Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.

Guest Blogger: Context and Reader Bias Matter

UPDATED

Today's New York Times has a story about Apple Computer's decision -- an arrogant and counterproductive move, in my view -- to ban sales of all books from a publisher that is releasing a new biography about Apple's Ruler Supreme. The article includes a quote from Mitchell Kertzman. (Note: He's a friend.) I was a bit surprised by the quote, and asked him about it in an e-mail. He said it was out of context. I asked him if he'd like to explain why in a posting here, and he agreed.

Here's what he wrote to me:

I've been getting angry emails because I was quoted in a column in today's New York Times about reactions in the industry to Steve Jobs/Apple's decision to not only refuse to sell the new Jobs book (iCon) but to pull the publisher's books from the shelves at Apple stores. Here's the quotation, which closes the article:

"It is not possible, aside from things unimagined, to damage his reputation," said Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in San Francisco. "Steve is on such a roll in both of his companies, he's earned the right to do whatever he wants."

I had a long and enjoyable conversation with Carolyn Marshall from the Times, who contributed to the story. She wanted to know if this incident/issue would in any way damage Steve's reputation in the industry. My comments were first, that nobody who had followed Steve Jobs would find this inconsistent with his past behavior. Second, Steve has had a spectacular string of successes with both Apple and Pixar. He has a long and distinguished career and has been serving all his constituencies very well. That, then, was the context of my quotation (which I actually did say). I believe that Steve has earned a permanent spot in the esteem of his colleagues and that he's been so successful that he's earned the right to do what he wants in his businesses with their products, strategies and offerings.

Somehow, the people who emailed me (and probably countless others who didn't), interpreted my comments to mean that his string of business successes permitted him to do ANYTHING, no matter how unethical or criminal. I can certainly see how someone deeply suspicious of the behavior of business executives might, at the extreme, read my comments that way. Of course, that isn't the way I intended them. Unlike the online journalism world, of course, there's no way to correct the ink on the paper, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts here.

I'm not sure what lessons can be learned here - certainly, comments quoted (no matter how accurately) out of context are dangerous. However, it also shows me how much people bring their biases to all they read and hear. I personally think it's a giant stretch to interpret my quotation in the way people did, and anyone who knows me would find it laughable to read it that way. We live in an "assume the worst" time, I guess.

By the way, I certainly wouldn’t have done what Steve and Apple did on this one, so I’m not saying I agree with it, just that Apple and Steve are a package that’s been pretty great for customers and shareholders for some time.

Update: John Dvorak asks how I (or Kertzman) know that Jobs himself ordered the book banning from the stores. Fair point: I don't, and have corrected my introduction to reflect that. (I also notice that the Times story carefully does not go as far as the headline on the piece, which attributes the decision to Jobs himself, though when you read the first two paragraphs the implication of Jobs' participation is clear.)

It's inconceivable to me that Jobs wasn't party to this move. But John is right: I don't have proof.

Business Journalism on Tap

I'm heading to Seattle to speak at the annual meeting of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. My panel is on the usual topic.

Also: Over at MarketWatch, Jon Friedman discusses the state of business journalism.

Orders from a PR Firm?

John Gorenfeld says the PR firm handling the new movie about Enron all but ordered him when to write his review.

Citizens Kane and Their Progress

The New York Times killed a magazine story about Wikinews by Matthew Yeomans, who promptly posted the piece online.

Read it here.

Journalism that Includes the Audience

Over at NewsForge, Robin "Roblimo" Miller has published a thoroughly fascinating piece about a would-be Texas technology tycoon whose activities raised deep suspicions.

This is fine journalism. For one thing, tt follows up a previous story -- we have short attention spans in this field. It also gives credit to readers who chimed in with relevant information. And there's a deep bow to a local newspaper that did some good work along the way. (Local TV news seems to have acted in a typically hapless manner.)

Nice work, all.

Thank You for Beta Testing Our Products

That's what Apple should say to its paying customers about its software releases, which are known to have bugs severe enough to warrant a fast and critical update. I suspect this will be true with the new operating system, OS X Tiger (10.4). As always, the usual folks are on the case.

I think I'll watch how others fare before loading this major update.

Open Source Radio?

KYOURadio.com claims to be. It's not, exactly, but it's a big deal to move to a podcasting format no matter what else isn't right with the idea -- and there's plenty of time to work out the bugs.

Good roundup today by Jeff Jarvis.

Bloggers Speak, World-Wide

The increasingly terrific Global Voices is doing a daily round-up of bloggers around the world. Here's today's take.

Broadband Slower than Pigeons; Pigeons Slower than Snails

After showing that Wi-Fly TCP (Transmission by Pigeons) protocol could be a faster data-transfer method than ADSL, Israeli geeks (their word, not mine) have now shown that snails can be better yet.

(Thanks, Ami...)

BlogNashville

You can scarcely turn around these days without seeing another project announced to promote what's now being called "citizens media" -- the bottom-up, edge-to-center notion that once everyday people have the tools with which to create their own media, they will. Now, increasingly, they are.

My current focus is on citizens' journalism, but the move toward a more democratic media structure transcends traditional reporting and editing. It includes the fast-growing genre of podcasting, video blogging and a variety of other styles and techniques. We are truly in the early days, because only now is technology cheap enough and bandwidth (sort of) sufficiently available for many more folks to join the global conversation.

