Hallo Tova:

>From your reply I'm going to assume for the moment that not only is there no 
>specific community named as yet, but that the O/S will not take place in the 
>context of a particular community but rather between and among the various 
>"professional" stakeholders.  I insist on this point only because if there 
>were a specific "target" community it would be important to me to understand 
>whether or not those who lived there were invited...

I'm afraid I am going to be a little tougher than Lisa in my response. You say 
the journalist in question is informed about these issues: so she would seem to 
qualify as a stakeholder. I would support inviting her only as a participant 
and subject to the same guidelines as everyone else. Then she can really write 
a good story dealing with the content, the results, and the process.  And more 
importantly having been through the experience she will be "coming from the 
right place" when doing so. Both my intuition and (admittedly limited in this 
case) experience is that even with the best of intentions and pre-briefing of 
participants, it is very difficult for the presence of "observers" of any 
stripe - especially "recorders" of the event - not to have a negative impact on 
the proceedings; not to somehow "skew" the way people behave...

If this is not possible (Lisa mentioned the time requirement for example), then 
one suggestion would be to arrange for a prior briefing about the process and 
the meeting and then invite her to conduct "before and after" interviews with 
participants like Harrison did in the videotape of Bell South - an excellent 
source of "sound bites" - as well as perhaps providing her with access to the 
proceedings after the fact (I'm hesitant about this part but I don't really 
have the full context...).

Shalom
Winston
 




--- Original Message ----- 
  From: Averbuch 
  To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu 
  Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 10:38 AM
  Subject: Re: journalists in an OS


  Winston,
  Thank you for helping me clear up what needs clarification,  - 
  So:
      "the community" potentially is all the state of Israel (every place that 
there are physical building and development) but there is no identified 
community as of yet.
       The invitation went out to all/most the government, municipal, academic, 
professional, NGO, voluntary bodies that have to do with this issue and is 
announced in professional and organizational gatherings about relevant issues. 
People who were not invited directly call to register after hearing from some 
one and join. 
      The journalist we know about is a good one and covers this type of issues 
in an important Israeli daily newspaper. I understand she was offered to come 
"as a Journalist", whatever that means. Intuitively I would be all for her 
coming as a participant but I keep asking myself what happens if people find 
their name and picture and words quoted (or twisted) in the morning paper...

  I hope this helps - thanks again
  yours
  Tova

  ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Winston Kinch 
    To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu 
    Sent: Friday, January 18, 2002 3:49 PM
    Subject: Re: journalists in an OS


    Some questions on Tova's post:

    Are members of the "target" community invited to the O/S? Are the 
journalists in question members of the community or representing community news 
sources? And, the key question, would the journalists be there as participants 
or as some kind of "observers"?

    Winston

Reply via email to