Nursing home bloggers

A couple of years ago I wondered if they have Internet access in nursing homes. I thought it made sense back then but now it seems…inevitable. I’m sure there must be nursing homes with net access for residents. But are there people living in nursing homes who are blogging? If so, (and there must be) it would seem to raise some interesting issues.

Most of Barb’s clients are individuals or corporations in the area of “long term care.” And she’s something of an expert in this area, but she really didn’t have ready answers to my questions. Good lawyers seldom do.

Here’s a scenerio: I’m 75 years old and still have most of my marbles but my kids don’t think I should be living alone so we all agree I should move into Sunnyvale Estates where I can get the day-to-day care I need. I have my own room and my one phone-line. Every day I flip open my Thinkpad, log in to my Typepad account, and blog away.

Let’s say I notice a little whiff scotch on the breath of the aide that brings me my lunch (luke-warm hotdog cut into tiny, no-choke bites…and apple sauce). I report it to the administration but they don’t do anything, so I blog it. A reporter for the New York Times happens to be researching a story on nursing homes and finds my blog. (Sound of shit hitting the adult diaper).

Or maybe I’m bed-fast for a while and I start getting a bed sore. So I take a photo with my little digital camera and post it to my blog. Hello!

My question to Barb was: Could the nursing home administration keep me from blogging. Did I give up my first-amendment rights when I moved in? Certainly the other residents have a right to privacy and I couldn’t/shouldn’t violate that with my blogging. But let’s say I stuck pretty much with my life and care in the facility. Can the nursing home stop me? And on what grounds?

I can’t believe this hasn’t come up yet. A Technorati search on “nursing home” lists 53,000+ posts. Looks like there are lots of posts about family members who are in nursing homes but (the few I scanned) didn’t appear to be written by a resident.

One might argue that by the time someone has to move to a nursing home, they are no longer capable of maintaining a blog. I spent a good deal of time in an excellent facility where my father spent the last few years of his life. And many of the residents probably could not have handled the logistics of blogging, even if they knew what it was.

But that was then and this is now. When we boomers move to Sunnyvale, we’re damn sure gonna want net access and we’ll have it with high-speed, state-of-the-art mobile phones. And a few million of us will be bloggers. An enlightened administrator would get out in front of this. Hell, blogging might be better for the residents than bingo. And it might offer other benefits. Why not encourage it. Might even be a good idea to have the Sunnyvale Estates Blog so you can engage in the conversation swirling around you.

[When I moved from Blogger to Typepad, I lost the link to the excellent cartoon site from which image above was linked. If anyone can provide the url, I’d like to add it here.]

Update: Found this AP story over at MSNBC: “Web savvy seniors embrace blogs”

Newsroom transubstantiation

Some interesting posts on the Mothboard about the state of radio. Dale Forbis concluded his with a finger-wag at bloggers:

“Somebody truly needs to tell bloggers, the minute you express an opinion, you are no longer committing journalism. Journalism’s not better, or more valuable — but it also doesn’t include opinion expressed by the journalist. Or, it’s not supposed to. Not good, responsible journalism.”

Most bloggers I know and read don’t think of what they do as journalism. And I’m sure Dale’s scolding tone is unintentional. But I’ve been in many of the same newsrooms he has and I’ve heard reporters take strong, heated stands on controversial issues. Conservatives vs. Liberals. Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice. Gun control. All the biggies. And then sit down and write a story on the same issue they were debating only moments before.

Are we to believe some sort of Miraculous Purge takes place and the reporters’ mind and heart are cleansed and the story he or she writes is untainted by the views expressed only moments before? A newsroom transubstantiation?

I don’t doubt that many reporters believe in this miracle, but it’s a faith not shared by their listeners/viewers/readers. Could it be that blogs are growing in popularity precisely because there is no pretense of objectivity? If we have an opinion, we flop it out there on the table.

I, for one, have no desire to commit journalism. And I hope there’s always someone around willing to do it. And if they can keep their political views and opinions out of their reporting, I’ll light a candle.

Update: When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Dale took me to task on this post and upon reflection I confess to having too much tar on my brush and smearing it indiscriminately. I know and work with a lot of good reporters who work hard at –and, as far as I know, succeed in– keeping their personal views out of their reporting. To suggest otherwise was wrong.

