Tag: tsunami

German Article in Migros Magazin [en]

Material from my interview with Migros Magazine was re-used for an other article in the German-language counterpart, Migros Magazin. Should I be unhappy about how it was done?

[fr] Un morceau d'interview et la photo prise pour mon interview dans Migros Magazine ont été réutilisés dans la version allemande, pour un article assez différent sur les blogs. Devrais-je m'offusquer qu'on ne m'ait pas demandé mon autorisation?

Last month, an interview of me was published in the French-speaking Migros Magazine, under the title Born to Blog. It was a pretty good article, and I was happy with the photograph.

This morning, I noticed an incoming referer from the German edition of the same magazine: Wie Blogger den Tsunami-Opfern Halfen, with my photograph. If my German isn’t too rusty, this means “How Bloggers Helped Tsunami OrphansVictims“.

Well, at first, I bypassed the title and started reading the text, assuming it must be a translation of my initial interview. Not so. The first and last paragraph have something to do with me, but the middle of this small article is about something I don’t even know about.

Exploring a little more by looking at the PDF version of the article, I understood that it was in fact part of a larger enquiry on blogs.

Right, so they re-used part of the interview I did in December, and the photograph to illustrate it. It’s nice to be in the German-language press, of course, but I can’t help thinking they should at least have asked me before re-using the interview and the photograph.

I was in for a bit more surprise when I tried to see where the article was linked from on the main page of the site. Here is what I saw. (Screenshots coming later.)

Now, I’ll agree that my photo is a good one (my thanks to the photographer for her patience, by the way), and that I have a slight tendancy to think others try to take advantage of me all the time, but it does strike me as a little strange that my photograph is used to illustrate the link to the other article in the enquiry. Try clicking around, you’ll see what I mean.

Should I be unhappy about this, or do you just give up any hope of what your words or image are used for once you start dealing with the press?

As an aside, a three-part interview of me will be aired on the RSR1 radio next week. More details about that in a later post.

Update 11.02.2005: after writing this post, I also sent an e-mail to the journalist who interviewed me. He called me straight away to apologize. Neither he nor his boss knew about the German article, so they were also a little annoyed. This was clearly an internal communication problem, and from what I understand it wasn’t the first time.

He assured me that even though the photo could in theory be re-used, it shouldn’t be taken out of its context. The present case was a bit on the limit, he admitted — the article was about blogging, but from a whole other angle. I suggested they get the web people to put in links between the two parts of the enquiry on weblogs.

Update 01.06.2005: photographer’s name removed at her request.

IT Conversations: Dan Gillmor [en]

Some notes on IT Conversations show with Halley Suitt and Dan Gillmor (audio available online).

[fr] Interview audio de Dan Gillmor par Halley Suitt. Quelques notes.

I’m currently listening to Halley’s interview of Dan Gillmor on IT Conversations. I’m not used to listening to stuff through the internet (the whole podcasting hype hasn’t really caught my interest… yet) — so here are a few notes and comments, mainly for myself.

First of all, I’m always slightly shocked to hear people I know from the Internet actually speaking. When chatting, or reading blogs, I forget that people have accents. So, my first reaction upon hearing Halley speaking was “Gosh! She really has an American accent!”.

After a first part on American politics that went completely over my head, the topic turned to “Journalism and blogging” (already more interesting) and finally, more webby stuff. A few random notes:

  • Strive for objectivity in journalism still a valid aim.
  • 9-11, elections, tsunami: made blogs visible as a media, rather than “made more people blog” (I’ve finally managed to name the confusion that irritates me so much.)
  • Camera phones (and digicams in general) have a highly disruptive potential. Towards more transparency. Harder to hide nasty things.
  • Podcasting: most people not trained to produce the kind of audio we enjoy listening to.
  • Blogs with small readership (target audience=family and close friends): very important sociologically.
  • Internet allows to bring readers closer to source material.
  • Probably lots of source material for historians gathering now on the web. Web stuff as potential replacement for the letter, which used to give lots of information on people’s lives and current events. (Biographies, History.)
  • Not holding people accountable (in future) about silly things they wrote on their teenage blogs…
  • About writing the book online: retaining authorship, while having thousands of “eyes” to give feedback and comments. (And the eyes in question will be those interested by the topic.)

Next one I’m listening to is Joi’s.

Article dans La Liberté [fr]

Un article dans La Liberté, pour lequel j’ai été interviewée, parle de la diversité de la blogosphère.

[en] A brief interview of me appeared today in La Liberté, on a page about the diversity of the blogosphere (PDF).

Un article dans La Liberté, Puissance et extension de la blogosphère (PDF), parle de la diversité de la blogosphère. Il y a aussi un petit interview “questions-réponses” de moi en encadré.

Article intéressant, à  mon avis, qui présente bien les différentes tendances existant parmi les blogs. Dommage simplement (pour un article sur les blogs!) qu’il n’indique pas une seule URL!