BuzzMachine

Simon Waldman (who’s not quite so intense as his photo would lead you to believe) has been promoted to head digital strategy and development for the Guardian’s parent company and its divisions. That’s a big bravo. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Simon and he’s a leader in our world.

Regional newspapers in the UK are suffering sharply declining circulation.

: Roy Greenslade finds the lessons in the numbers:

This is a truly shocking set of circulation results and confirms that the gentle downward sales trend has turned into a cliff-fall. Of course, there is one central mitigating factor. It is clear that readers are becoming viewers, choosing to read on screen rather than in print. . . .

I fully accept that we are in the midst of a communications revolution and print is suffering from its effects. Britain is hardly alone in that respect. In the United States and in Scandinavia, the same kinds of problems are occurring for paid-for newspapers. But I believe Britain is different in one important respect (and I realise that this is a controversial statement): its regional and local journalism is just not good enough to retain readers let alone win new ones.

Steve Hamm at Business Week has a good chronicle of the blog pressure that led to Dell, Apple, and Sony’s recall of their batteries.

The cybermedia didn’t merely expose the dangers of computers catching fire. They kept the heat on the manufacturers to do something about it and helped the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) conduct an investigation into the burning batteries.

Note well that the now-blogwise Dell thanked bloggers:

Dell credits the blogosphere for helping it get through the crisis. “Information travels around quickly,” says spokeswoman Gretchen Miller. “Also, it’s another channel to get the message to our customers so they can be safe.”

This, too, is networked journalism: customers able to gather together as an effective watchdog.

The New York Times tried to block UK readers from its detailed story about evidence in the London airplane bomb plot so as not to run afoul of British laws restricting such pretrial coverage. But The Guardian reports that it wasn’t — it couldn’t be — 100 percent effective for both technical and human reasons (i.e., bloggers copying the story for all to see). In this case, I assume, The Times’ motive was to not interfere with the prosecution of the case — not to get the terrorists off. But with the UK’s stricter libel laws, one could also imagine publications trying to play safe and restricting access to stories so as not to get sued. That, too, won’t work reliably. So all this raises a disturbing prospect: Will we find ourselves in a position where we need to publish to the lowest common legal denominator? Could China’s rules become our rules? And what will it take to protect us from that?

Jeff Pulver compiles a directory, sans grid, of the TV shows available only on the internet. Now if you come along and tell me which ones are good and string them together in a handy RSS feed I’ll have — voila — network 2.0. [via Rubel]

Now the Toronto Star is following the Guardian’s lead and offering a downloadable and printable edition — the Star in the afternoon, the Guardian all day long. It still remains to be seen whether people really are printing their own papers — where’s your union card, buster? — before the train ride home. Ten points to the first person who catches a picture of a commuter reading one of these things.

A bipartisan posse of bloggers managed to out Ted Stevens — everybody’s favorite punchline these days — as the senator who had put a secret hold on a bill to allow us to search and destroy pork in federal spending.

An unusual collaboration between Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Internet bloggers on Wednesday led a senator to publicly acknowledge that he’d been blocking a vote on a government accountability bill.

The admission by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, also offered a glimpse into the increasing role that online pundits play in U.S. policymaking.

Stevens’ confirmation that he was behind the legislative ‘hold’ on the bipartisan legislation came a day after Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, posted a Web log entry asking colleagues to cooperate with bloggers who were trying to identify who was using the legislative maneuver to stall a vote. . . .

The legislation, by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., would create a database that people could access online to learn the worth and the recipients of government contracts, including those secured through pork-barrel spending, or earmarks. . . .

‘When you have InstaPundit and RedState, some of the most influential conservative bloggers, working with (left-leaning) DailyKos, that’s sort of a powerful grassroots alliance,’ said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor.

But blog reporter Paul Kiel, who posted confirmation of Stevens’ announcement on TPMmuckraker.com, said he doesn’t see himself taking on a greater role in policymaking.

In this case, he said, the activism was about greater public disclosure, not any ideological issue. ‘We consider ourselves to be in the tradition of traditional journalism,’ Kiel said in a telephone interview. . . .

Frist wrote, ‘I am calling on all members, when asked by the blog community, to instruct their staff to answer whether or not they have a hold, honestly and transparently, so I can pass this bill.’

There is a textbook example of networked journalism.

Here are the TMP Muckraker report, the Sunlight Foundation report, the Porkbusters plea, and Mark Tapscott’s roundup.

Where’s the Pulitzer for bipartisan, pro-am networked reporting?

A UK journalist turned publisher had to go back for a second printing of his first book because the blog on which it is based got so much buzz. Blog power.

The Bivings Report — the folks who studied what web 2.0 features newspaper sites are and aren’t using — suggests nine ways to improve those sites functionally and it’s a good list. Among the suggestions: use tags, provide RSS, kill registration, link out to and partner with local bloggers.

Political blogs in the UK are lashing together to create an ad network. That helps. But I’ll say it again and keep saying it: Advertisers won’t bother with a balkanized world of separate blog networks; we need an open ad marketplace to give them choice and control and to give us proper value.

Sorry for the radio silence today. I’ve had the perfect storm of work, getting ready for my first class at CUNY, a column deadline, and life. Back with no warning.

Anyone who has spent more than six months reporting, editing, or watching the news could have guessed that John Mark Karr was just a sicko who was looking for attention. But, no, the news shmucks couldn’t help themselves. They had to dredge up the Jon Benet story because — why? — they had such fond memories of writing every damned hour about a dead little girl? I got a call last week from one of the cable networks asking whether I’d been following what the blogs were saying about Jon Benet. I said proudly that I had no frigging idea what they were saying, if anything, and that I didn’t care. The cable news person said, ‘good for you,’ and went looking elsewhere. There’s always somebody ready to talk about Jon Benet. It’s at moments like these that I feel ashamed for my ‘profession.’ They call this news? They call this journalism? It’s not the voyeurism that’s most offensive. It’s the stupidity.

: LATER: Howard Kurtz asks:

Will every anchor, correspondent and producer who shamelessly hyped the John Mark Karr story now apologize for taking the country for a ride?

Don’t hold your breath. . . .

So Karr was a fake, and the media caravan moves on. But I don’t think the public forgets. They should teach this one in journalism schools for a long time.

Will do.