Josh Flynn

This week I interviewed Michael Clark of Common Seed, a T-shirt company based out of Hamilton, a community adjacent to Lauraville, and his partner operates out of his own shop in Oakland, Ca. Michael attends the Tuesday Market Connection in Lauraville every week as a vendor and really enjoys the market and the Lauraville community.

The idea for Common Seed started with a cross-country road trip with the co-owner Brett Benner. They talked about wearable art and spreading “positive vibrations in T-shirt form” and got a bunch of tees, printing under the name Babylon Born, setting up stands at festivals. In 2006, Benner ended up moving out to Oakland, and Clark explained how they decided to change the name and the plan up a bit,

“we decided to change our name to Common Seed, because it is more of a meditation on the unity of all things, and Babylon Born is more reflective of the struggle against “the system” with apocalyptic overtones, a worm-hole down which we became less interested in traveling.”

Michael Clark of Common Seed

So Clark opened up shop here in Baltimore at a place in Hamilton, just north of Lauraville; Benner is printing out of his basement in Oakland. When I asked Clark what sets Common Seed apart from conventional T-shirt companies, he talked about a the company’s values in both the designs they put on the shirts as well as the materials and inks that are used in productions.

“From the beginning we knew it is not enough to just put positive artwork on t-shirts, but that the end product needs to wholistically reflect the higher ideals and vision to which we aspire. This awareness led us to using fair trade and/or American made organically grown cotton t-shirts, and printing with water-based inks.”

Clark also told me about the inspirations for the designs. They are definitely different than your typical T-shirt company, which usually focuses their design on sports teams, some fashion trend or some kind of gimmick or saying. They definitely fit in at the Lauraville market with their D.I.Y attitude and focus on properly acquired and produced materials.

While Clark is not a Lauraville resident, he does live in Hamilton and really likes the neighborhood and the community as well as the Tuesday Market Connection. I know this next quote is kind of a lot, but it wouldn’t have near the impact if I didn’t include the whole quote.

“Coming from the center of the city, the first thing that struck me was that there is some space to breathe. There are backyards, and space between houses, but we are still in the city. And from the time I moved in to now and for the foreseeable future the process of the neighborhood has been one of becoming what it is. What I mean by that is that it does not have a well-worn reputation as a neigborhood, which gives the community tremendous creative leeway in creating this place to be the ideal place for us to live, work, play, and grow. So things like the Connection happen, which is an absolute embodyment of the love, adaptability and creative spirit that is expressing itself in our community. And the more this expression unfolds the more rewarding the experience will be for everyone involved. And for those not involved, and other communities we can stand with wisdom and dignity, representing what is possible.”

People like Michael are what make this area of Baltimore so much different from the bad connotation that Baltimore citizens have received over the years. The attitude that community is so crucial, and that people that live in common areas should help each other to grow and strive is something rarely found in today’s society. Common Seed has some very different ideals and some stand-out designs and you can catch Michael and his T-shirts at the Lauraville Tuesday Market Connection this summer.

I found an article in the Baltimore Sun about two arrests made in the murder I had mentioned in my first blog. The Sun reported that the victim, Ricardo Montgomery, was meeting two young men at Garrett Heights Elementary School in Lauraville under the assumption he was getting a deal on a stolen television.

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Witnesses told police the suspects had planned to rob Montgomery in front of the school, and he was found dead by gunshot to the head in his car with his engine running. They stole his wallet and cell phone. It’s just so sad that this kind of thing has to happen. Life is so valuable and people treat it like it’s worth nothing (or apparently a cell and a wallet).

This week I found the blog of John Laur, a Lauraville resident who recently started working with the Lauraville Improvement Association and recently visited the Tuesday Market Connection and wrote a blog about his experiences with some accompanying pictures. The blog itself focuses on John and his girlfriend Bobbie and their experiences in Lauraville. After reading about John’s experiences at the market, I realized how different of an experience people can have on different days and at different times.

I was unable to go to the market the Tuesday that John attended, but I wish I would have been there for the live music from the St. Veronica’s Youth Steel Orchestra, which he described as the “true highlight of the market”. I liked the details John went into, even giving a list of what he and Bobbie purchased (and enjoyed) at the market.

