Che and Fidel in the Blogosphere

Somewhere along the line, Craig Newmark left the impression that people are going overboard with citizen journalism ("People have gotten too excited about citizen journalism, and they're not addressing the balance well.") and, I think, further gives the impression that there's a whole bunch of citizens just running around like Che and Fidel destabilizing the status quo...or at least that seems to be what's come across in this piece from CityPages ...

Honestly, I'm sure about Craig's real view of "citizen journalists" (he gives a very broad explanation in the interview) but there seems to be some misunderstanding...(and it occurs not just with Craig, lots of people have a misunderstanding of citizen journalism.)

The fact of the matter is that most of the folks who encourage citizen journalism are or have been journalists themselves--like Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis and a whole bunch of others. And probably the most famous citizen journalist, Joshua Micha Marshall (featured in the NYMag piece) is one of those guys who was a journalist before he made his mark as a citizen journalist.

Even non-marquee but well-respected names like Jeff Hess, Roxanne Cooper, and Amy Gahran have writing/journalism backgrounds.

Further, most of us who are more or less on the Citizen side of the phrase "citizen journalism" have mentors who have been in media or journalism. From the folks who blog at Masslive.com, to Baristanet and The Greensboro News-Record, we all have mentors of one sort of another. Even I have mentors.

Besides, people wouldn't be doing it, nor would they have found mentors, if there weren't forces of destiny who thought they had something worth developing and sharing with others.

Heck, it's not like we've banded together and invested in guillotines...or Cuban cigars...Give us a break, Craig!

Journalism citizen journalism, media Blogging Blog Blogs Weblogs

links to make you think

Jay Small shares his experiences with ads...Jay's been blogging since '02, is a noted journalist and media executive....as I said, no guarantees

JD's got a link to a cheeky piece in Wired on making money from blogs. Advice: don't quit your day job. But if you really want to, try blogging about finance and sex. How about financial sex?? Or find a way to make finances sexy...

Terry Heaton's $.02 on the NYMag article. Here's his take on blogging(that's *so* right in *so* many ways: "Here in Nashville, for example, we have a vibrant blogging community, and that's exactly what it is. We talk about the news. We talk about life. We talk about pets and sports and spouses and shopping and who's doing what to whom. I can think of only one local blogger whose goal may have been to make the A-list, and I think that's probably representative of the blogosphere as a whole."

Steve Outing at Poynter parses out the Technorati 100--and if you're young and Japanese or Chinese (12/100) you've got just as good a chance of hitting the top as you might if you blog about politics (14/100). Apparently the Japanese and Chinese kids are going to take over the world, so no matter what the rest of us old folks blog about, we have probably no chance of breaking that top 100. oh well, such is life...

citizen journalism, media Blogging Blog Blogs Weblogs

You Might Not Get There from Here...

I've been perusing Clive Thompson's article Blogs to Riches in New York Magazine about how YOU TOO CAN MAKE MONEY FROM BLOGGING!

Once again, readers get the usual cast of characters-- Marshall, the Gawker bunch, Huff'n'stuff--and a lot of math wiz mumbo-jumbo from Clay Shirky of NYU. It's all meant to convince us that if we blog hard enough, and fast enough, and are very cleaver, we, too can make loads of money from blogging!

Like listening to the folks at Amway...

The emphasis of the article though on big-money making from blogs is really only selling another pipe dream--something that sort of smells like someone fanning the flames of the latest take on the old Horatio Alger myth. Seriously. Even if you work really, really hard, pay good money for the latest schemes, follow the best advice, there are still no guarantees of success. Ever.

Perhaps the best advice was from Corey Doctorow of uber-blog BoingBoing: "“I always figured my life was fueling my blogging, so I didn’t want to be just a blogger...”

BoingBoing's got the numbers for its bloggers to just quit the world and go full time blog, but, from what Doctorow says that's not the point.

Kinda runs counter to Thompson's premise, doesn't it??

Y'all may be wondering, then, if the reason to blog isn't to make all that big, big money, is there any point to it? Emailing my friend Susan Mernit yesterday to thank her for a link, I mentioned some some snarking going on re the A-list (Thompson alludes to the sycophancy of the B & C list to the A-list). Susan said " To be honest, the best thing about blogging isn't the influence you acquire--it's the other smart people you get to know and talk with..."

That--right there--is the point of blogging. Too bad Clive fell for the numbers rather than the people.

FishbowlNY has a good $.02 also.

citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Dissecting the Great Technorati Popularity Contest

What's the deal with the Technorati Top 100? And why is it that so many of us never make it to the Top 100? (implied facetiousness)

Being very interested in the latest incarnation of the Top 100, I did something I rarely do--I looked it up. Some of the blogs and bloggers--Dooce, Jarvis, Winer, Hewitt--have been blogging for awhile. In Blogyears, they're very, very old. That they're still doing it, consistently, for so many years is amazing. They go!

Still others that have been on the list for awhile--Boing-Boing for instance--are group blogs that function as more than just your average blog. They've got a lot going on to catch people's attention.

I was, though, interested in what types and kinds of blogs made up the 100. So, after looking at most of them--many of which crashed my lousy IE browser, I came to these conclusins:

Aggregators are hot--either news or tech aggregators. build a news/tech aggregator and you're guaranteed a spot

Blogs by more than one person are hot --lots of groups doing lots of aggregating, mostly on news and tech, with some gossip.

Blogs by single individuals aren't as hot--the ones that are hot are done by tech geeks or 20-somethings. goes to show that geeks and kids rule the blogosphere (implied facetiousness again!)

Blogs about Tech definitely rule! alot of tech advice, tech news, Google watching (search engine and mathematical), web design stuff.

And everybody loves Gossip but, seriously, do I really care about Brad Pitt's belly lint? Perhaps I don't, but a lot of navel gazers apparently do.

the Right has far better cred than the Left kind of sad that the highest-rated new "liberal" blog is presided over by a former "right-winger." If she was ever was a right-winger at all. I'm sure Tim Russert wonders, too.

So, my conclusion--it's pretty much a popularity contest. If you have what it takes to construct your blog along certain lines--a news/tech aggregator with some of your best friends--I'm sure you'd shoot right up to the top! well, maybe not the Top per se but at least somewhere near it.

I just keep thinking of something a bodhisattva once told me: In life, there are no guarantees....

citizen journalism media Blogging Blog Blogs Weblogs Tech

Kristof and O'Reilly snit reaches new level of absurity.

What these two aren't realizing is that for each of them to be successful, they both have to be "experts," which then means that neither of them has any real world, real life perspective. O'Reilly's head is so far up his ass that he probably has no idea where Sudan is, and Kristof is so busy worrying about the problems of the world that he can't even see the human detritis on his own doorstep.

It's just too damned funny to watch titans swipe at each other like a two chicks catfighting in a biker bar. Now all we need is a few beers for the house.

citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs,

Apparenlty, Jim Brady and I have a lot in common! Don't worry Jim, some folks didn't like my opinions either.

Funny how a particular low-readership nobody in the blogosphere can have something in common with both Craig Newmark *and* the Washington Post in the same week! my god that's funny!!

I will have more on this later today...

media Blogging Blog Blogs Weblogs usthem

Check out Tristan Louis' great piece on The New Gatekeepers

And Jay Small's How to Make Groupthink sites better

citizen journalism, media Blogging Blog Blogs Weblogs usthem

come on! did you really think I'd change the name without getting another url??

There is, however, a tad more to the end of the name experiment, and, in the effort to be transparent, I'll tell the tale: Via a link on Slate I found Snarksmith. Penned by Michael Weiss and Nic Duquette (who's orignally from The Middle of Nowhere), Snarksmith is doesn't engage in what would normally be considered "snark." There's very little sense of catty plastiscene Joan Rivers urging insults. Rather, there was commentary that had the "what the heck were they thinking?" tone, with the majority of the stories smart and sharp in their observations.

So, to the critics who pretty much told me that I have no right to call this blog Snarkaholic--go take a look at Snarksmith

(yeah, and then you can tell me how much I have no right to do what I'm doing because I've never been a managing editor...yadda, yadda, yadda, I'm not listening...I'm a David flinging stones at the Establishment Goliaths, so get over it.)

