Talk media with people who aren't in the media, and you'll figure out pretty quickly that the motives outsiders ascribe to us generally fail to connect with reality because their assumptions have one basic, fundamental flaw: They figure the process of newsgathering is somehow rational and deliberate.
Here's a much better picture, from the great Lenslinger: Mad Skills of a Veteran Photog.
(Crossposted @ Xark!)
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Friday, February 17, 2006
Journalism from a software perspective
On Feb. 9, while reading up on the web framework Django, my eye gravitated toward an unfamiliar acronym in this sentence: “Django focuses on automating as much as possible and adhering to the DRY principle.”
So what’s DRY? To programmers, DRY means “Don’t Repeat Yourself,” and the link explaining the principle led eventually to this rather elegant statement: ''Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.''
My study of content management systems returned me to the Django page, but within minutes I found myself drifting back to this simple-but-powerful concept: Express every individual bit of knowledge in a clear and authoritative manner. It whispered in my ear, tugged at my sleeve, told me there was more in play here than geek esoterica.
But duty called, so to move on I scribbled the principle on a piece of sketchpad paper and pinned it to the corkboard behind my desk with this question: How Could We Apply This to 21st Century Journalism?
Because to be blunt, modern journalism – not to mention the larger culture – is in desperate need of some clear and authoritative factual statements.
Where we are
One of the great ironies of modern life is how post-modern conservatives become when the topic turns to the media. The Bible, Adam Smith, warped timber – these are articles of faith, received wisdom. Conservatives don’t generally challenge such statements with much fervor, nor should we expect them to. The goal of conservatism isn’t the questioning of authority but the bolstering it, typically against the critiques of the offensive, silly or malicious elements in society.
Yet when it comes to discussions of the media, even the most rock-ribbed of John Birchers turn downright existential.
Objectivity? Impossible! The very terms of the discussion render it so.
To 21st century American conservatives, any media claim of objectivity represents an overtly political act. What’s more, they say, the claim of journalistic objectivity is actually a partisan political act because – as any rational person can plainly see – the media is biased in favor of the Democratic Party.
Which leads us, ipso facto, to a surprisingly radical conclusion: Since the post-modern conservative critique has now eliminated even the possibility of journalistic objectivity, and since – as any rational person can plainly see – liberal media bias serves the Democratic Party, then the most essential media reform of the 21st century is the creation of a separate, subjective, distinctly partisan, pro-GOP press to compete with the old-line “mainstream media.”
This idea – that the antidote to a subjective-but-dishonest liberal media is an overtly subjective conservative media – isn’t new. FOX News and The Washington Times predate the current administration, as do numerous conservative press critics. What’s new are concepts that NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen calls “de-certification” and “rollback.” Both are now operative principles in both the Bush White House and the larger conservative movement.
De-certification rejects the notion that journalists have any unique standing to critically examine or publicly challenge the statements of political leaders. It identifies Big Journalism as just another special interest, and treats reporters as special pleaders. De-certification identifies press “spin” (coverage) as just another message in competition with the conservative message. It rejects the idea that reporters can be objective, or that critical coverage can be anything other than partisan.
Rollback is the implementation of de-certification. It is Scott McClellan repeating the same plainly non-responsive statement no matter the question. It is the release of the Dick Cheney hunting accident story to the local paper rather than the Washington press corps. It is President Bush pointing out that nobody elected the person asking him questions.
Though elements of this conservative critique may well be worth a larger discussion, it is their net effect that concerns me. Together, they portend a future in which the mass media will present Americans not just with competing viewpoints, but with competing facts. In the worst-case scenario, these polarized partisan presses will present factual claims that are mutually exclusive.
Which raises the question: Is American benefiting from its now-Balkanized mass media? Would subjectivity in mass media be helpful or harmful? And with critics on both sides of the political spectrum united in the belief that human objectivity is not possible, is there any way that those of us in the journalism business can steer our profession back toward something resembling a common frame of reference?
The stakes are visible in this study: In 2004, FOX News viewers were far more likely to vote for President Bush. These viewers were also far more likely to believe statements about Iraq that were factually untrue, and each of these inaccuracies negated Democratic critiques of the administration’s foreign policies.
It is now clear to me that simply appealing to the good faith of media consumers will never allow us to address this status quo. Reporters, editors and producers will never be able to regain objective credibility across partisan lines by making reforms in the way we report or package the news. Professionalism is good, but it won’t change the basic equation.
Two types of objectivity
Which is why in 2005 I began proposing that an optimistic vision of our future requires that journalists stop thinking about news as a craft and start thinking about news as an informational system.
I was covering science at the time, and you can’t do that very long without recognizing that objectivity wasn’t an impossibility for the biologists I covered – it was just another factor in their experiments. They controlled for it, and then they documented those controls for all to see. Not even Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the ultimate statement of observer-subjectivity, derails the scientific concept of objectivity.
Why? Because unlike journalistic objectivity, which proposes itself to be an artificial perspective, scientific objectivity is a documented process. A requirement of that process is that it be recorded clearly enough that findings are repeatable for all observers (in the case of laboratory experiments) or clearly controlled for the observer’s subjective perspective (field observation of a single event or series of events). When viewed from a distance, this process of objectivity varies for each individual discipline, but its philosophy is constant: Always be aware of the subjectivity of the observer, use agreed-upon standards, and show your work.
In other words, scientists have created a system of objectivity, and by abiding within its rules, civilization has flourished. Scientific objectivity allows a physicist in Oslo to derive a bit of knowledge that a physicist in Kyoto can apply to a larger experiment. While scientists do test each other’s findings, science does not re-invent wheels. This is why there is only one Uncertainty Principle – Heisenberg’s.
Compare this to modern journalism.
By our standards, if Al Gore took up physics and claimed he had derived an Uncertainty Principle, journalists leaving his press conference would be expected to call the White House for a response. The story announcing the Gore Uncertainty Principle (GUP) would likely point out that the Heritage Foundation has a competing Uncertainty Principle (HFUP), then noting in passing that that someone named Heisenberg had done similar work in the 1920s. Being journalistically objective, most versions of this story would report each of these claims as limited facts (the fact being that individuals had stated the claims) without attempting to evaluate those claims.
Along the way, we’d quote Gore saying why his GUP reaffirms the principles of participatory democracy, while a Heritage Foundation spokesman would opine about how the GUP gets it entirely, backwards wrong: the HFUP clearly proves that President Bush won both Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
A week later, a major media outlet might attempt to write a follow-up piece critically examining the claims, and if the reporter had any scientific expertise, this new story would likely conclude that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is the only one that matters, and that the partisan versions of this essential theory of quantum physics are, at best, irrelevant.
This story would be immediately assailed as biased, of course. Conservative viewers, watching their network, would reach one conclusion. Liberals another. And while this echo-chamber effect might be comforting for both groups, it’s hardly the prescription for creating an informed, constructive national debate on any subject.
Rethinking journalism
On December 9, 2005, I left this comment on a particularly contentious PressThink thread:
We need to create some kind of new information tool that helps us manage these situations, so that basic facts can be established and stipulated. If we don't trust the government and we don't trust the media and we don't trust each other, how can we get anywhere? We know how to build websites and blogs and news wires ... but how do (we) build trust in the 21st century?
Five days later I wrote a lengthy post (“21st century trust … the techno-geek way!”) at Xark! trying to answer my own question. And in early January, I actually proposed in another PressThink thread that journalists publicly evaluate their confidence in the factual content they were publishing.
The tricky part is that being explicit about confidence means editors would have to accept greater accountability. If I've overrated my 12-miners-alive story a 7 and it reverses, I look pretty damned stupid. Then again, if I'm systematically underbidding my confidence to prevent being revealed as wrong later, I'm not doing much to build my credibility. You want an incentive for people to be candid and thorough, and I think this might provide it.
To be truly useful, such a system would need to be keyed to something, whether it's a number system or a color code or a bar graph or a slider. Whatever. A 5 rating should mean the same thing to the reader as to the editor. The beauty of the web is that editors don't have to redundantly explain this stuff in print -- rather, they can post the rating and know that anybody who isn't sure what it means can click and find out exactly what it means. And the more specific the better.
