Microblogging Mania
Twitter Helps with Reporting, Filtering the News
Last May on MediaShift, we wrote a series of articles about a new microblogging tool called Twitter, which was just beginning to gain visibility among the digerati. At that time, many bloggers were still on the fence as to how useful the service really was. Many thought it was...continued...
Digging Deeper
NPR Considers Convergence for Next Generation of Radio Reporters
The younger generation will be our future leaders. We hear that a lot in politics, but it also applies to media companies wondering who will be leading them into a digital future. National Public Radio has two programs — Next Generation Radio (NextGen) and Intern Edition — aimed at...continued...
NewsTools2008
This Reporter Becomes a Participant at an Unconference
Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution? That’s a question you hear a lot when people complain about something that’s gone wrong in our modern world. And there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the future of journalism and whether it will survive...continued...
Digging Deeper
9 Tips to Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With search engines ranking as a top traffic driver for many blogs and content sites, optimizing a site for search engine exposure is an increasingly critical component of any online marketing effort. Search engine optimization, or “SEO,” means using technical and not-so-technical techniques to make sure that people searching...continued...
Crisis in News
Are Veteran Media Execs the Ones Who’ll See the Future?
BERKELEY — We are midway through the first day at the conference, “Crisis in News: Is There a Future for Investigative Reporting?” [You can read my earlier post from the conference here.] One thing that struck me here is that we have some serious bigwigs and executives at major...continued...
Crisis in News
State of Investigative Reporting at Newspapers, Broadcasting
BERKELEY, CA — I am blogging live from the conference, “Crisis in News: Symposium on Investgative Reporting,” at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. It is perhaps the most beautiful day outside here, with glorious blue skies, but investigative journalists are like vampires, hiding out in dark spaces when...continued...
The List
Examples of Online Investigative Journalism
This weekend I’ll be attending “The Crisis in News: Is There a Future for Investigative Journalism?” hosted at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. There will be a lot of old school journalism types who have been plying the trade of investigative work...continued...
Digging Deeper
Public Documents + Shoe Leather Reporting = The Smoking Gun’s Staying Power
In a world of social network widgets, videoblogs and Web 2.0 gewgaws, sometimes it’s the simple things that work best. That’s the lesson of Web 1.0 startup The Smoking Gun, a simply designed site that relies on public documents and criminal mugshots to bring in boatloads of traffic. If...continued...
Gawking at Numbers
Why Paying People by Page Views is Wrong
Recently, Gawker Media, the blog empire run by Nick Denton, made two moves that were curious. One was spinning off three sites that weren’t making the cut: Gridskipper (travel), Idolator (music), and Wonkette (politics). The other was slashing the pay-per-page-view rate for Gawker Media writers by 33%. In Denton’s...continued...
Finding Balance
’Blog Till You Drop’ Phenomenon Overblown; Disconnecting Is Key
The New York Times recently published a story , “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop,” that created a lot of buzz. The story told about bloggers who were literally working themselves to death. As if it were a quickly advancing trend, the Times’ Matt Richtel...continued...
Digging Deeper
The Social Press Release: Multimedia, Two-Way, Direct to the Public
Silicon Valley journalist/blogger Tom Foremski had had enough. Two years ago, he wrote a poison pen letter to the PR industry in a blog post titled Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!, in which he exhorted publicists to break down press releases into sections, tag the information and provide...continued...
Evolution of African Blogs
How Bloggers Covered Kenya Violence, Deal with Racism, Sexism
Mark Glaser is traveling this week, but we’re happy to have Sokari Ekine filling in as a special guest blogger. Ekine started the award-winning Black Looks blog in 2004, and covers challenging issues such as gender, sexuality and racism. Glaser will return to the blog next Monday. Within 24...continued...
Digging Deeper
Politico 2.0: Ruffini Blogs, Twitters, Crowdsources Obama Donations
Patrick Ruffini is the epitome of the new breed of political consultant. He’s a numbers wonk who swears by Microsoft Excel. He’s a tech geek who’s had his own political website since the mid-’90s, and he writes for various big-name group blogs such as TechPresident and TownHall.com — as...continued...
The Perception Game
Am I a Journalist or Blogger?
