Category: Social Media

Susan Mernit pointed to an SF Weekly article on Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Though she liked what the author, Ryan Blitstein, had to say, Susan expressed concern that he did not mention any women in the article–especially among the media critics. I’ll get into Susan’s concern later, tying it into something else I’m writing. For now, though, I want to look more closely at what Blitstein wrote about Newmark, the old media, and the new citizen journalism.

In reference to Newmark’s obvious financial success, as compared to Craigslist’s seemingly profitless persona and the somewhat negative impact this success has had on newspapers, Blitstein wrote:

It’s hard to reconcile Newmark’s utopian vision with Craigslist’s real-world revenues and the site’s effect on the media. To his credit, Newmark is obviously struggling with the issue. He doesn’t want to cause job losses, or contribute to journalism’s decline, and he hopes to use his power and money to fix the problem, but he isn’t sure exactly how: “I don’t know much about what to do about it, except to accelerate change. The news industry is experiencing serious dislocation. It’s happening. The faster it happens, the faster we get to new technologies, the more money and more opportunities journalists and editors will have.”

For nearly a year, he’s been talking up the use of new technologies, especially the potential of online citizen journalism. Now, he’s finally ready to put his money where his mouth is by funding a new venture. “It needs noise, buzz, and some smartass like me getting people to talk,” he says, animated as a preacher, so excited he nearly jumps out of his chair. “And I have to dwell on this, and this is big, and this may be the biggest contribution I ever make.”

Blistein carefully questioned the assumptions about the inherent goodness of the new citizen journalists–not because citizen journalism is not capable of contributing to the good of all; but because citizen journalists will never have the facilities, discipline, and opportunities to follow through on more in-depth stories:

Citizen journalism may become a helpful supplement to mainstream reporting, especially in smaller towns, just as bloggers help elucidate news on specific topics for millions of readers. But the more important (and more challenging) the stories are, the more likely it is that citizen journalists won’t have the wherewithal to complete them. “Citizen journalism will not be the Fourth Estate,” Cauthorn says. “It’s not going to sit down and stare across the room at an army of lawyers for some government official who’s outraged that you’ve written about his misdeeds.”

But if citizen journalism can’t replace the traditional media, surely its effects are innocuous, at worst. Not ncessarily so, as Blitstein points out:

In the best case, Newmark is joining a movement that will someday be of moderate help to the mainstream media. In the worst case, citizen journalism’s optimistic supporters, in neglecting the problems of the public institution that is the mainstream press, may leave America with both a failing news media and a mediocre technology that offers little assistance on essential stories.

Oddly enough just after reading this article, I received a link from Jonathon Delacour this morning to another writing that covers somewhat this same theme (found via a post at Drunken Blog). The writing was a weblog post titled, Party like it’s 1999, by photojournalist Jim Lowney. It in, Lowney talks about meeting with his old friend Tim Blair at the Open Source Media launch party.

A little corvid out in Reno mentioned yesterday that the mad Aussie journo Tim Blair was back in the Big Apple…Better yet, there was some sort of blogger conference complete with a free cocktail party or wine time or such…Blair said it was the launch of something called Open Source Media, formerly known as Pajamas Media, a massing of bloggers in some business venture.

What is *Open Source Media? The site says, among other things:

Where journalists once gave us “experts say,” blogs give us the experts themselves. And where faceless, “objective” editorial boards once handed down opinions and endorsements, bloggers sound off, the numbers on their public sitemeters lending them unassailable credibility as voices for the rest of us.

(emphasis mine)

It purports to be some form of formalized citizen journalism and it’s advisory board has members both luminous and not within weblogging circles. However, it was the staff that gave me pause; staff such as Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Charles Johnson. If you’re unaware of that name, let me give you Mr. Johnson’s weblog: Little Green Footballs. And who is CEO? Well, none other than Roger Simon. Looking through both the Advisory Board and staff, the only person who seems to be missing to truly give this new effort that necessary ‘rottweiler/pit bull’ feel, is Josh Trevino. But have no worries at his absence: he’s over at yet another example of citizen journalism, Spot On. (Well, Michelle Malkin could do equally well, but she’s busy writing definitive history books.)

At the post launch party, while attempting to have a quiet smoke with his old friend, Lowney recounts his experience with most of the attendees:

The September 11 attacks quickly became the meat of the conversation. But these nice folks didn’t mention the horror or death or the survivors or the wounding of a city or brave firefighters or fatherless children. They didn’t even offer a personal tale of the day. There were no “I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard” stories.

The talk went straight to the media coverage…I believe many of these people have come up with the information equivalent of the biggest mistake in dirty politics. As we know in politics, it’s not the alleged crime but the cover-up that takes you down. To some of these bloggers, it is not the story that matters but the coverage. And they want to use the coverage to take down whatever news outlet doesn’t fit in their world.

And they want to use the coverage to take down whatever news outlet doesn’t fit in their world. What news outlets? The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Sydney Morning Herald and the BBC among them; even my city’s own St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In their place, we’ll have Open Source Media and Spot-On and Newmark’s effort with Jarvis, not to mention Dan Gilmor’s Bayosphere effort and all the others–most either funded by eager venture capitalists or adoring fans; most run by people who have ‘made it big’ in weblogging more by being colorful pundits than by being journalists.