Some found the idea interesting. Kinda. Sorta. Most didn’t. But even though some people I respect – namely Paul Lukasik and Steve Lovelady – have rather graciously tried to tell me that I’ve got quite overboard with such thinking, I have the sneaking suspicion that the problem with most proposed solutions for our current media malaise is that they don’t go far enough.
The other problem is that they’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to objectivity. Fine: Let’s junk journalistic objectivity and its Halfling brethren “news judgment” and “fairness.” But let’s not concede the intellectual ground to competing subjective visions without first exploring the possibilities of a more scientific form of objectivity. Not a particularly enlightened perspective or state of being, but a transparent process.
How it might work.
Imagine for a moment that your next word processor came with an annoying “intelligent agent” feature that recognized any declarative statement of fact you ever wrote and then asked you to cite its definitive source. An incredible pain in the ass, yes.
But now imagine that, as a reader, every document you were ever asked to evaluate came to you as rich hypertext, with each summary fact transparently sourced all the way back to its original, definitive expression. Would you treat its claims differently than you would a document that arrived without that kind of depth behind it?
I’d wager you would. Sure, most writers cite sources, even if they don’t expressly name them. But are the sources definitive, or are they just dueling “facts” – on-the-public-record but never actually challenged or verified?
But back to our imagining. Anyone, given unlimited time and resources, could produce dry, boring, factual articles that are nevertheless elaborately festooned with hypertext-footnotes. Someone with zero understanding of how the modern mediascape works might even prescribe this as a solution for what ails us.
Realistically though, most reporters and editors will never have the time or resources to produce such exhaustive fact-check formatting on deadline. Even with modern
Web search-engines, checking a relatively simple statement back to its “single, unambiguous, authoritative representation” is exceedingly time-consuming and tedious task. Allow me to demonstrate:
“North Charleston, despite being one of the youngest cities in the state, is also among the largest.”
Now. Time me.
Two minutes: “As a means of bringing government closer to the people, an incorporation referendum was held on April 27, 1971. On June 12, 1972, after a series of legal battles, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the referendum results and North Charleston became a city.” (http://www.northcharleston.org/AboutUs/History.aspx)
Four minutes: “Incorporated in 1972, it is South Carolina's youngest city of any size.” (http://www.northcharleston.org/AboutUs/LocationMap.aspx).
Seven minutes: 2000 US Census population (via http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_bm=n&_lang=en&mt_name=DEC_2000_PL_U_GCTPL_ST7&format=ST-7&_box_head_nbr=GCT-PL&ds_name=DEC_2000_PL_U&geo_id=04000US45): 79,641
Eight minutes: Charleston, 96,650; Columbia 116,278;
Nine minutes. None other found.
So there we are: Almost 10 minutes of searching for a basically benign statement. The sources look pretty good, too – but they still aren’t anywhere close to the single, unambiguous, authoritative representations that the DRY principle calls for.
For instance, when the North Charleston city website calls itself “South Carolina’s youngest city of any size,” is that independent of the term “town?” It certainly doesn’t take into account the municipal soap opera that has been the recent history of the Town of James Island, which has been incorporated and disbanded twice in the last decade (James Island is currently unincorporated, which wouldn’t precisely invalidate this statement of fact). Beyond that, can the town of North Charleston be trusted to provide authoritative statements about itself?
Neither is the information up-to-date. There’s a 2003 census estimate that I found that shows North Charleston with roughly 81,500 residents… but that’s at least three years old now, and it’s an estimate. It doesn’t change the statement I made, but now I’m foundering. Which one would I pick as the authoritative representation of the original bit of knowledge?
Given this quick searching, perhaps I would edit my statement: “North Charleston, despite being the youngest city in the state, is also its third-largest.” The sentence is actually three factual statements: 1. North Charleston is the most recently incorporated municipality in South Carolina; 2. North Charleston’s population is estimated at roughly 81,500 people; 3. Only two other municipalities (Columbia and Charleston) in SC have larger populations. So my searching has marginally strengthened my statement and the hypertext footnoting may have improved your willingness to believe its veracity.
And yet in no way have I met the standards of the DRY Principle. I’ve wasted valuable time bolstering a sentence that – even when upgraded – makes the same point specifically that it originally made generally. And the items to which I point as my proof lack truly authoritative status. No doubt I’ll be fielding pointless phone calls from miffed James Islanders, who interpret the statement differently and want to argue.
Even under the most cursory examination, my DRY experiment is a tremendous timewasting flop.
All of which demonstrates why a real DRY fact-base would be tremendously valuable.
The trouble with search
Google is far from the definitive source most people imagine it to be. Just try updating your website and Googling the changes for proof. In fact, no web search engine can meet this standard, because the people writing the search algorithms aren’t the same people managing the data. So while web search points us toward facts, it cannot, as a system, create truly authoritative factual statements.
We need another tool. In fact, we need several of them.
- We need a curated fact-base. From raw data like census reports to statements contained in magazine articles, we need a database of primary factual statements that have been sourced and verified according to transparent and universally recognized standards.
- We need a system by which new primary factual statement may be reviewed and added to the factbase.
- We need a system by which all facts within the database can be reviewed and updated automatically. Such a system would also connect changes of primary fact to secondary statements such as “North Charleston is the state’s third-largest city.”
And then there’s No. 4:
- We need an intelligent word processing tool that automatically relates each factual claim to its original, unambiguous, authoritative statement.
No. 4 is the idea transports DRY Principle Journalism from the impractical to the sublime. Why? Because relevant factual statements tend to become pyramids over time. Down at the bottom? Census figures. Incorporation records. Later comes a statement, like mine, that combines census figures and incorporation records. Eventually, you reach statements like this one: “Along with its relative youth and rapid growth comes crime. North Charleston violent crime rate was among the highest in the United States in 2005 (ranked No. 79 for US municipalities).” Facts correlate, interrelate, expand and contrast.
If I write using DRY-principle facts, then each level of complexity I ascend becomes its own DRY-principle statement.
With the right tools linking the DRY factbase to my word processor, I’d know if my statement was generally correct, generally incorrect, or questionable. As I write, the built-in analyzer would search the factbase for relevant facts, perhaps listing them in a scrolling window beside my word processing field. At the end of the article, I’d probably edit by scanning back over the cited links generated by my intelligent agent, check to see if there were any obvious ways to improve the factual rigor of my article, and then press save.
Of course, if I’m reporting, my job is to generate new facts. How might DRY help me there?
Well, for starters it might let me know whether my subject is actually news – or just news to me. It would guard against me making factual and context errors. Perhaps we could even train it to recognize and challenge certain types of logical fallacies or misleading rhetorical devices.
But the most important role such an agent might play for a reporter is that it would recognize new, unsupported factual statements, note their cited sources, and apply to the factbase process.
Memory and power
On Sept. 1, 2005, with his administration beginning to come under fire for its response to the Katrina disaster, President Bush told reporters “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breech of the levees.”
With an intelligent agent dynamically connecting the DRY factbase to their word processors, reporters would have known this statement to be factually incorrect before they had finished typing the closing quotation mark. Why? Because multiple previous articles and disaster exercises had done exactly that – predicting with great accuracy the impact of a Katrina-like storm.
Yes, we all need an ever-expanding database of original-source facts, stated clearly and authoritatively. But the trick to making such a thing useful would be to embed in our writing tools the kinds of pattern-seeking software that first recognizes declarative grammar and then applies the words as search terms.
Positive correlations might stream into the word processor’s “hits” window as green supporting citations. But contradictory facts – like FEMAs previous disaster exercises – would flash red.
At the very least, a reporter following these protocols would know that the President’s statement was less than rigorously true. So too would anyone following the story at home. What’s the point of building the world’s greatest factual reference and not making it public to the world?
The President should have access to the factbase as well – if only to get his story straight before he goes out to meet the press.
And if the President wishes to contend that the factbase is wrong, well – we should be able to build feedback mechanisms that allow that, as well.