I struggle nearly every week with an identity problem: Am I a blogger or a journalist? Most times, I can take the easy way out and think of myself as the nouveau blogger/journalist or journalist/blogger — but which one comes first? nags my inner pigeon-holer. Last week’s blog post...continued...
Digging Deeper
Distinction Between Bloggers, Journalists Blurring More Than Ever
The time-worn debate of Bloggers vs. Journalists has finally run its course. For years, traditional journalists scoffed at bloggers as pajama-wearing screamers, while bloggers have pointed to MSM (mainstream media) as secretly biased and obsolete. While the extremists in this argument have had the stage shouting at each other...continued...
Digging Deeper
Gadfly 2.0: How One Investor Used Social Media to Shake Up Yahoo
If you’re following the twists and turns of Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo, you can’t escape one name that keeps popping up in the media: Eric Jackson. As an activist shareholder in Yahoo, he has become the voice of the opposition, calling on Yahoo to accept Microsoft’s takeover bid...continued...
Live-Blogging Super Tuesday
Social Media, Google-Twitter Mashup and More on Super Duper Tuesday
11:02 am Pacific Time I’ll be live-blogging the Super Tuesday election day here in the U.S. and will be highlighting all the efforts online to cover the day’s events and results. I’m especially interested in finding the best social media sites, mainstream news sites and blogs and video coverage —...continued...
Digging Deeper
BusinessWeek.com Pushes into Aggregation, Video, Participation to Stand Out
Business news is often about numbers. And when you check the audience numbers on the various top financial news sites online, the portals such as Yahoo Finance and MSN Money come out on top, followed by a jumble of online magazines such as Forbes.com, wire services such as Reuters,...continued...
Digging Deeper
Traditional Media Ready to Elevate the Conversation Online — with Moderation
Major media sites have started to get the religion of audience participation, but there’s been one big hitch: How do you harness the audience’s knowledge and participation without the forums devolving into a messy online brawl that requires time-intensive moderation? Over the years, traditional media sites have tried forums,...continued...
Predictorama
Blog Pundits Certain About Steve Jobs’ Keynote
After the stunningly bad predictions by pollsters, pundits, commentators and anyone who graced a cable TV news studio before the New Hampshire Democratic primary, we decided to turn a fake news source, the fictional Online News Network (ONN), to tell us what Apple CEO Steve Jobs will tell everyone...continued...
Startup Fever
Journalists, Bloggers Have a Sorry History at Startups
As a journalist covering a particular business, there is a temptation to believe that we know enough about that business to actually become a full participant in that business. We have been writing about it, we see what works and what fails, so we should know enough to try...continued...
Digging Deeper
Hype and Backlash for Second Life Miss the Bigger Picture
In May 2006, BusinessWeek ran a cover story on the virtual world Second Life (SL) by Robert Hof called My Virtual Life. The tagline breathlessly said, “A journey into a place in cyberspace where thousands of people have imaginary lives. Some even make a good living. Big advertisers are...continued...
Digging Deeper
TechPresident, 10Questions Put Spotlight on ‘Voter-Generated Content’
Just as the Internet and technology have shifted the playing field in media, allowing bloggers and podcasters to help set the news agenda, so has the realm of politics been disrupted by technology that gives voters more power to inject their own issues into the fray. And in the...continued...
Return to the BOBs
7 Lessons Learned While Judging World-Changing Blogs
I spent the past week in freezing wet Berlin, helping judge the Best of the Blogs awards once again, an international competition run by the German public media outlet, Deutsche Welle (DW). There were some surprising winners, some heated arguments among the judges flown in from around the world,...continued...
Comments? No Comment…
Losing the Journalistic Security Blanket
Mark Glaser is away on vacation this week, but we’re happy to have Clyde Bentley filling in as a special guest blogger. Bentley is an associate professor for convergence journalism at the University of Missouri. Bentley helped start the MyMissourian grassroots journalism hub, and teaches students how to incorporate...continued...
Digging Deeper
Traditional Media Evolves for Wildfire Coverage, But Hyper-Local Still Lacking
When people think of community or hyper-local neighborhood news, they typically think of bake sales, petty crime and development catfights. But when a disaster strikes, the stakes for community news are raised, and lightning-quick news updates online can save lives and help residents cope. That was the reality in...continued...
