While over in the States on the weekend, I picked up a copy of the Watertown Daily Times the excellent paper that is published out of our smaller neighbouring city in Jefferson Co., NY. As an artifact, it is especially interesting to read the “Northern New York” section on issues that are important to the community that is so close geographically across the river but so subtly different in so many ways and unknown in so many others…and not just why grown men wear red Dale Earnhardt NASCAR jackets in public?
- The strong interest in US high school sports never ceases to amaze me. You can watch the local Watertown TV and get the local footage, interviews and scores before the pros – you can also follow it on the webs news service of the competing TV station. You can listen to a high school or junior college basketball game on 620 WHEN. In the WDT and you can read pages of articles right now on the local northern New York school championships in wrestling, basketball and volleyball trying to figure out where all these small school are located and how the sectional and divisional structure works. What it helps foster is that legitimacy in the local as well as that thing you can only describe in somewhat cloying terms, a positive image for (or at least of) teens. We could do with more of that local coverage here.
- You find out about similar initiatives. We have some interest in wind power here in Kingston and so I was surprised to learn from page B4 that a $380 million (USD of course) 190 turbine wind farm is being built and finished this year on Tug Hill, called the Flat Rock Wind Project, in Lewis County about 75 miles to the SSE of here. I may be able to see it from the roof on a clear day. Such a project on PEI would provide 200% of local needs and create an exportable resource yet the local goals in PEI have been puny and plans are for less than 10% of the imaginations of our local US neighbours.
- I also read about a copyright law suit involving a blog and St. Lawrence University in St. Lawrence Co. I can’t comment on US copyright law and the WDT gives only passing mention at the bottom of B6 to the case in a larger article on university issues:
The change allows SLU’s Information Technology office to review and monitor files transmitted or stored on the university’s computers. The change was made in the wake of a copyright infringement suit SLU has brought against Interet Web log Take Back Our Campus. SLU is suing to stop the administrators of the Web log, or blog, from using university photos. The suit could reveal who is running the blog, which ridicules SLU administrators, staff and students.
But for a smaller-town paper, the sussinct characterization of blogging and the related issues is quite neatly done, though I think the days of the capitalization of “Internet” and “Web” are long gone. The case potentially covers any number of interesting concepts including free speech, copyright, education law and technology law so I hope to figure out how to follow it.
I wish the WDT had free web service but, given the real reporting that it is doing on a local basis, someone has to pay the piper and I can’t really justify about $100 CND for a year’s subscription for this hobby interest. But what a great way to get to know a community.