NY Times: On Web, Error Is Uncovered Through Relentless Pursuit. Starting Tuesday afternoon and working through the night, a group of bloggers dissected a photo and a caption on the Web site of a Republican Congressional candidate in California, Howard Kaloogian, and declared it a fraud. Within hours, Mr. Kaloogian withdrew the picture, blamed an unnamed staff member for the blunder and apologized.
There are lots and lots of stories like this, and there will be more.
In “Think Tanks for Sale,” Slate’s Timothy Noah exclaims:
Among the many revelations of the scandal surrounding the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff is the remarkable degree to which the capital’s think tank “scholars” can be bought.
It’s absolutely true. The sleaze Noah documents so well in this posting is well worth a look (and, I hope, an expression of utter disgust at what you read).
But a revelation? Not to anyone who’s been paying attention.
The practice of getting people to issue position papers, op-ed pieces and other opinion-pushing material is dishonorable when there’s no transparency, but it’s all too common. Astro-turfing — ginning up phony grassroots activity for or against some person or issue — has been going on for years, and the use of supposedly independent think tanks is part of that game.
My name for this slippery stuff is “opinion laundering” — getting others to take your positions while keeping your own fingerprints off the operation, as a money launderer does in turning illicit cash into the kind he can spend or invest openly.
One of my fondest hopes for citizen journalism is that we can, as a community, expose such activities whenever possible. The invaluable SourceWatch is always a good place to start.
The U.S. State Department has posted ‘Media Emerging’, a look at how conversational media forms are changing the nature of news and communications. I contributed a short piece on blogging.
Rebecca MacKinnon: Yahoo! Abomination.: Yahoo! executives keep framing this issue as black and white: Either you’re in there and do everything the Chinese authorities tell you without question, or you can’t do business in China at all. That is false. Companies can and do make choices. You can engage in China and choose not to do certain kinds of business. Yahoo! has placed user e-mail data within legal jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China. Google and Microsoft have both chosen not to do so. Why did Yahoo! chose to do this? Either they weren’t thinking through the consequences or they don’t care.
Mercury News: Bidding begins in McClatchy sale of 12 KR newspapers. Los Angeles investment firm Yucaipa Cos. and a group of Philadelphia investors made offers Tuesday for all or some of the 12 Knight Ridder newspapers McClatchy is selling. A spokesman for Yucaipa, which is allied with the Newspaper Guild, confirmed it had made a bid for all 12 newspapers, including the Mercury News. The Philadelphia investors made an offer for that city’s papers, the Inquirer and Daily News.
Dean Singleton’s MediaNews has also placed a bid, according to other reports. If so, his company has to be the odds-on favorite for at least some of the newspapers, notably those in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The employee proposal seems to be a serious one. I hope, if so, that there will soon be some serious investigative journalism into the life and activities of the man behind Yucaipa, Ron Burkle. So far we’ve seen almost nothing but puff pieces.
Editor & Publisher: Vermont Paper Wants to Cancel AP In Protest Of Bureau Chief Firing. At least one Vermont newspaper wants to cancel its Associated Press membership in protest of the news organization’s recent firing of longtime Vermont statehouse bureau chief Christopher Graff.
Someone — either Graff or his former bosses — needs to start talking about this, and soon.
Alastair Chivers, a journalism student in Scotland, is looking into “journalistic weblogs” and wants input on a survey about the role of blogs in the ecosystem.
The SF Chronicle reports that Current TV, the cable channel that’s doing some innovative bottom-up work to inspire citizen-generated content, will be getting carriage on Comcast’s cable networks. This is a milestone for Current and, maybe, for the genre.
deal to make the San Francisco company’s programs available to more Comcast subscribers.
In this week’s cover story, Newsweek suggests replacing the term “Web 2.0” with the more descriptive phrase “Living Web,” which refers to the dynamic quality of web content, the organic patterns of growth and expansion online, and the social interactions occurring everywhere.
Not only is the name “Living Web” more logical, but it makes sense to the vast majority of people who don’t know what “Web 2.0” means. This piece provides a solid overview for those trying to understand what is happening on the web by defining concepts like “user-generated content” and “tagging” and explaining what sites like deli.cio.us and Flickr actually do.
I think the most important take-away from the article comes from a quote by Tim O’Reilly, who Newsweek describes as an “early promoter of the Web 2.0 idea,” in which O’Reilly says that “the central idea is harnessing collective intelligence.” (The established newsweekly boldly nods to, but does not dwell on those who “believe that an army of bloggers can provide an alternative to even the smartest journalists.”)
Ultimately, what writers Steven Levy and Brad Stone driving home is the fact that the future of the web, and virtually all of the economic and social opportunities it affords, is undeniably in “our” hands.
I wish I could have attended yesterday’s “Un-Conference” about the future of journalism in Philadelphia, where a bunch of great folks met to discuss how a great American city can have great American journalism in an era when newspapers are coming under attack as businesses and news “consumers” (precisely the wrong word, which is why I put it in quotes) are becoming part of an emergent conversation.
Congrats to Karl Martino of PhillyFuture.org and the others who put this together. They are helping to invent tomorrow.