Category: technology

Predictable Responses

Warning: Undefined array key "adf" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 69

Warning: Undefined array key "sim_pages" in /home4/hpvcxhmy/public_html/wp-content/plugins/similarity/similarity.php on line 70

As newspaper Editorial Boards begin to write about SB 208 their positions mirror what I called the tip of the iceberg and what we expected on the day that SB 208 was announced. In fact, one might almost wonder in passing if the editorial in the Standard Examiner was written by the same person who wrote the editorial in the Deseret News. Both dismiss the idea that they oppose this because it cuts into the revenue they get from publishing legal notices and both suggest that a state run website would not treat all legal notices equally. Also, neither editorial mentioned that this website would help city governments and citizens to save money on all the legal notices that they are required to publish. Essentially all their objections boil down to scare tactics as shown by this response to the Standard Examiner editorial.

As I read the Deseret News version I had a thought about an amendment to the bill that would expose the sincerity of the newspapers in their "public service" claim for opposing this. If the bill were amended to stipulate that the legal notices website allow bulk uploads of legal notices from entities such as newspapers (at bulk rates), and also allow a feed or other source for newspapers to print or otherwise republish the notices from that site (if they so choose) then I can see no reason for newspapers to object – besides the revenue competition. If the papers really are not afraid of the competition – if they honestly believe they are opposing this on public service grounds – they should simply offer to post on the state website any legal notices they receive so that their service complies with the new law (assuming it passes).

The Deseret News also provided two claims that need to be debunked.

In addition, as any Web surfer can attest, Web sites are not dependable. They are subject to technical issues, and they don’t make a reliable and enduring archivable record the way newspapers do.

As a long-time web developer I can say that whatever temporary glitches a website may have does not change the fact that web sites can produce reliable and enduring archivable records. In fact, the most reliable archivable records of newspapers are digital. For proof of that simply go look at archive.org. I can pull up old websites of mine that I know no longer exist on any computer where I ever published them. Even if a government site went down it is not likely that it would be lost.

The bill claims it would cost the state nothing. However, Web sites require considerable maintenance and personnel. Even if this new site were to fall under existing state government Web services, it still would cost taxpayers. Newspapers, on the other hand, store and archive data for nothing other than the cost of a legal notice.

This statement completely ignores what was actually said when SB 208 was first unveiled. The site would not cost taxpayers anything not because Sen. Urquhart is ignoring the cost of running a site, but because the site would charge a nominal fee to cover the costs of the website.

I have nothing against the newspapers – sometimes they have useful information – but they have yet to show a solid reason why they deserve a captive market for legal notices. To prove that, I would encourage a removal of the cap on what they can charge for legal notices (this would be even more broad than what they are pushing for in SB 161) if SB 208 is passed.

Tags connections, Deseret News, laws, legislation, legislature, media, Steve Urquhart, Utah

technology

Track Voting Records

The Voting Record plugin I mentioned last week is ready for an early release. You can download it here and give it a try. I have not added the function to allow users to search the votes yet, but the votes can be entered and edited by blog authors and displayed on your blog. Instructions etc. are at the plugin page.

Tags civic participation, plugin, tools

life State technology

All is Well

It must be a really slow news day when the newspaper has to tell us something so basic as the fact that gays can’t get a marriage license in Utah. In other "news" the FEC would not allow me to run for President when I turned 18.

Recently I’ve been so busy that I am not really following anything more newsworthy than that anyway. I am working on a plugin that might interest politically active bloggers. I don’t normally talk about plugins on this blog, but I’ll post here when I have something that people can use.

Tags House 20, media, plugin

State technology

Legal Notice – SB 208

I was going to post a summary of the meeting, but many other people have already done a good job of that (Holly, JM Bell, Jason, Bob, Joe). So far, it appears that only JM Bell and BenJoe have taken the time to create something more than a back-of-the-napkin post of quotes and initial reactions. (That’s not a criticism of the other posts, by the way.) From the meeting itself I only want to post one little gem from Sen. Urquhart:

It’s not government’s job to prop up an industry.

I wish someone would tell that to Congress.

Now, my initial thoughts were that I can’t wait to see how the media reacts to this. The very tip of the iceberg comes in the form of a comment that has been posted on a couple of the blogs that wrote initial reactions.

The claim is that the newspapers are already developing a website that would serve a similar purpose of providing more access and wider distribution of legal notices. Personally, I won’t hold my breath. Even if their site is close to production I would have to see it before deciding if it really serves the public. There is no reason that citizens should be mandated to publish through the newspapers – just as there would be no justification for mandating that they could not publish through the newspapers.

