Non Sequitur vs. LICD
Antonio E. Gonzalez
<http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2009/05/24/>
. . . reminded me of a recent screed by Least I Could Do's Ryan
Sohmer:
<http://forums.leasticoulddo.com/index.php?showtopic=29036>
That itself led to a storyline, which started here . . .:
<http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090420>
. . . and ended here . . .:
<http://www.leasticoulddo.com/comic/20090509>
Oh and here's the full screed . . .:
"I find myself recently spending a great deal of thought on the
issue of the demise of the newspaper, and everything relating to it.
Everyday, it seems, we are assaulted with business headlines of
another newspaper shutting down, massive job cuts and features
disappearing by the handful. Is this the way to save a newspaper?
Probably not, but then, that�s not what I�ve been concerning myself
with. The main questions I�ve been posing are: Can the newspaper be
saved? Or more importantly, should it be?
A newspaper is a medium, in which to share information. When any other
medium in history has reached the end of it�s usefulness, it�s been
allowed to gracefully retire, to make way for the next step in
evolution.
I don�t use carrier pigeons to get in touch with my wife during the
day, I use my cell phone. I don�t use my VHS player to watch Band of
Brothers, I power on my Samsung Blu-Ray player. Rarely is the day when
I use a horse and buggy to get to work, I tend to rely on my
automobile.
I don�t pick up a newspaper to get the news, I check multiple sources
online, to read about them when they happen, as they happen, not 16
hours later in a newspaper which offers me limited information without
the immediate ability to get more.
Are we trying to save the newspaper because our generation still uses
it, or because the older generation is nostalgic and refuses to
embrace change?
Why would I pay 20$ a month for a subscription to my local paper, when
only 5% of it is original content? With the other 95% percent of is
syndicated content I can much more easily access online at the
Associated Press site? The newspaper model works off of advertising.
Big news, so does the web.
I believe local coverage is important, but I believe the current
medium in which we get said coverage is done. I want to know what�s
happening in Montreal. I want to read material from well educated
journalists (not bloggers). Why can�t I do that online?
You want to talk about going green? Why not eliminate the printed
newspaper as it is and move it online? Grab a calculator and tell me
how many trees that would save?
What the future will bring, I�m not sure, but change isn�t just coming
anymore, it�s here.
The medium has evolved."
--
- ReFlex76
Mike Peterson
The least he could do is learn how something works before he goes on
and on about how useless it has become.
1. Radio is still around, despite the invention and dominance of
television. Ditto with movies. To compare newspapers to VHS tape
players or horse-and-buggy transportation is ignorant. Newspapers need
to evolve but they don't need to disappear.
2. He repeats the popular but as-yet-undefended concept that news
simply happens and needs a place to be posted. The idea that web
advertising will support a system of newsrooms around the country and
around the world is already being disproven and is obviously false on
the face of it anyway. This is like saying "If the McDonald's closes,
we'll just eat at the drive-thru." (Assuming food at the drive-thru is
free or costs perhaps a penny.)
What his argument mostly proves is that anybody can say anything on
the Internet, regardless of whether it makes any sense or reflects any
real thought.
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
aemeijers
(snip)
>
> Oh and here's the full screed . . .:
>
> "I find myself recently spending a great deal of thought on the
> issue of the demise of the newspaper, and everything relating to it.
>
> Everyday, it seems, we are assaulted with business headlines of
> another newspaper shutting down, massive job cuts and features
> disappearing by the handful. Is this the way to save a newspaper?
> with. The main questions I�ve been posing are: Can the newspaper be
> saved? Or more importantly, should it be?
>
> A newspaper is a medium, in which to share information. When any other
> allowed to gracefully retire, to make way for the next step in
> evolution.
>
> day, I use my cell phone. I don�t use my VHS player to watch Band of
> Brothers, I power on my Samsung Blu-Ray player. Rarely is the day when
> I use a horse and buggy to get to work, I tend to rely on my
> automobile.
>
> online, to read about them when they happen, as they happen, not 16
> hours later in a newspaper which offers me limited information without
> the immediate ability to get more.
>
> Are we trying to save the newspaper because our generation still uses
> it, or because the older generation is nostalgic and refuses to
> embrace change?
>
> Why would I pay 20$ a month for a subscription to my local paper, when
> only 5% of it is original content? With the other 95% percent of is
> syndicated content I can much more easily access online at the
> Associated Press site? The newspaper model works off of advertising.
> Big news, so does the web.
>
> I believe local coverage is important, but I believe the current
> happening in Montreal. I want to read material from well educated
>
> You want to talk about going green? Why not eliminate the printed
> newspaper as it is and move it online? Grab a calculator and tell me
> how many trees that would save?
>
> anymore, it�s here.
>
> The medium has evolved."
>
>
I'll keep buying real newspapers, however downsized and pitiful they
become, as long as they keep printing them. I don't want to be tethered
to a computer screen for all my data input. You can't (cheaply or
easily) read a web site at breakfast, in the can, the passenger seat of
a car/bus/train, or on most airplanes. You definitely can't read one out
in the backyard, if the sun is shining. It Just Ain't The Same.