And a funny coincidence....our blogs came about around the same time. As to the chicken-egg argument, who knows. I had no idea these guys existed before yesterday, and I doubt they even know who I am. But they are Commrades in Smart Snark. And that's what counts the most.

Who knows...maybe there's a way for the lowly amateur snarker to work with these august snarkers? (never know unless you pitch it)

Oh, they also have a great definition of snark--which kind of adds to the contention that it ain't what so many Joan Rivers wannabees and finger-snapping fashionistas think it is.

I will be experimenting with new titles for this blog over the next few days

Blogs sometimes take on personalities, or personnas of their own, and it's time to see how this one might be morphed.

You Can't Do That In Here!: Anonymity, Transparency, and the Snark

Is snarky blogging just a reflection of the world outside the box--or is there something else that propels it? And what do we really think of transparent snarkers? Jay Small, a veteran newspaper guy who's resume lists a boatload of interactive/internet experience, uses what's going on at digg.com and Newsvine to make some important observations regarding snarkiness in on-line communities:

Real online communities, however, wind up being even dirtier than real world communities. I know some "citizen media" advocates say we should get used to bad behavior, because Web worlds simply mirror reality. They don't. They're worse, because the risks for bad behavior online are minor compared to the risks for similar behavior face-to-face.....

...Online, far too many people speak up only for self-interests, and those interests are often not relevant to the rest of the community. People become insulting, argumentative and even hateful, hiding behind flimsy user profiles and virtual reputations they're more than willing to sacrifice to the altar of the flame.

It's very easy to be anonymous and be negative--and to give the impression that you are just calling it as you see it. In fact, it seems that we often like people who are anonymously nasty and snarky--never needing to retract their words. Anonymity actually guarantees that they need not retract their words. Anonymity can even garner some notoriety and popularity--there is some entertainment value in the anonymous snark and it is rewarded (note
Jolie in NYC and David Lat of Underneath Their Robes, not to mention Wonkette, Snappy the Clam, etc.)

Yet we don't necessarily like it when we know the snarkers. When the snarkers are transparent, the snarker has to make sure that everyone knows he/she is only joking...

Take a look at Mark Cuban's snark on Phil Jackson. Jackson apparently made some comments in the press about Cuban, and Cuban is responding on his blog in a major snarkback. The snarkback has a certain entertainment value--on top of being Cuban's way of responding to Jackson. Cuban, however, employs a great strategy with this concluding comment:

Of course I don't truly believe that I own Phil. This is all tongue in cheek, but that won't prevent me from walking up to him and saying “Boo” to see if he jumps, just to find out for sure :)

Cuban knows the consequences of being transparent and snarking--and must make sure his snark is understood to be only a joke. If it wasn't, he might lose face with the public--be considered a "nasty man" or a "sore sport" or any other term we can think of. Jackson-worshippers would come out of the woodwork and load his blog with lots and lots of "you should apologize to Phil" comments.

If he were anonymous, and blogged in the third person, he wouldn't have to do anything beyond the snark--and some people might just appreciate it, thinking "man! that guy's really got Jackson's number!"

See the difference??

Yet can we demand that everyone who wants to be snarky must be transparent--when the anonymity almost guarantees a certain entertainment value? Can we even demand that everyone who participates in on-line communities must be transparent? If internet communities ask participants to be transparent in order to participate, they risk hearing the "free speech" comments and the fear-of-government-censorship comments--even when what the individual intends to post has nothing to do with the kind of speech that would justify fearing any censorship.

It's not censorship that people fear--they actually fear not being popular. If their only means to popularity is to snark, then they will do it in a manner that will not have any consequences--by being anonymous.

Because nobody wants to be unpopular and lose face with their peers. We all know that one from high school.

Think about it.

citizen journalism, civility media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, usthem sxswpanelprep

A Few More Good Thoughts on Anonymous Comments

Blog comments as football game trash-talking is a great piece by Tom Sherman...he's noticed a few things about anonymous comments I'd like to pass along(btw, these points are additions to Amy Gahran's Top 10 Reasons Why Blogs are Awkward Conversation Tools):

Anonymous commenting.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but makes for a lot of "one and done" visits to your website with potentially inflammatory comments. At least that's the kind of stuff I get!

Masquerading as other people.
You can use a central authentication system like TypeKey, but that will cut down on the conversation. (On second thought, that might be a good thing.)

No standard for HTML or formatting.
This creates a lot of confusing about what's allowed, what's not allowed, and how to format things. It makes the process much less efficient and potentially frustrating.

Moderation by one person as opposed to a community.
If you piss him/her off, your comments can be deleted or modifed. There are no set standards, and the blog is usually run on a whim.

Do people care about the conversation?
Oftentimes, folks who leave a comment are directing their feedback at the author. It could just as well be in an email. They don't care whether other commenters reply or not.

Thanks, Tom , for helping me sort an anonymous problem out

In regards to my anonymous commenter in the preceeding post, I was able to trace back, thru my stats, that it's a troll. Someone went thru a heck of alot of trouble to read a heck of a lot about me in order to push some buttons. I'll maintain that if this person wasn't a troll, he/she would let me know directly how he/she felt, probably via email.

Esp. if it was a gentleman who truly felt the need to mentor and be of help.

Trolling is as curious a psychological phenomenon as snarky blogs. Think about it: the most popular snarky blogs are, more often than not, anonymous--not pseudonymous where you might be able to find a thing or two out about the person--but totally anonymous. I think of blogs like Snappy the Clam and Miss Snark. It's a very odd thing that we don't mind when someone is anonymous and says something negative, but that some folks feel a sense of self-righteous indignation when the person is transparent and says something negative. There is a need to scold and to correct. It's one thing when the person correcting and scolding is transparent--odder, though, is the anonymous person's self-righteous need to scold and correct.

If we think about it, an anonymous scolding kind of amouts to very little other than a power-play between the two people involved.

I am remembering an old phrase from my newsgroup/forum days: "Don't feed the Trolls."

And a new one in the blogosphere: "Don't even give them access."

Feeding a Troll, or Having Lunch With a Friend? The Conundrum of the Anonymous Comment

Yesterday's post was an experiment. I wanted to push a boundary. I wanted to see if I still had the freedom to be "the rabble" and still be able to lob a tomato or two.

And while I don't know who the "anonymous" poster is, I do know that my own position as far as being an Average Jane Blogger ain't totally what it used to be.

Anonymous' comments may have been a way to intimidate--to have a certain power over me.

Then again, maybe they weren't.

Without any meta-filters--facial expressions, vocal tones, gender cues, or a name--to figure out what's truly going on, knowing how to consider a comment, and if to trust the commenter, is difficult.

It's like trying to figure out if you're feeding a troll who just wants to prove a point and have power....or if you are having an exchange with a friend or someone who will have an impact on you at some point, and really might be trying to be polite.

Usually I assume that people who are important folks will email me directly and let me know if they think I'm off-base. But, they, like me, might be trying to engage in their own commenting experiments--or have their own reasons for not wanting me to know who they are. For some folks, there's always the top-down communication thing, and the peer-to-peer thing is only a bit of lip-service.

Now, I could turn around and say that I'm not going to be intimidated by an anonymous poster who may be projecting his bad mood on to me. Yet, still, maybe I should consider the advice of someone who I know is a trusted and authoritative voice in the journalistic community (no, I'm not dropping names--just not polite), who I asked for a bit of career advice, who said I might want to consider 86'ing this blog and write "smart and newsy" from now on.

I may or may not truly care who the anonymous commenter is, but I know who the other advice-giver is--and while I never really kowtowed to folks who seems to relish pointing out how inferior I am, I know that the other guy has a much better perspective of who I am and what I can do.

I know too, that the adviser would never, *ever* take the kind of tone with me that the anonymous poster did--even if he felt I was horrifically off base. And he'd email before he left a comment in that tone, too. That's just the kind of guy he is.

So, when someone comments anonymously, in some respects, I must decide whether to feed the troll or if I'm having lunch with a trusted friend and adviser. I can't tell from the comments, but I know from the email.

This is, though, far from over.

Stay tuned...

p.s: I've been looking at my stats...and checking them twice... figure it out from there.