But we need to ask ourselves a bunch of questions. For example, will Draconian copyright laws will stifle people's ability to make their media available? Do all that many other people want to read, listen to or watch what we create? Will cable and phone companies, moving quickly to create a broadband duopoly in data services, make today's version of media consolidation seem tame by comparison -- with the obvious risks to freedom of expression? While the cost is dropping for creating media, will the tools will get sufficiently easy to use for truly average folks, as opposed to early adopters like us who will try anything just to see what happens? And so on.

I'm leading a session about all this at the BlogNashville gathering on May 7, and I'm interested in the issues you think we should raise. Post below, send me an e-mail or, best of all, come in person.

T-Mobile's New Consumer Aid

The mobile phone carrier has one-upped the competition with street-level maps of its coverage.

It's not perfect, however. I zoomed in on my house, where the signal strength is allegedly "great" by T-Mobile's account. I can assure you -- and the company -- that this is not true. The phone works, but the signal is, at best, adequate.

Still, this Web service punches a hole in a stonewall the mobile carriers have insisted on erecting for years. They've said maps of coverage and signal strength are "trade secrets" -- a shabby way of treating customers and potential customers.

T-Mobile deserves some credit here.

Apple's Latest Arrogant Stunt

Mercury News: Discord over Jobs biography. John Wiley & Sons, a leading publisher of technology books, said Apple Computer has removed all its titles from the shelves of Apple stores in apparent retaliation for the upcoming publication of a biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Well, this makes me all the more likely to buy Wiley's books. How about you?

Citizen Reporter and the FCC Files

jkOnTheRun found photos of IBM/Lenovo's upcoming tablet ThinkPad on the FCC's Website (example, big PDF). Electronics companies have to submit new devices for approval, and alert bloggers and others -- no doubt including IBM's competition -- are always on the lookout for such stuff.

As a ThinkPad owner (though I'm using it mainly to run Linux), this is news I can use.

(Via Slashdot)

'Blogger Relations' -- or More Spin?

A PR firm called Issue Dynamics is setting up a "blogger relations" unit.

Issue Dynamics has done some excellent work over the years. But it also recently made news -- though not enough -- for one of the ways it works on behalf of at least some clients. As eWeek reported in February, a subsidiary of the firm issued a report denouncing municipal wireless installations without making clear that big telecom firms, which vehemently oppose municipal wireless systems, are among the firm's chief funders. (See also Glenn Fleishman's "sock puppets" piece about this.)

I'm not suggesting that the mass media have done a very good job in recognizing and exposing this kind of thing, but the opportunity for partisans (corporate and/or political) to launder opinions through unsuspecting folks is huge and, I fear, growing. Bloggers and their readers should be on their toes.

One of the imperatives in the emerging citizen journalism sphere will be to ferret out and tell readers about these techniques, in a systematic and lasting way. I have some ideas on how this might be done -- and I'm not alone; see, for example, the excellent SourceWatch (formerly Disinfopedia) wiki, which is steadily compiling -- with the help of a wider community -- some information people need to know.

Maybe Issue Dynamics will behave in an entirely honorable way when dealing with bloggers. Or maybe not. Either way, readers need to know who's behind the opinions, so they can make better judgments about what -- and whom -- they can trust.

Huffington's Celebrity Group Blog

A reporter for a Big Newspaper called me today to ask about Arianna Huffington's soon-to-launch celebrity group-blog project (NY Times). As I said at the outset of the conversation, I'd prefer to wait to see it before deciding if it's good or bad.

At the very least, it's an interesting idea. I'm especially waiting to see if the contributors engage with the readers in a genuine conversation. If they do, I'll lead the cheers. If not, then the site will just be a scrolling op-ed page.

Nothing wrong with that. I'd certainly read it. But if that's all it becomes, then it's anything but a breakthrough in the arena I care most about: citizen journalism.

On a Roll

Tim Porter is writing some of the best analyses of today's journalism world anywhere. Samples:

The Mood of the Newsroom, a scathing summary of what ails the newspaper business -- much of it self-inflicted.

New Values for a New Age of Journalism, which speaks for itself.

If you care about this stuff, read both -- carefully.

Doing Pro Journalists' Work For Them

The Raw Story, going where professional journalists have utterly failed to tread, peers further into the increasingly weird "Jeff Gannon" story. Two Democratic members of Congress apparently had to file a Freedom of Information request with the Secret Service to get logs of Gannon's comings and goings at the White House, and the logs are curious.

More here, including the documents themselves.

See also Salon's coverage.

Grassroots Astroturf

Contra Costa Times: Letter writer fools Bay papers with various noms de plume. Under dozens of pseudonyms, Kyle Vallone has orchestrated the publication of scores of letters to the Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the Tri-Valley Herald during the last decade. A Times investigation found that the San Ramon man submitted more than 100 letters under fictitious identities to the three newspapers. Vallone estimated that he has had a hand in 200 bogus letters published in Northern California newspapers.

Vallone said the idea occurred to him while he was working on a Republican campaign in 1994. He and other workers would write letters on behalf of a candidate and send them to a "tree" of supporters who would sign their names and send them to newspapers. It occurred to him that he could skip a step, make up fictitious identities and send the letters via e-mail. He used free e-mail accounts and various voice-mail systems, his cell phone and home phone numbers to pull off his hoax.

Related: Giovanni Rodriguez asks, "Is it Cool to be Anonymous?

Blog Commentator to TV News Show: Bye, Bye

David Weinberger: The spit fight that ended my career at MSNBC . They want reports on what moderate left and right wing bloggers — "Nothing out of the mainstream," the producer told me yesterday — say about a "major" topic. What the hell does that have to do with blogging? And when two of the producers yesterday independently suggested that I report on the blogosphere's reaction to a Vietnam veteran spitting on Jane Fonda, I blurted out — because the flu had lowered my normal Walls of Timidity — that this wasn't a job I'm comfortable with.

