BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis

July 23, 2005

Moving day

: I'm moving over to WordPress tonight. Well, actually, I'm not moving. My amazing son is moving the site for me. And he's moving my RSS feeds through FeedBurner (so I hope you see no big changes there). procoder rar

Note on comments: I will keep up the old site forever (or until the earth blows up, whichever comes first). But I will NOT keep up the ability to post comments on the old site past a few days. You will note that I duped posts on both sites through all of July but I did not copy comments over. So don't get all paranoid that I killed all the Berniac posts. They are still there, for the joy of posterity, and I'll link to the old index page and the old permalinks on the old site will work.procoder rar

See you on the other side.....procoder rar

Search me

: Via Sean Bonner, I see that someone is selling T-shirts that say: "I do not consent to being searched."procoder rar

Digg courage

: Glenn Reynolds says:

AN ANTI-TERROR RALLY BY MUSLIMS in Antelope Valley, California.procoder rar

You know, if these people had blown something up, they'd be getting more press. Which suggests that if the press wants to help eliminate terrorism, it should adjust its priorities.

Let's shame them into it with our Digg for terrorist inciters, excusers, and opponents. procoder rar

It's about relationships

: The web isn't about -- or just about -- content or communication, of course. It's really about making connections -- about, well, links. But to be valued, those links must be organized around trust. In short: It's about relationships. procoder rar

The greater the value of the relationship, the greater the value of those who enable those relationships. Those who figure that out succeed (and those who try to impose the old models and relationships fail): Google connects us to information at a low level with sufficient accuracy (we trust it enough) and succeeds thanks to high efficiency and high volume. eBay connects people in transactions at a higher value by creating a system of trust. Whoever uses online functionality to connect, say, employers to the right executives or homebuyers to the right homes -- replacing today's middlemen -- can bring even more value. procoder rar

The first services that come along tend to free up information that used to be controlled by middlemen: It's what Craig's List did to classified apartment ads, what SelectQuote did to insurance rates (as Freakonomics points out).procoder rar

But in certain high-value transactions, no one has quite cracked that next level: using trust to make the right connection efficiently. procoder rar

Look at jobs. As I've said often, the new, inexpensive, efficient marketplaces where buyer and seller meet (Craig's List and Monster) replacing the old, expensive, inefficient ones (newspaper classifieds) are only a first step, a waystation on the way to a distributed future. Job listings and resumes are now popping up everywhere and anywhere online. So the next services to come along aggregate that (distribution and aggregation is the constant ebb and flow of this new world). Many services are now scraping jobs from any and all sources: Indeed, Simply Hired, Yahoo now, Flipdog was until it was scooped up by Monster, Workzoo still is after being bought by Jobster, and DirectEmployers' JobCentral has been doing it for sometime (as Stone points out, via Fred). procoder rar

Makes you think that you need the aggregator of aggregators, eh? But, no, what you need to sift through this, to find value and efficiency, is trust: Relationships. Of course, Linked In wants to do that but I still don't get the service -- that is, I subscribe, but I don't grok it, because it isn't efficient for me; it gives me relationships I don't necessarily care about or that can even be a bother. Look, too, at Ev Williams' frustration trying to find a service to manage his recruiting. No one has cracked this nut.procoder rar

This riff is inspired -- as much pondering often is -- by Umair Hague, who said that scraping jobs is just a first step:

I think the real problem in the jobs vertical is a coordination problem - not a search problem. That is, how do you connect job-seekers and decision-makers economically?procoder rar

Why do I think this? Think about what headhunters do - it's equal parts coordination and search. Sure, they have to find the right candidates; but they also have to build relationships with the right decision-makers. So far, the basic model on the Net for jobs has only ever really addressed the first half of this equation. I've argued this many times before; archive it if you're really interested.procoder rar

Matching jobs and job-seekers is fairly liquid on the net - the relative gap, and where Yahoo could build a strong sustainable advantage fast, is the coordination half of the value prop (which has been ignored for a veeeery long time, most likely because it's easier to build a few forms, a spider, and a database, than it is to build a whole new innovative coordination model).procoder rar

LinkedIn, I think, gets this coordination problem, and has a particular take on it, which I think is kind of brittle and rigid (ie, transaction costs for referrals are pretty high, and expected gains aren't that high on average). If you ask me, the dominant design will be (a lot) more plastic, and it does not have to be centered around 'link to me' style social networking (but I can't say more unfortunately).

The problem is finding the right -- the sufficient and efficient -- level of trust needed to make the right connection, the appropriate relationship. A service that doesn't provide enough trust won't work (in the old world, it was the problem of putting your phone number in the paper to sell a car to people you don't trust; in the new world, anything you do not trust is spam). But on the other hand, an effort to establish excess trust -- to make me friends when all I want to do is complete a transaction (see Tribe or Linked In) -- is too much; it's inefficient.procoder rar

I'm not sure how to do this in jobs. If I were, I'd create the business and make a damned fortune. I'd start by building on top of the aggregators and help people find the right jobs and get mutual recommendations specific to the task at hand. That's how headhunters work: When they call me to get names for a search, I take the time to reply because maybe someday they'll come searching for me. That's also how it works with friends and colleagues: I will recommend or help the ones I respect and trust and it's not wholly selfless; someday, maybe they will help me. But the networking is specific to the task at hand; I don't want to become buddies with all these folks and have to declare myself friends with some ongoing, public obligation (that's where Linked In stumbles). I want a system that lets me call on them when I need them and rewards me when they need me. I still don't know how to do that. Umair's right: That is the real challenge.procoder rar

So let's switch to another leg of the classified stool: Real estate. In no sane universe, of course, does a real-estate agent earn 6 percent commission for the services provided. Now Craig's List and search engines can take away half their job by sharing information and breaking apart the monopolistic trust (in the bad sense of the word) that multiple listings services are: We can find out what's for sale and how big it is and the price. procoder rar

But what they don't do is solve the trust problem: Real estate agents arrange for all those damned strangers to tour my house. At one level, it might be wise for a newspaper or Craig to simply offer a scheduling service (though if they take money from realtors, they are disinclined to do that): They could handle the hassle of matching schedules and then increase the level of trust by verifying the identities of the prospective homebuyers, by requiring and vetting credit-card information, for example. It would take a trusted agent to do that for both sides of the connection. On an even higher level, someone could start a new business that does nothing but arrange and schedule visits and physically accompany buyers on the visits: Say, a bonded moonlighting cop trusted to have my key does this to make sure my house and I are safe but without making any effort to actually sell my house (which he can't do without a license); I could pay the same person to wait at home for me to let the damned cable guy in. As a homebuyer, I would prefer that to a Realtor: I am armed with all the information I need about the homes -- now distributed and aggregated openly -- and I don't have to suffer through a sales guy's unctuous blather. procoder rar

Now take this same calculation to other areas. procoder rar

Take it to cars: Auto web sites give me the information I need about a car; CarsDirect and an Edmunds give me the information I need about pricing. Since all the cars are the same, I really don't need a trusted agent to sell me one (and I don't trust him anyway). If federal law would allow it, I'd just buy the car directly from Toyota and buy repair insurance (aka a warranty) and get it repaired wherever I want to by whomever I trust. That's the way that industry should work; regulation protecting old sales channels prevents it. procoder rar

Take it to marketing: If you use this medium wisely, you don't treat it as a medium. You treat everyone you find here as a consumer, as a customer, as a person. You find the people who help you improve your products (alpha consumers); you find the people who help you market your products (influencers); you find the people who help each other with your products (life is customer service); you make good products and get out of the way. If you're lucky, you don't advertise. You create a sufficient and trusted relationship with consumers to answer questions and solve problems and keep them coming back. Are you listening, Dell?procoder rar

And take it to news: The first step is to break up the old, centralized, controlled marketplaces of information and distribute news everywhere (put it online). The next is to aggregate it or help find it (see GoogleNews). The next is to solve the problem of overload and confusion via trust (see blogs). Note that the journalists no longer hold a monopoly on trust (if they ever did); in a distributed/aggregated world, we chose whom to trust. procoder rar

That is what the internet is about: not just distribution, not just information, not just transactions. It is a web of humans. It is about relationships. procoder rar

Information + Aggregation / Trust = Relationshipsprocoder rar

: I STAND CORRECTED: j.d. in the comments shows why I avoided higher math like the plague. What I meant to say is:procoder rar

(information + aggregation) / trust = relationshipsprocoder rar

When testosterone and capitalism meet...

... beautiful things happen: The complete Bud Lite Real Men of Genius commercials. [via Doc]procoder rar

July 22, 2005

Baiting Bernie

: James Wolcott, antimatter to Bernie Goldberg's matter, taunts him in promoing an appearance on Al Franken's show:

As many of you are no doubt aware, Al outranks me. He's #37 on Bernard Goldberg's list of the 100 people screwing up America--a book that should be more properly titled, Hey, You Liberals, Get Off My Lawn!--while I place at #64. Yet I'm not envious. If anything, I'm embarrassed that my ranking is as high as it is. I've only been screwing up America for a few paltry years while Oliver Stone and others who placed below me in this feebleminded gimmick of a fake book have spent decades of blood, sweat, and tears trying to undermine everything Goldberg holds dear in the studios of Fox News, where he seems to have set up a cot in the green room so that he can be always on call.
And, I know, by merely quoting that, I'll be asked by commenters: "Haven't you learned?" Oh, yes, I have. procoder rar

Digg terrorism

: Tom Friedman says the State Department should produce an annual War of Ideas Report that would put the harsh glare of attention on those who use their words to incite terrorism, those who make excuses for terrorism, and those who bravely oppose it. procoder rar

A fine idea. But I don't think the State Department is who should do this. procoder rar

Bloggers should. News organizations should follow. And I'd be delighted to see religious leaders join in. procoder rar

This seems like a fine project for Global Voices or such a group. procoder rar

Why not create the Digg of terrorism: We all get to nominate examples in each of Friedman's categories and we all get to vote them up to the home page. procoder rar

We all link to the worst of the worst to turn the spotlight on it.procoder rar

Those who can volunteer to translate the offending material. procoder rar

We convince news organizations to get RSS feeds of terrorism Diggs and report on those who are inciting and supporting the terrorists. procoder rar

We pepper those associated with these inciters and excusers -- their governments, their religious leaders, their media outlets -- with protests: The whole world is watching. procoder rar

The point is not to stop the speech. The point is to expose the speakers. And why rely on a government body, especially the U.S. State Department, to do this. Rely instead on the civilized citizens of the world. procoder rar

Why, it even comes with cute slogans suitable for T-shirts: Digg out terrorism! Digg terrorism a grave! Digg dirt!procoder rar

: Friedman preaches a wonderful sermon in that column:

Sunlight is more important than you think. Those who spread hate do not like to be exposed, noted Yigal Carmon, the founder of Memri, which monitors the Arab-Muslim media. The hate spreaders assume that they are talking only to their own, in their own language, and can get away with murder. When their words are spotlighted, they often feel pressure to retract, defend or explain them.procoder rar

"Whenever they are exposed, they react the next day," Mr. Carmon said. "No one wants to be exposed in the West as a preacher of hate."procoder rar

We also need to spotlight the "excuse makers," the former State Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed....procoder rar

Finally, we also need to shine a bright light on the "truth tellers." Every week some courageous Arab or Muslim intellectual, cleric or columnist publishes an essay in his or her media calling on fellow Muslims to deal with the cancer in their midst. The truth tellers' words also need to be disseminated globally.

Digg it. procoder rar

The unstory

: What's most impressive about the nomination of John Roberts is how the White House made it into the unstory. procoder rar

I don't see the blogs going crazy. There isn't much to say. Atrios very briefly had a moment's hope that Roberts had a connection to Iran-Contra. Oops. Wrong John Roberts. Nevermind. procoder rar

We're not hearing scandals or scandalous opinions from the guy. We're not hearing any particular protest that he's the whitest white guy they could find. procoder rar

The TV pundits and blathershows and the columnists aren't using their scarce ink and airtime to probe every Roberts angle because there aren't any. procoder rar

As I mentioned below, Kos et al were already moving on -- like the good political strategists they are -- to figure out how to find victory in defeat. And they're back to hammering the Rove story. procoder rar

In an absolutely bizarre post today, PowerLine defends Roberts against gay gags (because he was once caught in plaid pants). procoder rar

It is the unstory. procoder rar

Nonetheless, Howard Kurtz' Reliable Sources is talking about Roberts coverage and reaction on CNN this Sunday and I'll be on. Gee, I hope they don't think it's going to be so quiet that they have to invite Bernie.....procoder rar

The scarcity killer

: One of the slides in my PowerPoint BlogBoy dance calls the internet a scarcity killler and contemplates what that means for media: when advertisers can always find somewhere else to advertise and when access to scarce airtime and presstime is no longer valued. procoder rar

It doesn't kill commerce but it changes the rules and the value. So, for example, the scarce commodity might not be paper but may be trust. And so those who establish trust gain value in the future.procoder rar

At Always On, George Gilder went on a nice, hyperbolic riff on scarcity:

"TV is dying fast and it will be followed by Hollywood. These industries fed on scarcity. There are only a few channels available. TV was technology of tyrants. It fed this advertising model that has collapsed," Gilder told an audience at the conference. "The thirty-second spot is just going to die. Nobody is going to watch any ads they don't want to see.procoder rar

"Book culture and blog culture can redeem a civilization," he said.

procoder rar

Search me

: I say it's a good thing that New York police will start random bag searches on the subways. procoder rar

Oh, I know it will be inconvenient when I'm late for a meeting and it's 120-degrees down there and I fear there will be a line. Nonetheless, if and when the cops search me, I'll thank them. procoder rar

This morning on Today, they rolled out the "privacy" boogeyman. "Privacy advocates" were expressing concern. Who the hell are these "privacy advocates?" Name two. But listening to reporters, they seem to be everywhere. You just don't know it. Because they're very private. procoder rar

And what precisely is the privacy problem? If the cops catch you carrying something illegal, well, you shouldn't be carrying anything illegal. If they catch you carrying the latest Playboy -- or, more embarrassing, Radar -- then don't worry; they've seen worse. procoder rar

Are random screenings going to catch the next terrorist ready to kill people? We'll never know. But it is worth the effort.
procoder rar

July 21, 2005

It ain't Taco Bell

: I'm a simple man with simple tastes. I'd be happy going to Taco Bell for lunch every day (grilled stuffed burrito, chicken, please) but today I made a rare, very rare appearance at media canteen Michael's. Apart from my map Elizabeth Spiers (whom I passed by going in, late for lunch, but saw going out) I did not notice a single one of the luminaries listed here. Not even David Hasselhoff! procoder rar

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Me-Owe!

: The NY Post has just about the meanest front page and story I've seen (since the days of Bill Clinton, at least) on Jude Law's nanny. The lede:
Hey, Jude, you burned Sienna for . . . this?procoder rar

Even all tarted up for a photo shoot for London's Mirror newspaper, nanny Daisy Wright looks more like a late-night belt-notch than a top-shelf taste worth scrapping an engagement to a gorgeous A-list actress.

procoder rar

Cell-phone terrorists

: Listening to SkyNews via Fox via Sirius this morning I twice heard correspondents say that had just been ordered by the police to get off their cell phones because they feared the radio signals could detonate a bomb. procoder rar

Today the Wall Street Journal reports (free link) about cell phones being used to wage terrorism in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein outlawed cellphones, determined to maintain an iron grip on his subjects. But as Iraq catches up with the world's information revolution, cellphones have become as commonplace here as they are almost everywhere else in the world. Now, they are increasingly being used as battle tools -- to set off bombs from afar, to target fire and to provide insurgents with instant communications.
Meanwhile, the cells in some New York tunnels were turned off after 7/7 out of fear they could be used by terrorists but they were just turned back on because, rightly, authorities say that they are needed for communication in an emergency. procoder rar

Meanwhile, a study says that hands-free phones don't reduce the dangers of driving and calling. procoder rar

Cell phones are getting cultural cooties. procoder rar

London nerves

: Every network is now talking about evactuated tube stations in London and reports of smoke and a "nail bomb" and a bus attack. They are being careful, as they should be, not to go overboard. In the days after 9/11, there were many scares and reports that, thank God, did not pan out. We can only hope that's what is happening in London. Here's the Guardian, the BBC, CNN. I get errors from Reuters and the Times of London. procoder rar

Hating your customers

: The AP reports that the number of legal music downloads has tripled in the first half of 2005. I'd say that's good news. I'd say that's because, thanks to Apple, the industry finally found a way to help people do what they want to do: listen to music wherever they want. I'd say it indicates that if you give people the chance to do the right thing, they will. I'd say it's a good sign for humankind.procoder rar

But the music industry doesn't say that. The music industry treats its customers like thieves and idiots:

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries... credited the increase to a 13 percent rise in the number of broadband lines installed around the world, along with an industry campaign to both prosecute and educate against illegal downloading.
procoder rar

The reviews are in

: In the comments below, there are plenty of people giving Donny Deutsch's show and me bad reviews and that's fine: A critic is fair game for criticism. And we can all disagree. procoder rar

That's what makes America great (and not screwed up).procoder rar

I'll answer a few of the points:procoder rar

On reading books for TV: I didn't read the book. I said so here before the show. I did go looking for it but on short notice didn't have time to read it if I had. I read articles and posts about it and the summary sent over by the show's producers. And I will also say that I wasn't sure I wanted to add one more notch in the book's bestseller count (see below). procoder rar

As some commenters point out, don't think that every time you see Matt Lauer interviewing an author, he has read the book. Authors who get publicity on TV know that their books are rarely read by their interviewers but they take the publicity. If they wanted more than three minutes of stone-skipping, then they should go to C-SPAN, where people read the books but nobody watches the shows. procoder rar

And I don't think there is some moral imperative to read the book. There's nothing sacred about a book. When I'm called on to do the point-counterpoint TV dance with, say, someone from the PTC, I don't read their every screed and I don't expect them to read my every screed and we can still discuss and disagree about issues. procoder rar

As Linda Stasi said, we were there to discuss the list, which had gotten plenty of publicity: I was prepared to discuss the notion of it, she was there to discuss the names on the list. Which leads to the next point:procoder rar

Was it an ambush? I don't know that it was. I was told that Donny liked what Goldberg did, even though he, of course, disagreed with some of the names on the list. Donny started off with a polite discussion of substance about the list but Bernie got hostile quickly. That set the tone: If you disagree with him, you're ambushing him. He attacks other people -- and spends a whole book attacking people -- but yet he can't take the pushback himself. It was a bizarre start to the show. procoder rar

