ATHENSi.com

Athens Music Club announcement

2011-02-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Athens Music Club will hold its 13th annual fundraiser, entitled "Food and Music: A Taste of Athens," this Friday, April 25th from 6-8 at the First Methodist Church, 2. College Street in Athens. Tickets are $15 for adults and $7.50 for children and will be available at the door.

The event will include food tastings from multiple local restaurants, musical entertainment from a variety of local performers and a silent auction. All proceeds from the event will go towards music scholarships for local students, specifically the Vera Smith Scholarship Fund. For further information, please contact Elizabeth Koonce, Athens Music Club Treasurer at kooncee@ohio.edu

Assi Bonanga

2010-04-17T07:57:00.001-07:00

As South Africa continues to battle the challenges of bigotry and racism, lets raise our voices in unison to sing Assi Bonanga to a country that needs to so much now than ever before.

Assi Bonanga Johnny Cleg

2010-04-17T07:57:00.000-07:00

ATHENSi.com goes mobile

2010-03-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

We've figured out how to make a nice mobile version of ATHENSi.com. If you have an iPhone or some other web-friendly smartphone device, point its browser to athensi.com and you should see a very phone-friendly version of the site. We used the free version of widgetbox.com, so you will see ads on the mobile ATHENSi.com. Maybe some day we'll pony up the monthly fees necessary to make the mobile version ad-free.

New (and improved) ATHENSi.com

2010-03-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

For the past several weeks, ATHENSi.com has received something of a make-over, which is only really noticeable starting today. The background: students enrolled in JOUR 415/515, which is offered only in the deep-freeze known as winter quarter, have been pouring their energy into the site. They've produced a number of helpful how-to videos, available via the FAQs in the right hand column of ATHENSi.com. They've worked with community organizations to expand the content being offered by local groups, and most recently they've made some valuable suggestions on the layout of content.

An important change advocated by the students in the class was the enlargement of the "community news" footprint. This represents the success we've had at getting more local non-profits up and running as content creators. Students have helped groups set up twitter accounts and blogs so that their content is accessible via "RSS" feed. Which is the life-blood of ATHENSi.com. Simply put, no RSS feed means no content on ATHENSi.com.

One last goal this quarter is to be able to incorporate facebook fan page content. We're working on it, but it's proving to be a bit of a technical hurdle that has us stumped at the moment. But we're confident that our nerds can solve the problem, which will then allow us to subscribe to local organizations' facebook fan pages, of which their are many. Stay tuned.

Prof. Stewart

Book Review: DEAD AID: why aid is not working for Africa

2010-02-17T17:34:00.000-08:00

Book Review: DEAD AID: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. Dambisa Moyo

A new book has added to the voices demanding whether all the aid sent to Africa has helped the continent, or whether it would do better without such aid. Prosper Yao Tsikata of the Center for International Studies, Ohio University, examines this new challenge to accepted ideas.

Dambisa Moyo, a Harvard cum Oxford trained Zambian economist, confronts the venerable aid establishment in her new book “Dead Aid,” swimming against the mainstream ideological underpinnings of the age-old benevolent institution with somewhat watertight arguments against the unremitting flow of aid to African countries, metaphorically declaring aid dead.

The fundamental thesis of her book is that aid has not only failed to stimulate economic growth on the continent, but the life-support mechanism has consigned the continent to an “economic vegetative state” at which point economies on the continent have become unresponsive to aid or will be worse off with further dose of it.

Written in a “soft economic language,” Moyo carries along even the non-economics graduate with clarity of thought and evidence-based arguments to shore up her position. She exposes the reader to the labyrinth of intricacies associated with international market lending, simplifies its operations in relation to countries and corporate organizations, and offers basic econometrics of great importance to policy-makers, economic ministers on the African continent, the aid fraternity, individuals in development finance, and inquiring minds. Her book is a watershed where both recipients of foreign aid and the benevolent donors can pause to take stock of the 60 years of aid to the African continent. While Moyo’s work contain some important arguments and observations, there are a few weaknesses too, based on the socio-economic and political dynamics of the continent.

At the micro level, Moyo employs two important anecdotes to illustrate how aid drives hardworking entrepreneurs out of business. She evokes the mosquito net scenario by which recipients of free mosquito net not only drive the entrepreneur out of business, but deprives his workers of income and concomitantly starves their dependents. As an alternative, there is he sunglass and umbrella scenario: both items serve as protect in tandem with the changing weather, an analogy suitable for diversification of investment portfolios in order to spread risk.

