Here at Louisville Mojo we have been watching local political reporting for the past six years, mostly staying out of it.
Well, given that we are more excited to wax journalistic these days, we're now rallying reporters, pundits, politicos, and those other descriptors occasionally assigned to the good folks who keep debate fiery and offer genuine critique of would-be and actual politicians and their appointed counterparts.
To that end, Louisville Mojo will NO LONGER ACCEPT POLITICAL ADVERTISING.
We will voice our opinions, provide unbiased reporting of the facts, and we will take sides based on our values, but we will not risk being swayed or influenced by the revenue uptake typically associated with local media groups during political campaign cycles.
I invite and challenge our fellow news organizations in town to do the same. Let's rise to the challenge of stringent impartiality, further clarifying the separation between editorial and sales departments.
Over the past six years following the launch of Louisville Mojo, the online community in our city has really come into its own.
More than ever, there are a number of great local web sites, photographers, developers, designers, bloggers, and videographers in our midst.
The people driving this creativity are producing content for purposes of citizen journalism, education, entertainment, fame, fortune, and even just for fun.
At Metromojo (the company that owns this site), our original mission was to develop user-centric communities by enabling content (not creating content). We recently updated our strategy and are actively building LouisvilleMojo.com into a example of how user-generated, professional, and syndicated content can be delivered in a hyper-local package.
Today, we are seeking partnerships with some of the best local and regional writers and artists. The goal is to promote their work in whatever way best serves them (syndication, regular features, guest appearances, etc.), while growing this site into the leading progressive destination within the local media market.
Obviously, the benefit to Louisvillians will be the resultant great content delivered from a collective of intellectuals and thought leaders.
If you can think of opportunities that would benefit you by displaying your domain expertise in a particular area, such as becoming a featured blogger for a specific channel (see "channels" in the main site navigation), developing newsletter articles, or simply cross-posting your external blog updates into Mojo, we'd like to include your work.
I am excited to hear your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions, even if you'd prefer not to work with us.
I think that's wonderful. One of the things I enjoy doing is writing articles on unknowns artists of all genres in Louisville. Friends of Lou is a good start but they truly are misleading because I know a stack of people who can't even get exposure here for their artistic talents. Possibility city needs a new name or proof that it's telling the truth.
I also blog about outside perspectives on issues of life and relationships. Sure, I have no degree but it helps to relate better I think. Since I get a chance to talk to people at book signings, paranormal events, etc. my insight has been so valuable that a movie producer, Laura Seli helped convince me to blog about them. It seems to help a lot of people so it might be worth the public's while. I'm always about helping others.
You can see my articles on mafiaconnections.net but also on my site at http://www.danielsdoorstep.com/ondanielsmind as well as http://www.danielsdoorstep.com/friends
Whether or not anyone decides I'm worth being on this I wish everyone well and truly hope that a community of talents will benefit each other and not become singular, selfish, and too opinionated.
At Metromojo, we've been operating online communities since 2003. Over the past few years, I've seen trends wax and wane. One particularly disconcerting activity is definitely on the upswing. I'll call it lifejacking.
I'm not referring to the more common identity theft (there's insurance for that). Let's create a working definition. Lifejacking is the act of impersonating another person online, often in an effort to actively alter status, reputation, and credibility of the individual whose identity is being misrepresented.
I see two basic scenarios. Most often, the one doing the jacking presents herself as the other person by creating a fake profile. The fake profile is usually filled with pictures of the person whose identity is being utilized. To complicate matters, the lifejacker frequently has the foresight to create a (new) email address containing elements of the victim's persona, which is simply an added complication for site administrators. The goal of this 'jack is almost always to trash the victim's reputation. Yahoo just dealt with this type of thorny lifejacker case. In these cases, the offending party almost always knows the victim, usually with some level of intimacy.
In a more generic lifejacking scenario, the bad guy impersonates a victim who already has some degree of notoriety. The effort might be of libelous intent, simple humor with no particularly malicious activity or even just to claim 15 minutes of fame by piggybacking on the victim's "net cred." There has been a decent amount of coverage for this type, most particularly the celebrity lifejacking that has caused Twitter to verify accounts. This can be even more difficult to detect on Facebook, due to the granular control offered by the site's privacy settings.
As an operator of a social network with similar challenges (though of a much lower volume than the big boys), I am both relieved by the common carrier protection (USC Title 47, Common Carrier Reg., Sec. 230 - No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider) and concerned about the safety of our members. To that end, I propose a standard method of reporting these seemingly more innocuous types of identity theft, so that when online publishers do receive reports of a lifejacking, we can act in a consistent and aggressive manner, assisted by a high quality of evidence.
Apparently, the FTC already fields complaints of ID theft. The logical extension would be to create a clearinghouse for submissions that include lifejacking. In this case, our team would direct anyone claiming victim status to file an official FTC complaint. Once processed, that complaint could be parsed and notification sent back to our admin team for action. In this way, the federal government would become the record keeper for a class of activities that should be treated seriously, and publishers would have an authoritative source for actions that require removal and/or banning of a particular member.
In an age when acquaintances come to know each other online, and may never actually meet in person (or meet a second time), it makes sense to have an expeditious and high-level process for minimizing the damage caused by lifejackers. Just as more traditional identity theft is taken seriously, we need a solution with a clearly defined methodology for assisting victims of identity theft 2.0.
After many years of admiring his pithy and timely work at The Ville Voice, I am pleased to announce that Rick Redding has joined Metromojo. He will continue his notable brand of journalism with few noticeable changes (except that he'll have the opportunity to reach even more Louisvillians via Louisville Mojo).
If you have a lead or some breaking news for Rick, please feel free to message him directly.
Oh, yeah...and big congrats to Rick for winning the 2009 LEO Reader's Choice award for Best Local News Blog. Louisville Mojo was second behind him in that category. Now that we're on the same team...watch out!
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Ewww lol
Keith