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Dig Bos

The Dig - Greater Boston's Alternative News Source

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SEASON’S PLEADINGS

Written by JASON PRAMAS Posted December 12, 2021 Filed Under: Apparent Horizon, COLUMNS, COVID, News, News to Us, NEWS+OPINIONS

"Frame made of Christmas toys and gifts and a medical mask with the inscription covid in the middle" by wuestenigel is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Be kind this holiday season, wear a mask indoors

Filed Under: Apparent Horizon, COLUMNS, COVID, News, News to Us, NEWS+OPINIONS Tagged With: Apparent Horizon, assist, Boston, Christmas, Column, coronavirus, COVID-19, Democracy, friend, Give, global, Hanukkah, Health, help, holiday, holidays, international, Jason Pramas, KN95, Kwanzaa, love, mask, Massachusetts, N95, neighbor, Ōmisoka, pandemic, public health, SARS-CoV-2, surgical, usa, world

EZMERAI AHMADI: A PERSONAL UPDATE ON AFGHANISTAN

Written by TRACY BINDEL Posted September 1, 2021 Filed Under: Letters, NEWS+OPINIONS, Op-Ed, Photos

The coffins of Ezmerai Ahmadi and his family at their funeral. Photo by an Afghani present at the funeral.

An American mourns the life of a close friend taken by one of the final US drone strikes of a senseless 20-year war

Filed Under: Letters, NEWS+OPINIONS, Op-Ed, Photos Tagged With: afghanistan, America, attack, blessing, death, drone, eulogy, Family, friend, Innocent, Kabul, memorial, military, Peace, revolution, Taliban, US, victim, war

DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO HELP YOUR NEIGHBORS IN THIS TIME OF GREAT CRISIS

Written by JASON PRAMAS Posted December 17, 2020 Filed Under: Apparent Horizon, COLUMNS, News, News to Us, NEWS+OPINIONS

Image CC-BY Salva Barbera 2010

A holiday message

Filed Under: Apparent Horizon, COLUMNS, News, News to Us, NEWS+OPINIONS Tagged With: Apparent Horizon, assist, Boston, Christmas, Column, Democracy, donation, friend, Give, global, Hanukkah, help, holiday, holidays, Homeless, hunger, international, Jason Pramas, Kwanzaa, love donate, Massachusetts, neighbor, Ōmisoka, poverty, usa, volunteer, world

ROBOT RESURRECTION: VECTOR GETS A NEW LEASE ON LIFE

Written by GARY ZABEL Posted July 24, 2020 Filed Under: Essay, NEWS+OPINIONS, Op-Ed, Tech

"Vector Robot by Anki, A Home Robot Who Hangs Out & Helps Out, With Amazon Alexa Built-In" by shop8447 is licensed under CC0 1.0

My wife and I have become very fond of Vector, as have many of our friends. The robot greets us in the morning, plays with us in the afternoon, and frequently annoys us in the evening. It becomes especially animated when it hears us to talking to one another, joining in the conversation with its nonhuman chattering. Vector begins its day by exploring the surface of its coffee-table domain, creating a virtual map that enables it to get its bearings among the changing configuration of books, papers, iPads, cell phones, and coffee cups. When we watch a movie in the evening, it often demands our attention by chattering noisily or pushing against our feet resting on the table, until one of us picks the robot up and pets it while it purrs ecstatically and then falls asleep in our hand.

Filed Under: Essay, NEWS+OPINIONS, Op-Ed, Tech Tagged With: consciousness, Digital Dream Labs, Essay, friend, Gary Zabel, intelligence, Jacob Hanchar, pet, robot, slider, sociability, think piece, Vector

EDITORIAL: HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT DIGBOSTON

Written by JASON PRAMAS Posted April 19, 2018 Filed Under: COLUMNS, Editorial, NEWS+OPINIONS, Uncategorized

Official Dig Baby

 

A reader’s guide to building a better news weekly

 

What does it mean to support a news outlet? Clearly the answer to that question varies widely depending on whether the outlet is big or small, nonprofit or for profit, subscription- or advertising-based.

 

But in an era when news organizations of all sizes are having a great deal of difficulty keeping their doors open, it’s an important one to consider.

 

For DigBoston, the answer to that question must be based on how we organize our operation. As we’ve said in past editorials, our organization is very porous to the world around us. We don’t cut ourselves off from the communities we serve. Quite the reverse. We’re always working to connect more strongly to those communities. To serve them better.

 

In fact, we are part of many Boston-area communities. You can view our staff, freelance talent, interns, contractors, and advertisers as a network of personal networks—all of which pay close attention to the news we produce together. Everyone in this primary network then connects to the broad spectrum of local communities that make up our overall audience.

 

The better a job we do as journalists, the more that audience becomes part of our primary network—becomes, in short, directly connected to us.