To aid them, we’ll create new applications that will allow us to discover the differing opinions, the divese voices, and, above all, the Truth; applications based on the same technology that now helps us discover fresh, new voices, and that obscure but essential story.

Earlier in his writing, Lowney detailed how he was introduced to a group of the launch attendees by Blair:

Blair was making up stories about me in Bosnia and then said something about covering 9-11.

“So, you went right from the war in Bosnia to 9-11?” asked one woman. The woman next to her also eagerly awaited my answer.

I just looked at them and said not exactly.

In his article, Blistein references Wikipedia, seen as a combination validation and poster child for mass editing and other cooperative efforts:

Many citizen journalism proponents believe the best method is to let users do everything — reporting, writing, and editing the stories with minimal oversight. The shining example of the self-correcting site is Wikipedia.org, the online encyclopedia with 818,000 “wiki” Web page entries written and rewritten entirely by a volunteer user community. Users argue over facts and opinions within forums, and the site generally avoids “edit wars” over the content of pages.

As evidenced in my previous post, ‘edit wars’ are only a click away at any moment. In fact, we have discovered, over time and in sad, tedious detail, the subjects where an edit war is most likely going to take place are the most vulnerable subjects, and the ones where we need an assured neutrality the most.

In response to today’s Wikipedia happenings, Dave Winer made what I felt was one of the best statements about the entire event. As you read it, though, consider replacing Wikipedia with Wikipedia and citizen journalism:

the bigger problem is that Wikipedia is so often considered authoritative. That must stop now, surely. Every fact in there must be considered partisan, written by someone with a confict of interest. Further, we need to determine what authority means in the age of Internet scholarship. And we need to take a step back and ask if we really want the participants in history to write and rewrite the history. Isn’t there a place in this century for historians, non-participants who observe and report on the events

No worries, Dave. I’m sure Malkin’s available.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Kevin Marks writes today:

I got edited out of the history of Podcasting again by a mysterious IP address 82.108.78.107

If you do a whois lookup on this address, you can see it was Adam Curry.

I did previously reinsert this reference to my Bloggercon demo with citations, and I don’t want to get into an edit war. Suggestions welcomed.

I dunno Kevin: seems to me that telling the world that Adam Curry rewrites history to suit himself is both an effective way to highlight the problem, as well as fire a damn big cannon. I can understand your frustation, though–podcasting is big, and if you played a part in it, you want to be acknowledged. Fair is fair.

But I disagree with you on avoiding an edit war of the History section of Podcasting at Wikipedia. This item badly needs an edit war; it needs something. The section is poorly written, disjointed, jumps all over the timeline in no understandable pattern, and seems confused. Compared to other sections of the document, which are very nicely written, you can see the effects of a tug-of-war between personalities; some of whom should, perhaps, stick to audio casts.

Not that I’m naming names, you understand. Wouldn’t want to get into an edit war or anything.

Knowing I’m a fan, Dave Rogers sent me an email on Friday pointing me to a Talking Points Memo post that discussed how to get press passes for an early screening of the upcoming. “Serenity”. All we had to do was send an email to Grace Hill Media and mention we were TPM readers.

I sent the email in, and received a reply later in the evening saying that all the slots were full. That’s cool, and not unsurprising since I sent my email late. That’s when I noticed Dori Smith mention the Serenity promotion appeared on several of conservative weblogs, first:

Okay, here’s something that’s been puzzling me since yesterday: you’ve got Joss Whedon, who’s a well-known Hollywood liberal type and John Kerry supporter. He’s got a new movie coming out next week, name of Serenity.

So why on earth is Whedon, or the studio, or the PR folks, only working with rightwingers to plug the movie?

Maybe it’s ‘cause there aren’t any progressive bloggers who are long-time fans of the show?

It would seem that in the days before TPM mentioned the press pass for the showing, the publicity company, Grace Hill Media, had been targeting conservative webloggers. Now this isn’t surprising when you consider that the purpose of Grace Hill Media is to promote movies with ‘good family or moral values’ to Christians.

If you access the web site, all you get is a page with an address and the tagline Helping Hollywood reach people of faith. An associated press release states:

Tara Shaffer, a publicist with Grace Hill Media, says Hollywood executives have come to realize there is a big market for family-friendly films. The media company she represents is “a small group,” she says, “and our mission is really to make Christians aware of entertainment that shares in their beliefs or explores the same values they believe in.”

At the same time, Grace Hill Media is trying to help promote films that are family-friendly or that put meaningful, positive values onscreen, Shafer says. While not all the films the Christian firm highlights are necessarily family films, it tries to select projects that honor many of the heartfelt concerns of Christian viewers and “really just kind of elevate their view on the world.”

The email reply I had was from a Tara Shaffer.