The List
California Wildfire Coverage by Local Media, Blogs, Twitter, Maps and More
The last few days have shown that online resources, social media, and collaboration on the Net can make a huge difference in a natural disaster. As the wildfires have spread in Southern California, the evacuees and local residents have utilized the Internet not only to connect and get updated...continued...
Digging Deeper
MarketWatch Turns 10, But Can It Evolve for Another 10?
As the financial news site MarketWatch celebrates its 10th anniversary next week, the stalwart Web 1.0 company stands on the precipice of change. It has launched a community initiative that lets people comment on stories, rate stories, and compete for points by making market predictions. As part of Dow...continued...
Who’s a Journalist?
Even in U.S., Bloggers Get Little Protection
Earlier this year, there was a debate in journalism circles and in the general public about who could be considered a journalist, as San Francisco videoblogger and media maker Josh Wolf was jailed after refusing to turn over video footage to federal authorities. After spending 226 days in jail,...continued...
Digging Deeper
BBC Trains Iranian Journalists through ZigZag Online Magazine
Iran has a thriving blogosphere and a large educated and Internet-savvy class of people. But because it’s a closed society, most journalism training does not address the importance of objectivity and balance in reporting, nor does it stress the importance of online journalism. The BBC World Service Trust has...continued...
Burma Unrest
Can Internet, Blogs Sustain the Saffron Revolution?
When the ruling military junta in Burma cracked down on protesters, killing unarmed Buddhist monks, the world was watching. While mainstream journalists have to work undercover in Burma for fear of the junta’s wrath, Burmese citizens and tourists were able to shoot photos and videos of the protests and...continued...
Digging Deeper
Henry Blodget, Silicon Alley Look for Resurgence
When I mentioned the name “Henry Blodget” to a friend from the old dot-com daze, she wrinkled her nose with disgust. “How can anyone trust what he has to say, when he was the one who caused the bubble in the first place!” she said. Blodget was a financial...continued...
Cross-Platform Static
Bloggers Make Jump to TV Shows — But Should They?
It wasn’t that long ago that I was marveling over the fact that mainstream media was paying attention to blogs, particularly for culling public opinion on hot button political issues. I remember being shocked when CNN started featuring a segment quoting bloggers on “The Situation Room” — shocked and...continued...
Digging Deeper
Can Citizen Journalism Make a Difference in Jordan?
Ramsey Tesdell would like to bring the concept of citizen and community journalism to Jordan, an Arab country that has a long history of state-controlled media. Tesdell, 23, along with three other early 20somethings, launched the site 7iber in May as a place for “people-powered journalism,” hoping that average...continued...
Digging Deeper
TechDirt Builds Community of Bloggers to Offer Corporate Analysis
In the world of technology research, firms such as Gartner, Forrester Research and JupiterResearch seem to hold all the cards, knowing markets in-depth and charging firms thousands of dollars for a peek inside. Many small and medium companies, especially startups, are often on the outside looking in, not able...continued...
Digging Deeper
Collaborative Radio Shows Invite Listeners into Creative Process
Long before the term citizen journalism became trendy, ordinary citizens shared the stage for decades with professional journalists in talk radio. They collaborated, they cajoled, they ranted and they often added wit and wisdom to live radio call-in shows. But with the advent of the Internet, public radio shows...continued...
Digging Deeper
Placeblog Pioneer Sees Geo-Tagging as Key to Local Aggregation
For the past few years, bloggers have been living in a keyword-based world. When they write a blog post, they can tag the post by putting it into relevant topical categories. A post about the U.S. attorney general firing scandal might be tagged: “U.S. politics,” “Alberto Gonzales,” “attorney general...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Twitter Week Brings Praises, Catcalls
It seems like everyone who went to the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, last March came back talking about Twitter, the micro-blogging service that lets you broadcast bursts of information via text messaging. Alas, I didn’t attend, so remained a non-believer, as if I was a disciple...continued...
Digging Deeper
Milbloggers Upset with Restrictions, But Won’t Stop Blogging
Imagine you’re working at a small startup company and there are no regulations in place as to what you can do on company computers. You update your personal blog, and watch clips on YouTube during work breaks. But over time, the company grows bigger, and eventually tighter regulations come:...continued...
