Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.

Where the Readers/Viewers Will Take Us

Merrill Brown has written an important report for the Carnegie Foundation. Entitled "Abandoning the News," it starts:

There's a dramatic revolution taking place in the news business today and it isn't about TV anchor changes, scandals at storied newspapers or embedded reporters. The future course of the news, including the basic assumptions about how we consume news and information and make decisions in a democratic society are being altered by technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways. In short, the future of the U.S. news industry is seriously threatened by the seemingly irrevocable move by young people away from traditional sources of news.

Read it if you care about the future.

Grokster: The Court Understands

Reading the various accounts of the Grokster case that was argued this week at the Supreme Court, one thing is clear: The justices understood the stakes -- and they are plainly troubled by the threat to innovation if they rule in favor of the entertainment cartel and its allies.

Terri Schiavo, Rest in Peace

Now that she is gone, can we agree on that?

I'd Resign, but I'm Not a Member

The National Press Club shames itself by giving "Jeff Gannon" a pulpit. Sheesh.

(Via Romenesko)

Defending Journalism, Deciding Who's a Journalist

David Shaw's LA Times media column (reg req) this week was surprising not so much for its conclusion -- that bloggers don't deserve any special journalistic privileges -- as for its sloppiness.

Slate's Jack Schafer explains it well. Quote:

"Shaw seems to believe that the First Amendment and its subsidiary protections belong to the credentialed employees of the established corporate press and not to the great unwashed. I suggest that he—or one of the four experienced editors who touched his copy—research the history of the First Amendment. They'll learn that the Founders wrote it precisely to protect Tom, Dick, and Matt and the wide-eyed pamphleteers and the partisan press of the time. The professional press, which Shaw believes so essential in protecting society, didn't even exist until the late 19th century."

Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis smartly breaks down the component parts of journalism: witnessing, asking, editing, commenting and distributing.

The question that we have to ask, in the end, is whether anyone deserves special treatment as a journalist. I think so, but I'm increasingly hard pressed to figure out how it'll work in world where anyone can be a journalist. More to come on this topic soon...

A Dying Craft, or a Dying Business?

UPDATED

Jay Rosen: Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die. But an industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise.

I now take it for granted that newspapers are trapped -- highly profitable businesses that can't or won't take the kind of risks that will be crucial to survival.

I do not take it for granted that newspapers must die, however. And I definitely don't believe journalism is dying. It's changing.

Previous media forms didn't die even though they lost hegemony to new media. Some newspapers make their way through what's coming, because they'll become the community square for whatever community it is that they serve, geographic, demographic or whatever. (That's why the Wall Street Journal, for all its cluelessness about the Web in an archival sense, has a future, and why some local papers still have time to become the primary authorities in their areas before the online competition eats their lunch.)

The notion of driving a property to a profitable demise is pernicious, and impossible to pull off in a coherent way. It assumes that newspaper companies can milk the properties gently into their good night. No way.

What will happen, if newspaper companies don't start working right now, is the following: Profits will dwindle to a point where Wall Street demands higher profits (or kills the stock price, making even a good newspaper company vulnerable to takeover by one of the real sharks out there). This will set off a death spiral of firing staff, losing readers and advertisers, firing more staff and so on. It will not be a slow process once it starts.

I've heard through the grapevine about newspaper executives who think the answer may well be to encourage some form of citizen journalism -- meaning, in their construct, getting people to do all the work pro journalists do today but for no compensation while the business collects the revenues. Now there's a business model -- not.

If the newspaper business does turn out to be dying, we need to make sure that journalism does not. I apologize to my blogging friends for saying this, but the free for all in the blogging world, however valuable (and I love it), is not sufficient to replace what we'll be missing.

We need ways to combine the best of the old and the new. That's what I'm working on.

The people we've called the audience play a key role, in several ways. As consumers (I hate the word) of news they have to make some choices. I believe they will pay for quality, to start with. But young readers have changed media. We in the journalism sphere need to innovate on new forms and delivery mechanisms as well as the journalism itself.

We also need, as I've said again and again, to involve the audience in the process. This is crucial. And I want to do it in a way that gives us all a stake in the outcome.

I don't know what it's going to look like in the end. I have some ideas. But I'm in the process of bringing together some smart people I've met in these travels, from the new and old worlds. They're passionate about their communities, the world and journalism. They know that journalism (real journalism) plays too big a role in our checks and balances to go quietly into the night.

This will become a combination of the old and new. I know that I (or anyone) can't figure it out alone. The conversation has already started, and I'd like to help expand it and find ways for all of us to work on some projects together. In coming days and weeks I'll be asking for help. (Send me an e-mail if you have ideas or might want to join this effort.)

The Broadcasters and Their Billions

Drew Clark (National Journal): Spectrum Wars. Generations ago, broadcasters got the right to use the airwaves -- now worth billions of dollars -- for free. Ever since, they have used heavy lobbying and political friendships to stave off rivals. But as the digital age unfolds, change is in the air.

Hypocrisy in the Ranks of the Powerful

It's not just DeLay who's a hypocrite. Turns out that Bush sued a car-rental agency, looking for a deep pocket.

In fact, there's hypocrisy in big amounts from the Republican pols who want to keep government out of our lives or insert it directly into our lives, depending on the circumstances.

Dwight Meredith has chapter and verse on his blog.

This could have been a heck of a news story -- compiling all of the cases -- for an enterprising newspaper. But a blogger pieced it together.

AP Won't Say It; Blogger Does

Bruce Schneier, a world-class authority on security-in-technology issues, points out an AP story reporting on the flagrant lies told by the Bush administration's Transportation Safety Administration about its scandalous handling of "private" passenger data. AP won't call the agency's dissembling for what it is -- lying -- but Schneier does.