Western countries have conducted experiments in Africa for years without success, trying to assist the continent get on its feet. Examples of some of the Western prescriptions are the Economic Recovery Program, Structural Adjustment Program and, recently, the Highly Indebted Poor Country initiative. As an alternative to some of these policies followed under the auspices Western countries, and watered-down with aid, Moyo is calling for the strengthening of the middle class; for making African governments accountable to their people through the collection of taxes, and not aid, in order to build up a social capital; for wooing of investors and acquisition of rating as a guide to investors; for countries in Africa that have not already established functional stock markets to do so; for inclusion of the poor and unbankable a functional financial system along the lines of the Bangladesh’s successful Grameen Bank; and venturing into the international capitals market, citing examples from South Africa, Botswana and some of the emerging-markets.

Turning to all the things that are wrong with aid, Moyo provides an inexhaustible list: a culture of aid-dependency, conditionalities attached to aid, politicization of aid, aid as impetus to inflation, diminishing exports, difficulty in absorbing large inflows of cash by African economies, and reduction in domestic savings and investment, among others, all of which are interconnected and with chain reactions or ripple effects driving nations into greater poverty.

The contentious practice whereby western countries hedge their agricultural produce through subsidies to their farmers, placing African farmers at a great disadvantage cannot be underestimated in this discussion. In 2004, the United Sates blacklisted Ghana and other developing countries for trade practices that made American rice on their markets less competitive. A year later, America and Europe blocked Chinese textiles from entering their markets, for the simple reason that it was killing the textile industry in their countries. Over- liberalization of African economies has ruined agriculture and its related industries on the continent, rendering its people consumers and not producers. Ghana again, as an example, recorded US$500 million in rice imports alone in 2008, while young men and women lost jobs and arable land went uncultivated, a clear proximate cause of poverty within the context of global power relations of which aid is a part. In Moyo’s new economic approach, the suggestion is fair-trade by turning to China and other Asian countries.

Moyo mentions the Marshall Plan which saved Europe from ruins after the Second World War, saying it was well-intentioned and directed towards reconstruction and not development. But for Africa, not only has aid become amorphous, lacking specific targets, it also became a tool for maintaining strategic geopolitical controls: aid go to allies, regardless of how deserving a country is.

However, ironically, while Moyo commends Ghana and Gabon for venturing into the international capitals market—where Ghana issued US$750 million 10-year bonds in September 2007, as a model for the rest of the continent, a new regime in Ghana stretched the begging-bowl to the IMF in less than 6 months after assuming office, for US$600 million. The question then arises: what has happened to the financial interest Ghana generated in the international capitals market leading to the oversubscription of her bonds to the tune of US$5 billion of unmet investor demands, if in less than two years the country has to return to the IMF for a lease of new life for her economy?

Cancelling debt and replacing it with new aid does not help either. When in 2005, after the Live 8 concert in Britain directed more attention to the debt crisis, Ghana’s debt burden was reduced by 50 per cent, it was a great relief as Ghana, before opting for the opting for the Highly Indented Poor Country (HIPC) initiative spent 40 per cent of its GDP on debt service. But within 3 years, Ghana was back at the 2005 debt levels. There have been inconsistencies in government financial programs, and financial innovation has eluded leadership of the continent, leading to the aid-decency syndrome.

Regarding regionalization of markets. Moyo makes a classic case for economies of scale that this can promote, citing Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda which together could generates a market force of 100 million people, with the potential benefits of free-trade and single-currency. But this is where we fail most as a continent. In spite of ECOWAS provisions for the free movement of goods and services within the West African sub-region, the reality is the opposite. Robert Calderisi makes light of this in his book, “The Trouble with Africa, “markets are small, and weak transport links discourage internal trade. But Africans have been trading –or smuggling—goods across borders for decades and have been migrating to jobs wherever they can find them, at a pace that makes a mockery of official efforts at African Unity.” But however well unofficial trade may be doing, there are barriers to official trade. As an example, there is currently a ban on Ghanaian goods on the Nigerian market. Inter-country rivalries and lack of harmonious economic or trade policies form the cornerstone of discussions at annual sub-regional and inter-country conferences year in, year out, but sadly do not engender the intended results. Maybe, when the aid tap is turned off, as Moyo suggest, African leaders will act prudently with some urgency. But for now, the idea of African countries forming a regional coalition to access the bond markets can only be considered a mirage.

