Blogs Provide Raw Details From Scene of the Disater

[Mels]

Blogs Provide Raw Details From Scene of the Disaster

By JOHN SCHWARTZ, The New York Times

For vivid reporting from the enormous zone of tsunami disaster, it was hard to beat the blogs.

The so-called blogosphere, with its personal journals published on the Web, has become best known as a forum for bruising political discussion and media criticism. But the technology proved a ready medium for instant news of the tsunami disaster and for collaboration over ways to help.

There was the simple photo of a startlingly blue boat smashed against a beachside palm in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, at http://www.thiswayplease.com/extra.html. "Every house and fishing boat has been smashed, the entire length of the east coast," wrote Fred Robart, who posted the photo. "People who know and respect the sea well now talk of it in shock, dismay and fear."

At sumankumar.com, Nanda Kishore, a contributor, offered photos and commentary from Chennai, India: "Some drenched till their hips, some till their chest, some all over and some of them were so drenched that they had already stopped breathing. Men and women, old and young, all were running for lives. It was a horrible site to see. The relief workers could not attend to all the dead and all the alive. The dead were dropped and the half alive were carried to safety."

His postings included a photo of a body on a sidewalk with a buffalo walking by. "It now seems prophetic," he wrote, "for according to the Hindu mythology, Lord Yama (the god of death) rides on a buffalo."

Bloggers at the scene are more deeply affected by events than the journalists who roam from one disaster to another, said Xeni Jardin, one of the four co-editors of the site BoingBoing.net, which pointed visitors to many of the disaster blogs.

"They are helping us understand the impact of this event in a way that other media just can't," with an intimate voice and an unvarnished perspective, with the richness of local context, Ms. Jardin said.


More From the Times


· A Third of the Dead Are Said to Be Children
· Taking Their Grief and Aid to Temples
· Disaster Sneaks In; Village Pummeled


That makes blogs compelling - and now essential - reading, said Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University and a blogger. Once he heard about the disaster, "Right after BBC, I went to blogs," he said.

"This notion that we now have eyes and ears around the world is more than something we've grown accustomed to; we've grown to demand it," he said.

Bloggers at worldchanging.com, some of them living in the affected nations, began chattering immediately after the waves hit and began discussions of ways to help. South Asian bloggers created tsunamihelp blogspot.com to direct people to aid organizations. "I haven't seen this level of people saying, 'You know what? We can do something here. We can connect the pieces,' " said Alex Steffen, who lives in Seattle and edits worldchanging.com. "It's mind-blowing, and it's inspiring."

Howard Rheingold, the author of "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution," about the use of interactive technologies like text-messaging to build ad hoc coalitions, said that using blogs to muster support for aid was a natural next step. "If you can smartmob a political demonstration, an election or urban performance art, you can smartmob disaster relief," he said.

One veteran of the online medium said he was initially "a little disappointed" in the reports he got from the blogs. Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in California, said that with the widespread use of digital cameras and high-speed digital access, he was expecting to see more raw video and analysis.

He said that upon reflection he realized that it was difficult to get information out of hard-hit areas and that putting digital video online is still the domain of "deep geeks" with significant resources. "This brought home to me just how far we have to go," he said.

Ms. Jardin of BoingBoing said people online often argued about whether blogs would replace mainstream media. The question is as meaningless, she said, as asking "will farmers' markets replace restaurants?"

"One is a place for rich raw materials," she continued. "One represents a different stage of the process."

Blogging from the tsunami, she said, is "more raw and immediate," but the postings still lack the level of trust that has been earned by more established media. "There is no ombudsman for the blogosphere," she said. "One will not replace the other, but I think the two together are good for each other."

Dr. Vaidhyanathan said he was leaving for a long-planned trip to India today and, if possible, hoped to visit relatives in Madras. "As long as there is electricity and Internet access, I'll blog," he said.

[Socratesabroad]

Bloggers at the scene are more deeply affected by events than the journalists who roam from one disaster to another, said Xeni Jardin, one of the four co-editors of the site BoingBoing.net, which pointed visitors to many of the disaster blogs.

"They are helping us understand the impact of this event in a way that other media just can't," with an intimate voice and an unvarnished perspective, with the richness of local context, Ms. Jardin said.
[emphasis mine]

Perhaps it's just me, but I take 'an unvarnished perspective' to mean 'an unpolished perspective' - i.e. that blogs lack the level of editing, proofreading, and fact-checking expected of conventional news reporting. And given the lack of an establishment - with its inherent advantages (resources, infrastructure, reputation) and disadvantages (slowness, conservatism) - I fear that blogs tend to report on more marginal topics, portraying the bizarre (lost Disney porn http://boingboing.net/ ) as almost mainstream.

Blogging from the tsunami, she said, is "more raw and immediate," but the postings still lack the level of trust that has been earned by more established media. "There is no ombudsman for the blogosphere," she said. "One will not replace the other, but I think the two together are good for each other."

As a keen viewer/listener of the BBC (their feeds are free, while CNN's are for a fee), I'd have great difficulty imagining blogs ever taking its place. For off-the-beaten path accounts or opinions, I might look at a blog, but for facts and analysis I'd always end up back at conventional media like the BBC and the Economist.