Monday October 1, 2007
The Florida Springs blog.
Monday September 24, 2007
It never ceases to amaze me how many frickin blogs there are. Behold Miami Drums, dedicated to . . . well, drums in Miami. You’d think it’s new, but you’d be wrong: been around for over a year. No cheesy blogspot address, either. Update: Also — a list of Miami food blogs.
Wednesday September 12, 2007
How come this took so long: a new local blog called Daily Cocaine. Apparently not that daily, but check out the post about Camellia Street Grill in Everglades City, with a salad made almost completely out of vegetables grown behind the restaurant, an old house by the water.
Monday September 10, 2007
I hereby order you to love the Good News Social blog. Behind every good city there are good people, networking, and making things happen. This is their site.
Friday August 17, 2007
Whatever else we may take away from the recent CG Playhouse post, we learned that the South Florida theater scene has a blog(!): South Florida Theatre Scene. Three months of archives, nine (count ‘em) contributors, and no silly “blogroll” (whatever that is). Good job guys! (But note: you’re spelling “theater” wrong.)
Wednesday August 15, 2007
2 Live Looks gets the grand profile treatment from the Herald’s Jaweed Kaleem, including photos of the guys in action and a narrated slideshow. Congrats. (Oh, and I get quoted.)
Friday August 3, 2007
Good evening. Please note that Miami Nights now has an RSS feed. Thank you, gentlemen.
Thursday June 28, 2007
2 Live Looks
Discovering new “Miami” blogs and websites is becoming a daily occurrence in these muggy and rainy days of Summer, as peoples retreat into their air-conditioned rooms and behind glowing terminals.
The new street fashion blog 2 Live Looks is different, because Matthew actually has to leave his house to gather material. “Websites similar to this one have long existed for other cities, with Miami conspicuously missing.” Sure enough. The question is whether Matthew can keep up the post-a-day pace he seems to have set for himself. (Remember Miamity?) I sure hope he does.
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Thursday May 31, 2007
Congrats to Stuck on the Palmetto, named best local blog by New Times Broward/Palm Beach for the second year running.
Tuesday April 10, 2007
Miami blogger receives bizarre letter from lawyer of Miami Herald columnist
Here’s something! Last November Henry Gomez did a post about Marifeli Pérez-Stable, an FIU professor and Miami Herald columnist. The post links to a report and quotes an e-mail by an Indiana University professor that makes some pretty serious accusations against Pérez-Stable:
In 1993, I wrote an academic study entitled “Academic Espionage: U.S. Taxpayer Funding of a Pro Castro Study“ for the Institute for U.S. Cuba Relations in Washington, D.C. The report was translated into Spanish and published in Miami’s “Diario las Américas” newspaper. I used only one quote from the Pérez Méndez debriefing, which indicated that one of the participants of that project, Professor Marifeli Pérez-Stable, “was a DGI agent who responded to Cuban intelligence officials Isidro Gómez and Jesús Arboleya Cervera. Pérez-Stable, who had organized another DGI front group called the Cuban Culture Circle, was receiving $100 for every person that traveled to Cuba through that organization. According to Pérez-Méndez, Pérez-Stable replaced DGI agent Lourdes Casal after her death in Havana, and the DGI and ICAP prepared the yearly plans for Pérez-Stable.”
. . . wherein DGI is the Cuban intelligence agency. Good, right? Well, I guess word was slow to get around, but two weeks ago Henry got a letter from Pérez-Stable’s lawyer basically claiming that posting the accusation consisted of slander, insisting that it be taken down, and making veiled references to monetary damages:
Please provide me within thirty days of receipt of this letter or April 28, 2007 the name of your insurance carrier with information of all available limits.
Oh, and the letter came headlined “Not for Publication.” Henry, to his credit, talked to a lawyer who assured him that not only did he not have to take down shit, he could go ahead and post the letter, because NfP requests are just that — requests, not legally binding.
Now, I have no idea whether Pérez-Stable is guilty of any of this — I rather doubt it. But I think baseless accusations are best answered with openness and information (possibly information along the lines of why your accuser might have other motives), not with legal threats. It sounds to me from reading the EFF FAQ on Online Defamation Law that Henry is very much within his rights here:
A public figure must show “actual malice” — that you published with either knowledge of falsity or in reckless disregard for the truth.