Closely linked to the issue of regionalization is the issue of xenophobia and ethnocentrism on the continent. The most recent is the xenophobic attacks on foreigners in South Africa. Earlier in 1969, Nigerians and other West African nationals were expelled from Ghana. Nigeria did the same in 1983, expelling Ghanaians and other African nationals. During Cote d’Ivoire’s recent years of crisis, Ivorians have turned on African immigrants. These tensions are ever-present in African countries, especially when things go wrong.

Within the individual countries, ethnicity instead of being a positive cultural heritage, has become a diabolic attribute that must be exorcised. Rwanda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra-Leone are countries that come to mind. Even the democratic process in the so-called democracies on the continent has been injected with the ethnic poison. Elections are wantonly rigged, rendering the process treacherous and questionable.

Leading on from the above, Moyo’s work leads the reader into the dynamics of why FDI is still a long way away from becoming a reality in Africa, despite its cheap labor as compared to India and China, countries that have used similar inducements to attract FDI into their economies to turn their fortunes around. She describes two sorts of disincentives: man-made problems (widespread corruption, a maze of bureaucracy, a highly regulatory legal environment and endless streams of red-tape); and those relating to infrastructure (roads, telecommunication, power supply, etc). The fact is that private investment capital, as opposed to aid, is scared off by corruption and all the other man-made disincentives. So even though returns on investment may be 10 per cent in emerging-markets elsewhere, they may not be 10 per cent on the continent, in view of all the disincentives. Therefore, the investor may move to other more competitive emerging-markets, instead of Africa.

On remittances from abroad, there is no doubt that they depend on the migration of the highly-skilled from the continent. The flight of these professionals, trained at the expense of their compatriots, from the vital sectors of the various economies on the continent is still a cause for raging debate in losing countries. When the most brilliant and talented are cherry-picked, with 70 000 graduates leaving the continent each year, national development and the formation of a vibrant middle class is in jeopardy. Africa is losing its daughters and sons again as in the slave trade, though without force this time. According to Patrick Manning, “the inhabitants along the lagoons of Benin believe that cowries were obtained by the use of slaves. A slave was thrown into the sea and allowed to drawn. The cowries would grow on the body of the salve, and after a time the body would be dredged up and the cowries collected from it.”

He explained: “the story is both true and untrue: cowry shells, of course, were money in Africa. The story is untrue in that cowries grow in the Indian ocean, not in the Atlantic or the lagoons edging it, and untrue in that slaves were not drowned in order to get them. But the story is true as well as picturesque in its presentation of the sacrifice made in order to gain money in exchange. It is a stark example of the ideology justifying slavery in Africa. Africans seem to throw away precious resources, young men and women, on exchange for money.”

While remittance may be helpful in reducing poverty at the micro-level and in the short-term, (for individual beneficiaries of remittance), they distort the long-term macro-developmental agenda.

In her final analysis, Moyo calls for a reversal in the situation where 75 per cent of the money coming into the economy of African countries is from foreign aid while, trade money from the capitals market, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) contribute 5 percent, 3 percent and 5 percent respectively, and the rest from domestic savings and remittance. Her proposal for cutting back aid by 14 per cent each year for 5 years, to reduce the contribution of development aid to 5 percent while trade, FDI and the international capital markets become the lead sources of finance for development, seems ambitious and daring, considering the historical and geopolitical obstacles which impede Africa’s trade and FDI with the major global powers, as she has identified herself.

But the undeniable truth is that government-government aid has failed to deliver the desired results, and there is the need to consider other initiatives that will be directly poor-centered, whereby the poor individuals and their communities can benefit directly, rather than relying on corrupt government machinery as a conduit.

Moyo’s book should be seen as a wake-up call to the continent and all its stakeholders, about the dire consequences that are already unfolding, to consider alternatives ways of assisting the continent. Africa’s per capita income today is less than in the 1970s; Africa attracts less than one per cent of global capital flow; there is a huge drop in life expectancy across the continent as compared with the gains of the 1950s; one in 7 children die before age 5, rise in poverty from 11 per cent in 1970 to 66 per cent in 1980 when aid flows were at their peak; Africa’s per capita income is less than in the 1970s; and a host of other issues that confront the continent today.