Administration
So, imagine for a moment that our discovery informatics wizards could develop the right interface. And imagine that our systems geniuses could invent the right storage, cross-referencing and retrieval processes. Imagine that our best archivists and data specialists could create a transparent system for batch-converting the huge volume of new data that would soon flood into your fact base. Imagine that the wise among us could create fair and practical ways or making sure the factbase stays accurate.
OK then: How would we pay for it?
One answer might be that the nation’s media outlets could work cooperatively on such a system, much in the same way that that competitors work together to make the Associated Press. The project is too large for any single participant, but if each worked together, each would benefit.
Colleges and universities? Sure. Research and development labs? You bet. Anyone with an interest in the expansion and vetting of information could benefit.
Governments?
Well, that’s another question.
Regardless of who would pay and how much such a system would cost, I see nothing it what I propose here that exceeds the theoretical capabilities of existing or developing technologies. And if science is any guide, then the value of having solid factual information at the world’s disposal – without having to independently verify each individual bit of knowledge – would be a tremendous economic multiplier.
I believe a system like this will be within our reach within a decade.
Would it be a magic bullet? No. So much of what passes for fact is actually only “facty.” How much of our political reality is based on guesses, attitudes, opinions? A DRY factbase and standards-based journalism wouldn’t change that.
But creating a standard repository of “single, unambiguous, authoritative representations” of knowledge would be a transformative technology both for journalism and society. Not because it would expand knowledge – but because it would allow the creation of a system of mutually agreed-upon, standards-based journalism and communication.
Some people would choose to stay outside such a system. They would challenge its validity, appeal to fear, appeal to divine authority. They could appeal to “truthiness” just as they do today.
But by making such a system open-source, and by inviting everyone to participate in monitoring it, you would move truthiness from the heart of the culture to its periphery.
People like me will still write to persuade. We will still argue over which facts are relevant.
But no longer will you have to trust me to see the relative value in what I have to say.
And that would be the biggest improvement in communication I could ever imagine.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
NYT gots some 'splainin' to do...
I've been waiting, but it's clearly not going to happen. Not on its own accord, anyway. Not out of a sense of transparency or ethics or the public's right to know.
The brass at The New York Times thinks its decision to hold a story about the White House's warrantless domestic spying program for more than a year is none of our business. So they're not talking.
And, not to put too fine a point on things, that's bullshit.
Gabriel Sherman at the New York Observer had a piece about it today, along with this quote from NYT Executive Editor Bill Killer:
“I’m not going to talk about the back story to the story,” Mr. Keller said by phone on Dec. 20. “Maybe another time and another subject.”
Say what?
Read about it. Read about how Keller and Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. and Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman were summoned to the Oval Office on Dec. 6 by a president who didn't want them to publish the story. They published it anyway -- bully for them -- but this begs a serious question: If the story was so significant that three executives from the Times were willing to buck the most powerful man on the planet to print it this month, then why didn't they publish it much, much earlier?
As in before the 2004 election. That much earlier.
According to the NYO piece, reporter James Risen was prepared to write the story 14 months ago. When Risen's attempts to get the story approved were unsuccessful, he went on book leave "and his piece was shelved and regarded as dead, according to a Times source," Sherman said.
Was the Times forced to publish the story by the upcoming January release of Risen's book? Was it motivated by partisan bias (a popuar charge) to publish right before a key congressional vote on renewing The Patriot Act? Were there substantial holes in Risen's original reporting? Was it delayed by lawyers? Or by government influence? What issues were in play on this story behind closed doors at the Times?
But Keller, Sulzberger, Taubman, Risen, a second reporter assigned to the story and Managing Editor Jill Abramson have all since declined to comment. The wagons at the Times are circled.
It's all so very Old School. The adults got together behind closed doors and decided what they were going to do and say, and now all we get is the party line. To both the White House and the Times, it seems, the rest of us are children. Their message to us? You can't handle the truth.
The Times owes us an explanation, today. Not some other day, not some other subject, not whenever it suits Keller. Now. Come out and write a candid description of what went into this agonizingly slow decision, let us see behind the curtain and judge the credibility and motivation of all parties on our own. That's New School.
I've been a part of these newsroom battles, and they're ugly. Candor about who said what and why is painful, awkward and potentially career-threatening. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Did these people learn nothing from the Judith Miller disaster? Apparently not.
18:43 Update: A far better account of the story-behind-the-story at the NYT, written by reporter James Rainey, was published yesterday in The Los Angeles Times. Excerpt:
The brass at The New York Times thinks its decision to hold a story about the White House's warrantless domestic spying program for more than a year is none of our business. So they're not talking.
And, not to put too fine a point on things, that's bullshit.
Gabriel Sherman at the New York Observer had a piece about it today, along with this quote from NYT Executive Editor Bill Killer:
“I’m not going to talk about the back story to the story,” Mr. Keller said by phone on Dec. 20. “Maybe another time and another subject.”
Say what?
Read about it. Read about how Keller and Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. and Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman were summoned to the Oval Office on Dec. 6 by a president who didn't want them to publish the story. They published it anyway -- bully for them -- but this begs a serious question: If the story was so significant that three executives from the Times were willing to buck the most powerful man on the planet to print it this month, then why didn't they publish it much, much earlier?
As in before the 2004 election. That much earlier.
According to the NYO piece, reporter James Risen was prepared to write the story 14 months ago. When Risen's attempts to get the story approved were unsuccessful, he went on book leave "and his piece was shelved and regarded as dead, according to a Times source," Sherman said.
Was the Times forced to publish the story by the upcoming January release of Risen's book? Was it motivated by partisan bias (a popuar charge) to publish right before a key congressional vote on renewing The Patriot Act? Were there substantial holes in Risen's original reporting? Was it delayed by lawyers? Or by government influence? What issues were in play on this story behind closed doors at the Times?
But Keller, Sulzberger, Taubman, Risen, a second reporter assigned to the story and Managing Editor Jill Abramson have all since declined to comment. The wagons at the Times are circled.
It's all so very Old School. The adults got together behind closed doors and decided what they were going to do and say, and now all we get is the party line. To both the White House and the Times, it seems, the rest of us are children. Their message to us? You can't handle the truth.
The Times owes us an explanation, today. Not some other day, not some other subject, not whenever it suits Keller. Now. Come out and write a candid description of what went into this agonizingly slow decision, let us see behind the curtain and judge the credibility and motivation of all parties on our own. That's New School.
I've been a part of these newsroom battles, and they're ugly. Candor about who said what and why is painful, awkward and potentially career-threatening. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Did these people learn nothing from the Judith Miller disaster? Apparently not.
18:43 Update: A far better account of the story-behind-the-story at the NYT, written by reporter James Rainey, was published yesterday in The Los Angeles Times. Excerpt:
In a statement over the weekend, Keller said the paper printed the story after more reporting, which uncovered additional "concerns and misgivings" about the surveillance and also persuaded Times editors that they could proceed and "not expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."
The initial Times statements did not say that the paper's internal debate began before the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election — in which Iraq and national security questions loomed large — or make any reference to Risen's book, due out Jan. 16.
But two journalists, who declined to be identified, said that editors at the paper were actively considering running the story about the wiretaps before Bush's November showdown with Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.Dec. 22 Update: Here's Evan Dirkacz blogging the topic at Alternet.
Top editors at the paper eventually decided to hold the story. But the discussion was renewed after the election, with Risen and coauthor of the story, reporter Eric Lichtblau, joining some of the paper's editors in pushing for publication, according to the sources, who said they did not want to be identified because the Times had designated only Keller and a spokeswoman to address the matter.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
An online reading list for old and new media
I want to offer the folks in my newsroom a useful reading list on topics related to journalism, emerging media, etc. But rather than build it as a text document, I'm going to build it here.
So this is the goal: Instead of compling an exhaustive, show-off list of web resources related to journalism, media, new media, convergence, blah-blah-blah, I'm going to put together an edited list: Not everybody. Not even all the big somebodies. Just sites I think might be useful to journalists who want to join the conversation, plus notes.
Here's what I came up with this afternoon (Ed note: updated on Nov. 30):
Big ideas, discussion and criticism
The Mac Daddy of all media/new media sites: Jay Rosen's PressThink. You at least check it every day, even if there's not a new post, because the comments and discussions can be great. Rosen is currently off writing a book, so his readers are keeping up the site ... even though Jay is still guiding things from behind the scenes. (RSS)
Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine is considered by many to be the perfect companion/counterpoint to PressThink. I disagree. I think you read Jarvis for Jarvis and Rosen for Rosen. Rosen has a better comments section.