When they came back for the next segment, Donny called on Linda Stasi. Keep in mind, she is a columnist for the New York Friggin' Post, one of the top conservative papers in the nation. It's not as if they brought in Jim Wolcott or Eric Alterman and threw it to them. They called on a Postie.procoder rar

Linda and I were in the same studio, on the same couch (though we weren't supposed to acknowledge that; we were on separate cameras). I talked to her before the show and saw her notes preparing for the talk. She was going to engage Goldberg on his terms, on his list, and throw out her own nominees. That's how she started: She wanted Rush Limbaugh on the list, which was also her way of pointing out that Bernie had nothing but liberals on his list. That's a perfectly legitimate way to discuss the book. But this quickly devolved into shouting, with Bernie yelling at Linda to "shut up."procoder rar

I'd say it was Linda Stasi who was ambushed by Bernie Goldberg: He was hostile and rude and though he kept saying he would answer her question he never in fact tried to (an old TV trick from an old TV hand). He yelled and insulted. He made it personal, as he did with me later. She was disgusted with it and was ready to take off her microphone and walk out and she had every right to. procoder rar

I shrugged: It's just a silly discussion about a silly book on a silly TV show.procoder rar

But then, I hadn't yet had Bernie talking about my humping. procoder rar

And so now to the substance: As I said in my post before the show and as I said on the show, I don't buy his premise:procoder rar

America is not screwed up. procoder rar

Oh, we have plenty to disagree about and we damed well should be debating about how to solve our problems and face our mutual enemies and issues. But I do not think it is productive to make that personal and act as if some people are out to screw up America. We have met the enemy, Bernie, and it isn't us.procoder rar

Oh, there are plenty of people on Goldberg's list he and I would agree to disagree with. But I think that most of them are sincere and are not bad people out to "screw up America". Michael Moore behaves badly but he's sincere. Noam Chomsky has inane opinions but he's every bit as sincere as Bernie Goldberg.. oh, is he. procoder rar

They disagree. We can debate their disagreements. That is the very essence, again, of what makes America great. That is why America is not screwed up. procoder rar

But turning that debate into an ambush on the 100 people on this list and making it personal and mean is not a productive discussion. And we see too much of that in debates today. We saw it on cable until Jon Stewart killed Crossfire and that tide shifted (until last night, I guess). We see blogs often accused of that (though I do believe that's the exception and that most discussion in this medium -- unlike TV -- has the opportunity to be substantive and to link to all sides). procoder rar

To me, the mere exercise of trying to name 100 people on the other side as the bad guys who are screwing up our country is like freeze-drying the worst and most shallow of cable TV shout shows and online flames. It is the worst of making politics personal instead of productive. procoder rar

If anything is screwing up America, that attitude is. procoder rar

MORE: People in the comments are asking me to say I am wrong. No, we just disagree and I stand by my opinions and my view from being in the thick of it. They ask me to say I made a mistake. No, I didn't set up the event. I will say that I regret being part of it. I don't think anyone who was involved does not regret being part of it. It was not pleasant. It certainly was not informative. It was not good TV (though in its time, people tried to define such moments as good TV; those days are over). procoder rar

: LATER: Crooks & Liars has the video up. procoder rar

: AND NOW I'M WONDERING.... Who is nastier to me when I piss them off, conservatives or liberals? Hmmmmmm........procoder rar

: THIS IS GETTING COMICAL: Bill O'Reilly teases Bernie coming on to whine and waaaaaaaaaaaa about this "harrowing experience" on CNBC; the screen calls it a "TV Nightmare!," complete with exclamation mark. This from O'Reilly, the shut-up king and Goldberg of CBS News, the ambush kings.procoder rar

OK. I'm fed up now. I return to my original position: Bernie's bonkers... or a damned good book salesman. procoder rar

: Atrios has the appropriate one-word review:"Hilarious.procoder rar

: And here's Bernie waaaa-waaaa-waaaaaing his way to Rush Limbaugh:

The big point is that this is what the cultural elite liberals do these days. They can stab you in the back. No problem, because they know what's best. That's the problem. This time, they did it to me. Big deal. Big deal. Insignificant show. Big deal. They did the exact same thing, Rush, to Judge Bork. They did the exact same thing to Judge Pickering, the judge from Mississippi who they made out to be soft on cross burners -- and they're going to do it again, Rush, with Judge Roberts, and that's why Ralph Neas, the head of People for American Way is #10 on the list in this book.
He called the people on the show not just liberal but leftist. Can somebody tell Oliver Willis and Kos and Eric Alterman for me? Maybe I'll get my official party membership card back.procoder rar

: Now O'Reilly is calling it "TV terrorism."procoder rar

Twits.procoder rar

: Now I'm getting fag-bashing email from the Bernieacs. Nice bunch, them. It gets better. It's homophobic and racist. Sweethearts.procoder rar

: On O'Reilly, Goldberg says "the culture in this country has gotten way too angry and way too nasty." What the hell are you, Bernie?procoder rar

Bill is sympathetic on "the shut-up thing." Uh-huh. procoder rar

Poor widdle Bernie. Waaaa-waaa-waaaah.
procoder rar

July 20, 2005

Unplugged

: Two notable TV deaths today:procoder rar

: Gerry Thomas, inventor of the TV dinner, dead. procoder rar

: James Doohan, Scotty from Star Trek, beams up. procoder rar

Bizarro Bernie

: Yesterday, I taped Donny Deutsch's show with Bernie Goldberg about his book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (earlier post here). It's going to be on CNBC tonight at 10:30p and you have to watch, for you will see a bizarre performance that continued after the cameras went off. procoder rar

Bernie went bonkers. procoder rar

Or Bernie is bonkers. procoder rar

We report. You decide. procoder rar

The show started with Bernie snarling at Donny for no good reason. Then, in the second segment, Donny came to NY Post TV critic Linda Stasi, who was prepared to discuss Bernie's silly list (giving it more dignity than I would have have). With good humor and energy, she asked why Rush Limbaugh wasn't on it. procoder rar

Well, that set Bernie off. And downhill we went. Bernie shouted to Linda to shut up. He got downright mean. Linda and I were in the same studio (though we were on different cameras) and we looked at each other to confirm that we weren't nuts; this was. Bernie growled about how he can't stand being on "panel show." It got so bad that Donny had to scold Bernie for his behavior. procoder rar

Later, Bernie insisted that he wasn't a "church lady" (after Donny and I defended one of the names on his list, Howard Stern) but then he went on about people talking about "humping" on TV. When I said he did indeed sound like a church lady, he came back and said less-than-polite things about whom I hump. I said that's a fine way for him to talk. procoder rar

You get the flavor. procoder rar

And then the madness continued. procoder rar

Bernie called a producer at CNBC and reduced her to tears.procoder rar

He called media outlets -- starting with the, cough, sympathetic Washington Times -- arguing that he was ambushed. procoder rar

He called Fox -- where, according to one of the other guests, he has already appeared eight times to promote his book -- to whine and get on Bill O'Reilly's show. procoder rar

One theory is that this is all a publicity ploy. Another is that he's acting wacky. I think it's a combination of the two: This is the behavior of a paranoid who needs enemies to keep his paranoid rantings -- and publicity -- alive. Bernie wanted to be ambushed. He made it into an ambush. And the strategy is working. The book's selling (at time of taping it was No. 3 on Amazon behind only Harry Potter; now it's No. 6). Except we on the show didn't buy the book. And that really pissed him off. procoder rar

Here's what appeared in The Washington Times:

"I've been doing this a long, long time, and I have never, ever, ever, never -- I could say never and ever 10 more times -- experienced what I just went through," Mr. Goldberg told Inside the Beltway late yesterday after he taped the show, which is to air tonight, from Miami.
"Deutsch disagreed with everything, and that is just fine," said Mr. Goldberg, the best-selling author of "Bias" who has written the new book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken is No. 37)."
"But then, unbeknownst to me, they brought on a panel of five, plus Donny, all of whom took the other side. And it's not like they just respectfully disagreed; there was name-calling, ganging up; it was unbelievable. And not one of them even read the book. They admitted it.
"It was more than an ambush," he said. "It was the most cynical, dishonest thing I have ever been lassoed into. They misled me."
Immediately after the taping, Mr. Goldberg said, he told the show's producer, Marilyn Cutler, that Mr. Deutsch had been "dishonest."
And the spin continues. Someone masquerading as an "informed source" contacts the CaptainsQuarters with more whining:
However, instead of debating cultural issues as the producers had explained the segment to Goldberg, it turned out that the show had stacked the panel with people who disliked Goldberg's book -- and ganged up on him to belittle it.
The show issued a statement in response:
Mr. Goldberg was invited on our program to discuss his new book. We asked him if he would be willing to stay and join a panel of print and online journalists to discuss the people and issues he raised in the book and he agreed. At certain points during the segment, Mr. Goldberg, the panelists and Donny did not always agree. We felt that it was a healthy and robust conversation.procoder rar

We treat all of guests, including Mr. Goldberg, with nothing but the utmost respect and courtesy. We encourage people to tune into CNBC tonight at 10:30PM and watch for themselves.

: Now here are a few quotes from the show. I don't have a full transcript yet. This quote from me comes after he attacked Stasi and Barbara Walters before that, after the heat was already on high.
You know, Bernie, you put yourself up on a high pedestal here as if you're above journalism. But you know what? You're just using the oldest trick I know--and I did it myself--in: 'Let's come up with a meaningless list and then a meaningless debate about.' [That's] almost certainly what's happening right now. procoder rar

Let's start with the premise. America's not screwed up. Let's start there. America is a good place. It's a wonderful place.... procoder rar

And to say, `Well, I've got the list, and I have in my hand a list with names.' It's a ridiculous unjournalism, unnews exercise, and you make fun of Barbara Walters and others for blurring the line between news. This isn't news. This isn't journalism. It's a way to get promotion you're getting right now and then complaining about. It's really pretty hard to take, Bernie.

: And now a sample of the exchange between Bernie and Linda:
Ms. STASI: Well, I just think it's incredible that he writes a section on vicious celebrities and he's being so vicious. And we're just sitting here discussing it. You don't have to tell me to shut up, you know. It's just—I mean, don't you find that vulgar if you're yelling at somebody to shut up on television? Because I find that really vulgar.procoder rar

DEUTSCH: I couldn't agree more.procoder rar

Unidentified Guest: Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand how you could like...procoder rar

DEUTSCH: Wait, let him respond to that.procoder rar

Mr. GOLDBERG: No, I only did it because you don't shut up.procoder rar

Unidentified Guest: I don't understand...procoder rar

Mr. STASI: You know what? You see what I mean. It's so ignorant.procoder rar

Unidentified Guest: ...how do you tell a woman to shut up?procoder rar

Ms. STASI: It's ignorant.procoder rar

Unidentified Guest: A woman, tell her to shut up? I mean, come on.procoder rar

Ms. STASI: It's just ignorant. It's just ignorant.procoder rar

DEUTSCH: What signal is that? You're talking about cultural wars? To any young girl watching out there, you tell a woman to shut up?procoder rar

Ms. STASI: It doesn't matter if I'm a woman or not, what he says...procoder rar

Mr. GOLDBERG: Donny!procoder rar

DEUTSCH: It does matter.procoder rar

Ms. STASI: ...is just silly.procoder rar

Mr. GOLDBERG: Donny, Donny, that's interesting.procoder rar

Ms. STASI: It's vulgar and silly.

procoder rar

Supreme distraction

: Howard Kurtz on the uber media strategy in the White House:

I happen to think the president is giving the other side an extra month to build a case against his nominee (if that's what Democrats and liberals are inclined to do). But from the administration's point of view, media chatter about Roberts is probably superior to media chatter about whether Rove should be fired.
: MEANWHILE... Over at Kos they're trying to find the silver lining and that's how to lose well....procoder rar

Acbonin says that the filibuster and dragging out other nominations worked; that this is a victory. procoder rar

Steve M adds in a comment to that post that the Democrats need to lose this battle well:

But there are good losses too, and this is the concept that many refuse to accept. You can lose in a way that makes people sympathize with the principle you fought for. You can lose in a way that sets the stage to make a compelling case later. If you send a clear message to the American people that "we oppose Roberts because X will happen if he is confirmed," and then X does happen, now you have your campaign issue for 2008, 2012, and beyond. "Elect Democrats so we can roll back X and make sure it never happens again."
And Kos chimes in:
I see in Roberts someone who can help Democrats draw clear battle lines for the American public. It'll allow us to define who we are and who they are, and drive home the point that elections do matter, that there really is a difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.

procoder rar

amny.gifSelling your soul

: I pass by the AM New York freebie paper stand today and see the screaming headline: MOVIE THEATER STUNS AUDIENCES. It doesn't take a minute -- or a genius -- to see that it's an ad for Motorola, Loews, Cingular. The ad takes over the front page. Oh, there's still a real front page inside; this is a wrapper around the real paper. Still, this is the front page you see screaming at you from the valuable space of the newsracks; this is the image AM New York presents to its public. procoder rar

Now this is hardly the first paper to put an ad on its front page; that may be holy space, but everybody has his price. Nor is this the first paper to put on a wrapper, though those are usually handed out at events and I've never seen one in a newsstand, because newsstands are all about selling papers -- and news sells papers (doesn't it?). procoder rar

But, of course, this paper isn't sold. It's given away. And that changes the rules. Letting an ad take over the front page doesn't depress newsstand sales; there are no newsstand sales. procoder rar

And putting an ad with a giveaway on the cover may even help drive free papers out of the rack. All the better if they'd been giving away free sex.procoder rar

Why the hell do I care? Because the free-news economy changes the rules and I am always fascinated to see how this happens.procoder rar

I saw this happen at People in the '80s, when stars and their flacks realized that their images were being used on covers to sell magazines and they wanted something for it -- if not money then at least control ("picture approval" was their first bid). procoder rar

Economics change media. procoder rar

Here, AM New York's value is distribution -- greater distribution than the paid papers precisely because it's free. So that makes its front page more valuable to advertisers than it is to AM New York. procoder rar

I'm not pulling a holier-than-thou newspaper attitude about this; not making an ethical judgment about this. I'm just noting how the economics affect the product. procoder rar

The medium isn't the message. The bottom line is the message. procoder rar

So what does that mean for online? Where's our real value? Is it distribution? (No.) Is it audience? (Maybe.) Or is it relationships. (Yes.) And how does that make the product?procoder rar

Kiddie court

: The most striking thing about John Roberts -- so far -- is how damned young he looks. To make their legal legacies last longer, presidents will be drafting justices the way they draft basketball players, out of high school. Better yet: Junior high, when they're still virgins and haven't inhaled and haven't written anything embarrassing except for that poetry they had to do in English class.procoder rar

Shark ahead

: There's already a business conference on podcasting. procoder rar

July 19, 2005

The real John Roberts

: Rex Hammock has all the dirt.procoder rar

Hi-fi

: Philip Torrone from Make is taking a Boeing junket to nowhere to show off wi-fi. He links to Flickr photos filed from the air. procoder rar

Dave Winer reports that Chris Pirillo is a fellow traveler>/a>. procoder rar

Throw the Google at him

: Andru Edwards tells the story of how GoogleMaps saved him from a guilty verdict on a traffic ticket. [via Make]procoder rar

Sweaty, smelly, miserable mess

: That's me: Disgusting. It's a sauna without the showers in New York. I was out for 15 minutes and just closed the door to the office so no one can see what a mess I am. You're welcome for my sharing. procoder rar

Blogging smoke

: Jim Treacher, one of my favorite interacters hereabouts, is manning a blog for the movie Blowing Smoke, said blog created by another fave, Jackie Danicki. procoder rar

The 100 lists I hate

: I'm supposed to do Donny Deutsch's show (with Linda Stasi) later today regarding Bernie Goldberg's 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. And, yes, I should be ashamed of myself for giving this unimportant exercise in unjournalism more publicity. The nice folks at CNBC spared me reading the thing and sent me a nice summary by email. All Goldberg is doing is taking the most basic trick of soft news editors, unnews editors -- that is, city magazines, feature sections, talk shows: He's making a meaningless list and having a meaningless debate about it. But his list isn't just meaningless. It's just mean. Oh, I also hold some of his choices in less than high esteem. But what Goldberg is doing here is lumping together people who are truly hateful (terrorists) with people who don't agree with him. He's holding his own cable TV shoutfest without having the other side on to shout back. It's silly. But what's even sillier is that he uses this to pontificate about how he thinks America should be run. SpeakSpeak is giving him hell for it. But I like Jon Stewart's response to his pompous prudery best:

Goldberg: Once upon a time, not too many years ago, a drunk in a bar wouldn’t use the f-word. Now-he may be your pal-but Chevy Chase goes to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC at a gala where people are wearing tuxedos-and-gowns and calls the president of the United States a dumb blank.procoder rar

Stewart: Once upon a time, Thomas Jefferson f**ked slaves.

Perspective, people. procoder rar

LATER: Well, I hope the appearance goes better than this:

John Davison, editor at 1UP.com, deserves kudos for having the guts to walk off of the set of The Big Idea (CNBC) when it became evident that he'd been tricked into appearing on a show designed to do nothing but bash video games. It takes balls to walk off a show like that when things go sour because of manipulation instead of honest debate. It also takes more than a little self-respect. The nice thing about being a member of the media, though, is that you can still get your opinions out when you're comments are edited from existence by a two-faced TV broadcast.
Here's Davison's saga.procoder rar

AFTERWARDS: Bernie sure comes off as the angry, nasty, self-important, humorless prig. He went after Linda Stasi, who was very nice, and played the paranoid victim with Donny Deutsch. It's on tonight at 10p, if the Supremes don't preempt it. procoder rar

OH, AND: My first point: America isn't screwed up. procoder rar

: HUH: Well, now I have no idea what's happening. Deutsch has an entire show on polygamy. procoder rar

July 18, 2005

Changes at the top

: Who says you can't blog about your own office? Steve Baker tells us about changes at Business Week and what they mean:

The most important change (from a blog perspective) is that one managing editor position has been turned into three--count 'em--executive editor posts. Yet only one of these editors will focus on the paper-and-ink magazine. The other two will direct BW Online and new ventures. That means that two-thirds of the top editing team will be focused away from our paper magazine. Gives you an idea of where the growth is.
procoder rar

He doth protest a heckuva lot

: Go listen to the latest On The Media to hear a mind-boggling interview with Cleveland Plain Dealer Editor Doug Clilfton about his decision not to publish two stories based on leaked government docs in the aftermath of the Judith Miller jailing (sorry but the link to the segment doesn't work and transcripts aren't up yet but it's in the beginning of the MP3 atop this page). I wish I could quote and characterize it to give you a sense of what happens there but you have to listen because it's just bizarre. Clifton snaps at interview Bob Garfield and at The New York Times for reasons that aren't entirely clear. procoder rar

Democracy Guy writes about the interview here. procoder rar

Carnival of the walkers

: As you may know, I'm working with good folks at About.com on such things as blogs and one of the enthusiastic, blog-smart guides there, Wendy Bumgardner, has just started a Carnival of the walkers. procoder rar

The challenge, of course, is that there aren't a lot of blogs devoted just to walking. But we all do it. And I know there are good stories about good vacation walks with good photos and Flickr sagas memorializing these walks. procoder rar

So do me a favor: Post about your favorite walks and walk photos and walk stuff (cameras, whatever) and send the links to Wendy: walking.guide@about.com.procoder rar

I'm inspired by going on gorgeous strolls at Skytop last week and now that I'm back in miserably muggy Gotham, I want to smell the fresh air of freedom again. Beside, walking is the perfect topic for bloggers, isn't it: Left-right-left-right....procoder rar

News at the front

: Good on Reuters for supporting the creation of an Iraqi wire service.

The charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into that nation's first independent commercial news service.procoder rar

For the last several months, the Web site, Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq), has relied on a team of 30 stringers and the help of three of Iraq's independent newspapers, as well as feeds from the Reuters Arabic-language service, to publish hundreds of stories a month on politics, culture and even the taboo topic of AIDS in Iraq.procoder rar

Now the site, www.aswataliraq.info, will become a full-fledged newswire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets.

Yes, I can anticipate the cracks in the comments: Reuters and the U.N., what a team... we'll never see the word "terrorist" there. But I say give it a chance to prove its journalistic value. procoder rar

Gawker 1, Page 6 0

: Yesterday, Page 6 popped a vein over Gawker's snarking. Today, Jessica Coen gives Page 6 some advice:

Thesaurus.com is my top bookmark, and I suggest you make it the same on your browser. Then you needn't use words like "snarky" over and over again. Say I'm contemptous, irritable, cranky, cocky, insolent, sneering. Call me a dimwitted bitch, for all I care. Just don't use "snark" twice in the same item.
[via Blogebrity]procoder rar

To witness

: The Guardian's John Naughton -- a blog supporter -- has second thoughts about the citizen reporting that occurred in the London bombings. I disagree. He says in the Observer:

Hmmm ... Can I be alone in having mixed feelings about all this? I think it was Heidegger who said that 'technology is the art of arranging the world so that we don't have to experience it'.procoder rar

I find it astonishing - not to say macabre - that virtually the first thing a lay person would do after escaping injury in an explosion in which dozens of other human beings are killed or maimed is to film or photograph the scene and then relay it to a broadcasting organisation.

Whoa. Isn't that the reflex that every reporter has? What's so wrong with anyone else having the same need to remember and share and report and witness? procoder rar

And what makes fellow citizens lay people next to reporter-priests? procoder rar

On September 11th in New York, I didn't know what I was: witness, reporter, survivor. I stayed at the World Trade Center to report after the first jet hit. My wife remains, well, disapproving of that decision, but that's because, as it turned out, the danger was far from over. I, too, disapproved of my decision when I was enveloped by the cloud of destruction. procoder rar

But danger apart, I knew I had to report. A few days later, I started this blog to continue remembering and witnessing. I also bought a camera phone to replace the plain phone lost in that cloud, because I often thought how different our view of that day would have been if it had been seen at eye level and not from rooftops miles away. procoder rar

As a journalist, you would think that Naughton would welcome more truly eyewitness reporting, more facts, more stories, more humanity. And who better to provide this than witnesses themselves, now equipped not only with cameras but also with the knowledge that they could report what they saw themselves. Isn't that better than second-hand reporting?procoder rar

Naughton complains that some of the material they recorded was too graphic to be shown. Well, isn't that true of any photographer's rolls? That is why editors edit. procoder rar

I've heard others fret that just-people, lay people, would be too obtrusive -- but that assumes that professional journalists are not. Oh, but we are. procoder rar

When freedom becomes a unique selling proposition

: So I was listening to Sirius yesterday and heard one of its (many) promotions for its comedy channels and their pitch was that it's "radio that's cool, without the FCC rules." procoder rar

No escape

: Go read Tom Evslin's hilarious memory of a really bad day on the job. procoder rar

July 17, 2005

Feedthink

: There are two kinds of stuff on the internet: procoder rar

* Resources and articles and other static gems. procoder rar

* Feeds and lists and conversations and other dynamic goodies. procoder rar

Even that is a quite imperfect bucketing of the wonders of online but stay with me for a second, for it's at least a useful means of distinguishing some fundamental aspects of Web 1.0 from 2.0 and what's coming next and what's needed. procoder rar

Web 1.0 is built primarily on the former, the resources and articles and pages and mostly static things: It's about stuff that sits and is found at an address. It's about search. It's about URLs and permalinks. It's about Google and Yahoo before that. All that is valuable, always will be. procoder rar

But Web 2.0 adds on the wonders of the latter: feeds (RSS, Atom, FeedBurner, et al); lists (OPML, etc.); conversations (blog posts, Technorati links, PubSub feeds, comments); swarming points (tags on Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Dinnerbuzz); heat sensors (Blogpulse et al); aggregations (e.g., Command-Post.org); communities (Craig's List, et al); alerts (Craig's List feeds); decentralized distribution (bittorrent, etc.); and on and on. procoder rar

See Fred Wilson thinking about feeds and asking what businesses will be needed and will emerge, especially as Microsoft embraces RSS in Longhorn. See also Kevin Hale's wonderful post, which I linked to a few weeks ago, on how RSS is the new search. procoder rar

But it's more than that a new Microsoft or a new Google. It's bigger than that. This is a new architecture. It's a dynamic architecture.procoder rar

And it's not as if this is entirely new. About five years ago, when I arranged an investment in Moreover (which is when I met Nick Denton, which is when I met blogs, which is when my career and life changed, leading to the wonderful world of un-self-employment), what excited me was that this company -- which scrapes headlines to create categorized feeds -- was a means of getting to the dynamic web. There are many other examples, such as Technorati and Pubsub. Now, they're coming together to form the next generation.procoder rar

One of the things I couldn't get done at the last job was to rearchitect the news sites around feeds and RSS. When you think about it, that's exactly the structure a dynamic news site should take and once it does, it becomes easy to replace static, produced pages with collections of feeds: I could put together my town page with feeds of newspaper headlines, blog headlines, forum-thread headlines, new classifieds (these homes added to the market since you were here), weather information, and so on: all categorized, all conscious of what I last saw here. It's really not a gigantic change, it's just that it's hard to take something already built with bricks and rebuild it with hoses. procoder rar

I'm also grappling with this in my present consulting gig at The New York Times Company's About.com, which has an incredible collection of valuable reference material in about 500 topics and will also build lots of dynamic (current and conversational) material around those topics. Presenting each and organizing each brings different issues and opportunities.procoder rar

In both these cases, the borders between the two buckets become very fuzzy: Dynamic content can turn into static reference content (e.g., a blog post you point back to again and again). And static content can become dynamic (e.g., Wikipedia). procoder rar

And there are plenty of other issues that are only beginning to surface: There are not the means to measure audience for such things as RSS (readers don't cookie). You can throw out the definition of a page view when we shift to a world of the post view (post as in an element of content). You can throw out the definition of content when much of this is about conversation and interaction and just plain action. You can forget control of time and display when people can timeshift/placeshift/mediashift their stuff onto their iPods and phones and such. You have to worry about how people will find stuff in a post-search world where Google is no longer the answer to everything. procoder rar

Now back to Fred and his quest for new opportunities....procoder rar

I'm still trying to hook up with Dave Winer across vacations and travel to figure out what he's up to with OPML editors. I'm eager to play with his newest tools.procoder rar

One great thing about OPML is that it exposes the depth of possibilities of working with lists. Any feed or any list of feeds carries with it the option of action: Click on a headline to see the article. Click on the classified alert to get a job or a house. Click on the eBay alert to make a purchase. Listen to a podcast. Respond to email or posts. Mush it all together and rearrange it into your own to-do list. Make that your calendar. procoder rar

Feeds are dynamic in what they present, how they present it, and what you can do with it.procoder rar

Five years ago, I worked with a smart bunch of people in Munich who were creating a company called Twest that aimed to create much of this functionality: They were making the module that let a family create and edit a shopping list via browsers and phones anywhere anytime. Or party lists. Or quizes. Sadly, they were ahead of their time. But I still want that functionality today.procoder rar

In this post, a few weeks ago, I suggested that blogging and feeds should become a metaphor for how newsrooms operate -- and thus, a new content management tool for them. procoder rar

See Dinnerbuzz, below (or at least the Dinnnerbuzz of my hungry imagination).procoder rar

Like Fred, I'm eager to hear what opportunities there are in this next world. As you can tell from this rather rambling post, I'm not even ready to categorize the opportunities in buckets. But let's try a few:procoder rar

* New means of creating: that new newsroom system, that OPML editor.... procoder rar

* New means of finding what you want. What's the next Google? procoder rar

* New means of aggregating. Dinnerbuzz (to overuse that example!).procoder rar

* New means of acting: That family shopping list (with buy-it-now buttons). procoder rar

* New means of organizing: The ultimate calendar/to-do list/alert machine.procoder rar

* New means of communicating: Use SIP to give me that urgent alert in the best medium for me at the best time. procoder rar

* New means of recommending: Beyond Technorati's one-size-fits all authority.procoder rar

* New means of policing: What to do about the next generation of spam scum.procoder rar

* New means of marketing: If I'm going to be motivated to deliver via RSS I may need to make money doing it. procoder rar

* New means of consuming: What happens when you take the best of every RSS reader out there today and coordinate with all my Windows and Apple applications and all my devices? What's the next browser?procoder rar

What else? What are examples?procoder rar

: See also Heather Green's chat with Yahoo's RSS pointman Scott Gatz.procoder rar

Made for the distributed world

: I just came across Dinnerbuzz (catching up on my RSS after vacation; saw it via You're It). Though the execution is iffy at best, the concept is close to what I'm talking about in creating new information services for the distributed world. Here's the deal:procoder rar

When you post a review of a restaurant on your own blog, you tag it and Dinnerbuzz picks up the link and aggregates it with other links to posts about that restaurant, other posts with those tags, and other posts in those cities. So when it comes time to eat, you can come in and find what locals are saying about a restaurant or you can search for "outdoor" "Mexican" joints in "New York." Further, you'll be able to get RSS feeds so you can get an alert whenever someone writes about a great new vindaloo in your neighborhood. procoder rar

In old-centralized-marketplace-think, you'd try to get all those people to write restaurant reviews on your big-media site. And the question is: Why the hell should they? What do they get out of it? And in the old world, you tried to get people to read the reviews on your site when they knew there were reviews on tons of other sites out there as well and it's a pain to find them all.procoder rar

In new-decentralized-distributed-think, you recognize that people will write about what they want to write about where they want to write about it and if you're smart, you'll find ways to take advantage of all that great information and aggregate it and and aggregate audience around it, sending traffic out to all those writers on the edge because readers know they can come to you find find it all. procoder rar

To make this work, you need to get people to tag their posts and you need a critical mass of them so that people can start to agree (e.g., "byob" instead of "dry") on the right tags as happens on Flickr and Del.icio.us. But people will do that if they see that people are finding what they right because they tag and also if they start using the service themselves to find restaurants and so, in this gift economy, they realize that you need to give to get. procoder rar

The example I've often used about how tags will work best in a distributed world is jobs: You tag your resume anywhere on the internet and a specialized successor to Google (who may, indeed, use Google's API to get raw data) finds jobs and matches them with job seekers without forcing anyone to pick one centralized marketplace or another. I've also said this will work in hyperlocal: I don't want to write an entire blog about my town, but I would tag the occasional post to be aggregated into a community of them -- because I'd want to read that collection myself. procoder rar

This is a model for the future of media. There is tons of great stuff to be had out there; it's impossible to find and keep up with it all; search won't do the trick; tags and feeds will help. The key is not to collect the content and traffic -- the old, centralized media way -- but instead to collect enough information about that good stuff to help people find it when they want and to help support the people who create it all.procoder rar

: OOPS: Well, it appears I was projecting what I wanted Dinnerbuzz to be. I misread one description of it. As I see the service now, I have to go there to add tags to it with a link to my post. procoder rar

It would be better if I could just put the tags on my post (Technorati tags) or on Del.icio.us (with a for:dinnerbuzz tag) or simply add the posts and ping them and that would travel to Dinnerbuzz automatically. Those would be the better, more distributed ways to accomplish this. procoder rar

I also find it terribly frustrating that I can't find the way to get from a Dinnerbuzz listing to the actual posts!procoder rar

Or I'm wrong again....procoder rar

Well, at least in my imagination, I see potential here....procoder rar

More snark

: Dave Winer on professional reporters: "They take longer to get it wronger."procoder rar

Live by the snark, die by the snark

: Somebody stuck a sharp stick up somebody's rear.

Unknown outside the dork-infested waters of the Blogosphere, her name is Jessica Coen, and she's the co-editor of Gawker.com, where she regurgitates newspaper and magazine stories and slathers them in supposedly witty sarcasm. Every time we bump into Coen, 25, who likes to accessorize with a stuffed dog poking out of her handbag, she smiles and showers us with sycophantic praise. But her every mention of PAGE SIX on her Web site is snide and snarky. Word to Coen: Next time you see us at a party, keep walking. Or slithering. You can't be a boot-licker and a back-stabber at the same time.
procoder rar

But enough about you

: In dissecting Current.TV's relationship with its content contributors, Umair Haque at BuggleGeneration gets right to the heart of what's wrong with most big-media attempts to interact with the citizens via citizens' media. The big guys think it's still about them. They don't understand -- and perhaps never will -- that it's not about speaking but listening, about blowing up their networks to take part in vastly bigger networks than they ever could have imagined.

This raises a very special problem for Current TV. Namely, that more Web 2.0 focused competitors can always and everywhere offer a superior value prop, because they can leverage complementarity. Put another way, Current TV, by tying itself heavily to cable and satellite distribution, may be foregoing the real opportunity. If you follow this analysis, Current will never be able to raise relative switching costs.procoder rar

Is this a symptom of a deeper...uhhh...thing? Check this out:procoder rar

"...Assignment: Londonprocoder rar

Okay: We want to put together a reflective piece on the London bombings and their implications. Get out a camera -- a webcam will do -- and start talking."procoder rar

Look, peer production is not about ordering prosumers around to meekly do your bidding. It's about building a platform/community that does theirs.procoder rar

Not to sound harsh, but perhaps Current has the whole dynamics of this stuff backwards.procoder rar

In a sense, this is the same kind of mistake that 1.0 dot commers made - assuming that the www was just another distribution/mktg channel. Dot com 2.0 peer production plays like Current seem to be assuming more and more that the www is just another production channel (supply chain, if ya like). It's emphatically not.procoder rar

The deep economics of peer production are very different - they're about supply-side network fx, strong complementarity, and increasing returns. All of which are very different from traditional media competitive dynamics, and create very different industry structures.

Right. It's impossible for the big guys to think outside their networks. They can only think centralized; that was their core value, after all. They must learn how to think distributed: If they want to play in this new world at all, if they can, they must find out how they can help enable people to do what they want to do where they are already doing it. procoder rar

This means sharing content. It means sharing promotion. It means sharing knowledge and training. And, most of all, it means sharing money. It means supporting citizens' media in every way. procoder rar

Think eBay: It lets people start new businesses. What is the media equivalent of that? How do you create the world's biggest network by not tying it to a network, by even giving up your old network? procoder rar

I haven't seen many examples of this. I've seen big-media companies try to suck up content and cool from the new guys; that will expire like milk at a 7/11. I've seen new, little-media companies use the old, big-media models but make it work just because it's so much cheaper. I haven't seen many, if any, truly enable (and then exploit) the distributed universe. I'm working on my little corners of it, trying to push notions of the open-source infrastructure that become necessary if you're going to enable a distributed model. But it's not easy. Media always -- always -- existed thanks to its closed networks, thanks to controlling the means of distribution. When the advantage of distribution disappears -- and, in fact, becomes just a cost that weighs you down vs. your new, Web. 2.0 competitors -- these guys don't know what to do. They want to impose the old models on the new instead of accepting that the old is gone and understanding the opportunities of the new. procoder rar

Current.TV isn't it, or doesn't look like it's going to be. Blog posts quoted in print or on TV isn't it. Enabling the distributed world ... now that's it. procoder rar

July 16, 2005

What a Goofy idea

: Here's the dumbest idea for a podcast I've heard yet: Listen to Disney extolling the wonders of Disneyworld. What's next: The Ron Popiel knife podcast? The hold-music podcast? The subway announcements podcast? The annoying car alarm podcast? The Dell excuses in a foreign accent podcast? The Rush Limbaugh podcast?procoder rar

Tolerating intolerance

: Leon de Winter, a Dutch novelist and wise, wry social critic (or so I think, having read a few of his novels translated into German), writes in today's New York Times about the death of the historic Dutch culture of tolerance, in the wake of the murders of Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn. procoder rar

The terrible irony is that tolerance, fully exercised, ends up enveloping intolerance.

For centuries the Netherlands has been considered the most tolerant and liberal nation in the world. This attitude is a byproduct of a disciplined civic society, confident enough to provide space for those with different ideas. It produced the country in which Descartes found refuge, a center of freedom of thought and of a free press in Europe.procoder rar

That Netherlands no longer exists.procoder rar

The murder last year of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose killer was convicted this week, and the assassination of the politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 marked the end of the Holland of Erasmus and Spinoza.procoder rar

No, the Dutch suddenly did not become intolerant and insular. But these killings showed the cumulative effect of two forces that have shaken the foundations of Dutch civic society over the last 40 years: the cultural and sexual revolution of the 1960's and 70's and the influx of Muslim workers during those years of prosperity....procoder rar

When they came to the country, often under long-term government work visas, they were faced with a highly educated but apparently decadent society in the grip of a cultural revolution. Many were astonished: was this country some sort of freak show?procoder rar

No, it certainly wasn't. Under the effusive "anything goes" exterior, the majority of Dutch people held on to their disciplined Calvinist values. To the immigrants, however, this core was all but invisible....procoder rar

And thus the delicate mechanism of Holland's traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance. The news media, politicians and artists gnawed away at the traditional values of Calvinistic civic society, while in the bleak Muslim suburbs resentment grew among the Moroccans' Dutch-born children, who found the promise of an affluent life unfulfillable.procoder rar

Meanwhile, the news media and politicians maintained an unofficial ban on any discussion of the problems of immigration: after all, in progressive Holland only socioeconomic problems were admissible. It was simply not acceptable to discuss problems relating to religion and culture.