Moyo’s call to ignore Western criticisms with regard to Africa’s increasing partnership with China is in the right direction. In the changing dynamics in global politics, it is clear that the US has effectively become, economically a client state of China just as other African countries, while at the same time competing with China for natural resources. This implies that with huge debts owed to China by the US, the US is not well placed to criticize Africa’s increasing relationship with China. And it was on the watch of the IMF and the World Bank, appendage institutions of the West, that most of the despicable levels of corruption were committed by African leaders against their own people, while the West continued to support these leaders with aid. But while China certainly comes into the picture for Africa as a competitor of choice and a lead partner in boosting trade and FDI for mutual benefits, as African countries cultivate this relationship the leaders must be careful not to dislodge the neocolonialists only to replace them with a more manipulative system.

Authored by Prosper Yao Tsikata, Center for International Studies, Ohio University, for the African Prospects, London.

Videos from Athens Town Hall Meeting

2010-02-05T08:06:00.001-08:00

Night of Cultural Diversity

2010-02-04T20:50:00.001-08:00

Please join Ohio University Fulbright Scholars' Association (OUFSA) for our annual event "Night of cultural Diversity".
The evening will feature performances from diverse groups presented in our campus, tasty food and a lot of fun.
The tickets will be available for only $1.00.
As a response to the disaster in Haiti we will also collect donations to provide our support for the relief programs. We have already started donating for the cause and we are hoping that you will join us in this effort by donating prior and during the event as well. Please contact vice-president of OUFSA Mica Barreto Soares @ barreto_mica@hotmail.com if you would like to donate now.
Thank you and hope to see you at our event

Date:	Friday, February 5, 2010
Time:	5:00pm - 8:00pm
Location:	Walter Hall

Rally for Haiti-humanitarian response from OU

2010-01-18T14:20:00.000-08:00

"Rally for Haiti" is a humanitarian response by OU based student organizations, associations and coordinated by the Center for International Studies.

There are 7 organizations willing to join their efforts for the emergency relief and save the lives of people in Haiti through their commitment.
The event will cast the best performances from all over the world, all funds will go to charity funds to make sure help is there when it is needed.
Join us and unite for humanitarian response!

Yours,

Center for International Studies,

International Student Union,

African Student Union,

African Student Association,

Bakomoso Leadership Forum,

UNICEF-OU Chapter,

Save the Children-OU Chapter,

Farmers Market heats up, sounds off

2009-04-11T13:04:00.001-07:00

One of the many reasons that living in Athens, Ohio is better than a piece of freshly baked warm bread is a place where such food items are readily available -- the Athens Farmers' Market. In this podcast, Bob Stewart listens to the music of the market, as well as the many reasons folks in Athens cherish their chance to get together every week.

Or download the mp3.

Some of the voices you hear on this podcast:

Jack Wright, Bodie Stewart, Jen Lovejoy, Art Gish ... and many others.

Learn more about the market by reading the Athens Farmers' Market blog.

Stewart's presentation to faculty

2009-02-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

This presentation was givin 1/30/09 to the JSchool colloquium:

We moved the needle on ATHENSi.com

2009-01-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

The last week of January was a big week for our journalism class. We are focusing on increasing Web traffic on ATHENSi.com. We are thinking of journalists as facilitators of a diverse conversation within a community.

We had three days with over 400 unique visitors to ATHENSi.com! On the big snow day, when Ohio University was closed due to weather (for the first time in 10 years), ATHENSi.com had almost 600 visitors.

Let's keep the conversation going.

This is what we've been doing and what we think about it. Check it out.

What we like about ATHENSi.com

2009-01-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

This video features the students enrolled in the advanced journalism on the Web course, which is helping to upgrade ATHENSi.com during the winter quarter.

Group photo of "coaches"

2009-01-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

Here are the students in the J415/515 class, ready and willing to provide coaching on getting YOUR content onto ATHENSi.com.

Class podcast for day 1

2009-01-13T05:51:00.000-08:00

ATHENSi.com is a course in the JSchool one quarter out of the year. This is the quarter (Winter 08-09). We meet only on Fridays, 9-noon. Our first meeting was last Friday. Here's the podcast of the class session.

The podcast begins with Bob Stewart, the course instructor, introducing the class to the approach that will be taken during the quarter. Email Stewart at stewartr@ohio.edu if you have any feedback or questions.

Get read on ATHENSi.com!