Obviously Henry made it clear that he was repeating the words of somebody else, and that individual would seem to have at least reasonable credibility. What’s this lawyer thinking, anyway?
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Friday March 9, 2007
Manola Blablablanik has her debut sex column in this week’s CityLink. Congrats Manola! (Hopefully they’ll fix the link to her blog at the bottom — who you got working in the control room over there, Dan Sweeney??)
Tuesday January 23, 2007
Refresh Miami is, um, “a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas.” That clears it up. I guess they’re tech-people. You know, geeks. See also Monica Betancourt’s blog.
Friday January 19, 2007
WTF Transit Miami?
Monday January 15, 2007
Talk about microblogging: the Justice Building Blog, about the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building.
Thursday January 4, 2007
“You could spend hours drinking Prosecco and talking smack:” a couple (literally) of promising new writers at Metroblogging.
Tuesday January 2, 2007
New blog: Coral Gables View. Lots of news clippings with interesting observations. Looks promising.
Thursday November 30, 2006
Stuck on the Palmetto and Babalu: a reverse chronology of escalating hostility
But first some background.
Babalu is Miami’s most famous, most widely read blog (especially if you don’t count Drudge). It’s been around for over three years, and is widely read and internationally respected as the premiere online voice of Cubans in exile. It’s a group blog, but editor Val Pietro is close to a celebrity, having frequently appeared on the radio and in print media.
Stuck on the Palmetto just celebrated its one-year anniversary, and what a year it’s been. It’s become Miami’s most-read omniblog, and, as the sidebar prominently reminds us on every visit, was named New Times Broward’s ‘Best Blog’ for 2006. It was a one-man shop until just recently, and is officially written anonymously, though Rick and Alex’s anonymity extends pretty much just to the point of leaving off their last names.
It may or may not be worth pointing out that Babalu’s Technorati stats are about an order of magnitude higher then SotP’s. Linkfight (possibly skewed by SotP’s blogspotness). Anyway, here’s the escalating clash of these two giants, in reverse order:
- November 29 (yesterday!): a crazy post where Rick lists everything he’s been accused of and all the names he’s been called without any attempt to describe what he many have said or done to cause such a response. With comments closed (!) lest anyone else remind him.
- November 27: my rambling account of a deleted comment on Babalu, and what it might mean. A long argument, including Rick and Val, in the comments.
- November 14: Babalu gets pissed off at SotP for taking his image (and apparently photoshoping it — the version at the post has apparently been changed back) and generally being a pain in his ass, and (ironically) does a “rename this blog” poll.
- October 22: “ Someone Needs To Start A ‘babalu Watch’.” Ouch.
- October 11: an somewhat typical post where Rick gratuitously (though not inaccurately) points out a few insults Babalu has hurled at Herald reporters. With links.
- September 07: a particularly sarcastic “The Four Rules Of Blogging…according to Val Prieto” post. A response to the infamous “Horse Post” (see below).
- September 05: Val catches a glimpse of Fidel Castro on Law & Order, prompting a post titled Is Babalu Becoming Delusional?, followed by an oh SNAP — here’s the video capture post.
- August 31: The Horse Post. Rick gets something wrong in a post, causing Val to suggest “Maybe you should take an exit ramp and actually see the freaken city youre writing about.” That sets off an argument that gets pretty personal.
- Early August: Mixed positive and negative posts, with Rick getting increasingly skeptical of Babalu: one, two, three. Some early mentions.
A fight between two inconsequential bloggers is not very interesting. A fight between two prominent bloggers is . . . well, still not very interesting, but interesting enough to make it worth collecting all these links in one place. Personally, I like them both, but I disagree with both often enough to make it utterly impossible to try to pick a favorite or assign any blame. It’s just two guys who don’t see the world the same way, and it’s all on the record. At least until Blogger crashes once and for all!
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Tuesday November 28, 2006
Lolo has two new blogs: Sweat Records and Meatless Miami.