: LATER IN BRITAIN: See, too, Michael Portillo in The Sunday Times of London arguing that mindless multiculturalism is over:
Tolerance was clearly never meant to mean that Britain should allow those with roots outside the country to flout human rights and the laws of the land on the pretext that things were done differently where they came from. The Ayn Rand Institute is right to say that it is dangerous nonsense to pretend that all cultures are morally equivalent. Such sloppy thinking corrodes our ability to distinguish good from evil.procoder rar

It is tempting in a tolerant society to want to see other people’s point of view. If Islam has thrown up its extremists, we can recall the excesses committed over centuries in the name of Christianity. We can understand that a devout Muslim might find western society licentious and irreligious. But the time for sophistry has passed. Our citizens and our society are under threat from those who believe that difference is a justification for terror and murder. Our country has the right to assert its values and require from everyone living here compliance with our laws and respect for our standards.procoder rar

Britain’s woolly thinking about multiculturalism has helped to make us vulnerable.

: MORE FROM BLAIR: Tony Blair addresses his party on tolerance and staying the course:
The Prime Minister hit back at suggestions that the London atrocities were linked to injustices in the Middle East, saying it was the 'almost-devilish logic' of extremists to play on western guilt.procoder rar

Their propaganda was clever and sophisticated, he told an audience of Labour party delegates in London: 'It plays on our tolerance and good nature; it exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world - as if it is our behaviour that should change, that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil; that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs.procoder rar

'Their cause is not founded on injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such that it can't be moderated. It can't be remedied. It has to be stood up to.'

: So where does all this end up in my mind? Tolerance is good and necessary and civilized. Multiculturism is good; I'm so multi-culti I don't know how mult-culti I am. But tolerance for criminals is always dangerous and wrong-headed. See the post below on the angry young men. We would not tolerate and understand and whisper about KKK killers or Nazis or serial killers. Why should we tiptoe tolerantly around the murderers of 7/7 or 9/11 or any day in Iraq today just because they are multi to our culti? We should not. procoder rar

Just in time for Harry Potter

: Know how the papers they read in Harry Potter movies have moving images. Well, now Fujitsu introduces electronic paper that can show moving images even while bent. [via B&C]procoder rar

Angry young men

: When it turned out that the London bombings were carried out by four young Muslim men born in England, it seemed to give a lie to Tom Friedman's theory that Muslim terrorism sprouts from the anger of young men in Arab nations who have no hope of economic prosperity and freedom. procoder rar

Here were young men who may not have been born into Windsor Castle, but they were living in a land of freedom and opportunity. So how can they be portrayed as anything other than what they are: murderers? procoder rar

Well, today, The Times tries to continue portraying them as angry young men.

"I don't approve of what he did, but I understand it. You get driven to something like this, it doesn't just happen."procoder rar

To the boys from Cross Flats Park, Mr. Tanweer, 22, who blew himself up on a subway train in London last week, was devout, thoughtful and generous. If they understood his actions, it was because they lived in Mr. Tanweer's world, too.procoder rar

They did not agree with what Mr. Tanweer had done, but made clear they shared the same sense of otherness, the same sense of siege, the same sense that their community, and Muslims in general, were in their view helpless before the whims of greater powers. Ultimately, they understood his anger.procoder rar

The news that four British-born Muslim men from neighborhoods around Leeds were suspected of carrying out the bombings in London has made the shared dissatisfaction of boys like these and the creeping militancy of some young British Muslims an urgent issue in Britain.procoder rar

The bombers are an exception among Britain's 1.6 million Muslims. But their actions have highlighted a lingering question: why are second-generation British Muslims who should seemingly be farther up the road of assimilation rejecting the country in which they were born and raised?

The problem with that analysis is that though it does not justify their actions -- it tries to understand them -- it gives a tacit logic, even a justification, to the horribly illogical, unjustifiable, uncivilized crime. procoder rar

What they did is a crime. That's all it is, nothing more. A crime.procoder rar

But when we treat it as something else, when we try to understand it, when we grant the veil of political correctness -- of understanding, even tolerance, invoking fuzzy words like "otherness" -- we risk spreading the crime, making it if not acceptable then at least understandable for others. It is a cousin of glamorizing crime, of turning these scum into ideological, religious Bonnies and Clydes.procoder rar

Well, not Bonnies... Which brings up an entirely different question: If terrorism is caused by anger, then wouldn't the women of the Middle East be far more likely to turn into terrorists, since they are even more oppressed than their brothers and husbands, who are also their oppressors? procoder rar

So is it about anger at all? Or is it just a crime? And shouldn't we treat it as that? A crime. procoder rar

Do we justify vehicular manslaughter under the influence of alcohol because alcoholism is a disease? No, we treat the act as a crime and slap the killer in jail.procoder rar

Do we tolerate corporate fraud because the perpetrator was raised in a culture of competition, success, and greed> No, we treat the act as a crime and slap the thief in jail. procoder rar

Now it's fine to understand these acts insofar as it helps stop them. Yes, we must understand our enemies to defeat them. And, yes, sometimes we must understand the causes to eliminate those causes -- and I'd argue that supporting democracy in the Middle East is just that. procoder rar

But that's not what's happening in the efforts to understand why these young men did this terrible thing in London. This is not a military analysis aimed at finding and killing the enemy before he kills again. This is a sociological effort to understand them. And it begins with the presumption that we should accept their anger as as real.procoder rar

Well what the hell do they have to be angry about? They're fed. They're free. They're educated. They have health care. They can say and go where they want. Having problems with bullies on their playgrounds, are they? Well, don't we all? But we don't turn into Columbine killers or London bombers or Baghdad bombers who target children or the perpetrators of September 11th. Nothing justifies that. Nothing makes that understandable. procoder rar

Do we try to understand the BTK killer? Not really. Oh, we try to justify the sensationalistic coverage of the case in the media. But no one truly tries to understand him and justify what he did. No one asks whether he was angry (or, as it turns out, horny). We know he is a deranged killer and that's how we treat him. We rejoice at catching him; we throw him in prison; some regret that we can't kill him; and we shake our heads at what a horrid person he is. We disdain him.procoder rar

Well, these are crimes carried out by horrid criminals as well. procoder rar

They are not insurgents. They are not even terrorists. I am coming to think it is wrong to give them even that bit of explanation and justification. procoder rar

They are just murderers. procoder rar

Are they angry? Why even ask?procoder rar

: LATERprocoder rar

Yes, to call them "terrorist" gives them too much justification. procoder rar

Look at it this way: Would you have tried to understand Edgar Ray Killen, the convicted Ku Klux Klan killer in the Mississippi Burning murders? Would you have explained his cultural shame at losing the Civil War and called him an insurgent or a militant or even a terrorist? Would you have blamed his grandparents for teaching him to have no respect for black people? Or would you simply condemn his hate and his act? The answer, of course, is C. So why should it be any different when condemning the crimes of these murderers?procoder rar

LATER STILL:

A suicide bomber in a fuel truck blew himself up beside a Shiite mosque on Saturday evening in a town south of Baghdad, killing at least 58 people and wounding 86, the police said.
And what separates this from the bombing of a Mississippi black church? procoder rar

Murder is murder. procoder rar

Mac question

: OK, Mac heads, now that you've talked me into this, answer me this:procoder rar

How do I change the function of say, the F12 key on my Powerbook to turn it into a normal old forward delete key (FN-DELETE in Macese)? I'm being driven nuts by having to do two-handed deletes. I just want a simple delete key. And I can't believe that Apple devoted entire keys to eject and to bringing up the dashboard (when they have all those pretty icons to do the task for us).
procoder rar

July 15, 2005

Blogs float

: I'm back, and not by popular demand. We just spent a wonderful week with the family at Skytop, where I didn't post much because, yes, I do know how to have a vacation and, besides, I was on low-speed. Because you asked for it, here's one more picture from the wilderness.

boat.jpg
procoder rar

Do not build it. Not there.

: There is the whiff of good sense and victory in the efforts to preserve the World Trade Center memorial as a memorial and find someplace else to build the International Freedom Center that does not belong there. The Post reports today:

Officials are searching for new locations — some away from Ground Zero — to house a pair of controversial cultural centers slated for construction next to the 9/11 memorial, it was revealed yesterday.procoder rar

"We're making one last look around the site to see where it is feasible," said John Whitehead, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., referring to the hunt for homes for the International Freedom Center and the Drawing Center.procoder rar

The officials are looking "within the 16 acres" of the World Trade Center "and beyond," he said at an LMDC board meeting.procoder rar

The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation has asked him to look for a different space for the two centers, Whitehead said.procoder rar

But, he added, it's doubtful they will be moved.procoder rar

"It's not likely that we would find another place, but we are making an effort," he said.

Well, try a little harder, sir. procoder rar

Like the families, I have never suggested that these centers should not be built. But they should not be built at the World Trade Center (not on its 16 acres) for they do not belong there. They distract and detract from the memorial. And any effort to make them inofffensive if they are built there will only be seen as censorship. So from the start, I called for them to be built elsewhere. Now it appears that process has begun. procoder rar

Unfortunately, the sniping at the families who have brought this to our attention continues:

Whitehead, meanwhile, took aim yesterday at three directors on the foundation's board who have publicly criticized the proposed cultural projects.procoder rar

"The misrepresentations they have offered have done serious damage," he said without naming names. "The public is confused about the elements of the site."procoder rar

Monika Iken, Debra Burlingame and Lee Ielpi — each of whom lost a family member on 9/11 — have opposed the cultural centers.procoder rar

The public has "been told that the campaign is to 'take back the memorial' — as if it ever went away," Whitehead said in an apparent reference to the critics' Take Back the Memorial campaign.procoder rar

Last night, Burlingame accused Whitehead of having violated the memorial board's code of conduct, unanimously adopted this week.procoder rar

"It is regrettable that the ink is barely dry on the code . . . [yet] the chairman would slander three of the board members while at the same trying to muzzle us," she said.procoder rar

The board meeting was attended by several relatives of victims of the terror attacks who oppose the cultural projects.procoder rar

"He's already dismissed the idea that it could happen," said Charles Wolf, whose wife was killed on 9/11.procoder rar

The reference was to Whitehead's unenthusiastic pledge to look elsewhere for the cultural centers.

In an edidtorial, the Post also calls Whitehead on his pouting, foot-dragging, apparently insincere effort to find new sites for the center.
the governor would do well to get Whitehead in sync with the new plan.procoder rar

Or maybe it's not a plan at all — but rather a scheme to dupe those who object to politics at the 9/11 memorial.procoder rar

For Whitehead immediately discounted the plan, saying "it's not likely" another site will be found.procoder rar

This means either Pataki's folks are dissembling again (imagine that), or that Whitehead, arrogant as always, is thumbing his nose at the governor....procoder rar

The IFC and the Drawing Center may or may not have something to add to the post-9/11 debate.procoder rar

But not at Ground Zero.procoder rar

Pataki and Whitehead (whoever is in charge today) need to move them offsite — once and for all.Look harder, Mr. Whitehead. procoder rar

: See also the letter writers taking out after the NY Times and its editlorial in favor of building these centers on sacred ground. Says one:

The International Freedom Center can be built in lots of other places in New York. Ground zero is the wrong place. The "small, vocal group of protesters" you speak of represents what most New Yorkers think. You are out of touch with the public.
: See also the Take Back the Memorial blog, where more than 33,000 people have signed the petition disagreeing with Whitehead and the Times editorialists. procoder rar
July 14, 2005

Hear Yost

: Just got email from Cam Edwards, who says that Mark Yost, center of much journalistic controversy, will be on his Sirius show on Patriot 141 (friendly territory, no doubt) on Friday at 5:20p ET. procoder rar

Soon air will carry a warning label

: Today's absurd news from the nanny culture:

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, supported by other health advocates such as Children’s Hospital Boston, petitioned the Food and Drug Administration Wednesday to require warnings on soft drinks to alert consumers about over-indulging.procoder rar

It suggested sample warnings such as “Drink less (non-diet) soda to help prevent weight gain, tooth decay and other health problems,” or “To help protect your waistline and your teeth, consider drinking diet sodas.” It also suggested a label that bears a notice that caffeinated drinks are inappropriate for children.

How absurd. The nanny culture treats us as if we are all stupid and the nannies are the only ones who know what's best for us -- in food, in culture, in language. procoder rar

They bomb children

: They are the worst of mankind: The terrorists in Iraq are now bombing children.

Outside the door to the refrigerated room, Amjad's sobbing mother called his name over and over, as if to summon him back to life. Then she looked up and asked: "What did he do to deserve this? They are killing children. Why? Why?"procoder rar

Amjad and more than a dozen other children from east Baghdad's al-Khalij neighborhood made up the majority of the 27 people killed when a suicide bomber drove into a crowd that had gathered around U.S. soldiers who were handing out candy and small toys, police said.

Why does any responsible news organization try to dignify these people with labels like "insurgent," as if they have a cause and a purpose other than murder? Why doesn't every national and religious leader in the Arab world condemn these criminals for what they are? Why aren't other nations joining the fight to rid Iraq of this evil? procoder rar
July 13, 2005

Fore!

: My son put together this collage of his clumsy dad on the golf course. When you can't trust your own son....

golf.jpg
And, yes, that last picture is called "topping the ball." That is followed by cursing the ball. procoder rar

Press criticism criticism

: There have been a fair number of pixels devoted to the discussion over St. Paul Pioneer Press editorialist Mark Yost's criticism of media coverage of the Iraq war. Yost wrote:

I know the reporting's bad because I know people in Iraq. A Marine colonel buddy just finished a stint overseeing the power grid. When's the last time you read a story about the progress being made on the power grid? Or the new desalination plant that just came on-line, or the school that just opened, or the Iraqi policeman who died doing something heroic? No, to judge by the dispatches, all the Iraqis do is stand outside markets and government buildings waiting to be blown up.procoder rar

I also get unfiltered news from Iraq through an e-mail network of military friends who aren't so blinded by their own politics that they can't see the real good we're doing there. More important, they can see beyond their own navel and see the real good we're doing to promote peace and prosperity in the world. What makes this all the more ironic is the fact that the people who are fighting and dying want to stay and the people who are merely observers want to cut and run....procoder rar

Instead, we get Monday's front-page story about a "secret" memo about "emerging U.S. plans" to withdraw troops next year. Why isn't the focus of the story the fact that 14 of 18 Iraqi provinces are stable and the four that aren't are primarily home to the genocidal gang of thugs who terrorized that country for 30 years?procoder rar

And reporters wonder why they're despised.

Fair criticism, I'd think. procoder rar

But over in Romensko's letters, Steve Lovelady seethes:

Amazing. Mark Yost, an [editorial page] editor at Knight Ridder, the ONE news outlet which has consistently exposed the lies at the heart of the Iraq invasion and the grim reality of the current occupation, turns on his colleagues.procoder rar

I can't wait to see how the KR Washington bureau and the KR Iraq
contingent reponds to this one!procoder rar

There he is, guys. Go get him. You owe your readers no less.

What is amazing about this is that Lovelady is the managing editor of the friggin' Columbia Journalism Review Daily. You'd think that he would welcome intelligent, reasoned, two-sided discussion about media's coverage of this controverial story. Instead, he acts like the fat kid on the playground egging on the bullies in a fight. procoder rar

And we certainly know where the Columbia Journalism Review stands on war coverage, don't we now?procoder rar

But I'd like to see a real discussion on this. So I'll egg on a fight, but one fought without eggs: I would love to see a debate between Yost and Lovelady. I just emailed them both:

Gentlemen:procoder rar

How about engaging in a debate on Iraq war coverage in American media?procoder rar

Steve Lovelady: I found your snipe at Romenesko to be, well, unsatisfying. It did not address the issues raised by Mark Yost.procoder rar

Mark Yost: I would like to see you engage Steve and those who believe as he does.procoder rar

So how about a debate, sirs? I suggest an email debate. I'll be happy to post your responses on Buzzmachine.procoder rar

First question, if you are willing:procoder rar

Is American media coverage of the Iraq war balanced? Or do American media harbor an agenda in its coverage -- and if so, what agenda? Do American news media succeed -- or even try -- to present the positive and the negative news coming out of Iraq? Is there an obligation to be balanced? Or do you believe that balance would present an inaccurate picture of the news there?

I'll let you know when and if I get responses. Meanwhile, please give your own in the comments. procoder rar

: LATER: Steve Lovelady emails:

Jeff --
I'll have to decline, on several counts.
First, if I were going to debate Yost, I would want to do it at CJR
Daily, not at Buzzmachine, for obvious reasons.
Second, if you think my "snipe" at Romenesko did not address the
issues Mark raised -- when in fact I spent my entire letter
pointing out that the very specific and detailed Iraq coverage of
his OWN newspaper chain puts the lie to his careless accusations --
then you most assuredly would find my stance in any further debate
"well, unsatisfying."
Third, if what I currently read on Romenesko is any indication, poor
Yost already has enough fires to put out within the trade -- and
most especially within his own shop. I think the kindest thing any
of us can do at the moment is to leave the hapless lad to stew in
his own juices.
He's in it deep, and it's going to take a while to wade out.procoder rar

All best,
Steveprocoder rar

ps --Another option for you: Try David Cay Johnston, at the Times.
In a rather clinical but systematic manner, he pretty much
disemboweled Yost on Romenesko today after doing three minutes'
research on the Internet.