This is one reason why people don't trust mass media -- the too-common fear of telling things as they actually are, perhaps for fear of offending people in power. And it's one more reason why domain experts like Schneier get increasing readerships.

Another Journalist on the Govt. Payroll

The only word for this latest tale of a journalist on the take from government is "sickening" -- and the question is how many more of these people will be exposed?

Interesting coincidence: The major cases of this unethical practice so far have involved the Bush brothers and their respective administrations in Washington and Florida.

Update: And here's the story of a "journalist" being paid to pitch the products he covers.

The TV stations claim not to know what's going on. Shame on them, too.

A Citizen Fights Back, Via Web

A mall developer sicced his lawyers on a man who started a website to praise a new mall. He says: "Since I possess very limited resources with which to defend myself from this legal onslaught, I decided that my best option was to make use of that great equalizer, the World Wide Web."

Did he ever.

(Via BoingBoing)

A Buggy Car/Phone Combo; Customers, Not Companies, to Rescue

That's a reference to the semi-compatibility of the Bluetooth connection between my phone, a Treo 650, and my new Prius. It took a workaround simply to get the car and phone to recognize each other at all.

Naturally, neither PalmOne nor Toyota has thought to prominently tell customers about this on the part of their websites they produce themselves. No print publication would dream of looking at something so obscure, of course. The companies are letting the customers do their own reporting.

I'm hoping to find help for my next problem -- getting the now-paired phone and car to truly communicate as they should. I've been unable to upload my phone's address book into the Prius computer -- well, it uploads but most of the numbers don't display properly on the car's screen. Apparently if there's a dash (-) or parenthesis in the number that chokes the Prius database software. Idiotic. Other phones seem to work.

Yes, this stuff is still fairly new. But PalmOne's adherence to Bluetooth standards that other phone makers seem to understand well enough is leaving something to be desired.

The car, meanwhile, is quirky. I manually punched in some "one-button" phone numbers -- the car won't let you dial entire phone numbers via the built-in screen while it's moving -- but when the car is moving it also hides the numbers in the one-touch screen. You have to memorize what the one-touch numbers are (which isn't that hard for a couple but gets difficult for lots of them). I've found nothing online about this problem.

Once, we rode around in buggies. Now, what we ride around in is buggy.

Theocrats Running Rampant

Frank Rich (NY Times): The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay. Next to what's happening now, official displays of DeMille's old Ten Commandments monuments seem an innocuous encroachment of religion into public life. It is a full-scale jihad that our government signed onto last weekend, and what's most scary about it is how little was heard from the political opposition. The Harvard Law School constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe pointed out this week that even Joe McCarthy did not go so far as this Congress and president did in conspiring to "try to undo the processes of a state court." But faced with McCarthyism in God's name, most Democratic leaders went into hiding and stayed silent. Prayers are no more likely to revive their spines than poor Terri Schiavo's brain.

The Wrong Standard

Barron's (reg req): The Most Respected CEOs. (Warren) Buffett is the ultimate example of a CEO who counts -- Berkshire Hathaway wouldn't exist without him. Some worrywarts at Barron's were concerned about putting him on the list because of the ongoing investigation into a potentially dubious reinsurance contract that Berkshire's General Re unit provided to American International Group. That deal may not have represented Berkshire's finest hour, but it in no way diminishes Buffett's extraordinary achievement. Berkshire stock stood at 15 when he took over 40 years ago and it's now at $87,000 a share. That pretty much says it all.

First, a disclosure: I am an investor in Berkshire Hathaway, and have been since the mid-1980s. More than not, I admire Warren Buffett as a visionary and an advocate of honest capitalism. In particular, his loud complaints against sleazy accounting tricks and excessive pay for unaccountable executives who use those tricks to help pad insiders' pockets have been a welcome part of the conversation we all need to have about the nature and future of a system that, while imperfect, is plainly the best of the alternatives.

That's also why I get frustrated by the anything-goes attitude on Wall Street and in Washington and so many other places where cynical people ignore the context in which capitalism operates. Corporations are creatures of the state, not God, and they exist in a real world where employees, suppliers and communities should be, but frequently are not, given sufficient consideration next to pursuit of profits.

A spectacular return on investment does not pretty much say it all. It tells only part of the story.

If it turns out that Berkshire Hathaway has played a significant role in the growing insurance scandal, that would be more than a passing thought in my book. It would be an unfortunate contribution to the unethical culture that has become such a dismal hallmark of American business in recent years.

Buffett has earned the benefit of the doubt. But he has some questions to answer.

I hope Barron's -- like its sister publication, the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper of depth and influence -- will be asking those questions.

Bubble, Bubble, Bubble...

NY Times: Trading Places: Real Estate Instead of Dot-Coms. Real estate-crazed Americans have started behaving in ways that eerily recall the stock market obsession of the late 1990's.

And they've been doing it for several years here in California.

In mid-2003, in a Mercury News column, I wrote:

"Just as I didn't understand why stock prices were rising so much in the late 1990s, I don't understand what's going on here, either. Of course, maybe house prices will go up forever at a rate wildly exceeding inflation even as rental prices plummet periodically.

"I'm hearing some circular logic from those who believe this is sustainable. Prices keep rising because -- well, because they keep rising. We heard that kind of stuff in 1999 about stocks.

"Yes, there are some valid reasons, too. Supply is constrained and low interest rates are a huge help. But there's not much room for rates to fall. If true deflation sets in, home values will drop. If interest rates rise, as they seem to be doing now, sales will eventually slow and prices will drop.

"The housing bubble, if it is one, feels doubly troubling for another reason. With stocks, losses were limited. Home buyers, especially recent ones, are vastly more leveraged. Even a modest price correction of tens of thousands of dollars would erase their entire investment, or more."

