Center for Citizen Media

In his New Yorker piece where he found such inadequacy in citizen journalism, Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, wrote, “As journalism moves to the Internet, the main project ought to be moving reporters there, not stripping them away.”

Now read, in today’s NY Times, a story about how Lemann is whacking resources away from the excellent website associated with the Columbia Journalism Review, CJRDaily.org, an pouring them back into the paper magazine. His answer to the Times’ reporter’s obvious question — how can he write that and then do this — would embarrass a politician. (UPDATE: Here’s his further explanation, via Romenesko.)

Two of his top editors promptly quit in protest of the move. That should tell us something.

You can appreciate the position he faces. This was about money, and he doesn’t think he has enough to operate the magazine and put sufficient resources into the website, too. But this is a move squarely in the wrong direction for the long term, however much short-term sense it may seem to make financially.

This is a move by an Old Media person, not someone truly looking to the audience and participants of the future. Not surprising, but disappointing.

The Toronto Globe and Mail has a good roundup of how social and citizen media sites are responding to the events in London today.

Over at PressThink, Paul Bass, editor of the New Haven Independent site, writes:

If my experience is any guide, there are also pitfalls that point up the challenges that face the first wave of onliners as we develop the new journalism. I’ve found that some experiments that sound cool fall flat, while others take off. The readers have definitely become part of the process. Trained journalists still play a crucial but altered role. We’re more fact-gatherers, linkers, fact-checkers, conveners and referees than pundits or editorialists telling people what to think.

Anyone thinking about starting something like this should read Bass’ piece. It’s that essential.

The Wall Street Journal asks, “Where Did That Video Spoofing Gore’s Film Come From?

The answer, it appears, is a PR firm that also represents Exxon Mobil:

In an email exchange with The Wall Street Journal, Toutsmith didn’t answer when asked who he was or why he made the video, which has just over 59,000 views on YouTube. However, computer routing information contained in an email sent from Toutsmith’s Yahoo account indicate it didn’t come from an amateur working out of his basement.

Instead, the email originated from a computer registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp.

What this means, of course, is that slippery marketing consultants will do a better job covering their tracks in the future.

What it should mean, but won’t, is that when businesses want to counter speech they don’t like, they might be honest about who’s paying for the message. Whoever is behind this spoof (Exxon Mobil denies it’s involved), a little transparency would be refreshing.

As you’ll see by clicking on the link to Monday’s Citizen Journalism unconference — there are, among other things, podcasts, blog links and notes of the sessions — the event was a terrific success.

About 100 people spent a long day in conversation about some of the key areas that today’s and tomorrow’s citizen journalists will confront. We didn’t solve a lot of problems, but we gathered an impressive amount of data that will help us make progress. The audience-as-panel works, and our thanks to all who participated.

Ten cheers for the moderators — Lisa Williams, Andrew Lih, Steve Garfield, Tom Stites, Phil Malone and Ethan Zuckerman — who drew from the audience an enormous amount of information and wisdom. A huge and special thank you as well to Doc Searls, who took amazing notes.

The Berkman Center staff and volunteers took care of the details that made the day run so smoothly. Super thanks to Erica George, Colin Rhinesmith, Matt Duane, Frances Katz, Caroline Nellemann and Lokman Tsui.

After its ridiculous cover headline claiming that Digg.com’s founder has “made $60 million” — based on valuations, not cashed in for real money, by unnamed people “in the know” — Business Week is still refusing to acknowledge its goof, as Scott Rosenberg’s notes in a trenchant post:

Now the magazine can either publish a correction, which I doubt it will ever do, or live with the diminished credibility it deserves.

Ed Cone adds:

BusinessWeek’s best bet is to say, ‘We goofed. We wrote an interesting article about an interesting subject, but we made a pretty bad mistake in the way we headlined the story.’ Let’s see if they really understand anything about “Web 2.0.

Reuters, meanwhile, quickly admitted sending out a doctored photo and suspended the photographer. This is bad for the news service, unquestionably, but stonewalling would have been much worse. (Kudos to Little Green Footballs for apparently being first to spot and flag the doctored picture.)

The best investigative journalism team of our times was too expensive for Time Inc., which has millions to pay for pictures of celebrity babies, but Vanity Fair has done the right thing for Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele — and for all who care about quality journalism itself.

Dave Sifry has posted his State of the Blogosphere, August 2006, with the fairly amazing note that Technorati has tracked its 50 millionth blog. Of course, a lot of them are link-groveling spammers, but still…

And we’re off: the Citizen Journalism unconference has begun.

Doc Searls is keeping his docnograghy.

Live audio is here.

IRC: irc.freenode.net#citmedia

Synergy:

This spring, Harvard and Oxford law professor (and Berkman Center colleague) Jonathan Zittrain published “The Generative Internet,” a paper that looks at the future of general-purpose technology (such as PCs). As he’s written:

I think it’s critically important that users retain general purpose PCs, even some with proprietary OSes, instead of “information appliances.” I fear these appliances, like TiVo, can come to predominate — or that the PC itself will morph towards becoming one, with new gatekeepers determining what code will or won’t run on them, rather than the users themselves.

His theory held, in part, that people might be willing to cede control to the gatekeepers in part because of the proliferation of security threats. If the only way to have “safe computing” was to lock down our machines — even from our own tinkering — perhaps people would prefer that, he wondered.

Participants agreed we need need better tools to help deal with the threats without giving up the control that is vital to our fundamental freedoms. Might it be possible, for example, to develop a software tool that could live on general purpose computers and, in the background, gather data in a way that would collectively sniff out threats while not intruding on privacy?

In that same context, might such a tool be useful in another way: to keep an eye on whether the owners of the data networks were using them in ways that violated some of the basic rules of the road. Could we keep an eye on whether the phone and cable companies, which want to determine what content gets delivered in what order and at what speed, are abusing that power?

The phone and cable giants are on the verge of being granted such power by a Congress that seems to be in the pocket of these former monopolists. And that potential for discrimination is at the crux of the debate over what many call “network neutrality.”

Enter Tom Evslin, a former telco and data executive with deep understanding of networks and these issues. On July 11 in his blog, he asked for such a tool in this essay. Partial quote:

The broad and important question is: are there actual violations of Net Neutrality happening today? Are ISPs favoring services they offer by disadvantaging competitors on the ISPs’ network? If violations were to occur, how would they be detected and verified? Even those of us who believe that marketplace should regulate Net Neutrality (which requires more than a duopoly offering broadband access) know that a market can only operate efficiently when accurate and timely information is available.

We citizens at the end of our Internet connections are well placed to gather the data needed; but we don’t yet have the right tools to do so. I’m no longer technically competent to write these tools but I’m sure a lot of you are. It is also possible that both ISPs and vendors of services which might be blocked will make tools available.

Talk about idea convergence.

When smart thinkers like these guys are thinking along similar lines, the obvious thing to do is put them in the same room. So on Tuesday, August 8, Tom is coming down to the Berkman Center to talk about all of this (here’s his post about the session). There may still be space available to attend in person; to learn more, click here. If you can’t come, or are too late to get a seat, the event will be webcast.