Professor Andrew Cline has a blog and a podcast and calls it the Rhetorica Network. Cline is great at cutting through the crap on bias claims. Does bias exist? You betcha. Only it's more complex than most people think.
First Draft by Tim Porter is a very Rosen-esque site, in that the concepts are big and the context runs deep. The big difference is that Porter is a newsroom veteran, while Rosen is an academic. Porter isn't trying to bury newspapers -- he wants to save them. But he also understands that the real goal is improving journalism, no matter where it appears.
Dan Gillmor used to be the main man when it came to blogging about grassroots journalism. He even wrote the book on the subject: We The Media. These days he's involved in a local San Francisco project, so his blog isn't quite as useful to people outside the Bay Area as it used to be.
CJR Daily: Real-time media analysis from the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR Daily is the lair of Steve Lovelady, one of the great personalities and thinkers from PressThink.
MediaChannel is a broad, deep resource. The MediaChannel's Danny Schechter blogs as The News Dissector, and you can get him every morning in your e-mail if you subscribe.
Steve Yelvington works for Morris in Augusta and was the brains behind the Bluffton Today model. He's awfully damned smart. Don't-miss link: Ten years in new media: Looking back, looking forward. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Morph is a collection of writings, with comments, at The MediaCenter. (RSS)
Why should we limit our discussions of new media to old media forms? EPIC 2014 is an eight-minute Flash animation by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson that will orient you as well as any ponderous feed you might add to your browser.
Technology, culture, geekery, etc.
Slashdot: News for Nerds.Stuff that Matters is one of the best-read sites on the net, but if you're a journalist, you've probably never heard of it. (RSS)
Dave Winer's essential proto-blog, The Scripting News (RSS available, but not recommended, and isn't that ironic considering that Dave is the RSS Daddy?) probably has more daily readers than your newspaper does. Chew on that for a while.
The business
Digital Deliverance is a media business blog by Vin Crosbie. Crosbie also blogs over at the Corante group collaboration Rebuilding Media. He thinks big thoughts, but they're generally industry thoughts, not journalism-practioner thoughts. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Lost Remote TV blog is useful to print journalists trying to get the new media world, in which you have to grasp multiple media, not just newsprint. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Romanesko is the place to get the buzz about the journalism business. It's more like gossip column/newsletter for journalists more than it is a serious discussion of Big-J Journalism (although this is where you get the news that fuels those discussions). It's part of the Poynter Institute, which also offers the useful E-Media Tidbits, which is nice to have as an e-mail subscription.
Zeitgeist
Memeorandum: The Newfangled News Tangle (RSS) is a way of tracking what stories are being discussed. I keep it as both a static bookmark and as an RSS bookmark, and if you check it out you'll understand why. The static bookmark gives me more info about the items. The RSS bookmark makes for faster scanning.
For more meme tracking with strange little graphics that mean something, try The Daypop Top 40 (RSS available, but not recommended).
Blogdex calls itself The Weblog Diffusion Index. (Keep the RSS and static bookmarks side by side in your favorites)
The Hotline's Blogometer might just be the one thing I'd read every day if I could only read one thing. This is the best digest of blogosphere comment I've ever found. New one posted every business day at noon.
Blogpulse has multiple Zeitgeist/meme-tracking tools. I don't use them, but some people will love 'em because they're so easily customized.
Technorati is the standard for blog searching and its basic search page gives you the Top 10 search terms for the past hour. So if you wanna write about something that people are talking about, ya go to Technorati...
Newsmap gives you a real-time visual grok of the global info stream by country perpspective. Size, color, x-and-y coordinates -- everything means something at Newsmap.
Media watchdogs
Liberal watchdog: Media Matters for America. (RSS)
Conservative watchdog: Media Research Center.
Newspaper blogs/sites
The Times Picayune became a virtual newspaper the day Katrina hit, because so much of its readership was literally scattered to the winds. Today, its NOLA.com website has elements that might make it the world's biggest blog.
John Robinson's The Editor's Log. Here's the editor of a mid-size metro daily walking the walk for transparent, user-focused 21st century journalism..
The (Greensboro, N.C.) News and Record's staff blog and reader-writer blog idex page is called Town Square. Notice how the reporters who blog here are blogging as an extension of their beats, not as opinion columnists. Unless, of course, they happen to be opinion columnists.
rtptv.com is a different kind of site. It's the online component of the newsprint RTP Tech Journal, but rtptv.com manages to be innovative in all sorts of ways. I like the idea behind its frontpage design. I like the way they use video. I like the way they structure and organize content.
GoUpstate is the website for The (Spartanburg, SC) Herald-Journal. It's run by Andy Rhinehart, a former print reporter who taught himself HTML back in the 1990s. GoUpstate works in ways many larger newspaper sites don't, and despite being the website's only employee, Andy still finds time to innovate. Consider: GoUpstate has been streaming live audio coverage of local high school football games for years, while other papers in the state struggle to post high school scores before Saturday morning. Note how the homepage design is optimized to fit your a computer screen.
Bluffton Today is a significant experiment in combining online and print products. Lots of web-savvy thinking here, and bold uses of user-generated content. It would belong under the hyperlocal header, but it's corporate, not independent.
The Knoxville News Sentinel site (KnoxNews.com) is one of the better ones out there, at least as far as design goes.
Will Bunch is a newspaper guy who runs the full-service blog Attytood in Philadelphia. It wasn't on my list at the beginning, but after going back on a recommendation, it's high on the list now. (Special recommendation from Paul Lukasiak.)
The Cincinnati Post has a blog for its photo staff that offers a simple and attractive concept: Put up a shot, write about it, then let the users comment. Good photos provoke strong emotions, so this is a natural fit. Special recommendation from Grace Beahm.
So this is the goal: Instead of compling an exhaustive, show-off list of web resources related to journalism, media, new media, convergence, blah-blah-blah, I'm going to put together an edited list: Not everybody. Not even all the big somebodies. Just sites I think might be useful to journalists who want to join the conversation, plus notes.
Here's what I came up with this afternoon (Ed note: updated on Nov. 30):
Big ideas, discussion and criticism
The Mac Daddy of all media/new media sites: Jay Rosen's PressThink. You at least check it every day, even if there's not a new post, because the comments and discussions can be great. Rosen is currently off writing a book, so his readers are keeping up the site ... even though Jay is still guiding things from behind the scenes. (RSS)
Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine is considered by many to be the perfect companion/counterpoint to PressThink. I disagree. I think you read Jarvis for Jarvis and Rosen for Rosen. Rosen has a better comments section.
Professor Andrew Cline has a blog and a podcast and calls it the Rhetorica Network. Cline is great at cutting through the crap on bias claims. Does bias exist? You betcha. Only it's more complex than most people think.
First Draft by Tim Porter is a very Rosen-esque site, in that the concepts are big and the context runs deep. The big difference is that Porter is a newsroom veteran, while Rosen is an academic. Porter isn't trying to bury newspapers -- he wants to save them. But he also understands that the real goal is improving journalism, no matter where it appears.
Dan Gillmor used to be the main man when it came to blogging about grassroots journalism. He even wrote the book on the subject: We The Media. These days he's involved in a local San Francisco project, so his blog isn't quite as useful to people outside the Bay Area as it used to be.
CJR Daily: Real-time media analysis from the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR Daily is the lair of Steve Lovelady, one of the great personalities and thinkers from PressThink.
MediaChannel is a broad, deep resource. The MediaChannel's Danny Schechter blogs as The News Dissector, and you can get him every morning in your e-mail if you subscribe.
Steve Yelvington works for Morris in Augusta and was the brains behind the Bluffton Today model. He's awfully damned smart. Don't-miss link: Ten years in new media: Looking back, looking forward. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Morph is a collection of writings, with comments, at The MediaCenter. (RSS)
Why should we limit our discussions of new media to old media forms? EPIC 2014 is an eight-minute Flash animation by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson that will orient you as well as any ponderous feed you might add to your browser.
