An interesting bit of news floating thru the internet journalism community, about Atlanta Progressive News senior journalist Jonathan Springston losing his job.

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/freshloaf/2010/02/15/atlanta-progressive-news-fires-reporter-for-trying-to-be-objective/

"In an e-mail statement, editor Matthew Cardinale says Springston was asked to leave APN last week “because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.”"

---

As many of our readers know, we are in the midst of a major website redesign and relaunch that will result in new content and new forms of content, as well as tools to empower our readers to meaningfully participate in the democratic process. Part of that has meant going back to our core mission and re-examining how every part of what we do is consistent with, and advances, that mission.

In the end, we had to make a very difficult decision to move forward as a publication without Jonathan Springston. Last Wednesday, we informed him it seemed more appropriate if he found work with another publication or started his own publication.

At a very fundamental, core level, Springston did not share our vision for a news publication with a progressive perspective. He held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.

We get a lot of strange stuff in our email inbox - so when I saw this promo I was about to hit delete.

But I like the Blues. So I listened. This was actually a prety good tune - and its free,

http://www.pavementpr.com/1.mp3s/BrotherDege.TheBattleofNewOrleans.mp3

Traffic to the VOICES website has increased dramatically, and we have outgrown the servers we have used for many years. We are planning a move in the next few days, so unfortunately you can expect some periods of down time. Hopefully before long we will be settled into a new home.

I came across this story and thought it was an interesting one.

A person makes a vulgar post, (not all that terribly vulgar by normal human standards, but incautious and in poor judgement in the context of the written word) apparently in the comments section of someones blog, and when the comment is quickly deleted, the person repeats the post.

The blogger somehow determines that the poster is posting from a school computer, makes a phone call, leading to the quick resignation of the poster when the school identifies him.

Then the blogger reports on this series of events.

The comments to this final report are what is interesting. Most commenters take the position that this is an intolerable act on the bloggers part, that he should not have done anything more than ban the poster.

This is pretty much my position as well - I think the blogger who called the school was wrong.

But it's a curious question. If you are interested in this kind of issue, you might enjoy reading this webpage, especially the long long string of comments that follow. Some of it gets partisan, but that reflects the country we live in.

http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-editors-desk/the-editors-desk/2009/11/post-a-vulgar-comment-while-youre-at-work-lose-your-job/all-comments/

Are these kinds of video interesting or not? Should VOICES post more like this, or decline to repeat what are basically national advertisements?

Voices would like to hear your opinions and suggestions for stories and topics to cover in the next years worth of issues. So please let us know if there are topics and issues you'd like to see addressed in the pages of Voices.

We will consider and discuss all suggestions. And if we don't cover your story idea you can always come back and ask us why.

"PAUL SOLMAN: Here are the new numbers from the Labor Department's monthly survey of 60,000 households. The official number is what the government reports as U-3, 14.7 million unemployed as of June. That's 9.5 percent.

U-4 adds discouraged workers who've stopped looking. That would make unemployment 10 percent.

U-5, marginally attached workers who say they'd take a job, but haven't looked in a month. The number would then be up to 10.8 percent.

The most inclusive number, U-6, adds part-timers looking for full-time work, bringing the total to 16.5 percent.

Here's the transcript: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec09/undercounted_07-02.html

Just a reminder of why supporting Voices is so important for us all - investigative journalism is collapsing as a profession, the corporations that took over the older family-owned newspapers are going bankrupt, and jounalism has never been in greater peril in the history of our country.

A country that was built by and on the free press.

Read this commencement address given by Barbara Ehrenriech on May 16 to the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Class of 2009.

http://www.alternet.org/story/140442/barbara_ehrenreich:_welcome_to_a_dying_industry,_j-school_grads/

The dean gave me some very strict instructions about what to say today. No whining and no crying at the podium. No wringing of hands or gnashing of teeth. Be upbeat, be optimistic, he said -- adding that it wouldn't hurt to throw in a few tips about how to apply for food stamps.

So let's get the worst out of the way right up front: You are going to be trying to carve out a career in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. You are furthermore going to be trying to do so within what appears to be a dying industry. You have abundant skills and talents -- it's just not clear that anyone wants to pay you for them.

Well, you are not alone.

How do you think it feels to be an autoworker right now? And I've spent time with plenty of laid-off paper-mill workers, construction workers and miners. They've got skills; they've got experience. They just don't have jobs.

So let me be the first to say this to you: Welcome to the American working class.

...

ADDING SEARCH POWER TO PUBLIC DATA
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/adding-search-power-to-public-data.html

Instructions for this first release--

If you go to Google.com and type in [unemployment rate] or [population] followed by a U.S. state or county, you will see the most recent estimates:

Once you click the link, you'll go to an interactive chart that lets you add and remove data for different geographical areas.

see -- INTERACTIVE CHART at http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&idim=county:CN060850

See a VIDEO about this at the top URL --

The data we're including in this first launch represents just a small fraction of all the interesting public data available on the web. There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers' salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on. Reliable information about these kinds of things exists thanks to the hard work of data collectors gathering countless survey forms, and of careful statisticians estimating meaningful indicators that make hidden patterns of the world visible to the eye. All the data we've used in this first launch are produced and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division. They did the hard work! We just made the data a bit easier to find and use.