Meanwhile, Ed Cone, another on-air blogging personality, says he's "not there yet, but I hear what he's saying."

Shift in Journalism is inevitable

The Economist: Yesterday's papers. But it remains uncertain what mix of advertising revenue, tips and subscriptions will fund the news providers of the future, and how large a role today's providers will have. What is clear is that the control of news—what constitutes it, how to prioritise it and what is fact—is shifting subtly from being the sole purview of the news provider to the audience itself. Newspapers, Mr Murdoch implies, must learn to understand their role as providers of news independent of the old medium of distribution, the paper.

Business Week on Blogging

It's the cover story, and it's quite good (he said, having been quoted in the piece).

Why Current Intellectual Property Law is So Wrong-Headed

Jamie Boyle: Deconstructing Stupidity. It is as if we had signed an international stupidity pact, one that required us to ignore the evidence, to hand out new rights without asking for the simplest assessment of need. If the stakes were trivial, no one would care. But intellectual property (IP) is important. These are the ground rules of the information society. Mistakes hurt us. They have costs to free speech, competition, innovation, and science. Why are we making them?

This important essay asks, and begins to answer, the key question of why IP law has gone so wrong.

Boyle points out that there's money on the side of a less Draconian system than we have -- the technology industry dwarfs the entertainment cartel -- yet the law totally favors the entertainment side. The answers, he says, are complex and rife with mythology, pushed on all of us by the copyright interests, that skews the result.

Read it.

Web 2.0? Try 3.0

(I'm writing a periodic column for the Financial Times. Here's the one that appeared on Wednesday.)

So World Wide Web 2.0 is now upon us?

From my perspective, what’s happening feels more like Web 3.0 - and it’s just a hint of what’s yet to come.

We are barely a decade and a half into the existence of the web, the network of networks intertwined around our ever-smaller planet. The elemental units haven’t changed much, but the web’s functions have evolved in a dramatic way.

Press 'Hits" and How (Paul Graham Believes) They Happen

He says it's a PR phenomenon.

I don't think he gives enough credit to enterprising reporters. But there's no doubt that journalists do run in packs, and that they (we) are prone to forgetting history.

'Stand-Alone' Journalism in a Connected Age

Chris Nolan has written a smart and thorough piece for PressThink about her self-described gig: stand-alone journalism.

It's a catchy phrase, but an incomplete one (though Chris does make clear she means something much bigger by the terminology). Even the best solo blogger doesn't stand truly alone. We are all building on each others' work, and learning from each other and our communities.

The stand-alone journalist who misses this -- and Chris certainly gets it -- will not be standing long.

Your Assistance Requested (Linux Gurus), Please

I have a ThinkPad X40 and am looking for a version of Linux that recognizes all the hardware, including the Wi-Fi, and handles suspend/resume. I installed Xandros Linux, which handled the hardware perfectly but not suspend/resume.

Anyone know of a distribution that does it all?

Can Just Anyone Join?

A membership organization for our times: National Association for Information Destruction.

One Step Forward, Two Back with Apple's iTunes

Normally, technology companies add features to their products as the years go by. But when customer wishes intersect with corporate control freakery, normal goes out the window.

Case in point, notes George (assisted by a commenter) at his 90% Crud: Apple has added features to its iTunes software over time, it has also taken many away from users.

The bottom line is that Apple, beholden to the copyright cartel, reserves the right to screw over its customers whenever it pleases. You can blame America's insane copyright laws for this, not just Apple's way of doing things.

Broadcasters Starting to Pay Attention

I'm at the annual convention where TV and radio news directors get together to talk about their craft. My job is to riff on the usual topic, on a panel entitled, "Are We Becoming Irrelevant?"

The answer, of course, is no. Or, at least, not necessarily.

While I'm distinctly not a fan of local TV news, for the most part, I am a fan of broadcast journalism at its best -- and there's a great deal of excellent journalism out there on the airwaves, cable and satellite. Edward R. Murrow may be rolling in his grave at some of the crap that passes for news these days, but his legacy definitely hasn't faded into history.

The citizen-journalism movement is one of the great opportunities for the radio/TV news folks, because a new generation of audio- and video-fluent people will supply more material than we can comprehend today. Much -- most -- will be garbage. So what? The good stuff will be a vital part of how people see and understand the world.

We'll see and hear it one way or another, whether via a truly bottom-up method like video blogs or peer-to-peer networks. Yet established media can, and I believe must, embrace the emerging citizens media.

They already do, to an extent. Consider the aftermath of natural disasters when viewers send in videos of tornadoes, tsunamis, etc. that make their way on the air.

I take it for granted that smart broadcasters make this a more common practice, in everyday news, just as the about-to-launch Current TV operation says it will do.

The tools to create the content are getting cheaper, more powerful and easier to use every day. People will use them. Maybe the revolution will be televised, after all.

How the Community Can Work, Fast

UPDATED

This Wikipedia article about the new pope did not exist 24 hours ago.

As noted in the comments below, there was already a reasonably well-done page about Cardinal Ratzinger, and much of it came over to this page. But the speed with which the Wikipedia crowd raced to update and augment the page tells us something about how the distributed community can respond to something big.

The page has already suffered vandalism, another Wikipedia trait. But over time it will settle down to something all sides can agree on.

Is the process perfect? Of course not. But it does achieve something important, and teaches us much -- positive and negative -- about communities.

