Content developed by ImageProviders
Copyright 2011 - All Rights Reserved
Closely linked to the future of journalism, the regulation and development of the worldwide web is of serious interest to those who seek truth and communicate it. Educators, researchers, elected officials and journalists all should have some kind of situational awareness as we proceed along the timeline now well into the 21st century. Some say that private industry should provide the answer, but as has been shown before, often that leads to "natural monopolies" which can avoid the interests of the public and make only a few players wealthy beyond anyone's imagination.
Welcome to Gig.U, and Internet2 and the next iteration of the internet. Once the world's first packet switching network developed as the ARPANET by the Department of Defense, the web is now emerging as a super-broadband infrastructure among research universities. (Are you listening, @UUtah and @uscannenberg ?) ImageProviders asked Elise Kohn (formerly assigned to the FCC as policy advisor) to comment on the latest effort at Gig.U. Not one to use words when a thousand pictures will do, we came up with the following material that explains the current thinking on the development of a new, worldwide web.
You're welcome.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Film Review: The Help (Aug 10 in US and UK)
Viola Davis in "The Help" photo courtesy of Dreamworks ©2011
review by Michael Orton
copyright 2011 ImageProviders
All Rights Reserved
At the Sundance Film Festival this past January, a memorable appearance by Harry Belafonte offered the young filmmakers in attendance a personal understanding of his involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and of his fervent desire that above anything else, they be society's radicals (his emphasis). Citing the Works Progress Administration and the work of Dorthea Lange and Ben Shahn, he described artists as "the caretakers of truth," and perhaps even guardians of our culture and he said that "radical thought is the energy of the Universe."
Harry Belafonte (right) "sitting"
Belafonte told those assembled that day that he felt he had been "fortunate to interface with the harbingers of radical thinking," people like Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson. "The power of art is not to portray life as it is, but life as it should be..." but he also warned, "To be a radical is to be an outcast. We definitely paid a price."
These themes multiply the force and effect of the Tate Taylor film version of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 debut novel, "The Help," a story set in and about Jackson, Mississippi and the Jim Crow south. With breakout performances by Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis (note that several Oscar nominations are predicted, here), and with Stockett's author adequately played by ingenue Emma Stone, the film also contains a stunningly appropriate cameo by none other than Cicely Tyson herself. When Ms. Tyson takes the screen, one feels as though history has indeed come alive. Allison Janney offers a welcome presence as part of Jackson Mississippi's plantation establishment and Sissy Spacek's unabashed comic relief allows the overarching social tension to be almost welcome.
(l to r) Bryce Dallas Howard, Sissy Spacek and Octavia Spencer in "The Help"
America in the sixties included television's "Andy Griffith Show" for those privileged enough to have "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Leave It to Beaver" memories of their childhood, they were idyllic for some but not for all during that convulsive time of our nation's history. Ironically, one of the most caustic characters in the story is very well delivered by Bryce Dallas Howard a generation after her father (director Ron Howard) was Andy Griffiths' cherubic "Opie" in the Mayberry series of the sixties.
In "The Help," white hot performances including a revelatory soliloquy, delivered with piercing effect by Ms. Davis, help us truly understand that those famous years were not idyllic for everyone who lived through them. This is the transcendent effect of "The Help," and one that will definitely be recognized during Oscar's upcoming "For Your Consideration" season beginning in just six months. (Perhaps it is significant to note here that the nation's general election will occur only eight months after the Oscars are awarded this coming March).
And after viewing and feeling this story, which forcefully reminds us of how far we've come as a nation, one might conclude that as strenuous and painful as it was, the effort of Harry Belafonte, Martin Luther King and those other harbingers of radical thinking, was just The Help we needed.
"The Help" a DreamWorks release of a Reliance Big Entertainment feature
screenplay by Tate Taylor
directed by Tate Taylor
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The Future of Journalism ...in Utah?
by Michael Orton
copyright 2011 ImageProviders.org – all rights reserved
Salt Lake City –
First filed July 26, 2011
There is a saying among courtroom reporters who acknowledge the influence of journalism that “even judges read the newspapers.” It would be difficult to find many or any judges who would admit doing so prior to a ruling. Being informed is one thing, being influenced is another. Judges cite case law and legal precedent, yes. Newspapers, no.
In a packed federal courtroom for the district of Utah, Judge Dee Benson listened attentively to pre-sentencing arguments in the matter of The United States v. Timothy DeChristopher, the environmental activist convicted of disrupting a BLM lease auction under fraudulent pretense.
Judge Benson allowed Patrick Shea, one of DeChristopher’s attorneys to lead off. Then DeChristopher spoke on his own behalf, then John Huber spoke for the prosecution, followed by a rebuttal summation and plea for “creative” leniency by defense counsel Ron Yengich.
Then it was the judge’s turn to make some comments on the case and pronounce DeChristopher’s sentence. During his attempt to “do something appropriate,” as a penalty, Benson, with 20 years on the bench, did something quite unusual for a federal judge justifying the imprisonment of the accused: He quoted the Deseret News, the wholly-owned newspaper of Utah’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons). “Civil disobedience cannot be the order of the day,” noted Benson before sending DeChristopher to federal prison for two years and fining him $10,000.