Blogging, Blog, Blogs,civility usthem sxswpanelprep

If Bonnie Fuller can lecture at Columbia why the heck can't I?? Oh, I forgot--she's a jounralist and I'm just a lowly citizen with a few big fat opinions....perhaps if I spent my time watching Oprah's stomach and writing about it, rather than *thinking* about media and ethics, I might get that Columbia lectureship.

citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Dave Sifry talks about tags in his latest State of the Blogosphere report.

Very good news on tagging!

Yet I wonder when the stats will take into account the number of blogs abandoned vs. the number of blogs created?

citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Damned if You Do...Damned if You Don't....

Over at Buzzmachine, Jeff wrote a piece dissing an article that didn't sing the praises of Craigslist.

So I wrote a comment or two--and, apperently what I said wasn't all that well-liked. Still, I'm surprised to now see a Craigslist for Western Mass and wonder how long it's been rolling around over there (it's kind of tough to pinpoint when a new category appears on Craigslist unless you troll it often.) Going thru some of W. Mass's categories, though, it still seems under-utilized--so I do wonder its effect on newspapers out here.

Yet, there was an odd expreience in the comments section. I had, on another post here, made a snarky little comment about this place being a 'backwater'. (the comment was removed because it appears to have misled some people in a way I did not intend.)

Still--the blog is Snarkaholic. It means I sometimes say cutting things to test the waters, to push the envelope, to even see what the public's reaction will be. And a lot of the times I may not literally mean what I say.

So, I'm sure you're thinking "then why say it at all?"

Because I'm trying to learn about communication styles out here. Because I'm trying to see where the boundaries of civility are, how far a woman can push them, what will happen...if a woman can be as ascerbic as a man on some issues, or whether or not she must always be conciliatory and take the majority opinion...if the blogosphere is really very masculine and combative as some maintain...to figure out what the "jones" is that some people get from incivility.

And I'm learning a lot more than I thought I would--not just about incivility. There's a lot to be learned about class and caste, about whether or not there can be true peer-to-peer communication between individuals who, outside of the blogosphere, might not be peers at all. I'm learning a great deal about the masculine nature of the blogosphere and who the real men are. I'm learning that a woman's survival out here could very well be contingent on how nice and smart she is rather than how quick and barbed her opinions might get (unless, for some, you are on a certain side of the political fence.)

I've learned that self-censoring because of what appears to be the majority opinion is just not the right thing to do--that there is no way to know all the varieties of opinion that course thru all those wires and all those other screens.

And that emoticons just might be, to a greater or lesser degree, most important when all you have are words on a screen.

I'm tired. I'm going to take a nap.

no, it's not a backwater out here...but it ain't Silicon Valley either. It is what it is.


media Blogging, Blog Blogs civility

there was a little problem with comments, but they're back on....

James Frey's not alone...Anne Applebaum in Fashions in Falsehood unmasks a whole bunch of others who, one way or another, and even more blatantly, fudged their memoirs, including Lillian Hellman. Amazing how so many of those who commintted fiction in the name of fact won awards.

citizen journalism media books

3 Week Summer Blogging Course in Western Massachusetts

Major Announcement: I will be teaching a 3-week course on blogging at Holyoke Community College this summer.

The emphasis won't be on how to make yourself famous (or infamous) by shooting your mouth off--it will be on teaching people how to build their own blogs and how to communicate effectively with media and with others in the blogosphere. This is incredibly important as most people who blog will end up as Long Tail bloggers--but there is still good reason to blog even if you are rumbling around in the Long Tail.

I am also hoping to reach parents of children that blog--so that they understand what their kids might be doing, why they do it, and where it just might be going...

Mucho thanks to Dean Ken White--who has an open mind to blogging and can see its value as a communication tool.

citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs,

Strategic Board aggregates "technology blogs and news."

ended up there the other day in someone's search for "Jon Stewart." that was weird.

search engine Blogging, Blog, Blogs

Wikipedians: Wild AND Whacky!

Check this out: The Lowell Sun On Line reports how congerssional staffers changed Wikipedia entries: The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site that bills itself as the "world's largest encyclopedia," The Sun has learned.

They were, however, delightfully bipartisan: "One edit listed White House press secretary Scott McClellan under the entry for "douche." Another said of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma) that: "Coburn was voted the most annoying Senator by his peers in Congress. This was due to Senator Coburn being a huge douche-bag."

All this kinda blows apart the idea that Wikipedia's just as good as Brittanica--and also reminds me a heck of a lot of Mao's China--where, if y'all don't remember, we used to criticize for altering photographs when people were excommunicated from Mao's presence (I kid you not--go look it up.) We really don't have to go that far back though--it's been reported recently that China forbids access to information about the Tiananmen Square massacre probably because it's easier to manipulate Google to do its bidding than to hack all the sites that have info on the massacre.

Wikipedia blocks the IP addys of the offenders. That's nice, but I'm not sure it's really going to change some views on Wikipedia's credibility--esp. when it comes to the U.S. Congress.

citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs News and politics wikipedia

Clusty is another new search engine (I think.) It uses its "award winning Clustering Engine to organize search results into folders grouping similar items together."

Intersting. The results were kind of mixed. It's worth checking out though.

search engine Blogging, Blog, Blogs

Blogdigger now has better local aggregation! discovered I was in their search/system the other day...they are definitely gaining speed from last time I saw them. Way to go, guys!

search engine Blogging, Blog, Blogs

The Death of Mrs. King and Ending an Era

Coretta Scott King passed away yesterday. And within me there is a great, great sense of an ideal slipping away, never to be seen again...

The 60's were a terrible time. Being a child during that time was horrific and confusing--there was the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War movement, three assasinationg (Dr. King's, along with John and Bobby Kennedy), protests where people were beaten (and at Kent State even killed.) There were National Guard troops on the front steps of the Capitol, and riots in our cities.

Mrs. King was beautiful, and strong,and noble--more admirable, to me, than the glamourous Jackie Kennedy, whose image was that of a pretty wife without much opinion of her own. Mrs. King did not just stand by her husband's side--she had her own life, her own convictions. It was beautiful that those convictins, that life, dovetailed with Dr. King's, and they were able to work together for what they believed. Theirs was a very special bond. After his death, she carried the torch of his message, even as the world changed and so many seemed to no longer care.

Now, I am not much of a political person--although there are many who might debate that point. Quite frankly, I hate politics--mostly because from the minute I was born, on John Kennedy's inauguration, there was controversy. Childhood consisted of watching the VietNam war with my father--watching young men blown up and bleeding every night. Learning to read the paper around the age of 7, trying to understand why all those black people, who were marching peacefully, were being attacked with water cannons and dogs, when all they wanted was the right to be considered part of the American Dream.

Trying to understand why so many people hated a man who was so peaceful, and had a dream for children--not just his own, but me too.

He died. Mrs. King, who I remember, tried to keep his legacy. But women's voices, no matter how strong and clear, are often lost in the cacophony of rhetoric. And, over the years, Mrs. King's voice was, while always strong, lost in the court of public opinion--or at least it was not as strong as her husband's had been.

But that's just life--the worst of human nature in the political realm--unfortunately.

I wonder, though, what do we do now? How do we move forward from the death of Mrs. King, which seems so much like The End. Think about it--who, really, is left from that era?

It's not just the death of courageous people like Mrs. King. It's what they stood for--which, too, is dying. The Right, under the guidance of Reagan, decided it wanted act like Dr. Who and turn time back to those "kinder, gentler" eras, the ones that weren't so kind to people like Dr. and Mrs. King. The Left has degenerated into absurity--it is now a party where a man like Dr. King would be circumspect because of his faith (faith--and religion--are destructive in the eyes of the left, and Verboten).

There would be no place for people like Dr. and Mrs. King in this century. and that is what hurts the most about her death.

Where do we go from here? Where do we go when so many people either want to go back in time or censor/dismiss a person because of his/her beliefs? Where is the Reason that guided people like Dr. and Mrs. King? Reason is gone--from both the Left and the Right.

and without Reason balacing Faith and Faith balancing Reason, we deny the world, we deny the people of our country, an essential ability to create effective change.

I am sad. And I cry. Not just for the loss of Mrs. King. But for the loss of an era, and out of a kind of fear and dread because a Light of Faith and Reason, possibly the last of that kind of Light, is now extinguished.

And I wonder--can we find our Way from here? I don't know....and I worry...who will lead us away from the Right's march backward in time and the Left's abandonment of reason and faith....I wonder...