If newspapers are pushing to raise the cap on what they can charge for legal notices I have a hard time imagining that they are planning to offer the services of their new website for free or even at a low cost.

I think the heart of the comment is in this paragraph:

As has been the case for centuries, public notice is best served by a third-party, independent source. There should be a be check and balance on government power. In other words, should the fox be watching the henhouse when it comes to legal notices? Also, should the government be in the business of creating its own communications bureaucracy?

I think we need to define who the parties are to this system. The government has nothing to gain by not publishing some legal notice that has been submitted so I’m not sure that you could claim that they are any less independent than the newspapers. I don’t believe that publishing legal notices gives any power to the press. The whole statement sounds like a breathless rush to throw out something that might make people reject this proposal without any real argument against it.

A more thoughtful question was posed during the briefing (I believe by Ethan Millard):

Why should government take over a market that has been a private transaction?

My answer has two parts. First – is it really a private transaction when government has already mandated that the transaction take place? Second – I would not argue that government should take over such transactions, only that there is very little reason why government should avoid making the legal requirement that drives those transactions as painless as possible. If there were already some low-cost way for people to meet the requirements of providing legal notice that provided the requisite distribution of the notice then there would be no reason for this bill.

The fact is that government should not be mandating a captive market, as the legal notice requirement currently does. Newspapers have become dependent on their captive market – that’s not healthy for them and they need to fix it even if SB 208 were not being proposed. Let’s free people to allow publishing of legal notice outside the newspapers and then eliminate the cap on what newspapers can charge for the notice when people choose to publish through the papers.

Tags blogger briefing, connections, laws, legislation, legislature, media, Steve Urquhart, Utah

State technology

A Blogger Press Corps – of Sorts

Post author By David
Post date February 10, 2009
5 Comments on A Blogger Press Corps – of Sorts

I was just talking to Ric Cantrell about the Bloggerpresser that is taking place this afternoon at 4:00 in the senate building (it’s an open invitation – see his post for details on attending live or virtually). I want to share a couple of interesting thoughts from our conversation.

Ric mentioned as he has tried to organize this event that bloggers are not like the traditional press corps. (Not that he expected they would be.) With a standard press conference he can simply email the reporters who cover politics at the various news organizations and know that the conference will be covered. With bloggers there is no definitive list of who is interested or available. He can send an email to those whose emails addresses he has, but that does not guarantee that everyone who would like to come has been informed. There is no central place where anyone can be assured that all the appropriate bloggers will get the information.

That makes me wonder – what would be the best way to deal with this issue? Is it something where political bloggers who wish to cover state legislative issues should be expected to follow senatesite.com to get announcements when they do blogger oriented events? Would it be better to have a Utah Bloggers Pseudo Press Corps email list that interested bloggers could subscribe to for such announcements? (I made that name up as I typed it, don’t hold me to that name if you favor the email list idea.)

Another question I have is – who is interested in the idea of press credentials for bloggers? Who is interested in a non-credentialed Blogger Press Corps? Please let me know if you have interest in this area so that we can expand the group of people who are discussing the possibilities.

Tags blogging, connections, legislature, media, Press Bloggers

State technology

Utah Waste Buster

File this under "technology experiments by public officials" but it seemed worth linking to Utah Waste Buster
if for no other reason than the fact that my senator, Dan Liljenquist, is one of those who is behind this blog. While there are those who complain that this is a waste of money and time (not sure about that since blogger blogs like this are free) I figure that it is worth exploring ways to increase the flow of information between officials and constituents. I’ve added it to my sidebar for now to encourage people to visit and give this a chance of making a difference.

Time will tell if anything truly useful emerges, but I’m always happy to see efforts being made.

Tags connections, Dan Liljenquist, Senate 23, Steve Urquhart, Utah

culture National technology

D-TV Switch

That would be D as in "Delay " not D as in digital.

I have had the opportunity to drive to work for the last couple of days and have been listening to the radio as they discussed this issue. I used to wonder why television stations should be forced to switch to digital signals. Now I recognize that Congress has been holding them back from switching to digital signals exclusively. That leaves me with the question of why it is so important that everybody be able to receive a television signal.

I know I’m odd in the fact that I never watch television (since the middle of 2000), but I really don’t understand why television stations should be forced to serve people through analog. Some will argue that television is an important news source. I argue that the "news" that comes on television is somewhere between uninformative and misinformative most of the time. Some will argue that the entertainment is important. Though I find little television entertainment worth watching (yes, I still do have a vague idea of what’s offered), none of it is necessary and why should Congress be involved in mandating our entertainment options? (I can’t seem to find that section in my pocket Constitution.) Next thing you know, Uncle Sam will be giving away 5 free movie tickets per person per year – like they do in New Zealand (I may be wrong on the exact quantity).

