Scattered

This site averages around 50 visitors a day even though I have been posting less frequently of late. Who are these visitors? Who are you? (Consider sharing your identity in the comments below)

Most visits come from web surfers who stumble on a tagged topic of interest.

Two posts getting a lot of hits recently have to do with what happens when the word “God” is substituted for the word “Spirit” in familiar quotations — and vice versa.

If you are interested, the posts are here and here.

The ever-popular “tipsy beer truck” post also maintains its following although it clearly isn’t the same as those hitting on the God/Spirit posts.

Those in the know about blogging “success” (whatever that means) might fault the Red Electric for lack of focus. Beer trucks? God?

So what about my summer's lapse in writing? It’s not that I’m running on fumes; it’s just that I’m not sure anyone is particularly interested in what I’ve been thinking or doing of late.

Maybe your life is a lot like mine these pre-Indian Summer days. Scattered.

Oh, today, I went for an invigorating, forested walk with my visiting sister. How did we both end up in our sixties?

I’m going to Fairbanks, Alaska, early next month on Quaker business. Yes, there are Quakers in Fairbanks.

I’m still trying to block JPMorgan/Chase Bank from opening an unneeded branch in Hillsdale ... and I’m trying to attract a credit union instead.

The Hillsdale community held a celebratory and astonishing Paella dinner for 250 on Saturday night. It was a civic, culinary cabal of friends and neighbors.

National politics is mind-boggling and sad. The only thing worse is the horse-race coverage of it. It’s the beginning of a long silly season ... with a lot at stake.

I’m reading “The Gnostic Gospels,” Hemingway short stories and Chris Hedges’ “American Fascists, The Christian Right and the War on America” (Could things be THAT bad?)

Meanwhile I edit, write and publish The Hillsdale News, which saps writing energy and keeps me out of trouble and busy.

Our Quaker Multnomah Friends Meeting continues to amaze. Vibrant, growing, learning, nurturing, challenging.

How different are my two beloved communities: one secular in Hillsdale, the other spiritual yet deeply engaged in the suffering and injustices of the world. In both, we love, honor and respect each other. It’s hard at times. We differ. We make mistakes. We perform heroics despite ourselves. We talk. We look each other in the eyes, the windows to the soul, and connect to our shared humanity.

It’s “nothing to write home about," but, scattered as it is, it seems important to share for whatever truth it holds.

Another news media turning point

Here's further evidence of the shift from old media to new media.

Yesterday's New York Times carried a story about a Boston community newspaper that has begun running blog items in print.

Until now, newspapers ("old media") were considered the legitimate news source that provided content for "new media" web sites to disseminate.

With the Boston development, news now originating on-line is being legitimized by dissemination through print, the "old media."

The reversing trend is certain to continue until the newspaper-reading public fully migrates to on-line information.

Some of the reason for the reverse flow of information is found in the observations of John Wilpers, the editor-in-chief of BostonNow, the free-distribution daily that is printing the blogs. He says, in the words of the Times' article, that in publishing the blogs he is addressing "the news industry's biggest problem: an inability to connect with the communities it covers."

That's worth rereading...a newspaper with an "inability to connect with the communities it covers." How, one might ask, does a newspaper cover a community it doesn't connect with?

In the new digital age, the "inability" is the direct result of falling newspaper revenues leading to newsroom cuts. So newspapers are turning to free, on-line (and amateur) reporting.

In return, the news bloggers get additional exposure for their sites and keep the rights to their material. According to the Times story, they also get press credentials (or legitimacy through access to sources) and advice on how to increase traffic to their sites.

In the short run, the papers' principal obligation is maintaining quality control and the integrity of what they print.

In the long run, this latest development is simply a stopgap until the screen technology matches the portability and former profitability of newspapers and drives "old media" out of business.

At the rate newspapers are losing readers and revenue, "the long run" should be no longer than five years.

A sobering critique

On Monday evening my monthly writers’ group got to me about my Red Electric writing before the New York Times did on Tuesday morning.

Each writer in our group of six invites comments from the others about our monthly submissions. My submissions in the past two months have been several Red Electric posts.

On Monday evening one of my fellow writers put her criticism directly, “Your writing in the blog seems harsher.”

Another asked, obliquely, but tellingly, whether I missed having an editor.

Someone else wondered whether I would write my newspaper column the way I do the blog.

I had to confess that I’m more guarded in the column.

My tone, they were saying, is strangely different on-line. I agree. It is blunter and, frankly, less sensitive to how those I’m writing about might react.

I’ve been particularly tough on those in government and bureaucracies in general. I believe in what I’ve written, often passionately, but the criticism has been coarse at times.

I was sobered by my colleagues’ critique and my own repentance.

The very next morning, I found some solace in an explanation in the New York Times Science section. The author, Daniel Goleman, wrote that when we compose for the internet, we lack the visual feedback (a raised eyebrow, a grimace, a frown) that we do when we communicate face to face. As a result, our writing is far less inhibited. At times it is downright rude. At worst, it becomes “flaming.”

Psychologist even have a name for the behavior: “On-line Disinhibition Effect.”

What to do?

First, for me, a few apologies are in order to anyone who has been offended.

Second, clearly I need to create a greater sensitivity in this solitary writing space devoid of social cues.

Goleman suggests the problem will be solved when we have video e-mail so that we can see how recipients are responding. Until then he believes some kind of visual reminder of caution and civility should be pasted to the computer monitor.

The best one I can think of comes from the Salem, Oregon-based Hands Project. It takes the form of a refrigerators magnet depicting an open hand holding a heart. The image is accompanied by the words “Hands & words are not for hurting.”

In the case of on-line writing, the pledge should apply to typing hands and the words those hands send into cyberspace.