As I've also said, we have one endlessly renewable resource in America: financial suckers.

I fear what will happen this time, because the damage will be so much worse for our overall economy.

A Living Will for These Times

A new "For Sale/Barter" ad on craigslist begins:

Dear loved-ones,
I make the following statement in a sound state of mind and of my own volition:

If I am rendered comatose and determined to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for a period longer than one month and if no imminent cure is forthcoming, I do not wish to be kept alive by artificial means including but not limited to nourishment, hydration, etc.

However....

If, due to the absurd political state of affairs in this country, my persistent vegetative state and impending unplugging can be parlayed into some sort of political leverage, I wholly endorse using my predicament in whatever way possible for the purposes of passing legislation favorable to my general political and ethical outlook. Here is a list of top-tier causes I support and will continue to support, both while in my PVS and after my eventual death.

• Debt Relief to Impoverished Nations: I will agree to stay in a PVS for an indeterminate amount of time if the United States aggressively pursues a policy of debt relief and debt forgiveness to developing and impoverished nations.

There's more, much more.

Google and Transparency

UPDATED

I remain an admirer of Google, but like many other people I'm worried that the company is getting too big for its virtual britches. As Jeff Jarvis and others have noted lately, there's a worrisome bent toward "trust us" in the operation of Google News, a site I like but find frequently frustrating.

Google News embarrassed itself by including a disgusting Nazi-ish site (I will not link to it myself) in its source-crawl. The company has removed the site, thankfully, but not before enduring well-deserved ridicule for having included the garbage in the first place.

The problem is, among other things, a lack of transparency. Why doesn't Google just post a list of the news sites it uses as sources? I can't see the harm in doing this, and can see a lot of value.

Update: A Google spokesperson says: "I believe we did not list all the sites for competitive reasons. But, I do hear what you're saying and can pass your feedback (which we take very seriously) to the News team."

So the answer is No, for now. Too bad.

Until Google does the right thing, we'll have to use a list being compiled via a programming script at the Private Radio blog. Some of the sites surprise me, and will probably surprise you, too. (How long do you expect it will take for Google to demand that the blogger stop?)

---

On a separate matter, the excellent Philly Future -- a combination blog, citizens news and photo sharing site about Philadelphia -- is appropriately miffed that Google has absolutely no listing for the site. (UPDATE: This is being fixed; see Matt Cutts' comment below. Thanks, Matt!)

Karl Martino, who runs the site (and is former colleague of mine), wrote me:

I think Google has banned Philly Future from indexing.

Over a year ago a porn redirector owned the phillyfuture.org domain. I think that is what caused Googlebot to stop visiting the domain.

I've been posting in various message boards trying to get help. I've used their online forms to submit the site and ask for help a few times - but I can't seem to get a real response from Google itself except to: "be assured that these changes are automated. It is certainly our intent to represent the content of the internet fairly and accurately." from an automated reply. Basically - I keep being told to sit tight.

There is a nice Google employee blogger who is attempting to help - but he can't seem to figure out what's wrong. I've done all the right things according to him.

It's been a year now that I've had the Phillyfuture.org domain up. Googlebot has not visited. Philly Future is visitors traffic from MSN an Yahoo! - but not Google.

If anyone from Google is reading this, how about fixing what is obviously a bad setting?

For me, this is one more reason to use the other search engines for at least some of my searches.

Update: Google has responded to Karl, and it looks like all will be well. I'm glad to hear it.

So Where is Kyrgyzstan, Anyway?

UPDATED

I'm pretty good on geography, but when I read about the revolution and/or coup in Kyrgyzstan I had to confess to myself that other than knowing its general location in mid-Asia I couldn't place it on a map. I'm betting I'm not alone in this. Yet few of the news stories came with a map.

Seems like an obvious thing to include. Newspaper editors would include one as a matter of routine, even though it would take away space from the story. Web publishers have no excuse for not including maps, period.

(Map, showing general region, via CIA World Fact Book)

Not Being that Bozo on the Airplane

Had to cancel a trip east due to a nasty case of bronchitis from a chest cold. Yesterday I could barely complete a sentence without coughing up a storm; glad I had some strong medicine last night.

Not only was traveling a lousy idea for me, but I didn't want to be the guy on the plane who's coughing his lungs out, freaking out the other nearby passengers who'll spend the next day wondering if they're about to get sick, too.

Congressional Cowards

Question: If the Republican sock-puppets who passed the Schiavo law weren't doing it mostly for political posturing, why didn't they just do what they've made abundantly clear they expect the federal judiciary to do: Order the doctors to put the feeding tube back in. What hypocrites they are.

NowPublic.com Launches

"NowPublic.com" says, "The news is now public," and offers a platform for assigning, gathering and viewing news. It's probably too ambitious, but I mean that as a compliment.

Hint: It's Hyperbole

A predictable uproar will soon erupt in the blogosphere over Tina Brown's latest column (reg req) for the Washington Post. The piece, after rambling around a bit, ends up being a useful exploration of why our society has become so dangerously risk-averse, and notably so in our private lives.

Bloggers are already starting to complain about one sentence in this paragraph:

We are in the Eggshell Era, in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there's a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out -- and a public that is slowly being trained to accept a culture of finks. We're always under surveillance; cameras watch us wherever we go; paparazzi make small fortunes snapping glamour goddesses picking their noses; everything is on tape, with transcripts available. No matter who you are, someone is ready and willing to rat you out. Even the rats themselves have to look over their shoulders, because some smaller rat is always waiting in the wings. Bloggers are the new Stasi. All the timidity this engenders, all this watching your mouth has started to feel positively un-American.

