen in Japan. Get them in. See you in two weeks. Clark

NON-SNARKY BLOGGERS GIVE MAINSTREAM MEDIA NEWS THEY CAN USE
In his Internet Newsletter Frank Barnako notes that "the nation's
broadcasters and newspaper editors this week drew extensive online coverage
of their annual meetings from three independent reporters using Web logs
and cell phones." He cites coverage by buzzmachine.com and lostremote.com
and describes their work as "straight journalism, with none of the snarky
comments so common in blogs. It appears all three were motivated by nothing
more than the desire to prove they could do what they set out to do using a
cell phone and a network connection. No financial backing, no overhead, and
no wires." (CBS Market Watch 23 Mar 2004)
http://www.capitalvenue.com/FrankBarnako.htm

Hi gals and guys here is another long one I'd like you to read. It is from AlterNet which is a Journalism newsletter and very good you should check it out at AlterNet.com

The Gendered Newsroom

By Michele Weldon, Women's eNews
April 21, 2004

Ambition defies the boundaries of gender. Opportunity is less democratic.

For women working in daily newspapers across the country, the crawl toward the goal post of equity continues. The numbers of women on the staffs of daily newspapers in 2003 increased minutely to 37.23 percent of newsroom employees, according to the annual ASNE Newsroom Employment Census released Tuesday by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The meager improvement from 37.05 percent after a two-year decline in numbers of women in newsrooms forces us to decode the writing on the wall and choose the appropriate cliche: Is it "slow and steady wins the race?" Or "quit while you still can?"

Cassandra West, editor of WomanNews, a Wednesday section at the Chicago Tribune, said the study shows the profession is a long way from fair representation of 51 percent women in newsrooms.

"I'm not hopeful that we'll ever have those kinds of numbers, but the need to have more women analyzing, reporting and shaping news coverage is as important as the need to have more women in government, medicine, law and all other professions," West said.

Guys Still Corner Upper Management

According to the latest ASNE survey of 927 U.S. daily newspapers, men continue to dominate corner offices of upper management. Only 34.2 percent of supervisors are women, the study showed. With 65.8 percent male supervisors, men outnumber women supervisors almost 2 to 1. How can that not affect decisions made about what stories to cover and how?

The position of copy/layout editor is more gender-balanced with 41.4 percent of those jobs held by women, a minuscule gain from 41 percent female copy editors the year before. Twenty-two percent of women working in newsrooms are on the copy desk, which has been true for the past three years. Eighteen percent of men working in newsrooms are on the copy desk, unchanged for the past five years.

Though more women work as reporters than at any other position (with 49 percent of female newsroom employees working as reporters), there are still fewer female than male reporters. Only 39.6 percent of reporters are women, a blip of an increase from 39.5 percent female reporters in newsrooms, according to the report on 2003.

The photo department appears to be the least accommodating to women. Photos appearing in newspapers are almost three times more likely to be shot by a male photographer. Only 26.1 percent of the photographers in newsrooms in 2003 were women, another marginal increase from 25.9 percent the previous year. Only 7 percent of women working in newspapers are employed as photographers.

Considering this paucity, it is particularly sweet that two female photographers won Pulitzer Prizes this year; Cheryl Diaz Meyer at The Dallas Morning News for breaking news photography and Carolyn Cole at the Los Angeles Times for feature photography.

The annual ASNE newsroom census, established in 1978, has marked the climb in minority employment of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans over the past 25 years. The census only began to include the breakdown of women working in newsrooms in 1999. In the industry's admirable and necessary aim to achieve diversity, the inclusion of women is seen as an afterthought, 21 years late.

"Women have a world view, a personal view and what I believe is a much-needed human view of how we live and how everything is connected. So having as many women at the table in all areas of journalism is essential," West said.

But for women in journalism something goes awry between studying for journalism and working in it. Women represent more than 70 percent of students in journalism schools or at universities with journalism or communication programs. In the newsroom, however, that percentage has been cut in half.

"There's something broken with the system if almost two-thirds of the people who are studying journalism are female and less than half of the journalists working in newsrooms are women" said David Nelson, associate professor and chair of the newspaper department at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.

I grew up with the fictional role models of newspaper reporters Brenda Starr and Lois Lane. But when I noticed that most bylines belonged to men, I saw journalism as male-dominated. Even the designation of "soft" and "hard" news appeared to divide coverage into female and male camps.

Beyond this most recent report, several studies have pointed to the woeful representation of women in newsrooms in positions from entry level to management. A 2002 survey conducted for the American Press Institute and The Pew Center For Civic Journalism showed that 64 percent of all women said they saw their opportunities for advancement blocked by sexism. It also found that only 31 percent of the women surveyed said they will likely be promoted to the next logical position of their newspaper, compared to 42 percent of the men.

Does this imbalance of gender affect what shows up in the newspaper and who gets quoted on what kinds of stories? We can only draw that conclusion. The Readership Institute at Northwestern University's Media Management Center showed that in 3,500 front-page stories, male sources outnumbered female sources 3 to 1. Women are more likely to be quoted on stories about health, home, food, fashion, travel and education. Men, however, are most likely to be quoted on stories about politics, business, religion and science.

The goal is not to add more women to the cubicles because it is fair.

Today we can look to major newspapers across the country and see strong, talented women at the helm: Ann Marie Lipinski at the Chicago Tribune; Sandra Mims Rowe at The Oregonian, Julia Wallace at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Deborah Howell at Newhouse News Service, Amanda Bennett at the Philadelphia Enquirer, to name some. In hundreds of newspapers, we see female bylines from datelines across the globe in all sections of the paper.

Their courageous and hard-earned ascent is not just politically correct, it is critical to achieve balanced, fair and inclusive coverage of a complex, changing society. As reporters, photographers, layout designers, editors and managers of news outlets, women add a different tempo to the chorus of voices, a different vision. It took Gail Collins to bring mammograms to the editorial page of The New York Times.

