Alizah Salario

It is hard to think of writing about anything else than Haiti this morning. Anyone who has ever experienced any sort of loss (and that would be us all) can only fathom the heartache of the Haitian people and their loved ones.

As a journalist, or perhaps simply as a human being, I feel the need to be at the core of the event and bear witness to tragedy and suffering.  I have been amazed once again at the expediency of information and the way people around the world have galvanized to help, aid and abet.  I wonder though, how the process actually gets going. [...]

I love the way I move in art, and I feel somehow changed within a space redefined by sculpture.

[...]

I want to start the new year off right. I’m not sure what this entails. Any sort of Oprah-style attempt at manifesting the ‘live your best life’ motto seems rather unrealistic. (We’re already 4 days in and I’m just getting around to actualizing my resolution). My attempts at self-improvement are more modest – I can’t even remember to take my vitamins. I’d simply like to live a life, one that I envisioned for myself ages ago.

For the next two weeks, I’m trying to experience one thing a day – be it a movie, museum, theater production, or culinary delight – that reminds me I live in what is arguably the greatest city on earth (sorry, Chicago). I don’t want to live in an academic bubble, nor in some 5 block Upper West Side radius populated by the same people and places, but in a firey and fluid universe of ideas and culture. After all, isn’t that the truth?

Since moving to Manhattan in August, I’ve been in search of the real New York City. I’m at a loss when people ask me what I think of New York, because there is not one but many cities here. New Yorks, plural, are not laid out side by side but stacked on top of one another, layered dimensions in a city that often makes me feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe. I entered one New York when I hung out at a 5th Avenue trattoria eating olive oil gelato and watching beautiful people sip robust looking pinots or cabenets from long-stemmed wine glasses (yes, the gelato was delicious, and no, I did not dip my bread in it)  another New York exists in the stinky alley behind my apartment where I go to throw out my trash. It is an unavoidable aspect of living on an overcrowded island.

So where in the world is New York City? It never feels I’m there. Its always elsewhere, in the mess that is Times Square, in exclusive fusion restaurants, in the tight knit ethnic communities, at Ground Zero, on a park bench with a dog wearing a sweater more expensive than my own, or maybe on my fire escape, if I were a wealthy socialite and looked like Audrey Hepburn.  Even when I’m physically at these various locations, I often don’t feel in them. Perhaps I’m off somewhere in my own head, but I’d prefer to live where I stand.

I hope that by putting this in writing, I’ll hold myself accountable to my resolution, and find the New York that fits me best.  With any luck, soon you’ll be living vicariously though me.

“Posterity lies in the written word.”

These are the words of Judith Crist, famed film critic, media personality, and most recently, my personal & professional style professor. Her criticism is biting albeit accurate, and its no wonder she managed to make her way in the old boy’s club that defined journalism when she came of age.

In class yesterday, she told us that at this stage in the game, people tend to feel like a) any talent for writing they may or may not have had is all but lost or b) they wonder how they got away with writing the way they did for so long. I identify with both. Changing perceptions and the development of a more critical eye inevitably lead to a harsher view ones own work. Actualizing talent (an amorphous notion to begin with) feels like traveling to a distant horizon, forever out of reach: you know it exists, but you also know you will never reach it.

I suppose this is good thing: when you’ve achieved one goal, its precisely NOT the time to rest on your laurels.

Judith likely won’t read this, since she doesn’t much concern herself with what goes on in ‘outer space.’  I don’t blame her, really. After all, posterity lies in the written word, and the ones  you can hold onto, too.

I stepped into my favorite little coffee shop and glanced at the whiteboard listing the daily specials.  I like two things I saw : one, the flavored coffee of the day was vanilla hazelnut; two, a quote by Albert Einstein: “The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

I stopped to contemplate the sentiment, then beneath the quote I noticed something else. Someone had drawn in a red thumbs up sign and written ’6 people like this’ next to the quote. Beneath that, in different handwriting, ’1 person likes this’ was scrawled on the bottom of the board.

Hmph. Should I  change the 6 to a 7? I didn’t see the markers around. But in all honesty, I didn’t care to comment. Interacting with everything? I’m just not that into it.  Perhaps there is value in our web-based social interactions. We can validate other people’s feelings, affirm our politics or give our stamp of approval for just about anything with a mere click. While this might seem to be all about the original content, by putting our thoughts in writing (or rather an electronic thumb) we are in fact saying, yes, listen to me, for my opinion matters.