Further update: The vandals are having a good time mucking with the page, I'm sorry to report. What jerks they are.

Beginning of the End of Housing Bubble?

Reuters: Housing Starts Plunge, Producer Prices Up. U.S. housing starts posted their steepest drop in more than 14 years in March, suggesting some cooling in the long-hot housing market, while producer prices rose steeply on surging energy costs.

It's too early to predict that the housing mania is about to subside, but the larger economic forces are lining up in alarming ways. As the consequences of our reckless national policies and consumer madness start to come home, we may be heading toward a time of inflation and low growth -- what was once called stagflation -- or, perhaps, an outright recession.

This is getting worrisome.

Presiding Over Decline

NY Times: Cardinals Choose a Close Aide to John Paul II to Lead Church. In the name of orthodoxy, he is in favor of a smaller church, but one that is more ideologically pure.

I suspect he'll get what he wishes for...

Can Bloggers Match Oprah?

LA Times: Bloggers push literary fiction. Marking a departure from the solitary life of reading and writing, about 20 independent literary bloggers will begin working together in hopes of drawing readers to books they feel deserve more attention, while seeking to generate more and deeper public discussions of literature.

The LitBlog Co-Op is a worthy idea, and if it spurs more reading of valuable books that would have otherwise been ignored, terrific.

Of course, the blogosphere is already doing some of this without the organization. When a lot of folks talk about books they like, they inevitably create more readership.

This was plainly true for my own book, published last August. It was essentially ignored by the mainstream media in the United States -- just one full newspaper review, a couple of magazine pieces and only a few media mentions otherwise. (Papers in other countries paid a lot more attention.) But the online chatter was, and remains, substantial. The book has just gone into a new printing, and I have no doubt that bloggers have instrumental in its continuing sales.

I wonder if the bloggers doing this realize the extent to which they're about to get lobbied by publishers, authors, agents and others who want to sell books. Actually, I'm sure they do, and probably will welcome the attention. I'll be watching this experiment with great interest.

More Bad Behavior by 'Journalists'

Wall Street Journal (subscription): How Companies Pay TV Experts For On-Air Product Mentions. Plugs Come Amid News Shows And Appear Impartial; Pacts Are Rarely Disclosed

Once again, we read a story of improper activities by people who appear to be journalists.

The most depressing part of this story isn't the individual behavior, though that's bad enough. It's the way these commentators' big-network employers -- maybe that should be enablers -- go through such contortions of logic to defend what's going on.

Adobe Buys Macromedia

I'll have more to say later, but this is little more than proof that the Microsoft-era antitrust standard is alive and disturbingly healthy. It goes like this:

There is no antitrust standard, and there will be no enforcement.

Gordon Moore and His 'Law,' 40 Years Later

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore is one of the true greats of technology, and a thoroughly decent human being to boot. His famous guess about technological improvement, now enshrined as Moore's Law, is 40 years old.

There are so many items I could point at, but here are several worth a special look/listen:

Larry Magid has a podcast interview with Gordon Moore, of Moore's Law fame.

John Markoff, in today's NY Times, writes: "It's Moore's Law, but Another Had the Idea First."

Jerk CEOs, Part 12,434

The boss of Verizon tells the SF Chronicle: "Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?"

Congressional Follies

Am I the only one who thinks Congressional Democrats would be much happier if the corrupt Tom DeLay stayed put in his Republican leadership post? He's a walking, ranting advertisement for the other side (and obviously, as AP reports, some in his own party are aware of this.)

Of course, the alleged opposition party stands for almost nothing these days, anyway. Left Coaster lists 31 Democrats in the U.S. House who voted for the odious bankruptcy legislation (great for financial institutions; awful for regular folks) and the permanent repeal of the inheritance tax, which helps the super-rich at the expense of everyone else.

It makes me wonder: Who'd even notice if the Democrats had more seats in the House?

Telecom Companies Versus Communities

Tim Karr: Is Cheap Broadband Un-American? Forcing public broadband networks to ask permission from Verizon before offering service is akin to forcing public libraries to ask permission from Borders before checking out books. Meanwhile, the United States has slid from first to thirteenth place in national broadband penetration, falling behind South Korea, Japan and Canada, where effective private-public sector initiatives have paved over the digital divide, allowing more citizens to reap the economic benefits of the open information era at a fraction of the costs we take for granted.

Economics of News (Not Newspapers)

At the "Changing Economics of News gathering in Berkeley, we're getting down to some fairly core issues. Rather than try to summarize what's happening, I'll just note key observations by panel members:

"I don't think today we know the magnitude of the market failure" in the loss of what's often called "hard news" reporting, says James Hamilton, professor of economics and public policy at Duke University. (His new book, All the News That's Fit to Sell", should be required reading in the industry.)

Are we returning to the economics of the 19th Century, when circulation (as opposed to advertising) provided the bulk of the revenues? Perhaps, says Albert Scardino of the Guardian.

News is becoming a service, not a product, says GBN's Katherine Fulton. Maybe we're heading for a world where great journalism needs patrons as opposed to traditional customers.

Craig Newmark says, "The effects we're having on the classified (advertising) market are pretty overstated." But he says the news business has lost trust. He's cautious about predictions, having predicted "lunar colonies."

Brad DeLong asks: Why is Bloomberg (which hired the Washington Post's excellent Federal Reserve reporter) more interested in covering the Fed correctly than the Post?

The New York Times' John Markoff says a discussion like this in five years will derive from near-universal access to high-speed data connections -- that the medium will determine a lot of the economics.