The Power of Many
Escaping the Bubble in Campaign Journalism
Mark Glaser is traveling this week, but we’re happy to have Jay Rosen filling in as a special guest blogger. Rosen is an associate professor at New York University’s Department of Journalism and longtime blogger at PressThink. He is the founder of the NewAssignment.Net experiment in pro-am journalism, and executive...continued...
State of the News Media 2007
Project for Excellence in Journalism Dissects 38 Sites; Blogger Index Coming
Each year since 2004 the Project for Excellence in Journalism has dropped the bomb of knowledge on the media world in the form of the State of the News Media report. The report is breathtaking in scope, with quantitative research on newspapers, online, TV, magazines, radio and ethnic media....continued...
Digging Deeper
Reuters Looks to Africa and a Decentralized Future for Media
The 155-year-old Reuters wire service has been reinventing itself for the modern age of decentralized journalism, where millions of people have the tools to capture the news around them. Reuters has made alliances and investments in blog aggregators Global Voices and Pluck, and with Yahoo for the citizen-submitted news...continued...
Digging Deeper
AP Warms Up to Blogs, Citizen Media at NowPublic
There’s something bland and homogeneous about an Associated Press wire story. Just the facts, ma’am, in classic inverted pyramid style. The satirical newspaper The Onion has made a mint mocking the news wire style, and the blogosphere has targeted the AP and Reuters for hidden agendas in their oh-so-perfect...continued...
PoliticalShift
2008 Candidates Jump Online with Early Blog Ads
There has been a delicate dance between political operatives and the Internet. While activists have been using blogs and new media to spread the word about politics or specific candidates for years, the politicians and their consultants have been wary of spending too much of their campaign chest on...continued...
Digging Deeper
Google Search Snafu Can Have Huge Impact on Niche Blogs
Dear Google, What happened? Where’s the love? You used to bring me flowers, you used to sing me love songs. You used to bring me traffic, at any rate… Google, baby. Let me back in. Me and my pretty dumb things are shivering out here in the digital ether...continued...
Digging Deeper
Nielsen BuzzMetrics Tries to Measure Buzz in Social Media
Last year was a watershed for social media, with millions of people creating and sharing their own media on sites such as MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr and turning away from traditional one-way media such as TV, radio and newspapers. But for the proprietors of these new media sites, there’s...continued...
Digging Deeper
WSJ Gets Comfortable with Blogs, Wants to Boost Community
Historically, the august Wall Street Journal’s website has been the antithesis of Web 2.0 and online innovation. The Journal’s site, WSJ.com, costs money to access, even if you already pay for the print edition. The site has stressed online columns, as opposed to blogs, and there has been very...continued...
Digging Deeper
Valour-IT, Milblogs Give Hundreds of Laptops to Wounded Soldiers
As I sit here and type this blog post, I pause for a moment to consider how important my fingers and hands are to me as a blogger and writer. If I should be injured or lose the use of my hands in some awful accident, what would I...continued...
Digging Deeper
Newspaper, Bubble Blogs Feed the Real Estate Obsession
Have you ever gone to an open house even though you weren’t interested in buying the property? Have you ever pored over housing price data on Zillow or read through housing ads on Craigslist just for fun? You are not alone. There seems to be a growing obsession with...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Bloggers Leading Mainstream Journalists in Transparency
Perhaps I was being a bit purposefully provocative in my question to you — “Should bloggers avoid conflicts of interest as journalists do?” — but it didn’t take long for readers to correct my thinking. While journalists do have a code of ethics they are supposed to follow, no...continued...
Digging Deeper
TPMmuckraker Thrives as Political Corruption Runs Rampant
“I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.” — President...continued...
Digging Deeper
Pentagon PR Blogger Explains Military’s New Media Challenge
The U.S. military is proud of its history and strength as a top-down organization, with a clear chain of command. In fact, you can’t talk to anyone in military public affairs (the equivalent of private-sector public relations) without hearing the inevitable phrase “chain of command” in response to a...continued...
Blog Evolution
Judging the Best Weblogs in the World at The BOBs
Last Friday, I was sitting in a conference room on the 37th Floor of the Park Inn in Berlin, Germany, along with people from Brazil, Holland, Spain, France, Russia, Germany, China and other far-flung places. We had all been flown into town by German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle to...continued...
