September 30, 2008
Letting the FOX count the hens
Sounds at the end like the room may be laughing at the reporter…
Let’s just see what happens
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September 27, 2008
Washington Post debate mashupThe Washington Post has a nice set of interactive features for “decoding” the debates. You know what would be even better? The open access Larry Lessig and a left-right coalition is calling for.
September 23, 2008
Crowd sourcing radio segmentsThe Brian Lehrer Show, on the nation’s largest public radio station, WNYC, is asking listeners to use a set of wiki pages to help produce six segments about the candidates’ positions on some of the less-hyped issues in the presidential election. The first issue to air will be the Internet and Broadcast Regulation. It will be on this Friday, 10-12 (EDT).
August 25, 2008
Twitter vs. IRC for Convention groupsnark?I love Twitter, but I’m wondering whether it’s the right tool for getting together to do a group-watch (we’ll laugh, we’ll cry) of the Democratic convention tonight. Would old-fashioned IRC be better? I like IRC as a way of watching an event together. So, suppose I set up irc://www.freenode.net/democonvo tonight and opened it to anyone who wanted to join. As opposed to Twitter, the group would be smaller, it would consist of people who were there only to talk about the convention, and it would encourage more back and forth because the set of readers is the same as the set of potential writers. (With Twitter, the people you read don’t necessarily read you.) On the other hand, Twitter brings together unexpected people who are highly unlikely to jump into any one IRC chat, especially mine. On Twitter, I’ll be able to read running commentary from Joe Trippi and Michael Turk (Democratic and Republican Net strategists). I can pretty well guarantee that neither will show up to an IRC chat that I throw. So, I’m not sure what to do…
Dave Winer’s got an IRC going right now. He’s at the convention as a blogger…
WE mag launchesWE magazine has launched with a set of articles by, and interviews with, a stellar set of folks, including Stephen Downes, Dan Gillmor and Ethan Zuckerman. You can read it online for free, or pay for PDF or a paper version.
Categories: media Date: August 25th, 2008
August 17, 2008
Best. Explanation of sub-prime mortgage crisis. EverJay Rosen calls the special This American Life episode on the mortgage/credit crisis “probably the best work of explanatory journalism I have ever heard.” After listening to the podcast yesterday, I’ve got to agree. Not only do I now understand what happened, I think I’m actually going to remember the explanation. Furthermore, the show focuses on the question that really bothers most of us: What the hell were we thinking? Didn’t we know that offering huge loans to anyone who walked in was unlikely to end well? The show interviews people at different levels in the process, and asks them exactly that. It is a great piece of journalism. And be sure to read Jay’s piece about it, which is both insightful and wise.
Categories: infohistory, media Date: August 17th, 2008
August 13, 2008
The Guardian does LOLbushAugust 8, 2008
Small public-interest media grantsThe Media Research Hub has announced the availability of small-ish grants for advocacy groups working on media reform:
If you win, don’t forget my finder’s fee! :)
Categories: media Date: August 8th, 2008
August 7, 2008
How to make the debates interactiveJose Antonio Vargas at the Washington Post wonders how we could make the upcoming presidential debates interactive, given that the teaming with MySpace is disappointing. If given a choice between having more YouTube snowmen asking questions or hearing McCain and Obama talk with one another for an hour with no moderator and no questions, I would completely go for the YouTubeless version. But, since that’s not going to happen except in “West Wing” reruns, I think the best we can hope for is a two-parter that makes everything around the debates interactive. In part one, we the people have an official forum by which we can raise and debate questions beforehand. Maybe the moderators will be moved to ask something that actually matters to us. (The Berkman Question Tool is great for people in an audience to use during a session. It’s been open-sourced. Maybe it could be beefed up for national or regional use. Or maybe, if the debates really had a representative audience, it could be used during the debate. Sigh. Just daydreaming.) In part two, we the people carry on a simultaneous debate and discussion as the debate proceeds. And before it. And after it. This already happens, of course, albeit these days frequently through Twitter, which is not well designed for this. But we ought to be able to debate along with the debate. And we will, one way or another.
