This post tees off of one begun by Melanie Booth over on Prattlenog, where she asked her fellow members of the academic community for their perspective on the boundaries and norms of connecting with students via social media. 

Melanie’s question generated a fairly good mumber of responses, but a slight majority of them displayed a trend that is troubling to me. I respondee in the comments section on the original post on Prattlenog, but I want to expand on it here.

A number of instructors responding to Melanie voiced concerns that connecting with students on social media crossed some sort of personal/professional dividing line. Some even suggested that they only wished to connect with students through a second, “professional” profile, keeping their personal profile to themselves. I highly disagree with both stances.

First, this stance is based on the conflation of “social,” “personal,” and “private.”  Education, it should be remembered, can be defined as a form of socialization within a discipline of knowledge. To be social, then, is not necessarily the same thing as being personal — unless one believes that every classroom is the instructor’s personal space. Even, however, when being social is being personal, to be personal is not necessarily to be private. 

This notion of privacy on the Internet is a legacy of the early years of the Internet, when the myth of online anonymity was born. Somehow the belief (despite IP logging and the use of cookies) that the Internet allowed anonymity meant that it was inherently predisposed to privacy. In other words, because it was possible to pretend to be anyone and therefore protect their identity, then the Internet both was and should be a place where a user could say anything without any consequences in the non-online world.

Privacy on the Internet, then, became the privacy of being able to shout before a global audience with the protection from consequences. It was the privacy of identity, not the privacy of action. This lack of personal responsibility on the Internet has become its most dangerous and most destructive quality. 

So when faculty members at colleges and universities say that they want to avoid social media connections with students, the position they are taking is untenable. Although they likely do not realize it, what they are saying is that they want the liberty of behaving in a way that is publicly inappropriate without their students witnessing it.

Choosing a second identity for students to connect with is just another extension of this logic. Essentially one identity — the personal profile — is the genuine identity, while the second identity — the professional identity — is a blind, a mask from behind which the instructor presents his-or-herself to students.

This is fundementally inauthentic. I feel this is a deeply disturbing and frankly unethical position to take. It is also fundementally inauthentic, during an era when the search for authenticity on the Internet is rising .   

The Internet is a public place, like a town square or a city park or a sidewalk. If what a faculty memebr is doing online is inappropriate for a student to see or know, then why is it appropriate for anyone to see it? Or to put it another way, just as with the those other physical public places, don’t act inappropriately on Social Media and it won’t matter if students connect with you there.

In short, I say this to my fellow instructors in the world of academia: be genuine, be you, but be responsible for what you say and do on social media, and being connected to students will not be an issue of concern. Authenticity trumps all.

Over the last year or so — and especially lately — there’s been a lot of rhetoric tossed around over TriMet. Between a bad editorial, a near-miss on a labor action, and lots of Internet drama, I think it’s time for some cooler heads to prevail.

1.) The Oregonian’s editorial against measure 26-119. As of today, I don’t know how I’ll vote on measure 26-119, which would fund $125 million worth of improvements for TriMet’s transit system. Chief among the items that would be bought with the proceeds of this bond measure are numerous busses to replace aging vehicles and improvements for pedestrians, elderly, and handicapped citizens.

I can however tell you that the Oregonian’s editorial against the measure in yesterday’s paper is a load of bunk.

First, the paper states that the bond measure will cost taxpayers “$30 to $43 more in taxes each year.” That’s dead wrong. 26-119 replaces an existing TriMet bond that is expiring. It’s cost will be the same as the old bond. In short, this is a renewal, and its passage will result in the same tax bill as homeowners get now. The editorial board for the paper had to know this was a renewal. I cannot believe they would be so incompetent as to not check the facts on this. So that means they ignored the truth and chose to intentionally portray this as a tax hike rather than a renewal.

Second was this gem:

Approving a bond measure is like buying something with a credit card. It may look appealing, but it multiplies the cost of a purchase by adding interest. That doesn’t seem like a smart way to go.

So if this is correct, the Oregonian just dismissed all funding of public projects via bonds as irresponsible credit-card-like spending. This is an insane notion. Bonding is one of the oldest, most respected, most stable ways of funding the purchase of new equipment or the construction of new projects. This is an intellectually dishonest position, unless of course the paper will now oppose all public bonds from this point forward.

