Not to turn Blog P.I. into a catalog of things I did last weekend, but on Saturday I sat on a panel at the Phillips Foundation’s fall retreat for recipients of its journalism fellowships (about which more below). My co-panelists were Jose Vargas from the Washington Post, Amy Schatz from the Wall Street Journal, and Abbi Tatton from CNN. I was a replacement fill-in, which is why I was the lone non-journalist — but hey, I was a licensed journalist not too long ago, so, close enough for (the discussion of) government work.
The subject was how technology is changing politics — a mandate broad enough to take it in almost any direction. And if anything, I was the wet blanket of the panel. My opening comments focused on how the Internet is changing politics in ways not unique compared to previous technologies, techniques and politics. I didn’t get all the details out on Saturday, but the argument went something like:
Television : Nixon/Kennedy Debate :: YouTube/Internet video : “Macaca”
Direct mail/voter files : Richard Viguerie’s first claim to fame :: E-mail lists/subscribers : Why John Kerry matters in 2008
Radio and blogging both gave candidates ways to bypass established media channels and speak directly to supporters and voters. Television and online video can reframe the public’s perception of political events. Direct mail then as e-mail now communicate around the media as well as solicit campaign funds from an (ideally) opt-in crowd.
Panels such as these are at their best when the most interesting comments come from the audience. One theme that emerged in discussion was how even print journalists are being asked to produce short video (and audio) segments for the Internet when reporting from the road. To some extent, each of my fellow panelists had witnessed or dealt with this issue. It’s an interesting and even logical development, as online ad revenues rise compared to the dead tree edition. One also has to also wonder how thin it stretches their already-dwindling reportorial resources. At least in the Morissettean sense, it’s ironic that the migration of news content to the web coincides with layoffs owing to competition from the web.
My friend Robert Bluey, also present, volunteered that his alma mater, Ithaca College, is now offering a course it calls “Backpack Journalism.” He explains in an interesting post at his own blog:
Students are given a backpack with a MacBook, video camera, digital camera, a recording device and other instruments to produce a story. After receiving their assignments, the students are dispatched to cover the story using multiple media.
I find this new kind of journalism fascinating. However, I also sympathize with working journalists who are primarily writers, who may now find themselves needing to acquire new skills to adapt to a changing industry. My co-panelists are among the lucky ones — I suspect they’ll learn new tricks more quickly than some of their older colleagues.
One of whom might be Michael Scully, former journalist, journalism professor and blogger (but not the writer from The Simpsons). I tend to share his fears about what “backpack journalism” will mean in some (many, most?) newsrooms:
If Backpack Journalism is about sending ONE person out into the field to report a story, than Backpack Journalism is a travesty. It’s an accountant’s dream but an editor’s nightmare. Accountants love it because you’re sending one person out into the field to produce the work of three people; it’s an editor’s nightmare because the quality of the work is diminished.
I submit that the true business model for New Media must be to send THREE people out into the field. Let one report, one produce, one shoot. Each skill is very important, each skill is very different, each skill has a professional value.
On the other hand, someone who could do all three well would be highly sought-after and accordingly compensated. If the job description caught on, it would presumably spur different kinds of students to enter journalism in the first place. Myself, I actually applied to film school out of high school, but instead pursued print journalism in-state, as I that proved more realistic. But if becoming a “backpack journalist” was an option at Allen Hall, I’d at least have given it the old college try. Heck, I might have even finished my Journalism double-major.
And you know, I bet we can fit this into a hastily-assembled anti-triumphalist SAT problem like the ones above:
Note: As I promised above, a bit more about the Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship Program. They are presently seeking applicants for 2008. If you’re inclined toward constitutional democracy and classically liberal economics, and have less than ten years of journalism experience, then you (yes, you!) could land $50,000 to $75,000 to write on a topic of your choosing. Details here. Tell ‘em Blog P.I. sent you.
*I was also the only panelist with a client of current interest, so it made for a few interesting moments as the subject was indeed taken in almost any direction. Hats off to the Standard’s Michael Goldfarb for trying to get me to make news.
Because I’m a sucker for nametags and PowerPoint presentations, during lunchtime hours on Wednesday I attended a panel discussion co-sponsored by GWU’s Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet (yes, “Politics Democracy”; no, I’m not sure which word is supposed to modify the other) and PR agency Edelman*. But there was another reason to attend, and Edelman was it — the 
L’Affaire GoldFrisch III: We All Knew This Was Coming
This post was co-written with Tim Dreier of The One-Handed Economist; both of us are graduates of the University of Oregon in Eugene, where Deb Frisch once taught and now lives. As a matter of full disclosure, we’ve had a few scrapes with Frisch of our own, she having trolled the blog of a student magazine we both once edited. That’s covered below. For previous Blog P.I. coverage, see here and here.
