Tag Archives: internet

These are connected: Future of Journalism Links and Communication for September 23, 2009

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Ethan Zuckerman covered a Clay Shirky talk given at the Shorenstein Center” on journalism today and its future. It’s an absolute must read for media/info/com future thinkers: “Clay Shirky and accountability journalism”.

Mark Bowden traces the path a story takes, from political operatives, thru social media, to mainstream news, in the The Atlantic piece“The Story Behind The Story”. Another must read.

Paul Graham: Post-Medium Publishing. Slashdot thread.

Mathew Ingram: Micropayments for news: The holy grail or just a dangerous delusion?

The Atlantic: The Rise of the Professional Blogger

And finally, Timothy Egan attacks an entire subset of the population for their passion based on a lack of facts, missing the point that he is working for a member of the industry that has a role in that: “Working Class Zero”

If you build it, but don’t participate, you get what you deserve

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The Nieman Journalism Lab: Mathew Ingram: Newspapers get the kind of communities they deserve:

many newspapers still see comments as some kind of necessary evil: a bone tossed to readers to help drive traffic, but something that produces little else of value

That attitude is behind what renders the commenting at most newspaper websites so defective.

Surfacing the community around your news has way more to do with participating with it online than just enabling comments and walking away. In fact, doing the later by itself never works.

The web is littered with sites where commenting is enabled, and the hosts do not participate, do not curate, do not even moderate in a transparent fashion. The results of which are never good – thread after thread of trolling, personal invective, and lack of communication. This leads to far too many finding commenting as worthless add-on that you must have for a website, but for no other reason.

It’s a missed opportunity and for many of these sites, part of their failed web strategies.

If you have 10 million visitors a month and only 1 person focused on ‘community’ or ‘commenting’ – you have already failed.

Will Bunch: “People want a magic bullet… it’s not there”

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Will Bunch: Inquirer editor says you’re going to pay for this

Joshua-Michéle Ross : Stop Giving the Newspapers Your Advice – They Don’t Need It

Realistic views I heard at the norgs unconference maybe finally taking hold.

A perfect lesson in what our acceptance of soundbites can cause

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Shelley Powers was outright slandered by taking a sentence out of context from a comment she made: link.

This is part of the game of modern politics and modern media. The lack of apology from those involved is pretty damning, because no one wants to admit they participate in it or are part of the larger problem. A larger problem that is leading all of us to be less informed about the world around us when there is so much media available.

We have a responsibility one another. When you write from a position of trust – don’t abuse it.

Questions regarding Inquirer and Daily News plans to charge readers of their websites

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I was contacted by someone who teaches journalism for my thoughts on Daily News and Inquirer plans to charge readers – how they might affect local bloggers who often link, comment, or refer to the news from those online publications. He asked three difficult questions.

  • Q: Do you plan to pay for your local Philadelphia online news?
    A: It counts upon how much it costs and what if offers. I hope they pursue a NPR-like membership model instead of putting up a paywall. In the end, it counts upon the value offered.
  • Q: Will you link to articles that your readers will have to pay to read?
    A: Not if behind a paywall. I will find free alternatives to link to (KYW1060, TV station websites,
    national news sources, and especially local independent sources).
  • Q: Any general reactions to how you think this will affect what you do and what other local bloggers do?
    A: Local blogging will not be effected all that much believe it or not. There are many free alternatives. What is of concern is that we are becoming less and less informed as a people. At a time when we need *more* exposure to the work of the the Inquirer and Daily News, there will be less. That’s tragic.

I have to add that my hopes are that the papers remain local and that the bankruptcy proceedings are favorable to the local ownership. While I may disagree on paywalls, I feel that the news organizations within the papers stand the best chance at survival that way.

Making a good case, or how to disagree

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Paul Graham created a “disagreement hierarchy” that is an outline of arguing technique, from most base, to most complete. I’m hesitant to say “most effective” because as we’ve seen online – he or she with the most links can win an argument, no matter how ‘right’ or how ‘wrong’ – especially when the most fact filled refutation is considered opinion. Like Paul Graham, I’d love to see people consider it, because as he says, moving up the hierarchy makes people ‘less mean’. That’s because you move from making an argument about the person making the counter argument, to making your assertion stand on the weight of the facts you are presenting.

Sadly, anyone in any debate better be familiar with, and capable of using the first three rings of the ladder here, because an adversary most certainly will.

  1. DH0. Name-calling
  2. DH1. Ad Hominem
  3. DH3. Contradiction
  4. DH4. Counterargument.
  5. DH5. Refutation.
  6. DH6. Refuting the Central Point.

Read the whole thing: How to Disagree

The CreateDebateBlog drew up what amounts to a ‘reverse Maslow‘:

Disagreement Pyramid

Quotable – out of context – but worth it – on maybe why Bill O’Reilly is more popular than Bill Moyers?

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Alan Kay on comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak.beginners: Re: Smalltalk Data Structures and Algorithms:

What is wrong? Why is mere opinion so dominating discussions held on the easiest medium there has ever been that can provide substantiations with just a little curiosity and work? Is the world completely reverting to an oral culture of assertions held around an electronic campfire?

That quote is going to be passed around a lot.

It’s a one paragraph penetrating question into why the Bill O’Reilly’s of the world have so much more popularity then those who pursue the fact based journalism that a Bill Moyers pursues.

BTW – Howard Rheingold’s recent post at SFGate, “Crap Detection 101” is highly recommended (via Rebecca Blood).

How does news spread?

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Researchers at Cornell have published a paper titled “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle” that I need to dig into. They’ve published visualizations of their research at a NYTimes piece on the study says, “This is a landmark piece of work on the flow of news through the world… And the study shows how Web-scale analytics can serve as powerful sociological laboratories.”

Chris Anderson, who in May presented his own research into this to the International Communications Association (ICA) posted his reflections on that research and how it relates: Another Perspective on How “News” “Diffuses”: The Francisville 4 from Inside the Newsroom

Scott Rosenberg shares some criticisms in: “Newsies beat bloggers? Some caveats on memetracker study”.

Nieman Journalism Lab’s Zachary M. Seward summarizes it up: In the news cycle, memes spread more like a heartbeat than a virus.