Third, the paper suggests that TriMet should have been setting aside money for these things all along, and that because they haven’t set aside enough in the past, they shouldn’t get any now. This Monday-morning-quarterbacking must make the Oregonian’s editorial board feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it contributes absolutely nothing to solving our problems. The reality is that we start from today, with what we can affect today, and navel gazing with coulda-shoulda-wouldas about the past will not result in one improved stop, one replaced aging bus, or one additional LIFT service for our elderly and disabled citizens.

In short, the Oregonian’s editorial is both dishonest and dead wrong.

2.) Bus vs. rail budget rhetoric. Over the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of noise about how TriMet’s service cuts would not have been made if it hadn’t been building a rail system over the last three decades. A lot of noise is put out there — including by angry bus drivers — that MAX is only built at the expense of the bus network. There’s even transit equity activists out there now, trying to lobby for the agency to increase bus funding at the expense of light rail.

None of this is true and it’s time to knock it off.

Way, way, way back in 1969, an editorial in the now-defunct Oregon Journal noted that there could be no “taxation without transportation.” In this, the founding year of TriMet, there was concern that if the entire tri-county region was to pay to support the new agency, then the entire area needed service. In short, they argued in favor of transit equity, just as organizations like OPAL are doing today.

The irony: the Journal was warning about concentrating only on urban routes. “Already the idea is getting around that Tri-Met is to be operated primarily for the benefit of central Portland,” the editorial notes:

…the heaviest travel both on downtown streets and outlying roads comes during the morning and evening rush hours. Those drivers… are workers who earn their paychecks in Portland and take a large part of them out to the suburbs to spend. Both city and suburb will benefit by a smooth flow of traffic; neither can get along without the other.

What the Journal had recognized even in 1969 was that Tri-Met served two very distinct geographic markets: an urban, less affluent market, and a suburban and more affluent market. Despite the growth of high dollar urban living in Portland, this dynamic is still prevalent. To serve this mix, Tri-Met needed, in the Journal’s words, “truly metropolitan thinking.”

MAX light rail is part of that metropolitan thinking — in fact “MAX” stands for Metropolitan Area eXpress. Light rail is a key cornerstone to uniting diverse transit rider populations in one, cohesive system. Maybe in this era of tight budget constraints we’ve all forgotten that a little.

Just as importantly, light rail is a key cornerstone of our land-use system, our way of dealing with growth, and our very cultural fabric, as I’ve written about before. We as a region are not about to sacrifice our values or our long term goals because of short-term budget stresses. Our wallets are thinner, but what we believe in and stand for has not changed.

So let’s face it: we’re building the Orange Line to Milwaukie. And after that? Probably Southwest Portland, Tigard, and Sherwood, and maybe (if it’s ever built) a short stretch over the new Columbia River Crossing into Clark County. As a series of projects stretching over multiple decades, any delay we face creates a ripple forward that affects every project’s timeline.

So do you have to wait another 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes for your bus in order to ensure that the community won’t have to wait another year, five years, or a decade for high quality transit to be built? Yes. And if the people at OPAL really support good transit, then they need to drop their rallying cry of “bus riders unite” and replace it with “transit riders unite.”

Lastly, remember that all those pro-bus libertarians aren’t pro-transit at all. They just know that the only way to sell their opposition to (what they see as) the socialism of light rail is to support the (slightly less odious to them) bus system in opposition to it. This unholy alliance of pro-enviro justice groups and anti-light-rail libertarians has got to stop. Don’t kid yourself. If the latter ever got their way and axed MAX, the busses would be next on the chopping block.

3.) Bus driver / anti bus driver rage. These last few years have been tough for everybody, and nerves are fraying at the edge. A number of incidents have occurred over this time period wherein bus drivers have been involved in accidents, sometimes fatal. With press coverage of these incidents, the riding public has become more alert — perhaps downright paranoid — about their drivers following the transit agency’s rules. Some citizens have appointed themselves honorary TriMet supervisors, recording bus driver behavior on cameras and lodging complaints with TriMet about employees who talk about their work on the web. Two bus drivers who blog about their work ended up in hot water, with at least one of them yanking their TriMet related blog. The agency seems to be disciplining and firing drivers at higher rates than usual, and facing pressure from tight budgets has begun to question paying some of the cushiest medical benefits for transit workers in the nation.

It should come as no surprise that tensions are running a little… high.

