Berkman Buzz, week of August 6

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
Week of August 6, 2007

What's going on... take your pick or browse below.

*Dan Gillmor on citizen media in journalism education.
*Ethan Zuckerman explains his theory of “incremental infrastructure.”
*Urs Gasser reflects on two whirlwind weeks in Cambridge.
*Rebecca MacKinnon discusses Jimmy Wales’ pledge against search censorship.
*Doc Searls and summertime heat.
*William McGeveran's lesson from the Minnesota bridge collapse.
*Citizen Media Law Project: U.S. Senate Approves FOIA Amendments.
*Weekly Global Voice: Morocco Censorship Makes Headlines Yet Again.

The full buzz.

“This week is the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, better known in the field as AEJMC, where journalism and communications educators gather to ponder their profession. This will be my fourth such event, and in just a few years citizen journalism has moved from heresy – a topic to be considered, if at all, only in side conferences and hallways – to something that, while still not widely accepted, is at least of interest.”
Dan Gillmor, “Updating Journalism Education for This Century”

“Travels in June to Tanzania and South Africa - and specifically to the TED Global conference in Arusha, and a World Economic Forum meeting in Cape Town - have had me thinking more directly about economic development than I have for the past few years. Specifically, I came out of these conferences amazed by the success of the mobile phone industry in Africa and wondering whether what lessons other sectors could take from the mobile phone industry.”
Ethan Zuckerman, “Incremental Ideas”

“A few days ago, I returned from Cambridge, MA, where I had been spending two inspiring and inspired weeks. Here are only three of the many (professional) highlights: I was very fortunate, once more, to be on the faculty of the OII summer doctoral program (SDP) that - for the first time - took place at Harvard Law School (and, no, there hasn’t been an attempt to bring it to St. Gallen, rumors to the contrary…). My friends at the Berkman Center did a fantastic job in pulling together a very interesting summer program with a terrific line-up of contributors.”
Urs Gasser, “Cambridge, Summer 2007: A Few Impressions and a Thank You”

“Wikipedia founder Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Wales says that Wikia, his new for-profit wiki and search engine company, will never censor its content or compromise its users the way Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others have done in China. In Taipei at Wikimania, the annual world conference for people who work on Wikipedia and all its associated projects, Jimbo gave a presentation about Wikia, describing how he plans to create an open search engine which anybody on the planet can help build, and whose algorithms will be made public.”
Rebecca MacKinnon, “Jimbo Wales: Google’s China Mistake”

“Living in coastal California can dull one’s Eastern edge, forged in the heat of summer, sharpened by abrasive seasons, the recurrent swelters and chills of true summers and winters. I’ve always been, as my old business partner David Hodskins correctly put it, comfort-imperative. Maybe that’s one reason I stayed so long on the California coast after David took our company there from North Carolina for good business reasons: there was only one Silicon Valley, and that’s where we belonged. Temperate conditions certainly helped draw me to Santa Barbara, although I would have gone and stayed anywhere my wife liked.”
Doc Searls, “Back to Natures”

“I live in the Twin Cities, and the Law School where I teach is just a few blocks from the I-35W bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River last week. (It’s so nearby, in fact, that some of the investigators are using the school building as a temporary headquarters). I am fine and so is everyone I know. I was touched by the e-mails and phone calls my wife and I got right after the event from friends all around the country, checking in to make sure we all are safe. Some came from people I’ve just met a couple of times at conferences, but they were genuine and concerned. Others were from people who have been among my closest friends.”
William McGeveran, “Maintaining our Personal Bridges”

“Last Friday night (8/3), the United States Senate passed the the FOIA reform bill, S.849, before retiring for its August recess. We discussed the proposed FOIA amendments in detail a few weeks ago, when Senator Kyl was still holding the bill up in the Senate. The most notable aspect of the draft legislation from our perspective is its expansive definition of "the news media," which appears to encompass bloggers and other online journalists.”
Sam Bayard, “U.S. Senate Approves FOIA Amendments”

“Morocco has made headlines all too often this past year for free speech issues. In December, there was the banning of Morocco’s only darija (Moroccan dialect) magazine, Nichane, Aboubakr Jamai was practically forced out of the country to save his magazine, Le Journal, from a hefty fine, May saw Morocco named to CPJ’s Backsliders list of countries where press freedom has most deteriorated in recent years, and now, to top it all off, a new story unfolds.”
Jillian York, “Morocco: Censorship Makes Headlines Yet Again”