And what do you do when the internet is down, either locally (house or
neighborhood) due to power failure or data lines down, or more
widespread (ISP or major chunks of the backbone), due to a virus storm
or something?
I've been on the Internet since before it was called the Internet. I use
it every day. But it is just a tool, not a lifestyle. It is not the
replacement for all that has gone before, it is an addition.
--
aem sends...
Carl Fink
> 1. Radio is still around, despite the invention and dominance of
> television. Ditto with movies. To compare newspapers to VHS tape
> players or horse-and-buggy transportation is ignorant. Newspapers need
> to evolve but they don't need to disappear.
Where "ignorant" means "correct"? I don't think papers will be gone in the
next 10 years. 20? Maybe in the developed world.
> 2. He repeats the popular but as-yet-undefended concept that news
> simply happens and needs a place to be posted. The idea that web
> advertising will support a system of newsrooms around the country and
> around the world is already being disproven and is obviously false on
> the face of it anyway. This is like saying "If the McDonald's closes,
> we'll just eat at the drive-thru." (Assuming food at the drive-thru is
> free or costs perhaps a penny.)
My reading is that he kind of ignored the issue of where news stories will
come from once the papers are gone.
I've bought one dead-trees paper in the past 3 years. Because I wanted the
ads. Even the ADS disappointed me, and I have no reason to buy another. I
will continue to read newspaper content online.
(Note: including at the breakfast table, on the can, and all those other
places listed as not possible. I have a BlackBerry.)
--
Carl Fink nitpi...@nitpicking.com
Read my blog at blog.nitpicking.com. Reviews! Observations!
Stupid mistakes you can correct!
aemeijers
> (Note: including at the breakfast table, on the can, and all those other
> places listed as not possible. I have a BlackBerry.)
They let you use your blackberry on a plane, and you have reception up
there? And how much does that blackberry cost per month, and does it
work in the middle of nowhere? (Our bigshots at work have those, and
they are always crying about coverage gaps.) Until BBs have a
window-shade or holographic display screen, not really much of an option
for those of us with lousy eyesight. If all I want is headlines, may as
well listen to radio.
Sure, for well-off folks, the internet may be a viable alternative to
papers, modulo a few technological and infrastructure improvements. But
like the deacon said, without newspaper or TV/Radio news organizations
to provide content, what will it deliver? Anybody seen any numbers on
how Seattle PI is doing with their great experiment? (Actual question, I
am curious)
Newspapers, in one form or another, have been around since cheap
printing presses and mass literacy. (300 years?) I'm not ready to give
them up, just yet.
--
aem sends...
JC Dill
> The idea that web
> advertising will support a system of newsrooms around the country and
> around the world is already being disproven and is obviously false on
> the face of it anyway.
Perhaps the idea is we don't need such a large system of newsrooms
around the country and world. When I see a press conference and I see
dozens of reporters, I wonder why? Why do we need *so many* people to
report on the same event? I don't think we do need that many people
reporting on one event. IMHO the news organizations need to diversify -
fewer reporters on any one event or topic, cover more topics. Or, we
simply have too many reporters (and too many news organizations).
Most newspapers have very little actual new news (gathered from their
own investigation and reporting). Mostly they republish news gathered
from somewhere else and we can do that ourselves on the internet.
Regurgitating press releases and rewriting news stories from the
articles that come down the wire are usually not producing anything
worthwhile. If a newspaper wants to survive (in print or online) you
need to tell me something *new*, don't just repackage something I can
learn about elsewhere from someone else.
jc
aemeijers
reliable/trustworthy enough that people keep paying for their content, I
don't think there is such a thing as too many reporters. Sure, some are
crass assholes (interviewing weeping widows, etc), and some have their
own agendas to push, but hopefully the free market of ideas will sort
them out. I'm more scared of only having one or two reporters at an
event, especially if it is a government event where credentials are
required. Way too easy to fine-tune reality that way. Having competition
nipping at your backside is, I think, the best way to keep reporters
honest and actively seeking the truth. You screw up more than once or
twice, and your adoring readers will go elsewhere.
--
aem sends...
Carl Fink
> They let you use your blackberry on a plane ...
I fly maybe twice a year. If I had to read a newspaper while flying, I
could conceivably buy one. IOW, so what? BTW: yes.
> and you have reception up there?
Yes. Anyway, I use an app that saves the news articles on my handheld for
later reading, rather than reading them all live.
> And how much does that blackberry cost per month
For my plan, ~$70. How much extra for news? Why, nothing.
> and does it work in the middle of nowhere? (Our bigshots at work have
> those, and they are always crying about coverage gaps.)
I've only found about two places in two countries with no coverage, and I'm
on T-Mobile, one of the less-complete carriers. Where do your bigshots go,
anyway?
> Until BBs have a window-shade or holographic display screen, not really
> much of an option for those of us with lousy eyesight. If all I want is
> headlines, may as well listen to radio.
