BuzzMachine
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News articles as assets and paths
This is the start of a new project I’m working on to brainstorm new forms, relationships, and (business) models for news. Responding to a current discussion on Twitter among @AntDeRosa, @felixsalmon, @jayrosn_nyu & @davewiner ...
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The (not so) daily news
I have more conflicts than a Louisiana politician when it comes to the news of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reducing its frequency from seven to three days a week: I was in charge of digital content in the parent-company division that ...
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Creepy
I just reamed an ITN producer who emailed me this clip about Google seeking a patent for using background noise in audible search requests and wanted to talk to me “off the record” (why he’d offer that, I don’t kn...
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Consumer Reports’ moral panic
I’m very disappointed in Consumer Reports for falling into the moral panic about privacy and social services. Today it issues a survey and a Reefer Madness report that covers no new ground, only stirs it up, over privacy and Facebo...
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Social (network) pressure
By adding an organ-donation tool to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is setting up a dynamic of social pressure for virtue. Is that always good?Now getting us to sign our drivers’ licenses so our vital bits can be harvested to save others...
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Journalism Inside®
I wonder whether we should be teaching journalists to embed themselves and their abilities into the world rather than always making the world come to them. Thinking out loud…The other day, when Amazon peeved me by suddenly trying t...
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A new Buzzmachine
At long last, and by popular demand (and disgust at my old design), Buzzmachine is reborn thanks to my son and webmaster, Jake. After I’d let my old design go to seed, he didn’t much like me calling him my webmaster. So he to...
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Good CUNY news
Good news at CUNY: My colleague Sandeep Junnarkar has been promoted to my old post as director of the interactive journalism program. I’ve been pushing for this to happen for sometime because, truth is, Sandeep has been doing all t...
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The (continuing) institutional revolution
I just read a fascinating book by Douglas W. Allen,
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OMFG! Change! Media freaks out!
I got a call today from ABC.com’s Joanna Stern about Google’s Goggles. She’s very nice. But I had a fit when she started by asking me about all that could go wrong with the new technology. That is your angle? I screeche...
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Mapping new opportunities in technology and news
At CUNY’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, we believe technology provides many still-untapped opportunities for news. So we commissioned Dr. Nicholas Diakopoulos to research and map that territory. He came back wit...
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The importance of JOBS
The JOBS bill being signed by President Obama today is critical to the emergence and growth of the next generation of industries as ecosystems. Those ecosystems are made up of three layers: Platforms (Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Faceboo...
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Lies
You need not take a journalist’s oath to tell the truth. You need only be born to a mother such as mine, who told me and my sister often–very often–that “there’s nothing worse than a liar.” It worked o...
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Whither capitalism?
I’ve been arguing for sometime that technology leads to efficiency over growth and that that will have profound impact on society we can only begin to grasp. Michel Bauwens now furthers the argument, asking whether capitalism can c...
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Gutenberg the Geek, reviewed
Some kind folks have reviewed my Kindle Single Gutenberg the Geek. Snippets: Craig Newmark: Gutenberg was a geek (I prefer “nerd”, being one) whose work invented our current day, much like our work together on the Internet is...
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Rewired youth?
Pew and Elon University surveyed a bunch of blatherers, including me, about the impact of the internet on youth, asking us to respond to a number of contrary scenarios about the year 2020. Lots of interesting responses here. I saved mine...
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Davos, disrupted
I’m among the disrupted of Davos. Outside, there’s an #OccupyDavos encampment in igloos (really). Down the road, someone will be giving out an award to the worst company of the world. But the disruption is no longer outside. ...
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Just saying
I can use Visa and Mastercard to pay for porn and support anti-abortion fanatics, Prop 8 homophobic bigots, and the Ku Klux Klan. But I can’t use them or PayPal to support Wikileaks, transparency, the First Amendment, and true gove...
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The cloud crisis
The ash cloud is on my mind more than yours, I’ll bet, because I outran it and because I’m concerned for my friends at re:publica and elsewhere who are still trying to get home by tortured combinations of planes, trains, and ...
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What is content, then?
In the discussion about the iPad, much has been made of its nature as a content consumption — versus creation — device. I lament its limitations as a tool of creation. Howard Owens, speaking for many, tells me that most peopl...
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The disrupted of Davos
The theme of this year’s World Economic Forum meeting at Davos was “rethink, redesign, rebuild.” When a friend recited that list for me, I responded that given the institutions there, the more appropriate slogan is R...
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The danger of the wall
The European, a German online news service, asked me to write a commentary for a debate on paid content. Here it is in German. And here’s the English text: I have nothing against charging for content, if you can. After all, I’m sel...
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The right to link
My column in the Guardian argues that we have a right to link and that the link is the basis of freedom of speech online. The issues are important and so I’m posting the entire column here: * * * Linking is more than merely a fun...
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The rise of the interest-state
In the post below, on Google standing up to China over its spying on dissidents and censorship, I note how Zeit Online calls Google a quasi-state — in a post under the headline “The Google Republic” — and Fallows ...