August 4, 2008
HelpAReporter.comPeter Shankman, a marketing/PR practioner/speaker, has set up a service called HelpAReporter.com that intends to bring together journalists and sources. It’s free and very informal — you sign up for emails, you respond to requests for help — which is an appropriate way to start. But it’s so ripe an opportunity for abuse by people pushing their clients’ points of view, or just pushing their clients’ brands, that it’ll be interesting to see whether journalists avail themselves of it. Because it’s a mailing list that arrives up to three times a day, my guess is that it’ll mainly be PR folks and lobbyists who attend to it closely enough, and that will (?) drive down its utility for journalists. But, I’m rarely right, so we’ll see…
[Later that day: See Peter S’s comment about how he handles abusers. Sounds pretty effective to me :)
July 29, 2008
Reason #12,563 I love the WebI’m a-lovin’ Marijn Haverbeke’s Eloquent Javascript, an interactive javascript tutorial. It’s clear, nicely written, nice looking, handy (what with its embedded console for trying scripts out), free, and Creative Commons licensed. It’s easily downloadable so you can run/read it even when you don’t have any of that newfangled “broadband” the kids are so excited about. Thank you, Marijn.
July 27, 2008
Citizen media satireThe Guardian’s satire of citizen media has some biting lines, but it’ll be interesting to see how funny — that is, truthful — it seems in, say, five years.
July 24, 2008
HuffingtonPost starts providing topic pagesHuffingtonPost today announced that, in addition to its usual front-page layout, it’s aggregating its content around 75 (so far) top-level topics. For example, here’s the Barack Obama page. This takes a page (so to speak) from the NY Times Topic pages, which pull together the NYT’s topic on something like 3,000 topics. The NYT Topic pages not only give a centralized place to read about something, they also give people a place to link to, which apparently happens a lot given the strength of those pages in Google rankings. Likewise, the Huffpo “Big News” pages can be linked to and are widgetized. I’m not sure how the new HuffPo pages differ from the old pages you’d see when you clicked on a tag. Presumably, there’s been some level of hand editing, but I’m not sure
Categories: everythingIsMiscellaneous, media Date: July 24th, 2008
More journalism linksMore links that have come up at the Berkman discussion about keeping hard journalism sustainable:
Categories: media Date: July 24th, 2008
e-Journalism linksSome sites that have come up at a confab in progress at the Berkman Center about sustainable models for journalism: Spot.us for public support of particular stories
Dan Gillmor on helping the almost-journalists The “iTunes of journalism”: Mochila
Categories: media Date: July 24th, 2008
July 21, 2008
Turning to the bloggersWhen I read something like today’s news that only 10% of American newspaper editors consider foreign news to be “very essential” to their coverage, I instinctively turn to the bloggers who I know will have something enlightening, thoughtful and sometimes profound to say. And that by itself says a lot about how news is changing. Of course, I did read that particular news in a newspaper, although I was referred there by a blog aggregator. So, I’m not saying that professional news media are unnecessary or add nothing. Not at all. But the news ecology in just a few years has become 100% mixed.
July 20, 2008
Mygazines, because Magster.com was taken?Mygazines.com is an interesting idea. Currently in beta, it’s designed to let anyone upload any magazine or magazine article, and then share the content, using the familiar elements of content-based social networking sites (or, more accurately, the social networking elements of content-based sites). The site unfortunately has little information about itself, so I don’t know what they think they’re going to do about the obvious copyright issues. The existing content includes the magazines’ ads, so maybe the site hopes publishers will see some benefit in being scanned ‘n’ read. (As an example, here’s a link to the complete contents of the current issue of The New Yorker.) While the tool for reading is pretty slick, the process of posting to enable said slickness seems pretty onerous. I’m interested to see what becomes of it…
July 5, 2008
Graffiti: The movieI am a crotchety old man about graffiti. 99.9% of them — and, as usual, all my statistics have been authenticated by having been made up — impose an adolescent narcissism. But I also think: (a) I don’t really understand the cultural positioning behind it, (b) some of it is public, rebellious art, and (c) it’s not like the commercial exploitation of public space is so great. So, the documentary Bomb-It looks very interesting. (The initial trailer is meatier than the new one.) (Thanks to RageBoy for the link, for this follow-up, and for posting the beautiful poster.)
