Pete's Gardening Blog regularly shares tidbits relating to the author's gardening efforts, including tips and pictures.

Related blogs and services you will be interested in:

Straight From the Farm

Philadelphia Orchard Project

PlanPhilly enables Philadelphians to take part in a dialog about the future of the city. Its home page was recently redesigned. Check it out.

Above Average Jane has been doing a fantastic job sharing news items happening in the Philadelphia region's political scene you should be aware of. Yeah, it can be bit "inside baseball" sometimes, but it is more 'news you should know' than 'news you are looking for'. Subscribe. Get aware.

Christopher Wink, co-Founder of Technically Philly, has a diverse set of interests that place him right in the middle of media's evolution in Philly. He shares these interests on his terrific personal blog that you want to subscribe to. Check it out.

Philadelphia Neighborhoods, NEastPhilly.com, West Philly News, Frankford Gazette, Fishtown.us.

Any other favorites out there?

Albert Yee shares news that R. Bradley Maule has completed his move to Portland, OR. He managed the very significant phillyskyline for almost ten years. His knowledge and love of architecture, of place, of photography and Philadelphia inspired and informed thousands across the city.

From the phillyskyline about page:

Hello, I'm R. Bradley Maule, sometimes RBM, always B Love. This is my web site. It is made in honor of the city I live in and love, Philadelphia. It is to present an honest look—warts and all—at the city and its varied urban fabric.

I came here from Tyrone, Pennsylvania (Steelers Country) in 2000, and have spent all my 33 years at a PA address. I have no mission statement or goal with this site, but if I had one wish, it would be that Pennsylvanians could see past the nonsense and love one another, from Erie to Philly up to the Poconos back out to the Burgh and everywhere in between.

But here on Philly Skyline, my friends and I are just sharing our experiences right here in Philadelphia with our fellow humans.

Albert points to his Farewell, Philadelphia slideshow on Flickr. Make sure to subscribe to Maule of America to follow his work in the future (some great shots already there!).

He left an imprintis going to be greatly missed. His impact will live on.

Thank you Brad.

Political Scientist Michael Parenti catalogued seven generalizations about the way the news media create anti-union messaging--from painting workers as greedy, to omitting the salary of management or depicting public officials (like Mayor Nutter) as neutral. Using this lens to dissect the coverage of the SEPTA strike, it becomes clear that local media like the Inquirer and Daily News have a dangerous anti-union bias, once again making the case that to build our own movement we need our own media.

Building on Nutter, FOX News, and the SEPTA Strike, it is vital that we look at the atrocious coverage of The Inquirer and in particular the work of staff writers Melissa Dribben, Jim Moran and Kia Gregory in the article Another Infuriating Day for Commuters. Basically the journalists utilized every metaphor and trick possible to make workers seem greedy and divide transit workers from other Philadelphians, explicitly taking the side of SEPTA management at a critical juncture in the contract struggle.

How was this done? Principally through using the voice of everyday Philadelphians to put forward an anti-union, pro-management message. In Michael Parenti's book, Inventing Reality: The Politics of Mass Media, he looks at seven basic generalizations of mass media's mistreatment of labor struggles. Those mistreatments are:
1) Portrayal of labors struggles as senseless, avoidable contests created by unions' unwillingness to negotiate in good faith,
2) Focus on Company wage "offers" omitting or underplaying reference to takebacks, and employee grievances, making the workers appear irrational, greedy and self-destructive
3) No coverage given to management salaries, bonuses or compensation and how they are inconsistent with concessions demanded by workers
4) Emphasis on the impact rather than the causes of strikes, laying the blame for the strike totally on the union and detailing the damage the strike does to the economy and public weal
5) Failure to consider the harm caused to the workers' interests if they were to give up the strike
6) Unwillingness or inability to cover stories of union solidarity and mutual support
7) Portrayal of the government (including the courts and police) as a neutral arbiter upholding the public interests when it is rather protecting corporate properties and bodyguarding strike-breakers.

Based on these seven generalizations let's take a look at the coverage of the strike in the story: Another Infuriating Day for Commuters. It is clear from the title that the authors are focused on the inconvenience the strike presents to commuters with no focus on the reason the strike began or the fact that 5,500 workers have been laboring for 8-9 months without a contract or job security.

However, in the fifth paragraph the fun begins as the authors use a commuter to voice the message: "The union is a monopoly... and people hate monopolies. One hundred years ago, corporations were the wolves. Now unions are the wolves." While this is a nonsensical point because it misapprehends the point of collective bargaining, the message is clear, everyday workers are greedy, irrational and un-American. Moreover workers, some which make 28K a year, are selfish, while there is not so much as a peep on the salaries of management—who get 100% of their healthcare paid for and receive up to $195,000 per year in salary—which is almost 7x more than some SEPTA bus drivers. But why should journalists allow an inconvenient fact to get in the way of their story.

The article goes on to focus on the difficulty of commuting during the strike, tacitly painting TWU workers as the culprits. However the article ends once again voicing the concerns of another commuter that says that this is a bad economy and the union has to accept the reality of the economic crisis like everyone else and basically end the strike and accept whatever contract the noble management offers.