The saga of Deborah Frisch, longtime comment troll and all-around kook, took another troubling, if not exactly unforeseeable turn in the last 48 hours. As far as we know, she is now the first troll of the political blogosphere to face criminal charges relating to such activity. On August 21 she was arraigned in an Oregon courtroom on charges of stalking and telephone harassment (PDF). The docket can be found at the link preceding, but is captured below for your viewing pleasure:
According to Don’t Hire Deb, a blog devoted to documenting Frisch’s outrageous behavior while depriving her own site of traffic, Frisch posted either $4,000 bail or $400 to a bondsman, and must reappear in court on September 25th. As is speculated in DHD comments and elsewhere, this likely stems not from Frisch’s well-publicized Jeff Goldstein-related misadventures (to the best of our knowledge she’s never called him) but rather similar interactions with former colleagues at University of Oregon (where she was denied tenure in 1994 and served as an adjunct until July 2001) including calling, emailing, and a quickly-removed post to her blog.
Just a few months ago, Frisch was an obscurity known only to the blogs she trolled, such as our own Oregon Commentator and Steve Verdon’s Deinonychus Antirrhopus. But at this point, she is undergoing the most severe public self-destruction we’ve seen yet. And when you consider that includes Jason Leopold and other, better-known individuals, that’s saying something. Academic John Lott and attorney Glenn Greenwald may be guilty of sock-puppetry, but that’s bush-league compared to Deb’s prolonged breakdown. Michael A. Bellesiles? A liar and a hack, but so far as we know he never ended up in jail for his antics. And no, having his Bancroft Prize revoked is not the same thing. Hell, Jayson Blair managed to spin his utter fecklessness into a book deal, as did “fabulist” Stephen Glass. Frisch, though, is in a class of her own: a vitriolic sociopath whose delusion knows almost no bounds.
For those of you just tuning in, Deb made a name for herself in the rightosphere by making altogether disturbing, one might say John Mark Karr-esque comments about Goldstein’s family. Within hours of
Goldstein having publicized her identitybeing called out by Goldstein’s readers, Frisch resigned from a Univ. of Ariz. teaching job, thereby pre-empting a probable termination. The story got some press play in the Tucson Citizen, Eugene Register-Guard and Inside Higher Ed. Goldstein sought and obtained a restraining order against her, and that might have been the end of it.Instead, her online behavior became even more erratic: Posting fake suicide notes, angering colleagues on an academic listserv, claiming to pursue legal action against Goldstein, Ace of Spades HQ and Matthew Heidt of Blackfive. And most strangely, attacking the folks at lefty satire blog Sadly, No!, well known for its disdain of Goldstein, and which had previously belittled the Frisch controversy. More recently she has gone so far as to heckle Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden (whom she had claimed an interest in working for) and, apparently, now managed to stalk and harass former colleagues in Oregon.
Commenters at DHD, Patterico’s Pontifications and Ace of Spades HQ have posited that the cyclical nature of Deb’s “teh crazy” implies a drinking problem. Whether a joke or conventional wisdom, the notion has has gotten so much play that after the first of Deb’s bizarre attacks, the S,N! regulars mentioned her drinking whilst tearing her a new one:
Three days later, Frisch was in a Lane County courthouse.
Over the course of a few short weeks Frisch has gone from employed university adjunct to unemployable Internet sociopath with a rap sheet. It’s one thing to troll a few right-wing sites for fun and attention, but another matter entirely to make thinly veiled threats about a man’s child, imply that he’s a pedophile, and then proceed to alienate essentially everyone in the blogosphere and more than a few in what we might call “meatspace.”
If we didn’t know any better, we’d call the whole thing unbelievable. But having followed the unfolding Frisch fiasco, it’s more than believable. It was an inevitability.
Update: Kevin Hayden from The American Street, in the comments:
This sounds right to us; far from being her only target, Goldstein was just the one with the biggest soapbox. We won’t join in the clinical depression/alcoholism debate, and we certainly hope we don’t give the impression of gleefully piling on. Fortunately, the only person likely to be hurt in all this is Frisch herself — alas, not so fortunate for her.
Update 2: An interesting possibility raised in a non-political message board, found via our referrer logs:
The poster is based in Kentucky, while Frisch was charged under Oregon laws, so we’re not sure if this is applicable or not. We haven’t had a chance to look into Oregon’s cyber-stalking laws, so we don’t know whether this is the case in California’s Canada. If anybody knows the answer, please let us know.
Update 3: Having perused Oregon’s H.B. 2918, a cyberstalking law passed in 2001 and a (perhaps too) brief summary of S.B. 1067 relating to “telephonic harrassment,” it’s our guess that this charge actually does pertain to actual use of telephones. On the other hand, IANAL, and neither is Tim.
Update 4: John Dunshee, a self-described Poor Schmuck, offers a clarification of Oregon bail procedure in the comments:
This is news to me, having never been arrested and only going through Lane County’s court system after getting caught at a university neighborhood bar with a fake ID. But I can affirm that Oregon does like its jobs programs: For a whole summer during college, I pumped gas at a Portland-area Chevron. At most gas stations in Oregon and New Jersey and nowhere else, self-service is illegal.