The reality is that TriMet drivers have some of the hardest, most thankless jobs in the region. Think about it. When you drive the area’s major arterials, do you feel happy? For many of us, just 15, 20, or 30 minutes on the freeways and highways of the region at the beginning and end of day are enough to make us start yelling at other drivers and wanting to move to the wilds of Montana, never to see another soul again. Now imagine driving in that all day. Fun, huh?

Most bus riders probably know how stressful the job is because most bus riders probably have seen the same things I’ve seen: crazy drivers, accidents waiting to happen, the odd stray bicyclist not paying attention, the pedestrian stepping into a crosswalk against their light. But there are a few bus riders out there who have appointed themselves Captain Safety, their cell phone cameras at the ready.

You’re not helping things.

And to the drivers, forget that annoying, self-righteous moron who is stalking you on the bus hoping to send in their video to TriMet HQ and the local FOX affiliate. He or she is not representative of the rest of us, your riders, who you take care of every day.

As for the drivers themselves, I’m thankful that you didn’t stage a sick-out this morning. A soft strike such as a sickout will only serve to make the commutes of TriMet riders longer, slower, and more painful, and that anger won’t get turned against an agency that is trying to reduce what most perceive as over-inflated benefits packages for drivers. No, that anger will turn towards the drivers who called in sick, and in turn to all drivers. So it was a good strategic move not to call in sick.

But moving forward, we’re all having to deal with reductions to survive these times. Everyone. So by all means, fight for keeping the most benefits you can — that’s in your interest — but accept that they are on the table. Negotiate. Work towards a deal. What we all want — what we all want — is to have a functioning transit system that benefits the most people across the entire region. We all do have common ground to start from.

Is the knowledge of fringe, obscure historical remnants like these traces of the former industrial past of the Central Eastside — and the stories behind them — part of the uniqueness of Portland cultural DNA?

What makes up the cultural DNA of Portland? This is a question that, as a student of cities, I constantly ask myself. It is the reason I have travelled to other cities in the region, spanning from Vancouver, B.C. to San Francisco. It is the reason I have a passion for history, a passion for photography, a passion for local food. All of these things help me to form perspective on what makes this place, this urban region, so unique.

A number of weeks ago, friend and fellow Portland blogger Dan Haneckow lead a history tour around his neighborhood, the Overlook area of Portland. Taking place on a fine, sunny, but breezy afternoon, the walk attracted around fifty people of all ages and backgrounds. Dan lead us through the streets north of the old town of Albina, as far east as Interstate 5, and as far north as Killingsworth. Along the way we learned about the filling of ravines, secret basement speakeasy bars, Polish enclaves, victims of the Japanese internment, and all sorts of other historic scraps.

At about 7 p.m., the tour wound down, and about eight of us stuck around (Dan and myself included) to have dinner and a beer at the Lucky Lab and talk history. A gaze around the table was fascinating. Old mixed with young, newcomers mixed with natives, blue collar mixed with white. And what was this diverse crowd doing over beers, in the blue-hour light, on a random Summer sunday evening?

We were discussing where, of all things, the Piggly Wiggly used to be.

Of all the things, this strange mix of backgrounds, ages, occupations, and origins all had one thing in common, and that was an intense interest — perhaps love — of place. By place I don’t mean the grandness of the bridge-hemmed river, the cast iron Gilded Age remnants of Old Town, or the postcard-stock rose gardens and parks. I mean instead the most intimate levels of location. Building by building, block by block, the finest grain of urbanity. These were people who cared who owned the house before them as well as who came before them, and before them, and so on back to the builders. These were people who wanted to know just what used to be in the coffee shop, just why the building on the corner is rounded, just why there’s a tall, odd, green metal pole that stands orphan beside the road.

This love of place is a kind of historic hyper-localism, or as Lost Oregon’s John Chilson recently described it to me, “micro-history.” I hesitate to say whether this trait is unique to Portland, but there is no question to me that this sensitivity to the most intimate levels of historical narrative is a definite part of the Portland DNA, a common element of culture that crosses generational, economic, and social lines.

Naturally, in filling in the answers about the Portland DNA, I unearth yet more questions. Is this hyper-local historicism something that only reveals itself to a person after living in a place for a certain amount of time? Is it accessible only to the native or the local, of importance and available not to the visitor? And, therefore, is it rampant everywhere, but simply unavailable to me without living in those other places? Or, conversely, is it a unique quality or character of being of or from this region that we call Portland? Do we, here, breed and mold a culture of historicism? There has, after all, always been a reflective, contemplative, and inward turning tendency here. Maybe, just maybe, we’re all just a little geeky for what came before. Not a surprise, perhaps, for the city that reintroduced the world to the streetcar.

