About
The Canberra Votes website is an attempt give community groups and concerned individuals a proper voice.
Often these groups (and individuals) champion issues or positions affecting their own communities of interest. Unfortunately getting a sympathetic ear of the mainstream media can often be hard to achieve. Complex issues are simply broken down in to the “8 second grab” and the intricacies of the issues are never successfully conveyed to the wider public.
The Canberra Votes website will attempt to redress that imbalance by allowing the groups and individuals to express their stories, at their own pace, in their own words, in their own way.
Occasionally there may even be stories run that are just plain interesting with no particular issue behind them.
Probably the best way to describe the purpose and aims of this site is with the on air interview, Jonathon Reynolds the site creator and publisher had with ABC Local Radio 666 presenter Genevieve Jacobs on the 3rd June 2008:
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Often issues and events when reported in the mainstream media (Radio, Television and Print) are not always reported correctly or in their entirety. Other times the reporter or journalist (or their editors) may introduce a particular “spin” on the event. The reasons for this are simple: there is only a limited amount of time (or space) in which a news story can be told and it has to be summarised, generalised or modified to make it interesting and palatable for general consumption.
The basic premise of this site is an attempt to capture and record events and issues, particularly those issues and events of concern to the community in the lead up to the ACT Election on 18 October 2008 as and how they occur. The site takes a raw approach to its reporting format with as little (or preferably no) editing as possible, and we tend to shy away from traditional interviews with leading questions.
Obviously as the site is (initially) being run by an individual the amount of coverage possible is wholly dependent on the ability of that individual to attend the various events and meetings around town. The biggest problem is knowing what is happening where and having the time to attend. If you would like a particular event covered feel free to use the “Contact Us” page to let us know what is going on, when and where. Alternatively if you would like to record events yourself for inclusion on the sites (with appropriate attribution) please contact us… we need all the assistance we can get! So long as an event is recorded in its entirety and (to the best of an individuals ability) impartially it will be considered for inclusion.
The other purpose of this site is to provide a public forum for individuals to comment on the stories that are being presented.
Other local Canberra citizen driven news web sites such as the “The RiotACT” allow anyone to register, and anyone who is registered to post an article or post comments in reply. The only problem is with that approach is it allows individuals to register multiple times and hide behind pseudonyms. As a result the comments (and sometimes articles) often become highly personal, vitriolic, dominated by political party hacks, issue bigots, outright inane or sometimes just plain silly. It is not always a bad thing, but it does detract from the potentially serious aspects of that site.
This site will be taking a very different approach, any individual that is prepared to have themselves publicly identified by their real Given Name, Family Name and Suburb of Residence is invited to “Register” and leave comments on the various stories. Obviously there are some common-sense rules that will need to apply and these are well covered on the “Legal / Site Terms and Conditions” page.
Finally for those that are interested in the technical aspects of the site… the underlying code is WordPress, extensive use is made of Open Source software and software modules and other free internet resources such as Google Video, YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr to host material.
For the most part the equipment used to create and edit the videos is standard consumer video equipment and nothing fancy in terms of the computer hardware (combination of Apple / Windows PC systems) with the associated entry level software to make it happen. Occasionally we get access to professional equipment and resources and where we do you’ll obviously see the difference. Preparing and uploading the video footage is a painful and laboriously slow process … on average every minute of video footage you see on the site has taken approximately 6 minutes to prepare and actually upload.
So in conclusion, may your visits to the site be frequent, interesting and enlightening.
