Marcus' World

The Future of Fresh Kills

This morning I attended a briefing sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, about the ambitious plan to convert the former Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island into one of the city's greatest parks.  According to Wikipedia, its harsh name comes from its location along the Fresh Kills estuary.  The landfill closed in 2001, and covered 45% of the site.  Creeks, wetlands, and dry lowland make up the remainder of the land.

Following the World Trade Center attack, the landfill was re-opened to accommodate debris from the Trade Center.  Some family members have sued the city, claiming that the remains of their loved ones are mixed within the debris.

As the lawsuit proceeds, planning for the park continues.  At 2,200 acres (2.5 times the size of Central Park), there is lots of room to be creative.   Many great proposals are under consideration. Soccer fields will be part of the mix, which is important because there are not enough fields in the city today.  A September 11 memorial will provide a poignant view of Lower Manhattan.   The city's Fresh Kills web site provides a wealth of information.

The timeline for completion is 20-30 years; basically, as long as I've been alive. That astounded me.  In addition to the concerns of the September 11 families, this project might languish due to inertia and different priorities of future political leaders.  I hope that it succeeds despite all  obstacles.  What I heard today sounded even more majestic than Central Park. 

New Job

In January I'm going to begin working as a Clinical Medical Librarian for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.   My position at New York University Medical Center (NYU) is grant-funded, and I've been hunting for a new position for a while. 

NYU tried hard to get me to stay, which I appreciate.  But my heart was set on trying something else.  For the last several months--basically as long as I've been looking for a new job--I've wondered if librarianship is really for me.  Now I have a different environment in which to be a librarian, which will provide a valuable comparison to my time at NYU.  Instead of working for a medical school/health center, I'll be in a more focused clinical and research environment. 

My role will be to serve as a liaison to several departments at the Cancer Center, and to work with colleagues to raise the profile of the library.  The library is in a growth mode right now, which should make it an interesting time to work there.  I'll be able to walk to work again, which I haven't done in over three years.  Although it seems silly to base a job decision on  such matters, they do make a difference.

For the next month, I'll be going to conferences and finishing up at NYU.  Blogging will go on as well, of course, but probably at a less rapid clip until after the new year.  Happy holidays to all.

The End of News?, Continued

I sent this week's posting about the end of news to Jay Rosen, Associate Professor of Journalism at NYU and publisher of the blog PressThink.   In that post, I noted that journalist Michael Massing (who will publish a second article on the state of the news business in the New York Review of Books) doesn't find anything positive about blogs.   Massing stresses that blogs are a new political organizing tool, particularly on the right; he doesn't find them to be an example of journalism in their own right.  Rosen does feel that some bloggers are journalists, and that the best can challenge "group think" among traditional reporters.  As Rosen's interview with veteran Washington Post reporter Thomas B. Edsall reveals, some reporters agree with him.

As I noted a few weeks ago, I'm somewhere between Rosen's optimism and Massing's disdain for blogs.  Rhetoric about the potential of blogs to renew democracy is messianic, and sets up unreasonable expectations.  At the same time, blogs are far more than a fad.  For the first time ever, articulate people have the ability to immediately post their reaction to the news, and to report news on their own.  We are far from witnessing "the end of news," as Massing fears.  But nobody knows what "the news" will become in the future.

Google Book Search Debate at New York Public Library

On Thursday I attended a debate about Google Book Search at the New York Public Library.  NYPL is one of five libraries that have allowed Google to scan their collections--either in whole or in part--and make them searchable.  The others are Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford. Both the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have sued Google for copyright infringement.   

Google scans books in their entirety in order to provide robust searches; people can conduct either a regular search, or dedicated book search,  in order to find books.  Only snippets of copyrighted text will appear, while the full text of public domain material appears.  (Perhaps this discrepancy will lead to a greater appreciation for the value of the public domain.)  Google has not cleared the rights to do this from the authors or publishers,  which has generated the lawsuits.

The debate featured Nick Taylor of the Authors Guild; Allan Adler of the Association of American Publishers; David Drummond of Google; and Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University and the Creative Commons.   The Times has a  story today, and Lessig has reflected upon the evening.

It was much more lively than I anticipated.  People clapped for the panelists on many occasions.  In general, older people clapped for the anti-Google arguments; younger folks cheered for Google.   I always clapped for Google, although I am concerned that it has the could gain monopoly power over how we access information.  But there is no doubt that making closed libraries open is a great public good;  Michigan is an open public library in principle, but  attending it in person is such a formidable barrier for most people that it is closed in reality.  One of my initial concerns was that Google would sully the library results pages by running ads, but thus far they have chosen not to do this.

The opposition of authors made no sense to me before the evening, or after.  As Tim Wu argues in Slate, Google is doing authors a favor by increasing exposure to their works.  Mr. Taylor  frequently stressed that it was an "appropriation" of intellectual property for Google to do this without permission.  But receiving permission from every author would be so cumbersome as to halt the project in its tracks, and does not seem necessary under the terms of fair use.  After all, only mere snippets of text would appear in the results.

The publishers have a more reasonable argument.   They claim that the mere act of copying the books in the first place, no matter how it is used, violates copyright.  Alas, this may be true.  Copyright law has not kept up with technology, and so we are living in an uncertain time.  I am one of many that hopes that Google does not settle these suits, and that they progress all the way to the Supreme Court.  We all need to know for certain the boundaries of copyright law in the digital age. I hope these boundaries are generous.

