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June 04, 2005

Just bury me in the backyard

: The Washington Post reports a trend in home funerals. crack para ulead video 4.0

Sure enough, you can buy coffins on eBay. crack para ulead video 4.0

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The little fool

: Ward Churchill, the reputed professor infamous for calling 9/11's victims "little Eichmans," is in the bullseye of the Rocky Mountain News in a series of investigations that find:

At issue
Did Ward Churchill falsely accuse the U.S. Army of using smallpox as a weapon of genocide against American Indians?
Our findings
His claim cannot be supported by the sources he has cited.crack para ulead video 4.0

At issue
Did Churchill commit plagiarism by publishing the work of others as his own?
Our findings
An essay he "prepared" for a book was actually taken from a Canadian scholar.crack para ulead video 4.0

At issue
Did Churchill mischaracterize two important pieces of federal Indian law?
Our findings
His contentions about the Dawes Act of 1887 and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 are incorrect.crack para ulead video 4.0

At issue
Did Churchill misrepresent himself as having American Indian ancestry?
Our findings
His assertions that he is descended from Cherokee and Creek ancestors aren’t supported by extensive genealogical records.

I'm all for freedom of speech and academic freedom as well. But at what point does the academy become just a refuge for a fool? [via Glenn Reynolds]crack para ulead video 4.0

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Video Skype

: I'm putting this here just so I can find it when I need it: There's a video plug-in for Skype, at last. crack para ulead video 4.0

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Strange bedfellows, indeed

: In a Times of London interview, Mikhail Gorbachev reveals that he is a Blairite socialist and Jesus was the first socialist and he and Pope John Paul were penpals and he thinks Margaret Thatcher should be a model for Vladimir Putin. crack para ulead video 4.0

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Question the money

: John Tierney questions one of the sacred tenants of journalism: Thou shalt not pay sources. crack para ulead video 4.0

The question is: Why shouldn't Deep Throat, aka W. Mark Felt, make money from Watergate? Woodward and Bernstein certainly did. The scandal -- and Felt's information that helped them expose it -- made them famous and made them a fortune and established their careers as journalistic heroes. crack para ulead video 4.0

But when Felt's family tried to get some money for his story, they were treated like money-grubbers. People and Vanity Fair wouldn't pay them. Against journalistic ethics, they say. crack para ulead video 4.0

Now there is some reason for this, a practical ethical reason: If people reveal the truth for money, they may make up lies to make money. crack para ulead video 4.0

But there's another reason, an economic reason: Journalism cannot afford to share the money it makes off the truth. What if everyone wanted their cut? What if your competitor could pay more? What if George Steinbrenner were a publisher? He'd get all the scoops. crack para ulead video 4.0

As Tierney points out, the way to manage this in the past -- the way to launder the money -- was to publish a book; the public decides whether to buy your truth. There, it's OK to make money for your own story. In newspapers and magazines, you can't make money for your own story -- the publishers do; they sell their truth. crack para ulead video 4.0

I wonder whether the new age of distributed media that might change. I joked the other day that if Watergate occurred today, Deep Throat would have a blog. He might well, for it would give him control of his story and his identity. It's hard to imagine making enough money off Google AdSense to make whistleblowing pay. It's also hard to imagine a whistleblower able to get the verification and attention that journalists bring. But I have to believe that the next Deep Throat will want to control the fate of his story.... and its value. And is that so wrong?crack para ulead video 4.0

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Join the iParty

: The CBC is developing a show about bloggers using the voices of podcasters. crack para ulead video 4.0

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Half-baked

: Fred Wilson (second link today) talks about fully baked vs. half-baked blog posts. I prefer half-baked.crack para ulead video 4.0

Fully baked is a lecture or a book or a show. It says, "I'm done. Eat what I tell you."crack para ulead video 4.0

Half-baked is a conversation. It says, "Join in. Add some pepperoni before it's done, make it better, make it right for you. Enjoy."crack para ulead video 4.0

Old media necessitated fully baked thought and expression: You had to "finish" it and get it "right" before you used precious paper, production, and distribution and you couldn't go back and do it over again; you couldn't rethink. crack para ulead video 4.0

New media allows half-baked notions to be distributed and shared and improved upon and rethought. crack para ulead video 4.0

At the end of the day, I believe, the half-baked approach will end up with better thought, thanks to the conversation.crack para ulead video 4.0

Of course, quality is still a factor. A stupid notion, whether fully or half-baked, is still a stupid notion and no amount of remixing or baking can fix it. Bad sauce makes bad pizzas. crack para ulead video 4.0