Monday November 27, 2006
What's up with a deleted comment?
![screenshot from Babalu: [ED: A PORTION OF THIS COMMENT WAS DELETED BECAUSE IT WAS COMPLETELY INAPPROPORIATE.]](https://web.archive.org/web/20071003192203im_/http://www.criticalmiami.com/images/558.gif)
OK, so a disgruntled former employee storms the Herald, takes a hostage, and then surrenders. The blogs jump all over it, of course. But one particular thing struck me during all this: a comment left on the Babalu post about the event. Here it is:
“Warning: The Attorney General Has Determined that working at the Miami Herald Is Dangerous to Your Health.”
It’s unfortunate that Jose Varela did not seize the racist Tom Fiedler. Had he done so, Cuban exiles would have erected a monument to Varela at the Cuban Memorial Plaza.
Pretty outrageous comment, and Rick and Bob both picked up on it; at some point in the meantime, the second paragraph of the comment was deleted, presumably by Val, the owner of Babalu. (Rick has thoughtfully archived a pre-deletion screenshot here.)
I find that comment outrageous, maybe even bordering on offensive, but for the life of me I can’t see how it rises to the level of needing to be censored. Now, Val runs a great blog, and I’m not trying to suggest that he can’t do anything he wants with his comments section. But I think the deleting of this comment deserves a little discussion. Many people in the Cuban-American community in Miami hate Fiedler. Heck, many Miamians of all sorts of origins hate him — this is a guy who’s claim to fame is sinking Gary Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign.
But nobody believes that the comment was a serious suggestion that someone harm Fiedler, nor can the “racist” comment possibly be viewed as a factual allegation. This poster was voicing serious dislike of, and doing it in an irreverent fashion. It’s not like joking about violence is considered out of bounds; check out Wonkette’s reaction to this very story:
We hope this is the start of a trend, and expect to see Tom Toles firing warning shots out of Downie’s office window by the end of the year.
And that’s a post, folks, not a comment.
OK, so comments get deleted all the time, right? What’s the big deal? Well, for 99% of the comments that get deleted from blogs, it’s because they’re abusive to the process — we delete spam, commercial messages, and abusive language directed at other commenters (ie “trolling”), which undermine the conversation. We do not, generally, delete comments simply because we disagree with them. But wait a second, if we take the gist of the comment to be that Fiedler is an ass, then presumably the editors of Babalu agree with the sentiment.
So what does it mean that this comment got deleted? That Val actually likes Fiedler? That he thought there was a genuine incitement to kidnap him? Or was it that he didn’t want that comment up because it made his blog’s community look a little nutty?
If it’s the latter, then the implications are troubling. Are they that, once again, the Cuban-American community is supposed to speak with one unified voice? That “extreme” comments are encouraged so long as they stay within certain prescribed lines (note that a regular commenter is named “KillCastro”)? Or that the line between flippant comments and violent actions is still dangerously thin for some?
Again, my intention is not to tell Val how to run his house, or what he can and can’t delete. But unlike zapping a piece of spam, deleting this particular comment had meaning, and it’s worth wondering what that is.
Update:
. . .and a not unpredictable brawl ensued in the comments below. I want to thank Val for correcting a couple of my points and sharing his perspective on this issue. To wit: (1) I was wrong about KillCastro being a regular commenter on Balabu; I randomly came across some old posts that led me to that conclusion. (2) I obviously wasn’t clear enough in saying that I think the comment should have stayed. (3) the comment was deleted by George, after consulting with Val (not a major point IMHO).
But let me jump straight to what I think is the most significant issue, and one which everyone in the comments seems to be ignoring: The comment was deleted to avoid (further) criticism from Rick. What’s up with that?? As much as I think the comment should have stayed, I think the reason for its deletion is even worse. We all have strong opinions, and we have blogs so we can hash out our intellectual differences. So why delete a comment to avoid an argument, if it’s an honest argument?
The rest of my thoughts are more relevant to what’s being discussed in the comments, so I’ll continue there. Thanks to everyone for participating — it’s a little bit of a flame war, but there’s some good exchange of ideas, too.
Update: This comment says something very important. Thanks, Manuel.