African Watchblog
Keeping an Eye on the Kenyan Parliament
Mark Glaser is away on vacation this week, but we’re happy to have Ory Okolloh filling in as a guest blogger. Okolloh writes the Kenyan Pundit blog and graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2005. She is currently based in South Africa working as the Legal and...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Wal-Mart ‘Flogs’ Par for the PR Course
All blogs are not created equal, and many of them are not transparent in their athenticity either. Sometimes we are hoodwinked, we want to believe, but we are deceived by what have become known as “flogs” or fake blogs, bought and paid for by someone else. In the case...continued...
Digging Deeper
Brian Ross: Foley Story a Watershed for ABC News on the Web
The website navigation on each of the top U.S. broadcaster sites is the same litany of typical news categories: U.S., World, Politics, Business, Health, Science, etc. But at ABCNews.com, the list is slightly different: U.S., International, Investigative — that’s right, the Investigative category lands in the No. 3 slot...continued...
Digging Deeper
Creative Commons + Flickr = 22 Million Sharable Photos
When I was writing a blog post about Mark Cuban and his ShareSleuth site, I wanted to illustrate it with a good photo of Cuban but didn’t like the photo he sent me. So I turned to an invaluable source of photography for a non-commercial blog like MediaShift —...continued...
Online Organizing
Gallaudet University Protests Gain Global Audience
If you’re a non-deaf person who generally follows U.S. national news, you probably have a vague idea that there have been protests going on at the only university for the deaf, Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC. You might not be sure why the protests are happening, except that the...continued...
Not Dead Yet
Don’t Stick Fork In Editorialists Just Yet
Mark Glaser is away on vacation this week, but we’re happy to have Mark Tapscott filling in as a guest blogger. Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog and the Distinguished Journalism Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Glaser will return here next...continued...
Digging Deeper
Can Witness, Global Voices Make Human Rights Video Go Viral?
There is an impulse when we see quirky videos we like on YouTube to email them on to friends or co-workers. When those catchy videos start accumulating viewers, marketers say it’s gone viral through word-of-mouth popularity. So what if you could take videos shot by citizens of human rights...continued...
Digging Deeper
Mark Cuban’s Sharesleuth Takes Business Reporting to Ethical Edge
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban has one of the best named weblogs, Blog Maverick, because he is nothing if not a maverick in the technology, sports and online worlds. He shepherded his Broadcast.com streaming multimedia company through a successful initial public offering in 1998 and sold it to Yahoo in...continued...
Open Source Reporting
Bloggers Gauge Web 2.0 Features for Newspaper Sites Around World
So this is how open source reporting works. On August 1, The Bivings Group released a research report of how the Top 100 U.S. newspaper websites were implementing features such as blogs, podcasts and social bookmarking. (I summarized the findings here.) By August 10, three bloggers located outside the...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Skepticism Rampant Over War ‘Fauxtography’
Most people trust that the photos they see of war in their daily newspaper shot by a professional photographer are accurate. The photographer risked his or her life to get the shot, snapped the picture, sent it to a photo editor, who then vetted it for publication. But photos...continued...
NewspaperShift
Newspaper Sites Hot to Blog, Cool to Podcasts
Newspaper companies are feeling the shift hard, as people go from reading print newspapers to getting their news and classified ads on the Internet. But if there’s one thing the Newspaper Association of America can hang their hat on, it’s that newspaper websites continue to grow their audiences and...continued...
Live from BlogHer
Being a BlogHim at BlogHer Conference
SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Compared to last month’s fiesty, combative BloggerCon IV conference in San Francisco, the BlogHer conference here is almost a revival meeting of mutual support and warm emotion. During the jam-packed opening session today, BlogHer organizer Elisa Camahort had women come to the stage to describe...continued...
Rare Good News
Bloggers Freed From Jail in China, Egypt, Iran
With bombs dropping in Lebanon and Israel, sectarian violence rising in Iraq and civil war in Somalia — among other bad tidings — we are in dire need of good news and a reason to get up in the morning. Thankfully, there has been a spate of such news...continued...
