« September 23, 2003 | Main
| September 25, 2003 »

September 24, 2003

The people of the dust: Register now
: Newsday reports that a disappointing 10,000 people have joined the World Trade Center Health Registry.
If you were there on that day or worked there afterwards, please sign up. The more data they gather, the more they know about the health risk to all of us, the more they know about the health risk to any one of us. The data is important. It could save lives by treating illness in time.
The survey is as easy as such a thing can be.
So please register. pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (3)

Bada-blog
: I'm so damned proud: NJ.com creates the Soprano's blog.pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (1)

No news is bad news
: In a smart instant essay, Jay Rosen cautions that we shouldn't fall into the why-does-the-press-report-only-bad-news trap in judging coverage of Iraq (inspired by the USA Today survey of Baghdad correspondents' weltanschauungs, linked here). He's right, of course. That stinky herring always haunts the news business. And we should ignore it. It's our job to report bad news when the news is bad.
But the question about Iraqi coverage is not whether the coverage is too negative or too positive but whether the picture is accurate; that's the issue. Do reporters have on their Kosovo (read: liberation) or their Vietnam (read: quagmire) glasses? The answer is as loaded as Charlton Heston's closet.
And Rosen asks another good question that's all about seeing the bigger problems to cover, the deeper story, the harder questions:

Maybe the complaint is not with covering the problems; it’s the narrow range of problems seen in the news. Maybe you’re not missing the positive note so much as proper warning signals about what could go wrong, if we’re not alert. Preventative journalism, (one possible alternative) talks openly about problems; it also has tacit confidence they can be solved, which is a democratic attitude.
I don’t think the press is too negative. But it is at times too unimaginative to tell me what’s going on. Personally, I want to know about problems on the ground in Iraq, a country my country has occupied; and if it takes relentless problem-scouting by special ops in the press, I want that too. But relentless problem-solving is what’s needed on the ground and in the atmosphere of Iraq. This much we know. There’s a big story in wait out there, but journalists do not necessarily know how to tell it.

pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (3)

Blogging the bus
: I'm making reservations for Bloggercon next week. Yesterday, someone who'll remain nameless yelled at me for going. We are a dysfunctional family, we are. I also saw that Dave Winer just put up rules for the conference and the hubris of that idea bothered me until I read them: "All conversations, whether to the entire room or one-to-one, unless otherwise stated, clearly and up front, are on the record and for attribution." Fine.
But here's my real travel note:
I'm taking the bus to Boston. But not just any bus: The new Limoliner: Manhattan to Back Bay in four hours on a single seat with high-speed Internet access the whole wayand a DVD movie and a stewardess with snacks and only 28 privileged seats.
I'll do anything not to fly.pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (1)

The ombudsman's ombudsman
: Matt Welch has some very funny moments from an ombudsman under attack. pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (0)

A world without editors
: The LA Time's Tim Rutten takes a long time to say little in the controversy over the Sacramento Bee's blog policy. At the end, there's this:

Question: Perhaps blogs, which derive their immediacy and vibrancy from the Web's essentially egalitarian and libertarian ethos, and conventional news organizations simply are incompatible in their pure forms?
"An edited blog is a contradiction in terms," said Orville Schell, dean of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "It's a characteristic of the Internet in general that forms like the blog emerge with great exuberance and edgy promise and then the overseers move in. That's a pity. We need frontiers of plain-speaking, even it's politically incorrect. I understand why the Bee did what it did, but it leads to a restraint on free-thinking, which is lamentable."

Rutten's question is pretentious and silly. There is no "pure" form of either medium; when there is, it will lie dead in a museum.
Schell's answer is almost right. But the issue isn't so much free-thinking, it's immediacy and honesty and understanding what makes blogs great.
Nick Denton said it better in an IM exchange I've quoted often here. What do we love about blogs? Denton: "No editors." That says it all. pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (1)

If you have to explain...
: My favorite caveat! (From the LA Times story on blogminders, above):

(Exclamation points signal irony on Kaus' site.)

pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (0)

Gov. Spam
: In a desperate, last-minute move to get stay elected, California Gov. Gray Davis is signing into law a tough anti-spam measure.
I wish other politicians in Washington were feeling just as desperate to stay elected and did likewise.
pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (4)

Blogbiz: Bubble boy or baron?

: Jason Calacanis, late of the late Silicon Alley Reporter, has announced the start of his weblog company.
Nick Denton has already tried to burst Jason's bubble:

Jason Calacanis, founder of Silicon Alley Reporter and boomtime hype-merchant, has re-emerged as a blog booster. God help us.... Calacanis is a smart and engaging guy, and I'm a believer in web media, but the last thing the world needs now is his brand of late 90s enthusiasm.

