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Videos I Won't Bother to Watch…

From the New York Times homepage a few minutes ago:

Picture 33

Sigh…

7 Comments on “Videos I Won't Bother to Watch…”

  1. #1 sy
    on Jun 3rd, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    awful blurb for a very short take on a relatively complicated debate in “daily me” territory. video is sunstein versus volokh.

  2. #2 Jon Garfunkel
    on Jun 3rd, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    I suppose the proper response is, “Are split-screen webcam dialogues (good or bad for us?”

    It’s Volokh v. Sunnstein– 2 law professors. West Coast v. (now) East Coast. I wish that the Times actually had information architects to discuss this. Sunstein’s writings on blogging in particular have been shallow, and Volokh is too invested in blogging to give an outside opinion.

    But I won’t let that prejudice me, I’ll see if I can stomach it.

  3. #3 Jon Garfunkel
    on Jun 3rd, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    Reader-researcher here will add, shame on the NYT for that headline. The full bloggingheads dialogue headines the first segment “The echo-chamber effect in blogs vs. newspapers.” It looks interesting, but…

    My general problem is that I’m spoiled by the production quality of radio and TV. Anybody can write publishable copy (presuming they edit it…) but delivering crisp speech/video is very difficult on a webcam.

  4. #4 Ralph Cooksey-Talbott
    on Jun 4th, 2008 at 11:32 am

    Actually blogs are the shining light in the field of journalism as far too many of the news folk are simply actors and actresses playing reporters and writers.

    They read the script and smile or ask the canned questions with no follow up and then arrange for the talking points to be reprinted nearly verbatim.

    Needless to say a critical examination of the veracity of the content is never performed. Not even on such a basic level as fact checking much less the rebuttal of erronious points.

    While I have seen bloggers go over the edge I also see them reporting the news that the papers and networks will not cover due to the vested interests of their owners in the war economy…

  5. #5 Jon Garfunkel
    on Jun 8th, 2008 at 10:44 pm

    And bloggers respond to all their comments…

  6. #6 EthanZ
    on Jun 9th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Echoing many of the other comments – terrible headline, excellent video, and closely related to an interest of yours, Dan – the ways in which serendipity can work both online and offline. I wrote at painful length about the video here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/06/09/the-architecture-of-serendipity/

  7. #7 Jon Garfunkel
    on Jun 10th, 2008 at 5:57 am

    Ethan– great work as always. When I said that Sunstien’s writing on blogs was “shallow” above, I meant that in his books (Infotopia, Republic 2.0) he barely initiates the sort of quantitative analysis you’ve done.