When Everyone is an Eye-Witness, What is a Journalist? | Storyful Blog:

Yet, from the vantage point of the social web, there was no apparent need for a third person to mediate. In the blatant first-person world of YouTube and Twitter, we all get to decide the meaning.

That concept strikes fear into the heart of those who believe there is eternal value in journalism. Even those of us who have mastered the tools of the social age have a deep ambivalence about where they are taking us.

On the night of the Boston bombings, my Twitter timeline was filled with the ambivalent cry of those who saw danger and opportunity around them. In the words of one angst-ridden tweep:

“Today reminds me how Twitter has become one of the greatest tools as well as one of greatest threats to true journalism”.

I share the sentiment. But I also despair at the failure of the guardians of ‘True Journalism’ to develop a coherent response to that contradiction. Perhaps the problem is that too many journalists still believe they are the rightful ‘owners’ of breaking news.

American Airlines earned an enemy:

So that’s the end of our two week nightmare battling American Airlines. A bag lost to gross negligence of American Airlines and that asshole of a passenger who took it in the first place (who takes a wrong bag, filled with baby clothing and toys, fails to report it for almost a week, then doesn’t return it at all?).

Never did someone express a true emotion of empathy at American Airlines. Never an offer to put someone with authority and competence on the case to get to the bottom of it. No offers of even token gestures for our sour experience. No nothing.

American Airlines, you are a terrible company. I hope that your disdain for helping customers in trouble catches up to you one day and you go out of business.

You know better, this is inexcusable:

If Gruber’s going to call Lynch a bozo, if you’re going to double and treble down on it, then where’s the articles calling Schiller and the rest of the Apple executive team, including Jobs, “bozos” for supporting shitty products like the Moto iTunes Phone? Right.

It’s not just Gruber. Jim Dalrymple, someone else who knows how shit works in a corporation should start checking his kegerator hoses for mold for agreeing with Gruber on this in his piece, “Bozo”:

John Gruber giving his thoughts on Apple’s newest VP Kevin Lynch. There is also an Exhibit B. Like Gruber, it concerns me that Lynch kept beating the Flash drum for so long, even when it was clear it was dead.

Oh come on Jim, it most certainly does not. You’ve been a part of a largeish corporation before, you know how shit works. The both of them do. Kevin Lynch wasn’t doing anything that anyone else in his position, including Gruber wouldn’t have done. He was supporting a major company initiative in public. That’s not the sign of a bozo, and Gruber needs to stop pretending otherwise.

Source: bynkii.com

Reading devices:

Would I be permitted to be productive at all, or is only consumption allowed? Could I write? Code? Draw? Compose? Run some reports? Reboot a server? Why specifically make an exception for reading with everything our modern devices can do?

Last year, the agency announced that an industry working group would study the issue. The group, which first met in January, comprises people from various industries, including Amazon, the Consumer Electronics Association, Boeing, the Association of Flight Attendants, the Federal Communications Commission and aircraft makers.

Oh. (Emphasis mine.)

Source: Marco.org

The Small Town Volunteer Fire Department:

Unincorporated population centers in a NJ county were often assigned to the nearest township. For Newfield that was Franklin Township, which still exists today. By 1924, the residents of Newfield were very unhappy with the services being provided them through Franklin Township in exchange for local real estate taxes so they petitioned to become a NJ Borough with an elected mayor and six member council, and the state government granted that request.

The residents of Newfield, which had its own bank, school, fire company, grocery stores, carnegie library, etc, felt least government was best. I smile and think of them as Libertarians long before such a movement existed. This was, of course, a bargain the town was making with itself to provide public services with minimal taxes through promotion of volunteerism.

This attitude and tradition has worked well. The School Board, the Ambulance Corps, the Cemetery Board, the Library Board, and the fire company are all staffed with unpaid volunteers. For the essential services of EMS and fire-fighting, these unpaid volunteers also undergo many hours of training to remain certified. In consequence, those essential service organizations are backups for other EMS and fire-fighting services in surrounding towns.

Source: inessential.com