July 2, 2008
Kindle is fun but sucks for scholarsI’m enjoying my Amazon Kindle ebook reader, albeit while accidentally pressing the “next page” button as often as everyone else (did they beta test this thing all on the thumbless?), and whining about the rest of the annoyances about which you should not even get me started. Nevertheless, it works fine for pleasure reading and I like carrying a whole bunch of books among which I can switch rapidly. And despite its ugly DRM heart, you can upload books from the Net in PRC, MOBI, or text formats. But, when it comes to books I read for research, it’s about as effective as it would be as a boat anchor. First, the note-taking and highlighting are jokes. Second, it (usefully) lets you repaginate on the fly, but (annoyingly) doesn’t know the original page numbering. How am I supposed to cite a page in a reference? It should let us ask nicely about which physical page the current text came from. Third, there’s no bibliographic tool. Obviously, Kindle was not designed for researchers. I understand that, and I would have made the same marketing decision. But for Kindle 2.0, it’d just take some software. (Well, and a change to the Kindle book format to capture the original page numbers.) There’s a bunch of skeptical Kindle links here.
July 1, 2008
A day without the WebZachary McCune, who is at the Berkman Center, became an “ambassador” for One Web Day. To rev up for it, he did an anthropological study on himself by going without the Net for one day. He’s blogged his odyssey. As an example, here’s what Zack wrote at 12:22:
And at 1:20, amidst all the urges to google this or click on that, he has a quieter moment:
Oh, just read the whole thing yourself! It’s wonderful.
Categories: digital culture, media Date: July 1st, 2008
June 29, 2008
Coach potatoes in the age of YouTube?Would we not then be YouTubers? (Amazingly, the query youtuber “coach potato” only turns up 4 hits, none of which are making this bad joke. Am I getting my Google syntax wrong??) (And if it’s not clear why it’s a joke at all, look up “tuber.” See? Hahaha.)
June 20, 2008
HL: The argument against printWay back when, the magazine Movieline was one of my many guilty pleasures. (Aren’t we supposed to feel guilty about all pleasures? Oy.) It was an irreverent mag for people who felt a little bad about liking pop movies. Apparently there weren’t enough of us, or we were the wrong demo for the advertisers, because Movieline became Hollywood Life, which was more interested in the lifestyles of the rich and boring than in teasing the people we had secret crushes on. Then Hollywood Life stopped publishing, and, frankly, I didn’t care. Now it’s back and in my mailbox as HL, an ultra-glossy, high glamor, near-card-stock magazine that epitomizes just about everything I don’t want to see in a magazine or, frankly, on paper: The topics are out of date. The first three one-page profiles are of the big name stars of Indiana Jones, Savage Grace, and Leatherheads, three movies that came out weeks ago, and one of which failed miserably months ago. Jeez! It fetishizes the sorts of objects no one actually buys and few of us care about: Diamonds, obscenely expensive perfume, furniture too ugly to sit in, clothing only Jessica Alba’s prepubescent sister could fit in. The font is tiny, and although it has serifs, it is far from angelic. The stems are so fine that it is almost illegible when it’s printed white against a dark background, which it frequently is. It’s even worse when it’s black against a blue and black background photo of a shag carpet, as it is on a two-page spread. Print is not intended to be op art. The photography is dark ‘n’ trite, because you know that’s how us jet-setting couch potatoes like it. And when they run a full page photo of Malcolm McDowell printed on blue paper, not only is his dark jacket nothing but a black lump, they tell us who provided it for the shot. John Varvatos, call your agent. Or your lawyer. The writing is awful. Here is the opening line of the piece on Harrison Ford: “Harrison is like … a fine wine.” And that’s proudly in all caps as the lead-in. (The ellipsis is in the original.) The big article on Cannes takes three long paragraphs of value-free blather (”sleepy fishing village,” “charmed circle,” “could hardly have imagined,” “celebrity hot spots,” “breathtaking vista,” “windswept pines”) before telling us what it’s about: Some glamorous Cannes spots you might to visit. Even then, it lacks the sort of information that might be useful to a traveler. As you’ve guessed, HL doesn’t give a flying celluloid crap about anyone new and actually interesting. For example, a two-page spread tells us that the Halcyon Company — “one of Hollywood’s most cutting-edge and innovative entertainment groups” because, well, it hasn’t actually produced anything … be sure to tip your PR agent, boys — plans on “reinventing” sci-fi by picking up the Terminator franchise. Yes, there’s nothing more cutting-edge and innovative than picking up a franchise. Oh, they have a “portfolio” of young Hollywood actors…whom they portray as 1940’s noir-ish stars (oddly claiming the photography is an homage to the Silent Era). In fact, overall the photos are retro as if a magazine proudly proclaiming that print isn’t dead can only prove it by looking like something you might have found in your upscale dentist’s office forty years ago. Do you think when I mulch it, the varnish on the pages will cause my geraniums to wilt?