Technology, culture, geekery, etc.
Slashdot: News for Nerds.Stuff that Matters is one of the best-read sites on the net, but if you're a journalist, you've probably never heard of it. (RSS)
Dave Winer's essential proto-blog, The Scripting News (RSS available, but not recommended, and isn't that ironic considering that Dave is the RSS Daddy?) probably has more daily readers than your newspaper does. Chew on that for a while.
The business
Digital Deliverance is a media business blog by Vin Crosbie. Crosbie also blogs over at the Corante group collaboration Rebuilding Media. He thinks big thoughts, but they're generally industry thoughts, not journalism-practioner thoughts. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Lost Remote TV blog is useful to print journalists trying to get the new media world, in which you have to grasp multiple media, not just newsprint. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Romanesko is the place to get the buzz about the journalism business. It's more like gossip column/newsletter for journalists more than it is a serious discussion of Big-J Journalism (although this is where you get the news that fuels those discussions). It's part of the Poynter Institute, which also offers the useful E-Media Tidbits, which is nice to have as an e-mail subscription.
Zeitgeist
Memeorandum: The Newfangled News Tangle (RSS) is a way of tracking what stories are being discussed. I keep it as both a static bookmark and as an RSS bookmark, and if you check it out you'll understand why. The static bookmark gives me more info about the items. The RSS bookmark makes for faster scanning.
For more meme tracking with strange little graphics that mean something, try The Daypop Top 40 (RSS available, but not recommended).
Blogdex calls itself The Weblog Diffusion Index. (Keep the RSS and static bookmarks side by side in your favorites)
The Hotline's Blogometer might just be the one thing I'd read every day if I could only read one thing. This is the best digest of blogosphere comment I've ever found. New one posted every business day at noon.
Blogpulse has multiple Zeitgeist/meme-tracking tools. I don't use them, but some people will love 'em because they're so easily customized.
Technorati is the standard for blog searching and its basic search page gives you the Top 10 search terms for the past hour. So if you wanna write about something that people are talking about, ya go to Technorati...
Newsmap gives you a real-time visual grok of the global info stream by country perpspective. Size, color, x-and-y coordinates -- everything means something at Newsmap.
Media watchdogs
Liberal watchdog: Media Matters for America. (RSS)
Conservative watchdog: Media Research Center.
Newspaper blogs/sites
The Times Picayune became a virtual newspaper the day Katrina hit, because so much of its readership was literally scattered to the winds. Today, its NOLA.com website has elements that might make it the world's biggest blog.
John Robinson's The Editor's Log. Here's the editor of a mid-size metro daily walking the walk for transparent, user-focused 21st century journalism..
The (Greensboro, N.C.) News and Record's staff blog and reader-writer blog idex page is called Town Square. Notice how the reporters who blog here are blogging as an extension of their beats, not as opinion columnists. Unless, of course, they happen to be opinion columnists.
rtptv.com is a different kind of site. It's the online component of the newsprint RTP Tech Journal, but rtptv.com manages to be innovative in all sorts of ways. I like the idea behind its frontpage design. I like the way they use video. I like the way they structure and organize content.
GoUpstate is the website for The (Spartanburg, SC) Herald-Journal. It's run by Andy Rhinehart, a former print reporter who taught himself HTML back in the 1990s. GoUpstate works in ways many larger newspaper sites don't, and despite being the website's only employee, Andy still finds time to innovate. Consider: GoUpstate has been streaming live audio coverage of local high school football games for years, while other papers in the state struggle to post high school scores before Saturday morning. Note how the homepage design is optimized to fit your a computer screen.
Bluffton Today is a significant experiment in combining online and print products. Lots of web-savvy thinking here, and bold uses of user-generated content. It would belong under the hyperlocal header, but it's corporate, not independent.
The Knoxville News Sentinel site (KnoxNews.com) is one of the better ones out there, at least as far as design goes.
Will Bunch is a newspaper guy who runs the full-service blog Attytood in Philadelphia. It wasn't on my list at the beginning, but after going back on a recommendation, it's high on the list now. (Special recommendation from Paul Lukasiak.)
The Cincinnati Post has a blog for its photo staff that offers a simple and attractive concept: Put up a shot, write about it, then let the users comment. Good photos provoke strong emotions, so this is a natural fit. Special recommendation from Grace Beahm.
Metablogging
Ed Cone, who could write the book on metablogging, is best known for his Word Up blog, which everybody just call's "Ed's blog." He also blogs about ACC basketball, among other topics. (RSS) I could point out other metablogs, but in the spirit of the original idea, I'll stop here. Just read Ed.
Hyperlocal, independent news blogs/sites
The New Haven Independent was founded by a long-time reporter who spotted something I had written at PressThink and decided to give journalism another try -- on his terms. I think it's a great site, naturally.
Hypergene is a participatory journalism blog, with plenty of how-to stuff. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
If you live in Watertown, Mass., and you care about local events and have a computer and a sense of humor, you read H2OTown. It's written by Lisa Williams.
I seldom get around to reading this, but check out Essex County, New Jersey's The Barista of Bloomfield Avenue by Debbie Galant and Liz George. This is hyperlocal news with style and pop and personality. It's a nice bookend for H2OTown, too.
Greensboro101 is Roch Smith's community blog portal. Between Roch and Ed and The News and Record, Greensboro, NC, had everything it needed to become the capital city of Blog Nation.
Craig's List could have been filed in all sorts of places on this list, but I'm putting it here because it functions as a useful connection to your community. Those of you in the newsprint business should be paying particular attention, because Craig's List and its unborn cousins are far bigger threats to your traditional business model than flashy start-ups like Pajamas Media will ever be. Craig's List is where you go to find a job, a rug, a roommate or a ride, but you can also rant about what bugs you, write a love poem to the woman who smiled at you as her train left the station, or book a multi-partner neighborhood sex party for the weekend.
Useability, web design and site architecture
Jay Small works for Scripps-Howard and blogs at Small Initiatives. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Jeffery Zeldman is a web designer and author who blogs at Zeldman.com. (Special recommendation from Andy Rhinehart)
Steve Krug wrote a great book about website useability (Don't Make Me Think). There's more at his site.
Misc.
Chris Nolan is a recovering reporter who morphed into a techie and now blogs with a sharp, cold eye.
Wikipedia belongs on any new media list for a couple of reasons. In the first place, if you need a reference for new media developments and their related technical terms, or if you're looking for information on the innovators in the field, Wikipedia is probably the best place on Earth to find quick answers. Secondly, it's the largest encyclopedia ever created, a feat accomplished with only two paid employees. But I think it belongs here for a third reason: Wikipedia is a model of the voluntary cooperation that is an emerging theme in Internet culture. This tends to freak out business types, who can't imagine such behavior on such a broad scale. Like it or not, wiki-esque cooperation and community is going to be a feature of future commerce, so you'd better adapt your thinking to include it.
(Nov. 21 update: Wrote a more descriptive header for the first category; added the link to the EPIC 2014 Flash animation; added Craig's List and Wikipedia; fixed the spelling of Jay Small's name, which has only one "S" in it; fixed the link to CJR; after going back and reading it more thoroughly than I have in the past, I added Attytood to the list on the recommendation of investigative reporter Paul Lukasiak. Thanks for the other recommendations so far -- I'll have to take some time to check them out before deciding whether or not to add them.
(Nov. 22: Took the non-existant "e" off Roch Smith's name. Thank you, Anna H.)
(Nov. 30th: Fixed style and bad-writing glitches, fixed fixes I missed, added the interesting photoblog suggested by Grace Beahm. I've gotten myself an in-house website for the newsroom, so it's about time to post this stuff for my bretheren. Thanks to everyone for your feedback and help, both on- and off-blog. --dc)
Monday, October 17, 2005
The New Media Food Chain
Anybody who has followed Jay Rosen's recent PressThink coverage of the Judith Miller debacle at The New York Times has probably noticed a change in the color of the sky this week. Some future historian will likely declare the Miller case a milestone in the development of global networked media, concluding with 20-20 hindsight that this was the week when we entered a new world.
