tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-126736732024-03-13T11:30:57.799-05:00the Constant ObserverBack when we had 13 channels, Mom used to say: "Don't sit so close,you'll ruin your eyes." I wonder what she'd say about the Internet...Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.comBlogger687125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-24810053652014748602012-03-29T11:39:00.001-05:002012-03-29T13:14:26.658-05:00Following my passion for fashion (in blogging)--and my final post on The Constant ObserverFor about the past year or so, this blog has been in "sunsetting" mode--but I haven't quite wanted to shut it down. Part of my reason for shutting it down has been my increasing dis-interest in hyperlocal journalism and the newspaper industry; a growing lack of interest in many aspects of technology. Not to mention growing dis-illusion with the overall media landscape--which Jon Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-80363870027755923822012-02-22T12:56:00.000-05:002012-02-22T12:56:26.116-05:00David Brooks' plea to save the Great White MaleCall me a cock-eyed optimist, but yesterday while I was reading David Brooks' editorial titled "The Talent Society," I thought he might have something to say that wasn't reactionary. oh, who was I kidding?? But he did bring up some interesting statistics regarding single people, then kinds of lives we have, and how our lives could be short-changing both poor children and middle-class (white) menTish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-74554140590598731152012-01-26T16:45:00.003-05:002012-01-26T16:48:19.279-05:00White Boy Media Critics, Haute Mainstream Media, and Why We Won't Get Diverse Viewpoints Any TIme SoonLast evening, Jay Rosen asked his friends on Facebook (of which I'm one) if he should comment on Shani Hilton's Where Are The Women And Non-White Media Critics? essay, where Jay's name and blog link (along with David Carr, Howard Kurtz, and a few others)appears. The first responses, from males, told Jay that the story was "link bait" and he shouldn't respond. I ventured in to say that Ms. HiltonTish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-70347189433289822792011-12-08T01:01:00.002-05:002011-12-08T01:04:45.105-05:00Rick Perry Indugles in Political Asshattery--Blames Everyone But Catholics For Taking Prayer Out of SchoolsAs someone who still likes to wish people a Merry Christmas, and who, when asked, refers to herself as an "academic Catholic," and has lots of friends across a variety of denominations, not to mention someone who has gay family members and gay friends, I was horrifically offended by the following piece of historically incorrect asshattery trotted out by Rick Perry:
Ok, so I guess Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-23466350299332097022011-11-16T13:50:00.001-05:002011-11-16T13:52:14.080-05:00Debate: Women Journalists Bullied, Threatened with Violence, for Opinion ColumnsPerhaps if Katie Roiphe were a journalist working online, she would have a better understanding of sexual harassment and wouldn't be asking "what on earth is that?" Because it seems that at the same time Roiphe was having a hissy over the allegations of sexual harassment against Republican candidate Herman Cain, some of here compatriots across the pond were dealing with some serious sexual Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-21461220527543534392011-11-15T13:03:00.001-05:002011-11-15T14:06:52.709-05:00Mainstream Media Use Twitter as Broadcast Medium (and so do lots of others)The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) issued an new report yesterday covering how mainstream media outlets make use of Twitter.
Not surprisingly, 93 percent of mainstream media outlets surveyed--this included print, network television, radio, and online-- use Twitter as another means of broadcasting their own information. The study surveyed 3,600 tweets from 13 major news Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-8581362626515428052011-09-08T16:36:00.000-05:002011-09-08T16:36:29.908-05:00Google Buys Zagat....So what does that mean for Yelp and Foursquare??It's a little late in the day to report this--as most of you probably know by now--but Google has purchased Zagat, known for its almost never-wrong restaurant ratings. Here's the announcement from Tim and Nina Zagat with a great nod to the consumer who has helped to make their guide great:
It is a testament to the knowledgeable consumers who contribute their opinions that Zagat Survey has Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-20297783103228191682011-08-28T22:38:00.000-05:002011-08-28T22:38:13.280-05:00In which Jack Shafer is laid off, freemiums are considered, and a note about this blogI don't know who the genius was who thought that giving away high quality written content on the web was a good idea, but I definitely remember when newspapers thought their websites would be cracking great promotion for their printed product. So,when I read Paul Carr's essay--Now Can We All Agree That The “High Quality Web Content” Experiment Has Failed? and a mention of Slate's decision to layTish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-34514631378958079502011-06-21T07:43:00.000-05:002011-06-21T07:43:43.057-05:00New York Times Limits Comment Characters from 5,000 to 2,000*Yesterday, the New York Times announced that it would limit the number of characters that can be used to write a comment from 5,000 to 2,000. Aron Pilhofer, told The Wrap that:
"We've had one of the highest character limits known to humanity for a long time. We've gotten feedback from readers and frequent commenters, as well as internally, that our character limit is too high, that maybe we Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-4550958576989519022011-06-20T12:15:00.001-05:002011-06-20T12:19:56.535-05:00Local Newspaper Experiments with Crowdsourcing in News CafeCan a local paper really get the community involved in the process of creating local news? If you ask John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register Co, the answer might be "yes." Mr. Paton was the keynote speaker at the 10th International Newsroom Summit held last week in Zurich, Switzerland, where he discussed about the company's "news cafe" experiment in Torrington, CT....