I’m not sure how I feel about getting a free movie courtesy of an organization that equates ‘faithful’ and ‘values’ with Christian. If I had gotten the press pass, what would have been expected of me? According to Al Hawkins, the stipulations and requirements that go with the pass does not make one a happy customer:

Congratulations. You had a shot at some decent publicity from some real fans (my wife and I just finished enjoying a Firefly episode when I received your email) and you threw it away. I was more than willing to engage in a fair exchange – publicity and Google rank for a early shot to see a movie I’ve really been looking forward to seeing. Instead you tried to dictate the content of my space on the web for a nebulous offer that could disappear at a whim.

Forget it. Maybe other people are willing to abide by your terms. I’ll go ahead and buy a ticket, see it when everybody else does, and talk about the movie the way that I like.

Now, let’s trip away from movies to another discussion floating around freebies this week, but this one related to wine, discovered via Scott Reynen.

It started with a promotion that Hugh MacLeod is involved with, which includes giving away wine. There’s a wiki involved, and blogger bashes and geek dinners and what not. I can’t even find the beginning post where this all started.

Anyway, Ben Metcalf, writing personally and not in his capacity as a BBC employee called the wine “crappy”, leading to an interesting exchange of comments, where Ben wrote:

I also do think the way it’s being marketed is pretty ‘crappy’, but then I don’t deny that it’s all above board and you are within your right to push it in the way you do.

I just think it pollutes the blogosphere as you are giving one brand an a disproportionate advantage over its rivals — it’s not “natural selection”. Plus there is certain expectation (be it implied or just passive) for someone to give it a favourable review having received a complimentary bottle.

This led Hugh to go after the BBC:

Ben thinks it’s OK for the massive, State-funded BBC to use blogs to connect with people (Ben works on the blog thing for the Beeb), and think it’s OK for a huge company like Microsoft to use blogs to do the same (he happily attended the last Scoble dinner, and according to this, he’s coming to the next one), but it’s not OK for a small, independant winery to use the blogosphere to connect with people? And here he is kvetching about “disproportionate advantage”?

I find his double standards appalling.

I like the BBC (”A fine British anachronism- just like the Royal Family” etc). And I think some of the stuff they’re doing online is pretty nifty.

But here’s the thing they’re not getting: “Social Media” and “Socialised Media” are not compatable. Why? Because the former does not need the latter. And the latter cannot accept that.

The Beeb likes to think it’s in the business of “Empowering People”. Maybe they are, but only if it doesn’t lessen their own power base within the British Establishment. They sneer at commercialism; their currency of choice is control. Are they transparent about that? The hell they are.

Again, I was surprised that Hugh went after the BBC, because Ben wasn’t writing as a member of the BBC but as himself. I’m not sure how this became an incident of big media and little guys, or social media and socialized media, whatever that means. Regardless, in comments to Hugh’s post, Scott wrote:

I thought Ben made it clear that the implication that positive responses are expected comes with any free give away. Peter repeated the same thing. Personally, I find the “big business is out to get me” incredibly boring. But that’s not really the point. You sitll haven’t addressed Ben’s criticism. How can you expect to get honest feedback on the wine when the act of giving it away completely changes the context? How is this any different from giving free toothpaste to dentists and then saying “4 out of 5 dentists recommend our toothpaste”?

Tom Coates of “Bag” fame also jumps in:

Well firstly, yes, of course people can give things away without there being any cynical intentions. But any corporation that gives away their own products is trying to sell you something. That’s not a bad thing to do, but it’s not charity either.

Which goes back to my post on “clean industry” that I wrote yesterday, saying that the tech companies–any company, really–do not act from altruism. I found the link to Tom Coates from Dave Rogers, returning full circle, who wrote:

Interesting discussion going on in a number of weblogs. I won’t call it a “conversation,” because it isn’t one. But it is interesting. Favorite quote from a comment by Tom Coats:

Well if that’s true, then I find it completely depressing, and will look forward to my friends dropping in brand associations in telephone calls in the future so that they can scrabble for a few extra pennies at the cost of any respect I had for them.

But I maintain that this is the logical conclusion of the metaphor that “markets are conversations.” There is no distinction between the social and the mercantile, no boundaries. In effect, the mercantile becomes preeminent, and the social merely exists to support and facilitate the mercantile. The social fabric becomes social capital, and every relationship is valued mainly as a business opportunity. We then pay attention to people, not because there’s anything intrinsically worthwhile in paying attention to people, but because we don’t want to miss a potential competitive advantage. And if it’s to our advantage to ignore some people, then we will by all means do so. Compassion is something that is outsourced because it’s not part of a competitive core competency. Education becomes the means by which we prepare people to enter the work force, not to help prepare people for something as soft and mushy and inane as life.

What I want to know, considering who I am and my beat, so to speak, is: Why aren’t more women being given these opportunities?

No, no, just joshin’. Except in a way, I’m not. When Dave writes, We then pay attention to people, not because there’s anything intrinsically worthwhile in paying attention to people, but because we don’t want to miss a potential competitive advantage. And if it’s to our advantage to ignore some people, then we will by all means do so, he’s touching on an issue of worth and value, and those who have value in the marketplace, aren’t necessarily those who have something worthwhile to share.

I am so sick of this marketing crap. Dave, nice dragonfly photo.