2009-01-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

2009 will be an important year for ATHENSi.com... We starting the year with a journalism class full of students interested in online journalism. The main goal: make ATHENSi.com an even more robust and useful Web site for the community of Athens, Ohio.

The goal: help Athenians to reach other members in our community by means of ATHENSi.com. I spoke yesterday at the Rotary Club to explain the process and the goals. Listen to podcast of my talk at Rotary Club.

I've already added two blogs as a result of yesterday's talk:

1. rotaractathens.blogspot.com, from the Rotaract of Athens group, will show up in ATHENSi.com's community section.

2. themesathens.blogspot.com, a blog for the Athens Themes store, is included in ATHENSi.com's marketplace section.

McDargh CD hits thankful note

2008-12-17T07:34:00.000-08:00

Peg McDargh is no stranger to Athenians. Nor is her fight against cancer. And it probably won't come as a surprise to those who know her that she's taking a thankful approach to her remaining days among us.

She's just released a CD, "A Christmas Thank You from Peg," recorded in November on her Steinway baby grand. I recently interviewed Peg for this blog post, and recorded some of her playing as well.

Listening to the CD has been a pleasure, and it accomplishes exactly what she wants it to do in that it calms our spirit. During these hectic, difficult times, we need more spirit-calming. So it is we who should be grateful. And of course, when it comes to knowing Peg, we are beyond all measure grateful.

New navigation aid added to athensi.com

2008-11-25T12:24:00.000-08:00

We've made a minor (but hopefully very helpful) change to the athensi.com web page today. In the right hand column is a new navigation aid, with all of the non-news categories listed in alphabetical order. They include:

» BLOGS
» COMMUNITY
» EAT ATHENS
» ENTERTAINMENT
» GOOGLE: ATHENS
» GOOGLE: OU
» LIBRARY NEWS
» MARKETPLACE (formerly "business")
» OU NEWS
» OPINION
» PHOTO GALLERY
» PODCASTS
» SPORTS
» WORLDLINK

Unless users scrolled down the page on athensi.com they may not have even known that these categories exist. And a couple of them are relatively new additions to site. GOOGLE: ATHENS and GOOGLE: OU bring in content that Google News automatically finds about Athens, Ohio and Ohio University, respectively.

Users may also have noticed that the weather information has been changed. We've scaled it back considerably to allow the navigation section to be seen "above the fold."

Get ready for January '09

2008-11-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

Come January '09 I hope you'll be hearing a lot about (and from) athensi.com.

First, a bit of background. athensi.com actually started out as actv7news.com, shoveling content from the student-produced newscast, ACTV-7 News. Then, in February 2001 the site became more of a portal page for Athens-based media. When rss technology came along a few years ago we completely changed how content reached athensi.com.

Now, as athensi.com approaches its eighth anniversary, I've come to realize that the site -- along with the Internet itself -- is just starting to reach its potential to be a real marketplace of ideas. But it can reach that potential only if you, dear users, decide to participate not only as consumers but as producers in the marketplace. Here's how you can do just that.

BLOGGING:

Start a blog and send me the address (stewartr@ohio.edu). If you feel shy, check out what other bloggers in Athens are saying on their blog.

If you are part of a community organization, start up a blog for that organization and pass the address along to me (again, stewartr@ohio.edu). We'll add it to the community section on athensi.com.

If you are a business and want to reach buyers and other members of the community in Athens, start up a blog and write about your business, your products and services, etc., and we'll add it to our business section. Cool, huh?

ADD PHOTOS:

You also can add pictures to athensi.com's photo gallery. Just set up a free account on flickr.com and tag your photos "athens, ohio" (make sure to use the quotation marks so that your tag will be athens, ohio and not just athens and ohio, which won't work).

The reason that I'm excited about January '09 is that I'm teaching a course in the JSchool that will work specifically on getting the word out about athensi.com. Students in the class will go out into the community to teach individuals and organizations that want to have their voice heard on athensi.com how to blog, how to upload photos, etc., so that those blogs and photos can be included on athensi.com Then, and only then, will athensi.com be all that it can be for the community of Athens, Ohio.

Businesses in Athens, Ohio, start blogging!

2008-11-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

athensi.com includes a business blog section now, which means that area businesses can reach their customers on athensi.com through a free blogging service such as wordpress or blogspot. If you start up a blog for your business, send Bob Stewart (stewartr@ohio.edu) the address of your blog and he'll add it to athensi.com's business blogs.