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Friday November 24, 2006
Poor Metroblogging Miami. Half their posts are promises to cover a given topic along with a call for experts to do the actual writing, I. Ambrosia, their only writer worth reading, is posting less frequently all the time, and now this: Some twit from D.C. does a post about not knowing the difference between Ice Cube and Ice-T. They all look the same, huh Don? Thanks for dropping in and idioting up the place.
Wednesday November 22, 2006
New Times vs. ignore
If there’s one thing ignore’s good at, it’s handing out a dissing. Last week New Times gave them the opportunity, and they brought their blog out of a month-long hibernation to take NT down a peg:
Hey Jean, why do we keep receiving inquisitive calls from Lara Coppola every time she sees her name (and, more scarily and ethically dubious, misquotes attributed to her by you) in your column? Why does Ms. Coppola think that “we must have talked to you” because, well, she hasn’t? According to Lara, she has never spoken to you. She doesn’t even know who the fuck you are, just like Wikipedia, which recently erased your self-posted entry because you were deemed, we shit you not, “irrelevant.”
We’re guessing someone will soon be calling the big doggies in Colorado…again.
At issue is this article, which, um — borrows — images, and possibly the whole concept, from a months-old ignore feature about Kareem Edouard. Here’s a link to the blog rant, which also includes a swipe at Miami Nights.
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Tuesday October 24, 2006
The Corruption in Surfside, Florida blog. Wow, sounds serious. (thanks, Ed!)
Friday September 29, 2006
Sometimes a comment really hits home, and provokes a lot of reflection, as this one, suggesting “wow, alesh why don’t you tell us what you ate last night.” Not a bad idea, and so here pleased to be presenting: i eat food, my new blog. Updated probably maybe twice a week or so, and sporting a design which I consider to be an homage to Preshrunk, though with more red.
Tuesday September 26, 2006
The funniest thing I’ve seen so far today: In a recent online poll, 81% of the respondents thought online polls should continue. (Rick thinks I’m a spoilsport to suggest that online polls are a waste of time, even “just for fun.”) Update: Everyone agrees that I’m an ass for “making a big deal” out of this. See Fanless and the entire argument in the comments. BTW, I like to “click on buttons and look at graphs” as much as the next guy, and in that spirit I offer a link to the implicit association test at Harvard.
Friday September 15, 2006
Henry, of Cuban-American Pundits, has started up Herald Watch. He began right before the Marti fiasco perfect timing. This should be interesting.
Monday August 7, 2006
Spankin’ new: Miami forums at 411. A classy effort, but if my experiments with the Miami Wiki are any indication, it’s difficult to get readers to do anything more then scroll and click.
Um, no, sorry, the Miami bloggers will NOT be gathering
I got a weird e-mail link to this weird invite yesterday, and I ignored the living shit out of it. This morning, when Christian and Rick have posts about it (and so do probably a bunch of other bloggers I haven’t looked at yet – Fanless is my first stop when he has a new post, and Rick is comprehensive, hence my checking there to see if anyone else noticed it), I dug it out of my inbox trashcan and took another look.
So, yes, hi guys! I agree with Rick: this is a great idea. I also agree with Rick that it’s mainly great at getting your restaurant, vineyard, or whatever it is, some inexpensive publicity. Clever.
But no. You don’t get to throw the big party where all the Miami bloggers finally get together. Too many of us are anti-corporate, some of us are adamantly anonymous, and most of us have an aversion to the 33139 zip code. I have hung out with a few of the Miami bloggers, and I’m sure we’ll have more things where more of us get together. But when it’s organized by some out-of-town corporate interest, I don’t think I’m the only one who’s going to be able to find something more interesting to do.
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Thursday July 27, 2006
Miamivision Blogarama
I don’t normally link to fresh new blogs, on the grounds that they’re often here today, gone tomorrow. But Miamivision is too good to pass up. Witness the picture above, from this post about the proposed Empire World Tower. No idea where they got the rendering (which is a year old in any case), but it sure is impressive.
