Posts from ‘January, 2009’

Andy Oram’s “Validators” is short fiction “based on the premise that journalism had been replaced by Internet access.” Intriguing…

There’s a debate under way in the newspaper/journalism corner of the blogosphere and Twittersphere, spurred by an op-ed commentary in the New York Times earlier this week. The piece, by Yale’s chief investment officer, David Swensen, and his colleague Michael Schmidt, a Yale financial analyst, starts with a questionable idea — that newspapers should be […]

Michael Goldfarb, a web editor for the right-wing Weekly Standard, was a blogger on the McCain campaign last fall. In a Q & A with CJR, he says, among other things, that he was told his role would be to “attack the press” in the blog: And that struck me as a really bad idea, […]

I’ll be in New York on Feb. 10 to speak at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. My topic is considering ways to expand and extend the ecosystem around books: We know now that many books, especially timely non-fiction, can become major elements of intellectual ecosystems—including blogs, websites, magazine excerpts, speaking gigs, consulting […]

Good news: EveryBlock, the terrific local data site started by Adrian Holovaty, is launching a partnership with the New York Times. More here. This is part of the future for media entrepreneurs: partnering with established companies to fill in gaps and take advantage of existing clout. Good for both of them.

Here’s a piece I wrote for Talking Points Memo on a subject I’ve covered here before. It begins: Our government’s current operating principle seems to be bailing out people who were culpable in the financial meltdown. If so, journalists are surely entitled to billions of dollars. Why? Journalists were grossly deficient when it came to […]

Washington Post: New Obama Orders on Transparency, FOIA Requests. In a move that pleased good government groups and some journalists, President Obama issued new orders today designed to improve the federal government’s openness and transparency. The first memo instructs all agencies and departments to “adopt a presumption in favor” of Freedom of Information Act requests, […]

From the Los Angeles Times: Rosa Brooks’ Dec. 11 column described Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich as “newly indicted.” He has only been charged in a federal corruption case. Huh?

Gene Koo: Obama’s non-reductive rhetoric. The technology to bypass top-down media is one cornerstone of Obama’s success as a communicator. His nonreductive rhetoric is another.

Jason Kottke notes the new robots.txt file at whitehouse.gov — down to a single “disallow” from more than 2,400 yesterday.