BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

February 21, 2005

Keller of The Times speaks

: NY Times Executive Editor Bill Keller spoke at Columbia on topics including blogs:

Keller’s speech focused on the struggle of print journalism to maintain its relevance in the face of constant cable news updates, increased blogging, and failures in credibility.porno.sou.ro
He noted that, according to a recent opinion poll, the public’s trust in journalists is at its lowest point in decades. He attributed this in part to the increasingly polarized nature of the American public, who look to the press for support of their viewpoints.porno.sou.ro
“At the moment,” he said, “the major press is under attack from ideologues on the right and left.”porno.sou.ro
Keller also sees “blogging,” or online writing that blurs news and commentary, as a mixed blessing. While he celebrated the blogger’s ability to uncover breaking news, he noted that a blog’s inherent bias might be detrimental to the reader. “A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.”

Mickey Kaus is disturbed by the picture he painted. porno.sou.ro

: I got an email response to my response to his reponse to my post from Keller and I wanted to let you know that but I'm not responding or posting yet because I'm on vacation (kind of) and even Bill said I could deal with it after I get back (though at least one commenter here is less understanding). porno.sou.ro

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The rich get richer. Corollary: The famous get more famous.

: Jeopardy all-time champ Ken Jennings has a Cingular commercial.porno.sou.ro

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New

: Jonathan Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard, has a new site of local blog posts for the Western states. porno.sou.ro

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Dialogue

: Patterico -- who has been biting the butt of the LA Times for sometime -- interviews Times opinion editor Bob Sipchen and blogs it. I don't know whether Patterico will agree -- I'll bet he won't -- but I consider his history with the LA Times to be a success story in teaching big media to listen and not just lecture. When he pushed them on a big story against one Supreme Court justice of one stripe, they listened and published a story against another of the other stripe. A few weeks ago, they invited him to publish a piece in the Times about correcting the Times. And now he's interviewing an editor. He's still critical of the paper and that's fine. But they're talking. And that's good. porno.sou.ro

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What's second prize?

: We're in the hotel from hell in Philly: took hours to get in after check-in time; there's a strange noise that sounds like every flush in the building comes through our rooms that went on all night (but, oddly, disappears in the); parking costs $31; at at 10p they tell us they ran out of blankets for our son's unmade bed. Next time: The Four Seasons. porno.sou.ro

Anyway, blogging will be limted by tourism and sleep deprivation. porno.sou.ro

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More about About

: Two damned good posts about The Times' About deal: one from John Battelle and one from Jay Rosen. porno.sou.ro

: LATER: Simon Waldman of the Guardian also weighs in. porno.sou.ro

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Trees rejoice

: The Washington Post sums up the woes of the newspaper industry.

"Print is dead," Sports Illustrated President John Squires told a room full of newspaper and magazine circulation executives at a conference in Toronto in November. His advice? "Get over it," meaning publishers should stop trying to save their ink-on-paper product and focus on electronic delivery of their journalism.

It's not dead. But it's not growing. And in an economy that demands growth, that smells like death. porno.sou.ro

The story has nothing radically news but it is a good sum of the state of the business. More later...porno.sou.ro

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Gone-zo

: Hunter Thompson commits suicide. porno.sou.ro

Thompson was really the first reaction to one-size-fits-all journalism. He was the argument that the grand shared experience of media in a three-network, one-newspaper-town world was actually bad because it was boring and institutional and inhuman. Thompson tried to inject humanity back into journalism. He injected it like drugs into his veins and, yes, sometimes it was a bad trip. porno.sou.ro

: LATER: At the Borders near here, they wasted no time putting up a sales shrine. porno.sou.ro

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