Survey Says
Big Media Last to Know Bloggers Not in Pajamas
Today was going to be a day of triumphalism in the new media world, a day where I would celebrate the growing ranks of blog creators (a.k.a. bloggers) and blog readers in the U.S., while also noting the growing number of people downloading podcasts. I would combine the happy...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Everyone Has an Opinion on Future of Rocketboom
So what’s up with Rocketboom, the popular video blog that lost its longtime host, Amanda Congdon? When we last left the he said/she said soap opera, Rocketboom honcho Andrew Baron was readying a replacement for Congdon, while Congdon was upset about being “unboomed” from the show. While I was...continued...
Rocketboom Drama
Is Amanda Congdon Replaceable?
When I lived in New York City in the late ’80s, I thought I was a hotshot DJ. I spun records (yes, vinyl) at a restaurant in Queens that had a special dance night catering to flight attendants. More people started showing up, the owner started charging for entry,...continued...
Digging Deeper
Blogger-Anchor Brian Williams Defends Nightly Newscasts
After countless months of blissful ignorance, I finally broke down and watched the “NBC Nightly News.” OK, so it was at 10:30 pm and it was really a netcast online. I still watched what looked like the evening news. It harked back to a time, perhaps 10 years ago,...continued...
Live from BloggerCon
Thinking Beyond Blogs
SAN FRANCISCO — Despite my initial reaction to BloggerCon as being a room full of bloggers talking about blogging, the topics of discussion on the first day actually went beyond just blogging. The technical discussions touched on web standards and podcasting, and at one point someone even complained that...continued...
Opinion-Page Makeover
Turn NY Times Columnists Into Bloggers
Last week I tried to channel Ronald Reagan in asking New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. to tear down the TimesSelect pay wall. But perhaps I tried too hard to stick to the original speech, without clarifying my points well. Plus, I wonder what would happen if the...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Newspaper Blogs Must Break Social Control of Newsroom
Something about the juxtoposition of the words “newspaper blog” doesn’t ring true. Newspapers and blogs don’t seem to fit together naturally unless you’re thinking of a blogger who likes to rip apart the bias of a local newspaper. Yet, if you can set aside the early combative relationship between...continued...
Digging Deeper
Blogger Beware: Syndicators Might Offer a Raw Deal
Budding writers often dream of the day their words will reach a wider audience, and that they’ll get paid for their hard work. And for many bloggers who toil in obscurity below the radar, the thought of having their blog posts show up on a huge newspaper site such...continued...
Sock Puppetry
Bloggers Must Be Vigilant Against Astroturf Comments
If you run an online forum or a blog that allows readers to comment, you sometimes feel like you’re having a conversation in the fog. Often people will contribute anonymously or make up names or places where they live, or even lie about their gender, age or occupation. So...continued...
Digging Deeper
Blogs, Wiki, Google Bomb Used to Free Egyptian Activist
Last August, when I was working on a story for Online Journalism Review about activists using technology to organize protests in Egypt, I made the mistake of focusing too much on blogs. One of the people I interviewed, Alaa Abd El Fattah, was quick to pounce on me for...continued...
Digging Deeper
Your Guide to Blogging
From time to time, I’m going to try to give an overview of one broad new-media topic, annotated with online resources and plenty of tips. The idea is to help you understand the topic, learn the jargon, and hopefully consider participating in some way — even if it’s all...continued...
Digging Deeper
Reuters Looks to Provide ‘Spine of Truth’ to Blogosphere
In the brave new world of citizen media — with bloggers, podcasters and video journalists doing it themselves — what role does the musty old wire service play? An important one, if it can stay relevant, honest and transparent. Because if you eliminate the tell-it-like-it-is wire stories from the...continued...
Live from London
We Media’s World Tour from Reuters
LONDON — First, the good news. I can report that the halls of the We Media conference were buzzing today with people slagging the overproduced Big Media lovefest at the BBC yesterday, and heaping praise on the second day’s global focus and more intimate setting at Reuters’ headquarters in...continued...
Live from London
We Media, Me Too Media and Them Media
LONDON — It’s exciting to be in a room — well, actually a glitzy BBC TV studio — with a group of top media executives, consultants, think-tankers and gadflys for a day of discussion about We Media or citizen journalism. Much of the discussion was about how Big Media...continued...
Live from London
Which Media Do You Trust?
LONDON — I am your on-the-scene correspondent this week from London, where I am currently in a BBC TV studio listening to various people discuss citizen journalism at the We Media Forum. The conference bills itself thusly: “No ordinary conference, We Media is about how we create a better-informed...continued...
