Connecting threads….

Dan says that its time to wave goodbye to the the idea of journalistic objectivity and move on to embrace new (old) principals that are required in this day and age: thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, and transparency. Couldn’t agree more. I’d love to see pundit bloggers agree on these principals. Boy would I.

Meanwhile Jay Rosen says the whole blogger vs. journalist argument is over. I’ve never really subscribed to the idea that it existed since I’ve always looked at blogging a toolset.

Ed Cone shares the smartest thing I’ve read in a while on the subject (I say that because it agrees with what I just said!): “Blogging is a tool, Journalism is an occupation, and Credibility is a goal” from The Head Lemur.

For pundits/journalists/domain experts – credibility is the goal. For the rest of the world – Shelley’s right – it’s about fun, communication, expression and sharing.

“You link it, you own it”

“…the less something you link to has the stamp of official authority, the more you’ve taken responsibility for it. That is, if I link to the paper of record, then I own the responsibility for it 10% and they own it 90%. But, if I link to “some person on the internets somewhere” who has no established institutional credibility (or lack of) then I own it 95%. In other words, the less likely it is that anyone would have heard about something without my bringing it to their attention, the more I’ve taken the responsibility for verifying the information.”

Eschaton: You link it, you own it: 01/16/05

Yep. And what you say in your link text counts too. Just one of the reasons that power laws (Clay Shirky) do exit on the web. No matter what you might believe.

Technorati announces winners to their developer contest

Top three winners:

You policy wonks will want to bookmark GovTrack.us. What a service!

You media/newspaper folks will be interested in Whitelabel.org. It wraps BBC News articles to show what blogs are commenting on them.

Those of you interested in the intersection between Democracy and technology will want to bookmark Personal Democracy Forum.

Read about them and the rest of the winners here.

SixApart buys LiveJournal

In a move that is bound to make many nervous (though it shouldn’t folks) SixApart buys LiveJournal. Two blogger toolsets under one roof. Actually, two entirely different blogging cultures under one roof. I think that’s a good thing. They have lots to learn from one another.

But “The real question we have to ask ourselves is what happens when you consolidate that much Perl code under one roof?” (rc3.org). Hehe.