Posts from ‘April, 2007’

A startup in the U.K. called Yoosk has created a space for regular folks to ask public figures questions. Tim Hood, co-founder, says in an email: Yoosk users will submit and then vote on the best questions which will be ranked according to their popularity. We will take the most popular questions and send them […]

Annalee Newitz: “I Bought Votes on Digg. Despite their doubts, Diggers kept digging my blog. There’s a perverse incentive here: Diggers who vote early on stories that become wildly popular become more “reputable” in the Digg system. If you’re trying to move up the Digg ranks, it’s in your best interest to vote on anything […]

Ourmedia, a site where citizen-media types — especially podcasters and video producers — can upload and discuss their work, has launched a 2.0 version of the site. The page is much clearer in its aims than before, with a clean design and many tools for citizen media creators. Ourmedia is an alternative to YouTube, Blip.tv […]

If you missed the live program, as I did, you can watch “Bill Moyers Journal: Buying the War” — a brilliant documentary that everyone who cares about the future of American journalism should see. The report examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role […]

The news of Jack Valenti’s death reminds me of a column I wrote about him a few years ago. I wished, I said, that he’d been on our side in the copyright wars — that is, the side of those who wanted a fairer balance of interests. Valenti worked for the Hollywood cartel, however, and […]

I’m in New Orleans, or more precisely on a plane heading that way, with my class from the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. There, along with my co-instructor, Bill Gannon, and Dartmouth College researcher Quintus Jett, we’re planning to visit a neighborhood called Gentilly. Our purpose is to work on a project […]

UPDATED Wired News calls Jason Calacanis “cowardly” for refusing to do an interview except by email. Pretty thin-skinned response to Jason’s fuller explanation of why that’s his policy. Updates: Wired’s Fred Vogelstein posts the entire email exchange he had with Jason on this topic. (Fred didn’t write the item to which I linked above.) Also, […]

Dave Winer has created a smart mockup of what he calls MSNBC-of-the-Future. The viewers can use checkboxes to say what they’re interested in seeing covered, and what they’re not interested in seeing covered. (Update: Dave gets lots of responses.) Audience feedback is a fine idea. Until then I use a different kind of checkbox: the […]

David Halberstam, who died Monday in a Bay Area car crash, was one of the great journalists of his generation and an inspiration to countless people, including me, who later took up the craft.

Citmedia friend and contributor J.D. Lasica reported earlier this week from the Web 2.0 Expo . Bill Tancer, general manager of research at HitWise and Dave Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati paired up for a keynote on the state of the “Participatory Web” or “Live Web.” There’s no question that blogs and other participatory […]