BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

April 09, 2005

Open-minded

: You have to give Bill Maher points -- yes, you have to -- when he shows an open-mindedness. Sometimes -- when I disagree with him -- he can drive me nuts; he makes a sport and a career of it. But sometimes, he swims against the liberal tide. On this week's show, after having Richard Perle on -- displaying his own balls for coming on this show, by the way -- Maher says tells his panel that they have to acknowledge that a government has been formed in Iraq and progress has been made: "For all their bullshit and lying and f'ing it up, it still could work." He then challenges his panel: "Come on, if in three years there are four democracies in the Middle East, you won't give them that." When Arianna Huffing complains about the deaths, Maher says, "7,000 died building the Panama Canal."

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Citizen photojournalists

: Two new efforts to get citizens to take and submit photos:

: The Guardian has an election-related Flickr gallery called the Blair Watch Project for Brit cits' pix. And meanwhile, in the stix...

: Augusta.com has golf fans sending in pix. [via Rex and Smartmobs]

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Trees rejoice

: Newspaper circulation gloom.

: Meanwhile, across the pond, Simon Waldman of The Guardian reports online job classified revenue there:

Some classified ad revenue figures for 2004 from the Advertising Association:
: Online recruitment revenues for online specialists in 2004: Ł80m (up 56%)
: Online recruitment revenues for regional newspapers in 2004: Ł33m (up 38%)
: Online recruitment revenues for national newspapers in 2004: Ł7m (up 61%).

I wonder whether Craig is a major factor there yet.

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Media chaos

: The On The Media audio version of Bob Garfield's very good Ad Age print story on the coming chaos in media is now available for your listening pleasure.

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How many blogs?

: We'd found some consistency in the number of blogs: Technorati, Pew, and PubSub are all around 8 million. But note in the post below that Perseus found 20 million. Doesn't much matter. The real answer is: Lots.

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Bcastblog

: Broadcasting & Cable has a blog and I didn't even know it. It's good and added to my RSS. Now if only they -- and Ad Age -- would put more of their stories online so we can link to them.

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The death of /.?

: No, of course, it's not the death of Slashdot, but in a good exploration of the Slashdot v. BoingBoing v. blog effect on traffic (which is to say, news), the WSJ's Jeremy Wagstaff says (in, regrettably, not a free link) that the /. effect is fizzling -- or more accurately, I think, is being overtaken:

When Jeff Henning, who runs an online survey service, Perseus Development, did a survey in late 2003 he found more than four million blogs. Earlier this year he found nearly 20 million. And while the vast majority don't survive, quite a few that do are becoming more and more popular. The daily traffic to just one blog hosting company, TypePad, overtook that of Slashdot last August. The point? Well, I believe the blogosphere -- and the Internet as a whole -- is maturing into a place where information finds its way from the fringes to the center. This is because the links between all these disparate sources of information are reaching critical mass.

: Find much more on this on Wagstaff's blog.

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A comment

: Ahmad from IraqiExpat leaves a wonderful comment in the Reporters Without Borders post below:

I was talking to an Iraqi anti-American once, and I asked him, do you want the Americans to leave, he said no that would be disasterous; then I said do you support their attacker, he said yes!!! He supported what he thought was resistance, yet at the same time he wanted Americans to stay!!! Can someone explain this?

True story.

: Speaking of comments, I'm having fun in the thread unspooling in the conference spam post below.

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A link

: Bloggers often get email asking for a link. And the usual, proper, and logical bloggers' response is: Sorry, no, but I link to the things I want to talk about not the people who happen to email me. If we all put up the links of those who merely emailed us, we'd merely be a link exchange. And that business didn't go very far.

But today I got email I could resist berating and cajoling me for not noticing his blog and adding it to my blogroll. (I haven't added anybody to my blogroll in many months; I actually need to take a day off just to clean up the blogroll and the page and I can't afford to do that right now). He, of course, played to my ego, saying he reads me, even though we don't always agree, and saying that he leaves comments. OK, OK. So I read his blog and enjoyed it. So I'll break the rule and link to Egyptian Sand Monkey: "Be forewarned: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not, please sod off."

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