“A Gadfly Becomes Persona Non Grata in City Hall
By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: June 16, 2007
It took Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to actually bar Rafael Martínez Alequin, the publisher of a small independent newspaper, from City Hall news conferences.”

Mr. Martinez, who was interviewed on the premiere airing of Lisacast, was written up in the NYTimes yesterday. You can read the article here.

In essence, it talks about the struggle of a long-time journalist to sustain press credentials. Martinez has hired Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer to address what he says is unconstitutional in the way it approves media credentials. Both Mr. Siegel and police reporter Leonard Levit (nypdconfidential.com) are considering federal lawsuits to set things straight. Administration officials (at the police department) say that they denied Mr. Alequin and Mr. Levitt press credentials because “they did not show a need to cover breaking news for a legitimate news organization.“

Wow, “a need“. Do I even need to finish this thought? Evidently. Whose need? Who says what is legitimate?

“An individual’s declaration that they are a news-gathering organization does not make it so,” said Paul J. Browne, a Police Department spokesman.

Then what makes it so and what makes it legit? Does anyone else find it interesting that the police dictate this? Um, aren’t the police a little tight with the politicians?

This could all be solved by a simple definition of what a news-gathering organization is. And I think once the power-holders are willing or overthrown to have that discussion, we’ll be a step closer to righteousness. On the list of getting to this new definition, we should be sure to ask about each of the pieces of this term:

 1. NEWS Things that happen that anyone cares about, well that’s everything. How do we decide what people want? We don’t, becuase they do (or will pretty soon). Yesterday I spoke with Dave Winer, inarguably a thought-leader and contributor to this cause, who has been talking for some time about a user-specified news service. That means you get to choose what news you want, you don’t have to page through the paper or a web site for the things you care about and you don’t have to watch weeks and weeks of live coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death (if you don’t want to).

2. GATHERING The collection of news and supporting documentation, evidence or support and the practices applied therein are what makes it legitimate. This really brings us back to the neccessity to place guidelines in place for due diligence, admittedly a subjective term (but that is true today also). These are really questions of ethics. Maybe we could incorporate a confidence rating for news where stories which have been checked by multiple sources, for instance, have a higher rating. Things are only more true as time goes by because they get exposure, are challenged, are added to by different perspectives. By this way, we will get more of the true story.

3. ORGANIZATION Even in my scattered behavior and loose-knit daily routine, I am an organization. I have an office, but that shouldn’t even be a point. I have organized thoughts and opinions, organized an audience around me and organized a path for distributing information. We should not place more value on a traditional organization just because, and maybe especially because, it’s been unwritten by someone with money or power and a staff of 10,000.

Let everyone speak (isn’t that written down somewhere important?) and let the readers and viewers decide what news is. As it happens, Mayor Bloomberg will be in San Francisco tomorrow morning at the Common Wealth Club. I wonder if any bloggers will be there.

Our Father’s Day show, named “Who’s Your Daddy?” featured a discussion with Steve Gershik and Emily Morse of sexwithemily.com. We talked about the use of podcasting for business and pleasure, radio industry challenges, the tradeoffs to accepting sponsorship dollars for your show.

 Emily also mentions her interest in women’s politics, working for Barbara Boxer, and recent escapades at the Playboy mansion and swinger parties. That’s a mouthful. Get and earful by listening to the show here.

BlogTalkRadio’s Hilary Leewong interviews Lisacast on her BlogTalkRadio show “15-Minutes of Fame“. Miss Leewong featured Lisacast this week after a great show yesterday with Rafe Needleman, who runs CNET’s Webware.com. Mr. Needleman provided some wonderful perspectives about the convergence of consumer-adopted tools in the workplace. Checkout Webware.com for the Webware 100 Awards. I have been reading Rafe’s columns for years and it was a great pleasure to be able to speak with him on my show.

This week’s guest Dr. Thomas Buckholtz makes an early appearance this week on Lisacast, Saturday at 2 pm PST live .

Date: Saturday, June 2rd, 2007
Time: 2:00 – 2:30 am PST
Dial-in #: +1 (646) 478-4956

Download the show after it airs.

Q. From Jan Sandred via Twitter during the show:

“Jan Sandred how important is governance vs “the market” to create growth?”

A. From Lisa at Lisacast:

“Thanks for the question, Jan. This is a very interesting question, in particular, because of its origin. Jan Sandred is from Sweden. He was a panelist at the Innovation Journalism Conference last week at Stanford University. He and I spoke about the differences in our cultures from a business standpoint. In Sweden, the government holds a more commonly present position in the funding and growth of a business. But deeper I think is the fact that in the Swedish culture, descisions are made by consensus, whereas in America we all seem to lead, whether or not anyone follows. There are benefits to both of course. While the American aggressive, independent nature may yield quick successes, it will produce at least as many failures, and sometimes because without the support of the business ecosystem, investors, employees and partners, etc. it cannot grow. In a recent post I wrote called The Return of Reliance, I touched on the fact that that we seem to be refamiliarizing ourselves in this country (me specifically even) with the idea of relying on our networks, other members of our society, and other supporters for back up. I guess this is not as much a matter of ‘governance’ or policy or regulation as it is consensus support. The idea posed, of governence as a supporting force for growth rather than market demand, well let’s look at that for a moment as it relates to new media. All kinds of policy issues are popping up each day on net neutrality, bloggers as press, information availability, government access, military blogging/videoblogging — the point I’m making is that it’s a moving target because we don’t all agree as much as group about what’s what. That’s part of the nature of the United States. That’s why we came here in the first place. To be able to express our differences. And as more information is available and tools the same to produce and distribute it, it’s meant only to get more complicated. And as it does, society will shift to accomodate. To me, there are a couple of issues. One, are racing to the market and growing fast good things? Some businesses grow too fast without becoming sophisticated enough to manage their own growth and crumble. Slow is not always bad. The second issue is how will governance change. Watch the US campaigns for the 2008 presidency. Watch the effect of user generated media, grassroot campaigns and voting system reformation. I think we’re going to see governence change and as a result, market entry and organization growth with it.”