Sandy Close of Pacific News Service notes the explosion of ethnic media, a "hunger to be visible" in a world where mass media have failed to reflect society's realities. Small businesses are the advertising base.

Zephyr Teachout says we must create an architecture for civic involvement, including journalism -- but we need to combine real world activity with online work.

Reaching the new America is an enormous opportunity for emergent media, says Sandy Close. She urges multi-lingual jobs classifieds for craigslist, as an example of what's needed.

Fulton: We are at absolute takeoff point with "motion media" online, a shift in power to different kinds of institutions and citizens. The old institutions (and people) have a preservation mindset, while "the real game is innovation, not preservation" -- and will take place outside the current power structure. Is the Associated Press of the future a bottom-up phenomenon?

Kim-Mai Cutler, editor of the campus Daily Californian, notes that the news aggregators and portals -- such as Yahoo News -- are the current winners. Raises the question of how journalism will be paid for...

My take on the event: There are still many more questions than answers about future business models, but the writing is squarely on the wall. The industry that has provided high-quality journalism (amid the garbage) for all these years had better pay attention.

Bubble, Bubble, Bubble, Bubble...

SF Chronicle: Homeowners find much to appreciate Homeowners find much to appreciate. Despite rising interest rates, sales and prices in the Bay Area rocket to new highs. How high? The annual increase in the median home price now tops the region's typical household income.

Mercury News: Home buyers 'flip'. Of the 1,882 houses and condos sold in the county in February, 4.5 percent -- about 84 homes -- had been purchased within the previous six months, according to DataQuick Information Systems. That's up from 3 percent in February 2004. The prior record for ``flipping'' in Santa Clara County was set in June 1989, when 3.5 percent of homes sold had been owned for less than six months.

This drunken binge is unreal. And when the music stops, the hangover will be massive.

What's most outrageous about it? I take for granted that people will bet everything, however foolishly, on what look like sure things, particularly when industries pretend that markets skyrocket forever -- after all, this real-estate run-up is increasingly being fueled by nothing-down and interest-only loans to people who in rational times would be shown the door by lenders.

And despite a few cautionary stories and the occasional cautionary quote in the gee-whiz-ain't-it-amazing coverage, the media are not beginning to cover this as it should be covered: as a clear and maybe imminent threat to the economy when rationality returns. Shades of the Internet bubble a few years ago, eh?

Soon enough, we'll be reading woe-filled stories -- a year or two from now, or whenever -- about those sad sacks who lost more than they had betting on what is surely turning into a suckers' play. Look elsewhere for sympathy when that happens.

Obliviousness ==> Oblivion?

Tim Porter was at Tuesday's panel before the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, and in his report he noted this "telling moment" when the moderators

"put a slide up of Craig Newmark and asked how many people in the room of several hundred recognized him or his name. Only a smattering of hands rose. A few more hands went up at the mention of Craigslist and its free classifieds."

In an admittedly imperfect analogy, allow me to wonder how many railroad executives in 1908 would have recognized a picture of Henry Ford.

More on Who's a Journalist

Bringing in an historical perpsective, Boston University's Chris Daly says we should ask Thomas Jefferson to help us figure out who journalists are. Good advice, as you'll see if you read his essay. He sums up:

Anyone who engages in reporting -- whether for newspapers, magazines, radio, television, or blogs -- deserves equal protection under those laws, whether the news is delivered with a quill pen or a computer.

Dan Bricklin adds some ideas.

New RSS Newsreader of Note

I'm experimenting with Pito Salas' BlogBridge, an RSS aggregator and newsreader, and much more. It includes rating systems and sync between computers. Impressive...

Apple's War on Journalism, Continued

A bunch of bloggers joined an amicus brief in the Apple-versus-bloggers situation, which asks the court to adopt "a functional test for the newsgatherers' privilege that does not discriminate between reporters, regardless of the medium in which they publish" as well as creating a "a test that will not impede journalists' use of the Internet to report news by limiting their constitutional protections when they publish there."

I'm not on the list, having already filed a declaration in the case (at the request of the lawyers; I'm not being paid for this).

The question of who is a journalist has been basically taken off the table in this case, given the judge's initial ruling that dodged the issue. Now it's about whether any journalist can write or broadcast about something Apple or any company has deemed a trade secret. Big journalism organizations are on the case now -- late to the party, I note, having ignored it earlier -- because their own interests have been threatened.

I'm uncomfortable with the "who's a journalist" question, and am still working on what I think. It's clear to me that we need to separate the who from the what -- that is, we need to protect people who are doing the deed of journalism, as opposed to naming the people we are calling journalists; this is the only sensible approach, if we're going to protect journalism and the public good, in a world where anyone can be a journalist at one time or another.

Murdoch Looks Ahead

I'm no fan of Rupert Murdoch, a press (robber) baron whose greed and overtly one-sided journalism have been a malevolent force in the media sphere. But in a speech he gave this week to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he said a bunch of things that needed saying -- and for that, he's done a real public service.

The speech is online at the News Corp. website, and it's essential reading for anyone in the news business.

Interestingly, News Corp. has been anything but a leader on the Internet. The company made some stabs at it in the 1990s, but retreated in a fairly ignominious way after apparently concluding that there wasn't a good enough business model compared with traditional media.

In his talk to the editors, however, Murdoch showed that he and the people who are briefing him on this stuff are attuned to the emerging world, and in a profound way. Here's a sample:

But our internet site will have to do still more to be competitive. For some, it may have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.

At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy -- chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can’t vouch for the quality of people who aren’t regularly employed by us – and bloggers could only add to the work done by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve. So long as our readers understand the distinction between bloggers and our journalists.