Journalism, citizen journalism, media

On the issue of anonymity vs. pseudonymity Vin Crosbie is right. Readers should be transparent, too...


Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs,

Are the "citizens" journalsits, or the journalists "citizens"?

Topix.net weblog started a "citizen journalism" venture a short time ago...and figures that News 2.0 is not Journalism and tells us why Baristanet is so good: "Baristanet is so good it makes me want to read about fender benders in a suburb on the other side of the country. But it's run by two professional journalists. Debbie Galant writes for the New York Times. Liz George writes for the New York Daily News. Liz has a degree in journalism from NYU. They're doing great journalism here, but I wouldn't call it grass roots, or "citizen"."

That's the key...great "citizen journalism" is usually done by people who either are or were journalists.

Don't believe the hype--explore it and find the truth.

Journalism, citizen journalism, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs,

Enough Excitement for One Week

I have certainly had enough excitement for one week around here. Not being a big media personage whose used to all the hullaballoo, I'm a bit exhausted. Therefore, some re-trenching is in order. Just a short break mind you...just a short break.

The Facts of Life

In a woman’s world, you don’t earn any social points for staking out an extreme position and defending it against all comers. Men might garner respect for doing so, and experience the exhilaration of battle along the way; women are more likely find themselves on the receiving end of some serious social isolation, and to find the road to this isolation stressful and frightening.

--on Neo-neocon from Bookworm Room.

But you never can tell what's going to happen next.

Courting Community and Comments: "You Can Pick Your Friends... And You Can Pick Your Comments..."

Cruising around for commentary on Wednesday'sWaPo on-line panel on Interactivity Ethics , I came across the National Review Media Blog's commentary (thanks to Insta)....and as I read thru both WaPo and Media Blog commentaries, it becomes evident that how a blogger handles his/her comments has an awful lot to do with who makes up an individual blogger's reading/commenting community.

Let's start with Jay Rosen's admonition of Reynolds regarding interactivity:

I have comments at my blog, and they are completely open. I not only monitor them carefully, I'm an active presence in comment threads and I argue a lot with readers. I get mad at them too. A great many users have told me that while I write good posts, what they really like is the range of reactions from others in comments. For some, that discussion is a primary, not a second-order good on offer at PressThink.

Jay's blog, though, is very different in content and in structure to Glenn's. Jay's content isn't going to appeal to the majority of blog readers out there--and there are probably a lot of folks who read Glenn who aren't familiar with Jay. Jay is incredibly smart, and writes a blog where the arguments and dialogue take time to cogitate. Glenn, as equally smart, presents his opinions quite differently, in very different language. Even though the two men are most likely intellectual equals, Jay's content is not as accessible as Glenn's. Therefore many of the people who comment on Jay's blog are going to be thinking before they write and are going to fashion their responses quite differently. Even when people disagree with Jay, the disagreements don't usually get reduced to attacks on Jay's appearance, nor on his political leanings, nor are they threats to "knock his block off" (even if they're thinking it.) On Glen's blog, where the posts are a mixed bag, it's easy to see where comments could get personal very easily.

What does this say about the ideal of peer-to-peer communication that is supposed to exist on blogs? It can then be said that accessibility of a blogger's content can effect who ends up in the blogger's community. If you are blogging in a way that is accessible to most people (quick reads), and are following the old rules of information blogging (a few words with a link), your readership will be different from the person who posts long and wordy. The blogger, then, ends up soliciting a particular peer group by blog style as much as through demonstrated opinion.

As a blogger, you choose a particular communication style. You then, in a sense, pick your friends--audience, community, peer group--thru that style as much as with your political views, general commentary, personality, or celebrity status.

And, as I now know, if you're going to solicit a certain kind of interaction, there must be a strategy to deal with it. Bloggers can take Jay's route, or Glenn's, or any route that works for them.

But the real question at WaPo appears to be more about how an entity like a media outlet should handle invectives, not how bloggers with large readerships-- who are individuals choosing their peer groups--handle invectives. On that front, I don't believe that any one individual blogger, no matter how well-read, has the perfect answer for big media. Big media, with its top-down communication style, will have to continue to make blunders, take the heat, and discuss the issue again and again before an adequate strategy is worked out. And the strategy may be, in a manner concurrent with individual bloggers, contingent on who the big media outlet wants its peer group-community-audience to be and how it solicits that audience. When that is figured out, the solution to handling comments--free for all, moderation, or nothing--will become evident (even if not perfected--it's a process.)

An quick aside: a couple of friends told me that G.R. chose my comment on the WaPo dialogue. I figured, because of its level of invective, that it'd get passed over. Who knew? Now seeing it, in black and white for myself, I understand his point. Duly noted, Prof. Thanks for the heads up.


WaPo media Blogging Blog Blogs Journalism citizen journalism

I'm officially a right wing blogger according to National Journal

I wonder if that's possible for a slightly right-of-center quasi-feminist to actually be a right-wing blogger?

oh, the world is a funny, funny place.

Where Seldom Is Heard, A Discouraging Word....

Quick Update: since I decided to moderate comments, the only people who have sent comments in are other bloggers. Apparently, if it can't go directly from their heads to my blog, in an anonymous hissy fit, it's not worth sending in. That's good. Saves bandwidth.

How To Handle An Instalanche: Responding to Old AudienceThink

Well, with much thanks to Glenn "Comments? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Comments!" Reynolds, I expreienced a little shitstorm over here. And if the Washington Post is interested in how an individual handles a shitstorm, the Editors and Omsbudspersons and Pundits and Image Spinners can come over and take a look and read the rest of this essay....

There was no moderation of comments. There was no deletion. There was no re-writing. Why? Because the majority of the comments were from anonymous, non-blogger sources. My interest in the blogosphere is in conversation with other bloggers and non-blogger individuals willing to be as transparent as myself--not with people who do not blog and do not identify themselves when they leave comments. Blogging is about peer-to-peer communication, not about anonymously screaming at the blogger. If ya think about it, anonymous comments are kind of like screaming at the TV. Anonymous comments are an Old Audience response to Old Media. If you are anonymous to me, I am only a one-dimensional, flat-screen celebrity to you. And there is no rule that says a celebrity blogger must respond to anonymous non-blogger comments. Celebrities don't respond to heckling, do they?

So, for the better part of the blogoshpere, Old Audience ways have not changed--they're anonymosly screaming at the TV. It's only in small pockets, among small groups out here in the Technorati Long Tail, where changes are taking place, where we are engaging one another. We don't get big comments because we're not as "smart" as pundits, nor that our blogs are not well written, nor that our blogs aren't creatively inflammatory enough. We're simply not celebrities nor personages. We're just people. We write to converse with one another. We converse with those who understand the medium, who are willing to truly and honestly engage and participate in the medium.

Most pundits don't really get blogging nor bloggers. Pundits don't really converse with people (with the minor exception of Jeff Jarvis, whose comments section isn't all that overrun and will respond to email and will speak to Average Jane bloggers at conferences) MSM likes pundits though. Pundits are just like MSM. Pundits are worried about spin and reputation and such. MSM is worried about spin and reputation and such. They can relate to one another. Neither can relate to the Long Tail because they are listening to The Audience, not Bloggers.

So, if there are some things I've learned from the shitstorm: That there really is a huge disconnect between the worlds of msm/pundit blogging and those of us who are bloggers. I learned there are a lot of fanboys and fangirls who feel the need to defend their Favorite to the death, including make personal attacks--and that most anonymous commenters are like folks who troll forums than they are like bloggers. I learned that anonymous commenting is an awful lot like yelling at the TV.