I also thought it was interesting that John talked to Mac of Chef Mac’s Louisiana Cuisine and that he will be opening up a Louisiana themed restaurant in the near future. When I went to the market with my girlfriend Christina, we were on our way downtown so I didn’t get any of the food at the market (did get an iced coffee from Zeke’s) but after reading this blog as well as being enticed by the smells of the freshly cooked cuisine, I think I have dinner plans for next Tuesday night.

It was nice to see another perspective articulated into a blog with external links and pictures. On a side note, I first got in touch with John through Twitter, not even knowing he was a Lauraville resident; but he has been very helpful thus far with my project and I hope I can somehow incoprorate an interview with John into my final project.

Although “Journalism Online” was published in 2002, and the web is a completely different beast here in 2009; Mike Ward was still able to provide some guidlines and tips for writing online that still apply today. It is obvious now, but Ward realized early on that the online environment is largely a non-linear experience, and that journalists can no longer dictate the news, but rather need to be a part of the community and serve as a medium for news between those making the news and those needing to be informed.

Ward highlights five rules put forth by Leah Gentry, one of the leading voices in the early years of online story construction and a writer for the Chicago Tribune and latimes.com. The guidelines are a good reminder of how to go about writing for this medium. It is one of those things where the suggestions seem so obvious like rule #1: Follow the guidelines of good journalism, or rule #2: Leverage the strengths fo the medium. While these things seem inherent in writing for the web, it is helpful to see it laid out in this list.

Rules three and four were grouped together, but also stressed an important point that I had not thought of as so crucial to the process; deconstruct, reconstruct, and storyboard. It is easy to get lost in online stories, and it is hard as a writer to develop a rhythm and organization that can captivate an online audience to read your entire story. Gentry reminds us that we need to look at things from a broader perspective and look at how stories connect and can be presented in a cohesive, yet non-linear fashion.

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I have been trying to explore and learn how to use Twitter to its full potential lately, and this BeatBlogging.org article is a pretty good starting point for a Twitter rookie, especially if you want to use it for journalistic purposes. The article itself, written by Patrick Thornton, is short, but it is a concise beginning point with a lot of good external links.

One feature of Twitter I didn’t use before reading the article was the search page that allows you to query everybody that is tweeting. I had been using the external client Tweetdeck before, that has a similar option. What I liked about the Twitter search is that for somebody who wants constant updates on a certain term and doesn’t want to take up a column in Tweetdeck, or just prefers RSS feeds, the Twitter search allows users to set up RSS for the searches.

I used the search to find people tweeting about Lauraville, and was even able to get some leads for interviews and connect with some people that were vending and attending the Lauraville Tuesday Market Connection and meet up with them through Twitter. I think if used in the ways it was meant to be used, it is a powerful tool that has the potential to stay for at least a few more years.

Danielle demonstrating her hoops

This week I interviewed Danielle Weissman, a local hula hoop maker that demonstrates, sells and allows trials of her hula hoops at the Lauraville Tuesday Market Connection. She just got into making them about a month ago, and has been hooping for about six months now.

Hula hooping is definitely a hit at the Tuesday market. The kids love to test our her homemade hoops and practice as they try to emulate Danielle’s moves.

She uses very high grade tubing as well as durable grip tape to make the designs and ensure that the hoops are of higher quality than something one could pick up at K-Mart or a toy store. She also makes two sizes to accommodate to adults as well as children; the size of the hoop also affects the hoop user’s control. The larger ones are easier and go slower.

Some kids try different hoop sizes

Danielle was inspired by her friend that did fire hoop performances in Los Angeles and thought that it would be something fun and interesting to do and has now turned it into her own small business. She hoops with the local kids and tries to help them to become better hoopers themselves and adds a nice dimension to the Tuesday Market.

I am having a really hard time to find current articles about Lauraville. It is a very small area of Baltimore, so there is not a lot of people blogging or writing articles about it; which is actually one of the reasons that I chose to cover it. I found a post in the blog All We Can Eat from the Washington Post that is a little over the 2-week time frame for research article, but there was not much else to mention in the media.