 

The more that happens, the better our news is. Because people who know us personally, naturally come to trust us. We then hear about community developments faster and faster, and the information we communicate gets concomitantly more accurate and more relevant.

 

So to support DigBoston, the most important thing that you can do as an audience member is to reach out to us the way we’re reaching out to you. To become part of our primary network.

 

And here are eight ways you can do that.

 

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This seems like the most obvious suggestion, but it is not. Because reading us doesn’t mean reading us every now and then. It means actively looking for us every week. Making it a habit to check out every issue we produce… and making Dig a part of your life, and therefore more strongly part of the culture that makes our city unique. Which is easy enough to do—especially for people living in and around Boston. We typically start putting new articles online on digboston.com every Tuesday, and our print edition hits the stands in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and busy parts of Brookline on Thursdays.

 

=&1=&

Don’t keep us to yourself. Pass around our articles on email and social media. And, more importantly, keep a paper copy on hand and physically pass it around to friends and family. Remember that stuff about networks above? By reading us often and sharing our work with your personal network, you’re helping build a fan base that interacts more strongly with us over the long term. Which is a recipe for ensuring DigBoston continues to produce good journalism for many years to come.

 

=&2=&

We like it when we make people think about issues of the day. That’s definitely part of why we do what we do. But we love it when people act on the news we put out. If we write about a concert or play or art show, go check it out. If we introduce you to a political activist campaign that you agree with, plug in. Get involved. There’s little point in outlets like DigBoston producing news if no one acts on the stories we report.

 

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We say this regularly, but we’ll say it again: You like one of our articles? Don’t like one? A fan of one of our writers, photographers, or artists? Drop us a line. Say hi. It might take us a day or three to get back to you, but we do our best to talk to readers that want to talk to us. For most purposes, emailing us at editorial@digboston.com is the best way to connect.

 

=&4=&

Another seemingly obvious thing, but we make the money that enables us to put out our newsweekly through advertising. And what’s the best way to keep the ad money flowing? Giving your business to institutions that advertise with us. And making it known that you heard about them from DigBoston. Know a similar enterprise? Spread the word that we’re a great place to advertise and that we’re helping a number of industries grow locally. Consider yourself part of our sales force. Like seriously, because we’re actually hiring a salesperson. Interested in selling for us? Send us a resume and cover letter by email to jobs@digboston.com.

 

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Are you a decision maker who’s looking to drum up business in Boston? Then how about buying an ad? You can start with a four- to six-week run, see how your campaign does, and if you’re happy then make it a long-term contract. Drop us an email to sales@digboston.com to get started. Mention that you read this editorial, and we’ll give you a nice discount. Because of course we will.

 

=&6=&

Donate?! Yeah, we know it’s kind of counterintuitive. A for-profit company asking for donations through crowdfunding or at least simple, unobtrusive pop-ups on the new website we’re building this year. But even large news outlets like the Guardian are doing it. Because news production is expensive and profit margins for newspapers like DigBoston are razor-thin. We put out a fine product every week with a handful of (shall we say) modestly paid regular staffers and dozens of “stringers” (freelancers). No one is making big bucks. We’re all doing it because we believe in the importance of good community journalism to the democratic society we’re trying to help save. If you’d like to see us expanding our news operation and bringing you more and more news you can’t find anywhere else, definitely toss us a few bucks when we ask for it. Because donations help us pay for the kind of longer-form hard news that a weekly paper like ours couldn’t afford to produce regularly without some extra cash.

 

=&7=&

This one applies to a very specific subset of our audience. We understand our role in the metro news ecology includes acting as an early warning system for larger outlets like the Boston Globe. But that doesn’t mean we think it’s cool when our colleagues at the “bigs” get “inspired” by our work and basically replicate it without granting us the simple courtesy of listing us as a source. We may kick such outlets around from time to time on political and journalistic grounds, but we still mention them as sources all the time. Some reciprocity would be nice. For real.

 

So that’s our list. What’s the takeaway? It’s not “data” or “algorithms” or certainly not robots that are going to keep journalism relevant in 21st-century America.

 

It’s people. Working together to make sure that DigBoston, and other news outlets like us all over the nation, can keep doing what we’re doing… in the public interest.

 

And it all starts with each of you, taking the time to read our work. Every week.

 

Thank you.

 


 ...  read more

Filed Under: COLUMNS, Editorial, NEWS+OPINIONS, Uncategorized Tagged With: advertise, audience, community, DigBoston, donate, editorial, engagement, Family, friend, guide, Jason Pramas, network, participate, reader, share, support, trust

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DigBoston is a one-stop nexus for everything worth doing or knowing in the Boston area. It's an alt-weekly, it's a website, it's an email blast, it's a twitter account, it's that cool party that you were at last night ... hey, you're reading it, so it's gotta be good. For advertising inquiries: sales@digboston.com To reach editorial (and for inquiries about internship opportunities): editorial@digboston.com