For many years now, the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) has been a major news item in the Portland metropolitan region. For those in other regions, the CRC is a project to replace the existing dual lift spans that carry Interstate 5 over the Columbia River between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. The planning process was begun in 1999, and  is still unfinished, and if completed, the CRC would be the most expensive public works project in Northwest history.

As the CRC is a multi-agency, multi-jurisdiction, multi-modal, bi-state project, it should come as no surprise that gaining a consensus on the form and funding of the bridge has been a significant challenge. The project has suffered a series of setbacks, culminating in a series of stakeholder revolts. The situation grew so bad that, earlier in the year, the governors of Oregon and Washington convened an Independent Review Panel (IRP) to conduct a review of the project and make recommendations for moving forward. 

Today, that report was released. In it are a number of very interesting criticisms and conclusions, but for now I’d like to focus on one particular aspect that I find absolutely fascinating: the CRC’s public involvement process. The IRP noted “perception that the CRC is not including and/or listening to public and stakeholder opinion and is not performing [required] public outreach….” The IRP further noted that many stakeholders lacked a sense of inclusivity and that as a result “There appears to be a lack of trust and credibility in what the CRC is doing and how it is proceeding.” (The above statements are from page 101 of the report.)

It is unusual for a public project to engender this broadly held lack of trust. The IRP is not discussing just a few local NIMBYs or a handful of special interests upset at not getting their way. What the IRP is describing here is an outright revolt by people who were involved with shaping the project, including people who had served on one of the numerous CRC working groups, bodies of stakeholders specifically designed to provide input. How did this happen?

The cause, as the IRP sees it, sounds hauntingly familiar. They describe a scenario wherein the working groups were not adeqautely communicated with to learn the outcomes of their input. From page 102:

“…lack of engagement in feedback with each of the groups and major stakeholders, explaining what decisions were made based on their advice, where the project was going, what their role would be in the future; and if necessary when and why the advisory group’s efforts were considered complete, has significantly contributed to the lack of trust and a perception that any information presented is more as a “sales pitch” versus genuine discussion and consideration of the concerns and issues being raised by the public.“

   
The supreme irony of the situation is that, in most cases, the IRP found that the recommendations of these working groups were being listened to and were affecting the outcomes of the project. The result was that the stakeholders were unable to perceive their role in the process as being both valued and necessary. To again quote from the report:  

“…there is a sense of loss of ownership in the project and a fear that whatever input was provided is no longer being considered or even rejected without comment or reason.  This further leads to a feeling, even if not correct, that the CRC was going through the motions and not truly engaged in a meaningful public input. This sense of loss of ownership and fear of rejection is then what leads to the lack of trust and credibility.“

  
Public participation professionals are usually most concerned with ensuring that the input of stakeholders gets communicated adequately and meaningfully up the decision-making chain. What is often forgotten–as with the CRC–is that the communication has to go back down the chain too, or credibility can be needlessly lost. Here, with the CRC, that error may result in the endangering of a very substantial project. The IRP, again, says it best (page 103):  

“If the feelings of lack of trust and credibility continue… the lack of agreement among the sponsors and buy-in from the community could seriously delay the CRC; or in a worst case scenario result in cancellation all together.“

For those who have a passion for public participation, the CRC is worth serious attention, especially from the standpoint of “lessons learned.” Hopefully, moving forward, it will also serve as an example of how to save a project from such shaky ground. Regardless of the outcome, the CRC’s public involvement process should prove interesting and instructive to watch over the coming years.

It’s time for Portland’s transit leadership to stand up for the region’s vision.

Over the last two years, as the economy shrank, local transit services here in the Portland region have been taking serious criticism. A number of narratives have emerged. One is that TriMet’s investments in rail expansion have come at the expense of the bus system. Another popular criticism is that TriMet places too much emphasis on changing land use patterns instead of transportation. Most recently, Dave Lister issued a kitchen-sink screed to these effects. The idea of the bus-hating, obsessively social-engineering TriMet has become the predominant narrative.

So far, most of these complaints have remained unanswered. Portland’s leadership on transit, transportation, and land use? MIA.