In this short recap of Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-84928280014323679012011-06-16T15:06:00.003-05:002011-06-16T15:31:00.993-05:00The Future of Media: Women and Minorities Need Not Apply...Some of the most important conversations about where media, marketing, and technology are headed are often conducted behind closed doors, at conferences and panel discussions attended by industry insiders who received invitations or could afford to attend. Rarely, if ever, are the conversations or findings from these events reported or published where anyone might read them. As a result, Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-89419932477125881062011-05-23T13:22:00.002-05:002011-05-23T16:13:30.174-05:00Wall St. Journal Reporter Takes Heat for Helping Us Know What They KnowFor years now, tech entrepreneurs have been telling us not to worry about the information we upload to their sites, and advertisers have tried to assure us that they were collecting only that information that's necessary for them. In fact, we've been told that giving them all kinds of information is actually a *good* thing. That for the advertisers, giving us better targeted ads really helps usTish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-92010819351748483342010-11-05T13:47:00.001-05:002010-11-05T13:54:15.815-05:00Screw Your Copyright Infringing Content Grab! Pay Me!It was no surprise when I heard the story that a post by blogger Monica Gaudio had been lifted by a famous cooking magazine and posted on their site. Ms. Gaudio had been given a byline, but was never informed the post had been taken, nor was she paid for the scraped post (it was not re-posted, as there was no link back to Monica's original.)
Why should she have been both notified and paid? Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-45789681587008952672010-11-04T17:15:00.001-05:002010-11-16T12:17:56.066-05:00Why I'm Quitting Foursquare (you might want to think about it too....)Update 11/13/10: Jon Evans @TechCrunch writes similar sentiments in
Dear Foursquare, Gowalla: Please Let's Stop Pretending This is Fun Um, yeah--because it's not...
By the time Foursquare came out, geo-location apps weren't news to me. I'd already heard of BriteKite and Gowalla. Friends (predominantly male) were using both to regularly inform me of their whereabouts. It was all rather Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-74005121783339367972010-09-29T15:02:00.003-05:002010-09-29T23:41:00.133-05:00Mayhill Fowler and the pitfalls on the road from unpaid blogger to paid journalistThe other day, Mayhill Fowler, the blogger who broke the "Bittergate" story announced that she was leaving the Huffington Post Fowler states in her intro: I want to be paid for my time and effort—or at a minimum, to get a little remuneration in return for the money I spend myself in order to do original reportage. I would not expect to be paid for punditry. But can a "blogger" go from rank Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-35168504308704509072010-09-16T16:23:00.002-05:002010-09-16T16:28:22.496-05:00The death of RSS might be greatly exaggerated. Here's why....