Even more impressive are the observations about on the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts:
Architect Cesar Pelli was forced to keep [the Sears tower] in his design by well-meaning but misguided preservationists who went epileptic when they found out that it might get nixed in the plan. Although it is not a great example of the Art Deco style, it seems it was the only example of Art Deco architecture left in Miami. Too bad there isn’t any money in the budget to hire Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen to turn it into a giant flashlight pointing skyward. That would give Miami that elusive signature piece of art or architecture it sorely lacks because no matter how grand the design and effective the acoustics are, Pelli’s buildings would be hard to pick out of a lineup of concert halls.
[ . . . ]
”...it connects with a past that was precious to many people.” [Pelli] As someone who grew up here, that statement reeks with irony. It was in the Sears tower that I was first exposed to the Jim Crow laws of 1950’s Miami. I was probably five or six when I made the mistake of going to the wrong water fountain. . .
Snap! And there’s much more: a proposal for the soon-to-be gentrified Overtown, a tribute to Churchill’s Pub, and more more more. See also the original site, a mecha of (flash) weirdness. (via Transit Miami)
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Monday July 10, 2006
Larry Lebowits interviews Gabriel of Transit Miami and rounds up local transit-related blogging. Cool! (Hopefully the Herald will fix the hilariously messed up links by the time you read this.) Herald readers landing here, if you’re really only interested in transportation click ‘Traffic’. And here’s that Metrorail anagram. Update: Yes, they fixed it.
Monday June 19, 2006
It’s a funny thing about RSS readers: they track everyhing going on at your blog. So even though Miamity is dead [sob!!], I can tell that Kyle recently updated the Filling Out The New Times Poll post. No idea what he changed, but it’s still worth reading.
Friday June 9, 2006
South Florida Commuter Services has two blogs(!) – Diary of a South Florida Commuter and Diary of a South Florida Vanpooler. They seem pretty infrequently updated, and might (?) make for interesting reading, if they weren’t #EEEEEE on #FFFFFF (that’s light gray on white). (via Greener Miami)
Wednesday May 17, 2006
The blogacious hipster politics
I’m writing this drunk, and it’s about silly shit, and life is short, and you’re probably better off skipping this post. Count yourself warned.
Item #1 is this ignore post, wherein our heros (a) make fun of this event for being sponsored by Toyota (“where does it end?” I don’t know, but it ended a long-ass time ago if you’re going to eschew anything with corporate sponsorship, guys. Also, and I really really do love ignore, but you guys using “hipster cunt” as a put-down is kind of like a bulldozer calling a forklift yellow, isn’t it?) and (b) totally go off on Crispin Porter + Bogusky, because they found out that someone at the company left an ignore-insulting comment on Miamity (Kyle is pals with ignore, so he prob. gave them the IP). Also note this, and also that said comment was left under the name “newtimez,” which brings us to . . .
Item #2 So the New Times’ best of issue named a TV station’s web site Best Local Website, which is great, except that (#1: the Associated Press style guide demands that “Web site” is two words, and #2:) the logic that got you to that selection, taken to its obvious logical conclusion, leads you to name herald.com the “Best local Website” every year henceforth. Still no big problem, except that they then say something like “the loozers in Bloward can have a ‘best blog’ category, but we in daD3z know that blogz are, like, sooo 2001; we ain’t even w’dat, yo” (check the link above, in case I’m mis-remembering their quote a little (and also, btw, a belated congrats to Rick, who got the best blog nod in da BPB)), with which I just have the slightest of problems. Blogs, to me, are a format, not so much a cultural entity in and of themselves. In other words, a particular blog can be good or bad, cool or uncool, but to call blogs in general uncool is equivalent to someone in the 1920’s saying that the talkies are a silly fad, or (as I put it here) someone in 1460 saying that books are “so 1455.”
OK, so the New Times said something dumb. Appropriately, tNFH makes fun of them for it, as does Franklin (in tNFH’s comments), as does Kyle, and as I would like to . . .