Women have needs for information on issues from public policy to private healthcare that differ from those of male readers. To respond, we need to race toward parity in employing and promoting women at our country's newspapers so ambition can meet opportunity half way.

Michele Weldon is an assistant Professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and is second vice president of Journalism and Women Symposium. She is the author of the memoir, "I Closed My Eyes: Revelations of a Battered Woman," and "Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story Through Journaling," both from Hazelden Publishing.

Content Files

Election 2004
The most important election of your life.

Rights & Liberties
Human rights and civil liberties.

MediaCulture
Critical perspectives on our media-driven world

Movie Mix
Home of The Alternative Movie Awards.

War on Iraq
Coverage of America's war with Iraq.

DrugReporter
News from the front lines of the drug war.

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ÊDiscussion

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Home È ÊMediaCulture È

The Gendered Newsroom

By Michele Weldon, Women's eNews
April 21, 2004

Ambition defies the boundaries of gender. Opportunity is less democratic.

For women working in daily newspapers across the country, the crawl toward the goal post of equity continues. The numbers of women on the staffs of daily newspapers in 2003 increased minutely to 37.23 percent of newsroom employees, according to the annual ASNE Newsroom Employment Census released Tuesday by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The meager improvement from 37.05 percent after a two-year decline in numbers of women in newsrooms forces us to decode the writing on the wall and choose the appropriate cliche: Is it "slow and steady wins the race?" Or "quit while you still can?"

Cassandra West, editor of WomanNews, a Wednesday section at the Chicago Tribune, said the study shows the profession is a long way from fair representation of 51 percent women in newsrooms.

"I'm not hopeful that we'll ever have those kinds of numbers, but the need to have more women analyzing, reporting and shaping news coverage is as important as the need to have more women in government, medicine, law and all other professions," West said.

Guys Still Corner Upper Management

According to the latest ASNE survey of 927 U.S. daily newspapers, men continue to dominate corner offices of upper management. Only 34.2 percent of supervisors are women, the study showed. With 65.8 percent male supervisors, men outnumber women supervisors almost 2 to 1. How can that not affect decisions made about what stories to cover and how?

The position of copy/layout editor is more gender-balanced with 41.4 percent of those jobs held by women, a minuscule gain from 41 percent female copy editors the year before. Twenty-two percent of women working in newsrooms are on the copy desk, which has been true for the past three years. Eighteen percent of men working in newsrooms are on the copy desk, unchanged for the past five years.

Though more women work as reporters than at any other position (with 49 percent of female newsroom employees working as reporters), there are still fewer female than male reporters. Only 39.6 percent of reporters are women, a blip of an increase from 39.5 percent female reporters in newsrooms, according to the report on 2003.

The photo department appears to be the least accommodating to women. Photos appearing in newspapers are almost three times more likely to be shot by a male photographer. Only 26.1 percent of the photographers in newsrooms in 2003 were women, another marginal increase from 25.9 percent the previous year. Only 7 percent of women working in newspapers are employed as photographers.

Considering this paucity, it is particularly sweet that two female photographers won Pulitzer Prizes this year; Cheryl Diaz Meyer at The Dallas Morning News for breaking news photography and Carolyn Cole at the Los Angeles Times for feature photography.

The annual ASNE newsroom census, established in 1978, has marked the climb in minority employment of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans over the past 25 years. The census only began to include the breakdown of women working in newsrooms in 1999. In the industry's admirable and necessary aim to achieve diversity, the inclusion of women is seen as an afterthought, 21 years late.

"Women have a world view, a personal view and what I believe is a much-needed human view of how we live and how everything is connected. So having as many women at the table in all areas of journalism is essential," West said.

But for women in journalism something goes awry between studying for journalism and working in it. Women represent more than 70 percent of students in journalism schools or at universities with journalism or communication programs. In the newsroom, however, that percentage has been cut in half.

"There's something broken with the system if almost two-thirds of the people who are studying journalism are female and less than half of the journalists working in newsrooms are women" said David Nelson, associate professor and chair of the newspaper department at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.

I grew up with the fictional role models of newspaper reporters Brenda Starr and Lois Lane. But when I noticed that most bylines belonged to men, I saw journalism as male-dominated. Even the designation of "soft" and "hard" news appeared to divide coverage into female and male camps.

Beyond this most recent report, several studies have pointed to the woeful representation of women in newsrooms in positions from entry level to management. A 2002 survey conducted for the American Press Institute and The Pew Center For Civic Journalism showed that 64 percent of all women said they saw their opportunities for advancement blocked by sexism. It also found that only 31 percent of the women surveyed said they will likely be promoted to the next logical position of their newspaper, compared to 42 percent of the men.

Does this imbalance of gender affect what shows up in the newspaper and who gets quoted on what kinds of stories? We can only draw that conclusion. The Readership Institute at Northwestern University's Media Management Center showed that in 3,500 front-page stories, male sources outnumbered female sources 3 to 1. Women are more likely to be quoted on stories about health, home, food, fashion, travel and education. Men, however, are most likely to be quoted on stories about politics, business, religion and science.

The goal is not to add more women to the cubicles because it is fair.

Today we can look to major newspapers across the country and see strong, talented women at the helm: Ann Marie Lipinski at the Chicago Tribune; Sandra Mims Rowe at The Oregonian, Julia Wallace at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Deborah Howell at Newhouse News Service, Amanda Bennett at the Philadelphia Enquirer, to name some. In hundreds of newspapers, we see female bylines from datelines across the globe in all sections of the paper.

Their courageous and hard-earned ascent is not just politically correct, it is critical to achieve balanced, fair and inclusive coverage of a complex, changing society. As reporters, photographers, layout designers, editors and managers of news outlets, women add a different tempo to the chorus of voices, a different vision. It took Gail Collins to bring mammograms to the editorial page of The New York Times.

Women have needs for information on issues from public policy to private healthcare that differ from those of male readers. To respond, we need to race toward parity in employing and promoting women at our country's newspapers so ambition can meet opportunity half way.