When this metro area embarked on light rail over twenty years ago, it was a conscious decision. Buses, yeomen transit though they be, were limited in their ability to handle high capacity loads and deliver the so-called “choice rider.” Rail, on the other hand, was more efficient and attracted new riders. But beyond that, yes, there indeed was a land-use component to a transit system with a rail core. Rail offered an opportunity to change how we lived in this region, and dovetailed with our vision of a denser urban area and a firm urban growth boundary protecting natural resources. Today, however, we as a region are letting that vision slip.

Have there been mis-steps along the way? Without doubt. Do we need to re-examine our commitment to other modes (like buses)? Yes. If TriMet is to be a credible voice in the region, it will need to meaningfully commit to greater geographic, economic, and social equity. By-and-large, that means the agency will need to pay more attention to capital investments in the bus system than it has for the last decade.

But in addressing such issues, we cannot let our vision of an expansive, efficient, accessible and highly utilized rail-cored transit system go by the wayside. Rail is one of the most critical components to our way of managing growth, and our vision of where this region is headed in the next half-century. We cannot abandon that vision to the rhetorical manslaughter of those who would see transit only benefit their own narrow needs, or worse yet, to those who see it as only a system of last resort for the elderly, disabled, young, and unemployed. We cannot lose ground to those who would use the rhetoric of bus disinvestment as a stalking horse to hide their opposition to our unique land-use system.

It is time for those who support the long-term vision of a denser, more livable metropolitan area to step up and provide some leadership on this issue. Say something. Do something! This cause is worth defending, and that that defense is apparently left up to relatively junior people such as me is shameful.

Is Eugene’s Bus Rapid Transit system, EmX, a model for how to build such transit lines? Only if outward appearances matter more than function.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) bemuses me. For years, I have watched as bus manufacturers invented a new way of marketing their products as being a lower cost alternative to rail transit systems. BRT was touted as in every way just as good as rail, but at less cost. Although I am a frequent bus rider and an advocate for improving transit, I believed the entire BRT trend was all so much window dressing. Worse, it was being used as a cudgel against rail projects by anti-rail transit activists who found that they could get more credibility with the public if they dressed themselves in the clothing of being pro-bus.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when Eugene opened its own BRT line, EmX, in 2009, that riding it was not a priority. It should also not be a surprise that I was prepared to be underwhelmed.

Over the last year or so, however, I have softened a little on BRT. While I still hold to my criticisms of it, I also see that there could be uses for it as well. For example, BRT might make a lot of sense as a feeder, extending the reach of a rail system into areas where the capacity and scale of rail might be too great. I also could see a role for an BRT system for agencies that do not have the wherewithal to start a rail system yet. High capacity busses have always been appealing to me — I love the articulated trolley-coaches of Seattle and Vancouver, and often feel that TriMet could use some larger vehicles for their more popular frequent service routes.

So when, this Spring, I had an opportunity to ride EmX at long last, I was hoping that I would be pleasantly surprised, and find a model for BRT that might be applicable elsewhere. Instead, I found that the system confirmed every worst fear I had. This is especially true for two main critiques: that it is, essentially, a fake rail system that will do little to attract choice riders, and that it is not even a good working example of BRT.

Outside: sleek and pretty. Inside? Set from a bad sci-fi torture scene.

Shiny on the outside, terrible on the inside. Like most BRT systems, EmX has busses that look pretty from the outside. The equipment has a streamlined look that reminds me a little of the 1930s PCC streetcars. (Ironically the PCC car was designed to look more like a bus.) They look very modern and sleek. While I bristle a bit at the fender skirts hiding the wheels and other touches clearly meant to mock the look of a rail vehicle, I can almost forgive such foolery because the overall effect is attractive. Nothing erodes critique like success, after all.

On the inside, though? Disappointing. Even setting aside the poor choice of colors (a depressing mix of middle grays and muddy greens) and the patches of exposed metal, the vehicle had such an odd mixture of seating locations and combinations. A long set of seats sits high over the central wheel wells, so that passengers there appear to be waiting for a shoe shine. Aisles feel narrow as a result of this squashed arrangement as well. The articulated section — which was unlined on the inside and was rapidly collecting dirt in its accordion folds — held a pair of seats to each side, backlit by two florescent tubes, looking more like an execution chair set from Logan’s Run than anyplace I’d want to sit for a ride. Worst of all were the bike accommodations. Bikes stand in one group, three deep, parallel to the wall. It’s like triple parking; if your bike is a the back, you’d better get the first two out of the way first, or you’re trapped.

