Blackboard Blogger: "A man with a chalkboard in Liberia is smarter than Pinch Sulzberger."

Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough
-- REM, Losing My Religion

Sippican Cottage can see clearly now:The Future Of The Internet Is A Blackboard. The New York Times doesn't see anything.

The New York Times sells their building and their jet and lay off thousands who are just doing their job, but they pay hundreds of thousands -- millions -- to keep the Op-Ed page going, and the bigshot managers in caviar at their Long Island Gold Coast getaways.

All I can get on the Internet is opinion. It's an enormous sea of opinion. Everyone is doing for free what Maureen Dowd wants to earn a phone number for. That can't last. But they'll sacrifice the entire news operation on the altar of opinion to keep it going to the bitter end

The democratization of opinion would tell a normal person in a position of authority at a newspaper to abandon opinion and put factual information first, last, and always in the paper. And maybe not print it, just offer it in pixels.

The man at the end of the information spear, is one Alfred Sirleaf of Liberia.

Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger.

He take runs the "€œDaily News", a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn’t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand.

Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works. The lack of electricity never throws him off. The lack of funding means he’s creative in ways that he recruits people from around the city and country to report news to him. He uses his cell phone as the major point of connection between him and the 10,000 (he says) that read his blackboard daily.

Liberia's Blackboard Blogger from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo.

An inspiring and cautionary story. Read All About It: HERE and HERE.

Posted by Vanderleun at March 24, 2009 10:43 AM