In the Old World, the press and its superset, The Media, covered our institutions. When The Media became part of the story, some subset of The Media would examine that role and report on it.
In the New World, The Media still covers our institutions, but it no longer covers itself. That function has now been assumed by The Blogosphere. Permanently.
This is a natural phenomenon, because coverage of our shape-shifting, hydra-headed Media practically demands limitless perspective. No single observer can see the whole of it. But The Blogosphere is the totality of many observers. And while The Media is far better equipped to cover the world than individual citizens are, anyone with a TV and access to Google can cover The Media. Consequently, The Media covers tsunami recovery efforts, while The Blogosphere covers that coverage -- sometimes including unfiltered reports from bloggers on the scene. Is it accurate? Misleading? Does it offer the proper context?
While we have witnessed this phenomenon previously, the Miller story is the best example so far. Print-only readers simply do not have the same grasp of this complex tale as do those who read the comments and threads at places like PressThink, CJR, BTC News, Joho, etc.
Not only is The New York Times unable to cover itself in this instance, but other Old World publications seem to be struggling as well. They are bound by rules and conventions, friendships and rivalries, by "professional courtesy," and -- in some cases, no doubt -- by complicity.
In this limited sense, The Blogosphere has now transcended The Media. This is not to say that bloggers are more powerful than the TV news networks and big dailies (yet), but there is a comparison to be made here between a relationship that we understand far better: Media does not control government, but because it has the power to establish the narrative for government actions, media influences government.
To understand the New World, move one link up the new media food chain and look back. The Blogosphere does not control The Media, but because it has the power to establish the narrative for Media actions, the Blogosphere influences Media.
A scientist, looking at that event, would say that The Blogosphere is able to do this because it is larger and more complex than The Media. In every sense of the word, The Media is now the subject of The Blogosphere. It has "gone meta."
Let us pause and recognize the historic significance of this moment. We are democratizing power and changing the culture in ways few people have even imagined. Next step: Let's help those people imagine it.
In the Old World, the press and its superset, The Media, covered our institutions. When The Media became part of the story, some subset of The Media would examine that role and report on it.
In the New World, The Media still covers our institutions, but it no longer covers itself. That function has now been assumed by The Blogosphere. Permanently.
This is a natural phenomenon, because coverage of our shape-shifting, hydra-headed Media practically demands limitless perspective. No single observer can see the whole of it. But The Blogosphere is the totality of many observers. And while The Media is far better equipped to cover the world than individual citizens are, anyone with a TV and access to Google can cover The Media. Consequently, The Media covers tsunami recovery efforts, while The Blogosphere covers that coverage -- sometimes including unfiltered reports from bloggers on the scene. Is it accurate? Misleading? Does it offer the proper context?
While we have witnessed this phenomenon previously, the Miller story is the best example so far. Print-only readers simply do not have the same grasp of this complex tale as do those who read the comments and threads at places like PressThink, CJR, BTC News, Joho, etc.
Not only is The New York Times unable to cover itself in this instance, but other Old World publications seem to be struggling as well. They are bound by rules and conventions, friendships and rivalries, by "professional courtesy," and -- in some cases, no doubt -- by complicity.
In this limited sense, The Blogosphere has now transcended The Media. This is not to say that bloggers are more powerful than the TV news networks and big dailies (yet), but there is a comparison to be made here between a relationship that we understand far better: Media does not control government, but because it has the power to establish the narrative for government actions, media influences government.
To understand the New World, move one link up the new media food chain and look back. The Blogosphere does not control The Media, but because it has the power to establish the narrative for Media actions, the Blogosphere influences Media.
A scientist, looking at that event, would say that The Blogosphere is able to do this because it is larger and more complex than The Media. In every sense of the word, The Media is now the subject of The Blogosphere. It has "gone meta."
Let us pause and recognize the historic significance of this moment. We are democratizing power and changing the culture in ways few people have even imagined. Next step: Let's help those people imagine it.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
The Media "singularity"
Editor's note: When one of my posts over at Xark! (a criticism of Anderson Cooper called Enough with the posing) initiated an interesting back-and-forth about media credibility and objectivity, it prompted me to write a long comment. I'm cross-posting it here because, as I read over it on the page, it occurred to me that I had inadvertently described a state of media singularity -- an evolutionary step in human consciousness.The discussion about credibility/objectivity/etc. is a worthy one, but my point here was more basic: I don't like the acting, the dramatic personae, the fake cinema verte. I think Geraldo has done it for years, and it's laughable, but when I watched Anderson Cooper do it, I found it disturbing.
One of the best things I read every day is a MediaChannel.org e-mail called Media Savvy: A daily update on media and political matters that has the effect of making me a better receiver. From an informed position, everything has value -- Hannity, Limbaugh, Franken, PrisonPlanet, Stewart.
Friday, September 23, 2005
The Intelligence Briefing model of journalism
Posted today at PressThink in reference to discussion on the NYT's Times Select paywall:
What's valuable today? Information that comes with a high degree of confidence and carries predictive power.
What's parsley? Politicized opinion, infotainment, stenographic reporting and "analysis" of the obvious.
I think we are in the middle of a paradigm shift that will divide information and commentary into two basic categories: 1. Basic, "unwarranteed" communication, which will continue to be too cheap to meter; 2. Value-added information, which will abandon our Old School value of "fairness" for a model based on the daily intelligence briefing.
When we talk about "objectivity," we tend to talk about its limits. We don't tend to talk about its value. When we talk about commentary, we talk about its slant. We don't tend to talk about its perceptiveness. Our current frame of reference is a newspaper/broadcast model that is based on certain assumptions about "gatekeeper functions," "credibility," "balance," and the mass audience.
When you adopt an intelligence agency perspective, the information gatherer and the information analyst are working for a specific end user, not a general, passive audience.
This is a radically different relationship. Your loyalty is to your subscriber, not to your sources, not to your political friends. Your value -- your continued employment, for that matter -- is attached to the quality and utility of your information and your insights.
People will pay for such content, and the networked media makes it possible for more people to access such services. These are, ultimately, the "editors" described in the EPIC 2014 animation.
Will people pay for Times Select? Not unless it has this function.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Getting ahead of disaster
The problem with a disaster like Katrina is that it is literally too large and too profound for the average person to wrap their brain around. Consequently, the media now resembles a bunch of blind men describing an elephant, only we're doing it around the clock.
Making matters worse, in our rush to catch up with events, in our need to provide "hurricane porn" 24/7, we've overlooked another important part of our job as journalists: Probing for meaning.
The unplugging of New Orleans from the American economy -- and the absorption of at least half a million long-term refugees -- promises to be one of the most transformative events of the early 21st century. The implications of this mind-boggling task will affect every American in hundreds of ways, large and small.
If there was ever a time for a disaster wiki ... if there was ever a call for the smartest people in the country to get in communication and start comparing notes ... this might be it.
When considered in the light of an American moment that was already feeling rather precarious, the ongoing disaster in the Gulf represents an enormous threat to our way of life. Traditions, institutions, relationships and expectations that made perfect sense on Sunday are now either history or utterly unsure. And we're not thinking about them.
A year from now, we will look back at these days and say "If we had only thought of X."
It's our job as journalists to start thinking about X today. And one way to do that is to start asking everyone we know -- and many people we don't -- "What might X be?"
P.S.: Here's the e-mail I just sent out to about 90 people, many of them local, many of them spread out across around the country:
Making matters worse, in our rush to catch up with events, in our need to provide "hurricane porn" 24/7, we've overlooked another important part of our job as journalists: Probing for meaning.
The unplugging of New Orleans from the American economy -- and the absorption of at least half a million long-term refugees -- promises to be one of the most transformative events of the early 21st century. The implications of this mind-boggling task will affect every American in hundreds of ways, large and small.
If there was ever a time for a disaster wiki ... if there was ever a call for the smartest people in the country to get in communication and start comparing notes ... this might be it.
When considered in the light of an American moment that was already feeling rather precarious, the ongoing disaster in the Gulf represents an enormous threat to our way of life. Traditions, institutions, relationships and expectations that made perfect sense on Sunday are now either history or utterly unsure. And we're not thinking about them.