But does it?

Just why do we need to give our two sense so often? Is it really that we all want to be part of the conversation? Or are we losing our ability to view and observe without perpetual commentary? Does the mindless (albeit entertaining) chatter distract us from the issue at hand, be it Obama’s health care plan or a friend’s engagement?  Does it lead to an inflated sense of self-importance? And what indeed will all this self-aggrandizement lead to further down the line?

I don’t have the answers, but I do wonder how responsible web 2.0 is for reality shows, increased narcissism, the branding of individuals and our society’s obsession with fame.

The Internet lends itself to being altered and manipulated in ways that print does not (and, for that matter, even erasable whiteboards). We’re so busy talking about how we can change it, do we ever stop to think about how it is changing us?

Yes, I know its Sunday, but I simply couldn’t wait to share info on some exciting new sites. Remember there’s more out there than Facebook and Twitter.

1) The Atlantic’s new opinions aggregate, The Atlantic Wire, launches this week. The site chooses 50 of the most influential thinkers and opinions writers who shape our thinking and foster public debate. Join the conversation.

2) A new way to search: Google fast flip allows users to search multiple magazine sites for a specific topic. Pages virtually flip from one article to the next. A quicker, more efficient way to scan a variety of sources.Great for indulging my celebrity obsessions and Internet ADHD.

3) I’m also loving the NY Time’s new  Visual Journalism blog. Incredible photographs and video from some top notch journalists.  Taking visual journalism to the next level.

Bonus: My new television obsession,  Glee.  Its sooo New Trier Forensics team circa the late 90′s. In the pilot there’s an acapella version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing and a main character who posts a weekly MySpace video of her musical theater performances. What’s not to love?

I had the pleasure of reading Gawker’s play-by-play of Harvey Levin’s visit to the J-school.

Comments after the article included one about Columbia “stooping low” in inviting Levin, and a bit about  “paparazzi=journalists? Ah the dumbing down of America strikes again.”

I listened intently to Harvey. I listened because he has a business model that works, and that’s no easy feat whether the content is about The Hills or Capitol Hill.  We spend so much time debating what journalism should be that we fail to notice what it is.

It is not the news that needs to change but the paradigm in which we examine it.  Are we the first generation to experience a radical shift in the way information is disseminated? Highbrow and lowbrow entertainment are no longer separated by a vast chasm of social and class differences. Media – our access to it and the expediency with which it travels – fills the void.

The issue is much larger than entertainment news watering down hard news or bloggers diminishing the credibility of reporters – it is the consumers becoming the producers. It is user generated content, citizen journalists, sending eyewitness pictures taken with a cell phone camera over twitter and getting picked up by AP, and bloggers who have influence not because they are going to win Pulitzers but because they are widely read. It is accessibility and exposure. It is reality television making a celebrity out of the average Joe. It is Ashton Kutcher twittering sans an agent or publicists’ approval that makes the average Joe accessible to a celebrity.

Why don’t we just accept that these hybrid forms of distilling entertainment and information are not to be written off nor defined as authentic journalism just yet? They need to come in to their own, but until then why not explore them? Why don’t we stop caring what were are or we aren’t and invite the head of the top celebrity news site to a distinguished journalism school simply because we need to listen?

Journalists do not exist in a vacuum.  What good would it to do staunchly defend entrenched ways of thinking about news and newspapers simply because that’s the way things have always been? That’s an awfully conservative notion, and that’s something that journalism, as an institution, has never been.

We like boxed wine and fancy champagne. We can shop at Target and Bloomingdales. These ideas are not revolutionary. Why should they been seen as transgressive when applied to journalism?  A site like Gawker (see blogroll) could only exist in a fractured, hybridized, communal media world anyway. And in my opinion, that’s a good thing.

To compartmentalize – and therefore to close oneself off -  in a medium (the internet) and an industry (the media) that is fluid and open by its very nature is to contradict precisely what makes it successful. It is career suicide.

