Posts with Category Glocal Challenge

My Two Weeks W/O Wolfe Blitzer

I grabbed a coffee and a meat pie. I brushed off the huckster trying to convince me to patronize his peep show. I had been traveling all over Australia for the past two months, and I was taking the morning off from sight-seeing and beach-going. I went to the newsstand in Sydney’s King’s Cross district and grabbed the morning paper.

It was September 12th, 2001 in Australia. Sitting on the stoop in front of that newsstand, the world changed; I never felt more American.

My Two Weeks Without Wolf Blitzer

For the past two weeks I haven’t flipped to CNN or Fox News once. I haven’t read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. As part of the Go Glocal Project I…

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The Rubber Glove

IMG_1715“We have a lack of quality low-income housing in Muncie,” Steve, the city’s building commissioner, said. One night a month the Circles community, which works to lift people out of poverty, hosts a Big View session open to the public to discuss issues that people living in poverty face.

Last night we talked about housing.

“Two week into my job I got called out to a house.” Steve paused and stared at the floor. It seemed as if he was setting up a long story that would include details like where the house was and what it looked like. But then he sat back and got right to it. “A mother was holding her…

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Report on Glocal Challenge #1: bin hard to avoid the news

Two weeks ago I announced my first Glocal Challenge: Boycott American News.

I failed horribly.

Watching Al Jazeera English

At first I was doing great. I would get up in the morning and live stream Al Jazeera English. (No I’m not a terrorist, if you think watching AJE is something a terrorist would do, you have to read this post.) It wasn’t always easy to watch AJE. At times it was like eavesdropping on friends who are talking about what they really think of you.

AJE finished an important story on protests in Syria and turned to a discussion about president Obama releasing his birth certificate.

Clip of Obama: “We live in serious times…”

Clip end.

“Please tell me this…

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Glocal Challenge #1: Boycotting American News (but not news about America)

Welcome to the first Glocal Challenge of the Go Glocal Project!

Let’s do this!

What does Timbuktu think of you?

Do you read any newspapers based in developing countries ? Me neither. What if we did? How would seeing how the world sees us change the way we see ourselves?

Conor Friedersdorf had an interesting piece in the Atlantic Monthly comparing CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, to Al Jazeera. The American mainstay cable network sites’ headlines were filled with royal wedding news, puppies, and sex, while Al Jazeera had headlines about the press in Iraq, women’s rights in Bahrain, and war crimes in Sri Lanka.

Are we really that self-centered and shallow?

Friedersdorf writes:

If Americans felt an appropriate degree of responsibility for the…

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