Michele Weldon is an assistant Professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and is second vice president of Journalism and Women Symposium. She is the author of the memoir, "I Closed My Eyes: Revelations of a Battered Woman," and "Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story Through Journaling," both from Hazelden Publishing.

Content Files

Election 2004
The most important election of your life.

Rights & Liberties
Human rights and civil liberties.

MediaCulture
Critical perspectives on our media-driven world

Movie Mix
Home of The Alternative Movie Awards.

War on Iraq
Coverage of America's war with Iraq.

DrugReporter
News from the front lines of the drug war.

EnviroHealth
From climate change to medical news.


Feedback

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 Discussion

Visit AlterNet's forums for lively discussions on today's news.
Guests »
Members »


Home »  MediaCulture »

The Gendered Newsroom

By Michele Weldon, Women's eNews
April 21, 2004

Ambition defies the boundaries of gender. Opportunity is less democratic.

For women working in daily newspapers across the country, the crawl toward the goal post of equity continues. The numbers of women on the staffs of daily newspapers in 2003 increased minutely to 37.23 percent of newsroom employees, according to the annual ASNE Newsroom Employment Census released Tuesday by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The meager improvement from 37.05 percent after a two-year decline in numbers of women in newsrooms forces us to decode the writing on the wall and choose the appropriate cliche: Is it "slow and steady wins the race?" Or "quit while you still can?"

Cassandra West, editor of WomanNews, a Wednesday section at the Chicago Tribune, said the study shows the profession is a long way from fair representation of 51 percent women in newsrooms.

"I'm not hopeful that we'll ever have those kinds of numbers, but the need to have more women analyzing, reporting and shaping news coverage is as important as the need to have more women in government, medicine, law and all other professions," West said.

Guys Still Corner Upper Management

According to the latest ASNE survey of 927 U.S. daily newspapers, men continue to dominate corner offices of upper management. Only 34.2 percent of supervisors are women, the study showed. With 65.8 percent male supervisors, men outnumber women supervisors almost 2 to 1. How can that not affect decisions made about what stories to cover and how?

The position of copy/layout editor is more gender-balanced with 41.4 percent of those jobs held by women, a minuscule gain from 41 percent female copy editors the year before. Twenty-two percent of women working in newsrooms are on the copy desk, which has been true for the past three years. Eighteen percent of men working in newsrooms are on the copy desk, unchanged for the past five years.

Though more women work as reporters than at any other position (with 49 percent of female newsroom employees working as reporters), there are still fewer female than male reporters. Only 39.6 percent of reporters are women, a blip of an increase from 39.5 percent female reporters in newsrooms, according to the report on 2003.

The photo department appears to be the least accommodating to women. Photos appearing in newspapers are almost three times more likely to be shot by a male photographer. Only 26.1 percent of the photographers in newsrooms in 2003 were women, another marginal increase from 25.9 percent the previous year. Only 7 percent of women working in newspapers are employed as photographers.

Considering this paucity, it is particularly sweet that two female photographers won Pulitzer Prizes this year; Cheryl Diaz Meyer at The Dallas Morning News for breaking news photography and Carolyn Cole at the Los Angeles Times for feature photography.

The annual ASNE newsroom census, established in 1978, has marked the climb in minority employment of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans over the past 25 years. The census only began to include the breakdown of women working in newsrooms in 1999. In the industry's admirable and necessary aim to achieve diversity, the inclusion of women is seen as an afterthought, 21 years late.

"Women have a world view, a personal view and what I believe is a much-needed human view of how we live and how everything is connected. So having as many women at the table in all areas of journalism is essential," West said.

But for women in journalism something goes awry between studying for journalism and working in it. Women represent more than 70 percent of students in journalism schools or at universities with journalism or communication programs. In the newsroom, however, that percentage has been cut in half.

"There's something broken with the system if almost two-thirds of the people who are studying journalism are female and less than half of the journalists working in newsrooms are women" said David Nelson, associate professor and chair of the newspaper department at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.

I grew up with the fictional role models of newspaper reporters Brenda Starr and Lois Lane. But when I noticed that most bylines belonged to men, I saw journalism as male-dominated. Even the designation of "soft" and "hard" news appeared to divide coverage into female and male camps.

Beyond this most recent report, several studies have pointed to the woeful representation of women in newsrooms in positions from entry level to management. A 2002 survey conducted for the American Press Institute and The Pew Center For Civic Journalism showed that 64 percent of all women said they saw their opportunities for advancement blocked by sexism. It also found that only 31 percent of the women surveyed said they will likely be promoted to the next logical position of their newspaper, compared to 42 percent of the men.

Does this imbalance of gender affect what shows up in the newspaper and who gets quoted on what kinds of stories? We can only draw that conclusion. The Readership Institute at Northwestern University's Media Management Center showed that in 3,500 front-page stories, male sources outnumbered female sources 3 to 1. Women are more likely to be quoted on stories about health, home, food, fashion, travel and education. Men, however, are most likely to be quoted on stories about politics, business, religion and science.

The goal is not to add more women to the cubicles because it is fair.

Today we can look to major newspapers across the country and see strong, talented women at the helm: Ann Marie Lipinski at the Chicago Tribune; Sandra Mims Rowe at The Oregonian, Julia Wallace at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Deborah Howell at Newhouse News Service, Amanda Bennett at the Philadelphia Enquirer, to name some. In hundreds of newspapers, we see female bylines from datelines across the globe in all sections of the paper.

Their courageous and hard-earned ascent is not just politically correct, it is critical to achieve balanced, fair and inclusive coverage of a complex, changing society. As reporters, photographers, layout designers, editors and managers of news outlets, women add a different tempo to the chorus of voices, a different vision. It took Gail Collins to bring mammograms to the editorial page of The New York Times.

Women have needs for information on issues from public policy to private healthcare that differ from those of male readers. To respond, we need to race toward parity in employing and promoting women at our country's newspapers so ambition can meet opportunity half way.

