Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.

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.