And another observation about my conclusions about Jane: We live in a soundbyte world. When I went to the Post's page to find out about the panel, I read an awful lot about the blogs and backgrounds of Jay, Jeff and Glenn. The Post made sure to inform me of the qualifications of these men beyond "blogger"--and anyone who knows anything about blogging is fully aware of who these three men, The Usual Suspects, happen to be. What did the Post tell me about Jane? That she blogs. That's it. I followed the obvious trail to her blog, the way I did when I first encountered Jay, Jeff and Glenn--because, for the same reason, I wanted to know what made her so special. By going to their blog bios, I found out a lot more about Jay, Jeff and Glenn, than I did about Jane. Modesty? But what, really, is so modest about saying one is *only* a Hollywood producer who wrote a book? Why not say one is or was a journalist or whatever one happened to be? Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing has no problem telling the world her credentials--and I can respect Xeni's opinions on media and on handling comments (and her comments on >The News Hour were spot on) because she is not suffereng some kind of false modesty--and she's been blogging a heck of a long time. So, it seems that, in the world of msm/punditblogging, a woman's credentials--as a blogger or as an intellectual/thinker-- really don't matter all that much. It's possible, for a woman, that a woman doesn't need the types and kinds of credentials equal to or better than the men. Maybe all she needs to be is photogenic--which neither three of the men happen to be (sorry guys, you're all geeks.) Think of it this way, too: if it were a man who did what Jane did to get on that panel--engage in the same kind of rhetoric--would we have read more about his background...and would he have even been considered for the panel in the first place? Maybe not. Only the Post can know for sure.

Oh, and today, comments will be moderated. One day's worth of unmoderated shitstorm/instalanche is enough for now.

**A Special Thank You To those in yesterday's comments who expressed their own dissatisfaction with Jane. My post ended up giving them a forum, too. and that was a good thing, in its own odd way. And to those special folks who, on and off blog, supported me. You guys are great!

media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs

WaPo to Women Bloggers--It's Not What You Know...

Update: It's now June, and I've learned alot on the last six months, mostly by getting into some rather important and interesting dialogues with bloggers and journalists...since my vocabulary has evolved, and in looking back at this post, I realize that what I was looking for from Hamsher was transparency. I wanted to know more about her background--specifically what she'd done before blogging for Huffington Post. I did extensive google and yahoo searches on the day of this post, and found realitively little information about her. That was troubling to me because I knew a great deal about the others on the panel. My feelings were, and still are, that if someone is to be on a panel, I want to know everything about who he/she is.I expect the person to be transparent. Transparency earns trust. If the person isn't willing to tell me outright, and the event he/she is participating in is only giving me a soundbyte, I should be able to use whatever search engines I have at hand to find all the information necessary to know about this person. The person should have a bio that tells me who he/she is, her experience both past and present.

I have been on panels. I know people check backgrounds--as soon as my profile's up, I get googled and people find their way back to my blogs. At the time of this post, I did what I could to verify Hamsher's background and came up with nothing other than the official Huffington Post soundbyte. I came up with less information than someone could have found out about me, or any other of a number of bloggers I know, at that time. Something was just not right.

In effect, I expected transparency. When there is transparency, I can respect that person--even if he/she doesn't have an illustrious background--more than I can respsect someone who says he/she is a "blogger" and leaves it at that. Why? Because, quite frankly, the term "blogger" is, right now, subjective. It can mean someone who uses a particular tool (a blog) to communicate. It can be someone who's mastered a communication form. It can be related to a businessperson, am activist, a former reporter, a thinker or just an average schmoe looking for a voice in the media malestrom.

I do not believe that we should hide behind the subjective label of "blogger" in order to get some sort of cred with the common man--or common woman. I don't think anyone should try to be a blogger just because it's All The Rage and The Cool Thing To Be.

All bloggers may be created equal--we use the same tool. But some bloggers--by their backgrounds and the editorial process behind them--are, in the eyes of many, more equal than others.

The other term I've become very familiar with is astroturfing. The term is usually associated with political orgs that pay or otherwise support individuals in commenting, emailing, or snailmailing efforts that simulate a grassroots opinion campaign. The main hallmarks of blog comment astroturf are a series of sentiments with similar syntax left by sources that cannot be verified, or are anonymous/pseudonymous. There are many ways to say "you suck," but if a number of comments appear saying "you suck," and in a very similar manner, or are all anonymous/pseudonymous and/or unverifiable, you can bet the comments are astroturfing efforts of an org to get someone to never blog again.

In Blogger, there are ways for 'turfers to give the semblance of being legit--set up a false profile, with no trackable information, and no blog, just to comment.

One way to root out 'turfers, other than noticing their shoddy syntax and lack of identity, is to track the comments back thru a blog's stats (if you have the stats package to do that) If a series of comments are generated from the same ISP, or from the same geographic area in a short period of time, it's probably 'turf.

'Turfers are bullies, and many think they are justified in their actions because their cause is righteous. Yeah, and terrorists often feel the same way.

When I looked back at the number of negative comments, not just noting how many were anonymous, I also noticed how so many said the same thing. I wasn't able to verify if they were all from the same ISP (I have the freebie Sitemeter, so no perks), but I've got an inkling that a number of them were Astroturf.

Transparency remains one of my big concerns (right now, a bit more that astroturfing). Some members of the MSM would like journalists to reveal personal info about themselves in efforts to avoid conflicts of interest. Some newsrooms are putting out good efforts to be transparent by opening up about their editorial processes. Bloggers are fighting MSM over transparency--and I think each and every one who engages the debate has his/her own reason for not being transparent. But if a blogger is already revealing a likeness and a name, why hide in an effort to be "just a blogger"?

What then is "just a blogger"? Sometimes "just a blogger" isn't quite a blogger like another unknown blogger. Sometimes "just a blogger" should be more transaprent than even the high profile folks of MSM. Otherwise, he/she is in the same opaque-bottomed boat as MSM, and, perhaps, just as deceptive. end


Today, the Washington Post will demonstrate to bloggers all over the U.S. that women bloggers don't need much in the way of credentials to be part of a serious discussion on ethics when it host a panel on Ethics and Interactivity with Jane Hamsher sitting alongside Jay Rosen (who is probably the most qualified),
Jeff Jarvis (who's being quiet on this one), and
Glenn Reynolds (who truly puts the PUNDIT in Instapundit).

And, on behalf of my corner of the blogosphere, I'll say it loud: Jane Hamsher?

The Post and Jay Rosen prominently list her as blogging at firedoglake...but only the Post lists her as blogging at Huffington Post

Hmmm...why doesn't Jay list her as blogging for HP? Is it some sort of veiled attempt to make a Hollywood top-down communicator look like your Average Jane blogger?

What is even further insulting to all bloggers--and women bloggers especially--is that Hamsher has no background in journalism, nor ethics, nor handling comments. Hamsher says, though, in one post: "I can only speak about my own experience, as a blogger who regularly converses with numerous main stream media journalists." (BTW, I do this, too...)*Note: I followed the same soundbyte trail to find out about Jane as I did awhile ago to find out about Jeff, Jay and Glenn--from a link from another blog, to their blog, to their bio. Also, note that on the WaPo site, they tell us a great deal about J, J, & R, but not a lot about Jane, the only one of the group who was not one of the Usual Suspects. Why did the Post fail me, a soundbyte consumer, and tell me virtually nothing about the one woman on the panel and, once again, recite the pedigrees of the men? Do I really need the credentials of the Usual Suspects? Kinda odd to keep mum about the newbie, don't you think?

I love the way she so modestly calls herself a blogger when, in fact, that's hardly the case. According to her bio, she is a Hollywood Personage--a producer above anything else. She has blogged for her friend Arianna since September, '05 She co-blogs at firedoglake (yes, not even her own blog), and has only recently begun receiving comments--and I'm not even sure if she responds to them or just lets them accumulate.

The Post is merely proving to all of us out here in the blogosphere that celebrity more than anything bestows credibility. Jane Hamsher, blogging only since September, now, all of a sudden, knows so much more than so many of us about ethics, blogging, and journalism, that she is qualified to be on a Washington Post panel.

Frankly, if I were Jay, Jeff, and Glenn, I'd be seriously questioning the Post's decision to include Hamsher on the panel. Why couldn't the Post find y'all a peer? Someone with the credentials and the smarts to be on this panel?

media, Blogging Blog Blogs
Journalism ethics

"Bloggers often hide messages by choosing a font the same color as the background. "

Or at least that's what they think over at CSI Miami

I'm not sure how many of y'all watch CSI Miami or any of CBS's wildly successful CSI franchises...but take a few moments to read the synopsis of "Silencer"--last night's episode.

According to the text from the trailer posted at CSI Files : A MURDER LEADS TO AN EMPLOYEE BLOG....


and that's when the wild misinformation about blogging occurs....there's all sorts of stuff about a "virtual keyboard" and "Bluetooth technology" enabling some fancy moblogging with a blackberry...yeah, that's kinda plausable...if you can afford the stuff....

but did you know that "Bloggers often hide messages by choosing a font the same color as the background. " That's right from the text folks. I kid you not. Now you know! Aren't we a crafty bunch!

