Citizen Will

Category: Media

  • The Power of Sorry: A Local Apology to Get the Ball Rolling

    Over the last six years, I’ve learned more than a tad about how our local political sausage is ground. The manufacturing of poor public policy for political gain adds a distinctively bitter taste to that meaty melange. Yes, at times, pettiness, spite, gamesmanship and ego overwhelm good sense and reasonable public policy. For a few […]

  • CarrboroCitizen: Better Late

    I bumped into the new CarrboroCitizen’s Taylor Sisk and Kirk Ross this morning at Carrboro’s Weaver St. Market. “Where’s the paper?”, I asked. Kirk said that more than 20 folks had already called him asking the same question “Where’s my paper?” Well, they had a few bumps on the road to their premier issue. All’s […]

  • CarrboroCitizen: T-Minus 6 Minutes And Counting

    I walked over to the offices of the Carrboro Citizen this afternoon to see if Kirk and company would make their Mar. 21st D-Day. Fingers were flying as the staff wrestled multiple streams of content onto the Triangle’s newest newspaper. Bubba told me that they had to have all the magic bottled by 10PM, just […]

  • Easthom Update on Chapel Hill WiFi

    In case you don’t subscribe to Council member Laurin Easthom’s ‘blog The Easthom Page, she has an update on some possible forward motion on implementing a municipal network. Updated staff report on wireless with council discussion is tentative but hopeful for April 23. Such a report will be pretty inclusive and give us the staff’s […]

  • Chapel Hill’s Public Forum on Information Technology

    If you would like to see our Town use technology to more effectively address social issues, improve operational efficiencies and drive the cost of doing government business down, then make a date to attend the rescheduled Public Forum on Information Technology 7-9pm Mar. 21st, 2007. The event will be held in the Conference Room of […]

  • Trash Talk: SqueezeThePulp Led Online

    Though I’ve quoted many relevant comments from OrangePolitics, a watering-hole for local pols, the “other” local forum, SqueezeThePulp has been popping with online commentary for months. Here’s one of the more active threads Proposed Orange County Landfill Transfer Station Survey which led off with this David Richter open letter to the Orange County Board of […]

  • Community Networking: Profiting from Poor Leadership Clearwire Gains a Toe-hold

    Profiting from Council’s continued inability to craft effective technology policy, Clearwire, a wireless Internet service provider utilizing proprietary spectrum, has gained a toe-hold in our community. These days, it’s hard to imagine getting through high school without the Internet. However, there are at least 100 students at East Chapel Hill High School whose families cannot […]

  • News Wars

    No, I’m not talking about a face-off between the N&O and the Herald Sun. If you get PBS HD 4.2, Frontline is airing the episode, “What’s Happening to the News”, of their series News War Bergman traces the recent history of American journalism, from the Nixon administration’s attacks on the media and the post-Watergate popularity […]

  • The Other Citizen

    Looks like one of our community’s cooler cats is out of the bag. The Daily Tar Heel reports today on pioneering on-line journalist, State political analyst, former editor of the Indy Kirk Ross’ ( Exile On Jones Street) latest venture: The Carrboro Citizen. Why create a new media outlet for Carrboro? “It’s got 17,000 people, […]

  • Carrboro’s New Media Experiment

    There’s been a small discussion over on SqueezeThePulp about the declining efficacy of local media outlets in covering our community. I suggested that new media outlets will soon move into this long fallow territory – intensively covering local events – to the possible detriment of traditional news outlets. It appears that Carrboro is the center […]

  • Municipal Networking: Nary a Citizen Advocate to be Found

    An update on the muni-networking task force prepared by UNC’s Shannon Howle Schelin, PhD, one of our stronger advocates for 21st century infrastructure. On November 13, 2006, an exploratory meeting was held at the Town of Chapel Hill to discuss the Town’s interest in pursuing a wireless strategy. The goal of the meeting was to […]

  • Herald-Sun Editor Robert Ashley gets an earful from CitizenWill…

    Went to an interesting Downtown Partnership sponsored Safety Forum this morning, the notes of which I’ll post later… While there I had the pleasure of meeting the Herald-Sun’s Robert Ashley. Poor guy. He probably wouldn’t have sat next to me if he’d known I was going to give him an earful about the Herald-Sun’s on-line […]

  • 53rd and Falling: Our Free Press

    I’ve been thinking quite a bit about citizen journalism of late. Exemplary reports by BlueNC’s own SouthernDem, Greensboro’s release of the “secret” RMA report detailing the reasons for their police chief’s discharge, commentary from real journalists at the recent ConvergeSouth unconference, the Sunlight Foundation’s key assistance in outing congressional nepotism and revealing federal earmarks have […]

  • Here comes the Judge: Superior Court District 15B Oct. 16th Bar Forum

    There were 20+ folks tonight – with a couple from the media – maybe 4 or 5 organizers – some town staff and the balance being interested citizens. I was already convinced that District 15B voters have a heck of slate of candidates before them – tonight I was more impressed than ever. Very simply […]

  • Oct. 16th Superior Court 15B Forum: Opening

    Opening statements. I botched Mr. Stein’s statement. Later this week I hope to retrieve a video copy from the cable telecast. youTube link to opening statements.