Strangely, the dedicated busway only exists in front of the University of Oregon.

It barely qualifies as BRT at all. BRT generally means that busses have their own right-of-way, and EmX was touted as being no exception. Through downtown Eugene, however, EmX operates on surface streets with little discernible signal priority. The private right-of-way — aka designated EmX only lanes — doesn’t begin until the line hits Franklin Boulevard in front of the campus of the University of Oregon. Even here, the signal systems seem incomprehensible; at one location the EmX signals even displayed a clear indication to proceed while perpendicular traffic had a green light. Given that there was no traffic light for EmX, it was only that the bus driver was paying attention that kept us from entering the intersection.

The busway segment on Franklin, strangely, is not two-lane, but rather single, requiring busses to meet at designated points. This despite the fact that there appears to have been sufficient right-of-way to make it two lane in all places. Was this decision really worth it to save a few dollars on the margin? Strangely — or perhaps not so strangely — the busway segment ends at the eastern edge of the UO campus, and EmX must then negotiate a lane change from the center lanes of the road to the outside edge, through mixed traffic. From here into Springfield, where the initial EmX line ends, there is no signal priority, no dedicated EmX or transit lane. The busses fight for space and advancement in with all the other traffic.

Observing this, one has to ask, what’s the point? It’s as if EmX is not BRT at all, but just a high capacity, frequent service bus that has a short section of pretty but poorly thought out busway to make good pictures for the UO brochure materials.

Lest this become one giant dig against EmX and Lane Transit, EmX is, even if poorly executed, a step forward. It is still a high capacity bus line, and it is running on fast, frequent schedules. Service begins early, in the wee hours of the morning, and runs until well late in the night. But if Lane Transit is looking to expand their system — and they are — they ought to rethink their bus interior layouts and colors, and they need to think about more actual busways, or at a minimum signal priority and associated bus pockets at intersections.

So have I lost all hope for BRT, and reverted back to my knee-jerk BRT dislike? No. EmX may have been a tremendous disappointment, but BRT systems elsewhere appear much more useful. Everett’s Community Transit opened its own system, Swift, last year. Although I have yet to ride it, on paper it looks promising, including seven miles of busway and ten miles of signal priority service. (Unfortunately it looks like they us the same busses as EmX, however.) Of more interest, perhaps, is King County Metro’s proposed RapidRide system, which combines BRT elements with TriMet (pre-budget cut) style frequent service. Hopefully both will serve as better models of how BRT can add value to a public transit system, rather than just appear to, as EmX does.

Michael Andersen recently quit his day job as a newspaper reporter to start a mini newsmagazine for the Portland area’s “bus, bike, and low-car” population.

Transportation politics — especially bike and transit politics — can be fascinating stuff, especially to a transportation geek such as myself, but for most people it’s just all so much hot air. At the end of a day, to an average commuter, biker, walker, etcetera, does it really matter that so-and-so said such-and-such to so-and-so at such-and-such meeting? Does it matter to the average citizen what Fred Hansen (or now Neil McFarlane), David Bragdon, or Sam Adams has said? Doesn’t this all miss the point that, for most, transportation is about getting around, not about being a blood-sport to watch while eating popcorn?

Thinking about mostly non-auto transportation this way — as a consumer issue not a political one — is something that Michael Andersen thinks is an important but rarely undertaken endeavor. So after almost a year of toying with the idea, Andersen quit his job as a journalist at The Columbian this spring to concentrate on launching a new “10-minute newsmagazine” dedicated to the “bus, bikes, and low-car life.” Called Portland Afoot , the magazine put out its first issue this month.

Quitting a solid day job to stake it all on an untried niche publication? Some might question Andersen’s sanity, and when prompted he freely admits that they may be right. “I’m definitely crazy. But there aren’t enough crazy people in this business any more to come up with the ideas that’ll keep it alive. And I’ll be working like a dog all year to prove this crazy idea can work.”

Crazy perhaps, but Andersen has a method to his madness. In Andersen’s view, there is an increasing market in cities such as Portland for niche publications. “Regular newspapers are optimized for the 1950s distribution, with a very little [amount] of everything,” he explains. At the time, people weren’t paying for the news, they were paying for the aggregation of it in one place. The Internet has largely supplanted that role, meaning that the media have to concentrate more on producing valuable content people are actually willing to pay directly for.