The End of News?

I have a strong bias against criticism of the press, which is just as much willful denial on my part as it is defense of a valuable institution.  My pat formula is that, since liberals and conservatives are both critical of the media, it must be doing something right.  But as the string of scandals in recent years have shown, this is too simplistic.  I need to be less dismissive of the critics.

One of the best critics on the left is Michael Massing, who recently published thoughtful critiques of the New York Times's WMD coverage in the New York Review of Books.  In an article in the latest issue of the New York Review, "The End of News?", he takes a broader look at the overall state of the news business, and finds it in sad shape.

Massing argues that talk radio and blogs have both provided conservatives with new opportunities to critique the mainstream media.  Massing takes an anthropological approach to talk radio, by tuning into Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for what is clearly the first time in his life.   Massing's shock at the antics of conservative radio hosts reveals just how different his world is from theirs, and is unintentionally funny.  But his larger point about the interconnections between the bloggers, the radio hosts, and Fox News is well made.

If the problem were merely the right wing blowhards, the press could weather the storm.  The larger clouds are the increasingly severe economics facing newspapers, and the fact that hardly any young people are readers.  In the best of worlds, these dire conditions would stimulate a resurgence of journalism.  But Massing isn't hopeful about how journalists have responded thus far.

Massing only notes the negative, echo-chamber quality of blogs.  He doesn't seem to see any positive role for them, but many people--such as Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen--perceive the grassroots nature of blogs as a harbinger of an enriched democracy.

Massing may be in the old guard, but it's an old guard with passion.  He cares deeply about quality journalism, which makes this article an essential read.

Northwestern Nostalgia

I felt twinges of college nostalgia today, when I read the Square Feet column in the Times about the booming commercial real estate market in Evanston, Illinois.  Evanston is the home of Northwestern, and is where I met Helen and made several good friends.

Downtown Evanston is booming. This is where Helen and I lived while she finished school as I went to library school.  The Barnes and Noble that we used to hang out in is moving across the street to a larger development,which was in the beginning stages when we were in town.  Condos sell for as little as $224,000 in Evanston; this would buy you a bathroom in Manhattan!

It's more than a bit maudlin to recall the glory years of college, but they really were great.  An easy college student sport was to talk about how lame Evanston was, but I always found it to be an interesting town.  It's good to see that it's even more vibrant today.

New Article on Politics with Perspective

My journal Politics with Perspective never took off. It's been sleepy for months! While it would have been wonderful to produce a thriving journal, I'm happy that it allowed me to vent my frustration about the pathetic state of political discourse.

I thought it was done and was planning to retire the journal quietly in a few months. That will probably still happen, but at least there's more content than I anticipated.   This week my colleague Heather Morrison, Project Coordinator for the British Columbia Electronic Library Network, sent me an essay for publication.

I've relaxed my 1,000 word minimum rule, which was intended to elicit thoughtful rather than knee-jerk essays.  Heather has accomplished that in just over 700 words.  Go over to Politics with Perspective and read her essay "Freedom Under Attack:  A Song, A Health Process, and Intellectual Property Law" when you have a chance.

That's Not Accurate

On October 31 White House press secretary Scott McClellan said, "That's accurate," to a series of factual  assertions by NBC reporter David Gregory about Karl Rove's involvement in Plamegate.  This was the Monday after the indictment of Scooter Libby, and the White House was in damage control mode.  But even so, McClellan readily acknowledged what Gregory had said.

The official White House transcript now reads, "I don't think that's accurate." Beyond changing its own record, the White House asked Congressional Quarterly and the Federal News Service to change theirs. Thankfully they both refused.

This takes guts.  The clip is widely available online, but the White House thinks that it can bend history merely by doctoring the record, and/or refusing to acknowledge the plain truth.  This is the same President who says "We don't  torture" even after we've seen all seen the photos from Abu Gharib.  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is growing ever more Orwellian all the time.

A Veterans Day Whitewash

With everything going against him, President Bush resorted to the most important tool in his arsenal: impugning the integrity of those who would dare to oppose him.  On a day when everyone should pause to honor our veterans, the President became a fiery partisan for old time's sake. 

Yes, Democrats and Republicans both saw the same intelligence on Iraq and voted to authorize war. But that was trumped-up, pre-packaged intelligence pointing to the destined conclusion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  The State department tried to sound the alarm, as did analysts in the CIA.  Everyone who disagreed was ignored.

For some reason, Bush didn't mention any of this.

Veterans Day

Today the Gotham Gazette pays its respects to veterans from New York City who have died since Veterans Day in 2004. 

Proportionately, New York does not have many war deaths.  Living here offers many choices, unlike some parts of the country that provide few alternatives to military service.  But New York certainly has its share of people who have not found their way otherwise, or who simply desire to serve their country.   These folks gravitate to the military.  It is also an economically stratified place--Not one of the 20 deaths is of a Manhattan resident, but every other borough has been affected. 

As of 1 PM there is one comment on the Gazette's entry.   "Our Gal in Brooklyn," a local activist, rails against military recruiters that seduce kids into signing up.  That's an important argument, but it felt opportunistic for her to make it today.  Today is a day for paying respects; let the debates resume tomorrow.