Michele Weldon is an assistant Professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and is second vice president of Journalism and Women Symposium. She is the author of the memoir, "I Closed My Eyes: Revelations of a Battered Woman," and "Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story Through Journaling," both from Hazelden Publishing.

Who is a reporter and what does a reporter do?

If the Whole World Was Watching

By Dana Hughes, YES! Magazine
April 15, 2004

As the midmorning sun beats down and the humidity traps the fumes and exhaust from buses and cars, a group of young Salvadorans set up cameras among the people and pigeons in a public park. As they work, they attract a lot of attention from bystanders, including the police, who don't stop them, but continue to watch with suspicious eyes.

Learning how to film that suspicion is the reason the group is there. They are setting up their cameras under the leadership of Sam Gregory, the program coordinator for a group called Witness that is providing film training for Entre Amigos ("Between Friends"), an organization of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people in El Salvador. The group plans to document the discrimination and abuse its members suffer from authorities as part of a campaign for reforms. But before any of that can happen, they have to learn how to make videos, which is where Gregory and Witness come in. Gregory knows that effective training requires practice in public where circumstances aren't as easily controlled as they are in the backyard where the training sessions began.

Witness is a nonprofit organization that uses video and other communications technology to promote and defend human rights. Over the course of 10 years it has trained 150 partner organizations in more than 50 countries. The groups vary by cause as well as location, ranging from a South America-based group of scientists who solve human rights crimes to a U.S.-based group focusing on juvenile incarceration.

The scope of Witness's work hasn't always been so broad. It was founded in 1992 by the British musician Peter Gabriel, after an amateur photographer videotaped the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers and drew international attention to human rights abuses in the United States. If a video recorded by chance could have so powerful an effect, Gabriel thought, why not record international abuses more purposefully? He joined with the Lawyers Committee on Human Rights and theReebok Human Rights Foundation to start Witness. It began with two staff members, a budget of $150,000, and a primary concentration on providing cameras. Today Witness is an independent organization with 11 full-time staff members and eight on-site volunteers who work from a large loft in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood, and camera training is only part of their work.

In 1996 Witness helped its partners at the Global Survival Network produce "Bought and Sold," a documentary based on an undercover investigation of the Russian mafia's involvement in trafficking of women from the former Soviet Union. Footage from the film was picked up by ABC News, BBC and CNN and was the subject of a front-page story in The New York Times.

The media attention produced results: President Clinton issued an executive order allocating $10 million to fight violence against women, with special emphasis on trafficking. The issue received more attention after Madeleine Albright put it on the agenda in her meetings with heads of state, and in 2000 the United Nations passed a transnational protocol to prevent trafficking. That year, the U.S. Congress also passed the Trafficking Victims Protections Act.

Following the success of the "Bought and Sold" campaign, Witness hired Gillian Caldwell, who had participated in the trafficking investigation as co-director of Global Survival Network, to be its first executive director. Under Caldwell's watch, Witness installed a full-time production and editing facility on site and the number of its in-house productions increased from three to 30 in two years.

She also led the group to make greater use of the Internet. Besides explaining the work of the organization and its partners, the Witness website (www.Witness.org) features "Rights Alert," webcasts that highlight footage from partner organizations with accompanying narratives and suggestions for action.

"We were one of the first nonprofit organizations with sophisticated Web broadcasting on the Net," Caldwell says. "It was getting about a hundred hits a month in 1998. We get over 1.5 million hits a month now."

As it has grown, Witness has won the attention of media celebrities and government officials. Actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins serve on the board of directors, and films are narrated by performers such as Q-Tip, a rap artist. As the group's visibility has increased, the number of Witness partners has increased by more than 40 in the past four years, and the applications continue to come in. The group has expanded its focus from civil rights to include social, economic, and cultural rights as well.

Witness is also beginning to train some of its long-term partners to do video and editing training themselves. Joey Lozano, a freelance journalist from the Philippines, first became interested in the role of the media when he noticed the lack of reporting on human rights abuses during the Marcos dictatorship. Working with Witness, Lozano began training groups in rural areas in basic journalism and broadcasting. One group was Nakamata, a coalition of 10 indigenous peoples organizations working to secure land rights on the island of Mindanao. After three indigenous leaders were murdered in 2001, Lozano and Nakamata documented the crime in a video that Witness broadcast on its website. A Philippines investigative news program also aired the footage. Because of the local and international attention, the National Bureau of Investigation conducted an inquiry that led to the indictment of three people for murder. A film featuring Lozano and Nakamata recently won the Abraham Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Sandrine Isambert, a former video editor for Witness, also helped train partners. "Once partners see the process of editing, they understand shooting and scripting better," she says. Isambert worked closely with the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team), one of the world's premier groups of scientists involved in human rights work. The team combines clues from interviews, exhumation of human remains, and laboratory analyses to solve crimes, identify victims, and return their remains to their families. Testifying before courts and international tribunals, E.A.A.F. has been instrumental in bringing to justice government officials from places like Argentina and Haiti for abuses committed during the 1980s and 90s. Witness helped the group produce and distribute a video, "When Bones Talk," explaining its work in layman's terms for representatives of governments and nongovernmental organizations.

Gregory, who has a background in both commercial film production and human rights activism and is fluent in Spanish, is the primary contact and instructor for Witness's Latin American partners.

In 2002, Gregory conducted a monthlong training program in Central America. He spent two weeks in villages on the northern coast of Honduras working with the Comite de Emergencia Garifuna de Honduras (Garifuna Emergency Committee of Honduras). An indigenous group working on sustainable development, the Comite has faced arson and death threats from wealthy developers in local communities. Gregory helped the group film and edit footage of abuses committed recently in various Garifuna villages. He also spent time in Guatemala, working with Jesus Tecu Osorio, a survivor of Guatemala's civil war, who has been documenting the effects of the war on its victims and survivors. And Gregory conducted the training in El Salvador for Entre Amigos, a new Witness partner.