So I found an blog post from the Washington Post about Zeke’s Coffee making a special blend for a cafe and gelato place called Pitano Gelato in Washington D.C. that serves and sells Zeke’s. According to the article, Thomas Rhodes, the owner of Zeke’s, made a special blend for Pitano Gelato and is getting attention in the D.C. area.

As I found out in my interview with Todd Brizzi, Zeke’s does not really put much into advertising, and mostly relies on word of mouth to get new customers. With this new exposure in a new market, it will help the company reach an audience outside of the Lauraville and even the Baltimore market.

The thing I found most interesting was that Rhodes made a special blend specifically for this place, and will ask him about it when I get a chance to sit down and talk with him.

I really liked Ira Glass’ series about storytelling from Current TV (the interview featured on YouTube). He has a lot of good experience in the broadcast industry and his knowledge and tips about telling good stories are valuable advice.

The two basic building blocks Glass stresses that people need to use in broadcast are anecdotes and moments of reflection. I had never thought about it in this way, but I liked the way he succinctly put it and gave these ideas terms to guide people in their stories and that a balance between the two should be struck.

He also talked about baiting the audience with engaging questions and keeping interest through the anecdotes and creating a sequence the audience can imagine; which is definitely important for a good story in the broadcast medium.

In the second part, Glass talks about the (sometimes immense) difficulties and importance of finding good and interesting stories. It was actually pretty encouraging to hear the way that he talked about growing as a media producer and that going through failures is part of the process. He also made the point that beginners will sometimes hang on to a story or idea, even if it is not panning out.

I have found myself doing that before, mostly because of time constraints; but I really liked how Glass discussed “enjoying the kill” when you have to dump stories. Even after the footage is shot, or the interviews are done, sometimes the best practice is; as Glass puts it, “abandoning crap”. He also made the point that nobody gets into this industry to make mediocre stuff, so why even bother with it?

Glass continues talking about producing sub-par products in the third section of the series. He emphasizes the need for that “special thing” and acting as human-like as possible. While the broadcast style of news is fine for that format, it sounds very unnatural and forced when doing stories that are more feature oriented; which Glass exemplifies in some of his own earlier work. I liked that he showed his own mistakes, and could look back and be a hard critic of his own work.

He also encouraged people to be harsh critics of themselves as well as those working with them. There are a lot of cool ideas for stories, but the execution is just as important; which is important and sometimes to remember. In the last segment, Glass talks about being yourself, talking in a conversational manner, and being a character in your stories as a distinct personality.

Overall, Glass provided a lot of good information and advice in the series and I think it will definitely help as I move forward with my first module.

This week I unfortunately do not have any actual reporting to document. I have made several contacts and set up tentative appointments to have interviews, but did not conduct any of them since last week when I interviewed Todd Brizzi of Zeke’s Coffee.

I made several efforts to make progress, scheduled interviews and meetings, and have a very good foundation for the future of the project. I am confident that missing this week’s post will not set me back.

In the interest of making this not sound like a string of excuses, I will leave it at that. Sorry to disappoint all of my many faithful blog followers!

Check back next week…

I came across an article in the Baltimore Sun yesterday about a little bookstore in Lauraville with some supposedly amazing muffins. I have never been to the Red Canoe, I have driven past it many times, but never noticed that they offered food. Author Richard Gorelick’s comments definitely have sparked my interest though:

“I did go a little crazy over that muffin, but I think it’s the best one I’ve ever had. Topped by poppy seeds, and just on the verge of overbaked, it was moist in every bite”

For some reason, the phrase “on the verge of overbaked” in reference to muffins sounds like its just my style; and I could almost taste the moist muffin as I read through his review.

The Red Canoe also offers other foods like soups, wraps and paninis to cater to the growing Lauraville community as well as serving coffee from Zeke’s coffee right around the corner. The food sounds great, and the atmosphere seems to match; but this is not what really interested me about the review.

