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The Rise of the Professional Blogger

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Benjamin Carlson - Sep. 13 (Opinion) - Today, the romantic notion that solitary, untamed bloggers are running the Web is more fantasy than fact—nearly as apocryphal as old myths about stoic Western sheriffs killing 11 outlaws with six bullets.

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Froomkin hired by Huffington Post

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 07 (Opinion) - In yet another sign of how online media outlets are strengthening as their older establishment predecessors are struggling to survive, The Huffington Post has hired Dan Froomkin to be its Washington Bureau Chief and regular columnist/blogger. Froomkin will oversee a staff of four five reporters and an Assistant Editor, guide The Huffington Post's Washington reporting, and write at least two posts per week to be featured on its main page and Politics page. I learned last night of the hiring and spoke to both Arianna Huffington and Froomkin this morning. Under still-unclear circumstances, which executives refuse to discuss even with their own Ombudsman, Froomkin was fired by The Washington Post a little more than two weeks ago after writing an online column for almost six years that was one of that newspaper's most popular. Almost immediately upon the reporting of Froomkin's firing, screenwriter Nora Ephron, an Editor-at-Large for The Huffington Post, emailed Huffington with a one-line note: "I hope we're hiring him." Within hours, Huffington called Froomkin, met with him in Washington last week, and a deal was finalized this week. That was just one of numerous overtures Froomkin received from various media outlets interested in hiring him (Salon was one such outlet expressing preliminary interest, but both Froomkin and Salon believed that much of what I do here already overlaps with much of the work he does).

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Update to the update on “Hey, Limbaugh” 5/8/2009

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

agweb.com - By Steve Cornett - May. 08 (Opinion) - In an earlier update, we wondered why Rush Limbaugh is stonewalling on his support for the Humane Society of the United States. One response accuses this reporter of not listening to Mr. Limbaugh, offering the challenge, “Listen, and then we can talk about where he stands on the issues.” Of course I listen to Limbaugh, as does just about everybody I know. I listen and mostly I agree. His support of the animal rights agenda has lowered him in my opinion, and by a lot. No, wait. It’s not his support for the movement. It’s his failure to own up and explain why he thinks that way.

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Public Transit Users More Likely to Reach Physical Activity Targets

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

obesitypanacea.blogspot.com - By Travis Saunders - Apr. 17 (Interview) - By building activity into your daily routine, you can ensure that you’re getting at least some physical activity on even the busiest days. . . . Although taking public transit may not seem like the most obvious way to increase your physical activity levels, a recent study by Ugo Lachapelle and Larry Frank at the University of British Columbia suggests that this might be the case.

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Rosen's Flying Seminar In The Future of News

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Press Think - By Jay Rosen - Mar. 26 (Opinion) - The pace quickened after Clay Shirky's Thinking the Unthinkable. Here's my best-of from a month of deep think as people came to terms with the collapse of the newspaper model, and tried looking ahead. I know these twelve links work. I tested them on Twitter. As the crisis in newspaper journalism grinds on, people watching it are trying to explain how we got here, and what we’re losing as part of the newspaper economy crashes. Some are trying to imagine a new news system. I try to follow this action, and have been sending around the best of these pieces via my Twitter feed. It’s part of my experiment in mindcasting, which you can read about here. Lately, the pace has picked up. A trigger was the March 13 appearance of Clay Shirky’s Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. That essay went viral; it now has a phenomenal 686 trackbacks, making it an instant classic in the online literature about the fate of the press. As good as Shirky’s piece is (very very good, I think) “Thinking the Unthinkable” is only a piece of the puzzle, and mostly backward-pointing. That’s why I’ve collected the following links. Together, they form a kind of flying seminar on the future of news, presented in real time. (They are all from the month of March 2009.) Read all twelve and you’ll be caught up on your newspaper big think. Here they are in the order I think you should read them. If you take the seminar, feel free to leave your impressions in the comments. The “flying” part is simple: go ahead, steal these links. Spread the seminar. Get your people up to speed.

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The Beleaguered News Industry ...

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Tom Tomorrow - Mar. 09 (Cartoon) - After the last reporter files the last news story, an army of citizen journalists gamely try to fill the void.

