This is the third May 1 since I’ve been living in Los Angeles. There is no day that has been more memorable, scary, or incredible in my LA experience than the past two May Firsts. May 1, 2006 had tremendous build-up, with some of the largest immigration rallies preceding it and it exceeded all expectations. Half a million people rallied and it made headlines around the world. More importantly, the local media began stepping up it’s coverage of immigrant issues as they affect every day life and commerce in Southern California. May 1, 2007 made headlines for different reasons, LAPD overreacted at MacArthur Park where rallies were taking place and many were injured by rubber bullets. It was horrible and a total embarrassment for the city and just an utter disgrace. Here’s hoping for a safe, memorable, and spirited May Day 2008 and a salute to the Dockworkers who effectively shut down all ports on the West Coast in protest of the Iraq War today.
Twitter Saves
Cool story:
Buck, 29, a former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, used the ubiquitous short messaging service to tap out a single word on his cellular phone: ARRESTED. The message went out to the cell phones and computers of a wide circle of friends in the United States and to the mostly leftist, anti-government bloggers in Egypt who are the subject of his graduate journalism project.
The next day, he walked out a free man with an Egyptian attorney hired by UC Berkeley at his side and the U.S. Embassy on the phone.
Twitter Updates for 2008-03-28
- without warning, Live365 emails me to say I now have to pay 50% more monthly AND shorten my broadcast? Where’s my founding VIP treatment, yo #
- escaping office / computer trance to check out Dealmaker LA and then to the Brewery for MindShare. yay. http://www.labrewery.org/mindshare #
- DoD accidentally sent ballistics to Taiwan. But TSA wont let nipple piercings fly. good lookin out, U.S. #
- At Mindshare, wishing there was pizza. Inspired, but hungry. And all the girls are barefoot. #
- @rizwank pls drive safe. U stink, my fault! #
- @caseymckinnon ouch! one lesson from the Jewish tradition would be to put the glasses in a paper or canvas bag before smashing 😉 #
- ugh lots of work email to parse — slowly but surely making my way down to Berkman media re:public @ Annenberg. Missing Castells tho 🙁 #
- @kthread thats BS. file a complaint and raise hell at tsa.gov/blog #
- @sloane @mashable and also twiistup at A/C after dinn3r (or for some, Zittrain @ hhill). Get social! #
- looking at lots of blurry dots in a preso. feels like a vision test. and y’know, @digidave kinda does look like his mickeymouse digg avatar #
- Marc Cooper: the pro-am approach allows for better reporting, audience, and precision. independent AND accurate. Generate debate. #
- Lunch with Southside Torey Malatia and Jon Taplin. Talkin econ of npr/pbs and cost-revs of multiplatform distribution. quietly missing 848. #
- listening to large future of news panel w/ @zittrain, @lisawilliams, @solana, @digidave and others. @zittrain opens with Simpsons joke. heh. #
- @rhetor it’s a Berkman Center event in conjunction with ASC http://tinyurl.com/226zrx #
- Lisa Williams: "Journalism will survive the death or transformation of its major institutions… GOOG + NYT same ind." (viva la revolucion)! #
- @lisawilliams’ slides @MRForum: http://flickr.com/photos/lisawilliams/ #
- Doc Searls says nobody has blogged about VRMproject’s relbutton icon. a microformat for customer/vendor http://rurl.org/mbk #
Bloggables + I’m Going to Argentina
Happy to announce that I will be travelblogging for what feels like the first time in years and, if I do it right, will actually be a return to my early blogging form circa my 7 month trek in and around Europe, 2000-2001. I’ll be in Argentina and Chile before, over, and after New Years. Drop a line if you’d like to meet up for a drink. Here are a few recent stories that I would have liked to blog about, but have been too busy:
* Nick Denton is looking to hire bloggers with “real” journo experience, and we’re not talking Owen Thomas types here, apparently. This has everyone going in circles once again on the can blogs = journalism if not journalists do not = bloggers meme.
* Ayman al-Zawahri, yeah — Al Qaeda #2 with the questionable name — wants his very own YouTube debate. Noah Schactman has the low down and an entertaining selection of reader-contributed questions in the comments.
* Google Zeitgeist 2007 has been released. Data that’s fun to play with, at your fingertips here.
* Early results are in on Nielsen’s new way of ranking online news sites’ success. Stickiness. Most sites don’t got it.
* and Google is getting more and more social. I’ve been starring and sharing Google Reader stories of interest for some time now and if you’re a GMail or GTalk contact of mine, we can now actively share our “shares” in our Readers. So far, I’m disappointed that it seems none of my contacts use the Goog reader or at least don’t share. These are my shared items, I’ve also been marking stories for coverage on LAist using Clipmarks and quite like their new version 3.0 interface. See what I mean here.