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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Via the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, Professor Thomas Pettit describes the decentralized media world of Social Media to be a world that is largely like the pre-Gutenberg era. Petit describes the matter in a video on Vimeo:

Thomas Pettitt on the Gutenberg Parentheses from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.
The possibility that we may be [...]

Is Vancouver a picture of the urban future, and/or Portland’s long lost twin? Perhaps neither.
Living in Portland, Oregon, I sometimes get a bit jaded about our region. Thanks to a strong tradition of urban planning, a large transit system, and comparatively robust growth management laws, Portland has become a kind of poster child for urbanization [...]