And, of course, as a writer myself, I don't mean to say that everything should be a committee product (in fact, what I like best about blogging is that there isn't an editor standing between me and you, my real editors). I don't want to read a novel written by committee. I've seen many a movie and TV show and magazine story wrecked by too much collaboration. Yes, the individual's voice and viewpoint and talent still has value and too many chefs can ruin the broth. crack para ulead video 4.0

But what's interesting about this notion of fully v. half-baked is that it addresses an assumption behind all media, an essential snobbery that, by necessity, got cooked into old media: The limitations of old production and distribution -- the fact that someone owned the printing press and paid for the paper and would not allow anything to get onto that paper until it fit his definition of baked -- meant that we all thought something wasn't good or right until it was declared done by someone with the power to do so: The tyranny of the chef. crack para ulead video 4.0

But when you think about it, that attitude reveals such hubris: believing that a thought can ever be done, that one author or one editor can know more than all their readers is so egotistical. crack para ulead video 4.0

That is the essential attitude shift that must happen in media, especially news media: Discussion is often more intelligent than content. Paraphrasing Dan Gillmor, the audience knows more than the author. crack para ulead video 4.0

Once we in big media stop acting as if we can fully bake anything, as if we know best, as if we are the only authorities, as if we're finished and the story is done when it's printed, then the public we serve should stop shooting at us when we screw up. If we provide valuable reporting and experience and resources but admit we're human and are not the final authority, if we join in the conversation that's already going on around us -- the remixing of our news, the baking of it -- then both we and the public we serve can learn the real value of collaboration.crack para ulead video 4.0

In the end, itreally is just a simple attitude shift: It says that when we publish something, we know it's not fully baked; we expect it to be debated and challenged and remixed and improved; we welcome that. crack para ulead video 4.0

Half-baked is better. crack para ulead video 4.0

: Hey, commenters, don't get too literal about "half-baked," as if it means numbskulled. It's Fred's creative wording and I like it and it's not to say that one puts out numbskulled ideas. It says that any idea we put out is likely to be unfinished and the key is admitting that. crack para ulead video 4.0

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RSS for life

: From the comments below, the Misanthropyst has a fine suggestion for the killer RSS ap:

Wanna make a million dollars? Help supermarkets and local merchants provide rss feeds for items they are having specials and sales on. Ask your wife if she'd subscribe -- I bet the answer would be, "In a heartbeat."

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Bad Google

: Jason finds a site that blocks Google's Web Accelerator and enumerates its evils. I didn't like it either. crack para ulead video 4.0

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Giving a damn

: Go read Seth Godin's two posts on companies that don't have to care and companies that care. This is also about an apparently inevitable shift companies and even industries go through: In Seth's example, it is planes, trains and automobiles: airlines are the buses of today. They don't care. See also FedEx turning into the Post Office of today because they're thinking about their cost structure instead of their customers. See also Apple preferring to end up in court with its customers than in a community. crack para ulead video 4.0

Used to be, our only defense against these companies that grow so big they con't have to or can't care anymore was to wait for them to go out of business and hope that another, better company rose from the ashes. But now -- in cases where the product can be digital and not bound by atoms -- we the people have the chance to build new and better competition. I'm working on a longer post on that: small is the new big. Later...crack para ulead video 4.0

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Asynch TV

: We have a TV on a cable box in the family room and a TV without a cable box in the kitchen next door and in the morning and evening, they're both feeding news. But suddenly, a few weeks ago, they went out of synch. The cable-box set's is a good six seconds behind the direct-feed TV. What's going on? crack para ulead video 4.0

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Two kinds of content

: Fred Wilson says that blogging software is the future of websites. I agree but added this:crack para ulead video 4.0

I think it's half the platform. The other is RSS. In the job I left yesterday, one of my undone projects was to convert the architecture of local news sites entirely to RSS: Everything is a feed. So a home page is a feed of latest and biggest stories. A town page is a feed of newspaper headlines, blog headlines, classified ads with the latest listings in the town, forum thread headlines, weather, and so on. crack para ulead video 4.0

Looked at that way, there are two kinds of content in the world: reference (fed by wiki so it can be updated) and feed (rss, fed by blog software). crack para ulead video 4.0

The former is lasting but needs to be updated; the latter -- news, conversation -- is timely and flows. Both need to be found. crack para ulead video 4.0

So the next layer you need is how to get to the content. That has been navigation and taxonomy. It may -- emphasis on may -- shift to search and folksonomy. We'll see. crack para ulead video 4.0

: Oh, and, of course, it's not just content. It's conversation. Links are, obviously, the other means of finding the stuff we want: linksonomy.crack para ulead video 4.0

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