Gorelick mentions the diverse origins of the owners of the cafe, who opened the Red Canoe about five years ago saying:

“Nicole Selhorst is from the Franche-Comté region of eastern France, Peter Selhorst is from Northern California’s Bay Area, and their roots are evident”

I’m sure there is an interesting story behind the creation and development of the Red Canoe, that specializes in children’s books. They have a focus on the community and the young families in it that is something rarely found in businesses these days. I want to try to somehow incorporate the Red Canoe into my package, whether as its own module, or as part of a module about businesses in the area.

Either way, the post has sparked my interest, and I just might stop by there sometime this weekend to grab a cup of coffee and a poppyseed muffin; and it might add a previously unseen dimension to my project.

The B.A.S.I.C Principles of Online Journalism series by Paul Bradshaw had a lot of very insightful information and provided a good amount of clarity to the somewhat muddled idea of what online journalism is all about. The only thing I think he could have improved was the navigation of the stories. I understand that most people would be reading it straight through from beginning to end, but it is hard to get to the individual components or the main page listing each section (although I think he did try at the top of the stories; the link goes to a WP search).

Bradshaw put his explanations and thoughts on the topic into a succinct and engaging format, and highlights some ideas that I think will really help me as I move forward in my online writing endeavors.

Having brief, one-concept paragraphs (as I am trying to do here) seems like a very logical and effective way of organizing stories or blog posts in the online domain. Breaking things down into constituent parts allows the reader to get more out of things and retain more of what they have read.

This breakdown also allows people to link to specific parts of your posts. For example, as I am pointing out Bradshaw’s examples of brevity, it would be a lot more useful for my readers if they can click a link to that page of the story, rather than the entire B.A.S.I.C series.

Bradshaw brings up the advantages of providing and subscribing to RSS feeds to create one’s own personalized news gathering platform. While I agree that RSS feeds can be a great alternative to scouring the web for what news you are interested in, I also think that the reason many people don’t use them is that they can quickly become overloaded just as the web can.

A few months ago I decided to try to set up some RSS feeds on my laptop so that I could consolidate what information that I wanted to see. For the first few days, I loved it, and found that it saved time and effort and I felt satisfyingly informed. After about a week, I had collected too many feeds and the information overload set in again, and I found myself sifting through thousands of stories on my RSS application; which didn’t seem useful.

It may just be my lack of customization of the setting to get what parts of the feeds that I want, but I think that the idea of feeds and consolidation of information still has a long way to come before it will be used in a mainstream fashion. When is the last time a news organization on TV or radio asked you to follow their RSS feed?

Another good point that Bradshaw addressed was scanning, including headlines, summary blurbs, and SEO when writing online. I never really thought about how the word order affected the reader as well as the search engines.

Moving on to linking (I already feel I am breaking the “brevity” rules), Bradshaw explains how important linking effectively is in the online community. I found one of his links about the affect of literacy in online writing and reading to be an eye-opening post. It is important to remember that while much of your audience might be well-educated and literate, there are also those that will be turned away if the words are too lofty or academic.

Also being that roughly 80% of online users scan websites rather than thoroughly read them, in some cases it seems better to have more simplified, clear, concise information.

Finally the author talks about community and conversation as the last part of the B.A.S.I.C series. His quote from blogger and journalist David Cohn really put things into perspective as to the future definition of a “journalist”.

“What they do is organize communities – and while it might not FEEL like media, it is. We may not call them “journalists” but they are helping to inform citizens so they can make decisions in a healthy democracy. They collect, filter and distribute information. Sounds like journalism to me.”

This sense of involving the community, rather than simply reporting what the journalist or news outlet has deemed important is the way that journalism seems to be headed.

The final point I wanted to touch on was Bradshaw’s “Conversation Loop”, which seems simple, but is crucial for those publishing on the web to consider and ultimately practice if they want to be successful in the online medium.  They need to be the ideal mix of party guest and host, by facilitating conversation and connecting people; as well as staying engaged and active themselves.

See how the loop includes listening and feedback from the journalist? This is much different from the days of the daily paper or nightly news; and can really help to engage people and communities as functioning members of a democracy.

Great posts Paul, keep up the good work!