Yes, I'm talking about the "Bloggers are the new Stasi" line.

Of course it's idiotic, and it unfortunately detracts from the otherwise reasonable point of the column. We are, indeed, in a world of busybodies where the slightest gaffe, depending on your status or notoriety, can be a disaster.

Who among us hasn't said stupid things, especially in situations we considered private? Who among us would not be chagrined if our every utterance was available to the world, and if a casual remark was taken out of context and turned into a damaging faux pas?

Tina Brown made one dumb remark. She's not wrong with her overall point.

We need to start cutting each other some slack. Soon.

OurMedia.org Launches

Congrats to JD, Marc and team on the launch of OurMedia.org, a place to share"videos, audio files, photos, text or software - for free - with a global community of creative individuals."

A Terri Schiavo Aggregator

It's an echo chamber, to be sure, but ProLifeBlogs.com's Terri Schiavo aggregator demonstrates what committed people can do in a hurry, with low-cost tools.

Jan Frel explains more here.

UPDATE: By the way, I agree almost entirely with what Scott Rosenberg writes here, notably, "(E)veryone who doesn't want George Bush and Congress to overrule relatives, doctors and courts to make those bedside end-of-life decisions for them needs to draw up that living will, pronto."

Turning Sunshine into Fog

Raleigh (North Carolina) News & Observer: Cities, agencies seek right to sue. State law gives you the right to see public records and attend government meetings. But now the government wants the power to sue you for asking.

The whole point of open-records and sunshine laws is to conduct the public's business in the light of day. But governments are always trying to shield their doings from the people who pay the bills.

This proposed law is plainly not designed to clarify open-access questions. It's a blatant threat against people who want to keep open government. What a travesty.

Good blog coverage here and here.

Flickr/Yahoo Make Deal

Yahoo is buying Flickr, and Jerry Yang (at PC Forum) just said he hoped not to do anything that makes the Flickr community feel neglected in any way.

Congrats to the Flickr team.

King James' Collaboration

David Bollier: Online Collaboration as an 'Irenicon'. We high-tech moderns like to think we have little connection to the past, but as I pondered the new online collaborations, I couldn’t help thinking that we could benefit from considering one of the greatest literary collaborations in history, the King James Bible.

One Reason to Avoid Brink's Home Security

Citizen-journalist Ed Foster explains.

Bush and Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda

Frank Rich (NY Times): Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake News. That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government Accountability Office discouraging the use of "covert propaganda" like the Karen Ryan "news reports." In other words, the brakes are off, and before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last weekend's Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how "most" of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them - and us.

The New York Times story to which he refers ran last week, and it's a scalding look at a corrupt practice.

Earlier this week, President Bush defended this utterly indefensible policy, and even joked about it. How did he get away with that? Because, as we've learned, the elite Washington press corps apparently agrees it's all a big joke. No. It is not.

The Bush policy is simple: It is part of an administration's deliberate attempt to corrupt the practice of journalism.

This practice did not start with Bush, as right-winger who can't bring themselves to criticize their hero note in defense of this corruption. Indeed, Clinton used the same technique several times.

But there's not a hint that Clinton's administration was in the same league of manipulative practices that are the standard for this one. No White House in decades has had the mania for secrecy that pervades the current crowd's attitude -- that they know best and that the public should know close to nothing. Where are the right-wingers on that? Mostly silent.

There are legions of PR people in the White House and agencies. Yet this government has spent, so far, a quarter of a billion taxpayer dollars on more PR -- and has used some of that to hoodwink Americans. The weird "Jeff Gannon" saga is the smallest part of what ought to be a growing scandal.

I reserve special contempt for the TV stations that used this rancid material, especially the ones that did so knowing they were pulling a fast one on their viewers. I'd like to see challenges to their FCC licensees when renewal time arrives; they abandoned any notion of serving the public trust.

And I plead with the Washington press corps to do its job. I will not hold my breath.

Bubble, Bubble..

San Francisco Chronicle: Up, Up and Away. Another month, another real estate record. Median prices for existing homes in the Bay Area hit an all-time-high of $569,000 in February, rocketing 19.5 percent from $476,000 in February 2004 and up 2.3 percent from $556,000 in January.

The most revealing statistics in the story: "Bay Area home buyers in February committed to a typical monthly mortgage payment of $2,549, a record. That payment is up 21.9 percent from $2,091 a year ago."

In other words, more and more people are further and further extended financially. Most of them are on mortgages that will cause their interest rates to rise at some point.

This is going to get so ugly.

Who's Investing for the Future? Plenty of Us

UPDATED

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual media report is online and loaded with fascinating data and conclusions. I want to point to one item -- a section called "News Investment" -- and this paragraph:

It is part of a larger trend in American journalism: much of the investment and effort is in repackaging and presenting information, not in gathering it. For all that the number of outlets has grown, the number of people engaged in collecting original information has not. Americans are frankly more likely to see the same pictures across multiple TV channels or read the same wire story in different venues than they were a generation ago.

I share the concern that news organizations are cutting their investments. An informed citizenry is crucial to the functioning of the republic and of society as a whole.

I don't see much hope that commercial journalism organizations will invest more. They are conservative to a fault when it comes to adapting to change. (I hope I am wrong on this, and suspect I'm not.)

But there is a great movement beginning to form. We're calling it things like "citizen journalism" or "grassroots media" and other names. It is the mass movement of telling each other our stories, via blogs and other media, and exposing our neighbors to news they can't get other ways.

People are already investing enormous amounts of time in the bottom-up arena. The majority of them are voting via clicks, seeking out better information -- or at least different perspectives -- to get a better report than the one dropped on their doorstep or on the evening TV show. A subset, a minority but still a lot of people, are folks who want to have their say and want to be part of a conversation, not talked down to in lecture mode by an industry that sees news as just another widget on an assembly line.