June 14, 2008
RIP, Tim RussertKaren Schneider posts that “Tim Russert didn’t have a poker face; it was obvious when he thought he was hearing nonsense…” Very true. It was good to have a journalist who was able to express emotions other than anger. He seemed to love what he did. We are the worse without him.
Categories: media Date: June 14th, 2008
June 10, 2008
Britannica tweaks the wikiBritannica has announced that it’s going to enable some measure of reader participation in the extending of the online version of their encyclopedia. You can see the beta of the new site here. The detailed overview of the planned site says:
Excellent! We needs lots of variations on the theme of collaboration. Editing and expertise add value. They slow things down and reduce the ability to scale, but Wikipedia’s process makes it possible to read an article that’s been altered, if only for a minutes, by some devilish hand. It all depends on what you’re trying to do, and collectively we’re trying to do everything. So, this is good news from Britannica. It’ll be fascinating to watch. To pick a nit, I’m not as convinced by Britannica’s insistence on objectivity as a value, however. The blog post says “we believe that the creation and documentation of knowledge is a collaborative process but not a democratic one.” It lists three positive consequences of this. The third is “objectivity, and it requires experts.” In a reference that makes you wish they’d at least once use the word “Wikipedia,” the post continues: “In contrast to our approach, democratic systems settle for something bland and less informative, what is sometimes termed a ‘neutral point of view.’” I think it would be reasonable for Britannica to tell us that an expert-based, edited system is likely to yield articles that are more comprehensive, more uniform in quality, more accurate and more reliable. But haven’t we gotten past thinking that expertise yields objectivity? Anyway, I think it’s amazing that the Britannica, in its 240th year, is taking this step. Britannica will be better for it, and so will we.
Categories: culture, digital culture, education, everythingIsMiscellaneous, folksonomy, knowledge, media Date: June 10th, 2008
June 9, 2008
AllVoicesAllVoices is a new site that lets anyone upload an “event,” which in other circumstances might be called a “news story.” The site enables the clustering of bloggage and msm coverage of the event in what looks like a useful way. I like a lot about it. I just hope it doesn’t become the preserve of yet another homogeneous group, which is exactly what the site doesn’t want to happen. (It could use tags. [LATER that day: A helpful person from AllVoices tells me that there are tags for user-contributed items but not for ones that the system susses out.]
June 6, 2008
Flyp’s balloonFlyp’s new issue is another example of how mainstream media production values can find a more interesting home on the Web. And in terms of raw content goodness, take a look at the bursting balloon high-speed imagery in the “Maximum Definition” article.
