Today's example of really sloppy local journalism.
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Petite nouvelle insolite du vendredi matin: certains journalistes n’ont rien à envier à certains blogueurs concernant la piètre qualité de ce qu’ils publient.
On entend encore et toujours se lamenter sur la mort du journalisme… et qu’à côté des blogs, le journalisme, c’est sérieux, ça, c’est un vrai métier, qu’on fait face à une apocalypse de l’information avec le naufrage des médias traditionnels, etc., etc.
Alors, avant d’aller plus loin, je tiens à préciser (disclaimer!) que je sais qu’il y a des journalistes qui font très bien leur boulot, etc., etc. — que mes amis et lecteurs journalistes ne prennent pas mal ce que je vais dire.
Comme toute personne qui se fait régulièrement interviewer le sait, les citations entre guillemets que l’on trouve dans un article écrit correspondent rarement aux mots prononcés, et inévitablement, quelque part entre la conversation avec le professionnel de la presse et la publication, détails et nuances se perdent en route, quand ce n’est pas carrément certains faits. A leur décharge, les journalistes travaillent souvent dans l’urgence, et sur des sujets avec lesquels ils ne sont pas forcément familiers, donc j’ai appris à accepter qu’un certain décalage entre “les faits” (qui contiennent “ce que j’ai dit”) et “le discours” (l’article) est inévitable. Avec l’expérience, je déduis aussi que c’est le cas de tous les articles que je lis, et non pas seulement de ceux pour lesquels j’ai été interviewée.
Mais passons. Ce qui m’interpelle aujourd’hui, c’est l’histoire du bancomat de Thierry Weber. Je vous laisse regarder sa vidéo explicative si vous voulez (elle est franchement un peu longuette) — mais voici un résumé des faits.
Hier, Thierry va retirer des sous au bancomat de la BCV, et trouve celui-ci en maintenance… écran actif. Il filme, fait quelques commentaires amusés. Voici la vidéo (il faut pencher la tête, avertissement, gare à votre nuque!):
Reste une bande de jeunes convaincue d’avoir découvert le Graal, s’imaginant déjà joyeusement retirer un million de francs.
Oui oui, vous avez bien lu. Thierry est une bande de jeunes à lui tout seul!
Alors on note:
une vidéo sur le web, ça ne peut être le fait que d’une bande de sales djeunz, et non pas d’un homme de 42 ans
franchement, à qui donc est-ce que ça a échappé que les commentaires de Thierry sur sa vidéo n’étaient peut-être pas à prendre au premier degré?
côté analyse des sources, zéro pointé pour le journaliste en question: remonter de la vidéo à son créateur, dans ce cas-ci, on ne peux pas dire que c’était un travail très compliqué (surtout qu’ils ont pris la peine d’appeler Christian Jacot-Descombes… mais retrouver l’auteur d’une source publié sur le web, ça non, on sait pas!)
et puis… dommage, pas possible de laisser de commentaire sur l’article pour rectifier l’erreur… ah non, c’est moi qui n’ai pas de compte 24heures pour commenter… bon, j’y vais de ce pas! Ah ben si, après avoir rempli la pile de champs nécessaires à l’obtention d’un compte pour commenter… la discussion est effectivement fermée! Bel exemple d’ouverture au dialogue.
Bref, on est pas sortis de l’auberge. Ce qui risque de buzzer plus encore que la vidéo, c’est le piètre travail de reportage sur cette histoire de la part de 24 heures!
Très difficile d'évaluer la qualité d'une proposition de conférence basé sur un résumé textuel (ce que je suis en train de faire à présent pour la conférence BlogTalk 2009 qui aura lieu à Jeju, en Corée du Sud). Il faudrait que les candidats donnent non seulement un descriptif écrit de leur proposition, mais aussi un court extrait vidéo (2-3 minutes), soit d'une conférence qu'ils ont déjà donnée, soit d'un "pitch" pour le sujet qu'ils proposent.
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Just a passing thought, as I’m spending some time reviewing submissions for the upcoming BlogTalk 2009 conference in Jeju, South Korea.
Just as my proposal was reviewed (and rejected) last year, I am now on the other side of the fence, looking at proposal abstracts and trying to determine if they would make good presentations for the conference.
BlogTalk is an interesting conference, because it tries to bridge the academic and practitioner worlds. The submission process resulting from that led to some interesting discussions last year (academics are used to submitting papers all over the place and are paid for that, practitioners on the conference circuit are more used to being asked to come and talk) and as a result the process was modified somewhat for this year. Practitioners and academics alike submit a short abstract of their talk/paper/research, and people like me (the programme committee) review them.
What I am realizing, doing this, is that it is very hard to imagine if the proposals will produce good talks. I mean, I can judge if their content is interesting or not. I don’t know the people sending in the proposals, so I keep going from “ah, this could be really good if the speaker is competent” to “ew, if the speaker isn’t good this could be a nightmare”.
Already in my long-gone university days, I had understood that content is only half of the deal. Take great content but a crap speaker, you’ll lose half your audience (and I’m being nice).
In 2007 and 2008, I gave a fair amount of talks all over the place and organized my own conference. All this time on the “conference circuit” and amongst regular speakers led me to view it as something quite close to the entertainment business.