It will be absolutely essential that we try to do this new kind of journalism in a good way -- not throwing out the best practices and principles of the past but using them to inform and improve that fervor and knowledge from the edge. We can do it together.

Update: Alan Mutter noticed something I missed -- profits are rising much faster than sales. There are several ways to make this happen, but one of the obvious ones is to squeeze the journalism expenses, which is precisely what is happening.

And Merrill Brown, in this essay about online journalism's progress, sums up this way:

So, while business might appear prosperous, beneath the success lies a perplexing reality. Many of the news organizations that make most Web site journalism possible, either through their dollars or the work of the journalists reporting for their traditional products, are in some combination of strategic, journalistic and financial peril. It is those organizations that make large-scale Internet news sites viable. In a world of dwindling resources, a world of falling daily newspaper readership and fragmented television news audiences, who will produce the journalism of scale and importance that informs citizens about national political campaigns and international conflict? Bloggers? Citizen journalists? The software developers who produce RSS readers?

The answers that emerge over this decade to those questions are certain to impact the future not just of Internet news but of journalism itself.

Help Lessig Do New Version of 'Code' Book

Mercury News: Professor's online publishing experiment. Further nudging outward the boundaries of online publishing, Stanford University Professor Larry Lessig will put his 1999 book ``Code'' online today and invite Internet users to help him write an updated version.

You can find the book site here.

A King Sihanouk Blog

Citing information from the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, the Federation of American Scientists is reporting that Cambodia's King Sihanouk has a blog. The works to which this refers seem to stretch the definition of a blog, but it's fascinating to see a political leader talking this way.

New Apple OS in April?

That's what Think Secret is reporting -- though the supposed announcement date of April 1 does raise an eyebrow. If it's true, I wonder if Apple will launch a new legal action to find out how the news got loose.

(Updated to corrected the link...)

Costly 'Free Ride' Sustains Authority

NY Times: Can Papers End the Free Ride Online? This migration of readers is beginning to transform the newspaper industry. Advertising revenue from online sites is booming and, while it accounts for only 2 percent or 3 percent of most newspapers' overall revenues, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. And newspaper executives are watching anxiously as the number of online readers grows while the number of print readers declines. "For some publishers, it really sticks in the craw that they are giving away their content for free," said Colby Atwood, vice president of Borrell Associates Inc., a media research firm. The giveaway means less support for expensive news-gathering operations and the potential erosion of advertising revenue from the print side, which is much more profitable.

It's a dilemma, no question, and it was high on the agenda at a recent conference of Web folks at the Poynter Institute. Revenues from online operations are soaring, but from a very low level -- and they remain far, far below the revenues that are coming in from print advertising.

Newspapers had already trained readers to consider the news almost free, anyway. After all, circulation (subscription and newsstand sales) revenues account for a small percentage of all the money that comes in.

But there's a consequence for newpapers that go behind what Doc Searls and others call a "pay-wall" -- a loss of Web presence in a world where being absent from the Web is, for many younger readers, like not being anywhere at all.

A difficult situation, for sure.

Executive Greed, Part 18,978

AP: AT&T execs would get $31M as part of SBC sale. Top executives of AT&T Corp. would receive $31 million in severance pay if the long-distance company's deal to be acquired by SBC Communications Inc. goes through as planned. The company would have paid an additional $10.3 million to chairman and chief executive David Dorman if he was not slated to become president of SBC after the merger, according to a filing late Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Of course, none of this loot had anything whatever to do with AT&T's decision to sell to SBC. Uh huh.

South by Southwest

UPDATED

I'm at the South by Southwest festival and conference, giving a talk today on grassroots media (what else?).

Update: Rex Hammock, a blogger I talked about in my book, introduced himself just before I spoke. Wish we'd had more time to chat -- he's a class act.

A Customer Service Data Point

The Starbucks coffee shops empire makes a big deal of its T-Mobile WiFi access in the U.S. and several other countries. The other countries need to get the message. At two of the three Starbucks I stopped by in London, the WiFi was not working. Not a big deal, but the two companies should work on delivering what they promise.

Apple's "Trade Secrets"

AP: Judge: Apple can press bloggers on sources. A California judge on Friday ruled that three independent online reporters may have to divulge confidential sources in a lawsuit brought by Apple Computer Inc., ruling that there are no legal protections for those who publish a company's trade secrets.

Reporting on business, if this bad ruling is upheld on appeal, will be a great deal harder in the future. Companies will simply slap "trade secret" protection on everything they do, and any reporter who gets a scoop on anything the company doesn't want the public to know about will be under a legal threat.

At least the judge didn't fully buy Apple's contention that the bloggers are not journalists. He ducked the question. His ruling suggests he was half-persuaded that these folks may well be journalists after all. Thanks for small favors.

But there will be long-range damage from this. Apple's acolytes, who keep finding reasons to worship a company that deserves increasing contempt, won't care. Someday, they will, but maybe too late by then.

During the time Steve Jobs has run the company, Apple has been hostile to truly independent journalism about its products and policies. This current attack on journalism -- and that is precisely what is going on here -- reflects the side of Jobs that will someday lead the company back down from its current heights. He is a genius, no question, but he is a control freak who doesn't seem to care whatsoever that he's infuriating some natural allies.

I'm writing this on a Mac. If I were buying a replacement today, I'm not at all sure I'd make the same choice again.

On the Road

Heading back to London overnight, then back to the U.S. Few postings if any during the next 24 hours or so.

Remembrance

In Spain today people are marking the anniversary of last year's horrendous bombings. Church bells have been ringing, and people are remembering.

