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Doug McGill has worked as a staff reporter for the New York Times and a foreign correspondent for Bloomberg News. But he left all that behind to take up a somewhat broader beat – the entire world. And what better place from which to cover the world than his home in southeastern Minnesota? McGill joins Bob to explain "glocal journalism" – the practice of finding and writing about the "invisible strands of mutual influence" connecting us to places thousands of miles away.
The world's smallest country is roughly the size of a basketball court, and located on an abandoned anti-aircraft deck in the North Sea. In 2000, Sealand's rulers leased its territory to HavenCo, a company that wanted to use the nation's sovereign status to evade Internet regulations. Brooke talks to Jonathan Cedar, co-director of a documentary about Sealand, and to Sean Hastings, co-founder and CEO of HavenCo.
The world does not necessarily agree on issues like cyber-crime, intellectual property rights, privacy, and free speech. So when it comes to governing the Internet, whose rules should apply? John Palfrey, executive director of the Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, talks with Brooke about the possibilities and impossibilities of Internet governance.
Last month, the Chinese government was spooked by a wave of anti-Japan street protests. Not because of what the protesters were demanding, but rather by the decentralized way in which they were organized. Using online chat rooms, text messaging, and email, the leaders appeared to be everywhere and nowhere. Bob talks to Xiao Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project, about the cat & mouse game that is China's relationship with its digital dissidents.
Google's ambition to digitize the world's books is raising the hackles of Europe's cultural guardians, some of whom fear that American control of the digital library will exacerbate American cultural imperialism. Leading the chorus is Jean Noel Jeanneney, president of France's National Library, whose call to arms inspired the European Commission to fund its own digital library. Jeanneney tells Bob that what's good for Google may not be good for the world. But Google's Susan Wojcicki explains that the nations of Europe have nothing to fear.
When USA Today was created in 1982, anonymous quotes were banned from its pages. Over time that policy changed. But founder Al Neuharth remains true to his belief that quality journalism can exist entirely free of off-the-record sources. He joins Brooke to discuss background briefings, competition for stories, and doing it all on the record, all the time.
Recently, the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, hired a computer expert to pose as a teenager in an Internet chat-room. His target was Spokane mayor Jim West, who was rumored to be offering favors to sex partners he met online. The sting has since met with sharp criticism from editors around the country. Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith explains the story's genesis to Bob, and defends its execution.
We've heard plenty about the so-called digital divide in this country between haves and have-nots. But what about the digital divide between this country and the rest of the world? In the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, Thomas Bleha argues that when it comes to developing the broadband infrastructure, the U.S. has fallen far behind Japan and other Asian nations. He makes his case for Brooke.