Utah’s independent daily, The Salt Lake Tribune, (owned by the Denver-based Media NewsGroup) had issued an editorial that day calling anything more than a token sentence an act of “retribution,” given other public figures in Utah who had blatantly violated federal laws governing public lands, and who had not even been indicted. This overt influence of Utah’s dominant culture, through its church-owned media, left many in the courtroom stunned.
The Flailing Model in Legacy Media
“Stop the presses,” says Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape. “Stop them right now,” he says with an emphatic index finger diving to the table. He says that because he feels the business of newspapers is a losing proposition and will continue to be. He describes it as a failing industry that is still scrambling to make sense of itself. “It is an industry that is struggling to be profitable amidst post-recession economic realities, the accelerating adoption of new technologies… and the growing number of people who have something to say to the connected world,” …many of whom were present in that Utah courtroom.
Journalism may not be “in trouble,” as much as it is “in revision.” Yes, 20,000 journalism jobs were lost in 2010 and newspapers have closed in major metro markets such as Denver, Baltimore and Cincinnati. But just like typewriting has changed in the past 25 years, so has a media profession which began with wooden type and handbills. This is not to say that the investigative reporter or the city council watchdog are job descriptions of the past. Where we will find them and when are the real issues of the new media.
“Information distribution via newspapers is based on an industrial age paradigm using fossil fuels to obtain wood turned into pulp and then paper using assembly-line methods and child labor for distribution,” observes Ric Cantrell, who, before becoming Utah Senate President Michael Waddoups’ Chief Deputy, coordinated communications for the state’s senate majority. The implication is unavoidable, especially in Utah, where broadband has penetrated three out of four households. Endorsements by federal judges notwithstanding, many newspapers as we have known them are on life support in this part of the information age.
So when Lisa Carricaburu, the assistant managing editor of the Salt Lake Tribune says, “the journalist’s role is changing immensely right now,” is she observing that journalism students graduating in the 21st century have learned to write the basics of HTML coding, or does she really mean that the journalists’ systems and delivery are changing immensely right now? Has their role in society really changed very much?
“Agency shops,” like the Los Angeles Times and the Valley News and Green Sheet of years ago, adopted the efficiencies of scale economies for profit after the Newspaper Agency Corporation came into existence. Competing newspapers simply couldn’t support two different delivery channels, but society recognized the value of two different points of editorial view and patronized them. An agency shop was one served by the same distribution company as its competitor. Two different papers were delivered by one “paperboy,” often on a bicycle working in the neighborhood before or after school. For some, it was a good gig while it lasted.
This is when Utah’s Deseret News first looked toward becoming the Deseret Morning News, after being an evening paper for decades. Today, the distributor for Utah’s major dailies is a company called “Media One,” and has diversified into real estate brokerage and employment agency functions. In the 21st century, their warehouse in Salt Lake City is a shell of its former self. Much of what was transported by trucks in the wee Utah hours (including the daily New York Times, also printed for western distribution in Salt Lake City) is now transmitted at the speed of light, and updated several times per day.
Reporting Technologies
As analog communications technologies were overcome by the digital wave that began in the nineteen eighties, entire careers depreciated and worker expertise became obsolete. Can this be said of journalism? Yes and no…
If electronic devices like laptop computers, smartphones, tablet e-readers and others are considered fully depreciated and even obsolete within three years, and with software outdated even faster, a provocative question with an uncertain answer is surely, “What is the future of journalism?” A panel of local reporters and editors recently assembled in Salt Lake City and tried to illuminate that topic by taking a few steps into that tunnel at the end of the light.
In that panel, Ms. Carricaburu declared that “What we [journalists] do, is worthy of pay, as opposed to what is often happening where journalism is treated as something that everyone can do and doesn’t have value to it.” Perhaps, but to those who witnessed the crackdown in the former Soviet Union, where police were flown in from Moscow to quell an autoworkers’ rebellion, or where dissidents in Iran pleaded with Twitter’s management to forestall a planned Twitter maintenance shutdown until their protest could be organized, directed and reported, citizen journalists and their newmedia most certainly have value with their audience. More recently, the last of the pharaohs was undone by “social media practitioners” in Egypt who couldn’t have cared less for remuneration but who did see their work as their calling. Because they’re being paid, a whole generation of “Mommy Bloggers” who have lured brands like Johnson & Johnson, MacDonalds, Hanes and Aveda (it goes on) to sponsor their websites now must be some kind of “journalists,” with that view.
“Community is what is subject to definition because [journalism] goes out broader and broader as technology progresses,” offers Lois Collins of the Deseret Morning News, “Journalism, practiced well, is a good set of eyes and ears in the community to help you be grounded and know what’s going on around you.” Hence the Twitter messages emanating from Tarir Square, Yemen and now Bahrain must be viewed as some kind of journalism or at least “reportage,” right? “Live Tweeting,” as it has come to be known, is a valid way of receiving the news, as evidenced during Utah’s 2011 legislative season and subsequent re-districting discussions. The hashtag has come of age, and very rapidly so.