Madrid: Terrorism, the Internet and Democracy

UPDATED

From the International Summit on Democracy, Security and Terrorism in Madrid, my working group on terrorism and the Internet has come up with what amounts to a set of principles and suggestions. I'll post them below.

First, a special word of thanks to Martín Varsavsky, who spearheaded this conference and had a special interest in this working group, and to the group's moderators, Joi Ito and Marko Ahtissari. Martín is a remarkable man, a fabulously successful entrepreneur with a powerful sense of social responsibility and justice. Our group was a bit out of place, as Ethan Zuckerman notes (see Ethan's near-transcript if you're interested in the nitty-gritty; David Weinberger also took excellent notes), but I hope we got something useful done.

The working group also included John Perry Barlow, John Gage, Chris Goggans, Pekka Himanen, David Isenberg, Rebecca MacKinnon, Andrew McLaughlin, Desiree Miloshevic, Jeff Moss, Ejovi Nuwere, Kazuhisa Ogawa, Marc Rotenberg, David Smith, Wendy Seltzer, Gohsuke Takama, Noriko Takiguchi and Paul Vixie. Several folks came in during the open part of the session and contributed their thoughts, too.

In a painful irony, and a poor decision, the conference organizers (over Martín's objections) kept the accredited media away from the sessions, penning them off in their own part of the building. I hope the blogging helped them a bit.

Keep in mind that this is a draft, the result of several days of work, not the Final Word. You can join this conversation more directly -- you can help edit the document to make it better -- by visiting the Global Voices wiki at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The Infrastructure of Democracy
Strengthening the Open Internet for a Safer World
March 11, 2005

I. The Internet is a foundation of democratic society in the 21st century, because the core values of the Internet and democracy are so closely aligned.

1. The Internet is fundamentally about openness, participation, and freedom of expression for all -- increasing the diversity and reach of information and ideas.
2. The Internet allows people to communicate and collaborate across borders and belief systems.
3. The Internet unites families and cultures in diaspora; it connects people, helping them to form civil societies.
4. The Internet can foster economic development by connecting people to information and markets.
5. The Internet introduces new ideas and views to those who may be isolated and prone to political violence.
6. The Internet is neither above nor below the law. The same legal principles that apply in the physical world also apply to human activities conducted over the Internet.

II. Decentralized systems -- the power of many -- can combat decentralized foes.

1. Terrorist networks are highly decentralized and distributed. A centralized effort by itself cannot effectively fight terrorism.
2. Terrorism is everyone's issue. The internet connects everyone. A connected citizenry is the best defense against terrorist propaganda.
3. As we saw in the aftermath of the March 11 bombing, response was spontaneous and rapid because the citizens were able to use the Internet to organize themselves.
4. As we are seeing in the distributed world of weblogs and other kinds of citizen media, truth emerges best in open conversation among people with divergent views.

III. The best response to abuses of openness is more openness.

1. Open, transparent environments are more secure and more stable than closed, opaque ones.
2. While Internet services can be interrupted, the Internet as a global system is ultimately resilient to attacks, even sophisticated and widely distributed ones.
3. The connectedness of the Internet – people talking with people – counters the divisiveness terrorists are trying to create.
4. The openness of the Internet may be exploited by terrorists, but as with democratic governments, openness minimizes the likelihood of terrorist acts and enables effective responses to terrorism.

IV. Well-meaning regulation of the Internet in established democracies could threaten the development of emerging democracies.

1. Terrorism cannot destroy the internet, but over-zealous legislation in response to terrorism could. Governments should consider mandating changes to core Internet functionality only with extraordinary caution.
2. Some government initiatives that look reasonable in fact violate the basic principles that have made the Internet a success.
3. For example, several interests have called for an end to anonymity. This would be highly unlikely to stop determined terrorists, but it would have a chilling effect on political activity and thereby reduce freedom and transparency. Limiting anonymity would have a cascading series of unintended results that would hurt freedom of expression, especially in countries seeking transition to democratic rule.

V. In conclusion we urge those gathered here in Madrid to:

1. Embrace the open Internet as a foundation of 21st Century democracy, and a critical tool in the fight against terrorism.
2. Recognizing the Internet's value as a critical communications infrastructure, invest to strengthen it against attacks and recover quickly from damage.
3. Work to spread access more evenly, aggressively addressing the Digital Divide, and to provide Internet access for all.
4. To protect free speech and association, endorse the availability of anonymous communications for all.
5. Resist attempts at international governance of the Internet: It can introduce processes that have unintended effects and violate the bottom-up democratic nature of the Net.

BitTorrent 4.0

It's available for Windows and Linux. Mac version someday, I hope.

Terrorism and the Internet

At the "International Summit on Democracy, Security and Terrorism" in Madrid, my working group is discussing the Internet. I've been taking notes, but defer to David Weinberger's blog for more details.

The conference organizers have apparently banned the local media from the event's sessions, a wrong-headed policy.

There's a strong bias in the room toward openness -- keeping the Internet free of unwarranted interference. But there's also a sense that the document we produce has to be something that policy-makers won't immediately dismiss as a naive or, worse, dangerous. We must acknowledge the risks even as we point out the benefits.

In particular, it's essential that we not end up with government-mandates changes to the basic Net architecture as a response to the realistic fears that terrorists will use and abuse the Net. Such changes could ultimately turn the medium into something vastly less useful for everyone.

A Bubble Tale to Make You Angry

The Seattle Times should get a Pulitzer for the series called "Dot-Con Job" -- a deep and scathing look at the sleaze that permeates a company called InfoSpace as it rose to prominence during the Internet bubble and then plummeted to almost nothing.

I came away infuriated, and convinced that some people should go to jail.