: Here's another link to a Yost colleague going after him. The link to which Lovelady refers is here, a bit of the way down. procoder rar

: And who says journalists are dispassionate? Everybody in this argument is seething and spitting and acting like they're on the playground still. There is a legitimate debate to be had over coverage of the war in Iraq. I don't see it yet. procoder rar

: LATER STILL: Mr. Lovelady emails again and I quote in full:

Jeff --
There's another reason not to engage in a debate with the most
unfortunate Mr. Yost:
The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Take a fresh look at Romenesko. This poor bastard has become the
pinata of the day.
Latest to weigh in:
* Charles Laszewski, a Pioneer-Press colleague of Yost;
* Clark Hoyt, KR Washington bureau chief (who addresses his remarks
not only to Yost but to the editors of all 33 KR papers, which
tells you something about Mr. Yost's future);
* and Hannah Allam, KR's eloquent Iraq bureau chief.
All of whom, as it happens, speak with lethal precision about the
matter at hand.
My guess is that by Monday Mr. Yost will be too busy standing in
line outside the St. Paul unemployment office to engage in
leisurely Internet debates.
Which, frankly, is as it should be. He's a right-wing shill who
belittled and betrayed the hundreds of reporters who go into harm's
way every day to tell us what the hell is really going on.
Steve
ps -- Please consider this on the record too. In fact, if you'd
publish it, I'd be grateful
So anyone who questions the party line, the orthodoxy, the company way, the union line should be banished to unemployment? Whew. procoder rar

Can American media's coverage of Iraq be questioned and judged? I would have thought that the answer should be, "of course." But the answer is, "of course not."procoder rar

What a fine lesson in journalism this is. procoder rar

: AND HE KEEPS EMAILING: Another missive from Mr. Lovelady, quoted in full:

Jeff:
This one takes the cake.
What an intellectually dishonest schmuck you are.
I supply you with
* Charles Laszewski, a Pioneer-Press colleague of Yost, who is
embarrassed at even being in the same building with the guy and who
eloquently explains why;
* Clark Hoyt, KR Washington bureau chief, who has for two years led
KR's groundbreaking coverage of the Iraq lie in Washington;
* Hannah Allam, KR's brave and brilliant Baghdad bureau chief, who
daily lives a life that would turn Mark Yost into a sniveling worm
hiding under his bed.
* David Cay Johnston, your colleague at the New York Times, who
demolishes Yost after 3 minutes on the Internet collecting contrary
information.
And you accuse me of wanting to avoid discussion ?
These four are far more eloquent than I at exposing Mark Yost as the
fraud, safely ensconced (for the moment) in an air-conditioned
office in St. Paul, than I could ever be.
How much "intelligent, reasoned, two-side discussion" do you want?
I gave you enough to last a week, Bubba.
Shame on you.
I still see the kid on the playground, not the experienced, dispassionate journalist and academic open to criticism of journalism; he collects links of those who agree with him in trying to lambast this guy Yost. Keep the email coming, Steve. procoder rar

I am asking whether there is room to question and criticize American media's coverage of the war in Iraq. I believe there is. Lovelady et al appearently believe there is not. Whether or not Yost is the ideal critic, I don't know. But an earnest discussion of the successes and failures and issues and shortcomings of coverage of the war should always be in order. And that's why I find it doubly shocking that the managing editor of the Columbia Journalism School's CJR Daily only seems interested in attacking this critic. Aren't there legitimate issues here to discuss? I think there are. procoder rar

A birthday in the family

: My son's blog just turned 1. There I also just learned that Digg has redesigned and it looks good and now even I can understand it. procoder rar

Neither Blog Son nor Blog Daddy will be posting much today. We're going golfing with PopPop (who'd be Blog GrandPa, if he blogged). And yes, in my case, golf is a comical adventure of lost balls, muffled curses, murdered grass, creative arithmetic, and knobby knees. There will be no photos. procoder rar

July 12, 2005

If only Rather had a blog...

: CBS News announced its big new internet strategy after hiring CBS Marketwatch founder Larry Kramer as the head. They invited a bunch of bloggers to the press announcement (but I couldn't attend, being off in my mountain retreat). procoder rar

Full disclosures (it's a day for full disclosures): In their early stages of planning, I spoke with Kramer, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, and CBSNews.com editor Dick Meyer offering my two cents. procoder rar

Features of the new CBS News strategy include:procoder rar

: A new blog that will "create a candid and robust dialogue between CBS News journalists and the public -- a move unprecedented among CBS's peers in broadcast and cable television journalism." It will "serve as the conduit between the public and CBS News to take viewers and users inside the news gathering, production and decision-making process via the use of original video and outtakes, interviews with correspondents and producers, and input from independent experts, among other methods." It's not an ombudsman; it's not an anchor blogging; it is an effort to open up two-way communication with CBS' audience about how CBS News makes its decisions. procoder rar

They say it's to be edited -- not sure why they don't say written -- by Vaughn Ververs, the National Journal's editor of The Hotline. procoder rar

: A "cable bypass strategy" -- which is to say that CBS News missed the cable train and so now it's trying to catch the internet plane. So they will serve news directly to the internet. Broadcasting & Cable reports that this will include a video player called The EyeBox to show 25,000 news clips and an initiative to get TV staffers to feed news to the web 24 hours a day. Let's hope they have more luck doing this than newspapers have had....procoder rar

This is a response to many developments: missing out on cable... the growth of the internet as a primary means of delivering news... the shrinking (and aging and dying) of the network news audience... and, yes, l'affaire Rather. If they'd had that blog when the Rather scandal developed, we would have had a place to look for and demand their response and they would have had to have responded. Things might have turned out differently....procoder rar

Snoblog

: As an emailer said, Sarah Boxer is at it again. The NY Times culture writer assigned to the internet -- lucky us -- now takes it upon herself to formulate a strange Marxist (or is it Maoist?) analysis of We'reNotAfraid.com, the wonderful weblog of Photoshopped images of solidarity, stiff-upper-lippedness, and defiance to terrorists.

The site displays a range of defiant postures. Some people hold up their middle fingers, presumably for the terrorists to see. Some people posted pictures of American soldiers, presumably for Londoners and Americans to see.procoder rar

But more and more, there's a brutish flaunting of wealth and leisure. Yesterday there were lots of pictures posted of smiling families at the beach and of people showing off their cars and vans. A picture from Italy shows a white sports car and comes with the caption: "Afraid? Why should we be afraid?"procoder rar

A few days ago, We're Not Afraid might have been a comfort. Today, there's a hint of "What, me worry?" from Mad magazine days, but without the humor or the sarcasm. We're Not Afraid, set up to show solidarity with London, seems to be turning into a place where the haves of the world can show that they're not afraid of the have-nots.

What's the most charitable word I can give to that: Sophomoric? Yes, that's it.procoder rar

And so what if we do want to flaunt our prosperity in defiance of those who would kill us for it? We should damn well flaunt exactly what the terrorists hate and fear most: freedom, sex, commerce, speech, women's rights, openness, success, prosperity, tolerance. I proposed (in a suggestion the NY Times editorialists today would have really hated -- see the post below about the 9/11 memorial) that we should use the now-disputed space at the World Trade Center to build not an International Freedom Center but instead a mall and a theater that shows R-rated movies. Now I say we should have Donald Trump send in a picture of himself wearing a "We're Not Afraid" button. And pictures of women and Jews, too. procoder rar

The worst of Boxer's analysis is that it feeds right into the why-they-hate-us culture: It's as if she's offended on behalf of the terrorists for showing them what we have and they do not: freedom. Well, damn it, we are successful and that is what they hate most and so we should brutishly flaunt it. procoder rar

Further, to hide the essence of our culture and our era -- our ability to be prosperous and leisurely -- is some strange signal of defeat. Should we hide our westerness, our modernity, our openness, our success, and our freedom as, say Jews had to hide their Jewishness in '30s Germany? If we do, then it's time to get out the burkas, ladies. procoder rar

But, of course, that's absurd. procoder rar

This is the same Boxer I complained about when she wrote about Iraqi bloggers (which led to this exchange [and see my parenthetical full disclosure in the post below]). procoder rar

Do not build it. Not there

: A New York Times editorial attacks 9/11 families for attacking plans for the International Freedom Center at the World Trade Center.

But in the past few weeks, we've watched a handful of vocal family members, who may not represent a majority of 9/11 families, change the dynamic at the World Trade Center site for the worse. They have begun a movement to "take back the memorial," which means, in essence, eventually purging ground zero of its cultural partners, including the International Freedom Center.
Well, I'd say we could easily turn that paragraph around and say that in the prior few weeks, we'd seen the International Freedom Center change the dynamics at the World Trade Center for the worse. They played a game of ideological hide-and-seek, taking a picture of a victorious, purple-fingered Iraqi voter out of their presentation because, apparently, democracy in Iraq isn't freedom worth celebrating. They created unimaginable links between 9/11 and American sins of slavery and, by implication, links to the why-they-hate-us worldview of 9/11 and terrorism. They said there'd be debate at the World Trade Center when, until then, I don't think anyone imagined there would be anything other than memorial and tribute there. procoder rar

The Times continues:

This protest resulted in a shocking response in late June from Gov. George Pataki. He openly joined the criticism of one of those institutions - the Drawing Center - for an exhibition that it sponsored, in another part of town, that contains controversial images of 9/11 and America's role in the world. And he has called on all the cultural partners at ground zero for reassurances that their programs will harmonize with the concerns of this small group of family members.
What's shocking is that anyone ever thought it would be a good idea to have such debates over the graves of the heroes and innocents of 9/11. It was a bad idea to include such an institution there. When I first heard "cultural center" at the World Trade Center, I was thinking perhaps a nice theater or perhaps a downtown extension of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not a forum for debating issues (and bashing us). But, of course, once you open the doors to art and expression, you can't shut it off to some and not others; that is not the American way. And so what's mistaken is to open those doors there, at this sacred place. Do it elsewhere. Not at the World Trade Center.procoder rar

The Times also takes quite a couple of swipes at the 9/11 families (my emphass):

By attempting to appease one small, vocal group of protesters who are unlikely to be appeased anyway, he is abrogating the rights of everyone else.... What was offered as an open invitation to restore the artistic life of Lower Manhattan will have turned into an invitation to provide only the kind of cultural offerings that please a vocal group of people whose genuine grief has already taken on a sharply political edge.
As if the IFC did not take on a sharply political edge? As if Pataki does not live by politics? That, once more, is why it is a mistake to have this debate there. Where is the debate society headquarters at Arlington? Where is the controversial gallery at Auschwitz? Why are they building this at the World Trade Center?procoder rar

: Full disclosure: This has been my advice on this blog and, directly, to Debra Burlingame, who now leads this protest. As I told you here, I spoke with her after her Wall Street Journal op-ed exposed what was happening at the IFC and advised that she should not find herself in a game of trying to edit and revise the committee behind the IFC or what it stands for or says; there is no winning that. Instead, I said, the memorial should be reserved for memory and tribute and we should not build distractions to that. I said that should be the families' goal. Obviously, I was not the only one who advised that. But I'm not a disinterested, dispassionate observer in this story. (Further full disclosure: I consult for a division of the NYTimes Company but I have utterly no connection with the paper's editorial page.)procoder rar

The story so far

: In news, I'm no fan of scandal journalism because I tend to get lost in the games of he-spat-she-spat and I think that most scandals ultimately have very little to do with our lives and distract from issues and stories that do matter. procoder rar

In the far less momentous word of so-called personality reporting, I also was no fan of the equivilant, what I came to call bodily fluids journalism: the emphasis on personal scandal over professional products. That is one essential reason why I created Entertainment Weekly: Because of a number of factors in the mid '80s (the remote control and cable and the resultant fragmentation of the audience; the rise of personality and the value of celebrity to market media; the increasing power of flacks as the new gatekeepers to the famous and what came to pass for news...), the stars' movie or TV show or album became far less important in media than the stars' sex scandal or baby or disease or death. So I started a magazine about product over personality, that helped you decide where to spend your money and time. procoder rar

I don't mean to stand up above the scandal mongers, all haughty. That's pretty hard for a former gossip columnist and People writer to do. It's just the way I look at things.procoder rar

And that's why I tend to pay little attention to scandals until I have to... which means I'm often behind the times. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing for a newsman. I was behind on l'affaire Rather until you, my readers, made me catch up and you were right to do so. procoder rar

Yesterday, I got email from a blog friend asking why I haven't been on top of l'affaire Rove (formerly known as l'affaire Plame) and the truth is that I just didn't keep up with all the ins and outs. The implication when people ask a blogger why he's not writing about a story is that there's a political motive: Why are you and Reynolds ignoring Rove? Confess! Apologize! Blog! But, in fact, it's usually just the case that the blogger simply doesn't care about the story and since a blog isn't a newspaper of record -- a blog is personal -- that's perfectly fine. I have not been a devotee of the Niger-Wilson-Plame-Miller-Cooper-Rove game of hot potato from the start. It's a pretty sleazy story of overlapping hidden agendas. I don't get my rocks off digging into scandals. And so I have not written about it. I haven't had anything worthwile to add. procoder rar

Still, I will admit it's time to catch up. But I look at the mountain of charges and countercharges with exhaustion. Just today, I read the NY Times story about White House silence (what we used to call stonewalling) on the hit reality show Rove and the Reporters past the jump without getting a summary of what exactly is now known or acknowledged about Rove's involvement. The Times assumes that we're all keeping up on every back-and-forth like good Sisyphusean scandalmongers. I haven't been. But The Times can't edit every story for ignorant dolts like me who haven't been keeping track of a story. Newspapers try; they add background graphs into the middle of tales but in the case of a saga like Rove/Plame, it's impossible to sum it all up in a graph or two. procoder rar

About a year ago, I wrote a post (which I can't find right now, being bandwidth challenged in the mountains but here's the same material in a Powerpoint on how technology changes news) arguing that if you created a news product from scratch today, you wouldn't include those background graphs. You'd link to the background instead. News would fork into 'now' and 'then.' The only problem is that news organizations aren't structured to give the news that way. Newspapers especially don't tell you what's happening right now; they tell you what happened a few hours ago, when they're good and ready. Apart from the scattered background graphs, they also aren't good at getting you up to speed on a story you've missed; they don't gather collected wisdom. Newspapers and newsrooms just aren't structured to do that. procoder rar

But the web is structured to do just that: to tell you what's happening right now and to gather collected wisdom. procoder rar

So I need someone to give me the story so far. Or the scandal so far. procoder rar

I went to Wikipedia's entry on Karl Rove and it was pretty good, though this triple negative took me 5 minutes to parse:

It would not have been illegal if Rove was unaware that Plame's CIA employment was classified information.
[The only way to make that sentence more befuddling would be to put it this way: "It would not have been illegal if Rove was unaware that Plame's CIA employment was not public information." A quadruple negative. But I digress.] procoder rar

Now you can the argument about whether Wikipedia is factual and edited and journalistic and all that. But at least it did help me get up to speed. procoder rar

Now the question remains whether I care. Sorry, but if I went to a party and heard one group dissecting Plame/Rove and another group dissecting War of the Worlds, I'd join the latter conversation. In a blog, it's hard to feign interest. procoder rar

: LATER: If you subscribe to the content analysis school of you-are-what-you-don't-write-about then Dave Winer finds evidence that NPR is part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. procoder rar

What's in a name?

: Tom Gross, author of an influential newsletter about coverage of Israel, writes a wonderful op-ed in the Jerusalem Post about the BBC's brief rediscovery of the word terrorist, which its ridiculous editorial guidelines all but ban -- except, it appears, within hours after a militant-insurgent-bomber nearly blows up your journalistic ass:

Britain's first bus bombing took place barely half a mile from the BBC's central London headquarters, and for a day or so after last Thursday's multiple bomb attacks the BBC, the influential leftist daily Guardian and even the British-based global news agency Reuters all seemed suddenly to discover the words "terrorism" and "terrorist." In Saturday's Guardian, for example, one or other of these words appeared on each of the first 11 pages.procoder rar

In marked contrast to BBC reports about bombs on public transport in Israel – bombs which in some cases were even worse than those in London since some were specifically aimed at children and most were packed with nails, screws, glass and specially-sharpened metal shards in order to maximize injuries – terms like "guerrilla," "militant," "activist" or "fighter" were suddenly nowhere to be seen.procoder rar

Nor – again in contrast to their coverage of Israel – did BBC correspondents, on either its domestic or international services, provide sympathetic accounts of the likely perpetrators, or explain to viewers that we must "understand" their "grievances."

Tom points us to Gene's post on Harry's Place with screenshots of the BBC's coverage before and after a crackdown by its PC police. procoder rar
July 11, 2005

Light posting explained

: I'm on vacation. procoder rar

Dell Hell: Deaf and dumb

: One of the great lessons of the cluetrain era is that your customers are your best customer support agents and marketers if only you allow them ... and respect them enough to listen to them. Dell does't. As we reported the other day, Dell shut its general customer forums... which should be the place for customers to help each other. Dwight Silverman found Dell's company line:

As for the Customer Care board, many of the non-technical issues posted there can only be addressed by authorized Dell representatives with access to customer information - not by peers as the Forum is designed to facilitate. That said, these questions are best handled through other secure online tools.
Or, clueless Dell, your customers can just blog their questions and answers without you. Or should I say, former customers?procoder rar
July 10, 2005

notafraid.jpg

We are not afraid

: A wonderful site of photos sent to London with a simple message: We are not afraid. Send your Photoshop messages of support to: pics@werenotafraid.com. [Hat tip: Pete]procoder rar

My contribution:

binladenafraid.gif
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Empower the people

: WKRN TV in Nashville is becoming a -- maybe the -- leader in understanding and exploiting the value of citizens' media (thanks to good advice from Terry Heaton and Michael Rosenblum). They just held a training session for viewers to shoot news video. Now that's the ticket: empower the people and everyone will win. procoder rar

Quacks like a blogger....

: Romenesko insists he's not a blogger. But he sure sounds like one in this post as he points to a San Fran Chron story complaining about Wired magazine sending "'scary letters' to readers who refuse to renew." And then he adds:

(Business 2.0 pulled that with me, too; I never agreed to an automatic renewal plan, although the mag's rep claimed I did.)
Sounds just like me complaining about Dell. Well, with less volume (in both senses of the word). But note that a blog is personal and that is a personal moment. And that's fine. Come to the light, Romensko, come to the light. procoder rar

The vast wing-ding conspiracy

: James Wolcott responds to my lament -- among others -- that Oliver Stone is going to make the first U.S. 9/11 movie with a paen to -- well, actually it sounds more like a eulogy for -- Stone's career. Wolcott is trying to find some vast right-wing conspiracy in people complaining about Stone seeing vast left-wing conspiracies. For me, it's much simpler and I come to it not from a political perspective but instead from two vantage points: the first as a critic (once a critic, always a critic) and the second as a New Yorker who sees the memories of that day as sacred. procoder rar

From the critical perspective, I'll repeat: Stone make crappy movies. He's a hack. Ace Hardware should have gotten technical Oscars for making the sledgehammers with which he pounds out his plots (in both senses of the word). I thought Wolcott had better taste than this, a finer sense of subtlety. But no: He says Stone actually deserved the Oscars he got for his Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, films writ in neon. But most surprisingly, Wolcott says in public that he thinks Stone got robbed for an Oscar with JFK. procoder rar

And now to the perspective of a witness: In JFK and other films, Stone shows no respect for the truth. He makes up his own truth. And I do not want to see that happen to September 11th. As a journalist, I would think that Wolcott would have higher standards for films that pretend to tell a story and add to history. procoder rar

Wolcott says Reynolds', Kaus' and my complaints are about politics and Hollywood. No, mine is about talent and taste and the truth. procoder rar

: Wolcott also replies to those who say that the heartland is rejecting Hollywood values at the fizzling box office:

The falling box office, as most sensible observers realize, is more due to the tremendous boom in plasma TVs, DVDs, digital cable, and all of the other sleek luxuries of home entertainment theater, which for increasing numbers of people beats sitting in a noisy audience and being flogged with an endless series of ads and movie previews.
Well, yes. But I disagree with both sides in this spat about the decline of Hollywood movies: It's not about values and it's not just about technology. It's about quality. I have been desperate to see a movie for weeks -- I love popcorn -- but I haven't been able to find one worth the trip. procoder rar
July 09, 2005

Novak who?