The problem is that NT is supposed to be a “fun” publication, and you can’t possibly be a “fun” weekly without shooting from the hip, and without saying some stupid shit from time to time. The problem is compounded in the case of the “Best of” issue, wherein the staff is required to make up all this shit in all these specific categories, and make it make sense, and be fun to read, and not be the same thing year after year, and, well, who am I to get upset if all those requirements get in the way of not saying stupid shit from time to time. Not to mention the fact, and let’s face it, that that everyone knows what the best blog in MIA is (and let’s face it: the only reason you’ve read this far was to see if I was going to go there, and now you know).
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Wednesday May 10, 2006
Let’s hear it for Miami moms blogging!
Tuesday May 9, 2006
Speaking of Rick, he’s all exited because M****st (I will not link them in a house. I will not link them with a mouse. I will not link them here or there. I will not link them anywhere!!) linked to MB411. Whatever. And for the record, I have been to an auto show. It was when I was 14. They had a mock up of the A-Team van, with a mounted machine gun. It was great.
What's up with the Daily Pulp?
Our story so far: Bob Norman launched the original Daily Pulp back in January, with a pretty decent splash. Word spread, and by March, the New Times brass took interest, and made him move it to their own domain. So far, so good. Then, on May 3, after months of posting every single weekday, the blog goes dark. Rick, along with most of the journalists in SoFla (who read the blog with some combination of delight and dread) are like, “wtf??” Then, on May 9th (yesterday, to those of you who are following along), a post appears on the Pulp from Tony Ortega, New Times editor, which cryptically begins “Bob’s busy with an investigation, so I thought I’d fill in . . .”
So, yeah, wtf? Well, rumour has it that it’s all about a beef between Bob and the New Times brass. A post (presumably the one intended for May 3) was vetoed by NT Lawyers, resulting in what must have been one of those legendary newsroom arguments. Lawyers and editors tend to win those fights, though, and the post never saw the light of day. So Bob goes off and writes another post, describing the whole incident (and probably using some choice words), and now they won’t let him put that post up, either. Now thoroughly pissed off, Bob stops writing the Pulp. He’s either sick of the whole damned thing, or it’s some sort of a stand-off.
If true, it’s disappointing but not unforeseeable. The New Times plays all punk-rock, but it’s a big national corporation, so it needs its ass covered. Maybe it’s impossible to do a blog like the Pulp under that kind of environment? In any case, if anyone has any other info on the situation, let’s hear it.
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Sunday May 7, 2006
Cuban connection
A follow-up to the Herald blogging post is really not necessary, since most of the blogs, while based in Miami, are not really about Miami. (There are, by the way, two new ones.)
Oscar Corral’s Cuban Connection is interesting sometimes. He recently posted about breaking up his blogroll into pro-Castro and anti-Castro, which just comes across as weird: the Herald’s blog on Cuban issues is “neutral” about whether Castro is good or bad?! To top that off, he refers to the “irreverence” of some of the anti-Castro blogs. Robert actually had a pretty good-natured response to that comment, which I’d have been pissed off about if I were him. Also, babalú gets oddly snubbed.
In any case, the comments section looks completely unmoderated, and an unhinged argument ensues.
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Thursday April 27, 2006
Right back at ya, SunPost
Tiffany Rainey’s article on Miami blogging is out in this week’s Sun Post. A pretty great rundown of some of the more prominent local blogs, illustrated by the totally awesome Chris Meesey.
During the art blogging panel, and in a few other conversations I’ve had with journalists, the supposed merging of blogging and journalism comes up often. But the conversations I’ve had with Tiffany, and other journalists, lead me to believe that the opposite is true: what I do looks a little like journalism, but the process is almost the exact opposite. Journalists are usually assigned stories (maybe sometimes they suggest them, but still there is editorial input at every stage), do a whole bunch of research, place phone calls, gather facts, and present a balanced piece that conforms to a previously established format and length. I, on the other hand, write about whatever the hell I feel like, at whatever length I want, and my research, if any, consists of a google search. I could count on one hand the number of phone calls I’ve made to gather information for CM. More then that, though, there is a distinct lack of planning about the whole thing – the average length of time between an idea for a post and the “publication” is maybe an hour. My saving grace is being able to cast a wide net – everything from personal experiences to a long-ass list of RSS feeds (some of which are extremely secret) makes it relatively easy and fun keep finding stuff that’s interesting to me to write about.