A year from now, we will look back at these days and say "If we had only thought of X."
It's our job as journalists to start thinking about X today. And one way to do that is to start asking everyone we know -- and many people we don't -- "What might X be?"
P.S.: Here's the e-mail I just sent out to about 90 people, many of them local, many of them spread out across around the country:
Dear all:
I am casting as wide a net as I can today, trying to get as many thoughtful responses as I can to this question:
"Regarding the long-term flooding of New Orleans, what so-far unpublicized secondary effects are likely to have the most profound, transformative and currently unanticipated effect on the nation as a whole?"
Some secondary effects, such as the rising cost of gasoline, are getting lots of attention. Others, like the destruction of the Gulf Coast shrimp fishery, have yet to be examined. I am interested in what people with different perspectives and insights would foresee as important issues affecting us all that we have yet to consider in the wake of this disaster.
I hope to combine the best and most thought-provoking responses into a piece to run in (my newspaper) in Charleston, S.C.
If you have a thought that you wish to share, I will be greatly appreciative. If you have any friends or colleagues that you think might offer an interesting response to this, please consider passing it on to them.
Thank you,
Daniel Conover
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Guerilla media
Whilst cruising around the Chihuahua desert one afternoon in 1988 with my cavalry troop's executive officer, I listened as he waxed philosophical over an MRE.
"A tank costs $2.6 million," he said. "But what if you took that $2.6 million and bought a bunch of dune buggies, mounted guided missiles and machine guns on 'em, and offered each dune buggy crew some kind of bonus for harrying the hell out of the enemy?"
The lieutenant's idea was radical, the kind of thing you talk about with a curious young buck sergeant but never with fellow officers. Restated from a 21st century perspective, the XO was suggesting that a swarm of lightly armed, highly mobile, independently commanded guerillas might be more effective at denying a modern enemy the ability to execute its plans.
In military jargon, we might say that 1st Lt. Kontos was stealing the principles of "asymmetric warfare" from the underdog and applying them to the dominant force. Not pirates: Privateers.
I was reminded of this while reading a comment on Jay Rosen's post about "things (journalism professors) used to believe but don't believe anymore." Journalism instructor David Crisp despaired of the current state of the business, examined the ideals that now look silly and concluded that "Maybe I'll just try to teach them to write punchy ledes and forget the rest of it."
Better yet: Teach them those ideals, David, but point them away from newspapers and network television. Tell them where to find the resistance instead.
Whatever you want to call it -- mainstream media, legacy media, The Media -- the dominant media in our culture is stuck. It moves a predictable speeds, in predictable ways. It lacks verve and brilliance, but it is well supplied and armored.
You can't confront it and win. You can't "change it from within." Creating a mirror-image "alternative media" that could go head-to-head with such a force is simply not a logistical possibility.
So instead, maybe you take Crisp's journalism students and you teach them the way of the guerilla. Teach them big ideals and little survival tricks. Teach them wisdom and initiative and character. Keep them out of the halls of corporate human resources, where mediocrity prowls in jealous vigilance.
Give them blogs, and set them loose.
Some enemies cannot be defeated directly. But if you deny those enemies the ability to act as they wish, if you harry them and give them no rest, if you show the people in the countryside that there is an option, then maybe...
Just maybe.
"A tank costs $2.6 million," he said. "But what if you took that $2.6 million and bought a bunch of dune buggies, mounted guided missiles and machine guns on 'em, and offered each dune buggy crew some kind of bonus for harrying the hell out of the enemy?"
The lieutenant's idea was radical, the kind of thing you talk about with a curious young buck sergeant but never with fellow officers. Restated from a 21st century perspective, the XO was suggesting that a swarm of lightly armed, highly mobile, independently commanded guerillas might be more effective at denying a modern enemy the ability to execute its plans.
In military jargon, we might say that 1st Lt. Kontos was stealing the principles of "asymmetric warfare" from the underdog and applying them to the dominant force. Not pirates: Privateers.
I was reminded of this while reading a comment on Jay Rosen's post about "things (journalism professors) used to believe but don't believe anymore." Journalism instructor David Crisp despaired of the current state of the business, examined the ideals that now look silly and concluded that "Maybe I'll just try to teach them to write punchy ledes and forget the rest of it."
Better yet: Teach them those ideals, David, but point them away from newspapers and network television. Tell them where to find the resistance instead.
Whatever you want to call it -- mainstream media, legacy media, The Media -- the dominant media in our culture is stuck. It moves a predictable speeds, in predictable ways. It lacks verve and brilliance, but it is well supplied and armored.
You can't confront it and win. You can't "change it from within." Creating a mirror-image "alternative media" that could go head-to-head with such a force is simply not a logistical possibility.
So instead, maybe you take Crisp's journalism students and you teach them the way of the guerilla. Teach them big ideals and little survival tricks. Teach them wisdom and initiative and character. Keep them out of the halls of corporate human resources, where mediocrity prowls in jealous vigilance.
Give them blogs, and set them loose.
Some enemies cannot be defeated directly. But if you deny those enemies the ability to act as they wish, if you harry them and give them no rest, if you show the people in the countryside that there is an option, then maybe...
Just maybe.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Being wrong: It's a good thing
One could argue that what truly distinguishes homo sapiens sapiens as a species isn't mental capacity, opposible thumbs or subcutaneous fat, but evidence that suggests we're the only animal that will choose death over being proven wrong.
People don't like to be wrong, but they should really give it a try every now and again. Being proven wrong is the gateway to all new knowledge, and it's actually freeing and exciting.
My most recent bout with wrongness has been my belief that all online media discussions devolve at some point into partisan brawls. Last week's PressThink thread seemed to support my thesis, and since the topic was the Plame Game, one can hardly be surprised.
But the current thread over at Jay Rosen's indespensible website has turned out to be refreshingly civil -- even inquisitive. Commenters I have sparred with, and in some cases disparaged, have made thoughtful, reasonable points. They've asked good questions. There hasn't been a notable insult, left or right.
Why the change? Why is one week contentious and the other harmonious (though certainly not bland)?
If I were a sociologist, I think I could get a Ph.D. examining the communities that grow up around successful blogs. They are endlessly fascinating.
And anyway, I was wrong. Not all media discussions end in partisan, culture war bickering. Thank goodness.
People don't like to be wrong, but they should really give it a try every now and again. Being proven wrong is the gateway to all new knowledge, and it's actually freeing and exciting.
My most recent bout with wrongness has been my belief that all online media discussions devolve at some point into partisan brawls. Last week's PressThink thread seemed to support my thesis, and since the topic was the Plame Game, one can hardly be surprised.
But the current thread over at Jay Rosen's indespensible website has turned out to be refreshingly civil -- even inquisitive. Commenters I have sparred with, and in some cases disparaged, have made thoughtful, reasonable points. They've asked good questions. There hasn't been a notable insult, left or right.
Why the change? Why is one week contentious and the other harmonious (though certainly not bland)?
If I were a sociologist, I think I could get a Ph.D. examining the communities that grow up around successful blogs. They are endlessly fascinating.
And anyway, I was wrong. Not all media discussions end in partisan, culture war bickering. Thank goodness.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
The newspaper of the future
Passed along from Andy Rhinehart this morning: This link to Digital Deliverance and its summary of New Media principles in the wake of the NYT's weekend story on "the newspaper of the future."
Not so much new, but a really good summary to pass along to your colleagues.
Not so much new, but a really good summary to pass along to your colleagues.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... an update
Regular readers of this blog and/or PressThink know that back in June I wrote a long post about my dissatisfaction with the standard blog format and my desire to try something new.
Since then I've been developing that new idea over at Typepad.com, a blog hosting service that offers unlimited team blogging (for a cost). In the next few days, I plan on taking it to the next phase, sending out author invitations to people I would like to read on a regular basis. If the idea catches on, more author invitations will follow.
The concept: Build a space where people of different backgrounds can write about any topic that engages their imagination, without limiting the discourse to the traditional rhetoric of politics, conflict and debate. If successful, it will be less like an episode of Crossfire and more like a rambling house party with a lot of interesting guests.
