Posts from ‘February, 2007’

Over the weekend, I attended a day-long workshop in Santa Barbara, California, where several dozen people got together to discuss what organizers called “Newspaper 2.0” — the next version of a venerable, and valuable, part of the traditional media ecosystem. The gathering’s subtext was the rapid decline of the main local daily newspaper. That reality […]

Times of London: Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’. Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year. Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be from customers will fall […]

SF Chronicle: Tonight at 11, news by neighbors / Santa Rosa TV station fires news staff, to ask local folks to provide programming. Spendlove is loath to dub what’s coming next to Channel 50 as “citizen journalism,” the industry buzz term that is journalism’s equivalent of user-generated content online. Broadly defined, citizen journalism means tapping […]

In a story entitled “WiFi Turns Internet Into Hideout for Criminals,” the Washington Post asserts, among other things: Open wireless signals are akin to leaving your front door wide open all day — and returning home to find that someone has stolen your belongings and left a mess that needs cleaning. An open WiFi signal […]

In today’s LA Times, media columnist Tim Rutten discusses the Anna Nicole Smith frenzy and its somewhat dismal implications for journalism’s more honorable traditions in a digital era. Key quote: Television ratings or aggregated “hits” on newspaper websites constitute useful marketing information. When they’re transmuted into editorial tools, what you get is a kind of […]

The SF Chronicle catches up with a somewhat old story today with a piece called “Creeps beware: Web gives women revenge / Catcall recipients share their stories — and men’s photos” — an article focusing on the way female bloggers are using the HollaBack sites to “post pictures and videos of guys who harass them […]

The National Journal’s William Powers, in “Mirror, Mirror,” writes of the “Scooter” Libby trial in Washington, where various kinds of journalistic and political malpractice (and just plain regular functioning) are on display: It’s a high-stakes game. In the Libby trial, we have a living tableau of a bunch of people who were playing it together, […]

NY Times: Fox to Begin a ‘More Business Friendly’ News Channel. No one has ever accused CNBC, the cable TV home of Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow and Maria Bartiromo, of being antibusiness. Until now. Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch confirmed one of the worst kept secrets in the media industry, that the News Corporation will start a […]

Dave Winer, commenting on Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ open letter on digital restrictions for downloaded music, says Apple is now a media company: Now the morning after it hits me how new this is, because Apple usually communicates through bigpub reporters like John Markoff at the NY Times and Steven Levy at Newsweek. This time […]

AP: Comcast, Facebook to launch TV series with user videos: Comcast Corp. and Facebook.com are joining forces to create a television series from user-generated videos that will appear online and through video on demand. Good to hear about this, but what will these “users” — the wrong word here — get paid? No word on […]