This week in words and pictures:

1. The entire Columbia J-school class of 2010 standing on the steps of the Journalism school. Perhaps you can catch my frizzy hair somewhere in there.   J-school photo
2. After three intense weeks of photo and audio training, I produced my first audio slideshow. Final cut pro and SLR cameras are now on my know how to list. It’s not quite NPR or NYT material, but for a girl who doesn’t deal with programs beyond Microsoft word I’d say its not too shabby. My audio slideshow
3. “Who are you to play God?” Disturbing events at a New Orleans hospital in the wake of Katrina. A great example of long term investigative reporting.  Uncovering Katrina
4. Just for fun! Six-word memoirs. A great site for poets and wordsmiths. I liked the love ones, naturally. “Take me for what I am” and “I’ll know when my love comes” and “There’s a place for us, somewhere…” Okay, I’ll stop.  Smithmag

All roads lead to New York

“I’m not saying this in any conceited way, but New York is the center of the world.”

It was not the first time a New Yorker told me this, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.  I sort of loathed him for saying it, but I also sort of agreed In any city of average proportions – Detroit, St. Louis – such a brazen declaration of self-importance would automatically be taken as tongue in cheek – or merely delusional. In the Los Angeleses and Londons of the world, you might agree that they are the center of something -  say, the film industry or the art world – but without this one aspect they would no longer be in the running for Center of the World. They couldn’t stand on their own without added bells and whistles. In New York, however, its many facets are not separate from the core of the city. They are the city. So you have to at least consider the hypothesis. Or pretend to.

I love all my cities, and I hate to be forced to rank them.  I believe in polyamorous love when it comes to places; you need to run to the comforting arms of an old home on occasion, if only to appreciate what you’ve got when you return. Chicago, Los Angeles and Istanbul, my previous homes, all contain many of the traits that New York possesses and attributes to its one-of-a-kind-status: stellar restaurants, diversity, arts, culture and beyond. So what it is about New York – and I find myself hesitating – is that none of these places have the gravitational pull of this place. None have such a tightly packed nucleus, a core of strength that draws everything around it into its force field. None feels like a living, breathing entity unto itself.  None sucks you in so completely that you simply cannot divorce yourself from the place that you are in; you cannot live in New York and refuse to be a part of the city.  No one is on the margins because the city is comprised of them, no one is on the outside because there is no real “in.” We all belong here, and then again none of us do.

Things move quickly and set the rest of the world in motion. I can’t say that it makes New York any better, but it does force you to keep up and cut the bullshit. In that sense, in New York, people inevitably become more of who they really are.

Suddenly there I was, sweating on the F train in anticipation of the last stop. Not surprisingly, I’ve always wanted to go to Coney Island.

Coney Island bears the trademark signs of any seaside amusement spot : men looking ridiculous carrying oversized stuffed animals on their shoulders, the spoils of their conquests at knock ‘em down or shoot the freak, row upon row of identical stores selling postcards, beachwear, inflatable toys and sunscreen, people belonging nowhere selling their wares from makeshift tables set up along the sidewalk, colorful menus hand-painted on concrete walls listing overpriced soft serve and frozen drinks, paint fading in the thick salt air, arepas, gyros, funnel cake, mangos, bbq, caramel apples, cotton candy, whining kids, drunk men, and couples engaging in excessive PDAs. Then there’s me, and the rest who fly solo.

I bought a mango on a stick and sad on a bench to stare at the sea.  It was peeled and sliced so that the layers of fruit resembled juicy petals. It was enough to share but I ate the entire thing myself.

Coney Island is like an old man who knows his best years are over. No matter how many flashy lights and glitzy rides you tack on, a sense of sadness pervades the place. I got all nostalgic for a time I never knew, say, when handsome sailors docked in NYC for 48 hrs and payed their respects to the ladies by taking them on the Ferris wheel before heading back to sea. Yet Coney Island is highly relevant. The clown from Steven King’s It, Pee Wee in his big top adventure, and a narrow media portrait of MJ the bizarro come to mind – people disturbing in the extent of their their torment, the perversity of artifice that masks an adult’s anger and pain with childlike innocence, misplaced talent curdling into garden variety freak show material, the rank smell of false happiness.

Still. I loved Coney Island despite her flaws. I felt we understood each other. She’s moody and tortured, and I…well, you get the point.

You go to place like Coney expecting to come out on top, but everything I’ve ever know about anticipating amusement from a place designed for it suggests the opposite: you let go of your balloon and the sky won’t give it back, you’re too short to ride the Cyclone, you’re looking forward to beating last year’s record in the bottle toss and you strike out with your first throws. Maybe they should just tear down the boardwalk and put up those condos. Squash any false hopes of returning to the way were (cue Barbara Streisand). Or maybe, just maybe, everyone should go alone, stare longingly at the sea and stop trying to make things anything other than what they already are.