OpenLife

From Joi Ito’s blog at http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/07/27/:

I think the DNC could turn into a key moment in the discussion about bloggers versus journalists. I’ve generally been rather low-key on this issue, taking a position that bloggers and mass media should work together and that bloggers and professional journalists had different strengths and weaknesses. I am getting a sense that an increasing number of professional journalists are beginning to feel threatened or at least seem to be trying to belittle bloggers as a source of news.

Jeff Jarvis addresses this question today by quoting Tom Rosenstiel on the question, what is a journalist?

Tom Rosenstiel - Boston Globe

- A journalist tries to tell the literal truth and get the facts right, does not pass along rumors, engages in verifying, and makes that verification process as transparent as possible.
- A journalist’s goal is to inspire public discussion, not to help one side win or lose. One who tries to do the latter is an activist.
- Neutrality is not a core principle of journalism. But the commitment to facts, to public consideration, and to independence from faction, is.
- A journalist’s loyalty to his or her audience, even above employer, is paramount.

Under this definition, a lot of what we are calling media or press is not journalism and I DARE any professional journalist to try to defend any big media company of sticking to the definition above without fail.

I’ve been interviewing a lot of professional journalists about “What is journalism? What makes a good journalist?” They usually talk about vetting sources, portraying things accurately, and other things that any blogger who is used to being ripped to shreds in comments by their readers on their blog do as second nature. My conclusion is that much of good journalism is just common sense, and I would even assert that compared to journalists who don’t write in their name, have fact-check desks to do their fact-checking and editors to fix their grammar, bloggers are much more accountable and have to take it in the face compared to their anonymous counterparts in the mass media.

Is mass media more rigorous than blogs? Remember the “Rumsfeld bans phone cameras” story that UPI and AFP ran and all the media picked up? Xeni at Boing Boing called the defense department and debunked the story and I updated my entry as a lot of the mass media were still going to press with the story. Did they print any corrections? I didn’t see any. And this isn’t an isolated incident. I’ve seen many cases where blogs have fact-checked and vetted stories that the media have just passed over.

I’m not blaming the mass media for their lack of ability be as nibble as blogs, but characterizing bloggers as a bunch of amateurs with no news value is really silly. Particularly annoying are the articles that seem to be picking a fight with the blogs. Maybe as Mahatma Ghandi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Dan, maybe you and “We the Media” better get over hear before the real fighting starts.

As always, I like David Weinberger’s. perspective on this.

David Weinberger

For example, after the breakfast, the bloggers were swarmed by the media. “You know one difference between you and us,” said a friendly guy from NPR, “We don’t applaud for the speakers.” But, heck, it was Howard Dean and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to stand and clap for him.

Comment - TrackBack [Joi Ito's Web]

Not so nice result of survey: It seems that one fifth of all recipients of spam responds to it - and many of them positively!

Read http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2004-07-27-spam_x.htm.

Interesting observations by Clay Shirky at http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/07/23/change_this.php.

The Change This Manifesto has been floating around for a few days:

In the Internet (and especially blogging), we see the glimpse of an alternative. Taken over time, many of the best blogs create a thoughtful, useful argument that actually teaches readers something.

The furor that’s erupted over the use of cameraphones in public mimics the reaction to the portable camera when it was introduced more than 100 years ago. [TheFeature.com]

Phil Albert’s column in LinuxInsider:

Last week, I examined the nuances of a marketplace for licenses, and its relationship to a parallel marketplace for products that use those licenses. This time, for those readers who might actually be in the market for a license, let’s review the one that gets the most ink — the General Public License (GPL).

[LinuxInsider]

I am quoted in the article Netbutikker dumper priser på piratsoftware in Computerworld Online 20 July 2004.

It’s about time.

Microsoft will return some of its cash hoard (Mercury News) to the money’s owners: shareholders. On Tuesday, the company announced a $75 billion set of payments, share repurchases and other measures designed to whack away at its absurdly high cash position, well over $50 billion and growing by about $1 billion a month.

Wall Street mavens have been urging such a move for some time. With legal troubles down to a manageable level, Microsoft says it now can afford to do the right thing.

Of course, the special dividend and buyback only highlight the fact that Microsoft still has scant competition, largely because the U.S. government has given it a pass to continue abusing its monopoly. Yet competition is better served with that money in shareholders’ pockets than Microsoft’s bank account. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Venture capitalist David Hornik warns that the Web logging world is inadvertently getting caught up in a trap of its own design. [CNET News.com]

I just finished reading The Chain of Chance by Stanislaw Lem - the author of book behind Tarkovski’s Solaris. A suspense or crime story with a very interesting plot and ending. Read the book. Very recommendable!