Well, it’s about bloody time. Except it sounds like it was just name-calling.


[Tags: iraq media]

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David Berlind is using his blog in a way few professional journalists do. He has been reporting on Massachusetts’ decision to use only Open Document Format-compliant software (= not Microsoft Office), with a mixture of comprehensive detail, dogged reporting, and, yes, advocacy. There’s no question where David stands on this. We hear a lot about whether bloggers can become journalists, but here we have a journalist who is as involved, passionate and transparent as any blogger.

In the latest round of his reporting — mixing his personal involvement in the issue — the National Federation of the Blind in Computer Science, which favors Word because of its accessibility features, is now willing to consider ODF. The ball is, as David says, in the ODF’s court.

And notice at the end of the article, David asks that this game be played out in public, in blogs. [Tags: DavidBerlind odf microsoft media journalism]

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Will Bunch recommends this Bob Baker post.

Jay Rosen recommends this one by Charles Cooper.

I recommend both articles and both recommenders. [Tags: media]

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IndependentSources runs a chart of Paul Krugman citations now that he’s been moved behind the New York Times pay wall. It is what diminishing influence looks like.

The post also points to a Kaus post that wonders if the NY Times would have taken an offer of $6.1 million — what it’s made in subscription fees — to diminish its influence. [Tags: media]

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Judith Miller got the NY Times to publish her farewell in the form of a letter to the editor. It is a model of what transparency isn’t.

Jeff Jarvis raises an interesting question in passing: Do the terms of the agreement prevent either side from disclosing the terms of the agreement or, worse, what actually happened? Either restriction would be bad news for a news organization. How about some meta-transparency from the Times on that question? [Tags: nytimes JudithMiller media JeffFarvis]

On the positive front, Richard Sambrook, head of the World Service of the BBC, who has been blogging within the BBC firewall, now has stepped out into the public blogosphere. Richard’s been behind some of the BBC’s most progressive experiments in empowering its listeners…

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Terry Heaton writes provocatively about the “unbundled newsroom“:

…our essential mission is to first serve the information needs of our community throughout the day, and then to create programs that will summarize the news of the day. This means a fundamental change in our approach to the news, for the best way to meet the needs of people during the day is to create news in an unbundled form. No longer can we simply repurpose content that’s created for a bundled program and distribute it elsewhere. On the contrary, our unbundled content is what should be repurposed to create our end-of-the-day summaries.

…field crews need tools for directly publishing to the Web, including text, stills, video, blogs, e-mail, cellphones, handhelds, and especially RSS. We need to see ourselves as pushing content at every turn in the creation and development of our journalism.

This is journalism made fully transparent. (There’s much more in Terry’s piece than those two snippets, btw.)

Terry sees the broadcast news programs as a rebundling of the bundles. I wonder whether the networks are going to be trusted as rebundlers worth listening to; already the editorial function has migrated to the Web to a remarkable degree for many of us. Why should we value the broadcasters’ editorial judgment enough to enable them to stay afloat economically? And if the news programs fail, why will the news divisions continue to generate unbundled content?

I’m not saying I have an alternative.

[Tags: news media TerryHeaton EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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If you want a quick read on whether your local newspaper understands the impact of RSS, check to see if the online versions of its movie reviews tell you the highest number of stars it can award. If instead a review shows you, say, three stars but not three out of how many, then the paper doesn’t understand that people are getting there not because of a previous relationship with the paper but simply because the page is part of the World Wide Cuisinart Web. [Tags: media entertainment Web2.0]

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Jeneane rewrites an Ad Age piece about blogging so that it blurts out more of the truth… [Tags: JeneaneSessum blogs humor]

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Cathy Young, a contributing editor to Reason magazine, in her column today in the Boston Globe goes on about how irresponsible bloggers got the facts wrong when John Henry Hinrichs killed himself, whipping up terrorist hysteria and undoubtedly making matters even worse for Hinrich’s family.

Let’s for now assume that Young is right that the bloggers saying there’s a coverup are wrong. (She cites a Wall Street Journal article and a Congressperson as her sources.) So, she’s found an example of bloggers getting something wrong. What exactly are we supposed to conclude from that? After all, The New York Times has been known to get some things wrong, whipping up terrorist hysteria. There’s a name for the fallacy Young’s column commits: Hasty Generalization.

What’s the name of your magazine again, Cathy? [Tags: media CathyYoung JohnHenryHinrichs]

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First, Judith Miller relies on Ahmed Chalabi — paid operative for Iraqi exiles — for a series of exclusives about those nasty WMDs pointed at us by Sadam Hussein, providing crucial support for Bush in his run-up to the war. Then she plays the “I have no recollection at this time” card when asked how Valerie Plame’s name (well, “Valerie Flame” as she noted it) first made it into her notebooks.

The Times had to apologize for it getting the build up to the war wrong. A little worse than switching the captions under the names of newly-weds. Now Miller can’t recall who first told her about Valerie Plame? How much more credibility is this Pulitzer Prize winner going to cost to the Times?

As always, Jay Rosen is the first person to read on this story. His take is that Miller essentially hijacked the newspaper. And it has cost us the truth: She didn’t pursue the Wilson/Plame story in the summer of 2003 when it might have had some effect on support for the war and on the election; she has only in the past couple of days agreed even to “cooperate” with the NY Times’ reporting of her own case. As Jay says, “The news pages of the New York Times were edited for months under the principle: don’t report anything that would anger the prosecutor or affect Miller’s case.”

It’s one thing to be gamed by a punk like Jayson Blair who lied so outrageously that you’d have to be as nuts as him to think he was making it all up. It’s another to be gamed by a senior Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. That requires a systemic flaw. If the Times’ editorial process is so broken and unreliable, what else are they getting wrong? And, beyond firing Miller, what can they do to get right?

The truth is that my trust has shifted. I find I trust The Times and other mainstream media far more after they’ve gone through the blogosphere. E.g., I trust Jay’s blogging of the the Times’ coverage — and the remarkable voices in his comments section — more than I trust the coverage itself.

[Tags: media JudithMiller JayRosen nytimes journalism]

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