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Imagining Newspapers of the Future

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Lynn Klyde-Silverstein, Elliot Neaman, Tim Straus, Martin Kimel, Joel Kramer, Jessica Wanke, Louise Dufresne - Jan. 31 (Comment) - Re “News You Can Endow,” by David Swensen and Michael Schmidt (see link), which says endangered newspapers can be saved if we “turn them into nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities”: The writers don’t seem troubled by the rule that endowed status would prevent newspapers from attempting to “influence legislation.” Candidate endorsements are not the only thing this would suppress. Wouldn’t this also prevent newspapers from editorializing about any pending legislation? Isn’t that one of the most important jobs of a newspaper?

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Internet ‘Rightroots’ Key to GOP Revival

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Pajamas Media - By Jon Henke - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - For now, the goal should be to build ideological infrastructure — organically — outside the entrenched political establishment. We should build unifying grievances. We should organize ideas and then people. The Republican Party will not lead the Right out of the problems that plague the Republican Party; it will have to follow.

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The AP and CNN Get 'The Huxtable Effect' All Wrong | Media and Technology

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez - Nov. 14 (Comment) - The bad thing about having a blog is that news reporters can take your theories and mangle them all to hell and publish it all over the world.

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Gay marriage opposition uses public schools as a reason for Prop 8

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

realisticlies.wordpress.com - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - Recently, the majority of commercials saying, “Yes on Prop 8,” are also saying that the reason to vote “yes” is because of our public schools. One of the big reasons homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to get married is because teachers in public schools might mention it.

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Ashin Mettacara: Burma, Myanmar: 2008 voting has closed; view the Winners

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

http://www.ashinmettacara.org/ - By Ashin Mettacara - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - Ashin Mettacara is an independent blogger monk from Burma who is contributing to OpEdNews with the aim of spreading news to the whole world about the crisis in Burma.

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Debate Watch: What is Sarah Palin Getting Into?

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Hoa Quach - Oct. 02 (Comment) - Just a few short hours until the 2008 Vice Presidential Debate and days away from Sarah Palin’s infamous interviews with Katie Couric. So, what’s expected of the Republican VP candidate tonight, as she proves to the world and American voters that she’s a superior choice to Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden?

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Voices without Votes ? Debate Watch: What is Joe Biden Up Against?

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

voiceswithoutvotes.org - By Jillian York - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - Since Barack Obama selected Senator Joe Biden as his running mate just prior to the Democratic National Convention in August, little attention has been paid to the Senator from Delaware. With all of the media's attention focused on Obama himself (as well as Sarah Palin of course), little focus has been given to Biden. A few bloggers have noticed him, however.

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MSM Tensions Erupt

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Eric Alterman - Aug. 28 (Opinion) - Really? As Matt Yglesias points out , it's pretty clear how the media should treat these ads that they know to be dishonest. Use them to accurately create a pattern of dishonesty by John McCain's campaign. If Obama was putting out lies about McCain, how fast do you think the media would figure a way out of that "conundrum"? It's not like they have anything else to do here...

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How I became a soldier in the Georgia-Russia cyberwar

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Evgeny Morozov - Aug. 16 (Opinion) - Nobody seems to know whether this is a centralized Russian attack, the work of a loose band of hackers, or something else. Having read so many contradicting accounts, I knew that the only reliable way to find out what was really happening was to enlist in the Russian digital army myself.

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Jamal Dajani: What Did Bush Really See in Putin's Eyes?

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jamal Dajani- The Huffington Post - Aug. 14 (Opinion) - It is very unusual in the Middle East to turn on the television or read a newspaper without finding a major story about a new development in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Israel and Palestine. However, this week was different.

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Fox News suffers another debate snub; bloggers take a bow

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Media Matters - By Eric Boehlert - Aug. 12 (Opinion) - Bloggers deserve the credit because the pushback they initiated was something that members of the Democratic Party had, for years, refused to do. Instead, they adopted a go-along/get-along strategy with Fox News, hoping that if they were nice (and cooperative) with Fox News, then Fox News would be nice (and cooperative) in response. Indeed, without the online campaign, do you think the head of the Democratic National Committee would have appeared on Fox News and publicly denounced its coverage as being "shockingly biased" the way Howard Dean did in May? I doubt it, since for years Democrats, and particularly the inside-the-Beltway party leaders, acquiesced.