Yet what's even more amusing was the graphic for what the blog looked like--very fancy and far more sophisticated than anything I've seen even from the top of the A-list--and that it was available thru some open source, quasi Xanga/Livejournal thing called "Blog-Daze.com"...I wish I could find a graphic of it, but, alas, nothing to be had. Even the fanboy/fangirl sites don't have a pic.

This isn't the first time a CSI franchise tapped into the latest trend. Thursday nite's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation the Big Daddy of CSI Miami often mines the fetish world for cheap titilation: remember the adult baby, the "furries" and of course, Gil Grissom's tryst with Lady Heather???

But at least when they do fetish, the get it *mostly* right. When they do tech, it seems that they're so far out there that they shoot their own credibility in the foot.

>, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs Television TV Entertainment

WaPo Restores Comments....For the Moment...

Checking up on the Washington Post this a.m....I found that they acutally did restore comments to post.blog.

There is also a Q & A with Exec Editor Jim Brady (who is quite the babyfaced newspaperman....hmmm....how come such a young man...couldn'd find a competent, seasoned, older woman to do this job???)

The Q&A though is a fascinating bit of spin. I won't jump on the bandwagon that's excoriating the Post for its insufficient--yet rather quick--response (the Q&A took place at noon on friday and some comments were restored by 6pm-ish). Frankly, if the Post would just hire a few good blogging consultants--people who acutally blog for the personal edification, not as corporate shills--they might have been able to deal with the response adequately.

The best response *might* have been to do what newspaper-sponsored Forums and Newsgroups usually do: delete the seriously foul posts, get rid of any unrelated spam, and let everyone else hash the whole thing out amongst themselves. They can, if they want, dictate to the reporter or whomever started the sh*tstorm to not respond to the negativity. That would be their, or the sh*tstormee's, choice. Sometimes the best way to respond to sh*t is to not respond--it can be a no-win situation. But negative comments,even ones peppered with an obscenity or two, if making a coherent point and are not personal attacks, are a consequence of communication in our modern world.

Then again, there's always this attitude one could take: foul personal attacks more often than not reflect badly on the one making them, and don't necessarily reflect anything to the person being attacked. It's the old "I'm rubber, you're glue...whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you" mentality.

Dan Gillmor has a great comment about it.

Think about it.
Journalism citizen journalism, media Blogging Blog Blogs

"Hey! You Suck!"--Incivility Shuts Down Wash Post Blogs

The Washinton Post chose to close its comments indefinitely after several angry posts in response to ""a statement made by ombudsman Deborah Howell that Jack Abramoff, who is at the centre of a Washington scandal for having bribed a significant number of politicans in order to 'buy influence', payed off Democrats as well as Republicans after ."

Terry Heaton thinks this is a case of the deeper issue here is command and control from the mountain top.

But Terry misses the another salient point to the Post's actions: it may seem like a big deal, but in truth, it only highlights a general problem with incivility in the blogosphere. And that there is no clear consensus, even among bloggers, on how to handle it. Terry wants to pick on msm for its actions, but would he feel the same way about individual bloggers taking the same action?

As some of us will remember there was quite a bit of fallout after BlogHer over Ambra Nykola's poison-pen blogging about Koan Bremner's presence at the conference. Although Ambra is definitely entitled to her rabid remarks, she blocked dissenting bloggers from posting comments to her entry. Further, Ambra often shuts off commentary on posts at her blog (specifically, look up her post on Sex and the City where she did not want any dissenting viewpoints.)

Basically, she's top-down communicating to the rest of us in the blogosphere--but she doesn't seem to be suffering all that much for it.

Now, when I came into blogging, I was a veteran of the New York Times Film Forums--which, if one didn't watch out, one could end up pretty bruised and bloddy. The Film Forums ended up getting trolled so bad-- with some of the trolls launching personal email attacks against posters and hacking several posters' personal websites--that the usually low-profile Moderators chose to require registration and approval before allowing individuals to post to the Forums.

Knowing what can happen in the Wild Wild West of the 'Web, I expected, when I started blogging, to get flamed, fired on, and fumed at--and by anonymous people (because it's easier to do that when nobody knows who you are.) And, yes, it happens sometimes, but hey, I'm made of asbestos, so no biggie...

Still, there are loads and loads of bloggers who don't know how to handle it and are hurt/offended/horrified/pissed off when it happens. That's why we're having the Us and Them: A Blog Conversation Guide at SXSW Interactive in March.

When bloggers are concerned about incivility and confused about how to handle it, how can we expect msm (that is, for the most part, confused about blogging) to handle it any better?

Frankly, it's a much bigger issue than just the Post's "indefinite" response.

Journalism citizen journalism media Blogging Blog Blogs

When a Writer isn't a Blogger

Was Simon Dumenco--"The Media Guy" at AdAge--suffering from a case of sour grapes when he wrote A Blogger is Just A Writer With A Cooler Name? Did he, perhaps, lose out on a hot chick to the scruffy dude who said he was a blogger?? And I wonder how Simon would feel if we all stopped calling him a columnist and called him *just* a writer with a fat pretentious title and a regular salary.

Seriously, though-- Dumenco is one in a long line of "journalists" (who the heck knows where he went to school) who feel some sort of compulsion to tell the rest of us who bloggers are and what bloggers are about--that blogging is just about the software and the distinction between writers and bloggers is all an artificial construct. According to Dumenco:

OK, you might argue, blogging is aesthetically a different beast -- it's instantaneous media. (Well, since the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, pretty much all media has had to learn how to be instantaneous.) It's unpolished. (The best blogs I read are as sophisticated as anything old-school media publishes.) It's voice-y. (The best old-school media I read tends to be voice-y.) It's about opinion, not reporting. (The best reporting to come out of MacWorld in San Francisco last week was published on blogs.) It's, well, often sloppy and reckless (and Judy Miller wasn't?).

OK, then, you might further argue, the Internet itself treats blogs as structurally distinct things. Well, sure, there are blog-specific search engines (Technorati, Icerocket, blogsearch.google.com, etc.), but the lines between blog and non-blog content are rapidly dissolving. Traditional news organizations and blogs often get seemingly equal weight as news sources in Google News. And just last week, I found out about Sprint's West Coast fiber optic network outage from the new Gmail Web Clip ticker that sits atop my e-mail inbox -- and the clip came from a blog, not a traditional news organization.

More importantly, though, I wonder who it is--other than bloggers--that Dumenco considers writers. He paints a broad stroke with his title, but narrows the focus of the term in his text to journalists--very bad form! Guess he doesn't consider folks who scribble on legal pads, and sometimes call themselves writers, to be writers. Probably also doesn't consider all those folks who pen and publish fiction to be writers either. (he also has the audacity to talk about "the best bloggers"--oh, who might that be? Obviously, the A-list. That's only one kind of blogger, too.)

So, I feel it's something of my own duty, being both a bona fide blogger as well as a bona fide published writer, to delineate some of the differences between bloggers and writers that he appears to overlook in favor of some tired, journalistic blogger-hating rhetoric:

Writers deal with Editors. Bloggers deal with Comments. Okay, Simon, I'm sure you could say this is splitting hairs, but these are two different/ Edtiors, as you are probably aware, comment--but they comment in an effort to fix your stuff. Editors comment on your spelling and grammar and wordchoice and fix your tone so your piece fits right with their publication or makes sure you conform to APA or Chicago. People who leave comments for Bloggers don't give a darned, and many don't know, about APA or Chicago rules. Commenters are more concerned with conversing with the blogger (or sometimes other commenters)--with refuting or supporting what the blogger says. Bloggers can get defensive with Comments and still publish. Writers can't necessarily get defensive with Editors or their piece could get 86'ed and they labelled "difficult to work with."

Writing is static media. Blogging is social media When someone writes a story or an article, it is meant simply to convey information. The person isn't looking to get direct feedback. They might, but that really isn't the intention. Blogging isn't static. Once again, bloggers get direct feedback. They sometimes even change a post. A writer can write one article, get it published in a magazine, and that's it. A writer can sit around for another month or longer before another article comes out, can sweat over the process for months, and still have readers. A blogger not only has to eventually interact with others, but also has to keep writing on a regular basis or people forget you were ever there.