“We do have to deliver the news any way people want it,” says Ms. Carricaburu, “It’s a moving target, and we’re always trying to figure out what’s next and what our role is.”
That hasn’t always been the case, even in the days well before the digital doorstep. In fact, in its earliest relationship with government, journalists and newspapers were steeped in partisanship and bias, a notion that would be tempered by professional organizations and emerging efforts at ethical standards as reporters’ reach, frequency and sophistication increased.
The journalism trade now has a cadre of “backpacker” journalists who, operating alone, can file a story from a daypack containing a solid-state video camera, a laptop computer and a cellular or satellite phone, from anywhere in the world (with very limited exceptions). News producers and editors have embraced the “multi-media journalist” model, where advances in communications demand that a cub reporter know the basics of HTML5 coding. Why? Because today, when the story originates electronically, those who insist on reading the inked version are at least 12hrs behind the breaking stories when the newsprint hits their driveway or newsstand. When was the last time you bought an ink ribbon for a typewriter, if you ever did?
Current Governance and Management of Journalism
In the U.S., the discussion of the role of government in regulating the internet as medium for news outlets has centered around the concept of “net neutrality,” where the big corporate players like Comcast and the telecommunications companies would prefer more profit when more bandwidth is required (esp. in the distribution of news and entertainment). Consumer advocates resist this metering or tiered pricing, saying that the internet, developed by the government, should work for people, not corporations. The Obama administration has promoted the concept of “The Internet Bill of Rights,” and uses it in discussions with emerging democracies in many parts of the world.
At the regional level, and in an era of radically changing workflows and job descriptions, people like Clark Gilbert of Deseret Digital Media (including the Deseret Morning News) are revising the human architecture of news and information systems. Owned by the LDS (Mormon) church, the new structure of Mr. Gilbert’s newsroom is being watched closely by his industry. Breaking news is often assigned to both electronic and print reporters, so that the story can be prepared for distribution on subsidiary outlets including KSL-TV, the Deseret Morning News, and corporate websites simultaneously. Longform, or “investigative” assignments can also be covered by multi-platform teams of reporters for the same efficient purposes. A third level of reporting at DDM is comprised of freelance, sub-contracting information gatherers who are part of the variable cost budget.
News economics in the Information Age
In a post-recession business climate, monetizing an online information enterprise is as daunting as any startup, but with fewer barriers to entry. Starting a WordPress template and puting your words, pictures and video in front of the entire connected world, is not the chore it once was when Andreessen's Mosaic and file transfer protocol was more difficult to understand. Until Rupert Murdoch announced that the online edition of the Wall Street Journal would not be given away, the online consumer has had little responsibility in acquiring content from their favorite columnists and reporters. When the New York Times decided to put a paywall in front of their online content and charge for “all access,” the industry decided that there might be a model worth pursuing. As porous as it may be, the NYT online edition is pushing its way toward a breakeven point, and adjustments along that path are expected.
Arianna Huffington and Tim Armstrong explained some of the reasoning behind their recent merger of The Huffington Post and America Online. “To us, the history of the internet has been about platform development. As that has matured to its present state, we feel that the internet will now focus on content curation,” noted Ms. Huffington, whose online enterprise had been purchased by Mr. Armstrong for a reported 315 million U.S. dollars. Controversies about that aside, it represents an indelible fact that the journalistic landscape is changing.
This does not mean the kind of mindless aggregation assembled by online publications like Paper.li, where RSS feeds offer an automated view of what is currently floating in cyberspace, will and should prevail. It does mean, as veteran journalist James O’Shea notes, that “the answer is out there, perhaps in a fledgling not-for-profit operation like the Chicago News Cooperative,” (Mr. O’Shea’s company) or in the currently popular notion of “entrepreneurial journalism,” which is the hottest topic in the hottest j-schools in America. O’Shea says that the new model is emerging with an audience that “is small, discerning and willing to pay if the information is good and the reporting is solid.”
There lies the future of news in Utah and perhaps the world.
Michael Orton is a native of Salt Lake City. He has earned degrees from UCLA and the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, and has worked with national media organizations including CBS and ABC Television. He is currently a freelance multi-media journalist working between Denver and Los Angeles.
copyright 2011 ImageProviders.org – all rights reserved
Salt Lake City –
First filed July 26, 2011
There is a saying among courtroom reporters who acknowledge the influence of journalism that “even judges read the newspapers.” It would be difficult to find many or any judges who would admit doing so prior to a ruling. Being informed is one thing, being influenced is another. Judges cite case law and legal precedent, yes. Newspapers, no.
In a packed federal courtroom for the district of Utah, Judge Dee Benson listened attentively to pre-sentencing arguments in the matter of The United States v. Timothy DeChristopher, the environmental activist convicted of disrupting a BLM lease auction under fraudulent pretense.
Judge Benson allowed Patrick Shea, one of DeChristopher’s attorneys to lead off. Then DeChristopher spoke on his own behalf, then John Huber spoke for the prosecution, followed by a rebuttal summation and plea for “creative” leniency by defense counsel Ron Yengich.