: Jay Rosen says it's time to give the cold shoulder to Robert Novak:

I, for one, have had it with Robert Novak. And if all the journalists who are talking today about "chilling effects" and individual conscience mean what they say, they will, as a matter of conscience and pride, start giving Novak himself the big chill.
: It was Novak yesterday who said that Rhenquist was retiring, setting cable news operations across the land into high alert. He was wrong. I half wonder whether somebody wasn't gaming Novak to game his credibility. procoder rar

Search me

: Jason Calacanis prays for Yahoo or Google to launch blog search. Yahoo appears answers his prayers via angel Steve Rubel. [Via Steve Baker. procoder rar

Dell Hell: The Postscript

: Houston Chron tech guru Dwight Silverman decided to call Dell and find out what their policy and strategy is regarding issues their customers raise in these newfangled blog things. That's whatcha call real reporting.

I spoke with Jennifer J. Davis, a spokesperson in Dell's consumer products group, who said that Dell does indeed monitor online blogs and discussion forums. She would not say how many people are engaged in doing so.procoder rar

However, it's a policy of look, don't touch -- those monitoring do not respond publicly, nor do they try to make contact pro-actively.procoder rar

"The best process for getting issues addressed is to contact us directly," she said.procoder rar

Of course, for those U.S. customers frustrated with loophole-ridden repair/return policies, overseas call centers whose employees can't master English or techs who can't think outside the script, direct communication doesn't always result in customer satisfaction.procoder rar

Davis said the company aims its resources at fixing these problems, hoping that improved customer experiences will translate into more positive buzz. She said internal surveys show an uptick in customer satisfaction, and is hoping soon-to-be-released independent studies will echo those results.procoder rar

Those who are waiting for Dell's executives and technical types to blog a la competitor HP, you'll be on hold for a while: There are no plans for sanctioned Dell blogs anytime soon.procoder rar

However, Davis said the company is formulating a policy for employee blogs that should be released soon.procoder rar

She said Dell sees blogs as unnecessary at this time.procoder rar

"With our direct model, we feel like we already have a good, two-way communications channel with our customers," Davis said.procoder rar

Of course, it depends on what you do with the incoming communication. A two-way conversation only has value if you take action on the problems you're hearing about.

Clueless. Absolutely clueless. And keep in mind that this is a technology company. It's also a company that doesn't have a retail channel and so it should have a different, direct, new, and better relationship with its customers. Instead, it's worse. procoder rar

I repeat my offer, Dell: If you're reading this, I'll come and explain it to you. PowerPoint primed and ready. procoder rar

: Christopher Carfi at the Social Customer Manifesto has been tracking the Dell saga and also has some great reporting. He found out that Dell is closing its customer forums! And so he used that vaunted Dell two-way communication to find out why they're cutting off that two-way communication in an IM with a faraway land. procoder rar

: And all that pretty much answers the Blog Business Summit's Dell Cluewatch: They asked anyone who ever heard from Dell after posting about the company to come forward. They're going to wait a very, very long time: When Dell Hell freezes over. procoder rar

Oh, no, anything but that

: Conspiracy nutjob, has-been, and bad filmmaker Oliver Stone is making the first movie about 9/11. procoder rar

: Joe Gandelman also laments. procoder rar

Video jockeys: Help, please

: Can you video experts tell me what the quality issues are with video recorded onto SD cards et al instead of onto tape and discs. What's the maximum quality of such digital cameras? I'm asking for a project that would involve a lot of people carrying cameras all the time and so smaller is better, and so is easier. Appreciate the advice. procoder rar

July 08, 2005

News as it doesn't happen

: I'm at MSNBC now, ready to go on Connected. I was to do London bombing links. Then they said they wanted the hurricane. Oh, no, I pleaded, not the No. 1 Cable Cliche?!? No, they agreed, we'd do both. Whew. I just hate being a cliche. But then came the rumors that at least one Supreme would step down. So I'm ready with late-breaking blog links. This is news.procoder rar

: Before going on, I'm watching Christopher Hitchens fence with Ron Reagan over Iraq and terrorism; much fun. We want our Hitchvision.procoder rar

Marching against terrorism

: Here's a nascent effort to organize a march against terrorism and terrorists in London. I found it via this London blogger, whom I found via this London blogger, whom I found via Technorati's London bombing page. Wish I could join them. procoder rar

Media on media

: I'll be on Brian Lehrer's show momentarily (11:40a) and on MSNBC's Connected tonight at 5p to talk about new media and the London attacks. procoder rar

The Muslim problem

: Here's the elephant in the world that we too often don't dare address in our PC era:procoder rar

Are Muslim terrorists a Muslim problem? And should the Muslim world -- its religous and political leaders and its citizens -- be fixing this problem by condemning and hunting down and jailing and stopping those who murder innocents in their name? procoder rar

When we ask that, we meet responses like the ones in the comments directly below. Some of the folks there have no problem condemning the war in Iraq and George Bush and America with it. What's wrong with looking for condemnation from the Muslim world? What's wrong with looking to see demonstrations against Muslim terrorism by the vast majority of Muslims in the Muslim world just like the demonstrations against an American war held by Americans in America?procoder rar

Last night on the BBC, I heard a leading London Muslim cleric respond to the bombings by complaining that the likely perpetrators are called Muslim terrorists. procoder rar

We're dancing around PC wording when we should be directly dealing with the problem here. procoder rar

But today, Tom Friedman dances closer to the flames. He says that, indeed, this is a Muslim problem... because, if the Muslim world does not deal with it, the actions of the worst among them will affect them all (my emphasis):

Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.procoder rar

And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.procoder rar

What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed. Many people said Palestinian suicide bombing was the spontaneous reaction of frustrated Palestinian youth. But when Palestinians decided that it was in their interest to have a cease-fire with Israel, those bombings stopped cold. The village said enough was enough.procoder rar

The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks....


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The morning after

: Jonah Lehrer on the morning after:

The mood of London is a strange one this morning. As Auden wrote in "Musee des Beaux Arts": "everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster." He was right. Outside I hear buses, not sirens. The sun is shining, and the usual crowd has gathered in the Starbucks across the street. Having been in NY for 9/11, I find something deeply inspiring about the way these cities dust themselves off.
But there is no doubt that the conversation has changed. The peace, love and understanding of July 6th has morphed into questions of who, what and why. It's time to count the dead. Gone is Bono and Geldof. The TV's are now saturated with incessant loops of the Police Commissioner explaining exactly how much he doesn't know. It makes me sad to say, but no one in this city is thinking about melting glaciers and rising oceans. Let's hope our leaders give us some news to cheer us up.
: And on Global Voices, they're aggregating views from the Muslim blogopshere. They're quoting condolences. I wonder how representative that is. If only it were. procoder rar

: LATER: Various commenters are going after me for that last night. I'll repeat what I said in response to one in the comments on the post above:

No, Ethan, I am saying that if the good sentiments in those blog posts were truly representative of the street and leadership of the Muslim world, we would see that condemnation and legal recourse and broad demonstrations. I truly wish it is representative. But it is a legitimate question to wonder whether it is.
procoder rar

New news : Fred Wilson says "this [my post below about witnesses to news reporting it on their blogs] is what its all about and why CNN with its 24x7 news channel is hopelessly out of date."procoder rar

Not if CNN et al are smart enough to take advantage of the millions of new reporters who can keep them on top of the news.procoder rar

: Ironically, I was supposed to have lunch yesterday with the president of such a news network to talk about just this. But, of course, we had to cancel because of the big news. But we did reschedule. procoder rar

: I also think this is ironic: The blog segment on MSNBC, which I was to do last night, was preempted by the London news. But, of course, there was news -- at least Londoners' stories about that news -- on the blogs. procoder rar

: As I also noted yesterday, it is now reflex for the BBC and the venerable Times of London to solicit stories from the public and to publish them. Of course, they didn't have to ask. All they had to do was go reading their local bloggers. procoder rar

: I'm also struck by the new definition of news. As I wandered through the London blogs listed by subway station, I found, again and again, bloggers using their new tool just to tell their family and friends, "I'm fine." That is the news that matters most, isn't it?procoder rar

: ALSO: I found Technorati -- its search and its tags -- useful in finding London bombing news and reaction yesterday. They put together a special page aggregating the tags. procoder rar

: Joe's Dartblog as a montage of front pages. procoder rar

Equivalencies

: In the Guardian, Polly Toynbee argues that the Olympics should be London's memorial to the attack -- and, stiff upper and all that, I can see Brits taking on the games with just such determination. procoder rar

She also joins in the game of equivalencies that tries to make terrorism equal something. For Galloway, it equals retribution for Iraq. For her:

How barbaric, Tony Blair rightly said, that the terrorists should strike just as the G8 at least strives to do better on Africa and climate change. Yes indeed. But then barbarism is in the eye of the beholder and every act of war is justified in the warped minds of its perpetrators. Barbaric might also be 30,000 children a day dying in Africa while a mere 25,000 US cotton farmers keep their trade-denying subsidies. Or Bangladesh soon to be washed away in global-warming floods. Or arms sold to those who will force them upon child soldiers, or any number of worldwide atrocities.
Dangerous game, that. Cotton farmers... soldiers hunting down terrorists... and terrorist themselves won't appear in the same sane dictionary under "barbaric."procoder rar
July 07, 2005

The rest of the day

: I'm listening to the BBC's Five Live now as more and more people call in to tell their stories of the day in London: the moment of the attack, not knowing what was happening, escaping danger without the knowledge of how great the danger was, spending hours walking, just walking, not sure how to get home.... Yes, this reminds me very much of the rest of that day in New York almost four years ago now. procoder rar

Fatwa this

: Musliim clerics gather to limit the issuing of fatwas:

The move is meant to weaken statements by figures involved in fighting in Iraq who ordain violence....procoder rar

They all also agreed that followers cannot label other Muslims as "apostates", something groups in Iraq have done to justify attacks against Iraqi police and civilians.procoder rar

A conference statement said the clerics agreed that an adherent of each of the eight schools of thought "is a Muslim".procoder rar

"Declaring that person an apostate is impossible, verily his or her blood, honour and property are sacrosanct," according to the statement read by Jordanian Religious Affairs Minister Abdul-Salam al-Abadi.

How about issuing one big fatwa against Muslims murdering Muslims... and Britons... and Americans. How about one big fatwa against terrorism? procoder rar

: And will the Arab street have the balls to condemn the terrorists who just murdered Egypt's envoy to Iraq? At least Mubarek is calling his murderers terrorists.

President Hosni Mubarak expressed condolences for the death of Egypt's top envoy in the country, Ihab al-Sherif, and called his killers "terrorists" after al-Qaida in Iraq claimed on Thurday to have killed the diplomat.procoder rar

"This terrorist act will not deter Egypt from its firm position in support of Iraq and its people," Mubarak's office said in a statement carried by the state news agency MENA.

procoder rar

Later

: More bomb links as the evening goes on.....procoder rar

: Here is a very good roundup of London blogs and moblogs from the Wall Street Journal (free link). procoder rar

: Tony Blair gives an eloquent statement, of course. It is about values.

It is through terrorism that the people that have committed this terrible act express their values, and it is right at this moment that we demonstrate ours. I think we all know what they are trying to do - they are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cower us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do, of trying to stop us going about our business as normal, as we are entitled to do, and they should not, and they must not, succeed.procoder rar

When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed. When they try to divide our people or weaken our resolve, we will not be divided and our resolve will hold firm. We will show, by our spirit and dignity, and by our quiet but true strength that there is in the British people, that our values will long outlast theirs. The purpose of terrorism is just that, it is to terrorise people, and we will not be terrorised.procoder rar

I would like once again to express my sympathy and my sorrow to those families who will be grieving, so unexpectedly and tragically, tonight. This is a very sad day for the British people, but we will hold true to the British way of life.

: A friend points to the most emailed stories on Al Jazeera right now:
• Bush falls off bike again
• Dozens killed in London serial blasts
• Car bombs kill many in Iraq
• Study shows hookah health risks
• Will US keep letting Israel sell arms?
Dozens killed by terrorist bombs ranks No. 2. [Hat tip to Tom Coscarelli]procoder rar

: UPDATE: Sam Richardson emails that I'm being unfair (well, Tom is) with the Al Jazeera snipe. He sends a list of NY Times emailed articles and the bombing comes out much lower there. The reason, he argues reasonably, is that big stories are the least likely to be emailed since everyone knows them (or because there are so many versions, perhaps). procoder rar

: ProjectNothing has lots of links. procoder rar

: See Tim Porter on his unread newspapers. procoder rar

The bomb-us-please crowd

: Well, it didn't take long for the we're-to-blame self-flagellators to come out. And who better to lead the charge than MP George Galloway:

"We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings."
: And his idiocy never stops:
We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way, as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East.procoder rar

Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free of the threat of needless violence.

To borrow the Oliver Willis Analysis: Stupid, just stupid. procoder rar

: Incredibly -- or not so incredibly, I suppose -- A Kossack praises Galloway:

I have to say, this is the right note to strike in my opinion.
You have to say it? Because you just can't help yourself?procoder rar

News everywhere

: We have now reached the point where we could be assured that when a big news event happened, witnesses would be online with accounts of it in a matter of minutes. News was never like that. But now, that's the way it is. procoder rar

Here is a moblog photo from the London subway after the attack, uploaded vy Adam Stacey here (via the Guardian newsblog).

londonmoblog.jpg
: The BBC picks up the picture here along with another moblog picture and some truly frightening photos of a decapitated bus.
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Stupid TV

: I'm in an office in New York and cut off from the world of TV news because, apart from the BBC -- which is, of course, getting hammered right now -- none of the big networks streams its news live over the internet; they're putting up clips that become stale the moment they're up. Oh, yes, they don't want to piss off the cable companies. But how about pissing off the public they serve? Get online, people. It ain't 1990 anymore. procoder rar

: I also tried to listen to the BBC or CNN or Fox via Sirius on the internet, since I pay for it. But, apparently, licensing deals cut that off. I tuned into a left talk station and they said they didn't know what was going on. Now, at last, I'm listening to the BBC via WNYC.procoder rar

Millions of people are now cut off from the news these organizations are serving. procoder rar

Not again

: A series of explosions hit buses and subways in London and isn't it a terrible state of the world when we now have too many suspects in such terrorism. procoder rar

The entire transit system in London has been shut down. There are reports of the top of a double-decker bus flying off. There are many eyewitnesses, bloodied, telling of very bad injuries and of people trapped in trains. As occurred in New York on 9/11, the phones, land and cell, are all but off. procoder rar

Here is a directory of London bloggers organized, with irony, around the Underground. As you find bloggers who are reporting, please let us know in the comments here. procoder rar

Skitz heard the explosions nearby. Norm Geras has started writing about it; he's updateing here. A Samizdata blogger is blogging from work. The London MetroBlogger was riding the transit system. Command Post is on the case.procoder rar

BBC report . Just saw a fuzzy picture (via PBS in New York) that appeared to be a web cam, camerca phone, or sat phone from a correspondent on a London street, getting news in an fast as possible. I also see jump security cams being used live on CNN via a British network. They are now saying that these are the security cameras we have heard about (and saw dramatized on the BBC/HBO drama about a dirty bomb in London): There are cameras for every 20 people in London, they're saying. procoder rar

Reuters here:

Several blasts hit the underground network and police said there had been at least three explosions on buses in the city.procoder rar

A source at the Metronet consortium that runs part of the capital's underground network said "there were three explosions and there have been some fatalities."procoder rar

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the blasts had caused "terrible injuries."

The Guardian is staying on top of the tragedy with Neil McIntosh manning the Newsblog:
1102 The pictures coming in from around the city are truly shocking. Down near Holborn there's a bus - possibly one of the big tourist buses that are a fixture on the London streets - with its top floor ripped apart. One report talks of the injured being operated on in the concourse at Liverpool Street station.
Times Onlinein London is asking Londonders to email their stories into the paper. It's report here.procoder rar

The Sun is covering many angles to the story and is also asking for people to send in their n ews. procoder rar

Mirror here. procoder rar

: Eamonn Sullilvan reports on his blog and does what we all do first: He tells his family he's fine:

I'm fine and I've talked to Kathy. Scary stuff because this seemed to have happened on my Tube line, near my work, around the time I would have been there (I'd have left Liverpool Street station around 8:30am). I'm working from home today. Some of the kids take the same Tube line to get to school, but on the opposite side of London. I'll have to drive and pick them up at school today, along with hundreds of thousands of other anxious parents.
That story times millions. procoder rar

BEEN THERE: As I came toward New York this morning, I looked over at the skyline, as I always do now. This morning, I made sure there was no smoke. I was nervous about taking the train into the city and decided not to go to the World Trade Center today. I also decided to get into the city before 9am, which seems to be the murderers' witching hour. And when I got to the city, I called my wife to let her know I had arrived safely; she expects that. That is life anywhere in the world in a world of terrorism. procoder rar

: I heard Tony Blair listening to the BBC on my Sirius on the way in and just watched him on Reuters raw video. Every syllable, ever glance communicated his personal devestation. procoder rar

: Many links from Tim Worstall. Many, of course, from Glenn Reynolds. Many on the UK blog aggregator. procoder rar

July 06, 2005

Instanet

: Austin Bay creates video in the war zone and Glenn Reynolds produces it. We should start thinking of all this as a network. procoder rar

On shields

: I don't have a simple, 1-D opinion about what Judith Miller and Norman Pearlstine did in the Plame case, nor about shield laws. procoder rar

I'll likely be drummed out of the corps of journalism (if I haven't been already and, if I have, what the hell, I'm not a joiner) but I've come to see that Time Inc. Editor in Chief Pearlstine did the hard thing, probably the right thing. The easy thing for him to do would have been to defy the court, stand by the journalistic orthodoxy, refuse to hand over the subpoened documents, lump fines that wouldn't mean diddly to Time Warner, and go into the J-Hall of Fame on the back of his jailed reporter, Matthew Cooper. The hard thing to do was to defy the orthodoxy and conclude that, indeed, news organizations are not above the law. If the law is an ass, then change the law; that's what we do in this country. procoder rar

Meanwhile, Judith Miller is taking the brave move of protecting her source and I have to respect that even if others do not. procoder rar

And I am relieved for Matthew Cooper, getting his get-out-of-jail card at the last minute in the form of a dispensation to testify from his source. To quote a more charitable blog than the last one linked:

The First Amendment may suffer for Cooper's decision, but telling your six year old son that you may not come back for 180 days to uphold press freedoms not granted under the scope of a federal investigation makes the decision easy.
I've confessed that I'm not sure I would have the courage to go to jail and say goodbye to my children over professional privilege; I might be tempted to open an ice-cream stand instead. procoder rar

As for shield laws: I'll repeat what I said before:

I firmly believe that anyone and everyone can do journalism; I am a blog triumphalist, a proponent of citizens' media. So there should not be a special privilege for people who are somehow officially accredited as journalists -- not only because that excludes citizens who do journalism but also because it puts those credentialed at risk of having their credentials pulled by authorities. We do not want to find ourselves in that position.procoder rar

Should there be a privilege? When everyone has it, there is also the danger that someone will claim privilege to hide criminal behavior: Someone will claim via a blog that they are doing journalism and have privilege and thus refuse to reveal a source of what they wrote in civil or criminal matters.procoder rar

This had led many to say that privilege should not extend to criminal activities: that it is an obligation of citizens who know of criminal activity to reveal that. If that were the standard, then Miller would still not have privilege.procoder rar

Frankly, I'm not sure where I come down. Ying-yangs:procoder rar

I do believe in the necessity of privilege to enable the watchdogging of the powerful.procoder rar

At the same time, I think we have grossly abused confidential sources in media and perhaps ruined privilege in the process.procoder rar

I do think that if journalists have privilege then all citizens have privilege when they practice journalism, which now anyone can do: Anyone can publish.procoder rar

I also believe there need to be limits -- for example, regarding criminal activity. But then that, too, defangs privilege.