But rather than trying to hype weblogs, Calacanis is trying to dehype big media and thus look bigger in comparison. In this worldview, there's zero-sum hot air and one must deflate the other guy's bubble to inflate one's own.
On my comments, below, Calacanis argues that big media can't really do blogs; it's an either-or, he says:

At a certain point a weblog stops being a weblog and starts becoming a newspaper, or perhaps more accurately a newswire. I think fact-checking and editing is one of those points.
Now, the public has an expectation that weblogs are unedited so they can be frequently updated, and that because of this dynamic sometimes there are errors on weblogs....
Now, the public has the *exact* opposite expectation of newspapers....
If publications like the NYT get into blogging they are going to confuse users---at least for a while. However, users are very smart and if the NYT put a disclaimer at the top explaining about what is going on... then there would be no issue....

He comes around grudgingly. But you can tell: He hopes newspapers don't blog. (They will.)pocket virtuagirl 1.7

: Now to Calacanis' own business: It's essentially a weblog syndicate for b2b blogs (in media, technology, business, life sciences -- 100 in the first year, 500 in three years), offering hosting and other services; in return, he covers all his costs with the first cut of revenue and then splits profits 50/50 (by my calculations, he's figuring each blog will pull in six figures). The Denton model, on the other hand, is to pay a pittance but pay nonetheless. The About.com model is (or was) a combination: a guaranteed payment with a split of the upside. Take your pick. The question for any of them is whether there is sufficient advertising revenue to support anyone in blogbiz. The answer: Not yet.
And that is why this has to grow slowly. It cannot grow ahead of advertiser acceptance and performance unless you want to go get a whomp of VC cash and start the implosion clock ticking down.
In the world of weblogs, small is good; small is what makes it possible for them to succeed. And patience is more than a virtue. Patience is an asset.pocket virtuagirl 1.7

: But if that's where Jason stopped -- with a business plan and a prayer -- I'd tip the hat, wish him luck, buy him lunch (which I'll do anyway) and watch his progress with eager interest (which I'll still do).
But what's more interesting to me is the zero-sum hype game he plays (when -- Denton's right -- hype is a dangeros toy to be playing with right now).
In his mission statement, Jason plays to flavor-of-the-month media bashing:

Traditional journalism is, in a word, broken. We've spent the last decade working in publishing (online and offline) and we believe that traditional journalism is imploding. Traditional news outlets like the New York Times are experiencing huge embarrassments like Jayson Blair. We believe these episodes are based on the increasing pressure media companies have to the “bottom line”, as well as the the fact that these outlets do not allow user feedback....
On top of the unnecessarily one-way journalism being practiced today, the media space is suffering from the appearance of (and in some cases outright) impropriety. Do you really trust CNBC to report on their parent company GE?...
We believe participatory journalism is a better model then one-way journalism. Of course, participatory journalism is harder, more work and still developing as a discipline. We sincerely hope to help this field mature.

Simplistic and beside the point.
Weblogs for business will succeed only because they can piggyback on the content of others. If there's nothing to point to, there's nothing to blog. If big media is so bankrupt, then why point to their stories? If you don't point to their stories, then you have to report your own. But you can't afford to do that; you're only a blog. That is the world through the hype perspective.
Better would be the value perspective: There's a lot of information out there; you don't have time to find the best; we'll find it for you; you're welcome. That is the true b2b blog promise.
Sell the positive, my friend. Nobody buys on the negative.pocket virtuagirl 1.7

: The next pillar in his temple:

Talent wants to be free. One of the after effects of the dot com boom and bust is that many of the most talented journalists want to be freelancers. After the bust everyone realized that a) no company is loyal to them and b) that they can make a better living on their own as a freelancer while having a better lifestyle.

Now I found that one pretty funny. I know plenty of freelancers who wish they had regular gigs with health insurance (something Jason would be really wise to offer) and paychecks. And they're sick of writing for free. Talent doesn't want to be free. Talent wants to be paid.pocket virtuagirl 1.7

: The third pillar:

Partnering is better then owning. Our goal is to partner with individual webloggers letting them do what they do best (writing, creating community, researching) while supporting them with what we do best (upgrading the software that drives their Web site, generating revenue, running the business).

Well, I have another idea on this, but I'll tell you about that later....pocket virtuagirl 1.7

: If Calacanis succeeds, it is good for all of weblogging. If he hypes -- as Tony Perkins as done at AlwaysOn, trying to co-opt the buzz about blogs without creating or even knowing what blogs are and what they can be -- then then hurts everyone; it gives us all cooties.
Let's all learn our lessons. The '90s weren't that long ago. Don't hype. Don't overpromise. Don't act bigger than the next guy.
Do good work and the audience will come. Invent a better information trap and the world will beat a path to your door. pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (7)

World's smartest stripper
: Howard Stern et al went to Scores yesterday to audition contenders for the World Smartest Stripper contest.
Only one of the many strippers tested knew how many states there are. One said 700. One said 52. When told she did pretty well, she was only two off, she said, "Oh, 54."
When asked who the vice president is, one said that she's not into politics. "I don't even know whether the president is Republican or Dominican."
And when Howard asked one what animal is used to make pickles, she said, "What's a pickle?"
pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (13)

Big-guy blogs
: Mark Glaser gathers advice for how newspapers should blog. pocket virtuagirl 1.7

LINK | Comments (1)