Then it was the judge’s turn to make some comments on the case and pronounce DeChristopher’s sentence. During his attempt to “do something appropriate,” as a penalty, Benson, with 20 years on the bench, did something quite unusual for a federal judge justifying the imprisonment of the accused: He quoted the Deseret News, the wholly-owned newspaper of Utah’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons). “Civil disobedience cannot be the order of the day,” noted Benson before sending DeChristopher to federal prison for two years and fining him $10,000.
Utah’s independent daily, The Salt Lake Tribune, (owned by the Denver-based Media NewsGroup) had issued an editorial that day calling anything more than a token sentence an act of “retribution,” given other public figures in Utah who had blatantly violated federal laws governing public lands, and who had not even been indicted. This overt influence of Utah’s dominant culture, through its church-owned media, left many in the courtroom stunned.
The Flailing Model in Legacy Media
“Stop the presses,” says Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape. “Stop them right now,” he says with an emphatic index finger diving to the table. He says that because he feels the business of newspapers is a losing proposition and will continue to be. He describes it as a failing industry that is still scrambling to make sense of itself. “It is an industry that is struggling to be profitable amidst post-recession economic realities, the accelerating adoption of new technologies… and the growing number of people who have something to say to the connected world,” …many of whom were present in that Utah courtroom.
Journalism may not be “in trouble,” as much as it is “in revision.” Yes, 20,000 journalism jobs were lost in 2010 and newspapers have closed in major metro markets such as Denver, Baltimore and Cincinnati. But just like typewriting has changed in the past 25 years, so has a media profession which began with wooden type and handbills. This is not to say that the investigative reporter or the city council watchdog are job descriptions of the past. Where we will find them and when are the real issues of the new media.
“Information distribution via newspapers is based on an industrial age paradigm using fossil fuels to obtain wood turned into pulp and then paper using assembly-line methods and child labor for distribution,” observes Ric Cantrell, who, before becoming Utah Senate President Michael Waddoups’ Chief Deputy, coordinated communications for the state’s senate majority. The implication is unavoidable, especially in Utah, where broadband has penetrated three out of four households. Endorsements by federal judges notwithstanding, many newspapers as we have known them are on life support in this part of the information age.
LISA CARRICABURU of the Salt Lake Tribune -- Photo copyright 2011 ImageProviders
So when Lisa Carricaburu, the assistant managing editor of the Salt Lake Tribune says, “the journalist’s role is changing immensely right now,” is she observing that journalism students graduating in the 21st century have learned to write the basics of HTML coding, or does she really mean that the journalists’ systems and delivery are changing immensely right now? Has their role in society really changed very much?
“Agency shops,” like the Los Angeles Times and the Valley News and Green Sheet of years ago, adopted the efficiencies of scale economies for profit after the Newspaper Agency Corporation came into existence. Competing newspapers simply couldn’t support two different delivery channels, but society recognized the value of two different points of editorial view and patronized them. An agency shop was one served by the same distribution company as its competitor. Two different papers were delivered by one “paperboy,” often on a bicycle working in the neighborhood before or after school. For some, it was a good gig while it lasted.
“Newsies” photo courtesy of Disney Pictures Marketing -- all rights reserved
This is when Utah’s Deseret News first looked toward becoming the Deseret Morning News, after being an evening paper for decades. Today, the distributor for Utah’s major dailies is a company called “Media One,” and has diversified into real estate brokerage and employment agency functions. In the 21st century, their warehouse in Salt Lake City is a shell of its former self. Much of what was transported by trucks in the wee Utah hours (including the daily New York Times, also printed for western distribution in Salt Lake City) is now transmitted at the speed of light, and updated several times per day.
Reporting Technologies
As analog communications technologies were overcome by the digital wave that began in the nineteen eighties, entire careers depreciated and worker expertise became obsolete. Can this be said of journalism? Yes and no…
If electronic devices like laptop computers, smartphones, tablet e-readers and others are considered fully depreciated and even obsolete within three years, and with software outdated even faster, a provocative question with an uncertain answer is surely, “What is the future of journalism?” A panel of local reporters and editors recently assembled in Salt Lake City and tried to illuminate that topic by taking a few steps into that tunnel at the end of the light.
L to R: Ben Winslow, Jeff Robinson, Lois Collins and Lisa Carricaburu
In that panel, Ms. Carricaburu declared that “What we [journalists] do, is worthy of pay, as opposed to what is often happening where journalism is treated as something that everyone can do and doesn’t have value to it.” Perhaps, but to those who witnessed the crackdown in the former Soviet Union, where police were flown in from Moscow to quell an autoworkers’ rebellion, or where dissidents in Iran pleaded with Twitter’s management to forestall a planned Twitter maintenance shutdown until their protest could be organized, directed and reported, citizen journalists and their newmedia most certainly have value with their audience. More recently, the last of the pharaohs was undone by “social media practitioners” in Egypt who couldn’t have cared less for remuneration but who did see their work as their calling. Because they’re being paid, a whole generation of “Mommy Bloggers” who have lured brands like Johnson & Johnson, MacDonalds, Hanes and Aveda (it goes on) to sponsor their websites now must be some kind of “journalists,” with that view.