Categories: media Date: June 6th, 2008
June 4, 2008
The audible campaign, from The Conversations NetworkThe Conversations Network has added a new “channel” that does for the 2008 US presidential campaign what IT Conversations does for tech: Lots of good talk by interesting, informed people. It’s a joint project with the equally estimable PRX.org. [Disclosure: I'm on The CN board of directors. It's a non-profit.]Disclosure
May 6, 2008
[berkman] David Ardia: Citizen Media Law ProjectDavid Ardia is giving a Berkman lunch talk on the Citizen Media Law Project. David begins by acknowledging his colleagues on the project, which has been student-driven to a large degree. [Caution Live-Blogging: I'm missing things, getting them wrong, etc. You will be able to see the session itself at Media Berkman. ] David begins by looking at iBrattleboro.com, a citizen journalism, the neurodiversity weblog, and wikileaks. These sites have come to the attention of CMLP because they are citizens media sites that have little or no journalism training, little or know knowledge of media law, and not a lot of money. The CMLP grew out of a desire to provide resources for groups like these. (Dan Gillmor was one of the forces behind this, says David.) CMLP began in April 2007, got a Knight News Challenge Award in May, published its legal threats database in Nov, launched their legal guide in Jan. 2008, and in Feb. did its first amicus filing (for Wikileaks). The legal guide site has lots and lots of material in it, covering six topics: forming a business and getting online, dealing with online legal risks, newsgathering and privacy, access to government info, intellectual property, and risks associated with publication. There are 5-10 topics under each of these. There’s a lot there. David walks through the site. There is a rich variety of ways of finding and browsing. In David’s example, the site explains how to create a non-profit corp., and actually steps you through the process, including the specifics for the fifteen states the guide covers so far. The legal threats database has 25 attributes by which it can be searched. Users can contribute their own entries, although most come in through email. (They also import data from the Chilling Effects site.) The database does not make judgments about the threats. There are 467 entries in the database. Over half are law suits. They include threats to bring criminal charges (16) or to bring disciplinary action (18); that last is included because the legal system backs up the contracts that permit disciplinary action. David explains that the site takes an inclusive approach since you can easily narrow your queries to the areas that interest you. [A good "miscellaneous" principle!] Factoids: California, which has 12% of the population, is the source of 21% of the threats. 30% of the legal claims are for defamation. Copyright infringements come in second with 8%. 93 of the law suits are pending. 40 settled. The plaintiffs got an injunction in 16 of the cases and won their cases 13 times. That’s not a lot out of more than 250 cases. David says that these sorts of results are fairly normal for law suits, although (he adds) these tend to be emotion-driven litigations, not money-driven. David gives us a tour of the iBrattleboro case entry. It’s a very well-organized, thorough research on the topic. David ends by posing some questions for expanding the database and opening it up.
Categories: digital rights, media Date: May 6th, 2008
May 1, 2008
I’ve been rocketboomed…Rocketboom is running a synopsis of my talk on fame at ROFLcon. (Does that make me meta-famous?)
Categories: digital culture, media Date: May 1st, 2008
April 24, 2008
Citizen Media legal guideThe Berkman Center’s Citizen Media Law Project has a site that’s rich with information, written in non-legalese, about your rights and liabilities as a blogger (and general citizen media person) in the U.S. There’s lots to browse there, and it’s all quite concise and helpful. For example, the section on whether it’s legal to record a phone call you’re having with someone else says, in part:
This is an excellent resource.
Web fame - notes on my talk-to-be at ROFLconI’m talking tomorrow at ROFLcon, a conference about Web fame, celebrity and culture. I’m supposed to be talking in a general way about Web fame. Then I’m leading a panel composed of men (yup) who are Web famous: Kyle Macdonald (One Red Paperclip), Joe Mathelete (Joe Mathelete Explains Marmaduke), Ian Spector (Chuck Norris Facts), Andy Ochiltree (JibJab.com), Andrew Baron (Rocketboom), Alex Tew (The Million Dollar Homepage) Here’s a sketch of what I’m thinking of saying: Fame has been a property of the broadcast (= one-to-many) system. Fame is based on the math of many people knowing you, so many that you can’t know them. But it’s not just math, of course. It’s also economics. The broadcast economy has a fiduciary interest in building and maintaining the famous. TheyR |