Opinion Roundup
Mixed Views on Apple Vs. Gossip Sites
In the Age of the Blog, the wheels of justice are spinning in the U.S. as courts are trying to rule on the rights of bloggers as journalists. There are more questions than answers in a case such as Apple vs. Does: Are the people who run gossip news...continued...
Free Hao Wu
Blogosphere Unites to Help Jailed Chinese Filmmaker
It’s a strange sensation reading through the personal musings of Hao Wu on his Beijing or Bust blog. There is an entry, Teacher for Life, in which Hao recollects a recent meeting with a former teacher. The entry is dated February 22 — the same date that the Beijing...continued...
Digging Deeper
Singapore Tries to Squelch Political Blogs, Podcasts
While many Americans have been focused lately on online censorship in China, few have noticed a similar practice in other countries such as Singapore. That island state is a parliamentary republic in theory, but has really been run by one dominant party in its history of independence since 1965...continued...
Get a Life
Fighting Blog Obsession
When I first started blogging in January, I had a sneaky suspicion that this blog might become a bit of an obsession. Here’s what I wrote then: “But now, finally, in 2006, I am ready to turn my life over to the blog. I hope it doesn’t eat my...continued...
Blog Tempest
Strumpette an ‘Anonymous Coward’ or PR Muckraker?
Everyone who toils in glamorous industries dreams of the day that they’ll write a tell-all book or blog on the subject of what really goes on at their workplace. And the example of the Washingtonienne is instructive: Capitol Hill staffer writes about her sexcapades with co-workers on an anonymous...continued...
Israeli Elections
Live Blogging the Next Best Thing to TV
Before the 2004 U.S. elections, I considered political news on the Internet to be an addendum to the breaking news I would get from cable TV or the serious journalism of newspapers and magazines. But as the 2004 elections neared in October of that year, I realized that any...continued...
Blog Obsession
I Am a Technorati Addict
When I started this blog, I was worried that it would take over my life. What I didn’t know at the time was that the blog wasn’t the only thing that would take over. Now, when I log on each day, it’s not just to read comments on the...continued...
Far From a Twilight
Blog Hype Over — Business Has Just Begun
Journalists can be very predictable. They love a story about something exciting and new that is changing our culture, changing our politics, transforming our very lives! And they equally love a story debunking that thing that was supposed to transform our lives as really being a crock, just something...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Giving Props to Last-Place Finishers at Olympics
As we are knee-deep in the Winter Olympics games, I wondered how you were experiencing the Olympics online, and asked you to tell me about some quirky sites you liked. The Games so far have been a bit quirky, from the marshmallow-headed mascots Neve and Gliz (pictured here) to...continued...
Video Blog Sellout
Rocketboom Nets $80,000 After eBay Auction
When Andrew Baron decided to use eBay to sell the first ads on his popular video blog Rocketboom, he was worried that no one would bite. But bite they did. After Rocketboom’s 10-day auction, the winning bidder had the screen name of StarFinder5, and paid $40,000 for five ads...continued...
Your Blog Here
SportingNews.com Gives Readers Super Platform
If you’re nutty about sports, and live in the U.S., you probably spend a good amount of time on the leading American sports website, ESPN.com. It’s flashy, it has attitude, it’s filled with good info, and it’s awash in video highlights. And for fan involvement, there’s ESPN SportsNation with...continued...
Forget Ad Agencies
Rocketboom Auctions Ad to the Highest Bidder
In the beginning, when the web first became popular, everyone talked about disintermediation, the idea that the Internet would help eliminate the middleman or intermediary. You could buy books without going to a bookstore, read newspapers without going to a newsstand, and communicate with like-minded folks without going to...continued...
Blog Comments
Washingtonpost.com Walks the Line
The people who run the website for the Washington Post newspaper, washingtonpost.com, really want to empower their readers and give them more online. They offer live online chats with reporters and editors, online forums for readers to discuss Post articles, and a slew of blogs including the Post.Blog, in...continued...
Welcome Aboard
Why Do I Blog?
Blogging is a funny thing. Weblogs, those online diaries that run in reverse chronological order, are just like any other new technological advance: more people have heard of them than have actually read them or written them. My Aunt Bobby, when she heard that I was writing about blogs, would...continued...
