Center for Citizen Media

CNN: The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. Therefore, CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate.

Unlike the greedy executives at NBC, who have slapped severe restrictions on anyone else’s use of the debates broadcast by the network and MSNBC, CNN recognizes the public value in giving the widest possible access to this material.

NBC and its corporate parent, General Electric, should be ashamed. CNN and its parent, Time Warner, should take a bow.

Glenn Greenwald (Salon): Who funds and runs the Politico? So the President and CEO of The Politico worked in multiple positions in the Reagan White House, and was continuously promoted until he rose to the level of Assistant to the President. And his close connection to the Reagan family and the Reagan presidency continues through today. Are we supposed to treat this fact as irrelevant or something when assessing what The Politico is and what type of political coverage it churns out?

This certainly came as news to me as well. And it’s absolutely, plainly relevant for readers.

How does this differ from the Republican leanings of Dean SIngleton, whose company now owns a vast number of newspapers in America? The difference is that the sole coverage area of the Politico is politics. Suppose General Motors bought the Detroit News and Free Press.

The Politico has, it seems to me, shown a somewhat rightward tilt. That’s fine, but the site should also be practicing a bit more transparency.

From BarackObama.com, an

open letter to Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean urging the DNC to make the video from any Democratic Presidential debate publicly available after the debate for free and without restriction.

All well and good, and a step forward.

But why doesn’t Obama go the next step, and decline to participate in debates where heavy-handed “owners” of the sessions — NBC being the chief offender at this point — refuse to make the material available? He and the other candidates should make this a condition of participation. Suggestions don’t cut it.

The rumors are flying fast and furious (see Techmeme for a sampling). This is a logical deal, yet a potentially foolish one.

It’s logical because the two companies have been whacked by Google in the online advertising and search space, and combined they offer fairly complementary services. The world needs a solid non-Google choice, because Google is getting too powerful for our good.

But Microsoft’s legacy software business is in conflict with the online world. If they make this deal, they should combine most of Yahoo’s businesses with MSN into a separate company. Compete with Google — and with MIcrosoft. Then there’s a good chance of making it work.

UPDATED

Clark Hoyt is the next Public Editor of the New York Times. He’s one of the great journalists of this generation, and I fully expect him to look deeply into the paper’s journalism — with fairness and toughness — in ways that illuminate the journalism of the world’s most important news organization. The Times will be vastly better in the end for this hire.

UPDATE: Not everyone shares my opinion of Hoyt, to put it mildly. Unfortunately I’ve only heard from people who don’t seem inclined to make their views known publicly.

(Note: I own a small amount of NYT stock.)

Make Internet TV: This guide has step-by-step instructions for shooting, editing, and publishing online videos that can be watched and subscribed to by millions of people.

NY Times: How a Number Became the Latest Web Celebrity. A throng of tech-savvy Internet users have banded together over the last two days to publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the movie industry to prevent illegal copying of high-definition movies. The broader distribution of the code may not pose a serious threat to the movie industry, because only sophisticated technologists can use it to tailor the decryption software capable of getting around the copy protection on Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. But its relentless spread has already become a lesson in mob power on the Internet and the futility of censorship in the digital world.

The “code” is a number, and calling Digg.com’s users a mob utterly misunderstands what’s going on here. I deeply admire what Kevin Rose at Digg is doing by refusing to keep removing the number as Hollywood has demanded. He posted today:

You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

The insanity of the legal framework on which the film industry is relying here has never been clearer. When will Congress figure it out?

Reuters: News Corp. makes $5 billion bid for Dow Jones:

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. offered to buy Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones & Co. Inc. for about $5 billion, but a representative of the publisher’s controlling shareholders said they would vote against the bid. Murdoch, whose $60-a-share bid represents a 65 percent premium to Monday’s closing price, would gain the powerful Wall Street Journal brand ahead of his planned fourth-quarter launch of a business news cable channel.

Ugh.

There’s no doubt that the Dow Jones is one of the most mis-managed brands of all time. Nor, however, is there any doubt that the Wall Street Journal is one of the top five English-language newspapers (apart from its entertaining but ultimately rancid editorial page) in the world.

The latter fact is why the thought of Murdoch running the paper is so disturbing. He has shown little interest serious journalism, but a voracious appetite for power, including the assembling of political clout (usually right-wing, unless that gets in the way of making money) to pursue empire-building. His top news-business people, surely reflecting the boss’ notions, think CNBC — already little more than a corporate cheerleader — isn’t pro-business enough.

Can anyone doubt that Murdoch would interfere with the brilliant journalism that is the WSJ hallmark (again, apart from the editorial page)? The record at other News Corp. properties says it would be inevitable.

I own a small amount of Dow Jones stock. I hope the Bancroft family, which controls enough of the voting shares to prevent a hostile takeover, will stand firm — and that the share price will drop again, at least in the short term, from where it went today after Murdoch’s bid. My faith is in the company’s long-term wish to put out great journalism. In the end, I believe, my investment will do better that way — and that it will have been an investment in a journalistic future where, even as citizen media grows from its still-tenuous roots, quality still matters in the Big Media end of the ecosystem.

A startup in the U.K. called Yoosk has created a space for regular folks to ask public figures questions. Tim Hood, co-founder, says in an email:

Yoosk users will submit and then vote on the best questions which will be ranked according to their popularity. We will take the most popular questions and send them to the public figures being asked and request an answer on behalf of our members. The answers we receive will be posted on the site in a similar format to an online tabloid magazine and then members will be able to rate these answers according to whether they actually answer the question and whether or not they think the answer is truthful and sincere.

This is starting to become a trend, and it’s a good one. Another noteworthy effort is PrezConference on YouTube, where several presidential candidates have already answered citizens’ questions.

Yoosk is taking a page from Digg and Newsvine (and other such sites) in its approach, ranking by popularity the questions being asked. This will surely be gamed (see the previous posting), but it’s a good start.

Annalee Newitz: “I Bought Votes on Digg. Despite their doubts, Diggers kept digging my blog. There’s a perverse incentive here: Diggers who vote early on stories that become wildly popular become more “reputable” in the Digg system. If you’re trying to move up the Digg ranks, it’s in your best interest to vote on anything that looks like it’s gaining popularity. And my blog, with its flurry of paid votes, fit the pattern.

This reveals a flaw in the current system, not necessarily a flaw in the overall concept. But until we can combine reputation — in all its permutations — with popularity, sites like Digg and Newsvine will be missing the mark.