OaktownLive

Team Oaktown Live are citizen journalists using the technology we have access to to report on the cities, state, country, and world we live in.

People used to say “Freedom of the Press is available to anyone who can afford a printing press”. Well, we can afford a website and iPhones and a data plan. And the US Constitution doesn’t read “Freedom of the well-educated, professional, financially-backed press.”

Doesn’t mean we aren’t working at getting better at what we do.

Pirate (camera monkey, field correspondent, interviewer, raconteur, opinionator) is a graduate of the Edison Carter/Spider Jerusalem School of New Journalism. Said institute is very big on style and philosophy, but kinda thin on technique. Still a bit of a learning curve there.

Pirate is mainly a drag on the team. Lexi is the smart, attractive, technically competent research-maven, the generally reasonable member of the team.

What Pirate brings to the table is mostly the instinct to run towards cops-in-riot-gear carrying a camera shouting “LIVE AND DIRECT ON THE INTERNET!”, and the ability march for miles and miles while livestreaming.

Lexica (Base control, Social Stream Moderator, Head of Research, Editrix, Voice of Reason/Adult Supervision) It is whispered by some that Lexica sprang, Athena-like, from an ancient research library whose powerful doors were, like Zeus’ skull beneath the shattering might a Hepheastus’ hammer, split open with a single mighty blow. Some say she was born at Stanford Hospital, but how pedestrian an origin story is that? I say go with the magic library.

As Base-Control, Lexica holds down the social stream, posting/tweeting links of relevance to whatever Pirate is filming at the moment. Lexica also does a fair bit of the heavy lifting in the research dept to keep the team informed. She’s in charge of editing, so misspellings and sloppy vid clips means someone let Pirate off-leash with the raw footage again. Lexica also enforces the team’s social stream moderation policy in order to facilitate open discussion of issues that can be, at times, contentious.

Attention developers: When you come up with a way for Lexi to do lower-third text updates live to the stream, she’ll be your best friend like “WHOA” and TOL will be HELLA cookin’ with gas.

Team Oaktown Live think all citizen journalist livestreamers need to watch Max Haedroom. The team aspires to be like Edison and Theora. The team’s budget means it’s closer to Blank Reg and Dominique. And the jerkiness of the stream strays into Max headroom territory sometimes.

Team Oaktown Live are avid members of (and if our recollections are correct, coiners of the phrase) Sunshine Bloc. They are also entry-level students of Kingian Nonviolence through the Positive Peace Warrior Network.

Because Transparency and nonviolence go very well together and have a long, productive working relationship when trying to change the world.

Leave a comment on any of our posts or email us at TeamOaktownLive@Gmail.com. On Twitter, @TeamOaktownLive