To carry this one step further, some digital natives do even more than blog with text – they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting – and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well.

And with the growing proliferation of broadband, the emphasis online is shifting from text only to text with video. The future is soon upon us in this regard. Google and Yahoo already are testing video search while other established cable brands, including Fox News, are accompanying their text news stories with video clips.

Read the whole thing.

America the Idiotic

Jeff Jarvis: American women have no nipples (before 10 p.m.). This shows the absurd lengths to which regulatory puritanism has gone: Now American women can't have nipples, at least not before the "safe harbor," when, apparently, nipples are suddenly, magically allowed to pop out again.

Asking the Readers

Wall Street Journal: News Sites Solicit Articles Straight From Readers. In the past year, a handful of small newspapers have launched variations on that model. Newspaper publishers are eager to find new ways to connect to readers -- daily newspaper circulation dropped 11% between 1990 and 2003, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. Now, as do-it-yourself Web publishing tools are making it easier for laypeople to create blogs, newspapers are borrowing ideas from those informal Web journals in an effort to make their own coverage more accessible, and, they hope, attract more readers.

Blogs Blocked by Nannyware

This blog and lots of others are blocked from viewing in enterprises that subscribe to nannyware from this company. More from Robert Ambrogi.

Bloggers' Cloudy Business Issues

Mark Glaser (Online Journalism Review): Advertising, editorial lines blur as bloggers' salaries tied to traffic. About.com and Gawker Media pioneer writer payment systems that tie bonuses to traffic growth, while 'stand-alone journalists' do business and editorial functions.

Booted from Panels? Not a Bad Idea...

Jay Rosen says it's time for people who hold panels on tomorrow's journalism to stop featuring the usual suspects and bring in new blood -- namely the people who are out there in the trenches doing what the rest of us are just talking about.

He's right, though he unaccountably doesn't include me in the list of usual suspects. I don't know whether to be flattered or horrified...

Book Published in Taiwan

The Taiwanese edition of my book has been published, and today's China Times has a review. Hope it's friendly...

Pitching Newspaper Editors on Citizen Journalism

That's what I'll do later today on the opening plenary panel at the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. The ASNE is the trade organization for the top editors at U.S. newspapers, and an audience well worth a two-day cross-country trip to pitch on the virtues of grassroots media.

I'm going to say what I always say: that this is too important for their future to ignore, and that it's going to happen with or without them -- and that newspapers, almost uniquely, have the ability to be the leaders in this new marketplace of ideas given their already strong presence in local communities.

Citizen Videos Counter Official Accounts

Today's New York Times has a story, "Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest," that is by turns infuriating and enlightening -- infuriating because of the apparently unpunished official misconduct that it plainly suggests, and enlightening in its demonstration of citizen empowerment. From the story:

A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.

For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.

Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.

Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.

As Mark Forscher, who pointed the story out to me, notes: "Although the Times doesn't come out and call it 'citizen journalism' or 'grassroots media' isn't this what it's all about? Regular people empowered through the creation of their own media to hold those in power accountable?"

Accountability is more than getting bogus charges dropped, however. It's holding to account public employees who lie in pursuit of law and order. Not much sign of that in these cases.

Nonethelesss, the message is starting to get clearer for everyone. The ubiquity of cameras has disturbing privacy implications. But it also means that the truth won't always stay buried.

A Story that Takes Resources ($$$) to Report

NY Times: Stores Say Wild Salmon, but Tests Say Farm Bred. Tests performed for The New York Times in March on salmon sold as wild by eight New York City stores, going for as much as $29 a pound, showed that the fish at six of the eight were farm raised. Farmed salmon, available year round, sells for $5 to $12 a pound in the city.

What the newspaper has done here is an example of excellent consumer reporting -- a piece that took serious resources, as in money and a willingness to take what undoubtedly will be some serious heat from the markets named here, to accomplish. It's difficult to imagine how citizen-journalists could pull off the same story in such a credible way.

This is one more reason why I don't want to see Big Journalism disappear. It's too important.

Attention in the 'Syndisphere'

My older, wiser brother Steve advises, "Vote with your Feed." Key quote:

This is the subscription economy we’re talking about. Not the Blogosphere so much as the Syndisphere. In this ecosystem the contract is based on continued attention, not captured attention. It leverages a form of broadcast couch potato dynamics, where inertia keeps you tuned from ER to Leno to Today. When CSI broke that cycle, it was a big deal. In the Syndisphere once you’ve signed on, it takes more effort than it’s worth to sign off. Unsubscribing requires real motivation.

Another Big Media Company Starts to Get It

The Rocky Mountain News is launching YourHub.com, asking for reader contributions. We'll see what the readers do.

About That Free Annual Credit Report

You're well-advised to know what your credit report says about you, in this age of identity theft and data-mongering by companies that seem indifferent to the damage they cause in the process of selling our most private information to almost anyone who'll pay for it.

You're also supposed to be able to get a free report every year from the "Big Three" credit companies -- Experian, Equifax and Trans Union -- by going to AnnualCreditReport.com and filling in the appropriate information.

Nice idea. But if your experience is like mine, good luck. I managed to get only my Experian report. The other two companies' sites refused to cooperate.

The Equifax server returned an error message -- and then claimed I'd already gotten a report when I tried again.

Trans Union's site asked me to input my credit card numbers (and other information) for verification, and then insisted that an absolutely correct number for one card was incorrect. The site eventually kicked me out, and said to call or write for the report.

If you've ever tried to deal with these companies on the phone, you know the futility. But I'll have to do it. I'll let you know what further nonsense they put me through.

