Category: default || By jt3y

News item in Saturday's Daily News (the story isn't currently online): Complaints were lodged last week at a Glassport borough council meeting over a Website called glassportboro.com, which features, as you might expect, information about the TV show "ALF."

No, of course not; it features information about Glassport. According to the story, "some residents" are upset, which I would interpret as "some residents who the author of the Website has criticized are upset."

A quick review of the Website, owned by Dennis Marini of Glassport, reveals a lot of content that looks to be strictly factual and obtained from public records --- things like reprinted council meeting minutes, police press releases, and the borough's monthly financial statements.

But there are also editorials --- some signed, some unsigned --- critical of elected officials and the direction that the borough of 4,900 people has taken. Candidates for political office have also posted comments and declared their positions.

I know even less about Glassport than I know about anything else, and there are lots of things about which I know squat. Suffice it to say I don't know how to evaluate the claims of various people writing on glassportboro.com for truth or accuracy, and I have no idea what kind of axes are being ground, or whose oxen are being gored.

But I do know that the beauty of the First Amendment is that Mr. Marini can host a Website called glassportboro.com that makes an argument, and that people who disagree with him can create their own and make opposing arguments. And the beauty of the Internet is that it's made it a lot more convenient to disseminate the information.

Years ago, if you had a niche message --- targeting people who care about politics in Glassport, for instance --- you would have had to write pamphlets or newsletters, photocopy or ditto them, and mail them or pass them out on street corners. Yet despite the fact that it was a bit of a pain in the rear, there was a burgeoning industry of "'zines" in the late '80s and early '90s.

Now, you can skip the whole printing and publishing process and go straight from creation of content to distribution. And rather than seeking out readers, they seek you out through search engines like Google.

Rumors of the demise of the "mainstream media" at the hands of Web publishers are greatly exaggerated, mainly by delusional bloggers who are seriously overestimating their own importance. Newspaper circulation and TV viewership are both down, especially among those who spend a lot of time on the Internet, but TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers are still the big dogs, and Web publishing is not going to topple them any time soon. If TV wasn't still a major force in advertising, would so many Websites advertise on TV? Also, some top Websites are controlled by the same conglomerates that own major newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets, such as AOL Time Warner. As their marketshare of "traditional" media declines, they'll gain eyeballs for their "new" media.

Nevertheless, the Web sure has made it easier for the voiceless to have voices. They may be shouting into a wind tunnel, but they never even got a chance to see the wind tunnel before, so that's some kind of progress.

An Alert Reader recently pointed me to a column by Mike Seate in the Tribune-Review, which called people who self-publish online "fools" for writing for free. Maybe we are.

Is it foolish for Mr. Marini to care enough about Glassport to want to maintain a Website about it? Is it foolish for Mike Madison to care enough about events surrounding his local school board to keep tabs on them over at Pittsblog? I guess it's in the eyes of their readers.

Personally, I make sure I do my best writing for the people who pay me to write; publishing the Almanac is more of a daily writing exercise to limber up my typing fingers. It's practice. That's why I don't bother spilcheking it or making sure the grammar is gooder. If people get a kick out of reading it, so much the better.

Jack Kelly wrote in the Post-Gazette recently that his newspaper held a editorial discussion about many topics, including Web logs, and "the consensus seemed to be that we needn't worry much about them." But as Kelly pointed out, it was these "fools" who have broken several big news stories, including the story that Eason Jordan of CNN had alleged that reporters in the Middle East were being deliberately targeted by American troops.

"The earth rumbles, and we think it's our big feet, stomping the Lilliputians," Kelly says. "But what if it's an earthquake about to swallow us up?"

Maybe, but I wouldn't count my earthquakes before they've hatched. It remains to be seen if Web publishing and blogging is here to stay, or if it's just a faddish hobby; Seate suggests it's like the CB radio boom of the 1970s, which had a huge surge of popularity and then faded out.

Yet many bloggers are doing nothing more than keeping a diary online; instead of hiding them under their beds, they put them on the Internet. And keeping diaries or journals is hardly a fad. It's probably as old as written language itself; all that's changed now is the medium the diarists are using.

In any event, I'd hesitate to call anyone choosing to exercise their First Amendment rights a "fool," unless their opinions are truly in the realm of cloud cuckoo land. Was it foolish for Thomas Paine to print up pamphlets the 1770s that supported American independence? Was it foolish for William Lloyd Garrison to publish abolitionist newspapers in the 1830s? Was it foolish for Soviet dissidents to distribute underground newsletters calling for the overthrow of Communism?

Not only did those folks write for free, they published at great risk to their own lives. That sounds like the very definition of foolishness.

Whereas I only risk making myself look --- well, foolish --- on a daily basis. But I have fun.

...

A correspondent reports that she was waiting in line at a Lysle Boulevard convenience store behind a young man who had his wallet on a chain. Which is not necessarily unusual, except that this was a white plastic chain --- of the type often used to hang plants from hooks on front porches. She asks whether this is a trend, and as far as I know, it isn't.

It could have been worse, of course. He could have had his wallet on a macrame chain.

...

(Lest anyone think that my comments about Mike Seate's column are motivated by some evil purpose, in the interest of full disclosure, I used to work at the Trib, and some people there were happy to see me go. I also happen to enjoy Mike's column, but don't hold that against him. Also, I had shredded wheat for breakfast, I'm wearing brown socks today, and I just got a haircut. How's that for full disclosure?)