July 2010
1 post
Notes on WikiLeaks, New Media, Fixing What's...
Annotations to Jay Rosen’s take on WikLeak’s Afghanistan War logs, the WaPo’s surveillance state investigation and the media:
1. If a big story is available to everyone equally, journalists will pass on it. ((*Bullshit*. Herd journalism is the rule of the land — and the real story isn’t the documents anyways, but how they’re interpreted. ))
4. Wikileaks is...
April 2010
1 post
The Science of SEO?
In response to a discussion of the scientifically distasteful term “missing link,” and how SEO favors its use:
I wonder sometimes about how many of our traffic-enhancing strategies, including those focused on search engine optimization, are grounded in solid data and proven hypotheses, and how many are based on hunches, wishful thinking and preconceived notions.
To take the latest...
January 2010
1 post
“A change in form is always, as well, a change in content. That is unavoidable,...”
– Digital Clutter: Why How We Read Matters
December 2009
0 posts
Why journalism needs paywalls →
“AOL is betting it can reinvent itself with a numbers-driven approach to...”
– AOL Readies New Media-Production System - WSJ.com
September 2009
1 post
“In 2002, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette started charging for online content....”
– A New Horizon For The News
August 2009
3 posts
Unraveling The CIA Scandal →
The free ride that's killing the news business →
Because the Little Red Hen bore all the costs to produce the bread, and the other animals bore none, she can’t afford to match their prices, and they drive her out of business.
July 2009
1 post
“On the issue of attribution and linking standards, we realize that if algorithms...”
– “Does Attribution Make The Link Economy Less Awful?” neatly summarizing (without a direct link) “What’s a Fair Share In the Age of Google?”
June 2009
5 posts
“We need to stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about...”
– Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World
“I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes American institutions as...”
– David Simon’s Testimony at the Future of Journalism Hearing
The History of News Cycles
In the ongoing autopsy of journalism, relatively little attention has been paid to news cycles — far less than, say, declining ad revenues, falling circulations and non-payment models. But if those are obvious and immediate causes of death, then perpetual news cycles are an underlying factor, a stress that exacerbates the disease. Daily and weekly journalism exist in an environment defined by...
A Comment on "Newspapers vs. Bloggers: The New...
In his attack on the New York Times’ criticism of publish-first, verify-later tech blogging, Jeff Jarvis says “this discussion should be about so much more than just errors and corrections. This is about new and better ways to gather, share, and verify news.” In the process, he defends a very poor way of gathering and sharing news, and a mediocre way of verifying it. A subtle...
Some thoughts on David Carr's AdAge Q&A
Carr: I think one thing that people do not understand is, as recently as four or five years ago, to be a member of Manhattan media, you weren’t rich, but you lived as a rich person might. You went to the parties that a rich person would go to, you ate the food that a rich person would eat, you drank the vodka that a rich person would drink, and you’d end up in black cars, and...
May 2009
9 posts
"Why journalists deserve low pay:" the annotated...
((Originally printed in the Christian Science Monitor. Hit the link — the CSM, if not this article, deserves the pageview.))
Why journalists deserve low pay By Robert G. Picard Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic...
Google and Local Journalism
“We hear that Google is apparently talking with papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times. And that makes sense, given their importance and size. But the problem with that is that as great as those papers may be, they are outliers in the world of daily journalism. What’s needed is something to help the 1,400 or so smaller daily publications, as well as the thousands of...
On "The 'Lack of Vision' thing?"
Dan from Xark wants to replace journalism with informatics. Interesting read:
On the other hand, the 2010 “story” is only a subset of a much more complex and valuable data set, which exists within a data structure that allows its information to be retrieved accurately and reconfigured in useful ways.
Quick critique. One, invoking evolution as a guiding principle: please stop....
Newspapers have a future — one nickel at a time →
So pay to be. Assuming it’s necessary, I propose that American newspapers get an exemption from federal antitrust statutes, allowing them all to shut down their Web sites on the same day and to…
The American Press on Suicide Watch →
Whatever shape journalism ultimately takes in America, make no mistake that in the end we will get what we pay for.
Tech Review EIC on Journalism →
The printing press stands here as an objective correlative for the material production and distribution of media. Shirky and Winer’s real error is that the physical is the least of it. The creation of good journalism is a tremendously laborious process, requiring an infrastructure more expensive than any press.
In a disclosure at the bottom of her Web page, Ms. Smith notifies readers that she accepts compensation for blog posts, but says, “We always give our honest opinions.” Still, in an interview, Ms. Smith said she never writes anything negative about products she is asked to review because, “I choose not to be critical.”
“Who is behind this? You are, if you’re interested.”
– The San Francisco Post-Chronicle
2 tags
Alexis Madrigal and Sarah Rich: The Wiki That's... →
Not so sure about proprietary software as a revenue source; but designing for handhelds makes sense. Maybe by selling the content — let’s call it the paper, for old time’s sake — as an app, with a free (ad-supported) and premium (subscription) service?