This onion has more layers:procoder rar

On the one hand, not having protection for confidential sources means that they will be less likely to blow the whistle on power and that is bad for democracy.procoder rar

Let's not forget that the prevailing issue here isn't just journalistic secrecy but government secrecy and what should and should not be kept from us in our alleged interest. And who's going to determine what that interest is?procoder rar

On the other hand, for journalists to claim "privilege" is for them to separate themselves from the public they serve and we've had too much of that. Journalists used to be citizens with a press. But now all citizens can have the press. Now we all can be journalists with sources and secrets and the public's interest at heart. So where does that leave us?procoder rar

I said before -- and suffered the scorn of one particularly snooty, nasty, old-fashioned journalist as a result -- that if Watergate happened today, Deep Throat would get a blog. That was seen as another moment of blog triumphalism. But I already have more than enough of those. procoder rar

What this really means is that the state of anonymity and secrets changes. Now someone with a secret to reveal can do it and does not need to hide behind a reporter's shield to do it -- and, in many cases, cannot hide behind that shield: The source can go to the internet and reveal the secret directly, and anonymously. The internet becomes the anonymizer that reporters have been. So then no one knows who the source is. And no one knows how credible the revelation of the secret is. But that is where we head when we kill the middlemen. procoder rar

Of course, as we get to the stinky middle of this onion, we will find all kinds of smelly motives of people using people to push their own agendas. It's not just about principle. It's about politics. procoder rar

: Full disclosures: I consult for About.com, owned by The New York Times Company. I know Norman Pearlstine and used to work for Time Inc. I used to work for Matt Cooper's late father-in-law, Henry Grunwald. procoder rar

On the air

: I'm supposed to be on MSNBC's Connected Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, subbing in the blog report spot. procoder rar

Today, I'll be talking about the Olympics, Karl Rove, and Feed Lindsay.procoder rar

: UPDATE: Now I'm not doing the blog segment. Now I'm joining in segments on Miller/Cooper.procoder rar

: VIDEO AT 6:53: Ian Schwartz has the video from Connected.procoder rar

Google prison hack

: Martha Stewart tells Vanity Fair that she figured out how to take the drat unfashionable ankle bracelet off:

Asked about the electronic monitoring device she must wear on her ankle she has complained repeatedly that it irritates her skin Stewart says she knows how to remove it. "I watched them put it on. You can figure out how to get it off," she is quoted as saying. "It's on the Internet. I looked it up."
But Phillip Torone says Martha is a better Googler than he. He can't find this on the internet. Can you?procoder rar

The lesser of...

: Arianna endorses Alberto Gonzales for the Supreme Court. Well, as good as....

That’s right, Dobson and Bauer and Schlafly and Perkins, and groups like Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America have been so focused on sticking a knife through Gonzales’ Supreme Court chances that hearing their collective pining for “another Scalia or Thomas”, and reading rants like the National Review’s “conservatives would be appalled and demoralized by a Gonzales appointment,” I actually had a brain freeze moment where, I’m ashamed to admit, I thought: Gee, I hope Bush picks the man who thinks the Geneva Conventions are “quaint”. I wonder if that’s what happened to Boies too when he made his prediction, without voicing any concern, that Gonzales would be confirmed.
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Good riddance

: I, for one, am delighted that New York lost the 2012 Olympics. We did not need another security threat; an expensive stadium; drug-crazed athletes; an overdose of reporters; endless gushing features on the 6 pm news; candy-colored banners festooning our city, trying to put us in a good mood; and yet more touurists. New York never needed the Olympics and as they pointed out on the radio this morning -- comparing the crowd of thousands of losers, as it turns out, in Paris vs. the gaggle of reporters in New York -- New Yorkers never wanted the Olympics. procoder rar

: LATER: As My World Turns says Chirac may have lost Paris the Olympics with his snarks at the Brits (below):

But -- and here is the Olympics connection -- it was also hinted both in London and on last night’s NBC News that Chirac’s faux pas could only hurt Paris’ bid for hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics. NBC News mentioned that two of the judges who would decide which city was going to host the 2012 Summer Olympics were from Finland! A little revenge on their part might have gone a long way...
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How Kos is like a Subaru bumpersticker

: In the spirit of peace, love, and kindness, Kos likens the American right to al Qaeda and shows how the American left has no loonies of its own. Just a few of his deft notes:

Self-image
Al Qaida/Taliban: Belief in their own infallibility
American Taliban: Belief in their own infallibility
Liberals: Willingness to consider other viewpoints...procoder rar

Free Speech
Al Qaida/Taliban: Anyone who disagrees with us is an infidel and must be silenced
American Taliban: Anyone who disagrees with us is a traitor and must be silenced
Liberals: Anyone who disagrees with us is in for a spirited discussion

Well, unless you disagree with Kos or Ollie....procoder rar

: Not wanting to be accused of subtlety or restraint, here's more.
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July 05, 2005

Beware the blogs!

: Now it's the Washington Post's turn to write a silly, paranoid, and ignorant story smashing blogs. Telling a story about someone who speculated on a blog that someone was running for a seat in Virginia politics -- someone who said he tried to listen in on a conversation on a politician's front yard -- the Post moans:

"It's creepy. That somebody would spread rumors on Jim Moran's seat, that's not all that surprising. The fact that somebody is keeping tabs on who we have over to dinner, that's more problematic," she said. "The whole thing about being anonymous is that there's no accountability. They can literally post anything."procoder rar

Such is the new and emerging realm of Internet blogs. Since the 2005 Virginia election cycle kicked off, the number of blogs talking about Virginia politics has swelled to at least 20. Many are run anonymously, allowing people to express their views freely -- and giving them an easy way to spread rumors and half-truths.

Oh, I'll be there are a helluva lot more than 20 of them. Run for the hills!procoder rar

Arabs attack Arabs... and it works

: So now the insurgents terrorists of Iraq are going after Arab diplomats to get them to leave the country... and, sadly, it's working.

Gunmen ambushed the top Bahraini and Pakistani diplomats in separate attacks as they drove through the capital today, spurring Pakistan to announce the withdrawal of its ambassador from Iraq.procoder rar

The Bahraini diplomat, Hassan Malallah al-Ansari, was struck in the right arm by a bullet and taken to a hospital. The Pakistani ambassador, Muhammad Yunis Khan, escaped unharmed, though a car in his convoy was raked by bullets. The ambushes came three days after the top Egyptian diplomat here was kidnapped as he drove alone through western Baghdad. Insurgents appear to have begun an organized campaign to drive Muslim diplomats out of Iraq as the American and Iraqi governments are pressing Arab countries to send ambassadors here and upgrade their diplomatic ties.

You'd think, you'd hope that the proper response among Arab brethren would be to denouce the attacks with defiance and vow to stay. You'd think. procoder rar

: Later: Says Captains Quarter:

The Arabic world has now gotten a taste of al-Qaeda diplomacy over the past week, as Iraq-AQ ringleader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has changed tactics. Instead of just blowing up Iraqis in an attempt to demoralize the populace -- a strategy that clearly has backfired -- he has now turned his guns and bombs on diplomats posted to Iraq from neighboring Middle East countries....procoder rar

It's difficult to devise a dumber strategy than this, and it reeks of desperation. Some of these countries have significant sympathy in their population for AQ's goals in the region. However, these attacks not only risk alienating their less-lunatic enables in the Middle East, they threaten to turn Arabic governments from positions of benign neglect to active and deadly opposition to AQ and its supporters. No government will blithely allow its envoys to become targets for Islamists, no matter how sympathetic they might be.procoder rar

Zarqawi must know this -- he's crazy, but so far we've seen no evidence that he's stupid. To go out of his way to antagonize countries like Egypt and Bahrain, he must realize that all other options have run their course and have failed. He risks accomplishing what George Bush has tried for years: uniting Arabs in the Middle East to fight terrorism and to support democracy, specifically in Iraq.

We can only hope.procoder rar

Filtered coffee

: Chris Anderson has a nice riff on the role of the filter vs. the friend (that is, the middleman/editor vs. the recommender/neighbor) in the post-scarcity, mass-of-niches era of media and products.

In the existing Short Tail markets, where distribution is expensive and shelf space is at a premium, the supply side of the market has to be exceedingly discriminating in what it lets through. These producers, retailers and marketers have made a science of trying to guess what people will want, to improve their odds of picking winners. They don't always guess right--there are surely as many things that deserved to make it market but were overlooked as there are things that made it to market and then flopped--but the survivors get a reputation for some sort of mystical insight into the consumer psyche.procoder rar

But in Long Tail markets, where distribution is cheap and shelf space is plentiful, the safe bet is to assume that everything is eventually going to be available. The role of filter then shifts from gatekeeper to advisor. Rather than predicting taste, post-filters such as Google measure it. Rather than lumping consumer into pre-determined demographic and psychographic categories, post-filters such as Amazon's custom recommendations treat them like individuals who reveal their likes and dislikes through their behavior. Rather than keeping things off the market, post-filters such as MP3 blogs create a markets for things that are already available by stimulating demand for them.

His chart:
postfilters.jpgprocoder rar

It can also be expressed as first-person vs. third-person markets. procoder rar

An industry, befuddled

: This post on the Editors' Weblog sums up the state of the collective vision and strategy in the worldwide newspaper business:

Who has the best business model? Associated New Media announced recently that it was to scale back its Evening Standard website because it was cannibalizing sales of its print edition. Today, the news is that Mirror Group Newspapers, parent company of the tabloid The Daily Mirror, plans on expanding its online ventures in order to increase online revenue and readers.
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Really Simple Sales

: The NY Times discovers advertisers discovering RSS. The is no doubt that RSS -- whether people know what the initials mean or even know they're using it -- will become a major transport of content. But I've said before that it needs to deliver user stats via cookies before it really takes off (and before publishers will be willing to deliver full content and not just links on it). procoder rar

Cat Frog fight!

: Ever the gentleman, Jacques Chirac manages to piss off the Brits before the G8:

An astonishing diplomatic blunder by Jacques Chirac soured relations with the UK after it emerged that he had mocked Britain’s cooking and reputation for trustworthiness.procoder rar

His comments, made during a private conversation with President Putin of Russia and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, were overheard and printed in the Libération newspaper yesterday.procoder rar

“The only thing that they have ever done for European agriculture is ‘mad cow’ disease,” M Chirac said of the British. “You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland,” he told amused colleagues during a meeting in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on Sunday.procoder rar

M Chirac’s remarks are being seized upon as evidence of “Old Europe’s” true feelings towards Britain when relations have been severely strained by the budget row at last month’s European Union summit.

procoder rar
July 04, 2005

Dell hell: Where's the flack when you need him?

: Steve Broback at the Blog Business Summit looks up Dell's PR company's web site on blogs and it says:

One refers to an ancient (feb 2003) Fortune article with blog in the headline, and the other assures clients that OutCast is on top of the whole crazy, kooky blog thing:
Blogger Relations
Here’s what every technology vendor fears about blogs: they don’t know what they don’t know. OutCast navigates the confusing world of the blogosphere on behalf of our clients so they can focus on their business. There are an estimated 9 million blogs today, but which ones matter to you? It’s our job not only to tell you, but to help you negotiate that terrain. How do we do this? Remember when News.com was new? Remember when Usenet mattered? We do. So relax. Breathe. Whether it’s radio in the 1920s, TV in the 1950s or the Web in the 1990s, new media is new media.
Except when it's not media, when it's customers talking. procoder rar

Variety, spice, and all that

: I should add to the points below that I'm looking to try out Word Press not out of any problems with Movable Type. In due course, I want to try various of the tools; I started on Blogger and moved to MT (but did not upgrade to the latest version because it was likely beyond my own IQ) and now want to try WP. There are lots of great tools enabling this new medium and I don't mean to slight any of them. Besides, my son is my webmaster and he says he'll support WP. Gotta do what the boss says. procoder rar

Conversation stoppers

: Continuing the theme of technological dependence and addiction... Since I have given tough love to Technorati over time for not being able to constantly update its counts, I should in the spirit of equal opportunity lament PubSub these days: I haven't seen updated links there in days. Wazzup? I depend on these services to find out what people are saying. When they don't work, it's like losing my cell phone. procoder rar

Broken type

: This weekend's burp in Movable Type installations -- which came because of a conflict in an update of the Control Panel that controls many web servers -- reveals an odd vulnerability of citizens' media. No medium before could be so handicapped by a single bug or glitch (or virus or spam attack). Of course, in blogs, we're used to it; Blogger used to go down all the time and with it half the Blogosphere then . But what's oddly unnerving in this case is that an external change could have such an impact. Then again, because this is a community, people shared symptoms and then solutions with dispatch. procoder rar

The fake war

: Jay Rosen on the fake war media has declared over the Supreme Court nomination. We hear anchors and morning-show gabbers talk about this as if there is breaking news, as if the fighting is going on now. But the truth is, of course, that we're just waiting. Says Jay:

Meanwhile, I do think "the armies of ideological activists from both sides" now gearing up for the battle royale are embarking not on a rational exercise in political persuasion--a battle for hearts and minds in proper terms--but an absurd and wasteful media campaign that will probably have little effect on the nomination itself, yet serve perfectly the purposes of those for whom culture war is way of life.
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Slippery devil

: David Carr in today's NY Times on podcasting (full disclosure: he quotes me with a full disclosure):

For the time being, podcasting is a cipher, a technology that seems to further threaten established media's stranglehold on public consciousness, but offers little opportunity in the way of a real actual business. Big media are aggressively attempting to get their arms around the next big thing. But it remains elusive, a medium that is viral and uncontrollable by nature, and that does not threaten to become a business any time soon.
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The new, improved Buzzmachine

: I am not ready to pull the switch just yet, but here is a preview of the start of a new Buzzmachine on Word Press. (Don't use that address; it will take over the buzzmachine.com address when I'm ready.) I will leave the old, Movable Type site up forever as an archive. I have more to do on the new but my amazing son set it up in no time tonight.....procoder rar

July 03, 2005

Problems with Movable Type conflicts at the host. Can't post anything longer than this. I'm a jinx. Switching to Word Press next.....procoder rar

QUESTION: Any issues running both Word Press (for the current blog) and Movable Type (archiving everything up to this point) on the same server? I assume I simply need to have WP in a different directory. I'm thinking of doing this to avoid rebuilding MT and killing all the permalinks. procoder rar

QUESTION 2: Can I change the name of the RSS feed from Word Press so that I don't have to make people resubscribe??procoder rar

Dell hell: nearing the end (and aren't you glad?)

: Yes, I bought the Powerbook. And, yes, there have been moments when I've despaired: It feels like moving to Paris and not speaking French (though it sure is pretty there). There is as much illogic in part of the Mac world as in the Microsoft world. I damned near didn't get my printer working (and I still cannot get the proper drive installed; I keep installing the installer and then it won't show up anywhere). I damned near didn't get my Treo to sync. But I have it. And so, next week, I'll send the Dell back. procoder rar

Meanwhile... Dwight Silverman, tech guru of the Houston Chronicle, writes about the saga here:

For at least the last three years, I've heard a growing number of complaints from consumers about Dell's customer service. The gripes run from the basic -- confusing phone menus, ridiculous hold times, clueless tech support relying too much on scripts, outsourced call centers with poor English-language skills -- to the more complex, including accusations of not honoring the specifics of premium warranties and using loopholes to avoid fixing or replacing defective parts.procoder rar

I've asked Dell executives about this repeatedly, most recently at January's Consumer Electronics Show. The answer is always either a.) we're aware of this and we're working to solve the problem, or b.) we're aware of the problem and we believe it's getting better.procoder rar

But I don't think it has.

He quotes Ed Bott who says, quite rightly, that I shouldn't get special treatment because I'm a blogger or media guy.
I'm writing to express my disgust with the response that Jeff's series of rants got from other people who have high-traffic Web sites that are run by popular content-management systems (blogs, I think they're called). These folks seem to think that because Jeff is semi-famous and gets quoted a lot on other Web sites and occasionally has his face on TV to talk about these blog things, he's entitled to special treatment.procoder rar

There's no doubt that Jeff's high Google juice will result in lots of people reading about his experience. When they do, they'll get an accurate picture of how broken Dell's customer service is and how their Complete Care guarantee doesn't deliver on its promises....procoder rar

Google Dell customer service problems and you get 2,950,000 hits, with titles like "My unbelievable experiences with Dell" and "How bad is Dell support? A lot!" and "If you have problems, expect no assistance from Dell" all on the first page of results. (And Jeff, if you had done that search before you made the purchase, maybe you wouldn't have bought from Dell.)procoder rar

My point is that there is already plenty of evidence available to anyone who knows how to use Google that Dell's customer service sucks, to put it mildly. Granting special treatment to so-called A-listers only convinces me that A is for arrogant.

