So Yahoo hired Kevin Sites to report on war for them. On the one hand, sure, that’s cool: multimedia man hired by the thoroughly modern media company. But does anyone else think it’s strange to have a site and a reporter who covers just war? Yahoo emphasizes that this doesn’t mean they are “building any kind of news organization.” So that means, instead, that they’re just going for the bloody bits?
Tag: Weblogs
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In Media Guardian
A second personal announcement: I am now a regular, every-other-week columnist for Media Guardian.
I’m delighted and honored to be there because I’ve long admired the Guardian’s media section and because I think the Guardian is the best-written newspaper in the world (in English, at least). And note that I’m there not thanks to my resume but thanks to my blog. In fact, they say they want me to write for print on themes I’ve explored here — how shall we say this? — for screen.
It’s also cool to be in the first edition of the new, medium-sized, Berliner-format Guardian.
Today’s column reiterates and polishes up some of what I’ve written about news media and Katrina. The Reader’s Digest version, just the lead and the kicker:
In less than a day, Hurricane Katrina rendered worthless the printing presses and broadcast towers that made big media big. And that will change news forever….
But journalism’s rediscovered courage and newly discovered fallibility are, I will contend, less profound changes than the one brought on by the flooding of presses and the toppling of towers. For at that moment, news was freed from the shackles of media. Now he who controls distribution no longer controls news. And news is no longer shaped by the pipe that carries it. That is what Katrina did to the news.
Rex Hammock, a magazine publisher and fellow blogger at Rexblog.com, wrote that the Times-Picayune and nola.com deserve a Pulitzer for their news blogs. I second that. It doesn’t matter whether the work came rolling off a press or a blog: it is journalism of the highest calibre and greatest service. The Pulitzer committee would serve journalism well by separating the content from the container, the medium from the message, and recognising great reporting wherever and however and from whomever it comes, with or without a press.
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Citizens’ media is citizens’ business
Damn, I’m impressed: Terry Heaton just sent an email to Nashville bloggers inviting them to join a local bloggers’ ad network run with Young’s WKRN-TV, already a leader in blogging and citizens’ media, and the coincidentally named Jarvis Coffin of Burst! Media. I’ve long said that big media’s relationship with bloggers — especially local bloggers — should encompass content and promotion … and money! When we say we want to support citizens’ media, we should mean it. Terry and company do. WKRN’S email said:
As you know, WKRN-TV has been pioneering efforts to highlight your work and to help the local blogging community….
We’ve entered into an agreement with Burst! Media, one of the top providers of Internet advertising, to create an ad network here in the Nashville area that will include each of you, if you choose to participate….
In addition to the national ads that his company will provide, WKRN is also going to provide local advertising to the network via Burst! Ad rates from local advertisers are often much higher than national ads, so you will earn more money as the local thrust of the partnership grows. In fact, if YOU sell an ad, you will also be able to serve it to the entire network….
The advertising community has been slow to move into the blogging universe for a lot of reasons, and Burst! is affording an opportunity not available anywhere.
Think I should move to Nashville.
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Corrections, links, and RSS
I messed up a post below on the 9/11 Commission; I just plain got it wrong because I didn’t do my research well. I added a correction to that post, leaving my mistake for the world to see, as is our ethic in blogs. Then it occurred to me I should go farther and so I went to the sites where I’d seen links to that post and, where possible, I left a comment confessing my mistake. But now I also realize that readers who saw the post via RSS will have seen the original item but not the correction on it. That’s an issue for corrections in blogs. Similar issues exist in print: If you clip an article or just remember it and don’t see a correction — often buried — and don’t go looking for it in an archive where a correction may be attached, you can carry the error forward. Online, at least the original item can carry a correction for all those who see it after the correction is made. But what about the links to that item? And what about RSS readers, who see feeds of original content but not of changes to that content? Because of RSS, should corrections cause new posts that can be seen in feeds?
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Desperate Hummerdrivers
Check out Amanda Congdon’s Emmy-award-winner today as the desperate housewife of the energy crisis.