NOTE: to find the business section scroll down to the bottom of athensi.com. If more businesses start feeding their rss feeds to athensi.com, we'll move that section up.

To bloggers on blogspot: please fix your site feed

2008-11-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, if you're using blogspot for a blog that's included on athensi.com, please help us out by making the following fix:

1. select "Settings" for the blog
2. select the tab labeled "Site Feed"
3. switch to Advanced Mode
4. change the settings for "Blog Comment Feed" and "Per-Post Comment Feeds" to "None"

What this "fix" will do is prevent your blog from sending out rss notices for comments made on your blog. This doesn't mean you can't have a notice sent to your own email when a comment is made. It just prevents an rss notice from being sent out. For some reason, those notices appear on athensi.com as "empty" messages, which are confusing to folks.

thanks...

When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange...

2008-04-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

Spring is an exciting time for ATHENSi.com and you'll see why in the weeks to come. Already we've made a few changes to the site. For instance, now with the addition of the Business Feed, you'll be able to find out what's hot and new with local businesses.

You also may notice that Do/See Athens and Arts and Entertainment have come together. Through much negotiations these two sections were able to set aside their differences and agree that it should be easier for you to find out what's going on in Athens that day or over the weekend. Check it out!

Keep an "i" out for more changes... and have a Happy Friday

The Big Upgrade...

2008-01-31T07:06:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed a few subtle (but Very Important) changes to the athensi.com site. The most obvious: additional xml/rss feeds, each noted on the graphic above the associated content category. Whereas our old site only had athensi.com original content (which hardly exists) in an outbound feed, this new version of athensi.com bundles up content from partner sites, presents it on athensi.com while ALSO making an rss feed of that bundled content.

Our goal hasn't changed, however: improving the flow of information about Athens, Ohio to the community of Athens. This means trying to drive traffic to all of the content providers in Athens... whether they be of the Big Media variety (relatively speaking) or part of the local blogger community.

In the process of updating the functionality of the site, with the help of programming Claus Rasmussen (based in Denmark, of all places!), I also tried to look around for more potential content providers who have rss feeds on their sites. To do this search, I googled the terms: athens ohio rss ... and did, indeed, find some sites I'd never heard about before. The addition of those sites, plus the culling of some sites and blogs that hadn't been updated in several months, should make the content on athensi.com more relevant, up-to-date, useful, etc., etc.

I hope you find ATHENSi.com to be of use to you, and if you can think of ways to improve it (e.g., if you know about sites with rss feeds that aren't showing up on our site), let me know. My email: profstewartrk@gmail.com

Thanks,
Bob Stewart

International Street Fair video!!

2007-05-22T09:41:00.001-07:00

or, how to get YOUR videos onto ATHENSi.com....

OK, I have to admit it: I was shooting video with my cool little Kodak V570 at the Int'l Street Fair this last weekend mainly because my son, Ben, was in the African drum group. Seemed like a good excuse to use some of those videos to talk about how YOU can get YOUR videos onto the site.

Step 1: shoot some great video of something going on in Athens; the great thing about my Kodak camera is that it shoots quicktime movies in 320x240 format... 30 frames a second... which looks great.

Step 2: upload the videos to YouTube or Google Video.

Step 3: add the code in your blog so that those videos show up in your blog... (see below). That's it!

Paschal Yao Younge, Ohio University associate professor of music education, leads OU's African drum ensemble in its performance last Saturday:

Check out the soloist in this next one: that's right... Ben.

Here's a nice slideshow too, using my flickr acct:

get your own blog (onto ATHENSi.com)!

2007-05-09T05:34:00.001-07:00

Want to say your piece to the Athens's Nation? Blog it. We'll subscribe to your rss feed and bingo, you've got a chance to make your case.

No idea how to get started? No idea about rss? This blog will try to explain all of the jargon, starting with "blog" and ending with "RSS." What I'm not going to tell you is what to say.

A lengthy definition of "blog" probably isn't necessary, so I'll keep it short. A blog is an online journal/diary/bully pulpit/&tc., which is relatively easy (and completely free) to set up. Check out blogger.com, host of this blog, if you have no idea of where to start. BTW, a few folks out there in cyberland actually make an honest living by blogging, but everything I read about that says it's a lot of hard work feeding the blog machine.