Note: If you've used the AnnualCreditReport.com site, feel free to post about your experience below. I can't believe I'm the only one who's not having much luck with this.

Guest Blogger: The Mitch Albom Affair

UPDATED

Jim Bettinger, a former San Jose Mercury News colleague who now runs one of the most prestigious journalism fellowship programs, the Knight Fellowships at Stanford, is properly disturbed by the Mitch Albom situation. The star Detroit Free Press columnist and best-selling author (also a former colleague) wrote a column describing two former college basketball players' attendance at a game that they did not, in fact, attend; he was writing for publication several days later. (Update: According to this Chicago Tribune story, Albom has been suspended.)

Jim notes this account and points to the Romenesko site for more related links on the affair.

I'm personally conflicted by this situation, partly because I worked at the Free Press for almost six years, and knew -- and admired -- Mitch while I was there. But it's difficult to argue with Jim Bettinger's assessment -- in particular, that whatever Mitch did wrong here, it was grossly compounded by the negligence of his editors.

Jim writes:

There's a quality about it that says something profoundly disturbing about the newspaper business, more so than Jayson Blair or Jack Kelley or any of the others.

It is this: An accomplished newspaper writer at a serious metropolitan newspaper, along with some number of editors at that newspaper, and some number of editors at other newspaper websites, published and posted a piece of journalism that they knew (or should have known) was misleading, in that it represented to the reader that Albom was at the game and wrote what he had seen there.

Albom's quasi-apology says the fact that Cleaves and Richardson didn't go to the game "was hardly the thrust of the column," but any reasonable reading of the column is that it was the thrust: I, Mitch Albom, was at the game, and seeing these two NBA players there was a telling moment. If Cleaves and Richardson had shown up, this still would have been misleading.

The editors who, on Friday, read and put in the paper a column that began, "In the audience Saturday were..." should have realized this was misleading. So should the newspaper website editors who posted the column on Friday (Googling courtesy of Michael David Smith). That so many people in "gatekeeper" positions could have participated in this suggests two explanations, not mutually exclusive.

One is that these editors have such a heavy workload that they do not have time to really read everything that they put in the paper. In the case of those who posted the Albom column on their websites, I think that's a real possibility. To the extent that this is a factor, it's a concrete demonstration of how the reductions in editorial staff for economic reasons can affect quality.

The other explanation is that we tolerate a certain degree of misleading readers in the name of a livelier, more readable, more compelling account of events. I think we always knew this. But it has rarely been shown to me so starkly: That a columnist would write on Friday a story recounting without any qualification what was going to happen the next day, and that so many editors would put their initials on it, suggests that it's part of our operating system.

It's hard to think of a stance that is more disrespectful to readers - "We're going to publish something that we know is misleading (or that we don't care if it's misleading) because it reads better that way" - and we'd all be fools to think that readers don't learn this.

Update on "Journalist" Taking Government Pay

AP: Boston Herald Fires Writer Aiding Governor. The Boston Herald on Friday fired a columnist who signed a contract worth up to $10,000 to help Gov. Mitt Romney's administration promote its environmental policies. Herald Publisher Patrick Purcell initially said the paper would continue Charles Chieppo's weekly column, a day after he began working for the governor's Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.

Two things here. First, the Herald's initial response was shameful. This guy should have been shown the door the second his government payoff became known.

Second, the conservative wing of the blogosphere has been all too silent to the poisoning of journalistic integrity represented by this example and others like it. (There are exceptions, I'm glad to say.)

We're seeing a pretty disturbing trend here. And people of honor in the journalism community -- amateur or pro and no matter what their politics -- should be on the case.

Paying Citizen Journalists

GetLocalNews says it's going to pay citizen journalists (CNet)."

Applause...

(Corrected to fix bad link.)

Big Journalists Finally Take on Apple in Blog Case

They've been AWOL so far, but finally some Big Media companies are coming to the legal defense (Silicon Valley Watcher) of the Web publishers Apple is suing for reporting "trade secrets" in recent months. I suspect this is because the judge in the case dodged the question of whether the site owners were journalists in the first place.

As I noted before, the ruling was a direct shot at the process of journalism in California. I'm glad to see that the big journalism organizations have understood the stakes -- and are acting on that.

Secure Instant Messaging

I may have mentioned this before, but if you are ever interested in communicating with me by instant message, please get Skype. Not only is the voice calling encrypted, but so is everything else. I'm on yet another wireless network today, and not especially thrilled with the idea of sending my IMs in the clear.

Modest Proposal for Litigious Apple and Copyright Cartel

Peter Rojas (Engadget): Apple, RIAA Should Sue Each Other’s Fans. Astonishing as it may seem given that few companies besides Apple have the raw engineering acumen to remove the LCD screen from an MP3 player, the RIAA also has technology that could benefit Apple’s legal department. The anti-piracy probes that RIAA member companies put into peer-to-peer networks could be a boon to Apple rumor control.

Encarta Asks for Reader Help

Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia has a blog and is requesting input from users. It's no Wikipedia, but asking -- and listening -- won't hurt.

Another "Journalist" on a Government Payroll

Boston Globe: State employs a Herald columnist. Governor Mitt Romney's administration has awarded a $10,000 contract to a Boston Herald op-ed columnist to promote the governor's environmental policies. The columnist, Charles D. Chieppo, started working yesterday with the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.

Sigh...

EFF's Latest Pioneers

Congrats to Mitch Kapor, Ed Felten and Patrick Ball, this year's recipients of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Awards. Well deserved.