Thus was born Portland Afoot, and Andersen isn’t kidding when he says it’s a “10-minute newsmagazine.” The publication feels like a small, high-quality newsletter, but unlike most of that breed it is not a haphazard collection of causes and events struggling for your attention. Instead, it’s a very graphically pleasing and efficient pub with more practical approaches to stories. A news brief about whether or not MAX will get to Clark County via the planned Columbia River Crossing, for example, includes a (thankfully shortened!) link at the end to additional information on the Portland Afoot web site about the related upcoming Metro president race. The primary feature for the inaugural issue is a ranking of TriMet’s bus lines for on-time performance, number of chair lifts, number of stops (a characteristic Andersen labels as “most hectic”), and so forth. In short, the magazine is a gem for those dependent on the non-auto transportation system, or those who are just plain transportation geeks. Subscriptions to the magazine are $14 for a year — thats about a buck per issue — and are well worth it.

Some may ask why Andersen is producing a paper publication in the age of the iPad. Andersen lists a number of reasons, including the ease of reading a paper publication, making the publication available to an audience that is both “rich and poor, young and old,” and the fact that paper publications are still a hallmark of credibility. There’s also a less tangible, more emotional appeal to a paper publication: pleasure. Says Andersen, “Getting a magazine in the mail makes me think somebody likes me. Getting an email newsletter makes me think I have something to do.”

Andersen has many ambitious plans, including filling out the Portland Afoot web site (which is a wiki) with more detailed, slightly “more wonky” content. The next issue is currently in the works, and will include an interview with famous bus driver and blogger Dan Christensen and an article on the best and worst places to sit on a MAX train. Andersen is working on stories that he hopes to break as well, noting that originating stories that matter is important to the publication.

To learn more about Portland Afoot, visit their web site, or subscribe here.

Does social media mean the world of Mad Men style persuasion is really over? Think twice before you answer. Illustration: Dyna Moe.

Last month, a really cool video on the impacts of social media got updated. I’m referring to this video, produced by Eric Qualman at Socialnomics:

I’m a big fan of the video, and often use it as a good, tight primer on how social media is changing our societies. And I say societies because it really is a global phenomenon, not just one for Western Civilization.

There is, however, one argument that Qualman lays out in the video that I’d like to take exception to. At one point, he shows a picture of Dale Carnegie and then a still of the character Don Draper from the AMC show Mad Men. The video then states that the future of marketing and corporate-citizen communications will required “acting[ing] more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men.”

For those of you who do not know the show, Mad Men follows the lives of a handful of men and women in the advertising industry in Mid-Century New York. Frequently the plot delves into the messy machinations of advertising campaigns, as the employees of the firm try to figure out how to get into the heads (and wallets) of consumers.

There is no doubt that social media is leveling the power playing field between corporations and citizens. In some cases, it has turned them into virtual “caged tigers”, prowling and pawing and ready to tear a company to shreds if it makes the wrong move. However, the kind of faith in grass-roots based communication that the Socialnomics video makes is rather naive, and also rather dismissive of one of the most powerful streaks of human existence, the narrative.

Humanity is a story-telling creature. We are constantly evolving narratives to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the world, to socially construct mutual understanding, and to cement our individual places in society. When Mad Men’s lead advertising man Don Draper spins a story around a product — casting, for example, the Kodak slide projector as a time machine taking us backwards and forwards on a carousel of memories — he’s telling us a story. He’s using all the great and awful arts of rhetoric and narrative to connect us to that product.

What social media has done has guaranteed the public a place in the narrative. Now, the average citizen has the ability to talk back, to exchange, to discuss the stories being placed before them. In so doing, however, all it really has done has placed the citizen back into their role as audience to a play — it should be remembered that an essential element of drama is that the audience plays a part as well.

The power of narrative — the power of what is on that stage before the audience — is the power of initiative and creation, and has not gone away. I hope that we will continue to see social media evolve and I hope that it will continue to foster a more democratic society throughout the world. We should not, however, invest in it the notion that it reduces, even one iota, the power of rhetoric and narrative.

The VooDoo Donut Bacon Maple Bar. Gourmet? No. Unique? No. Portland? Yes.

