Kuyper in the US

For those who understand Dutch and are interested in this kind of stuff: I'm travelling through the US for two months working on a project for the Dutch newspaper Trouw and the Free University of Amsterdam. I'm making the same trip that the Dutch politician, journalist and theologian Abraham Kuyper made in 1898 looking for Kuyperian influences on my way. On the road I will be writing articles, taking pictures and making videos. My first stop was New York city. To read the article click here.

You can follow the entire trip (and watch video's etc.) on this website.

On October 14 I will also give a presentation about my trip during the AmericaXperience at the Free University of Amsterdam. For more information click here.

Barbershop in Birmingham

Check out the video I made for RNW about Eugene Jones, a civil rights activist who marched with Martin Luther King. Today, Eugene is the owner of a barbershop in Birmingham, Alabama where people could register to vote. In the video Jones reflects on the civil rights history in Birmingham and talks about the meaning of Barack Obama for black America.

You can find more videos on the Trouw website, such as this video I made about Sarah Palin at a McCain-Palin rally in Pennsylvania and this video on young voters with two students from Harvard.

The Dreamer and the Dream

During the 60's, pastor Gwen C.Webb was one of the 'foot soldiers' that marched with Martin Luther King in Birmingham, Alabama. Today, Webb sees president-elect Obama as the fulfilment of King's dream and works as a volunteer for the Obama team in Birmingham: "It reminded me of the movement again".

November 4, 2008

posters on a wall @ Central Square, Cambridge, MA

Jay & Bob Talkin' Politics in Mexican Hat, Utah

On the night of the last presidential debate we passed through Utah on our way from Monument Valley to Colorado. Hoping to find a place to watch the debate with some Americans we stopped in the small town of Mexican Hat, Utah. But, most people we asked about the debate either didn't know there was one in the first place or weren't going to watch it. So, we ended up eating dinner at the Mexican Hat Lodge - the famous home of the 'swingin steak' - and had a nice chat with these guys:

Road Trip Comin' up: Starting on October 12 in Albuquerque, New Mexico

While America is getting ready for the presidential elections, my brother and I will be driving through the American South for a couple of weeks.

Starting in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Tuesday, October 14 we'll drive all the way to the center of American politics in Washington, DC. After my brother flies back to Holland on the 28th, I'll stay a couple of weeks longer and will be around during the elections as well as the week after. I'll try to keep you posted right here on some of the stories we run into while on the road.


PS: Is Dorothea Lange actually wearing Converse All Stars while driving through the Great Depression here?

Wiki says: In his late 30s, Marquis M. Converse, who was previously a respected manager at a footwear manufacturing firm, opened the Converse Rubber Shoe Company (also known as the Boston Rubber Shoe Company) in Malden, Massachusetts in 1908. The company was a rubber shoe manufacturer, providing winterized rubber soled footwear for men, women, and children. By 1910, Converse was producing 4,000 shoes daily, but it wasn't until 1915 that the company began manufacturing athletic shoes for tennis. The company's main turning point came in 1917 when the Converse All-Star basketball shoe was introduced. Then in 1921, a basketball player named Charles H. or "Chuck" Taylor walked into Converse complaining of sore feet. Converse gave him a job. He worked as a salesman and ambassador, promoting the shoes around the United States, and in 1923 his signature was added to the All Star patch.

Dang, I really think she is...

Shouldn't forget to pack mine...

Small Town Iran: Kharanaq

After a beautiful ride from Yazd through the snowy Iranian desert we were welcomed in the small town of Kharanaq by these old little men and the woman with the wheelbarrow. They invited us to warm up around their fire and did not let us go until we had eaten almost half a wheelbarrow of sandy yellow carrots, which they had just taken out of the frozen ground. Actually, the carrots tasted surprisingly good: fresh and juicy in a way. The woman insisted on being in a picture with her wheelbarrow. I love these people...

A selection of my photos from Iran are currently being exhibited at the Univeristy of Leiden (Lipsius Building, Room 127 as well as in the hallway leading to the multimedia-lab).

Joris Luyendijk: 5 New Ways for Journalism

About two years ago Joris Luyendijk wrote "Het Zijn Net Mensen" (People like us. Images from the Middle East), a very insightful, critical as well as self-reflexive view on the problems concerning the practice of journalism in the Middle-East. In the book Luyendijk gives the reader a look behind the scenes of foreign news and broadly states that news is always filtered, distorted and/or manipulated in one way or another, and that traditional western style journalism does not work in countries in which press freedom is restricted. In the Netherlands his book has been read by more than 200.000 people and ignited a public debate about the way in which journalists and the media work, especially abroad.

The downside was that many people in the Netherlands completely lost their trust in any foreign news reports whatsoever believing that it is completely impossible to practice journalism in the Middle East. As Luyendijk has stated over and over again, this was not what he was trying to say. He did believe, though, that journalists needed to be plunged into a same kind of crisis as Edward Said once plunged anthropologists in. Not to destroy journalism, but to change it, to improve it in ways it could not without dealing with this crisis. During a lecture at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Luyendijk shared how his own thinking has developed since he wrote his bestseller. Most importantly, he came up with five "new ways for journalism" to deal with the challenges described in his book. What follows is a summary of his statements accompanied with (kinda blurry) video clips of Luyendijk describing every solution one by one:

1. We need new genres that will illuminate what remains hidden in a police state, namely that it is a police state. The strength of a dictatorship is how it manages to hide its true nature. So, break down the facade: show what a police state really is and what the absence of the rule of law really means.



2. Introduce to the public the concept of "structural ambiguity." This is an ambiguity that cannot be overcome by extra efforts in reporting because it is inherent in the system, in this case a police state. You cannot extrapolate one person's views to the wider population in a way you can in a democratic context, because there are no opinion polls, ratings, free parliamentary debates, etc. For example, we cannot know the general opinion of ordinary Egyptians about the cartoon crises. We cannot know what is representative. And this ambiguity should find a place in coverage.



3. In conflicts media organizations should find ways to increase transparency about their choices and their criteria for selection. Rather than hiding behind promises of objectivity journalists should embrace their subjectivity and explain why they cover this and not that, to highlight why they took this angle and not that angle, why they use these terms and not other ones. This requires a rethinking of the journalist's role: a journalist is not a 'fly on the wall', but part of the world he or she covers. We should accept these human influences and analyze how they influence reporting.



4. The need for journalists to situate themselves in the field they represent. "Where does reality stop and representation begin?" Luyendijk wonders. Often things happen so that, or because camera's are there. We need new/more conceptual tools to analyze and new journalistic tools to represnet the interplay between image and reality, between coverage and its influence on the world it covers.



5. The objectification of the opponent in a conflict paves the way for violence. Luyendijk called this "perhaps the most important and urgent challenge" and believes the media should not help to pave this road. Journalists should also familiarize the news consumer with the points of view of the opponent and his/her reasons. In every situation and every conflict there exist different narratives about the events being covered. We need to find a way to put these multiple narratives into one meta-narrative, for example by also showing what Al-Jazeera or other news stations have to say about the situation being covered.