Absolutely right. Here's what I said in response in his comments:
I agree that bloggers on whatever list shouldn't be treated differently. But if Dell were smart, it would use blogs as an opportunity to see what customers are saying ... and to fix problems (and get good PR for it)... and to learn about their own products and service...
Dell has people clipping media services to see what Walt Mossberg is saying and, yes, Walt is influential, but he's not a consumer; he's a reporter.
On blogs, Dell would find its consumers... including the many thousands who are pissed at Dell. That should teach them something. But it won't if they won't listen.
: Jason Calacanis follows the saga here; Steve Rubel does here; Robert Scoble does here. procoder rar

Damned technology

: I haven't been on the blog because I've been too busy trying to migrate from the Dell to the Powerbook. This is the second weekend in a row that I've wasted thanks to PCs (and, yes, I blame Dell... if I had the slightest faith that a new machine would work and that their service would work, I wouldn't be doing this now... wasting time and a great deal of money). No matter what the manufacturer, we would not tolerate this degree of difficulty with cars, dishwashers, and phones... all about as complex as a PC. What a pain. procoder rar

July 02, 2005

MagMan

: To evade the long arm of the FEC, Bill Hobbs is, as you probably know, closing his blog and opening instead an online magazine. I congratulated him in is comments with these observations:

Well, as a magazine publisher, you now get:
- A table at Michael's.
- An expense account.
- A clothing allowance.
- A car service.
- An assistant who will go get you Starbucks coffee whenever you ring your bell.
- A minimally but expensively designed office with a view.
- A large ego.
- A reputation not as big as your ego thinks it is.
- The opportunity to go to too damned many conferences in Florida.
- A new hostility to those things called blogs.
Enjoy.
procoder rar

Apple help

: OK, all you Appleheads: How the heck do you find an HP printer on a local wireless network? The printer ap and the network are finding the other computers on the network but not the printers. You got me into this....procoder rar

Just what the world needs: tipsy bloggers

: Hugh McLeod, marketing genius, has convinced a wine maker to create a brand image via bloggers: We're smart, we're tasteful, we drink. procoder rar

Live 8.1

: The Live 8 concerts are being held with the best of intentions, all would agree. But not all agree that they will have the best of outcomes. We're seeing asome cautious questioning of the celebrity strategy for world change in print and online. procoder rar

Ethan Zuckerman, the American blogger who knows Africa well, raises some questions and concerns and says, "This is yet another reason why I don’t get invited to cocktail parties." Among Ethan's concerns:

No matter how dumb you think the leaders of the G-8 nations are, they’re not dumb enough to conclude that people are flocking to a rock concert because of their passion for reforming trade policy. Perhaps if thousands of people were marching in the streets to demand an end to EU dairy subsidies rather than to see U2…procoder rar

... But in the age of citizen journalism, it’s pretty easy to hear what smart, opinionated Africans think about Live 8 directly from their blogs. I just did a roundup of African bloggers writing about Live 8 over at Global Voices. You may be unsurprised to discover that, generally speaking, there’s less enthusiasm for Live 8 on the continent than there is in the US or UK.procoder rar

While it’s admirable that thousands of bloggers have added Technorati badges to their pages to promote Live 8, to support African debt relief or to try to revive Bob Geldof’s career. But it would be a damn sight more useful and transformative if bloggers would go a step further and start reading some African bloggers… perhaps starting with some of the folks who are justifiably skeptical about the value of yet another rock concert. Allow me to recommend Thinker’s Room’s “Live Aid? Please!”, Sokari Ekine’s “Live 8419″ or Gerald Caplan’s brilliant piece in Pambazuka.

Go read those links at the end. Go read this, too on British concern: "This is simply an exercise in white, Western megalomania." And keep up on more links at Global Voices. procoder rar

: Even The New York Times issues a dose of skepticism about celebrities change agents:

Aid specialists are not nearly so confident, however. "It's a good thing, in that the focus is on Africa," said Richard Dowden, leader of the Royal African Society, a private policy research body. "The danger is that it concentrates on one big push, and if you don't get what you are asking for, you are setting yourself up for disillusionment."procoder rar

Indeed, some fundamental assumptions of the campaign are also being challenged. Will good intentions be thwarted by corrupt governments? Can African administrations cope with a surge of increased aid? "The future of Africa is not going to be decided by rock concerts but by African politicians making good decisions," Mr. Dowden said.procoder rar

Sir Bob dismisses those concerns. "I am withering in my scorn for the columnists who say, 'It's not going to work,' " he said. "Even if it doesn't work, what do they propose? Every night forever watching people live on TV dying on our screens?"procoder rar

In fact, there are those who argue that doing something for the sake of it can be as damaging as doing nothing. Even the Live Aid concerts 20 years ago "did harm as well as good," said David Rieff, a New York-based writer and authority on humanitarian aid. "The Live 8 phenomenon is part of this Western fantasy of omnipotence," Mr. Rieff continued in a telephone interview, "a politically correct version of the imperial impulse to give some money and all will be well, as if the problems of Africa are just the results of our not paying enough attention."

: I listened in on a conference call about Live 8 for bloggers and I've been reading about the attempts to make it a blog cause. But something bothered me about this, too: Bloggers were offered a chance to cover the concerts but there were conditions: They had to sign the pledge and advertise the concert. But will they require The Washington Post to sign the pledge and promote the concerts before being allowed in to cover them? If not, why should bloggers be treated differently from other media? Doesn't this just guarantee that blog coverage will be sympathetic? Is it sufficient that the bloggers' views on this will be as transparent as the Live 8 badges on their sites? Or is the promise of backstage access an attempt to influence their views?procoder rar

: I'm not trying to dismiss Live 8 or the blogging efforts and certainly applaud the motives. But it's good to see that the strategy is open for questioning. procoder rar

July 01, 2005

APB: Robot on the loose

: Tom Evslin can't find his robot. procoder rar

Dell hell: Seller beware

: The age of caveat emptor is over. procoder rar

Now the time has come when it's the seller who must beware. Caveat venditor.procoder rar

A company can no longer get away with consistently offering shoddy products or service or ignoring customers' concerns and needs. procoder rar

For now the customers can talk back where they can be heard. Those customers can gang up and share what they know and give their complaints volume. Of course, they can use their reviews and complaints to have a big impact on a company's reputation and business. procoder rar

Public relations has to take on a new meaning. It can no longer be about the press and publicity, which just separate companies from the public they are supposed to serve.procoder rar

Public relations must be about a new relationship with the public, with the public in charge. procoder rar

: All that is quite obvious to any of us. But it is far from obvious to too many big companies ... like Dell. procoder rar

I tested Dell and they failed. Their customer service mechanism did not recognize a machine and service pattern and customer that were a mess. They didn't try to fix it. procoder rar

I could have stayed on the phone for hours and gone up a tier at a time playing the customer having a psycho fit (ask anyone who has heard me go after customer service people who don't serve: I play the role well). procoder rar

Instead, I chose to write about the saga here. I chose to elicit the sympathy and conspiracy of fellow pissed-off Dell customers. I chose to see whether Dell is listening. procoder rar

They are not. procoder rar

Their media people were not reading the media that matters -- media written by their very own customers. This page is already No. 5 in Google under Dell sucks. I gave them time. They failed. procoder rar

So then I emailed their media department and told them to read this blog. I gave them a cheat sheet. They didn't. They failed. procoder rar

Only when I wrote to the Chief Marketing Officer, Michael A. George (michael_george@dell.com) did I get a rise out of the company: A very nice (of course) woman named Linda with an accent (Southern... and I don't mean Bangalore) called to promise to ready the endless email exchange with Dell. procoder rar

But as we say on the internet: That doesn't scale. If every dissatisfied customer had to email the Chief Marketing Officer, Michael A. George (michael_george@dell.com), he'd never have time to market. procoder rar

: So here's where things stand right now. Linda offered scripted apologies (in the same breath that she read the standard notice that the call was being recorded). She didn't hold onto her arguments about Dell policy on at-home service (when I said that her very own employee admitted that the at-home technician would not bring the parts necessary to fix the machine). She didn't rise to the legal bait of calling the at-home program "fraudulent" and my complaining about lost work (can you say "compensatory damages"?). procoder rar

She offered to send me a new machine. procoder rar

I said I had no faith in Dell, in the quality of its products or its service. procoder rar

I asked for a refund. procoder rar

She then offered a full refund. procoder rar

I said I would decide what to do my early next week. procoder rar

In the meantime, Apple and PC cultists will battle over the dead body of my Dell.procoder rar

: You know what: If Dell were really smart, they'd hire me (yes, me) to come to them and teach them about blogs, about how their customers now have a voice; about how their customers are a community -- a community often in revolt; about how they could find out what their customers really think; about how they could fix their customers' problems before they become revolts; about how they could become a better company with the help of their customers. procoder rar

If they'd only listen. procoder rar

The little cluetrain that could

: Well, I suppose it's a start. The NY Times today extols the wisdom of consumer-goods advertisers letting their consumers have a role in campaigns and products:

Crest, a division of Procter & Gamble, is asking people to go to the Web to vote for their favorite from a short list of contenders: lemon ice, sweet berry punch or tropica exotica. Samples of the flavors are attached to some Crest products.procoder rar

Marketing executives say the campaign reflects an increasing interest by companies in involving consumers in their advertising. The trend is another way to break from traditional advertising that viewers increasingly can tune out with TiVo and other digital video recorders. Marketers say the Internet has also made interactive campaigns easier to conduct.

Note that it says they want to involve consumers in their advertising. procoder rar

I quote Doc Searls in every PowerPoint BlogBoy dance I give [available for hire -advt]:

"Consumer is an industrial-age word, a broadcast-age word. It implies that we are all tied to our chairs, head back, eating 'content' and crapping cash.' "
procoder rar

It's not about consumers -- us -- getting involved in the company's -- their -- advertising. It's about companies realizing that they are us and we are them:

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together....
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob.
It's about companies realizing that we who buy and use these products are in a better position to both market and invent them. procoder rar

So it's nice that P&G is letting us vote on a limited set of toothpaste flavors. Really, it is. I'm not being sarcastic, well, not too sarcastic. I guess I feel empowered picking lemon ice (my choice). It is a step in the right direction. But only a step. It's not a zippy ride on the Cluetrain.procoder rar

If P&G really had balls, they would have the people create the flavors they want and make the executive decision about which ones to make and then create the marketing campaign about them. If P&G really wanted to succeed, it would give up control to the people they used to call their consumers. procoder rar

More like this:

Similarly, Staples Inc. is starting its Staples Invention Quest vote Aug. 10. Staples accepted product ideas from customers this spring and said it would award a $25,000 grand prize in September and nine semifinalist prizes of $5,000 - along with possible production deals - for the best inventions, chosen by Staples judges and online voters.procoder rar

Since the Crest voting began May 2, about 500,000 votes have been cast, said Tonia Elrod, a Crest spokeswoman. Staples, based in Framingham, Mass., received about 12,000 invention proposals this year, up from about 8,300 last year, said Jevin S. Eagle, the senior vice president of Staples Brands.

Another step in the right direction. But if Staples had balls, it would open a forum, wide open, asking office workers the world around to say what products they want and how the products they sell need improvement. Go here and see why you should build a keyboard impervious to crumbs. Build it. Then take a picture of the happy snarfer typing away (a blogger, I have no doubt) as your marketing campaign. He's not asking for a cut of the profits but it would be the neighborly thing to do. procoder rar

You have to give up control -- really give up control and mean it -- to win today. procoder rar

(And you've just witnessed me starting to write that damned book.)procoder rar

Armed and on-air

: So I get email from Move Forward America making the beginning of a right-wing radio talk-show host tour if Iraq starting next week. I never thought I'd say this about a bunch of right-wing radio talk-show hosts but... I hope they're armed. procoder rar

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9.11: My story
: My audio narrative of Sept. 11
: My story of Sept. 11

Recent posts of note
: The me in media
: We won't have to explain when...
: Super-duper reporting machine
: Weblogs and big media
: A new Iraqi blogger
: Link to a story on hyperlocal blogs
: Interview with a dinosaur
: Fisking Andy Rooney
: Blogs as buzzmachines
: Jay Rosen, Part I
: Jay Rosen, Part II
: The post-Internet newspaper
: 9.11 registry
: Online News Association
: 9.11 2003 morning ... afternoon
: PBSification of 9.11
... NY Post column
: Free content

Stuff
: Hyperlocal blog on Bernards NJ
: Confess ions of a warblogger

Video weblogs:
: Vlogs - video weblogs: State of the art.
: The start of vlogs
: Watch vlogs
: VLOG showcase

B-Roll: Hourly
: Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit
: Cory Doctorow: BoingBoing
: Gawker

B-Roll: Daily
: Glenn Reynolds.com on MSNBC.com
: James Lileks
: Jay Rosen's PressThink
: Elizabeth Spiers/NY Mag's Kicker
: A Small Victory
: Nick Denton
: Dan Gillmor
: Josh Marshall
: Atrios
: Matt Welch
: Dave Winer
: Doc Searls
: Richard Bennett
: Metafilter
: MSNBC Weblog Central

B-Roll: New
: David Isenberg
: Jay Rosen's PressThink
: Zeyad's Healing Iraq
: Om Malik
: Daniel Drezner
: Winds of Change
: Dead Parrots Society
: Fred Wilson's A VC
: Adam Curry
: Everything in Moderation
: Venture Blog
: Ed Sim's Beyond VC
: Pejman
: AKMA Adam
: Halley's Comment
: Au Currant
: Begging to Differ
: Ben Hammersley
: Chuck Olsen's Blogumentary
: John Scalzi on AOL
: Scalzi off AOL
: Daily Kos
: Dean Esmay
: Greg Allen
: Harry Hatchett et al
: Marketing Wonk
: Joi Ito
: Michael Totten
: Donald Sensing
: Outside the Beltway
: Radio Free Blogistan
: Scobelizer
: Kaye Trammell
: Norman Geras
: Dong Resin

B-Roll: Presidential
: Howard Dean
: Wesley Clark
: Unofficial Clark
: John Edwards
: Bush
: DNC's Kicking Ass

B-Roll: Middle East
: Zeyad's Healing Iraq
: Hoder's Editor: Myself
: Hoder: Persian
: The Eyeranian
: View From Iran
: Blue Bird Escape
: Persian Version
: Salam Pax
: Iranian.com
: Iranian Girl
: Astigma
: Steppenwolf
: Kaveh
: Me and Sassan
: Kandahar Chronicles
: Baghdad Burning
: Tehran Avenue
: Baghdad Bulletin

B-Roll: Frequently
: Command Post
: Steven Johnson
: Textism
: Aaron Bailey's 601AM
: Quarlo photos
: Howard Sherman
: Misanthropyst
: Joi Ito
: Reason's Hit & Run
: Paul Frankenstein
: David Galbraith
: Clay Shirky
: Fimoculous
: Howard Rheingold
: Henry Copeland
: Shifted Librarian"
: The Presurfer
: Ross Mayfield
: Jimmy Guterman
: Sebastian Paquet
: City Cynic
: Chris Pirillo
: Justin Katz
: Dean Allen: Textism
: Elizabeth Spiers
: Rossi Rant
: Lawrence Lessig
: Ken Layne
: Mickey Kaus
: David Weinberger
: Solly Ezekiel
: Meg Hourihan
: Jason Kottke
: Tony Pierce
: Dan Hon
: Karl Martino
: Law Meme
: Matt Webb
: Matthew Yglesias
: Morning News
: Scott Rosenberg
: Saltire
: Matt Haughey
: Evan Williams
: Little Green Footballs
: Patio Pundit
: Oliver Willis
: Tim Blair
: Andrea Harris
: John Ellis
: Moxie
: Phil Wolff
: Marc Weisblott
: Truth Laid Bear
: Patrick Nielsen Hayden: Electrolite
: The Fat Guy
: Shiloh Bucher
: Bjørn Stærk
: Emmanuelle Richard
: Reductio ad Absurdum
: Kevin Whited
: Rantburg
: Eugene Volokh et al
: Photodude
: ReadJacobs
: Amy Langfield
: Relapsed Catholic
: Holy Weblog
: Moira Breen
: Tom Coates
: Blogs of War
: Natalie Solent
: Kathy Kinsley
: Greg Beato
: Fritz Schranck
: Justin Slotman
: Libertarian Samizdata
: Follow Me Here
: Hypergene
: Ken Goldstein
: Rand Simberg
: William Quick
: Damian Penny
: Brian Linse
: Jay Zilber
: Sgt. Stryker
: Ted Barlow
: Megan McArdle
: Charles Dodgson
: Amygdala
: Dane Carlson
: Tom Tomorrow
: Stephen Green Vodkapundit
: Daniel Taylor
: Asparagirl
: Jim Treacher
: Frederik Norman
: Oxblog
: Anil Dash
: Woods Lot
: Virginia Postrel

B-Roll: Media/Tech
: Jim Romenesko
: I Want Media
: New Media Tidbits
: Corante
: Ad Rants
: Guardian Online Blog
: Lost Remote
: Marketing Fix
: Olivier Travers
: JD Lasica
: Rick Bruner I
: Marketing Wonk
: Tim Porter
: Always On nonblog
: Fast Company
: JD on MX
: Mike Wendland
: Kevin Werbach's Werblog
: Ed Cone
: Media Life
: WSJ Marketing & Media
: Media Guardian
: Chris Gulker

B-Roll: Blogs
: Movable Type's Six Apart
: Blogroots
: Corante on Blogging
: My Social Network explorer
: My Technorati Link Cosmos

B-Roll: Deutsch
: Schockwellenreiter
: Thomas Burg's Randgaenge
: Industrial Technology & Witchcraft
: David Kaspar's Medienkritik
: Ein Blog
: Heiko Hebig>
: Haiko Hebig>
: Papa Scott
: World Wide Klein
: Now Europe
: Martin Roell
: Monoklon
: Stefan Smalla
: Blog Haus
: Generation NeXt
: Tzwaen's Brain
: Le Sofa Blogger
: Kunstspaziergänge
: Meine Kleine Stadt (photos)
: eDings
: Netzeitung (web-only paper auf Deutsch)
: A ja!
: Sofia Sideshow (OK, it's Bulgarian)
: Netzeitung on this blog

Family
: My son's!
: My sister

JEFF JARVIS is former TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He was until recently president & creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Now he is working with The New York Times Company at About.com on content development and strategy and consulting for Advance, Fairchild, and the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, where he lead the creation of the curriculum for the new media program. He says he is at work on a book.
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