Considering what I heard about how much cheaper it is for stations to broadcast in digital I would bet that, if left to themselves, the television broadcasters would figure out a way to offer the financial incentive necessary to get their customers to switch to digital. But that would be a free market and <sarcasm>we wouldn’t want to try that – free market’s aren’t stable.</sarcasm>

Tags change, change congress, free markets, laws, media, television

culture technology

24 Hour News

James Fallows talks about what he calls the tyranny of technology – the way technology has changed news from having a daily news cycle, where organizations could take time to react and respond to news, to continuous coverage news where the responses and reactions must be nearly pre-planned. The tyranny here, as I interpret it, is that we have lowered the bar for what passes as news and increased the likelyhood of having the wool pulled over the eyes of society through a barrage of information that is no longer meaningful.

What do others think? Has 24-hour instant coverage news improved our access to useful information? Were there benefits to the daily news cycle that we have lost?

Tags media, questions

culture technology

Devoid of Newspapers

I’m sure that everyone has read a few articles about the shrinking revenue and circulation of newspapers around the country (and the world I suspect). As an example, Real Clear Politics recently asked Is the Demise of Newspapers Preordained? The trends don’t look good, and up until now I have viewed the situation through the lens of "what do newspapers need to do to remain viable?" I don’t meant o suggest that the situation has grown more dire – in fact I don’t think it has changed in any significant way – but today I began to ask myself "what would happen if newspapers disappeared entirely?"

Perhaps part of the thought was a result of Scott’s post that lists control of information as one of the three ingredients to despotism. Of course the demise of newspapers does not mean that there would be no information, nor does it necessarily mean that there would be a central control over the information that is publicly available.

First let me lay out my two assumptions in approaching this question – newspaper companies go bankrupt, in other words this is not simply a case of only publishing online rather than in a phsical paper; other forms of mass communication (radio, tv, internet) do not disappear.

Most directly what I would expect under these assumptions is that journalism would disappear as a paid profession except in whatever form it might be able to survive in unwritten formats (radio and tv). Currently we live in an age where newspapers are not an exclusive source of original written journalism. We have seen cases where the newspapers (and other professional media) get scooped by amatures with blogs and areas of interest. I believe this gives us a glimpse into what a vaccume of printed news would be filled with.

Anyone (such as myself) can publish information in a way that is publicly accessible. Of course very few people know where to find what I write while millions of people know exactly where to find the things that are written by a columnist at the New York Times. Although amatures already publish many times more information (by word count) than journalism professionals there would bea great shift if the vast majority of people received the majority of their information from the handfull of small-circulation sources to which they had been exposed. Also, there is a huge gap between the information that I am able to find, process, and write about while holding down a steady job and the information that can be found and published by someone who gets to spend their time in pursuit of new and important information.. If newspapers were consistently doing that job I would be distraught over the possibility of losing that service in society. As it is, I fear that we have already lost most of the value that newspapers could offer.

So my question is, what effects do other people see if the newspaper industry were to collapse? How would we cope? How obvious would the loss be in the public arena?

Tags media

culture technology

Progression of Transit

Hopefully the idea of growing into light rail does not come as a real surprise to anyone.

{Darrell Cook}, executive director of Mountainland Association of Governments, said if the dedicated bus system linking Utah Valley University, Brigham Young University and Provo’s East Bay works as expected, the system could, in time, be replaced by a light-rail system.

There would seem to be a natural progression for public transit that city planners could prepare for that would allow for public transit to be tailored to the current needs of a community with a defined growth potential as ridership needs increase over time. With advanced planning it should be relatively painless to meet expanding needs by starting early without investing prematurely in expensive systems.

The transition from BRT to light-rail is a last step along one line of progression, but I think there may be two progressions available. There is the regional transportation which starts with simple bus service and graduates to more complex bus service (with BRT and dedicated bus lanes etc.) before converting dedicated bus lanes into light rail – assuming that the growth and ridership supports each successive transition. Then there is the longer range transportation between metropolitan areas which starts with shuttles or express buses and eventually graduates to commuter rail or even high-speed rail. There may even be a step between the express/shuttle phase and the commuter rail phase that can be filled with DMU’s.

If early development incorporated the possibilities of future transit options then it might be easier and less costly to build and maintain transit commensurate with population.

Tags DMU, planning, Salt Lake Tribune, transit, transportation, Utah County