Lois Collins of the Deseret Morning News
“Community is what is subject to definition because [journalism] goes out broader and broader as technology progresses,” offers Lois Collins of the Deseret Morning News, “Journalism, practiced well, is a good set of eyes and ears in the community to help you be grounded and know what’s going on around you.” Hence the Twitter messages emanating from Tarir Square, Yemen and now Bahrain must be viewed as some kind of journalism or at least “reportage,” right? “Live Tweeting,” as it has come to be known, is a valid way of receiving the news, as evidenced during Utah’s 2011 legislative season and subsequent re-districting discussions. The hashtag has come of age, and very rapidly so.
“We do have to deliver the news any way people want it,” says Ms. Carricaburu, “It’s a moving target, and we’re always trying to figure out what’s next and what our role is.”
That hasn’t always been the case, even in the days well before the digital doorstep. In fact, in its earliest relationship with government, journalists and newspapers were steeped in partisanship and bias, a notion that would be tempered by professional organizations and emerging efforts at ethical standards as reporters’ reach, frequency and sophistication increased.
The journalism trade now has a cadre of “backpacker” journalists who, operating alone, can file a story from a daypack containing a solid-state video camera, a laptop computer and a cellular or satellite phone, from anywhere in the world (with very limited exceptions). News producers and editors have embraced the “multi-media journalist” model, where advances in communications demand that a cub reporter know the basics of HTML5 coding. Why? Because today, when the story originates electronically, those who insist on reading the inked version are at least 12hrs behind the breaking stories when the newsprint hits their driveway or newsstand. When was the last time you bought an ink ribbon for a typewriter, if you ever did?
Current Governance and Management of Journalism
In the U.S., the discussion of the role of government in regulating the internet as medium for news outlets has centered around the concept of “net neutrality,” where the big corporate players like Comcast and the telecommunications companies would prefer more profit when more bandwidth is required (esp. in the distribution of news and entertainment). Consumer advocates resist this metering or tiered pricing, saying that the internet, developed by the government, should work for people, not corporations. The Obama administration has promoted the concept of “The Internet Bill of Rights,” and uses it in discussions with emerging democracies in many parts of the world.
At the regional level, and in an era of radically changing workflows and job descriptions, people like Clark Gilbert of Deseret Digital Media (including the Deseret Morning News) are revising the human architecture of news and information systems. Owned by the LDS (Mormon) church, the new structure of Mr. Gilbert’s newsroom is being watched closely by his industry. Breaking news is often assigned to both electronic and print reporters, so that the story can be prepared for distribution on subsidiary outlets including KSL-TV, the Deseret Morning News, and corporate websites simultaneously. Longform, or “investigative” assignments can also be covered by multi-platform teams of reporters for the same efficient purposes. A third level of reporting at DDM is comprised of freelance, sub-contracting information gatherers who are part of the variable cost budget.
News economics in the Information Age
In a post-recession business climate, monetizing an online information enterprise is as daunting as any startup, but with fewer barriers to entry. Starting a WordPress template and puting your words, pictures and video in front of the entire connected world, is not the chore it once was when Andreessen's Mosaic and file transfer protocol was more difficult to understand. Until Rupert Murdoch announced that the online edition of the Wall Street Journal would not be given away, the online consumer has had little responsibility in acquiring content from their favorite columnists and reporters. When the New York Times decided to put a paywall in front of their online content and charge for “all access,” the industry decided that there might be a model worth pursuing. As porous as it may be, the NYT online edition is pushing its way toward a breakeven point, and adjustments along that path are expected.
Arianna Huffington and Tim Armstrong explained some of the reasoning behind their recent merger of The Huffington Post and America Online. “To us, the history of the internet has been about platform development. As that has matured to its present state, we feel that the internet will now focus on content curation,” noted Ms. Huffington, whose online enterprise had been purchased by Mr. Armstrong for a reported 315 million U.S. dollars. Controversies about that aside, it represents an indelible fact that the journalistic landscape is changing.
This does not mean the kind of mindless aggregation assembled by online publications like Paper.li, where RSS feeds offer an automated view of what is currently floating in cyberspace, will and should prevail. It does mean, as veteran journalist James O’Shea notes, that “the answer is out there, perhaps in a fledgling not-for-profit operation like the Chicago News Cooperative,” (Mr. O’Shea’s company) or in the currently popular notion of “entrepreneurial journalism,” which is the hottest topic in the hottest j-schools in America. O’Shea says that the new model is emerging with an audience that “is small, discerning and willing to pay if the information is good and the reporting is solid.”
There lies the future of news in Utah and perhaps the world.