Oh, but and so I wanted to talk about the SunPost… I first read the Post a few years ago, when it was sort of shit. It was around the same time CM started that I noticed it getting more fun to flip through, and my first post about it was back in June of last year. Since then much of the Post’s core reporting staff has turned over, and the new team, consisting of Tiffany, Omar Sommereyns, Rebecca Wakefield, and Alfredo Triff (the latter three are all, curiously, New Times transplants), along with a few others, are pushing the rag in a new direction, more community-oriented then the New Times, yet much hipper then ‘straight’ newspapers. The paper has also expanded it’s reach (previously, it was limited to only a few sections of Miami/Dade), and updated its look (some fancy design firm thing).
What’s missing is a modern web site. I’ve railed on about the lack of proper permlinks on numerous past occasions, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg – the Post’s site insists on attempting to duplicate the feel of reading the “real” paper, sacrificing the benefits of the web. And no RSS feed? Give me a break: the Herald has close to 200 different feeds. But whatever; they’ll figure it out, and the SunPost will continue to be an asset to the community.
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Friday April 7, 2006
Artblogging panel
The panel was fun. There was a little of an information gap, but overall, my worst fears were not realized. To wit: I wondered, since the five of us are obviously articulate in writing and perfectly fine expressing whatever we need to on the blogs, whether there would be about this forum that would add to that. The answer turned out to be “yes.” And while I’m sure there were moments that were painfully dull for the audience, there was also some good back-and-forth. The library didn’t close promptly at 8 pm as was threatened, and so the conversation was allowed to run its course very naturally. One of the questions that came up afterwards was “so what do we do for part 2”? The answer seems clear to me now: different bloggers!
One of the points I found myself making was how different blogging is from journalism (this was particularly apparent during a great chat I had with Omar Sommereyns and Tiffany Rainey of SunPost at the post-panel chowdown at Parilla): a journalist starts a story with an idea, then goes to gather the facts through phone calls and research, then fits it into the space allocated, and into a fairly well defined “story arc.” As a blogger, my approach is almost the reverse of this – I start with experiences that I’ve had, and things that I’ve done or thought because of my personal interests, then fit them into posts; in a sense, the “idea” for the post comes last. I can write as much or as little as I want, and I can do it whenever I want. So, well, it’ll be interesting to see where this stuff is 10 years from now, when blogs and newspapers have gone through whatever integrating they’ll go through, and the percentage of human beings with blogs has plateaued, and this stuff’s place in society is established and not feared.
Oh right, the panel… Well, KH and Alfredo got into a little back-and-forth with Franklin, but there was too much love for real sparks to fly. Helen Kohen was a great moderator; she approached it with the freshness of an outsider (who, as a journalist, did her research!), and was very good about passing the [proverbial] mic around.
Oh, and so Rebecca Carter liveblogged the first hour of the talk (and summarized much of the rest) at Greener Miami, and I think caught much of the more interesting content (the photo above is also hers). Nice work, Rebecca! Meanwhile, over at this Artblog thread Jack gives his assessment at comment #18 (note to Jack: at the dinner after the panel, someone suggested checking Artblog to see what you’d said about it, so we all saw your comment moments after you posted it, about an hour after the end of the panel).
Update: KH has some reflections here and here.
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Tuesday April 4, 2006
Second-to-last Tuesday
- Thursday is the panel I’m on with Franklin, Kathleen, Onajide, and Alfredo. There are discussions at Artblog and TNFH, and a blurb in the Herald [second thing down].
- Can we say ‘good riddance’ to the Marlins yet? Even their biggest fans are pissed off.
- Arturo Sandoval is opening a jazz club on Miami Beach.
- Critical Miamista.
- Gulfstream to add poker in mid-April.
- Sorry, but I just think it’s kind of cool that a bunch of people bailed out of a Metromover after it got stuck on the track.
- It’s getting difficult keeping up with all the new Miami blogs, but here’s Miami Transit.
- Speaking of the Port of Miami Tunnel, read the Critical Miami report from November.
- Marc photographed the orchid festival.
- According to this LA Times Article, Miami is leading the country in staged car crashes (bugmenot.)
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