Because the clientele of Entre Amigos is primarily working class and poorly educated, the first challenge the group faces with new members is to help them understand their rights. Another challenge facing Entre Amigos is getting the government to enforce these rights. In El Salvador 75,000 people disappeared or were killed during a 12-year civil war that ended only 10 years ago. Although a democratic system has been in place since 1994, effects of the war linger – there is an extremely high poverty and crime rate and such a proliferation of guns that supermarkets post signs asking customers to check their weapons before shopping. Since El Salvador is still in the process of establishing basic rule of law and civil rights, addressing discrimination based on sexual orientation is not a priority.

At the initial training session last July, even before the cameras were brought in, Gregory encouraged the group to clarify its goals for the use of video.

In El Salvador, ordinances originally designed to fine lewd behavior in public are turning into excuses for illegal detainment and harassment of gays and transsexuals openly displaying affection. Abuses are common in the prison system, with guards harassing homosexual and transgender inmates and placing them with others who are openly homophobic. So Gregory discussed different ways to record and document such abuses.

The second day focused on technical camera training. Gregory explained that Entre Amigos would be using digital hand-held cameras and passed two of them around the group. Then he showed a video on how to use the cameras, stopping the tape to demonstrate each time it introduced a new topic. He made sure everyone in the room handled a camera and tried the techniques.

The group then moved outside to practice in the backyard, where they immediately faced lighting and sound challenges. Next they practiced filming in public, staging an interview with one of the Entre Amigos members, who pointed out where last year's gay pride parade took place.

The last day of the training focused on editing. Like a television cook who prepares different parts of a meal in advance, Gregory worked at night on his computer, logging and editing footage shot that day so that the group could see the various stages of the process. Almost all of the Entre Amigos participants see the process of editing as the link to everything they learned. With an understanding of editing, members of the group say, they see how future footage can be tailored to fit their goals and advance their cause.

William Hernandez, the director of Entre Amigos, remarks that what the group has learned during the week will permanently change the nature of its work. Joaquin Caceres, Entre Amigos' director of educational programming, agrees, emphasizing that Gregory has provided more than just camera training; he has given the group a strategy. "It's a tool we will utilize as much as possible to help spur people into action."

This article originally appeared in the Ford Foundation Report, Winter 2003. Dana Hughes is a staff writer for FFR.

Advanced Writing Notes
OVERVIEW

This course aims to familiarize you with the nature and content of critical approaches to mass communication inquiry, and help you better understand the mass media and mass communication from a variety of perspectives. The course also is intended to encourage critical inquiry into communication theories, journalistic practices, news and entertainment content, and to assist all students in becoming more informed, thoughtful and discerning media consumers.

OBJECTIVES
Each student will be capable of defining mass communication, will be familiar with the various media of mass communication currently in use in society, and will understand the essential characteristics of each medium.
Each student will be familiar with the dominant theories of mass communication processes and effects and will understand the primary advantages and limitations of several approaches to mass communication research.
Each student will begin to demonstrate analytical and critical thinking skills required to link mass communication theory with cultural understandings and personal reading/viewing habits.
Each student will develop fundamental skills in writing for the various media (including print, broadcast (radio & T.V.), web, and public relations) and in writing genre articles in each area. A report on our tour of Asahi Shimbun will be required as well as an interview in English which will be written as a news paper article.
Good Luck and let's have an interesting and enjoyable time writting.
Clark

Oops- I forgot the URL here it is:http://www.cbcradio3.com

Hi writers I would like you to go to this web-site and click on Feeling Art and listen through the sequence about a visually impaired women experiencing art. See you on Thur. Clark

Hi this is your first assignment for 04. Read this essay and try and understand it. Make notes of what you don't understand and we will talk about that in class. Good Luck! WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF MEDIA OR HOW THE MEDIA SEES THE WORLD (and is that a good thing or not?)
"A Policy Poisoned by Money": An Interview With Greg Palast

by Scott Thill

One thing investigative journalist Greg Palast is not is some blow-dried cream puff crowing the party line on CNN or Fox News. While America has gotten used to calling stuffed shirts like Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Brian Williams et. al. journalists, those guys spend more time preening in the makeup room than sweating in the field finding out just what the hell the country is up to. Even Koppel's recent foray into Iraq during the war was a Tony Snow-job: embedded with the American military, however comfy it may be, cannot help but slant reportage, especially if the Marines are telling you where you can and can't go.

Greg Palast has no such directives compelling him towards -- or away, as is usually the case -- a real story. One look at his book -- The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters -- can tell you that this guy is neither afraid of digging up the dirty truth nor the goon squads sent his way to keep it from seeing the light of day. And we're talking big stuff: the Enron disgrace, the Exxon Valdez environmental disaster, the Florida election rigging, the Bush-bin Laden connections, international financial crime -- this is the stuff the X-Files' Mulder and Scully would have sniffed out if they weren't so bogged down with alien invasions.

But Palast might as well be an alien, since the mainstream American media has, almost without exception, declared him persona non grata. He's a hot potato, because he's uncompromising, refuses to be cowed, and isn't afraid of the money men that make shit happen in the United States and abroad. For that thankless job, he's given up the normal lives we all lead, in lieu of making justice happen. So the least we can do -- since the corporate-owned ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, NPR and onward will not -- is give him space to breathe some life into stagnant American journalism. After all, that's what the European continent has done, having granted Palast coveted posts at the BBC, as well as UK newspapers of note.

Think of that: an American dedicated to truth and justice, and only the Europeans will let him talk. Only in America!

Scott Thill : Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. I know you're a busy man.
Greg Palast : No problem, it's a great day. It's my birthday and I'm sitting on the beach, so eat your heart out. So what's on your mind, besides the president and his family coup d'etat?

ST : [Laughs.] Are you kidding? That's the only thing on my mind these days. I read your book and it floored me.
GP : It kinda floored me finding this stuff out.

