Cit Media

San Jose Mercury News: Wanted: Los Gatos bloggers. We’re looking for community bloggers in Los Gatos who can write about such things as events in town, school fundraisers, the score of the latest football game. We need someone who would love a forum for reflecting on the latest buzz story in town, or even write things to do for runners, kids, moms, retirees or other groups in town.

This could be a fairly big deal, especially if it means the paper will do more than just highlight what the bloggers do (i.e. pay them for what they do).

But the very fact that the paper has recognized what has been obvious for years — that the bloggers and others running websites in a community are able to supplement, and in some cases replace, what the newspaper has been doing, or failing to do.

Every newspaper should be a portal to the bloggers, Flickr and YouTube posters and others who are creating media about the towns and neighborhoods in the circulation area. That so few understand this is testament to the industry’s continuing cluelessness.

The Merc is owned by a company that has, from all available evidence, vastly more concern for profit than journalism — a company that appears not to see the value of excellence as a business proposition. So if this move is essentially to get more “content” for less money, it’s a loser.

But to the extent that the Mercury News is recognizing and helping to promote a wider and more diverse media ecosystem, this is a potentially noteworthy move.

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Jon Garfunkel: Easy Mark: The Elephant in the Locker Room. (I)t’s still immensely foolish as it is to ban someone from the lockerroom because they call themselves a blogger. If a cutoff is needed, I’d suggest one based on the old standby, circulation.

“Mark” is Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks franchise, and he’s decided bloggers aren’t welcome in the team’s locker room. Given his status as a popular blogger this is modestly hypocritical, but it’s his franchise to muck with as he wishes.

There is, of course, a space problem in any locker room. Only a certain number of people fit, and a team is entirely justified in limiting the number of reporters allowed inside. So how to decide which ones?

Circulation or viewership/listenership is one metric that’s workable — though a blogger in question in this case works for the big daily paper, making Cuban’s decision even more odd. The best metric, of course, is clout: What reach does the journalist have in a more general way? What audience does he or she have? If a blogger’s chief audience includes journalists who cover the team and the team’s most fanatical fans, that would seem to be a good person to have around.

Rank speculation: One possibility here is that many bloggers, such as Cuban, don’t follow other people’s rules of verbal decorum. Sports reporters often become fanboys (or girls) of the teams they cover, to the detriment of the journalism and fans. Maybe Cuban is worried, in part, of more serious journalism about his team and its famous follies.

Great headline, meanwhile, from the Deadspin blog: “Mark Cuban Dislikes Bloggers Who Aren’t Him.”

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Follow the links from Electronic Frontier Foundation page on the bizarre Manalapan v. Moskovitz lawsuit to see a local government running wild against free speech. The town is suing to get the identity of — and all kinds of other information about — a critical anonymous blogger.

Anonymous speech should generally be taken less seriously than speech where the speaker stands behind his own words, and I think this is such a case. But anonymous speech is part of a long and vital tradition in America, and this is also such an example.

Someone should show these officials the Bill of Rights. Kudos to the EFF for pursuing this case.

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Rebecca MacKinnon: Is Web2.0 a wash for free speech in China? Lately I’ve given a few talks around town titled “Will the Chinese Communist Party Survive the Internet?” My answer - for the short and medium term at least - is “yes.”

Western media pundits and many policymakers have a tendency to assume that the Internet will ultimately bring democracy to China. As for the long run, I think China will change. But I doubt China’s political evolution will follow the same pattern as the West. I am not convinced that, if China eventually becomes more pluralistic, it will necessarily involve the same political structures as Western democracies. Lately I’ve been wondering whether the Internet and mobile technologies could be major contributing factors to why China will evolve differently.

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Jeff Jarvis ably shreds NY Times editor Bill Keller’s straw men. Sadly, Keller and other major media people are still making this a bloggers against professional journalists question, which is not the question at all, or at least hasn’t been for anyone who actually knows anything about the development of new media.

Sheesh.

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Boston Phoenix: House pest. The biggest political story in Massachusetts right now is the state’s ongoing dalliance with casino gambling — but the biggest scoops haven’t been coming from the Globe or the Herald. Their source, instead, has been Yarmouth resident Peter Kenney, a/k/a the “Great Gadfly,” a sexagenarian carpenter and public-access-cable star who writes for CapeCodToday.com.

This should prompt some soul-searching at the big newspapers…

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Scott Karp reports “The Huffington Post Allows Top Commenters To Become Bloggers.”
I wish he’d asked the obvious question: Will any of these people get paid? As far as I know, Huffington doesn’t pay her bloggers, even the well-known ones.

Apparently the topic didn’t come up. Karp defends Huffingon’s no-pay approach in the comments.

This is a great business model for Huffington.

Let’s hope it’s unsustainable.

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David Erickson: Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Citizen Journalism.

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The Doc Searls Weblog has arrived in its a new home.

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All I can say is I’m glad he’s doing it: The 5-4-3 double play, or “The Art of Conference Blogging”

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