Michael Orton is a native of Salt Lake City. He has earned degrees from UCLA and the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, and has worked with national media organizations including CBS and ABC Television. He is currently a freelance multi-media journalist working between Denver and Los Angeles.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Utah’s New Office of Energy Development
by Michael Orton
Licensed through ImageProviders
SALT LAKE CITY –
Appearing on Tuesday before the Utah State House of Representatives’ natural resources committee, Rep. Roger Barrus (R-Davis) presented House bill 475 which, he said, “puts into place a new “Office of Energy Development in our state.” Along with the bill which easily passed his committee, Amanda Smith was introduced as the governor’s new energy advisor, assuming a role previously held by Dr. Diane Nielson whose background was in geology and mineral exploration. Presently overseeing both the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and the new energy development position, Ms. Smith will rely upon her background in law and her experience with public lands and conservation in the dual role until other appointees can be named. In an online press release issued Monday, the Governor's office indicated that his confidence in Ms. Smith was born from her ability to find common ground between a very diversely motivated group of stakeholders in a state with vast energy resources.
Rep. Barrus, an environmental engineer, testified that his bill “gives us the framework in which the Office of Energy Development can be created, and the governor’s energy advisor will appoint a director who will be over the office and will also appoint staff members as they are needed, but will do that within the existing budget.” This fiscal reality and the present-day limitations of Ms. Smith's assignment leaves the development of her newly created office wide open in a state which leads others in its efforts at economic recovery.
The governor's office had previously announced that his newest "energy initiative" would be available Wednesday, March 2, but late Tuesday the press conference scheduled for that purpose was cancelled until mid-March "due to scheduling conflicts." The governor had been in Washington testifying before congressional committees on both healthcare and "The Impact of the [Obama] Administration's Wild Lands Order on Jobs and Economic Growth."
Video coverage of the committee hearing and testimony is available via ImageProviders.
Update
Ashlee Buchholz, who coordinates information for the governor on this topic, indicates that his latest energy initiative document will now be released on March 18, 2011
Licensed through ImageProviders
SALT LAKE CITY –
Appearing on Tuesday before the Utah State House of Representatives’ natural resources committee, Rep. Roger Barrus (R-Davis) presented House bill 475 which, he said, “puts into place a new “Office of Energy Development in our state.” Along with the bill which easily passed his committee, Amanda Smith was introduced as the governor’s new energy advisor, assuming a role previously held by Dr. Diane Nielson whose background was in geology and mineral exploration. Presently overseeing both the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and the new energy development position, Ms. Smith will rely upon her background in law and her experience with public lands and conservation in the dual role until other appointees can be named. In an online press release issued Monday, the Governor's office indicated that his confidence in Ms. Smith was born from her ability to find common ground between a very diversely motivated group of stakeholders in a state with vast energy resources.
Rep. Barrus, an environmental engineer, testified that his bill “gives us the framework in which the Office of Energy Development can be created, and the governor’s energy advisor will appoint a director who will be over the office and will also appoint staff members as they are needed, but will do that within the existing budget.” This fiscal reality and the present-day limitations of Ms. Smith's assignment leaves the development of her newly created office wide open in a state which leads others in its efforts at economic recovery.
The governor's office had previously announced that his newest "energy initiative" would be available Wednesday, March 2, but late Tuesday the press conference scheduled for that purpose was cancelled until mid-March "due to scheduling conflicts." The governor had been in Washington testifying before congressional committees on both healthcare and "The Impact of the [Obama] Administration's Wild Lands Order on Jobs and Economic Growth."
Video coverage of the committee hearing and testimony is available via ImageProviders.
Update
Ashlee Buchholz, who coordinates information for the governor on this topic, indicates that his latest energy initiative document will now be released on March 18, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Utah Governor to Roll Out Energy Initiative
by Michael Orton
licensed via Creative Commons
SALT LAKE CITY --
Ted Wilson, Utah Governor Gary Herbert's energy task force chairman, introduced Amanda Smith as the state's new "energy advisor" to a group of environmental stakeholders this morning and then both described their governor's latest energy initiative, scheduled to be released to the public on Wednesday, March 2. Ms. Smith, originally a Jon Huntsman, Jr. appointee, was previously the head of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality and it was unclear if a new appointee to lead the UDEQ would be announced mid-week as well.
Noting that the original initiative draft from the 2010 meetings had been "pretty well beaten up by just about everybody" who held an interest, Wilson, a former mayor of Salt Lake City and avid outdoorsman, described the forthcoming document as Governor Herbert's "Ten Year Energy Initiative," and included the input offered at public hearings held throughout the state during the previous summer. Wilson stated that the revised initiative contained "a lot of renewables," but conceded that "not very many Americans are changing their way of life," leaving the activist stakeholders to wonder if this latest initiative would continue to favor commercial extraction industries. Utah is a major coal producer with significant natural resources contributing to its economic development even before it achieved statehood in 1896.
Lieutenant Governor Herbert succeeded Jon Huntsman, Jr. when the latter accepted an appointment by the Obama administration as ambassador to China in 2009. A realtor and former commissioner in Utah County south of Salt Lake, Gary Herbert was elected in his own right last November to a four-year term and came under significant criticism by the scientific community when he questioned the veracity of climate change last year. Wilson indicated that in the new initiative, Governor Herbert now accepts that he will be "governing the state on a warming planet."