The Puritans at Boeing

Europe must no doubt be thrilled to see America's latest idiotic puritan spanking: the firing of Boeing's CEO, Harry Stonecipher. He had an affair, and the board tossed him out, saying Stonecipher himself had created a no-second-chance ethics policy that left no choice.

Why would Europe be happy? Because that's Airbus, the only serious competitor to Boeing in the civilian aircraft market, is located. Seeing its adversary thrown into such turmoil over something so minor has to be a big win for Airbus.

Anyway, it's close to inconceivable that a European company would toss overboard a CEO for having an affair with another adult. In fact, it's totally inconceivable. An affair makes the guy look bad, but what on earth does it have to do with his job?

Maybe, as the linked Seattle Times story suggests, something else is going on -- because this firing doesn't make a lot of sense.

Or maybe America is turning into a nation that has totally lost proportion.

Note to Business Week: Bloggers Aren't Immune from Libel Law

In an otherwise constructive look at Apple's attack on freedom of the press, Business Week Online says:

However, blogs have also fast gained a reputation for inaccuracy that threatens to erode their writers' claim to the title of journalist. Just as these sites have been touted as the new pillars of American democracy for their ability to ensure that any literate person can publish, they have also proven to be swirling rumor mills. In traditional media, the same legal rights that allow a journalist to protect sources also hold such writers accountable to report the truth. If journalists stray from what's true, they can be charged with libel.

Well, sure, they can be sued for libel. But this piece suggests that pro journalists have more incentive than bloggers to tell the truth, and thus sets up the reader to think that the professionals therefore deserve more protection.

False. In fact, bloggers are hardly immune from libel laws. They, too, can be sued, as Yale law professor Jack Balkin noted a long time ago. (See also this story in Online Journalism Review.)

Professionals get sued more often, no doubt, but that's almost certainly because they work for organizations with deep pockets -- and because the damage they can cause when they get things wrong is greater.

Business Week's Jessi Hempel clarifies nicely.

Sony Stakes Future in Entertainment, Not Technology

NY Times: Shakeup at Sony Puts Westerner in Leader's Role. The board of the Sony Corporation of Japan named Sir Howard Stringer its chairman and chief executive today, an unusual instance of a leading Japanese company turning to a foreigner to fill a top position, the company said in Tokyo. Sir Howard, a Welsh-born former television news journalist, runs Sony Corporation of America and has helped revive the company's music and movie businesses in the United States. He will succeed Nobuyuki Idei, Sony's current chairman and chief executive, who had planned to retire next year after Sony's 60th anniversary.

Sony has had a blatant internal conflict for years, between its entertainment operations and its technologists. The entertainment people have succeeded in crippling the technology -- notably the absolute refusal until recently to allow the use of the MP3 format in its music players -- and have helped make Sony less relevant in the gadget world.

Stringer is one of the leaders of an entertainment cartel that uses copyright law to thwart innovation that it can't control or veto. His appointment to the head of Sony means, simply, that the entertainment side controls the company.

Road Trip

In London for a couple of days. At the moment I'm sitting in the bar of the Sheraton in Knightsbridge -- not because I'm staying here (I'm not) but because it's the nearest T-Mobile hotspot to where we were walking this afternoon.

On Tuesday, down to Madrid. There I'll be in the same situation as David Weinberger, who writes: "For reasons that are unclear, but I wasn't inclined to argue about them, I've been invited to a "summit" on "democracy, terrorism and security" in Madrid next week, me and my close personal friends Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan Zuckerman, Dan Gillmor, Joi Ito, David Isenberg, and Bill Clinton...you know, the same old crowd."

Tonight, meanwhile, it's Indian food, of course...

The Gathering Storms Over Speech

Apple Computer's disgusting attack on three online journalism sites, in a witch hunt to find out who (if anyone) inside the company leaked information about allegedly upcoming products, has taken a nasty turn. Too bad it's not surprising -- and journalists of all kinds should be paying attention.

A judge in California has decided that the sites don't qualify as "journalism" (AP) under state law and/or the First Amendment. By his bizarre and dangerous standard, I apparently stopped being a journalist the day I left my newspaper job after a quarter-century of writing for newspapers. (Note: At the request of lawyers for the sites, I've filed declarations -- here (104k PDF) and here (1MB PDF) -- saying that in my opinion these sites are performing a journalistic function. I haven't been paid to do so.)

Apple's bullying is bad enough. But the California case is just one of several harbingers of trouble for the online journalism world.

Another was the deliberate provocation from a member of the Federal Elections Commission, Bradley Smith, who's a harsh opponent of the McCain-Feingold law regulating campaign finance. He told CNet that current law requires the FEC to regulate the speech of bloggers and other online denizens who dare to discuss politics.

I regard this more as saber-rattling than a serious threat, at least for now. And it's also clear that Smith is trying to get Congress to punch a hole in the law to make it ineffective. I find myself agreeing increasingly with folks on the political right, including the Heritage Foundation's Mark Tapscott, who (among others) observes that the law is becoming an excuse for the outright regulation, and suppression, of speech.

As someone who supported the intent of McCain-Feingold but now agrees it needs reform if not repeal (and then try again with something better), I wish there was some recognition from those who want to torpedo the law outright that modern politics is being wrecked by the overwhelming influence of money, with serious effects on our republic. When politics becomes a system of one-dollar, one-vote -- and it has become precisely that in recent years -- we need to do something to restore at least a semblance of fairness.

But to use this desire for reform as a bludgeon to wipe out free speech in politics, precisely the kind of speech the nation's founders so ardently wanted to promote, is a perversion of their intent and common sense. Smith's remarks are a red flag waving at the blogging bulls, and they're responding just as he surely hoped -- with fury.