(Note: Mitch is a seed investor in my grassroots-journalism project, and I was a Pioneer honoree several years ago.)

Freedom FIghting

I'm honored that Reporters without Borders, an organization that fights for free speech around the world, has nominated me for a "Freedom Blog" award. Jay Rosen and Declan McCullagh are co-nominees in our category, which puts me in excellent company.

Ridge and the Revolving Door

Salon: Passport to pry. Civil libertarians are up in arms over government plans to embed new I.D. chips in visas and passports. And isn't it convenient that Tom Ridge is now the I.D. technology's biggest salesman?

Convenient, and corrupt. But corruption is legal when it's the Washington revolving door.

HP's Contemptuous Board

Business Week: HP's $58,000-a-Day Interim CEO. Hewlett-Packard's board has agreed to pay Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman a $3 million cash bonus for serving as interim CEO from Feb. 8, when it ousted Carly Fiorina, to Apr. 1, when former NCR (NCR ) Chief Executive Mark Hurd was hired.

With this flagrantly over-the-top gift, the board is showing contempt for its shareholders, employees and communities. This board shares none of the values that infused HP when its founders ran the place. Shameful.

My Other New Computer (Replacement Model)

Remember when people claimed that someday a computer would be as easy to use as a phone? As some wit said (wish I could remember who), folks weren't counting on phones becoming as difficult to use as computers, or as buggy flawed.

I just got a replacement for my Treo 650 phone/PDA. The first one had a habit of slowing to a crawl in performance -- click a key, wait 15 seconds for a response -- and forcing me to reboot it.

PalmOne's support people kept trying to tell me it must be the third-party software I installed. So I unloaded everything except the software that came with the unit. It still suffered the slowdown. I did a total reset: restoring factory settings, then reloading only my contacts and calendar data. Same problem.

At this point, the company's support person suggested a hard reset but leaving my data off the phone, just to see what would happen. I explained to him that this was an absolute non-starter of an idea, and asked to speak to a supervisor. He immediately changed direction and said he'd send me a replacement phone, which he did.

The replacement arrived the other day and I haven't had the slowdown problem since then. I've even restored Pocket Tunes, the music player that has allowed me to replace my iPod with the Treo when I'm on long trips. (I have a 1GB SD card in the thing, which holds more than enough music, around 10 CDs, for a cross-country flight as well as storing backups of my data.)

The new Treo also has a removable battery, unlike its predecessor, the 600 model. The battery life seems pretty good, but I'm going to get a spare.

Over the next few days I'm going to start adding back the software, or at least the latest updates from various sites, that I was running on the 600. I'll report back to you on whether the dreaded slowdown reappears.

He Don't Need No Stinking First Amendment

Hollywood Reporter: Sensenbrenner to cable execs: Indecency is criminal act. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations.

If what this politico is proposing is not unconstitutional, then we are well and truly screwed as a free society.

Why are people not screaming from the rooftops about the outrageous attacks we're seeing on the First Amendment, on free speech itself? Are people really that afraid these days to speak their minds?

Sensenbrenner surely knows he's playing craps with the Constitution when he makes these kinds of statements. He doesn't care. He's playing to an audience -- the people who don't realize that there is a personal censorship device that works infallibly. It's called the Off button.

More Citizen Journalism Media Watchdogging

CampusJ (Jewish Collegiate News) did some bottom-up journalism that forced the New York Times to admit a mistake. Read about it here.

On Journalism's Future, Continued

The Heritage Foundation's Mark Tapscott has a thoughtful analysis of Merrill Brown's Carnegie Corp. report on the decline of the mass media, with a response/clarification from the report's author.

Countering Wal-Mart's PR Campaign

AP: Wal-Mart Fights Criticism From Labor. Wal-Mart is "good for America" and the barrage of criticism against the company is an effort to protect the status quo in retailing, President and CEO Lee Scott said Tuesday in a sharp attack on organized labor and retail rivals.

It's not just labor that finds Wal-Mart such a drain on this nation, and it's not just retail rivals. It's Wal-Mart's way of doing business, which has its positive side but in the end harms this nation far more than it helps.

The giant company is too difficult for one newspaper to cover properly. In an era of multinational corporate giants, we will need to see group journalism -- and big groups at that -- tackle how such companies exist and operate around the globe.

Inevitably, some of the journalism will be done by partisans. Maybe most will be. Yet except for the occasional massive series by a big newspaper, the mass media are basically not equipped to get at the real story -- to provide the accumulation of facts and data, not just the big hits, that will explain how things work.

Wikipedia's Wal-Mart pages are a good start. They're augmented by sites such as Wake Up Wal-Mart, which lists news articles.

More would be even better -- such as frequent reports from people in the communities where Wal-Mart operates, told by the people who work and shop there, not to mention companies affected by its practices.

I wonder if this is the kind of overall tale that will be mostly told by citizen journalists.

Pew Podcasting Numbers Were High

So says Engadget in a post that sums up:

Not that podcasting as a phenomenon isn’t growing rapidly or anything, but there’s no reason to overinflate its importance, you know?

Yup.

That San Francisco Proposal to Regulate Political Blogs

UPDATED

Chris Nolan is on the case, and attending the Board of Supervisors meeting. A stand-alone journalist is doing what the big media should be doing -- covering the story.

Update: Here's her report from the scene.

Also: The National Journal, a Washington-based publication read by government and political folks, is on the larger story -- politicans wondering how to regulate bloggers' political speech. The Journal's Technology Daily has a piece on the San Francisco situation today, but I can't link to the subscribers-only story.