Author: Ruby Sinreich

I confess: I live in iTunes (although I refuse to buy anything from their store). I can remember a few years ago when I couldn’t see the point of ripping my CDs. I still don’t even have an iPod but these days, if I listen to it, it’s digital. Even though iTunes works incredibly well (now that I’ve figured out how to bend it to my will), there are a few things I don’t like about it, most of all how it doesn’t want to let me use anything else.

There are a few alternatives, like Cog, but I haven’t found anything that can meet my musical needs all day long like iTunes does. Today Brian sent me a link to Get Songbird. I actually haven’t used it yet (it’s still in preview), but it looks like a serious contender.

It’s an open-source media player built on the same framework as Firefox. It looks like it could become as ubiquitous among discriminating web users as Firefox has. Watch their screencast and see for yourself.

And it has this adorable little songbird icon everywhere, with a cute little fart coming out of its little bird butt. I don’t understand it, but I like it.

For an upcoming Q feature on blogging and ethics in the Raleigh News & Observer, I was asked to write a short piece about how blogging improves the accountability of journalists. This is a topic that has already generated several critical books and web sites, but it seemed like a new idea to the Q editor so I tried to keep it simple.

I wrote more than the 250 words requested, so here it is in its full, unedited glory:

Although there is some natural antagonism between journalists who get paid to report and bloggers who thrive on criticizing them, there is actually incredible synergy between these two groups, and they do more to support and improve each other than they may realize.

Political and issue-oriented blogging is made possible largely by the work of professional journalists and researchers. While bloggers tend to be quite discriminating in our choice of media, we often do rely on local and national newspapers as well as specialized outlets for our sources of information.

But of course we don’t always agree with what we read in the mainstream media, and as bloggers we have a platform as well as an obligation to say so. This where I believe that journalists can benefit from blogs – if they are willing to move past the binary “us vs. them” mentality. While you might not always agree with bloggers’ media critiques, I think we can all agree that greater accountability for journalists is an important goal and increasingly important in these duplicitous times.

I write from personal experience or from what I have read in trusted sources (including select news media and blogs). I don’t purport to be a journalist, and I don’t claim to do that kind of research. The great thing about blogs is that if we get something wrong, commenters can say so right on the same page as the original story, and authors can discuss why they wrote what they did.

For example, on OrangePolitics we may read a story and be able to fill in more perspectives than were shared in the story as we did with a recent article about building heights in downtown Chapel Hill. Sometimes we let reporters know about pressing community issues that might not have otherwise merited mainstream coverage such as the community outrage at the ban on dancing at Carr Mill Mall. And very often we find that reporters are using the dialogue on our site as a source for direct quotations in their stories.

In most cases we’re happy to help journalists do their jobs better, but bloggers also demand respect for what we do, which is add authentic personal perspectives to the public debate on the issues of our time.

I’ll add a link if/when this is actually published, probably Sunday.

I just want to give some bloggy good wishes to my friends Suzie and Giles who got married over the weekend. They got engaged after having been together for 10 years. I admire the patience and tenacity it took for them to wait until the time was right. Now is definitely their time.

I love this picture – look at those smiles!

Click here to see all the pictures on flickr tagged gilesandsuzie.

According to a local TV station, it’s Deep-Fried Coca-Cola.

The fair’s on! Don’t delay, it closes this Sunday!

This weekend North Carolina’s leading right-wing think tank held a conference for bloggers in Greensboro, NC. Just in case any limp-wristed, peace-loving, liberal hippie bloggers might mistake it for something they would want to attend, it was called “Carolina FreedomNet.” Can’t you just hear the deep-voiced announcer?

Anyway. I know I am on the Locke Foundation radar because their Executive Director sometimes visits OrangePolitics. I’m proud to know that I am part of the lefty blogosphere that inspires this kind of concern:

“Local blogging communities will become, and are already in some places, really important to electoral politics and local policy,” [Mary Katherine] Ham added. “Both are of great importance to conservatives. You don’t want local left blogger down the road blogging up the need for a new granola-paved bike path and the need to use your tax dollars to pay for it, and not have your own message to counter him. If there’s a vacuum, they will fill it, and the right blogosphere tends to be a bit behind on these kinds of things.”
– Beltway Blogroll: All Blogging Is Local via Politics and technology: Right-wingers talk about the local lefty blogs

Yeah! Granola-paved bike paths for all!!! But seriously, there have been a few conservative local blogs here in Orange County, but they have trouble being coherent long enough to have an impact on much of anything.

Next week – also in Greensboro – ConvergeSouth. I can’t go as I’ll at be this awesome wedding, but it should be fun. If you go tell Ed and Sue I sent you.

So earlier today, my friend Ed Cone’s blog brought my attention to online debate about Ms. Magazine’s upcoming cover story called “We Had Abortions.” Because the majority of commenters on Ed’s blog these days are right-wing trolls I got pissed off just thinking about what they might say.

After skimming the comments, I fired off this angry comment:

I had an abortion 18 years ago, and it was absolutely the best thing for all involved including my future children which I will be able to love, nurture, and support much more effectively.

Any of you who think what I did should be illegal: How many children have you adopted lately? How much additional taxes do you want to pay for public assistance for children and the people who take care of them? How many of you are even capable of getting pregnant?

And how many of you want me making decisions about YOUR family? Now please shut up and start acting like the Christians you claim to be.

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