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Afterword: the Ralph Nader lesson

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Kos - By Mike Stark - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - So why did I create the group? Why risk damaging Barack Obama's candidacy and hard-earned image of change-agent? After all, if I was convinced the prospects of success were zero, why bother organizing 22,000 people? If no good can come from the venture, why venture? I think the questions are fair and I'm going to do my best to answer them. And I'm going to answer the question by invoking Ralph Nader.

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Real change happens off-line

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Jul. 01 (Opinion) - By contrast, Internet activism is individualistic. It's great for a sense of interconnectedness, but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and '70s did. It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there. This is great for signing a petition to Congress or donating to a cause. But the real challenges in our society - the growing gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of racism and discrimination, the abuses from Iraq to Burma (Myanmar) - won't politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million. Millennials are poised to lead us all to reject the hyperindividualism and isolation that has dominated our recent past and recognize the deep interconnectedness and mutual responsibility that is our present and future.

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Google and the Anti-Obama Bloggers

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Miguel Helft - Jun. 30 (Opinion) - Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama? That was the question buzzing on a corner of the blogosphere over the last few days, after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their sites, which are hosted on Google's Blogger service.

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Do Our Clothes Matter?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

allvoices.com - By Marina - Jun. 26 (Opinion) - I am both concerned and perplexed at the choice presentation of many people participating in the planning of direct actions against neoliberal organizations and institutions around the globe.

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Bogus narratives

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Jon Carroll - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - The political media, particularly the national political media, particularly the national electronic political media, exist in a vast echo chamber. Someone picks up or makes up a concept-like thought and he says it out loud and everyone else hears and repeats it, and it soon takes on a life of its own, separate from its existence in reality-based reality. The people for whom the concept-like thought is a boon immediately pick it up and use it as a debating point. The people for whom the concept-like idea is a detriment chase it with denials. The media then can follow the quarrel about the concept-like idea, providing "balanced" coverage of a narrative that they created. So not only are we dealing with fantasy, we're dealing with fantasy at several removes. We've gone so meta that our brains have traveled to our toes. Never good. There are those who believe that crafty political operatives plant these narratives with a friendly talking head, and I'm sure that happens. But I also think that misinterpretation, sloppiness, deadline pressure and quite possibly recreational drug abuse all go into the creation of bogus narratives. Certainly there are conspiracies, but conspiracies are a lot of trouble, and a lot of them break down because someone wants to leave and get room service or laid.

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Copyright: AP gets tough and bloggers get angry

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:45:58 -0700

The Times - By Bernhard Warner - Jun. 18 (Opinion) - Bloggers don't like the way Associated Press is policing its copyright, but news wires are right to object to wholesale theft. Speak to any teacher these days and the biggest gripe about the internet age will probably be plagiarism. Where I teach in Rome, the university has a strict "no copying" policy. If a student is caught lifting text from a website and claiming it as his own, that's grounds for failure. End of story. And, if the crime is particularly grievous, it could lead to expulsion. The one-strike-and-you're-out policy isn't perfect, but it seems to strike enough fear into enough students to get them to think twice about stealing somebody else's work on Shakespeare or Cicero or Einstein. If only such a punishment loomed in the professional world. The issue of acceptable copying is raging in the blogosphere this week thanks to a showdown between the Associated Press and the publisher of a well-read blog-and-news-referral network, the Drudge Retort. It's like Digg for lefties, taking obvious swipes at the better-known, bulldog-style Drudge Report. AP kicked off the debate last week when it issued Rogers Cadenhead, the founder and publisher of the Drudge Retort, with demands that five stories and one user comment be taken down. Mr Cadenhead was incredulous, insisting that the bloggers merely paraphrased details of a few AP articles and repeated word-for-word a single quote. By his calculations, the excerpts ran from 33 to 79 words, and each carried a link to the original article. Where's the crime in that?

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AP wants $2.50 a word to excerpt its stories now?

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:35:06 -0700

Hot Air - By Allahpundit - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - And you thought their PR on this subject couldn't get any worse. Must be nice to have an exemption from the same federal fair use statute every other content provider in America is governed by.

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AP, hole, dig

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Buzzmachine - By Jeff Jarvis - Jun. 16 (Opinion) - The AP is still trying to preserve its way. But, as I often say, protection is no strategy for the future. In the story - which, note, I'm only summarizing here, without the quotes from the AP that might better state its stance (ahem) - the agency comes off like a policy ping-pong game, going back and forth:

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