Meanwhile, several weeks ago, two well-meaning members of Congress introduced legislation designed to address the increasing attacks on professional journalists. The Free Flow of Information Act (H.R. 581) has some good points, namely its attempt to give reporters a way to shield sources from unwarranted exposure. But it sharply circumscribes the definition of who's a journalist -- and appears to explicitly exclude bloggers and other non-traditional online journalists.

Who's get the protection? The legislation would give it to:

A) an entity that disseminates information by print, broadcast, cable, satellite, mechanical, photographic, electronic, or other means and that--

(i) publishes a newspaper, book, magazine, or other periodical;

(ii) operates a radio or television broadcast station (or network of such stations), cable system, or satellite carrier, or a channel or programming service for any such station, network, system, or carrier; or

(iii) operates a news agency or wire service;

(B) a parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such an entity; or

(C) an employee, contractor, or other person who gathers, edits, photographs, records, prepares, or disseminates news or information for such an entity.

In other words, bloggers need not apply unless they work for a major publication or broadcast.

See a pattern?

We're moving toward a system under which only the folks who are deemed to be professionals will be granted the status of journalists, and thereby more rights than the rest of us. This is pernicious in every way.

Mass media journalists and their bosses should be leading the fight against what's happening to bloggers. I fear they won't, because old media typically refuses to defend the rights of new entrants until the threats against the new folks directly threaten everyone. But my former colleagues in Big Media should understand that when we distinguish among kinds of journalists, discriminating against some because they're not working for organizations deemed worthy (or powerful) enough, trouble will arrive soon enough for everyone.

In a world where anyone can be a journalist, we can't let government or Big Media decide who has the right to inform the public about matters of interest or urgency. The priesthood should be dissolving, not gaining strength -- yet rulings and legislation like these move things in precisely the wrong direction.

Martha Stewart, Still a Crook

She's getting out of jail today, whoopee. And the media are feeding the public the story she and her crafty PR team have crafted. She's a crook -- not a major one, to be sure, but a crook nonetheless. She decided that the rules were for the little people and then lied through her teeth when she got caught.

Stewart is no Bernie Ebbers -- who was at the helm of what turned out to be a truly major-league con and may actually get away with it. But she's no hero, despite the way her fans and the media are treating her.

Thought Police in Malaysia -- and America

The estimable Jeff Ooi, a blogger in Malaysia who is doing great things for free speech, has been questioned by the authorities about his blog, according to GlobalVoices, which cites this Malaysiakini item.

Jeff is one of the best of the best in this new world of citizens media. He's working in a place that is not terribly fond of liberty, though it's way ahead of most Islamic nations on the freedom scale. He and other threatened grassroots speakers deserve our support.

So do American media in all forms these days, under attack from the resurgent blue-noses. The powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, now wants to extend their liberty-wounding censorship of the airwaves to cable and satellite.

Why not books, guys? Bookstores and libraries are full of material that children can see if they're motivated. And, of course, the Internet is the obvious target after that.

Why not? Because we have that arcane document called the Constitution (linked via Congress' own site), with a First Amendment that once meant something in the halls of power.

Stevens insists we need "standards of decency" in America. He's welcome to enforce his own standards in his own home. And he has the ultimate weapon -- the Off and Change-Channel buttons.

But he and his dictatorial allies don't trust Americans to make their own decisions, at least when it comes to personal liberty except the right to own weapons. Government, apparently, gets to decide what is decent. We are too feeble-minded to decide for ourselves.

These people praise moves toward liberty in Afghanistan but would emulate the Islamic fundamentalists in their attacks on free speech. What raging, dangerous, freedom-loathing hypocrites they are.

The RSS Bubble

Steve Gillmor: Bodcasting. Splash! Fwoop! Znorf. It’s the sound of nextgen RSS plays parachuting into the Valley, Rte. 128, and everywhere there’s a broadband connection. Odeo, Brightcove, ourmedia, the Times–by this time next spring the forest will be thick with bees circling in search of unpolinated flowers. The RSS Bubble is here.

Help Journalists with Good Questions

NiemanWatchdog.org notes that Rupert Murdoch is speaking at an upcoming newspaper convention, and the site is soliciting questions to ask the media mogul. I may post one or two myself.

Radio Program About Bloggers is Online

Dave Winer and I were guests this morning (really early, California time) on a New Hampshire Public Radio program about blogging. You can listen to it here,

Slices and Dices, Too...

I'm happy to report that "Mr. Sun" is offering the "Citizen Journalist Starter Pack" -- "everything you'll need to storm the gates of the mainstream media."

It even includes a flamethrower that's "extremely effective in neutralizing differing views and providing cover for uninformed opinions." Funny...

Housing Speculation: A Game for Suckers

NY Times: Speculators Seeing Gold in a Boom in the Prices for Homes. In several metropolitan areas, from Miami to Riverside, Calif., where the real estate market is white hot, rapidly rising prices are luring a growing number of ordinary people into buying and selling residences they do not intend to occupy, despite warnings from some economists that prices cannot continue to rise as steeply as they have in the last few years.

The suckers have arrived, in growing numbers. When this ends -- and it will end -- they will be holding the bag, as usual.

Yahoo Opens Up Search Tools

CNet: Yahoo opens up its search toolbox to developers. The network will allow software developers to create new applications (with the aid of application programming interfaces, or APIs) on top of Yahoo search, including images, video, news and local search.

This is a boost to the emerging Web services arena, and potentially a big deal for grassroots media as well. Giving people some tools to make new kinds of Web-based applications, connecting this set of data on one site with that set of data on another, is part of a phenomenon that will transform the way we think of information.

Google already has done some of this. Now Yahoo is upping the ante, it appears -- and Web users will be the winners in the end.