Posts from ‘November, 2006’

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Washington Post story, “Slain Journalist’s Family Files $20 Million Lawsuit,” repeats a too-common failing: citing the amount demanded by lawyers who’ve filed a lawsuit as if the number means anything at all. It means basically zip. Lawsuits can ask for any amount of money. Lawyers put in big numbers, often to attract press attention. […]

NY Times: ‘Ill-considered’ book, interview called off after fierce criticism. Bowing to intense pressure both outside and inside the company, the News Corp. on Monday canceled its plans to publish a book and broadcast an interview with O.J. Simpson in which he was to give a hypothetical account of how he might have murdered his […]

UPDATED SF Chronicle: ISP not responsible for online libel, state’s top court rules. People who claim they were libeled on line can’t sue the Internet service providers that carried the messages, the California Supreme Court ruled today. The unanimous ruling reversed an October 2003 decision by a state appellate court in San Francisco that would […]

NY Times: 176 Newspapers to Form a Partnership With Yahoo. A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once […]

The Baltimore Sun reports that “College papers deliver“: Spurred by research indicating that about 76 percent of the nation’s 6 million full-time college undergraduates read their campus papers at least occasionally, big corporations and advertisers are latching onto student-run publications. Here’s one reason. College newspapers are relentlessly local. They cover essentially one thing — the […]

After two fascinating days at the Nieman Narrative Journalism conference in Boston, I’m heading to SIME, the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event in Stockholm. Postings will be light until later on Monday. The Nieman conference, where I spoke, was fascinating because of the quality of speakers, which was outstanding, but also because the gathering’s theme — […]

Wired Magazine’s article about the YouTube “lonelygirl” phenomenon, “The Secret World of Lonelygirl,” is full of revealing detail. But in the end it’s a paean to deception — the hoodwinking of folks as part of a business plan. The article’s near-endorsement of the tactics lends Wired’s own credibility to the deceivers. Was that the intention? […]

Blogworks: The Blogosphere Loses Transparency. It’s been a bad week for transparency and honesty in the blogosphere, demonstrating that once blogging starts making money, the rules change.

Washington Post: O.J. Deal Leaves Sour Taste in Many Mouths. The two-part, two-hour TV interview is scheduled to be aired on the Fox network Nov. 27 and 29 and was conducted by hard-charging and controversial publisher Judith Regan. The show will run before the Nov. 30 release date of Simpson’s pseudo-confessional tome, “If I Did […]