Fisherman's and a Quarry

Some random notes which add up to why it was so awesome:

• I marched with the Town Dems, just behind the bagpipe band and in front of youth soccer - good music and plenty of cheers from the crowd throughout.
  
• The Town Dems ran out of Obama stickers midway through the parade - they were hot tickets!
  
• The weather held off just in time.
  
• Lori Ehrlich was one of only two elected officials to actually bother showing up to march. Kudos to she and her family!
  
• Hundreds came out, despite the ugly clouds.
  

That's got to be a huge success, by any metric. My only regret: with the weather turning sour, I missed the strawberry shortcake!

If anyone's feeling extra motivated by the Town Dems in the parade and wants to become involved, there's a potluck cookout July 9th at 6:30pm. Email me for more information. It's a good chance to meet everyone, feel a part of the community and learn ways to become more involved.

Labels: parade, town dems, town life

This is beyond frustrating. At town meeting, one of the more inspiring moments was when we decided to be more intelligent and creative as a town, trying to use a debt exclusion to pay for a much-needed new fire truck. To put it simply, a debt exclusion is a vote by the town to pay for the object (in this case, a truck) in one year - instead of paying interest and taking on more debt. The town would have to vote on it, but given that it would save us all money in the long run and the town was going to buy it no matter what, it was a brilliant idea.

Except, the truck costs more than the money Town Meeting allotted - per the first link.

Maylor noted that Medford just bought a truck for $328,000, others paid up to $475,000 and Marblehead spent $390,000. And given that all those fire trucks have the same engine and power train, he said, “I don’t think it’s really a question of longevity.”

Selectman Adam Forman asked why Carmody didn’t stand up at Town Meeting and say something. The chief said he’s not a Town Meeting member, but was hoping somebody would ask the chief’s opinion. Nobody did.

Dave Bowen of the Capital Improvement Committee then spoke, explaining that his group asked the chief if he could get a fire truck for $300,000.

“He said yes and didn’t come back to say we can’t use that truck,” Bowen said. “It’s customary for the Capital Improvement Committee to ask if we can get it for less.”

Apparently, the Fire Chief was at Town Meeting but didn't feel like he could 'speak up' when the question was under debate - because he's not a Town Meeting member. That's being awfully timid, considering we had a number of non-Town Meeting members address everyone on both nights, including before the debt exclusion debate even began. Furthermore, the question of whether or not $300,000 was enough came up during the debate. The Chief had a duty to speak up.

Labels: fire department, the Reporter

Diarist Sean Roche, of the popular blog Blue Mass Group, had an interesting post a few days ago on a subject very near to Swampscott. Lincoln-Sudbury's Superintendent, John Ritchie, used part of his commencement speech at their school's graduation to courageously tackle the anonymous postings of adults in the community, imploring his students never to stoop to their level. Specifically, he said:

Here's my advice: if you ever find yourself in a position where you are writing things for public consumption that have no intent other than to cause pain or cast aspersions on people, call people's character into question, question their ethics or honesty - and you're afraid to sign your name because if anyone ever knew it was you writing it, you'd be ashamed and embarrassed, you're on the wrong track.

Those are good words to live by. Unfortunately, Roche took offense to Ritchie's comments because the Superintendent blamed it on "the blogs." However, that doesn't take away from Superintedent Ritchie's case, as I suggested in Roche's diary: Superintendent Ritchie's only mistake was to confuse blogging with commenting. Unfortunately, it's an all-too common confusion.

As someone with some experience in both local campaigns and blogs, I hear time and time again people talking about comments on WickedLocal and other community papers as "the blogs." It's a dangerous precedent that must be kept in check, immediately. Unlike WickedLocal comments, blogs are actually held accountable - people have to sign in, build reputation and live by what they say. Anonymous comments on community papers are poison precisely because they aren't blogs: there's no signing in, so people can create new user names every time they post. Furthermore, there's no good way to keep track of anonymous comments, whereas blogs live online (and are easy to find) forever. The result is anonymous commenters aren't afraid to say anything, no matter how mean or vile, or whether or not it's backed up with facts. People say whatever they want because they're not held accountable, leading to such putrid words that Swampscott's own WickedLocal shut down its comments for months.

It's easy to see where the confusion grows: most of the population's never been to a blog; people just think any online commentary is simply 'blogging.' It would be nice if we could chalk this up to one big confusion, but by allowing this misunderstanding to take place, the reputation of blogs as useful tools is being sullied, all the while the real culprits are free from actually fixing the problem.

The problem is greatly exacerbated because, ultimately, this is about good journalism. The Swampscott Reporter wouldn't allow people to say anything they wanted in letters to the editor or the opinion section, so why should their comment section be treated any differently? Accountability in newspapers matter, perhaps more than anything else, and they're letting their good names be dragged through the mud because they haven't caught up to the Web 2.0.

So, what the heck are we going to do about it?

What are the problems?

• Anonymity.
• Unaccountability.
  
• A general ignorance about the web 2.0.
  

What are the solutions?

• Solving anonymity: the universal acceptance of 'signing in.'
  
• Solving the accountability gap: the universal promotion of online meritocracy; making newspapers buy into the importance of building user-name reputation.
  
• Solving Web ignorance: education. Everyone should know what a blog is versus a comment versus an Internet forum.
  

The last action item becomes important because when people keep confusing the comments and blogs as they are now, there's not going to be any progress in fixing the problem. Just like you can't cure the cold with antibiotics, we can't cure the problem of unaccountable commenters at newspapers if the population at large thinks it's 'the blogs.' Doctors go to med school for years so they can tell the difference between a cold and the flu - luckily, people should be able to know what a comment is versus a blog in around two minutes. Newspapers have no real incentive to fix their comment sections if people think there's something wrong with 'the blogs,' so let's get that step right: they need to bring accountability to their newspapers.

All of this becomes vastly more important because there's an intrinsic value to blogs: they cover events that newspapers can't cover and they democratize information. If the vast majority of the population doesn't value the medium of blogging, it's only going to be that much harder to sustain the progress that the blogosphere has been able to spearhead. Most importantly, when it comes to being online, while being anonymous can be a good thing, being unaccountable is never acceptable. The progressive blogosphere is built around that premise, but it can't rest until it's a universal standard all across the Internet.

Note: Parts of this blog were originally posted on my primary blog, Ryan's Take.

Labels: blogs, the Reporter, wickedlocal

This Wednesday, the 11th, at the Town Library, 7pm on the top floor.

Labels: town dems