Local Data Mining: Where No Georgia Press Dare Go

Investigative tech reporting in Georgia is non-existent. Other than cheerleading, Chamber-type stuff from the Atlanta Business Chronicle. There are startups incubated at Georgia Tech in the for-profit business of scraping data from social media sites, and then selling it back to organizations and business people, particularly folk in law enforcement. What’s commonly called “enterprise data mining.”

I know this because one company tried to sell me their lovely dashboard thingee. To which I replied, in a business-like manner of course at the meeting, “No thanks, I roll my own.”

Georgia law enforcement stores (years of) data scraped and mined from the general (presumed innocent) public, via such technology as license tag scanning. Lord knows what they then do with such data, and where (NSA?) they then feed that data, and the associated metadata, on to.

The head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Vernon Keenan, announced that factoid, rather proudly, to a room full of journalists at the Atlanta Press Club this summer. Not a single follow-up story on that matter, at least any I’m aware of. Not one.

Hasn’t the data-mining dilemma revealed by Glenn Greenwald piqued the slightest bit of interest on local angles to the dilemma just a little bit amongst Georgia press leadership? Seems not.

Come on MSM in Georgia. Do better.

Exploitation of Georgia’s Children In Reality TV Programming

After telling the officers in Douglas County, GA that she’s a gangbanger, Deja’neke continues the jail tour in shackles. Photo courtesy of AETV.

Shame on Douglas County, Georgia. Shame on Disney (A&E’s parent company) for supporting and funding (but mostly exploiting Georgia’s children), for profit, the production and broadcasting of the reality show Beyond Scared Straight on A&E.

The episode airing tonight, Thursday July 25, 2013, on A&E’s Beyond Scared Straight at 9pm features a juvenile reform program in Douglas County, Georgia that was created and implemented using tactics and practices of fear, violence and intimidation.

Of such tactics, Leonard Witt of Kennesaw State University’s Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, has this to say in an editorial:

They (academics studying conflict management) can tell you a few things about how violence begets violence and why piling trauma on kids who have suffered trauma their whole lives is not such a smart approach. Ever hear of programs like restorative justice?

Governor Nathan Deal should weigh-in on this media matter, as he has spoken out recently on matters of criminal (and juvenile) justice reform in Georgia, and he, Deal, fully supports reforming Georgia’s juvenile justice system.

However, this exploitative show features a method of “reform” that is not only dangerous, cruel and unusual, but has been demonstrated to be grossly ineffective; thus significantly undermining the effort, and new legislative mandate too, to legitimately and wisely reform our system of juvenile justice here in Georgia.

How Committed To Your Constituency Are You?

I started reading Ron Fennel’s (Smyrna, Georgia, City Councilperson, Ward 7) newsletter to his constituents, and several weeks later…

The exhaustively comprehensive newsletter was nothing if not long, detailed, and ridiculously informative. Seems the Smyrna councilperson loves pounding the keyboard almost as much as another Smyrna resident, Bob Barr.

Heck, within a few graphs I found out who the police chief was from a detailed photo, noted an email address I needed, and saw at least two Facebook friends mentioned in the copy.

Now I’m all for brevity on online communications, but the darn thing was so informative I say… go for it. Inform your constituency! And don’t stop until you’re done.

But how I wish other public servants who represent us would do the same.  And comprehensively and exhaustively so is just fine by me — if you’re elected to serve us the people.

In fact, our elected servants should seek clarity and transparency of communications on their keyboards until they drop from exhaustion, you ask me. That’s what good writers do. Write to the point of exhaustion, right?

You don’t have to thrown in what you had for breakfast three Tuesdays ago, as Councilperson Fennel almost does, but if  you do not yet have a newsletter but you do have a constituency (to serve) I suggest using Fennel’s newsletter as a model… for how to improve and clarify your community outreach and communications. After all, it really is your responsibility and duty. To us.

Your newsletter certainly doesn’t have to be as long and detailed as this one, but don’t forget some photos! Videos are good. Kitchen sink, too. And don’t be intimidated at the thought of starting one. Just a few graphs and an e-mail distribution list (you already have that) will do for a first effort. Set a time expectation too. Will you publish/send a newsletter every month? Every week? If so, let your audience know what exactly you’re going to be doing. Then go do it.

You can add bells and whistles to a newsletter as you gain confidence with your writing and your multimedia inclusions. Up the quality of your photos, eventually. Follow-up on things mentioned in a prior newsletter. Add a helpful link or three.

For example, I’m hoping the next newsletter from Mr. Fennel of Smyrna, Ga. will include a link to that Instagram account mentioned in the July letter regarding some Smyrna Boy Scouts and a sidewalk mapping project. Sounded interesting!

And if you need a newsletter written, edited, and distributed for you, well… you know who to ask.

BTW… if you haven’t been to Smyrna, Georgia lately you should go. Do a drive about. Snoop around over some pretty real estate. Place looks great.

City of Atlanta Malaise

Mayor Reed, at his speech to the Atlanta Press Club last week, Monday January 31, 2011, said there was a *pall* over Atlanta. And that we citizens needed to snap out of it. And think big. Look to pie-in-the-sky dreaming and shiny, glory-ridden kinds of projects to get us over our dark funk. Something along the lines of the Olympic games! Remember those? I hardly do.

The thing about living in COA (City of Atlanta, and I have for over 20 years now) is that it is a city mired in deep, determined, and wearisome bureaucracy. It’s hard to be cheerful, hopeful, have fun and think big when you’re beaten down from years and years of battling bureaucracy, over and over and over again, just for the most simple of services and responses.

My small Home Owners Association (HOA), for example, is beaten down financially with the weight of the extreme water bills we’ve had to pay for almost two years now. I tried, to no avail, to get help from my city council person, with literally reams of documentation sent to that office on this matter. To no avail. I was told we had no problem, and that all was fine. This was over a year ago. We now know there were some extreme problems at the Watershed Dept.

At the time, over a year ago, I went to the Dept. of Watershed management personally. To no avail. I’ve called and emailed, over and over again, assorted local news media personnel. To no avail, despite their numerous media attentions to the matter of city water bills.

And that’s just one department! Every department is a struggle in futility. Just getting a new Herbie Curbie from the city takes a monumental effort of citizen resolve and determination. Just finding an email or a phone number for an APD community contact is a struggle. How many times have we all been put on hold when calling 9-11? And we’ve all heard the horror stories of trying to get a building permit from COA.

After years of doing battle with the bureaucracy that is City of Atlanta, I feel worn down and wiped out. I feel that *pall* Mayor Reed talks about, in my spirit… at the thought of having to do anything that involves City of Atlanta. I think often about about moving out of City of Atlanta now, something I never used to do.

Mayor Reed’s administration seems to be energized to try to break through some of our crippling bureaucracy. I just hope our crippling *pall* doesn’t get to them too. We residents are about as low as we can already go.

We’re looking to Mayor Reed to talk us back up to a point where we can even CONSIDER calling downtown for a new Herbie Curbie, let alone start thinking, with any hope of renewed energies, of anything big and futuristic and hopeful for this city.

UPDATE: As I wrote this editorial, CBS-Atlanta was working-up a classic, un-sexy example of the daily bureaucrat struggles of just one intown Atlanta neighborhood… to add a traffic light or not. See their news package here. This neighborhood had to beat a very loud drum just to get the city to meet with residents and solicit their input over this critical matter. It is also critical that we have local media support by independent news outlets such as CBS-Atlanta to get City of Atlanta officials to just return a phone call or read an email from a resident. Fortunately, CBS-Atlanta is always responsive to residents’ concerns. Always.