posted by on August 10, 2011 at 05:11 PM
About
a year ago, we helped our friend CJ Chivers get set up with a Tumblr, Twitter, etc in support of his book,
The Gun, and to serve as a reporter’s notebook for his coverage of the Middle East.
It’s worth checking back on this, because Chris has been really doing incredible stuff in the past year—and has been recognized by
NPR and many others for his reporting. Most of his bylines in the past several months have been coming from Libya and the
Tumblr has become an incredibly interesting behind-the-scenes look at the realities of the conflict.
He’s outlined a lot of the coverage
here.
A few of the best:
Also, a very
moving story about the Death of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. An excerpt:
Everyone who admires Chris and Tim, and everyone who loves them, has a debt of gratitude to Human Rights Watch and to the International Organization for Migration, who together, on extremely short notice, bent the world to get Chris’s and Tim’s remains on the Ionian Spirit, the evacuation vessel that by chance was briefly in Misurata port tonight. The vessel delayed its departure to take them aboard and begin their journeys out. Tim was brought down first, while Chris clung to life. When Chris died, there seemed no time to get him there. But
HRW worked the phones, pleading by satellite call to the pier to have the ship held up again. They simultaneously urged one of Chris’s and Tim’s colleagues at the triage center to get Chris’s remains en route through the besieged city by ambulance, assessing — correctly as it turned out — that if they could honestly say that he was on his way then no captain would leave the pier.
They were right. Chris and Tim are at sea now, heading toward Benghazi, which means, in the indirect but solemn ways that the fallen travel from battlefields, that they are heading home.
What is powerful about these channels is that they are allowing for a much more nuanced, colorful, and personal take on what is happening. The Times coverage is great, and critically important, but this additional lens allows us a deeper perspective on things.
It is also worth noting that for all the talk of
Andy Carvin , the hyper aggregators in social media, and the speed that information decimiates through new channels, there are people out there doing the hard work in the field.
Check out a recent interview with
NPR’s Terry Gross
here.
posted by on October 30, 2010 at 09:48 AM
Super interesting:
I am pleased to preview ‘Dead Drops’ a new project which I started off as part of my ongoing EYEBEAM residency in NYC the last couple weeks. ‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your files and date. Each dead drop contains a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is still in progress, to be continued here and in more cities. Full documentation, movie, map and ‘How to make your own dead drop’ manual coming soon! Stay tuned.
posted by on October 29, 2010 at 04:57 PM
Awhile back, Benjamin met an interesting chap at an Esquire event: CJ Chivers, a former Marine Infantry officer and current senior reporter/war correspondent for the New York Times.
He had a book coming out, but wasn’t well versed in the Internet and the dark arts of social media marketing. Instead he spends his days “kicking dictators in the teeth,” rooting out corruption, and generally being awesome. So, we proposed a trade. TBG would help him get his Internet sorted out, and in exchange he would take us night fishing!
Over a sushi lunch at
TBG HQ, we set up with some basic stuff:
A Tumblr, a
Facebook page and a
Twitter feed to distribute the content. We thought the Tumblr should be a reporter’s notebook of sorts, telling the stories behind his new book, “The Gun,” a history of the AK-47.
After getting up and running, CJ really took to the new mediums, posting a lot of background context, videos and back stories that make for really compelling reads. This all goes to show that you don’t need to be fancy, as long as the stories and content are great.
So far the initial reviews have been stellar. Expect a follow-up post from our nightfishing adventure to come. If you want to check out The Gun,
here it is.