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Media after the site
Tweet: What does the post-page, post-site, post-media media world look like? @stephenfry, that’s what. The next phase of media, I’ve been thinking, will be after the page and after the site. Media can’t expect us to go...
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Nose, face, cut, spite: Blocking Google
There’s been a swine flu of stupidity spreading about the Murdoch meme of blocking Google from indexing a site’s content (to which Google always replies that you’ve always been able to do that with robots.txt – so...
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Giving up on the news business
Before reaching their dangerous conclusion – recommending government supported journalism in a report called the Reconstruction of American Journalism – former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and Columbia journalism pro...
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The open EU
I got email this morning from someone getting ready to present to the European Parliament on the changes in journalism from their perspective. He said: “Given the shift to hyper-local journalism, being a supra-national body seems t...
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Journalism as capitalism: Now that’s God’s work
The only way that journalism is going to be sustainable is if it is profitable – and out of that market relationship comes many other benefits: accountability to the public it serves; independence from funders’ agendas; growt...
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NewBizNews in the Guardian
In addition to the podcast (below), the New Business Models for News Project is the subject of my column in the Guardian’s media section. Here’s the full text: There is a future for news – a sustainable and once-again profita...
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Google bigotry
Google have an image problem – not a PR problem (that is, one with the public) but a press problem (one with whining old media people). Google is trying hard – too hard, perhaps – not to argue with the guys who still bu...
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The small c and me
I have cancer, prostrate cancer. When the doctor told me, he said that if you’re going to get it, this is the one to get. It made feel as if I’d just gotten an upgrade on Cancer Air. It was caught very early, found in only 5...
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Oh, to be the Economist
When newspaper people in the U.S. aren’t wishing they were the Wall Street Journal – “well, they can charge” – they aspire to be The Economist. Dream on. I just got email announcing The Economist GroupR...
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The craigslist (read: internet) witchhunt
The internet - in the form of the latest kerfuffle over craigslist - is exposing an anachronism of law in society. I’ve seen reference lately to attorneys general and law-enforcement officials saying that the craigslist communit...
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Arianna Huffington saves journalism
My Guardian column this week, under that headline, comes out of an interview I did with Huffington for the first edition of the Guardian Media Talk USA podcast. The column got trimmed for print, so I’ll paste my draft after the ju...
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Slices of a new journalism pie
The AP reports that Huffington Post is going to announce tomorrow the creation of a $1.75 million fund with various donors to pay for investigative reporting. First target: the economy. This, I’ve long held, is where foundation a...
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Guardian column: Whack-a-mole with micropayments
My Guardian column this week on newspapers trying (again) to imagine a world in which they can force people to pay online. (I’m told that the print version has some dropped lines; this is my draft): Like a gopher in the garden, the...
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Eating my own dogfood
I’ve said before that there’s nobody better at analyzing the plight of newspapers than Alan Mutter. But Alan and I disagree about one thing: the likelihood that newspapers will be able to charge for their content online when ...
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Hacking education
Educators - like musicians, journalists, carmakers, and bankers before them - won’t know what hit them. But as sure as change is overtaking every other sector of society, it will overtake education - as well it should. Our cookie-c...
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Here’s what Google would do
The irony is just too obvious: Google buys a paper factory in and replaces its machines (like the one above) with a data center. Note, too, the irony - or at least symmetry - of this happening in Finland, where its proudest company, No...
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Davos09: A crisis and failure of leadership
The crisis the world is suffering through now is a failure of leadership. The leaders of the world are in Davos. If the world is watching what happens here this week, it will be to hear solutions and see responsibility and accountability...
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Nothing new in black & white
A lovely review of the Folger Shakespeare Library show on the birth of newspapers by Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post has some gems: If you learn about the world primarily from newspapers, the Folger Shakespeare Library’s e...
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Identity and anonymity
On the Dallas Morning News opinion blog today, the paper brags about what sets its letters apart from online discussion: identity. They quote a frequent letter writer named Chris (irony: no last name given) who says: There was a stateme...
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Bad news, good news
For a proposal I’m writing, I want to compile key stats that show the state of the news business (at least the incumbents, plus a view of demand). Here’s what I have. Do you have other stats that reveal the state? Bad news… ...
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A danger to journalism
The more I think about it, the angrier I get at Gatehouse for its dangerous and hypocritical crusade against links. Links are the bloodstream of the web, carrying its oxygen. Links are how original journalism will get audience, traffic...
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Paper? What paper?
The American Society of Newspaper Editors is thinking of eliminating “paper” from its name. And I’m called revolutionary for talking about news post-paper?
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The last thing newspapers need
I’m still shaking my head over the American Press Institute’s announcement of a closed-door, invitation-only emergency meeting of only CEO-level newspaper executives to, in the words of E&P “ponder ways to revive t...
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The journalism of filling space and time
Election days are — next to the days after Thanksgiving and Christmas — the worst days of journalism on the calendar. They are “yeah, we know” days. People shop. People vote. Tell me something I don’t know. ...
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Boogie down
Mikiane.com suggests (en Francais) that the journalist is a DJ. I like that. It’s a bit less haughty than what I’ve been saying lately: The journalist is a curator. Curators work in stuffy museums where they control everythin...