ST : Yeah, but I'm just a reader. You're the guy who has to deal with the pressure. Do you ever wish for a normal life?
GP : Well, today I'm leading a normal life for my birthday, but it feels very unusual. But it gets kind of manic, getting all this information. When I was doing an investigation of the Exxon Valdez, I lived in native villages up in Prince William Sound. I was also in London, finding out who's trying to buy up Tony Blair's government. I had to pull an undercover operation -- which is something that's not in the book -- while doing an investigation of the Shoreham nuclear plant, which has since been dismantled. It was a dangerous, hot piece of shit that had to be taken apart.


Private enemy number one: Cynthia McKinney. "She knew she was taking on George Bush; what she didn't know, working in Atlanta, was that she was taking on Atlanta's black political establishment."

ST : Do you ever get worried about digging too deep?
GP : Well, yeah, but I'm not really worried about myself, because if I did that, I couldn't function. But I do worry very much about my sources. For example, I reported that George Bush's gold mining company bought property in Tanzania, which was then cleared of miners. The miners were on what they considered their own property (while the mining company considered it to be their own property), but were still removed by bulldozers that rolled over the pits. Except that there were fifty people still in the mines when they were sealed up. I don't think that it was done deliberately, but in the mayhem and chaos of a pitched battle over George Bush's goldfield, fifty miners were buried alive. I had many sources for that story, but a key investigator was a human rights lawyer named Tundu Lissu, who -- for uncovering this information and getting it to me -- has been since charged with sedition. He may end up in jail for quite some time, but that's only if he's lucky. There are people disappearing there over this story; it's dangerous stuff. This week I wrote about Cynthia McKinney, who got mangled trying to follow up on some of my stories.

ST : I read that one, "The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney."
GP : Yeah, that was the headline given by Alternet, but I was actually looking at a wider issue. That was only part of a longer piece about the endless fibs, fabrications and fractured news given to us by the New York Times , NPR -- what I like to call National Petroleum Radio -- and the rest of the mainstream press in America. I used McKinney's case as only one example of that longer story. Basically, she was trying to follow up on the Tanzania story -- she read the transcripts of my reports from BBC television when she was in Congress -- with the Human Rights Subcommittee, of which she was a ranking member. She knew she was taking on George Bush; what she didn't know, working in Atlanta, was that she was taking on Atlanta's black political establishment. She didn't know that two of the people also involved in that gold mining company were Vernon Jordan and Andrew Young. And that meant she was setting herself up for the slaughter; they waited in the bushes until they got her. She also called for an investigation into another one of my reports, about the quashing of the investigation of the bin Laden family and Saudi financing of terror before September 11th. Which had nothing to do with George Bush knowing about September 11th; it was an intelligence failure that had to be investigated. And when she called for that investigation, they mangled her words, basically said that she was accusing George Bush of joining hands with Osama bin Laden in masterminding the killings of September 11th. She said no such thing, and denied it, but they killed her with that. So I worry a lot about the people who feed me information. But fear for myself? Nah.

ST : I figure that the mainstream media is a hopeless cause, but shouldn't they at least try to cover these stories, if only to honor the people who risk their lives to get them out there?
GP : Look, if a whistleblower goes to the New York Times and says, "I want to tell you what's going on inside this corporation or inside this agency," they just get blown off. Thirty years ago, the Washington Post ran the Watergate story, so that would make this the thirtieth anniversary of the Post not running an investigative story! Name one thing they've done. For example, the Iran/Contra story was broken by Bob Perry of the Associated Press , for which he was duly fired. You're really talking about news guys who are afraid and, simply, lazy. They're lazy little press puppies who want everything packaged for them. Even places like 60 Minutes ; almost all their stories are handed to them pre-fabricated. Here's the people on camera, here's the story, here's the evidence. And it's not a question of it being light news, it's that they can't go one day without saying what our president did. And the thing is, it crowds out real news. Three million people have been killed in civil war in the Congo, but what news do we have? We get these weird blips once in a while, about peacekeeping forces going in. Millions of people! We don't know shit about the Mideast; the Mideast coverage for us is what's going on in Israel and Palestine. And for all the arguments about bias -- the U.S. is biased towards Israel, Europe is biased towards the Palestinians -- the main problem is that it's biased towards a tiny piece of a giant place. We don't know what the fuck is going on in Syria, we don't know what the fuck is going in the Sudan. I pick up the Times and I just want to fuckin' throw it against the wall.


One "journalist" confuses a Peabody with a Polk, while the others hire Jayson Blair . "You're really talking about news guys who are afraid and, simply, lazy. They're lazy little press puppies who want everything packaged for them." (Photo: Reuters/Chip East)

ST : Damn, what do you do when you turn on something like Fox? That shit must drive you insane.
GP : I don't have a television. And I produce television! But I won't watch it. In Britain, I can turn on BBC and get programming that doesn't always embarrass me. But there's no place to turn in America. They give you these pseudo-liberal oases like Charlie Rose or something, but that's just more of the officialdom talking at you. I think the worst thing that ever happened to America was the public broadcast system. PBS is more dangerous than Fox, because it is the lie that you're getting some type of alternative, that you're getting a fuller picture, when in fact you're just getting more syllables to tell you what Mobil Oil wants you to hear. In fact, NPR pulled me off the air the other day. They were going to run a show about the "Screwing of Cynthia McKinney," until someone realized that I said that NPR had fabricated her words as much as everyone else. Actually, it's the NPR report on McKinney that was the worst; they took two separate parts of a radio interview, linked them together and completely misstated her words. So, at the last minute, they pulled me off the air just before I was supposed to go on.

ST : Yeah, I was listening to NPR the other day and they had some guy from the Heritage Foundation on there. If I want to hear what the Heritage Foundation thinks, I can go to Fox.
GP : Exactly. Obviously, some assistant producer at NPR thought it would be good to have me on there to talk about the media, but only to have some general blather and definitely not to talk about NPR, of course. Basically, it tends to be more liberal -- what I like to call social liberal -- but there's no challenge to the basic economic program of the New World Order. Every one of their writers is pro-globalization. Do you realize that one of the most left-wing writers in America with any stature is Thomas Friedman, who once wrote that all of our economic problems were solved by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan? That's our most liberal columnist.