Writers write in paragraphs. Some Bloggers don't write in complete sentences. Writers don't aggregate. They fashion coherent thoughts into paragraphs. Lots of paragraphs. Some bloggers simply aggregate and their thoughts are pretty scatalogical. They want their blogs to be places where people can find links to stories about stuff. They want to be considered good providers of information--not quick-thinking, profound pundits. Writers want to be considered more than information providers--they want to have style and have a craft.

Writers can use more than 400 words per piece. Bloggers who do that risk not getting read. Writers can have lots of words--anywhere between 400 and 2500 or more depending on the piece. Some writers can't express themselves in less. Bloggers have to be quick or risk boring their readers. I risk boring readers. So does one of the smartest long-entry bloggers out there, Jay Rosen, who doesn't seem to mind the delineation between blogger and writer (but might prefer I call him journalist.)

Some Writers never, or can't blog. Some Bloggers don't, or can't write Some bloggers would never, ever think of writing articles. Some writers would never, ever think of blogging. It's a risk/reward thing. Some bloggers hate the idea of being edited. Some writers can't get past the editor in their heads long enough to blog.

Not all Writers are Media people. Not all Bloggers are Media people either. This harkens back to the old Dave Winer whine "all bloggers are journalists." Tell the girls and guys of MySpace.com or Livejournal that they're media people and some would probably freak. Just because someone is a journaller doesn't mean he or she is a journalist-- I don't think it needs an explanation, and it certainly isn't splitting hairs. Loads of journalists don't keep journals either. Then again, the idea of who a media person is all depends on the definition of media. If media is defined as a mode of artistic expression, mainly self-expression, then by golly! all bloggers and journalists and scribblers on legal pads are all the same! I'm sure there's a ton of journalists, and published writers, and published poets, and columnists who might have a very big bone to pick with that one...

So, unless Simon Dumenco is willing give up being called a columnist, occasionally not think in paragraphs, cut down on his wordiness, and take a direct comment or two, without censoring people who disagree with him, he may want to re-think how he uses the terms blogger and writer. Because as it stands now, he may know something about the latter, in the journalistic sense, but he really hasn't shown he knows all that much about the former.

>, media, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Journalism, citizen journalism

Debunking the Claims of Craigslist: 5 Mortal Wounds Crippling Print Journalism

After reading the hype-rific article on Craig Newmark and Craigslist in New York Magazine , I got to thinking more and more about the claim that Newmark's list is, like David, singlehandedly bringing down the Goliath of print journalism.

Now, if my knowledge of late 20th century history and pop culture is as good as my bible knowledge (and believe me, both are formidable), Goliath wasn't particularly crippled by the slings and arrows of the Israelites before he faced David--or at least not the way print journalism has been devastatingly crippled by the slings and arrows of a fast-changing American cultural scene and downward spirialling economy.

Saying Craigslist is singlehandedly killing newspapers is more like saying a matador doesn't need picadores to win at a bullfight. But I can see where puddin'headded, pie-eyed journalists with gaps in their knowledge of late 20th century America could make those claims.

So, over the past couple of days, I've been able to synthesize five key shifts in the American economic (and cultural) landscape that are still impacting, and will probably overtake, American print journalism--and might even get Crag Newmark's p/r people and all those gushy journalists to think again:

1) Downsizing, Networking, and the rise of Temping: Downsizing of upper level clerical and middle manager jobs effected want-ad directly. No jobs, no need to post ads. Getting wise, people began to mine their business contacts more regularly for employment opportunities--something many working and lower middle class folks had never done. When big corps that had considerably downsized needed to fill vacancies, they turned to temp agencies--the costs paid to temp agencies offset paying additional h.r. folks to screen applicants and were far less than what a company would pay in benefits for an new employee. But people are optimistic, and temps could be strung along for very long lengths of time before they figured out the temp-to-perm job was ever going to go to perm. Big corps didn't need to run large ads for long lengths of time to bring people in for jobs because temps and temp agencies were more efficient and cost effective. When push came to shove, and coprs needed people, and after people protested and it became illegal not to post and interview for a job even if a corp was going to hire from networking, corps chose to run ads on Sundays only, when more people traditionally bought the paper. People looking for real jobs, quickly picking up on the trends of networking and temping and Sunday only ads, stopped purchasing papers during the week and waited only for that one day. Revenue dropped for daily paper sales and probably stayed the same for Sunday. Ad revenue certainly dropped.


2) Courtesy Cards issued by Grocery Stores: Mom and Dad used to subscribe to the local paper not just for keeping up on local happenings, but also because each and every local grocery chain ran coupons in its Sunday and Wednesday editions. Courtesy Cards, originally issued to help store patrons cash checks, became ways for stores to offer "clipless coupon" discounts in their stores (as well as keep track of customers' purchasing habits.) There was talk for a time of completely phasing out coupons, as in-store clipless coupons were just as effective as the printed issues. Even though there are still manufacturers' coupons, issued in glossy supplements, the advent of courtesy cards and clipless coupons made it so that consumers didn't need to buy papers on Sunday and Wednesday especially if they wanted to get in-store coupon deals. Some grocers will still run ads, but people don't need to purchase the papers--and a lot don't have the time to read the ads anyway. Clipless coupons also helped to make ads smaller. Smaller ads, smaller revenue. Clipless coupons eliminated the need for economically squeezed consumers to buy newspapers. No purchases, no revenue

3) Decentralized Newsrooms: In the late '80's and into the '90's, many small papers began to be bought up by the conglomerates--Knight-Ridder and Gannett among others. They consolidated facilities along the lines of the downsizing trend going on in the rest of corporate America. Printing became more mechanized, which further eliminated, or radically changed traditional jobs like typesetters. Newspapers got leaner because there was very little local reporting. Case in point: my old New Jersey local paper The Home News was bought and consolidtated with The Asbury Park Press. Local bureaus were dismantled--the net effect being that we in the New Brusnwick region began to know more about what was going on down in Neptune than we did about the five car pileup on Rt. 1 in Edison. There seemed to be no need to purchase local papers regularly, and some people stop subscribing to local papers....and especially after the Next Big Thing...

4)Free On-line Content: if the local paper was no longer local, and its content was now provided free, on-line, why bother purchasing a print version? As a New Brusnwick resident, I could log into the new on-line version of The Home News and Tribune and read only the paltry local stories. A resident didn't even need the paper to find out about theater listings, as they were also on line, and had a better chance of finding out about the local bar scene from various 'zines that started to appear, with more frequency, in music stores--as well as from the area "alternative press." So, unless one likes the tactile sensation of newsprint rubbing off on one's fingers, and the rustling sound of paper pages being turned, all the information one used to need from a local paper--job listings, movie times, and reports on local stuff--was now free. Why buy? Revenue decreases again.


Newspapers have crashed...the final thing that burns them out of existence might be:

5) There is no such thing as a NewspaperWoman: In my survey of the newpapering industry, there seem to be second, third, even fourth generation newspapermen. Ever heard of even a second-generation Newspaperwoman? Nope! Know of any of the paltry few first-generation NewspaperWomen who are mentoring a new generation if NewspaperWomen? Nope. They may be toiling away in obscurity, but they, and their protegees (if any), aren't necessarily getting loads of press. Further, men still seem to occupy the majority of editorial positions with both major and local papers. The few women that are in editorial positions rarely make it into the club that would classify them in the same sense as the newspapermen. When women have managed to infiltrate even the Fortune 500, even fewer, if any, have been able to claim the mantle of "NewspaperWoman" and, more importantly, to add their voices to that particular Good Old Boys' Club. The few women that are allowed to occasionally dine with The Big Boys never seem to express opinions about their profession that are respected and promoted by their peers. Print journalism is possibly the very last closed shop that's out there--and that closed-minded, closed-shop mentality has, I believe, hampered print journalism's ability to perceive, accept, and flex with the changes that have occurred in American culture and economy.

Across the landscape of history, women have been integral to the continued existence of, and have made significant contributions to, philosophy, science, religion and the arts. That women are still shut out of print journalism's club of Newspapermen is, in the 21st century, not just a disgrace, but might be the final fastening nail in print journalism's coffin. What is it they say about new blood invigorating things? Apparently the newspaper industry's missed out on that one in favor of the old saw "Stay the Course."