I don't know how it will turn out -- it could be total flop -- but I've just got to find out what could happen if one makes room for art and humor and science and serendipty, while still keeping the conversation timely and topical.
That doesn't mean that I'm ending this media blog (as others have erroneously concluded). I've just pulled away from it as I've turned my thinking in new directions, posting here only when I feel like I've got something that belongs in the media conversation.
I won't be publicizing that new site off this one for much the same reason that I've stopped providing my URL in comments on PressThink. It's not that I've stopped speaking, it just that I'm more careful about what I'm advertising. Everyone understands that the volume at which one speaks is part of the message, and by dialing back my volume I'm hoping to speak with more integrity.
Some of you have already written requesting the link to new blog. You'll be receiving it shortly. Anyone else who wishes it need only ask.
Friday, July 15, 2005
My say to the PressThink crowd
Jay Rosen's July 7 post at PressThink on how the press should shun Novak until he comes clean (how positively Amish!) notched 265 comments, the majority of which I felt served as an example of how practically any media thread these days rapidly devolves into a political food fight.
On Tuesday, a guy calling himself antimedia showed up on Rosen's comment board with a bunch of Rove stuff I hadn't read before. Definitely right wing, but pretty good stuff. Meaty. Researched. Practically footnoted. I skimmed it, went back to work, and when I checked back ... there was even MORE of it.
Between 1:12 a.m. and 10:27 p.m. on July 12, this guy antimedia filed 13 posts, several of them lengthy, with all sorts of citations to material I'd never read or heard about. Without having checked it all out, I marked it for further study. It all struck me funny. My Spidey-Sense was buzzing.
The next morning's paper featured the Rove story prominently -- but with an eye-opening twist. The stuff I'd read for the first time in antimedia's Tuesday posts was suddenly the focus of the national wire story, only it was coming out of the mouth of Ken Mehlman, the former Bush campaign manager who now runs the RNC. Later that afternoon, while tracking the consistant GOP message, I found what I was looking for. And they looked remarkably like what I'd read the day before at PressThink.
At 5:39 p.m. on July 13, I posted this question on the comment board:
The first response, from regular PressThink conservative contributor Trained Auditor, was about what I'd expected:
On Tuesday, a guy calling himself antimedia showed up on Rosen's comment board with a bunch of Rove stuff I hadn't read before. Definitely right wing, but pretty good stuff. Meaty. Researched. Practically footnoted. I skimmed it, went back to work, and when I checked back ... there was even MORE of it.
Between 1:12 a.m. and 10:27 p.m. on July 12, this guy antimedia filed 13 posts, several of them lengthy, with all sorts of citations to material I'd never read or heard about. Without having checked it all out, I marked it for further study. It all struck me funny. My Spidey-Sense was buzzing.
The next morning's paper featured the Rove story prominently -- but with an eye-opening twist. The stuff I'd read for the first time in antimedia's Tuesday posts was suddenly the focus of the national wire story, only it was coming out of the mouth of Ken Mehlman, the former Bush campaign manager who now runs the RNC. Later that afternoon, while tracking the consistant GOP message, I found what I was looking for. And they looked remarkably like what I'd read the day before at PressThink.
At 5:39 p.m. on July 13, I posted this question on the comment board:
Anybody else notice how antimedia showed up yesterday flashing a line of logic that was practically identical to the GOP talking points that were being circulated more or less at the same time?Thursday was busy, but today I finally got the time to check back in.
The first response, from regular PressThink conservative contributor Trained Auditor, was about what I'd expected:
Conover:
Antimedia shed some real light, slaying some sacred cows of the left in the process, chiefly that "Bush lied" - - in fact, the President's 16 words in the State of the Union address regarding African nuclear materials were well founded (see underlying report(s), excerpted by Antimedia). I don't see that point disclosed in the brief catch-up summaries that are typically included in recent news reports of the Rove connection.Posted by: Trained Auditor at July 13, 2005 06:13 PM | Permalink
Then another new guy, going by the anonymous handle "blanknoone" showed up around 8 p.m. and made a couple of on-message, fact-packed, well-drilled pro-Rove posts. This prompted a response from Steve Lovelady of CJR, the guy who tends to ride herd on Rosen's righties.
I love it.
Now that Daniel Conover has exposed "antimedia" as a talking point parrot from the RNC, "antimedia" mysteriously disappears, only to be immediaately replaced by "blanknoone."
Come on, guys -- I can post under any name I want, but in the end I'm still Steve Lovelady.
Congrats, Jay. You've finally got the big boys, with all their numerous aliases, trying to pollute your site.
In a way, it's a compliment. They only wade in if they see something alarming on a site with wide readership.
Look at it this way: you've graduated.
Now, at last, as Phillip Roth says in Portnoy's Complaint, we can begin.Posted by: Steve Lovelady at July 13, 2005 09:26 PM | Permalink
That drew two consecutive comments from blanknoone:
Steve, I've been here for a while, even if I haven't been here for a while. I'm not new, and I'm not antimedia. M'kay? And Jay should be able to verify that by IP address without a problem. If you care, ask him to. I invite it.
Furthermore, you don't address any of my points. I haven't read any GOP talking points, at least not yet. But just because they are talking points (and I really don't think my long post could POSSIBLY be considered a talking point) doesn't mean they aren't true.
Posted by: blanknoone at July 13, 2005 09:42 PM | Permalink
***
BTW, Steve, has your supposedly non-partisan media watchdog group finally acknowledged having a radical left winger running the show and put him on the masthead? How long did it take? It would be obvious to anyone reading your posts, but at least you could be honest with your subscribers.
Posted by: blanknoone at July 13, 2005 09:45 PM | Permalink
And about half an hour later, here comes antimedia with another long post (excerpted):
But what I notice about myself is that I assume I'm capable of watching all this and sorting it out in meaningful ways, but I assume that people who tend to get all their news from one source or another lack this perspective. So an important question becomes: "Am I right about that?" And if I am, what (if anything) should we do about that? Does it require any action more specific than identification and discussion?
These days I write a great deal about biology, and here's a lesson from the life sciences: diversity is the sign of a healthy ecosystem. Taken as a whole, our mediasphere is more diverse than ever, but the real issue is, what about people who self-select a media monoculture? How do we re-engage them?
And this is where I think Janet is headed in the right direction: The spirit of the new media age is niche. The spirit of the old was One-Size-Fits-All. I think that when we fight over MSM coverage today, the unspoken goal is actually control over the normative power that Big Media represented in the One-Size-Fits-All Era. Conservatives aren't generally angry at bloggers who write opinionated pieces favoring homosexual marriage, but an AP story that takes no stand yet has the effect of making gay unions look normal drives them nuts.
Janet says that a new media will emerge, and I agree. I think we're actually making it, right now, right here, at this moment. The old model is top-down, normative, restrictive, authoritarian. The new model is sideways-distributed, group-forming and based (in the loose sense) on merit rather than authority.
It's hard to imagine this now, but it will become easier once we build the tools that that give individual users more direct control over information. By tools I mean the tools of discovery informatics, neural networks, intelligent agents: thinking tools, pattern-recognition tools, aggregators, quantifiers, connectors.
Today a blog is an individual neuron in a holographic consciousness that isn't yet fully self-conscious, something that allows us access to the greatest problem-solving technology ever invented (community).
In the future, a "blog" will be part of an aggregate, measured, fluctuating vox populi, and the back-and-forth flow of information will be ordered and shaped not by editors and producers, but by machines.
The human factor doesn't disappear in such a system -- it just moves to doing the things that humans do best: Asking questions, sharing experiences, considering options, etc.
That's the optimistic view. The pessimistic future is FOX Populai, the manipulation of small media by Big Media in a monocultural hierarchy. You can choose left or right or "phony centrism" (left and right will both claim that the "objective" journalists are all working for the other side secretly), and the culture will continue to polarize.
But we're not playing on that level right now. Today, blogs and VODcasts are just "cool," particularly with the demographic that forms the core audience for Anderson Cooper 360. When Cooper steps out of his news character and steps into his romantic citizen-journalist character, he is self-consciously trying to be two contradictory things at once. Maybe that's a sign of genius. And maybe it's just opportunistic and shallow.