March 16, 2009

SXSW Dispatch: Email Is for Old People

Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laughingsquid/">Scott Beale of Laughing Squid</a>

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Sheerly Avni is a film and culture writer guest-blogging for Mother Jones from Austin’s South by Southwest Festival.

Part One: Email Is for Old People

In a fit of pathological optimism, I opted to register for both the Interactive and Film portions of SXSW. This is like deciding to “do” both Italy and France on a five-day trip to Europe: Vertigo-inducing and ill-advised, though possible if you forgo sleep. Forgoing sleep in Austin has been easy; my hotel walls, more than three blocks away from the musical epicenter, were booming in time to the bass beat until well past 2 a.m.

And now I also have insomnia. Because not until I started passing out my spiffy new business cards in the SXSW pressroom did I discover that, despite living in San Francisco, having an iPhone, knowing some html, and maintaining a regular Facebook account, what a pathetically ass-backwards, last century, late-adopting, buzzword-clueless Internet rube I really am.

And, dear reader, or rather, user, or rather content-abuser, I hope you’re a rube too.

SXSW is all about the search for the new. New music, new filmmakers, and in tech, that new “killer app,” which will change everyone’s lives forever. The killer app of two years ago at SXSW was Twitter. The killer app of last year was also…. Twitter. And this year at SXSW, as I discovered while trading business cards with tech bloggers and entrepeneurs too polite to point it out (thanks, Grant!), not having a Twitter account printed on my card places me firmly on the dusty, musty side of ever-narrowing bandwidth between tomorrow and yesterday.

Email addresses are obsolete; give your Twitter handle instead? It took me a while to wrap my mind around the concept—long enough that by the time I’d built my new account, I’d found out that guess what, Twitter’s out now, too.

Like I said, vertigo.

In my next dispatch: Two films which premiered this weekend about what happens when it’s not your email address but your livelihood that’s become obsolete.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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