ST : It's scary how you're not accepted in America for your reportage, while the Europeans are eager to give you a chance to speak.
GP : The fact is that I report for the most prestigious television news show on the planet -- BBC television's Newsnight -- and I write for prestigious newspapers, the Guardian and Observer . I have George Orwell's old post, and yet somehow I'm treated like the Unabomber. "He's gonna take some hostages and demand his stuff get printed!" The only thing I can hope for is the miracle of the Internet. Which is why the establishment keeps saying, "Look out for the Internet; it's so scary out there! You can't rely on that information." Like you can rely on the information on the Los Angeles Times , although I should be careful, because the L.A. Times did a glowing profile of me. But, on the other hand, I went through the Times with the reporter who did that story and said, "Look at this crap!" [Laughs.] It's true! I mean, I'm happy to get a lovely profile, but the information is missing. They even had a story that said there was unanimous praise for the appointment of Paul Bremer as the viceroy of Iraq. Unanimous? Having the former business partner of Henry Kissinger take over Iraq? There wasn't anyone out there who had a problem with that idea? They looked all over the newsroom and even called the White House but couldn't find anyone who thought it wasn't a brilliant idea. [Laughs.] So what can you do? I won't watch TV here, and I certainly won't let my kids. I glance at the newspaper to see what the latest lie is, and about the only exception, because it follows the money, is the Wall Street Journal . But I do read Hustler , because I'm the latest issue! [Laughs.] The only American outlets for my writing are Harper's and Hustler . I've got the H's down.


Winston Smith, America's finest satirical artist alive. "The Winston Smith illustrations are crucial to the book. The Italians understand this; in their country, Winston Smith and I have equal billing on the book." (Photo: AP)

ST : Yes! Well, we'd love to have you at Morphizm. I'm a political guy, but I love music and film, too…
GP : That's the thing. I think the thing is that we have to be very careful for is this: progressives should not become grim. The success of the antiwar movement was not built on the grim speeches of Tom Hayden but more on the antics and fun of Abbie Hoffman. When we created our own counterculture (although the other side wasn't really culture, just official distratction), we had our own music and images, control of our own fun. Don't go to Disneyworld; throw away the TV! [Laughs.] People who have done those two things have already started the revolution. I bet that's where you'll find the great dissident America.

ST : That's what we're about here: the place where you don't get crap. For example, I noticed that you had Winston Smith's artwork in your book.
GP : Yeah! I'm glad you noticed that.

ST : Oh absolutely. I talked to Jello Biafra who was sued by his band mates for control of their Dead Kennedys catalog , and one of his chief complaints was that they made Smith's album art so small that no one could read it. And that was always the point, having that voice of protest.
GP : That's funny, because my publisher, Penguin, didn't understand why I had all those Winston Smith illustrations in the book. I think the book is worth the price just for Smith's artwork. And they didn't get it. I told them it was as important as the pictures of the FBI documents; it was key. I'm really glad you grabbed onto that, because the Winston Smith illustrations are crucial to the book. The Italians understand this; in their country, Winston Smith and I have equal billing on the book. But in America, I put it there for those who know, or those who should know.

ST : Speaking of those who should know, why is the Bush administration so intent on blocking this 9/11 probe, when they've used it to justify every war they've started since, plus some of the draconian domestic programs like Total Information Awareness?
GP : I just did a one-hour documentary on this for the BBC, "The Bush Family Fortunes," which you can't see, of course. It's going out all around the world, except America. We know that Bush's energy policy was completely Enronized. We know all about the secret meetings between Ken Lay and Dick Cheney; and even though people say we don't know what went on in those meetings, I have a lot of those letters and minutes. Lay simply said, "Here's the people I want as head of the agencies that are regulating me." He got to pick his own regulators, rewrite the energy laws of America; we know that.

But the oil patch continues on through foreign policy, although oil has always been at the heart of it, which in turn poisons our intelligence community. For example, George W's first business was funded by the U.S. financial agent of the bin Laden family, a guy named James Bath. Then we get to Harken, which is funded by a guy named Sheik Bahksh, out of Saudi Arabia. We have the government of Bahrain giving Harken a Persian Gulf drilling contract. You have to understand that some tiny oil driller out of Texas is never, ever given a Persian Gulf drilling contract; it just doesn't happen. But it turns out in this case, George W. Bush, whose daddy was president at the time, was put on the board. And throughout we've got Saudi and other Gulf money enriching George W. Bush.


Keep laughing, American infidel. You're still the chauffeur! "A lot of it is this: 'We don't bother the Saudis, they're our friends, they provide our oil.' Well, the Saudis have not been our buddies, they've been George W. Bush's buddies. They're not my buddies, especially when they're funding people that attacked the United States." (Photo: Reuters/Larry Downing)

So what was he doing in the summer of 2001? Previously, Bill Clinton had sent two delegations to Saudi Arabia saying, "Stop funding terrorists. Here's a list of people in your kingdom, in your royal family that are funding terrorists. Knock it off." Those delegations stop under Bush; plus, he disbands the unit investigating Saudi financial ties to terrorism, and removes the FBI team investigating Al Qaeda from Yemen. Now is this because Bush was planning to help Osama attack America? No. It's because he was making sure that his former business partners, and his Saudi friends, are not embarrassed about the revelations about who's backing terrorism. And none of the small incidents, like the Cole or the embassy attacks, touched the U.S.

