Web Cred... the players

Blogging, journalism, and credibility... this week's conference at Harvard will be blogged and webcast.  Those of us with an interest in the conversation will certainly have a chance to listen in.  I'm a truth-seeker from way-back.  The CIA and I have an affinity for that passage from the New Testament about truth (John 8:32). I wish I was there out front of the Harvard Law School hustling programs...

"Getcher program... can't tell the bloggers without a prooo-grammm!" 

I'll never make a dime at this blogging biz.  Don't need a disclosure here... nothing to disclose. Okay, there's always something to disclose.  The following information includes material from the High Beam Executive Search, a service that's reasonably inexpensive but that I get free because I pestered CBO Chris Locke. That said, let's get to it shall we?

I think a Samuel Adams beer advertisement would go nicely here inside the front cover of our program.  And maybe if we got the Globe to buy the back cover we could afford to pay the newsies we'll have out front at Berkman hawking this thing.

Here they are folks, in alphabetical order, and what better order is there for a bunch of text heads than alphabetical... first up, from the New York Times

Jill Abramson, Managing Editrix - Jill's most recent claim to fame was her decision to put a five column full color picture of dead brown babies on the front page above the fold.  Daniel Okrent says:

I asked managing editor Jill Abramson why she chose this picture. She said in an e-mail message that after careful and difficult consideration, she decided that the photo "seemed to perfectly convey the news: the sheer enormity of the disaster, as we learned one-third of the casualties are children in a part of the world where more than 50 percent of the population is children. It is an indescribably painful photograph, but one that was in all ways commensurate to the event." When I spoke with director of photography Michele McNally, who believes the paper has the obligation "to bear witness" at moments like this, she had a question for me: "Wouldn't you want us to show pictures from Auschwitz if the gates were opened in our time?"

Okay, to heck with alphabetical order... let's see who else from the Times is coming.  Oops, no one.  Jill would be the rep from the Gray Lady.  Jill doesn't seem to have a blog.  Background according to High Beam, includes ten years at the Wall Street Journal, Ferris Journalism professorship at Princeton teaching for a semester, co-authorship of "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas," and a BA in History and Literature from Harvard.

Faye M. Anderson, a prominent Republican free lance journalist, and a graduate of Stanford Law School - here's what we get from the link Faye provided:

A noted political analyst, Faye M. Anderson is the former national correspondent for PoliticallyBlack.com. During the first Bush administration, Anderson was a political appointee with the Employment Standards Administration of the Department of Labor. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and she was a frequent guest on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Anderson is a member of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation's Election Reform Task Force. She served on the steering committee of African-American Unity 2000, a national coalition of 80 grassroots organizations that was responsible for the higher than expected black voter turnout in the 2000 elections. Previously, Anderson was a national vice chairman of the Republican National Committee's New Majority Council and a member of the boards of the Ripon Society and the Ripon Educational Fund. She formerly served as executive director of the Council of 100, a national network of African American Republicans.

Walter Bender, from the MIT Media Lab.  According to HighBeam Executive Search,

Mr. Bender is a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory and Principal Investigator of the laboratory's News in the Future consortium. He received his BA from Harvard University in 1977. Mr. Bender joined the Architecture Machine Group at MIT in 1978. He received his MS at MIT in 1980. A founding member of the Media Laboratory, Mr. Bender is engaged in the study of new information technologies, particularly those which affect people directly. Much of the research addresses the notion of building upon the interactive styles associated with existing media and extending them into domains where a computer is incorporated into the interaction. He has participated in much of the pioneering research in the field of electronic publishing, including the ``Aspen Movie Map'', and the ``NewsPeek Electronic Newspaper'', both early examples of personalized interactive multi-media. 

Here are Walter's ...seven news services for community:

1. Identifying, including contrasting and relating
2. Analyzing, including positioning and verifying
3. Localizing, including augmenting and remembering
4. Contextualizing, including connecting and relating
5. Expressing, including storytelling and transcoding
6. Learning, including interacting and constructing
7. Advertising, including observing and transacting

Jon Bonne, a blogger!  Besides his gig at MSNBC.com, Jon blogs here.  I'm thinking Jon was invited because someone hopes he'll bring a side dish.  Just kidding!

Bill Buzenberg is an NPR bigwig with Minnesota Public Radio and a past fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  Bill doesn't seem to blog himself, but I dug out this tiddy-bitty:

Is blogging an essential part of our political and cultural future, or just a new talking point for activists and pundits? "The Blogging of the President: 2004" is produced by Minnesota Public Radio with Host Christopher Lydon and Producer Mary McGrath, the team that inaugurated "The Connection" on public radio in 1994. Chris and Mary returned to public radio last year with "The Whole Wide World, a dynamic series of specials for PRI. Bill Buzenberg of Minnesota Public Radio serves as Executive Producer of the program.

John Bracken - here's what HighBeam Executive Searchlinks to about John Bracken:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named John S. Bracken as program officer in the general program. Bracken's responsibilities include grantmaking related to public interest media and to intellectual property rights and the public domain. Before joining the foundation, Bracken served at American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam.

And there you have it!  All the Web Cred program participants from A to B. One out of six seems to be an active blogger, but who knows?  The other forty-two participants include at least a dozen bloggers that I'm familiar with, so the ratio will improve as the program writing continues. Here's the charm of blogging.  I'm putting together an annotated alphabetical list of people a half dozen or so at a time, then posting the list in reverse chronological order.  You can see why we have a $10 cover price on these glossy programs...

"Programs!  Getcher Programs!  Can't tell the pundits without a program!"