Good Reputation Sleeping

Stumbling Toward Ecstasy

Link: NPR : Cat Power in Concert.

NPR, the source of some of the best audio on the web and in the air, has always had a multimedia-challenged website. They are working to change that.

They have, in the last year or so, gotten some web-savvy m-school kids (m for multimedia) to help with photos and such, and are now in the market for someone to bring some sense to their efforts. in the meantime NPR has, little by little, been tricking out aspects of their site by what ever means necessary.

Take this recent live broadcast of the Cat Power concert in D.C. It has a audio slide show, the complete audio from the show, and some text to make the 'word people' feel better. All around they are moving in the right direction.

Once they complete their transition, this may be the site to come to for more than just audio archives!

Photography 2.0 on the Radio

I had an interesting time on Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio show last week. It was wonderful to share the mic with Heather Champ, one of the pioneers of Photography 2.0 with the Mirror Project, who now is Community Manager for Flickr. It was a bit strange, however, to hear the comments of Fred Ritchin, who seemed to want to cling to the 'top down' media hierarchy of we tell you what you should be interested in.

I was also surprised at his reluctance to give the amateur photo community its due by insisting that they shouldn't be spoken of in the same context as photo great Henri Cartier-Bresson. What was Cartier-Bresson before the fame? An amateur named Henri who liked taking photos with that new, small camera called a Leica.

And why don't we like the self-portraits? Why is it art when Lee Friedlander does it and not when the photographer is Solea?

I thought most of us in the main stream media had come to realize that it is better to embrace, understand and get on board, rather than to try and stand in front of the 21st century media train. Technology and the internet are changing photography just as they have changed society; how we choose to use our new tools is the only question worth asking.

To hear the show, follow the Open Source link above, or click here for the mp3.