Center for Citizen Media

NY Times: Publisher to Recall Harvard Student’s Novel. Just a day after saying it would not withdraw “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life” from bookstores, Little, Brown, the publisher of the novel whose author, Kaavya Viswanathan, confessed to copying passages from another writer’s books, said it would immediately recall all editions from store shelves.

Robert Niles at Online Journalism Review asks, “Can newspapers do blogs right?” — and some prominent online journalists offer responses.

As someone who wrote a newspaper blog for more than five years, I can assure you that the answer is Yes.

The fact that newspapers sometimes screw it up is meaningless, or close to it. Newspapers also screw up the “regular” journalism, too, from time to time. That doesn’t seem to deter them.

The only un-fixable mistake is when you fall off the horse and then refuse to jump back on.

Lance Dutson (Maine Web Report): State Contractor Files Federal Lawsuit Against Me. So here I am, one man against the state and its contractors, put in the position of shutting up or being pounded by their deep pockets and a wild misconception of what the court system is supposed to be used for. One person who has exposed a cavalcade of incompetence and who has to choose to allow it, or face an onslaught of personal attack and legal action.

The Boston Globe, in its story (the paper has known about this man and his situation for weeks, but apparently only got intererestd when the lawsuit was filed), quotes many of the usual suspects including my Berkman colleague John Palfrey, who observes that the plaintiff has to surmount a big legal hurdle here.

But what if this case is, as many suspect, an example of a deep-pocketed plaintiff trying to shut someone up — someone who can’t afford a long legal defense? That’s certainly a possibility here.

The situation points up the need for bloggers to realize their speech is subject to such actions. We get no pass when it comes to defaming people, and we shouldn’t.

But it also points up the need for sanctions, ones that hurt, against the plaintiffs when they file suits on specious grounds with the obvious goal of shutting people up or punishing them for telling the truth. Unfortunately, judges almost never penalize the plaintiffs or their lawyers in such cases, and that’s why the law is tipped against the defendants; defending yourself, even when you’re entirely in the right, can be too expensive.

I’m glad to say that the Media Bloggers Association is asking for help and its attorney, Ronald Coleman, is joining the case. (I’m a charter member of this organization.)

Over at my Bay Area blog, here’s my comment on today’s news that McClatchy will sell the San Jose Mercury News and three other papers, in a differently structured deal that strikes me as a bit smelly.

Guardian: BBC unveils radical revamp of website. The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.

The proof will be in the doing, of course, but this will be a fantastic experiment to watch — and cheer, if it works.

I’m heading to New York for tomorrow evening’s talk at Columbia University. Hope to see some of you there…

Dave Winer: Next steps for BitTorrent. Breadth of support is the most important thing BitTorrent needs. We need easier and more servers and clients, more non-infringing content, and more commitments from the tech industry, government, and eventually, of course, the entertainment industry. It’s a very rational, open technology, quite useful, and with a little more effort it will become a fixture in the toolkit for Internet developers, publishers and users.

Take a look at Congresspedia, a new initiative to put our lawmakers under an appropriate microscope — a wiki where we can all add what we know to what is likely to become an essential resource. The site, created by the recently launched Sunlight Foundation, will have editors keeping an eye on the activity (and making sure the trolls don’t take over).

Meanwhile, on the foundation’s site you can find several new blogs including “Under the Influence” and “Dollarocracy” — and, best of all, an “Assignment Desk” that invites citizen journalism. This is an excellent beginning to a project with huge promise.

(Disclosure: The Center for Citizen Media has had a conversation with the foundation about the possibility of doing a project together, and several of the advisors are friends or colleagues in other ventures.)

The Personal Bee is looking quite interesting in its early incarnation. The site says it’s

helping information producers and consumers capture the essential buzz from the roar of information washing over us all everyday. We believe that smart analysis of the information torrent coursing through blogs and mainstream news sites, coupled with the abilities of smart, aggressive and ambitious human editors, will help accelerate the evolution of our news media.

My former colleague Matt Marshall has spent substantial time on the site and offers some good details.

I have one strong objection to the Bee, however. It puts other people’s content in frames, keeping you on the Bee site (example). This is inappropriate behavior on today’s Net, and I’m surprised that such obviously Net-savvy folks would do this.

Harvard Crimson: Sophomore Novelist Admits To Borrowing Language From Earlier Books. Kaavya Viswanathan ’08 admitted yesterday to borrowing language from two books by Megan F. McCafferty, though the student novelist said that “any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious.”

“Completely unintentional and unconscious” — really?

Take a look at this page of excerpts and decide for yourself.