Once you've set up your account (say, on blogger.com), you need to identify your "rss feed," which allows your content to be "pushed" to ATHENSi.com... and anyone else's "feed reader." A feed reader, in essence, is a computer program that proactively looks for new content on sites to which it is "subscribed." In the case of a blogger.com blog, it has two types of RSS feeds to which feed readers can subscribe: a conventional RSS feed and an "Atom" feed. Since ATHENSi.com's system can't make heads or tails of Atom feeds, you need to know how to identify the "RSS" feed for your blog.

Since I can't ever remember the code ... and there's really no need to clutter up my already full brain with such code ... here's how I find the rss feed address for any of my new blogs.

1. copy and paste the blog address (i.e., the URL; in the case of this blog, the URL is: http://athensi.blogspot.com) into the form at http://feedburner.com.

2. feedburner.com will show you that there are two feeds from your blog (again, if it is hosted on blogger.com)... and Atom feed and an RSS feed:

Atom: http://athensi.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
RSS: http://athensi.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

You can see that they are very similar, with the alt=rss of the RSS feed address being the only difference.

3. Send me the address http://athensi.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss at robertkstewart@hotmail.com and I'll subscribe to your feed on ATHENSi.com. Presto: your can now speak your mind to the rest of Athens...

NOTE: I recommend that you turn on the "comments" section of your blog, just like I have my comments section turned on. This allows for greater discourse, conversation, talkback, etc.

Please note: It may take a day or two (or three if I'm really busy or out of town) to get your blog added to ATHENSi.com. And once it is added, it sometimes takes an hour or two for your most recent blog post to show up on our site. Be patient, but if you don't see your posts showing up within a day or two, please email me to let me know there's a problem.

Please note: ATHENSi.com and its manager (me) are not responsible for the content of the blogs to which we subscribe. At the same time, I reserve the right to unsubscribe to any blog, for whatever reason I deem appropriate. I hope that never happens, but if it does, I'll try to explain why in this blog.

blogging ATHENSi.com

2007-05-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

ATHENSi.com has been around since early 2001, making it one of the older web-only services in Athens, Ohio. If you are reading this, you probably already value ATHENSi.com's aggregating service, or some other aspect of the site.

For the record, ATHENSi.com is a community service of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. We created it as an outlet for journalism students learning about new media. With the cooperation of many, many local news media entities, we quickly added RSS feeds from every local new source we could think of, creating a portal aggregating service that makes ATHENSi.com a terrific starting point when you want to see what's going on in Athens, Ohio.

I should also admit before going further that I run site. And if a bus were to run me over on my way home, the site would keep on running for a while (because of the magic of rss), but if and when it were to break, I doubt very much that anyone could begin to figure out how to fix it. Maybe that's why I'm starting up this blog... to create a kind of "paper" trail. Toward that end, this blog is my way to bring more transparency to the production of the site. Strange that it's taken me so long to start this blog, given that I teach transparency to anyone who'll listen!

In fact, I set this blog up back in December, but immediately forgot about it, which I suppose means I wasn't thinking very seriously about it when I established it. I was a little surprised to stumble on it earlier this week while preparing for an... you got it... online journalism class. As soon as I saw the blog title I realized I had been remiss in NOT having set up such a blog a long time ago. Yes, I do have a little blurb under the site's FAQ section explaining a bit about the site. And yes, I do get an occasional email related to ATHENSi.com ... usually someone wanting coverage for an event, or a business or agency wanting to be linked from the site. I always try to figure out how to accommodate such requests. But I don't go out of my way to solicit such emails, and for that I'm embarrassed. Chagrined. I admit it, it's my bad. My only excuse: I was too busy playing guitar on my front porch, enjoying walks with my wife and our dogs on the Near East side of town, in other words, just kickin' back.

I'd like to think that ATHENSi.com can serve a more important role than being the occasional diversion, or convenient way to aggregate news in a portal-type site. In fact, with our web publishing technology -- which I'll write about in another blog post if anyone wants to know about it -- we can create the community bulletin board that folks say the Web should become in local communities. In fact, it really is up to you... citizens of Athens, Ohio, whether you want to have such a bulletin board, town square, public sphere, etc. in the entity of ATHENSi.com. Let me know if you want to start speaking out through the ATHENSi.com bullhorn, and I'll tell how it can be done.

Oh yeah, one more thing... The preferred "style" for referencing the site is ATHENSi.com. Not athensi.com. And certainly not Athensi.com. Just so you know.

Bob Stewart (robertkstewart@hotmail.com)