So, perhaps, Craig Newmark isn't doing anything to newspapers that newspapers haven't done already to themselves. When Goliath has self-inflicted mortal wounds, and is reeling from loss of blood, the pebble that dispatches him need only be the size of a grain of sand. And, unfortunatley, because of the short-term collective memory of many, and the excellence of a good p/r firm, that grain of sand ends up being perceived as a rock.

Think about it.

Journalism, citizen journalism, media

A Curious Little Gem In The Blogosphere

Yesterday, out of boredom, I was doing a Technorati search on media and stumbled across Scott Karp's blog Publishing 2.0.

Scott's the Managing Director of Research and Strategy for Atlantic Media and has alot on his mind. He started the blog back in December, and uses it to ruminate on the interface between New Media (blogging) and Old Media. Read his About page because I'm too lazy to parse it all out for ya.

Overall, he's really thinking about this whole thing--really thinking. Go take a look. I commented on Bloggers are So Wrong About Media because in it Scott seems to assume that all bloggers are created equal--and all of y'all know that some bloggers (mainly the A-list) are more equal than the rest of us around here. (and don't say we're not. don't piss on my shoe and tell me it's raining). Scott also discovered that being inflammatory and incendiary gets you somewhere in the blogosphere....

that's it exactly Scott...being the agent provocateur can get even a flea noticed!

But inflammatory rhetoric, like a tit-flash at Mardi Gras, will get a blogger only so far. There's got to be something beyond the snarky snap and the cranky jab. Hmmm...maybe that's why I'm so nice sometimes. ;-)

Give Scott a look....let's help the guy understand what The Rest of Us are doing out here.

media, Blogging Blog Blogs citizen journalism,

More on Snark and Journalism

Okay, so I did say I'd post the third installation of Jon Friedman's series on snark and journalism.

But, Jon...it's only the second full week of '06 and you're claiming that Gawker has it sown up for the year?!? for shame! There's a full 12 1/2 months left for the rest of the blogosphere to get more snarkarific. Who knows what might happen.

Then again, what do I know? ;-)

Still, I like that Jon quoted me in the second part, so here's the third:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - When it comes to the fine art of publishing snarky commentaries, nobody does it better than Gawker.

Gawker, the flagship of Gawker Media, stands apart because its editors, Jessica Coen and Jesse Oxfeld, are fair-minded and (very) funny. Oxfeld and Coen, who live in New York City, delight in skewering celebrities and newsmakers who do or say especially pompous things.

The four-year-old Internet site's wicked wit and journalistic sensibility are catching on. In November, Oxfeld noted, it had 6 million page views, its all-time high.

Unlike many pretenders to Gawker's throne, this site combines humor and basic journalistic values. Coen and Oxfeld are unabashedly sarcastic -- but seldom mean-spirited. "You take down people who deserve to be taken down," Coen said succinctly.

Their most loyal supporters keep them honest. "My mother doesn't read Gawker because it's too blue," Coen shrugged. "My mother emails me about my typos," Oxfeld said.

Oxfeld began writing for the site last June, Coen in August 2004. "I was the third permanent editor and have been here the longest," she said in an email, "which, I suppose, makes me the craziest." Coen and Oxfeld are carrying on the tradition established by such previous Gawker editors as Elizabeth Spiers and Choire Sicha.

Dynamic duo

I talked with Oxfeld and Coen on Jan. 3, over drinks in a West Village restaurant. During those two hours, it became apparent that Gawker's dynamic duo has a terrific working relationship.

They frequently finished one another's sentences, which is surprising since they work out of their apartments and can go days without even seeing one another (the two are advertisements for the virtues of instant messaging).

Oxfeld, who hails from northern New Jersey, has a background in mainstream journalism. Since graduating from Stanford University, he's had stints at Newsweek, ABC News, Brill's Content, Editor and Publisher as well as Media Bistro.

By contrast, Coen, a native of suburban Detroit who went to the University of Michigan, spent a year teaching 9th and 10th graders in South Central Los Angeles, through Teach For America. It's a national recruitment program which hopes to attract college graduates to teaching.

Then, after working in television for a year, she was accepted into the Columbia School of Journalism -- but turned down the opportunity to edit Gawker.

Actually, Coen might benefit more from a season at the Second City comedy training ground than hallowed Columbia. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Coen's gift for one-liners and deadpan humor someday catapults her to a gig on "The Daily Show."

Oxfeld said Gawker's publisher, Nick Denton (who declined to be interviewed for this piece), has said Gawker should have the breezy, informal feel of reflecting "what journalists talk about over drinks but can't write in their publications."

Because of the confrontational nature of what Gawker does, Denton has also said his staffers "have to be comfortable being outsiders."

Coen said the no-rules atmosphere is "a total blessing. We are free to say whatever we want, when we want."

And so they do. On Thursday, these snark-filled items appeared on Gawker's site:

-- "Macauley Culkin is preparing to marry actress Mila Kunis. We salute her bravery."

-- "Katie Couric's contract with the 'Today' show isn't up until May, and she can't even negotiate with CBS until then. So she'd appreciate it if you'd just shut the f*** up about what's next and focus on her legs."

-- "What's truly heartbreaking about Brad Pitt's forthcoming spawn, currently festering in Angelina Jolie's womb, is what the new baby will do to Jolie's two adopted children, Maddox and Zahara. Kids, say hi to your new, gorgeous replacement!"

Still, being needled in Gawker is a badge of honor. "The meanest thing we can do is ignore someone," Coen said.

The establishment is noticing. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said last year that she is a fan. Her colleague, Times media critic David Carr, devoted one of his columns to chide Gawker for writing insensitive stories during the recent media pandemonium surrounding Peter Braunstein, He's the one-time journalist who led police on a cross-country chase after he terrorized a woman on Halloween in New York. Carr cited "the permanently jaded sensibility of sites like Gawker."

A few days ago, when I told a senior Time magazine editor that I was going to write a column about the leader of snarky journalism, he shot back, "Well, you've got to write about Jessica Coen, right?"

And when I interviewed Justin Smith, the 36-year-old president of The Week magazine, he marveled, "It's amazing to think that Gawker is being written by two 25-year-olds!"

Coen, predictably, shrugged off the compliment. "We're NOT both 25-year-olds," she muttered. She grinned and added, "Jesse is 29!"

Sloppiness

Oxfeld and Coen have demanding jobs. Each of them writes 12 items a day.

The heavy workload can contribute to occasional sloppiness. Gawker commented on a Jan. 4 column in which I speculated about who's in and who's out in the media. I'd said that because of MSNBC's "serious improvement," Fox "could feel a pinch."

Gawker's unappealing interpretation: "Jon Friedman is clearly smoking crack, as proved by (among other things) his prediction that MSNBC will beat CNN and Fox News in 2006." (Among those "other things," I'd suggested that Gawker was "in" and the New York Post's gossippy "Page Six was "out.")

When I good-naturedly protested Gawker's account of what I'd written, Oxfeld dismissed me by saying I was "splitting hairs."

Success

For now, Gawker's biggest concern may just be coping with its new-found success.

In a surefire sign that they may be coming perilously close to mass acceptance, Oxfeld, Coen and some of their Gawker Media colleagues were featured in a photo layout in the February issue of Vanity Fair.

"We look so odd," Coen told me, "but at least I got guttered."

Will success ruin Gawker? "If we start taking any of it too seriously," Coen said, "we deserve to be bludgeoned to death with September Vogues."

Oxfeld noted: "We're working to keep it from being a problem by remaining just as tough on everyone as we've always been, including - as the site becomes bigger - ourselves."

The most common quibble I've heard about Gawker is that Coen and Oxfeld don't have bylines, so the readers don't know for sure who wrote what stuff. Perhaps it's fair to say that Oxfeld is the more earnest of the two while Coen lives to get under someone's skin.

When we concluded our interview that night in the restaurant, I thanked the two Gawker editors for their time. Oxfeld, devoid of snark this time, looked me in the eye and said evenly, "I trust you'll be nice to us."

But Coen smiled. "Oh, come on," she said devilishly, "something nasty wouldn't hurt. We haven't had a good catfight in a while."