What this article and most of the reporting of the SEPTA strike illustrates is the anti-union bent of our local mass-media. In this article, the journalists decide not to quote one member of TWU local 234 nor offer one positive portrait of these hard working transit workers, while quoting several anti-union commuters. In looking at the overall reporting of the Inquirer, Daily News, and our local TV affiliates, each of Parenti's gross anti-union generalizations have been core themes of the reporting

Make workers look greedy and irrational
Do not examine management salaries,
Avoid focusing on the cause of the strike
Attempt to make public officials like Mayor Nutter and Governor Rendell look neutral

Clearly the mass media has a vested stake in the outcome of this strike. How long are we gonna allow our media to be so explicitly anti-union. It is time we created our own media!

The Philadelphia Daily News and WHYY have launched a new service - "The City Howl". Use it as a new resource to share or read opinions of Philadelphia city services.

Congratulations Scott and Marisa!

Here's a pic of the happy couple on Flickr.

The city of San Francisco has a government run civic apps listing as mentioned by Craig Newmark.

We don't have a Philadelphia equivalent listing yet. But we can build our own index and share. Here's a start - add more here or elsewhere.

Open Source Philadelphia at Ignite Philly 2 - for a vision of what it could be.

iSepta

Merecat's iSepta + Train View Mashup

Everyblock Philadelphia

Media Mobilizing Project

Spotcrime

City-Data Philadelphia, PA

PhillyNeighborhoods.org

Upcoming.org Philadelphia, PA

The Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Plan Philly

Geeks Who Give

Volunteer Way

Philly New Media Hub

PhillyChi

Outside.in Philadelphia

Refresh Philly

Ignite Philly

Junto

NPower

InLiquid

MiND TV offers one-day and advance workshops, as well as production equipment rentals and one-on-one editing tutorials. Sign up online at www.mindtv.org/training

I haven't been able to access Phillyblog.com ... did ALL that site shut down? Thanks in advance for any information.


Sincerely,
Dana

Today was the first day in eons I spent cleaning up the news aggregator.

What that entails is visiting each blog on the blogroll, one by one and making a rather subjective determination if it stays in the aggregator or goes.

While I could (and do sometimes) use scripts to automate the process of verifing that blogs on the blogroll exist, and have recent posts, it takes a human invested in what this site is about to actually keep Philly Future working appropriately.

Along the way you end up discovering people who have migrated their blogs new locations, who themselves have moved away from Philly, who have given up blogging entirely, or have just mysteriously disappeared.

It probably sounds simple, sites like this should be removed from Philly Future right? But it isn't always that simple.

For example, Mark at the Long Cut. He was a Philly Future Featured Blog, Matt interviewed him way back 2005. He hasn't updated his blog since... well since January 2008. Should I remove his link? Some would say so. But his last post leaves me hope he will someday come back to blogging. So I hold out hope.

Speaking of Matt, a huge contributor to Philly Future in the past, one of the reasons it was the success it was for so long, his blog hasn't been updated since late last year, but like the Long Cut, it stays.

How about Mr. Dave Luna. A writer we've linked to here since, oh, the beginning of time, and someone who enriched the Philly blogosphere while he was blogging. Well he deleted his feed. That's easy.

Uncle Horn Head hasn't updated since October 2006. One of my favorite bloggers. But after two years, well it's pretty clear he's not coming back. Still miss him and Dave.

And what of Jim Capozzola and Star C. Foster (Sarcasmo). Both will never update their blogs again, yet there is no way I can remove those blogs from the blogroll. I feel honor bound to leave them linked, even though both have left this mortal coil, because they were so much a part of what made the Philly blogosphere - what made and continues to make Philly - so special to me.

A special shout out needs to go to Keystone Politics, Philadelphia Will Do, and Hallwatch.org for laying foundations in Philly for what's come later. Hallwatch was true citizen journalism at its finest, while Keystone Politics helped to provide a space for people to keep infromed about their state, and Dan McQuade shows just what is possible when a newspaper freely sponsors a blog.

All are missed.

To be sure there are a great, great many old timers still keeping at it and there are a ton of new voices who have joined the great online conversation. Where that leads Philly Future I am still figuring out and will post some thoughts shortly.

Thank you for keeping up with the journey so far.

Karl

July 31st: DrupalCamp Philadelphia: at Drexel

August 3rd: Refresh Philly, share on Facebook: at Comcast Center

IGOTAGUY.com is a company that strives to connect local service providers with their local audience. Unlike many other sites that offer similar services, IGOTAGUY.com focus on quality over quantity. Limited to a max 8 local service providers per category per area, IGOTAGUY.com has the ability to filter out companies that are not properly licensed and/or insured. For service providers (ex: contractors, home improvement, etc) IGOTAGUY.COM offers 1$ a day advertising. An unheard of low price for the high quality services received. Philadelphians may use the site for free to find anyone listed in the 80+ categories on the IGOTAGUY.com website.

For more information please visit www.igotaguy.com