James Keown’s blog roll

I arrived home this evening to find a message on our answering machine from a reporter for the Boston Herald. He said he was doing a story on James Keown who was arrested this morning (here in Jefferson City) for allegedly poisoning his wife with antifreeze in 2004. The reporter called me because smays.com was on James’ blog roll.

I met James eight or nine years ago when he was the assistant program director at KMBZ in Kansas City. I was still doing affiliate relations back then. James seemed like a bright, personable young man. I knew that he was back in Jefferson City but had had no contact with him in recent years. I was linked on his blog because he knew bloggers who knew me.

Once the story broke, it didn’t take reporters long to Google James and discover his blog. Others found it too and quickly began posting (anonymously) comments and some of were…harsh. The comments have been turned off but the blog is still up. The BostonHerald.com story included a link.

Most of today’s 600+ page views at smays.com have come from James’ blog. I suspect it will be a while before we see any new posts. If the charge against Mr. Keown is dismissed or he is tried and acquitted, will he blog his experiences?

Once again I am reminded of how connected we have become.

Quoted by Jeff Jarvis

Back in March I posted –somewhat giddily– about being added to Halley Suitt’s blog roll (I’m still there). Ms. Suitt was kind enough to say she stopped by smays.com from time to time. I suspect she was being kind, but still a thrill.

While he’s far less sexy than Ms. Suitt, Jeff Jarvis orbits in that same blogosphere firmament. His BuzzMachine is #49 on Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs (if you go in for such rankings, and Mr. Jarvis is not the sort to do so).

Today, while reading his latest post, I came across a quote that sounded strangely familiar. Mr. Jarvis attributed the quote to “A media exec even older than I…”

Good news: Jeff Jarvis read something I wrote and thought it worth pointing to (or someone sent him a link). Bad news: I’m older than Jeff Jarvis.

As I emailed Jeff (He’s just a kid, I can call him Jeff), this is like being in the audience at a Bruce Springsteen concert and hearing the Boss shout out, “Steve Mays is somewhere in the house tonight!”

Steve Rubel on corporate blogging

“In an ideal situation –weekly or even daily– someone is pumping the weblog with fresh compelling content. But any old content won’t do. Corporations interested in blogging need to add value to people’s lives. That’s the biggest key to a successful corporate blog that keeps people coming back. So what do I mean by add value? I mean give us a reason to read your blog. Give us something we can’t find anywhere else. Provide information that your customers, partners and prospects care about, not necessarily what you care about. Be a resource and a connector.”

Three groups of journalistic awareness of weblogs

Group 3, “growing smaller every day, is completely unaware of what has happened in the past few years. They don’t know what a blog is. They are still upset that the company started a website and they don’t believe they should have to write for it.”

From an article by Paul Conley (“Learning the basics of conversational editorial“) in which he describes three classes of journalistic awareness of weblogs. [via E-Meida Tidbits]

PhilAtkinson.org

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. And now Phil is doing it. Blogging, that is. Phil is the head of the IT group at Learfield Communications and one of the smartest guys I know. So I can’t explain how he got close enough to the blog pool to fall in. He has resisted blogging because –he explains– he looks at computers all day and doesn’t want to spend one more minute than he has to in front of one. But he’s an interesting guy and I hope his blog reflects that. Drives a vintage GTO. Makes custom fireworks. Has the nutrition habits of a 12 year old. And I think that’s all I know about Phil but expect to learn more if the blog glue dries.

What blogs cost American business

Story on AdAge.com by Bradley Johnson (registration required):

U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs. About 35 million workers — one in four people in the labor force — visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks — bloggers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break. Technorati, a blog search engine, now tracks 19.6 million blogs, a number that has doubled about every five months for the past three years. If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009. Imagine the work that won’t get done then.

And a week doesn’t go by that someone asks me to explain “this blogging thing.”

Weblog Usability: Top 10 Mistakes

Online usability expert Jakob Nielsen gives us The Top Ten Design Mistakes for Weblog Usability in this weeks Alertbox:

1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

I sometimes get a little too cute with my post titles (#3) and I struggle to keep my focus narrow (#8) but, all in all, I’m giving smays.com high marks. He explains each of these and I urge my blogging friends to take 5 minutes to read and heed what Uncle Jakob has to say.