Herbert is in Washington, D.C. this week, and many expect the republican governor to plea for the sovereignty of his state's public lands in testimony before a republican-dominated congressional hearing. That address is scheduled for tomorrow and Wilson said, "it will not be very nice" toward the Obama administration. The Bureau of Land Management currently oversees approximately 20 million acres in the state of Utah, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has recently described the designation of "wild lands" creating uncertainties for future management and leases by the commercial interests of Utah's coal, oil and gas producers. Wilson also indicated that the new initiative addresses the state's position on finite water resources in a new era of energy development.
Ms. Smith added that the new initiative "looks pretty different than the 2010 draft." She described the substance of the document as a set of recommendations covering eight areas with guiding principles "that consider energy development and its public health, environmental and economic impacts, regardless of the type of lens through which those are viewed."
Addendum
At the conclusion of this 55 minute meeting, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Smith were asked if the new initiative contained any time-specific goals or objectives. They replied that it did not.
licensed via Creative Commons
SALT LAKE CITY --
Ted Wilson, Utah Governor Gary Herbert's energy task force chairman, introduced Amanda Smith as the state's new "energy advisor" to a group of environmental stakeholders this morning and then both described their governor's latest energy initiative, scheduled to be released to the public on Wednesday, March 2. Ms. Smith, originally a Jon Huntsman, Jr. appointee, was previously the head of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality and it was unclear if a new appointee to lead the UDEQ would be announced mid-week as well.
Noting that the original initiative draft from the 2010 meetings had been "pretty well beaten up by just about everybody" who held an interest, Wilson, a former mayor of Salt Lake City and avid outdoorsman, described the forthcoming document as Governor Herbert's "Ten Year Energy Initiative," and included the input offered at public hearings held throughout the state during the previous summer. Wilson stated that the revised initiative contained "a lot of renewables," but conceded that "not very many Americans are changing their way of life," leaving the activist stakeholders to wonder if this latest initiative would continue to favor commercial extraction industries. Utah is a major coal producer with significant natural resources contributing to its economic development even before it achieved statehood in 1896.
Lieutenant Governor Herbert succeeded Jon Huntsman, Jr. when the latter accepted an appointment by the Obama administration as ambassador to China in 2009. A realtor and former commissioner in Utah County south of Salt Lake, Gary Herbert was elected in his own right last November to a four-year term and came under significant criticism by the scientific community when he questioned the veracity of climate change last year. Wilson indicated that in the new initiative, Governor Herbert now accepts that he will be "governing the state on a warming planet."
Herbert is in Washington, D.C. this week, and many expect the republican governor to plea for the sovereignty of his state's public lands in testimony before a republican-dominated congressional hearing. That address is scheduled for tomorrow and Wilson said, "it will not be very nice" toward the Obama administration. The Bureau of Land Management currently oversees approximately 20 million acres in the state of Utah, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has recently described the designation of "wild lands" creating uncertainties for future management and leases by the commercial interests of Utah's coal, oil and gas producers. Wilson also indicated that the new initiative addresses the state's position on finite water resources in a new era of energy development.
Ms. Smith added that the new initiative "looks pretty different than the 2010 draft." She described the substance of the document as a set of recommendations covering eight areas with guiding principles "that consider energy development and its public health, environmental and economic impacts, regardless of the type of lens through which those are viewed."
Addendum
At the conclusion of this 55 minute meeting, Mr. Wilson and Ms. Smith were asked if the new initiative contained any time-specific goals or objectives. They replied that it did not.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Whose Wilderness Is It, Anyway?
 |
| Utah includes nearly 20 million acres of public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management -- photo by L. Drake for MicroBureau West |
Washington, D.C. --
The Department of the Interior has just announced a reversal of the "drill, baby, drill" and "no more wilderness" era that began with the Bush administration's policies on public lands more than 10 years prior. Last Thursday, Interior Secretary and westerner Ken Salazar announced that the Bureau of Land Management will have the authority to set aside large tracts of federally-owned land that may need special consideration as "wild lands." Congress would still have the last word on what areas would be deemed formal "wilderness status," and thus permanently protected from extraction use and other commercial development. Some people in the state of Utah apparently didn't hear that last part. Congress will still have the same authority to designate formal wilderness areas.
In Utah, where there are nearly 20 million acres that are federally administered by the BLM, there was an immediate knee-jerk reaction from state politicians eager to attack the Obama administration as has been their norm. Reaction in that state may prove to be premature, where the state's righters often don't wait to consume and completely acknowledge all of the facts. However, Utah Governor Gary Herbert was so angered by Salazar’s announcement, he phoned BLM Administrator Bob Abbey to rail against what the governor calls “political posturing.” Uh, kind of like the federal government did with the natives of Utah prior to 1847.
“This decision may unintentionally damage all of the goodwill that we have worked so hard to build between the state, local governments, the environmental community and federal officials,” Utah's Governor Herbert said. (source: the Salt Lake Tribune). Plenty of observers would describe the Utah governor's statements as disingenuous at best, given the history of Utah's animus toward the Obama administration during the past two years. Herbert must believe that his opinion on the matter really counts now.
