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COMMUNICATION

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    Hail the New Democracy?

    Avoid any easy hype about the potential of the internet to usher in a new age of democracy, warns Jackie Ashley. Murdoch and the better-off are mapping their monopolistic powers over to the new digital medium while the old medium’s powers to question these elites are being sidelined: We should be nervous when politicians start boasting, as they are, that the net allows them to bypass irritatingly persistent, difficult interviewers such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman. Obviously, they need to be scrutinised and cross-questioned by well-briefed interrogators, secure enough in their jobs to push the point. Democracy demands it.… >>>

  • Journalists, Generalists

    We’ve spent a lot of time, post-Enron, criticizing the flaws in the investment community’s gatekeeping activities. But I think we should also recognize what the Enron case tells us about the value of newspaper journalism. Maybe, in other words, we have underestimated the value of impartial, professionally-motivated, under-paid and overworked generalists in tackling the kind of information-rich, analysis-dependent “mysteries” that the modern world throws at us. All of which, of course, points out the irony of what’s happening in the newspaper business right now. We are dismantling the institution of newspaper journalism precisely at the moment when it seems to… >>>

  • Carrots, Sticks, Journalism and Nick Denton

    Writers at NYC’s Gawker Media get paid bonuses for the volume of traffic and page views their stories generate, according to bitter and jaded hacks getting drunk in one of the dives on Fifty-second Street uncertain and afraid as the clever hopes expire etc an inside source. In a profile of Gawker boss Nick Denton, a “born mischief-maker who has made a fortune out of gossip”, by the Guardian’s James Silver, a Gawker underling reveals: We got quarterly bonuses based on traffic which results in this all-day obsessive monitoring of traffic. As long as page views stay high, advertising rates… >>>

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    BBC Regroups For A Digital Future

    More convergence at the BBC. Yesterday, its TV and radio departments shut up shop. And were then born again. Following Director-General Mark Thompson’s restructuring plans, the Beeb is regrouping into Vision, Audio & Music, Journalism and Future Media & Technology. – BBC Vision launches with a promise to audiences The BBC needs to be ready for “360 degree multi-platform content creation”, according to Thompson. – BBC reorganises for an on-demand Creative Future Or as one BBC radio, sorry, Audio and Music presenter put it: You can’t say radio any more in case people are listening on a mobile phone or… >>>

  • Notes From An Echo Chamber

    Words of wisdom from dotcom entrepreneur, billionaire, Ayn Rand fan etc Mark Cuban: You can find any type of discussion group across the Net that is finite enough to make you a hero. It might just be three people, but in that group, you’re your own David Koresh. And I think that gives people a false sense of wisdom. And I think that’s kind of a hassle right now. Mark Cuban, What I’ve Learned, Esquire >>>

  • Two Cheers For Google

    Yes, Google’s newly launched News Archive Search is a great boon to those lacking subscriptions to super expensive public record/newspaper/academic databases – all the news going back decades that’s unclassified and fit to print – such as LexisNexis and JSTOR. For a few dollars a shot, bloggers can now sample what journalists have become totally hooked on. Click over to one place and search. Cut and paste from a clutch of database cuttings. Leaving no citations to indicate that your great thoughts aren’t your great thoughts alone, damn, you sound authoritative. Due respect to old skool Google, but you won’t… >>>

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    Jumping on the YouTube

    Video marketeers beware. As Paris Hilton and Tony Blair both get down with the new brand-driven YouTube – yay! the Official Paris Hilton YouTube Channel as well as Tony’s Transformational Government & Leadership Challenge, angry, bored, plain delinquent consumers citizens are sharpening their keyboards: For a long time Governments have been looking around for way to get their ‘messages’ out to the public without the bothersome annoyance of journalists asking difficult questions. They may see YouTube as the fix for this.What they may not have taken account of is the video replies or text comments that people can leave in… >>>

  • Meta Blog

    A room where bloggers blog about blogging, the Bloggercon conference, San Francisco: The weird thing about live-blogging a conference is that you are multi-tasking on many levels. You are in a room with a laptop on your lap, typing away about what you hear and see. You might snap a digital photo of your fellow participants. But when do you stop blogging and join the discussion going on? And how do you read all the other blogs that people are writing who are sitting right next to you? – Michael Glaser, Mediashift >>>

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    Blogs v Newspapers

    Millions of websites will aggregate what we do, syndicate it, link it, comment on it, sneer at it, mash it, trash it, monetise it, praise it and attempt to discredit it – in some cases all at once. But no-one will actually go to the risk and the expense of setting up a global network of people whose only aim in their professional lives is to find things out, establish if they’re true, and write about them quickly, accurately and comprehensibly. The blogosphere, which is frequently parasitical on the mainstream media it so remorselessly critiques, can’t ever hope to replicate… >>>

  • Rich Pickings

    The motto of the bubble was get big fast. The rule today is get big cheap… What tickles my checkbook is the success of capital-efficient startups where the users themselves often contribute the feature road map, software and marketing. – David Cowan, Bessemer Ventures in Forbes Magazine [The bankrollers] don’t care about your newfound ability to publish your thoughts or your pictures. They are just glad that you are doing so. Why? Because in an information based economy, data is your primary natural source. And flow of data creates movement which can be harnessed. Like a water-mill. – bopuc/weblog >>>