So, setting up a conference that will be successful means finding engaging speakers who will be able to talk about interesting topics. When I organized Going Solo (clearly a very different type of conference than BlogTalk, of course), I picked speakers I was familiar with and that I had already seen “in action”.
Back to screening proposals for conferences — of course, if you want an open process, you’re not going to know all the speakers. But how about asking candidates, alongside the written abstract, for a 2-3 minute video excerpt of them giving a talk, or pitching their proposal?
Design exposed Ramesh to questions of culture. (steph-note: I think this is a very good point/thing.)
Put technology in the hands of people: things happen. Used in a different way and in a different context than what they were planned for.
Cultures understand how to take technologies to use them in ways that best benefit them.
Usability tends to push us towards thinking that there are specific uses for the technology, and we design them for those uses. But out there in the wild, other uses appear.
Example: Native American communities in Southern California, spread across reservations, connected through wifi.
Rethinking the museum. Piece of pottery — viewed by Zunis through stories, uses, rather than characteristics. Intersection between what the Zuni say about the piece of pottery, and the museum.
Video camera in villages in Andhra Pradesh. People seeing themselves in different ways.
=> comparative study Ramesh ran. 2 villages, similar demographics. “Create videos” around their everyday lives.
What happens? specially in an environment where 80% of the villagers are illiterate?
Power of choice. Characteristics of illiterate societies (very ritualized). When they start creating videos, some kind of literacy settles in. They’d take videos of things in the communities that were wrong, and send it to the government. Social action. Posted on YouTube, even!
What happened?
Mobility, dissemination, social capital, dialogue outside the focus group, confronting ritualization by interrupting everyday life.
Taking it to Policy. Scale vs. The Local.
How do policy-makers view the world? Example, waterlogging (monsoon). Hundreds of terms in people’s vocabulary for that, but only one for those complaints on a policy level.
Where to start? tagging to overcome ontology issues, for example.
Two main issues:
a) how do we develop web systems that actually show controversy (wikipedia doesn’t really show that, for example steph-note: except in talk pages)
b) search: information has moved from “in your mind” to “what you can find = Google”. Google’s algorithm is based on a certain idea of how things should be found. eg search for Africa — head over to page 3 at least to find the first page produced by/in Africa… that says something! How do we show different ways of solving a problem?
Xavier: FRIUP incubator. Very different from a coworking space. Very startup-minded. Need to leave after one year. Have to present a project to a committee who will decide if they can benefit from the incubator.
Going Solo, c'est demain! Une vidéo et deux-trois pensées d'organisatrice.
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Gosh. If I learnt one thing in my life, it’s that day go by and dates end up being “tomorrow”, and even “today” at some point. Going Solo is tomorrow — I have to pinch myself regularly to make sure I’m not dreaming.
You can still register online until tonight. Come to the Warm-Up Party this evening. I’m still wondering what to wear, worrying about a DHL package which reached Geneva yesterday morning but still hasn’t made it to my door, preparing to jot down some notes for what I’m going to say as the MC (and a panel moderator!) on the big day, wondering what “unpredictables” are going to crop up today (the last two days have been filled with them, big and small), remembering that I still have a bunch of Going Solo related photos to upload (maybe I’ll test the venue wifi with them)… Well, I’m busy.
And excited.
Thanks to all those of you who supported me these last months. I wouldn’t have made it this far without you.
Morsure de chat. Pas mon chat: chat du voisin que j'ai acculé (chez moi, pour le leur ramener) même après qu'il m'ait prévenu à grands coups de griffe qu'il était trop paniqué pour venir tranquillement. Moralité: les chats ont de longues dents pointues et ne se les lavent pas.
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Thanks to everybody for their sympathy and wishes of speedy recovery!
Not much typing. Cat bite. Details later. Nice cat. Not Bagha. Silly Steph.
Infected. Another appointment tonight. I hope they don’t leave me in this huge splint too long. Can’t do anything!
Friday night update:
Left arm: infected cat bite. They have long sharp canines and don’t like being cornered in a strange place by a strange person. Splint that forbids any use of my hand — will stick around for at least another 2-3 days.
Right arm: catheter. I had 3 doses of antibiotic through IV over the last 24 hours, and am headed for at least that many over the week-end. There are only so many veins in the arm you can stick needles in.
Now, we hope the long canine didn’t go deep enough to infect the bone — or I’m looking at 4-6 weeks of treatment.
Fingers crossed, everybody, please.
Video Update: the story and more details.
How it happened:
The consequences:
Sunday morning update: I can haz fingers!
Still got the catheter, though it hurts less now the tap is on the outside of my forearm.
Great improvement: fingers on my left hand! I can type somewhat! Things are taking a good turn. Thumb joint still very painful, so I’m a little worried it could be inflamed/infected — but gosh, does it feel good to have part of my hand back.
Sunday evening news: good!
Monday update: shower!
From now onwards, things are on the right track. I can remove my splint if I like, infection seems gone, but it’s still inflamed. So, I can type and do most of what one expects to do with two hands, just a bit slower and more painfully.