bye, bye Bloglines
There was quite a bit of discussion this week about the viability of RSS once word got out that the Bloglines reader--once the most popular RSS reader (and most simple to use)--would be shutting down as of October 1. Bloglines isn't the first RSS reader to shut down, and there are still a whole lot of people who use RSS readers, even if the casual or less tech-savvy reader Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-78997214118978097742010-09-13T18:30:00.000-05:002010-09-13T18:30:11.104-05:00From 2005 and Present Again.....On Reviving the Constant ObserverBack in May, I decided to take some time away from blogging to work on other projects. It was a good idea at the time. I had a backlog of writing projects to complete, a workshop series to teach, and a webinar to put together. It was asking way too much to divide my time between the preparation for those three things and blog with some consistency--not to mention manage the day to day tasks Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-24704597838131831942010-05-04T11:51:00.006-05:002010-05-19T18:39:54.215-05:00Find me at Poynter.org....(or, so long and thanks for all the cookies...)May marks the five-year anniversary of this blog, and I've had some time to think about where this blog is going as much as I have about where I'm going(career-wise.)This blog is now going on extended--and perhaps permanent--hiatus. Part of this decision has to do with the simple fact that, after five years, this blog feels played out. Five years is a long time in blog years, and I've pretty Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-22451920553485483822010-04-19T09:34:00.007-05:002010-04-20T13:56:57.537-05:00Will "content" kill "journalism"?Ever since the term "content mills" was coined, and ever since there's been much hue, cry and discussion on Demand Media (what some considered the preeminent content mill) and their deal with USAToday's Travel section, I've been wondering: is "content" a form of journalism, or is it just website filler with little or no journalistic value?Or is it really that cheap "content" on a news site Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-31607010155135800952010-03-25T07:01:00.003-05:002010-03-25T07:56:15.801-05:00How the study of religion social media...This week, the Alumni Association of Smith College is hosting A Century of Women in Type: A Conference for Smith Women in Media. I've been asked to be on a panel on blogging and new media, for which I'm truly honored. But it's got me thinking about my major--Religion and Biblical Literature--and how the academic study of religion relates to a deeper understanding of social media....The academicTish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-88840167650658785732010-02-28T13:09:00.007-05:002010-02-28T13:50:55.411-05:00A Meditation on the Personal Nature of American ArtThe other day, I met up with Patrice Lamothe, CEO of Pearltrees. It was an interesting meeting, and I mentioned to him that I'd gone to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art earlier that day. Funny thing is, Patrice is from Paris. So, there's something of an irony there, if you think about it....I tend to fall into ironic conversations with people quite often. Guess that could be because I'mTish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-26454264145717846772010-02-21T12:26:00.003-05:002010-02-24T16:29:31.739-05:00Four aspects that could make AOL's local "white spaces" workYesterday, I wrote about how AOL's new "white spaces" for local journalism might not work. There are, however, a couple of ways they might work:1. Proprietary alogrithms. If AOL has a proprietary alogrithm (like Demand Media) that will tweak headlines to hit on the proper keywords. However, on a local level, this will still have to be connected to some sort of geo-located search capability. IfTish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-25170435260226180322010-02-20T11:19:00.005-05:002010-02-21T12:35:21.607-05:00AOL Revisits the Citizen Shovelware concept with Patch.com (and why it won't work)Some time back I wrote a scathing post about "citizen shovelware": that's when an "if you build it, they will come" philosophy is applied to the idea of citizen journalism, and some wise corporate dude puts up a site and expects the citizenry to populate it. It appears now that AOL is taking on the idea of citizen shovelware as it plans to expand to "hundreds" of sites, as was reported Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-61378130126457194562010-02-03T13:08:00.002-05:002010-02-03T13:30:58.792-05:00Could Google's focus on real-time search screw up finding older news?I recently wrote a piece for Poynter.org on Google's new focus on real-time search--which, if you're looking for the most up-to-date news, esp. on an emergency, is probably a good thing. But today, as I looked for articles on the 2008 comments controversy at the Hartford Courant (which had Mayor Eddie Perez standing on the steps of the Courant giving the publisher hell) I found zip, zero, nada...Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12673673.post-5402559741010422522010-02-01T08:52:00.004-05:002010-02-01T09:51:39.587-05:00On Writing, Wanting to be Heard, and Gratitude for EditorsWhen we are young, the images we get of the writing life are somewhat peculiar--the image is of the writer who toils in isolation most of the time, who, almost by magic, has an editor and is then transported into the world of publishing. We are so busy studying style and so forth that we aren't taught about the process that got the book from a bunch of typed pages to a bound first edition. And,Tish Grierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15657229618222899908noreply@blogger.com0