So what's happened is that you have a foreign policy poisoned by money. Bush is saying, "Don't investigate my friends." In fact, some of these people, like Bahksh, are under investigation by European intelligence agencies for sponsoring Al Qaeda, although sometimes unknowingly. Al Qaeda runs a shakedown operation, but that's details. A lot of it is this: "We don't bother the Saudis, they're our friends, they're our buddies, they provide our oil." Well, the Saudis have not been our buddies, they've been George W. Bush's buddies. They're not my buddies, especially when they're funding people that attacked the United States. I worked in the World Trade Center; they attacked my building. Fifteen of those nineteen hijackers were Saudis, but we attacked Iraq without one shred of evidence that there was any connection between Hussein and Al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein, a horrible guy, but still.

And now they're selling us on Iran's connection to Al Qaeda. Keep this in mind: the United States was not Al Qaeda's first target. Their first target was Iran; almost no one knows or understands that in America. They hate the Iranians. Al Qaeda slaughtered the Iranian embassy delegation in Afghanistan; they came in and machine-gunned everyone. Iran is their number one target, because they are Shi'ites, and considered to be horrible apostates. The idea that the Iranian government has anything to do with Al Qaeda is insane. The Saddam Hussein thing was off the wall, but we're going to fight a government that hates Al Qaeda even more than we do. Now, Iran is a fascist Islamic government that should be deposed -- by their own people. Like I said, you pick up the paper, and you're ready to tear your hair out.

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ST : Right. Accusations against Bush for being a part of the 9/11 attacks aside, there's simply no denying his connections to all of the parties involved. He's a part of this whether he wants to be or not.
GP : That's the thing. Now, this continues on something that Clinton started, but he sent two delegations to Saudi Arabia in the year 2000, saying cut it out. And all the Saudis had to do was wait it out for their boy George. And they did, and this one of the big goddamn problems. Plus, we're given the bullshit that the Gulf is no longer dangerous? Think about this: Okinawa's government has been requesting the removal of American troops for five decades; World War II is over! We won't leave Okinawa, but we'll leave Saudi Arabia? It's the only place I know of where we're abandoning bases, and it's the only place on the planet that Al Qaeda wants us to abandon our bases. So basically now we've got a chickenshit, draft-dodging coward of a president who's decided that he's going to give in to Al Qaeda's laundry list. I think giving in to terrorists like Al Qaeda is a very bad move, and it led directly to those explosions in Riyadh. Because we said we were removing all our troops but 500, and that was Al Qaeda's way of saying, "No, no, no, that's not what we asked for." That's the problem inherent in bargaining with terrorists, and no matter what Bush says, that's exactly what he's doing. He's bargaining with Al Qaeda, because he doesn't want another attack before the election. Right now, he's heroic. If there's another attack, people will say, "What was all this bullshit for?"

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ST : That's another thing. Right now, I think he's vulnerable to the Democracts, Fox-sponsored polls aside.
GP : Yeah, with the exception of Lierberman, who's seems to be at a dead loss. I'm not sure he knows if he wants to be a Democrat. Think about this: Clinton was utterly unknown. No one would run against Bush Sr. in 1992, because he was the Desert Stormtrooper. He was supposed to be invincible, and all the Democrats could find was some philanderer from Arkansas, and that's how we ended up with Bill Clinton. So no one's ever heard of these guys, but they're not miracles. But compared to what the Democratic party has produced? Everyone running right now is head and shoulders above Al Gore. Gore is a confused loser, and the problem is that he doesn't know what he stands for.

ST : I talked to Dennis Kucinich a couple weeks ago, and he's my favorite out of all of them so far.
GP : It doesn't matter at this point. Democrats are very good at having firing squads within a circle. They need to make sure that the primary doesn't become a drinking of the Kool Aid, where everyone slaughters or shoots at each other. That would be the great tragedy of the Democratic party, but the Democratic party is tragic anyway. I never say who I vote for, so I won't say the Democrats get my vote. But they do get my pity.

27 June 03

SHELL GAME WITH HUMAN RIGHTS
http://www.corporateeurope.org/norms.html
Corporate lobby groups such as the International Chamber of
Commerce (ICC) have launched a fierce counter-campaign against the
proposed Norms on Business and Human Rights, which were developed
by a subcommission of the United Nations Commission on Human
Rights. The Norms oblige businesses internationally to refrain from
activities that violate human rights. In addition to the ICC, the
Norms have been vigorously opposed by the Shell oil company, a
self-proclaimed leader in the corporate social responsibility (CSR)
movement. "Is this not the kind of campaign one could expect only
from companies lagging behind and from free-riders refusing to
adapt to social and environmental concerns?" asks the Corporate
Europe Observatory (CEO). The motive behind Shell's opposition, CEO
suggests, is that "the company generally gets away easily with its
inflated claims concerning its social responsibility record. A
recent report by Christian Aid documents that Shell's operations in
the Niger Delta (Nigeria) are still causing serious problems for
local communities. The report also highlights that most of the
community development projects presented in various glossy Shell
reports on CSR are in fact failing. Hospitals, schools and water
supply systems are built but never start working, and roads are
mainly used to boost oil production. But beyond the debate about
the extent to which Shell`s CSR claims are actually greenwash and
poor-wash, it is clear that the company is determined to prevent
the emergence of international mechanisms through which communities
could hold it accountable to its pledges."
More web links related to this story are available at:
http://www.prwatch.org/spin/March_2004.html#1080415559

NEW E-BOOK READER USES DIGITAL PAPER TECHNOLOGY
Sony, Philips and digital paper pioneer E-Ink are launching an
electronic book reader called Librié, which is the size of a paperback book
and can hold 500 texts in its memory. The display has a resolution of 170
pixels per inch -- about the same quality as a newspaper, says E-Ink. The
Librié weighs about 300g (about 10.5 ounces), including four AAA batteries
and a front cover. The device uses battery power only when text is
refreshed, which means it should be able to display about 10,000 pages
before it needs its batteries changed. The Librié is 13mm (about half an
inch) thick and its screen measures 15cm (about 6 inches) diagonally. It's
due to go on sale in Japan in late April for $375. (BBC News 26 Mar 2004)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3568505.stm