Among my many interests are food and culture, and as a result I often follow blogs and online discussion forums with culinary themes, sites like Good Stuff Northwest, Portland Food & Drink, and Chowhound. In so doing, however, I’ve detected a rather odd trend amongst food lovers, the elevation of excellence over cultural significance.

By no means am I going to argue that wanting the highest quality ingredients prepared in the best possible manner is a bad thing. I believe that using excellence as the only measure of quality, however, is short sighted.

Food is cultural, in that it links us to place. When I think of experiences (like eating a meal) I am often reminded of places. The reverse, then, also becomes true; when I think of certain place I think of the foods that remind me of there. For example, I cannot think of Cincinnati without thinking of the Christmas-cookie spiced Cincy Chili or bottles of Ale8one from across the river in Kentucky. North Carolina? True barbecue pork, Cheerwine, and biscuits in the morning. Canada? The gravy-smothered pile of fried potatoes called poutine.

Are any of these “excellent?” Are any of them “gourmet?” Sure, they could all be made with quality, but for the most part none of these dishes or products would end up on a white-clothed dinner table.

A more local example: in the pages of MIX, the Portland-based food magazine produced by the Oregonian, the idea of the city’s “best burger” was explored. The results? Kobe beef this, mushroom demi-glace that. All of them looked beautiful, and no doubt were spectacular. None of them, however, were memorable. They were just one more expensive gourmet burger in restaurants that, in my view, you shouldn’t be ordering burgers at anyway. (Seriously, you’e going to go to Biwa to pick up a burger rather than a bowl of Ramen?)

What got ignored? Authentic experience, and authenticity is an integral part of culture. If I am going to go out for a burger, it’s not going to be for excellence. I can make a burger at home that will be far cheaper and far better than even the most top-notch burgers from the finest restaurants in town. No, if I am going out for a burger, I’m going out for the experience of the burger, not the ingredients of it. I’m going to go someplace like, say, the Skyline. The burger will be average, the milkshake will be very good, but the experience of getting there and being there in an authentic Mid-Century burger joint tucked deep into the woods of the West Hills will be unparalleled.

And this brings us to the Voodoo Donut. VooDoo has become a local institution, helped in large part by the media (and especially by being featured on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations in 2007). Some, however, have questioned its status as a must-eat in Portland. The charges are usually that the donuts are either not that spectacular, or that they are not that unique.

But the cultural role of food goes beyond excellence or even uniqueness. Voodoo’s signature bacon maple bar, for example, isn’t the best donut on the world, it certainly isn’t made from gourmet ingredients, and it’s certainly not endemic only to Portland. (Their bacon maple bar, in fact, is also made by at least a half dozen other donut companies in a half dozen other cities.) But the bacon maple bar and all the donuts made by VooDoo — and VooDoo itself with its funky, hole-in-the-wall, slightly punk atmosphere — is an authentic reflection of Portland’s eclectic, off-beat culture. And for that, it deserves a place in our hearts, and our stomachs.

Picture this. You, Average Q. Planner, are at an open house for a public project, to help people learn more. You are asked by a citizen for more information on something, and you state, “oh, go look on the project web site, your answers are all there.” You are then asked a few more specific questions, and state “I don’t know, but you can go onto our Twitter feed and ask us there, and get a response.”

You, the staff person, are proud. You’ve done your job, and better, you’ve done it in a new and innovative way by using your organization’s web site as well as social media.

But what about the citizen? The citizen is walking away from the meeting just as uninformed as when they entered the room, and feeling cheated somehow.

What actually went wrong here?

The Internet — and especially social media — are often viewed incorrectly by planners and engineers working on public projects. They are quite often viewed as a method to disseminate information more efficiently. What they fail to realize is that communication is not about efficiency, it’s about building relationships. By telling someone to look elsewhere, you’re shutting off a conduit of relationship between yourself and a citizen. To put it another way, when helping projects get built the exchange of information is just as important as the content.

Is it the wrong move, then, to put your project information on your web site, to direct people there, or to use social media tools like Twitter? Not at all. These are all great ideas. They are not, however, replacements for real, face-to-face conversations, nor phone calls, nor email. Nor are they ways to reduce your personal workload. Viewing them through that lens turns public outreach into a mechanical model, which is all about efficiency rather than inclusivity.

Outreach is about building relationships. It’s about empowering citizens, not dehumanizing them. Use the Internet for public outreach. Use social media. But don’t use them as an excuse for bad communication or the elimination of face-to-face contact.