The Utah Governor could examine the history of his land, which as a territory designated by the federal government of the United States, petitioned for statehood several times, finally being admitted in 1896 and named by its native people. The name "Utah" is a word from the Ute tribe meaning "people of the mountains." The people referred to in that language were the original inhabitants before United States came to be and before the arrival of mostly European settlers in 1847 during the nation's westward expansion. Many of Utah's emigrant families homesteaded its land with federal grants during the Cleveland administration.
The most recent wrangling on this land use matter involved a 2003 out-of-court settlement when then Governor Leavitt managed to wrest millions of acres from BLM purview and outraged environmental and conservation activists who feared unfettered extraction development. Salazar said of the 2003 settlement, "That should never have happened." Even so, a major development at Snow Basin was made possible by the generous privitization of public lands to Utah tycoon Earl Holding in preparation for the 2002 winter Olympics.
The recent announcement by Secretary Salazar became swift political fodder as Utah's U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch lept to the microphones to say, "I will continue to do everything I can to ensure that... the authority to designate wilderness stays where it belongs -- with Congress." This was purely political grandstanding to those who emphasized that the new designation still acknowledged congress' authority over the wilderness designation, effectively leaving that distinction unchanged. In addition, the BLM management personnel have been charged with the responsibility to include state and local authorities in the development of their management plans under the new policy. This is not a significant change, either.
For instance, with the new "wild lands" distinction, the BLM would have increased discretion regarding the development of roads and trails and even limited energy development or other activities in such areas, even if they "may impair wilderness characteristics." This is not often mentioned by the rabid state's rights people of Utah who many feel have overreacted to the announcement made by Salazar. Their neighbors and friends, working with the federal government, will undoubtedly continue to work with the rest of Utah's population even as they decry this recent action as a federal government "land grab."
Salazar said the new policy is in line with the BLM's multiuse mission of balancing recreational activities, livestock grazing and energy production with wild land conservation and preservation, all of which the state of Utah already enjoys. "Thousands of Americans make their livings from those public land uses," Salazar noted. "Wise stewardship isn't just the right thing to do, it's good for business and it's good for jobs."
Perhaps the Utah politicians have forgotten to include that part of the Secretary's remarks as they whip up a local frenzy over the "erosion of state's rights." The native tribal leaders of Utah have remained silent thus far.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Interior Sec. Salazar Responds to Sen. Bennett's Request
Utah via Washington, D.C. --
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has sent Utah Senator Bob Bennett an offer to review the 77 suspended oil-and-gas lease parcels that have been the subject of much debate in the west and in Washington. The hotly-contested matter has come to a head with Bennett's procedural delay of Sec. Salazar's undersecretary choice who requires senate confirmation.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has sent Utah Senator Bob Bennett an offer to review the 77 suspended oil-and-gas lease parcels that have been the subject of much debate in the west and in Washington. The hotly-contested matter has come to a head with Bennett's procedural delay of Sec. Salazar's undersecretary choice who requires senate confirmation.
Several of the controversial tracts can be seen from Utah's Arches National Park
Earlier, Sec. Salazar had nominated David Hayes as undersecretary, whom Bennett has admitted is "very qualified." But the process was held up this week by three votes in cloture, ostensibly because Bennett wanted more information and justification on the lease cancellations. In his formal response to Bennett dated this past Tuesday, May 12, Sec. Salazar indicated that his office has recently facilitated ten oil and gas lease sites covering more than 1.5 million acres of public lands within the United States and an additional 1.7 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico.
There are approximately 20 million acres of (BLM) public lands within the state of Utah, and only 77 leases have been cancelled by the Dept. of the Interior because of their proximity to National Parks and other sensitive areas. This concerned Senator Bennett from an ideological point-of-view, with many Utah state legislators joining the chorus.
When cabinet appointments were made by the incoming Obama administration, one of Sec. Salazar's first actions involved suspending the lease offerings in Utah's controversial and sensitive areas. Salazar, a former senator from Colorado, enjoyed a confirmation that was virtually free of objection or delay. He inherited a controversy from day one on the job with the Department of the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.
At the time they were offered for oil and gas leases, the tracts in Utah evoked rapid response from National Park officials, who claimed that the Bureau of Land Management hadn't contacted them prior to making the listings. Then, the National Park Service’s top official in Utah called the leases “shocking and disturbing” and said his agency wasn’t properly notified. Environmentalists called it a “fire sale” for the oil and gas industry by the departing Bush administration accompanied by prior campaign chants of "Drill, baby, drill."
“We find it shocking and disturbing,” said Cordell Roy, the chief Park Service administrator in Utah. “They added 51,000 acres of tracts near Arches, Dinosaur and Canyonlands without telling us about it. That’s 40 tracts within four miles of these parks.” The leasing process had also been clouded by the actions of Tim DeChristopher, an environmentalist who joined the October, 2008 bidding for the questionable leases as a self-described "act of civil disobedience."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)