Friday, March 04, 2005

bloggercon for SC and other topics

Apparently there's talk of a bloggercon in Charlotte now, and that's the closest one I've heard about. But there's a semi-local Evil Genius who might be thinking about something along those lines soon...

Dave Winer is just kicking ass this week as a news provider, and so much of the news is coming out of Google: sneaky shapeshifting of other people's content, adware, developing a browser, yada yada yada. Whatever happened to "don't be evil?" as a business plan? There's a nice comment on market hydraulics. If we had a collective brain in the MSM we'd be covering this stuff, and the way to do that ISN'T to tell some kid to go do it -- it's to work something out with the Daves of the world. And you know why we won't? Because the Daves of the world are not controllable, and we would want to control the product.

Hey, apparently my name got mentioned on the EGC clambake for March 3. It's still downloading here, but I read the shownotes. You know one thing that has changed? It used to be that reporters knew that they had more readers/listeners than their interview subjects. That's not necessarily true anymore.

I love what Jay Rosen is doing right now on PressThink. His latest is on Decertifying the Press, and it's the real deal, really a follow to his earlier piece on Gannon. It's great stuff because it contains none of that frustrating, point-missing, blind-alley distraction we all hate: when it comes to this topic, Rosen gets it. Guess who else agrees? Ed Cone. He's writing his weekend newspaper column on the topic.

Leaving soon for the SC Press Awards in Spartanburg, and Andy Rhinehart says there will be interesting topics afoot today, including the launch of their new aggregator (now that's just good marketing: launch it on the day all the newspapers in the state are in town).

The thought occurs to me: somebody ought to be blogging the press awards. But it ain't gonna be me, as I'm most likely gonna be wrapped around a beer.

Janet is gonna upload audacity onto a laptop, and plans to record on the way up to Sparkle City, so maybe this whole thing will wind up as a podcast.

A QUICK NOTE TO CERTAIN READERS: I got notes from a couple of you yesterday that I'd be responding to here, and sharing your links, except I'm working from home this a.m. and don't have access to my newspaper inbox. I'll get your stuff up Monday, and haven't forgotten -- it's good stuff, and deserves a link.