Center for Citizen Media

The Save the Internet coalition is trying to prevent a hijacking of our future. The robber barons of the Information Age — the phone and cable giants — are trying to wrest control of this absolutely essential infrastructure away from the edges of the networks, and put that control back in the center where they can tell us what to do and how.

Please understand: This is not an abstract argument over theory.

The future of citizen media, at least in the United States, will depend in significant degree upon whether our elected officials continue to do the bidding of the phone and cable companies, or whether they recognize the danger inherent in this power grab. Sadly, almost all of the signs are the wrong ones, forcing me to conclude that the political powers-that-be are much more comfortable on the side of the control freaks than on the side of genuine freedom and innovation. Perhaps that is nothing new, but it is disheartening.

Add your voice to the debate, however you feel.

• See also my colleague David Weinberger’s excellent explanation of why this matters.

Just a reminder to my New York-area friends that I’m giving the annual Hearst New Media Lecture this Thursday evening at Columbia University Journalism School. I’m honored to have been asked, and will be discussing ways that new media can help us do an even better job at living up to the fundamental principles of journalism in a Digital Age.

Daniel Henninger (Wall Street Journal): Wonder Land. At the risk of enabling, does the Internet mean that all the rest of us are being made unwitting participants in the personal and political life of, um, crazy people? As populist psychiatry, maybe this is a good thing; the Web allows large numbers of people to contribute to others’ therapy. It takes a village. But researchers note that the isolation of Web life results in many missed social cues. It is similar to the experience of riding an indoor roller coaster, what is known in that industry as a “dark ride.” This dark ride could be a very long one.

There is, without question, a tendency in some circles to shoot before aiming. This occurs in wider circles than the liberal ones Henninger cites (as if — laughing out loud — there are no right-wing bloggers who spew sheer garbage).

He’s also not up to date on the research. The so-called isolation of Web life is clearly not the case for most of us. We use it to make our physical-world lives better, including socially.

The nastiness or nuttiness of some bloggers is real enough, however. And people do say things online that they’d never say in person. But I suspect some of this stems from our increasingly nasty and politically insane culture as much as any major release from restraints.

In fact, I might offer the same advice to Henninger that I’d offer to someone who utterly loathed the screeds passing for editorials — sometimes fact-challenged as well as tendentious — that run on the same page where his column appears. That is: If you don’t like it, don’t read it.

Scot Hacker: Where’s Tibet? When we think about Google being in bed with the Chinese government and blocking access to information about Tibet, we know it’s bad, but we also assume the censorship applies only to Google users in China. Here we have an example of Google’s complicity affecting searches conducted from anywhere in the world.

What Scot, a colleague at Berkeley, has found is disturbing. China’s Internet muscle-flexing is causing all kinds of damage to the world. If we are to have reliable information, and if Google won’t provide it, we’re in for strange times to come.

At Wednesday evening’s Harvard gathering, the third in a series of “Engaging With the News” conversations, my Berkman Center colleague Colin Rhinesmith took amazingly detailed notes. Thanks, Colin!

Via Rocketboom, pioneer Dave Winer talks about lots of stuff including journalism instruction for non-journalists.

The folks over at the CBSNews.com Public Eye site asked me to write a guest posting. I did. They’ve called it “On The New Principles Of A More Diverse Media Ecosystem” — and it’s online today.

Jeff Jarvis is raising money to “Help Zeyad come to America.” Zeyad is the pioneering Iraqi blogger who want to attend journalism school in New York.

Mercury News: Judges take a few swipes at Apple’s arguments. A state appeals court in San Jose on Thursday appeared openly hostile to Apple Computer’s attempts to pry information from bloggers that would reveal who may have leaked confidential information on a new company product.

In a lively two-hour session, a panel of 6th District Court of Appeal justices repeatedly interrupted Apple lead attorney George Riley, questioning whether the company had valid reasons to sacrifice privacy and First Amendment rights in its quest to find out the source of the leak.

For citizen journalists everywhere, let’s hope Apple loses. See also this posting on my Silicon Valley blog.

Alan Mutter: Leveling the Pulitzer playing field. In an age of increasingly asymmetrical journalism, it’s time to create a two-tier system for awarding Pulitzer Prizes.

The system is clearly stacked in favor of the bi-coastal Big Newspaper crowd, but so what? They’re doing the best journalism.

Create new awards. Don’t create Pulitzer Lite.