I have terrible vision, though. Legally blind in one eye without my
glasses.
> Newspapers, in one form or another, have been around since cheap
> printing presses and mass literacy. (300 years?) I'm not ready to give
> them up, just yet.
But your preferences aren't the issue. It's whether papers as currently
constituted are a viable business model.
JC Dill
> JC Dill wrote:
>> Mike Peterson wrote:
>>> The idea that web
>>> advertising will support a system of newsrooms around the country and
>>> around the world is already being disproven and is obviously false on
>>> the face of it anyway.
>>
>> Perhaps the idea is we don't need such a large system of newsrooms
>> around the country and world. When I see a press conference and I see
>> dozens of reporters, I wonder why? Why do we need *so many* people to
>> report on the same event? I don't think we do need that many people
>> reporting on one event. IMHO the news organizations need to diversify
>> - fewer reporters on any one event or topic, cover more topics. Or,
>> we simply have too many reporters (and too many news organizations).
>>
>> Most newspapers have very little actual new news (gathered from their
>> own investigation and reporting). Mostly they republish news gathered
>> from somewhere else and we can do that ourselves on the internet.
>> Regurgitating press releases and rewriting news stories from the
>> articles that come down the wire are usually not producing anything
>> worthwhile. If a newspaper wants to survive (in print or online) you
>> need to tell me something *new*, don't just repackage something I can
>> learn about elsewhere from someone else.
> Wow. Where to start? As long as they can pay there own way, and are
> reliable/trustworthy enough that people keep paying for their content,
That's a big stretch there. I don't think there are enough people to
pay for the content that the current news media produces (in mass
duplication) to keep paying their own way.
> I don't think there is such a thing as too many reporters.
If we didn't have to pay for them, sure. But I think there are too many
for the number of people willing to pay for news via newspaper/magazine
sales (subscription or news-stand) or thru advertising supported
websites, or subscription supported websites. There simply isn't enough
money flowing into the news organizations anymore to support the news
gathering (and regurgitating) system as it is today.
> Sure, some are
> crass assholes (interviewing weeping widows, etc), and some have their
> own agendas to push, but hopefully the free market of ideas will sort
> them out. I'm more scared of only having one or two reporters at an
> event, especially if it is a government event where credentials are
> required.
I think the void will be filled by the new breed of reporter. There is
a reporter from the Huffington Post (online blog) at White House
briefings now.
> Way too easy to fine-tune reality that way. Having competition
> nipping at your backside is, I think, the best way to keep reporters
> honest and actively seeking the truth. You screw up more than once or
> twice, and your adoring readers will go elsewhere.
Note - many of them *are* going elsewhere. I read many more blogs than
online newspapers or newspaper news articles thru news aggregators
(google news, yahoo news, etc.). I was a dead-tree subscriber to my
local paper (Murky News aka San Jose Mercury News) for many years, but
they really fell behind in the last 10 years and when I moved some time
ago I never bothered to sign-up for delivery at my new location, and I
really didn't miss the paper. What I miss most are the ObComics, and
the crossword - I get both of them online now.
jc
Mike Peterson
> Mike Peterson wrote:
> > The idea that web
> > advertising will support a system of newsrooms around the country and
> > around the world is already being disproven and is obviously false on
> > the face of it anyway.
>
> Perhaps the idea is we don't need such a large system of newsrooms
> around the country and world. When I see a press conference and I see
> dozens of reporters, I wonder why? Why do we need *so many* people to
> report on the same event? I don't think we do need that many people
> reporting on one event. IMHO the news organizations need to diversify -
> fewer reporters on any one event or topic, cover more topics. Or, we
> simply have too many reporters (and too many news organizations).
So what you're saying is that we don't need any reporters in, say,
France or Germany. We'll just cover it from UN headquarters. And we
don't need reporters in Iowa or Mississippi, because news only happens
in New York, Chicago and LA.
And one reporter in Afghanistan, because there's a war there. No
reason to have dozens of reporters to cover any story, is there? Well,
heck, why waste money on that one guy? Let the military send out a
summary of what happened that day. I'm sure they'll be honest about
it.
And one news organization. You want Fox or Huffington Post? It doesn't
matter, as long as they cover the news.
>
> Most newspapers have very little actual new news (gathered from their
> own investigation and reporting). Mostly they republish news gathered
> from somewhere else and we can do that ourselves on the internet.
This is nonsense. You can't republish news if nobody is gathering it.
The ignorance of what is in the newspaper aside, this isn't even
logical. IT HAS TO START SOME PLACE.
That's the point.
> Regurgitating press releases and rewriting news stories from the
> articles that come down the wire are usually not producing anything
> worthwhile. If a newspaper wants to survive (in print or online) you
> need to tell me something *new*, don't just repackage something I can
> learn about elsewhere from someone else.
Why don't you go get a newspaper right now and try to actually read
it. If it's all wire copy, then you are wasting your money. But I
don't know a newspaper like that and I don't think you do either.
If you're going to criticize, take the time to analyze, please. This
is ridiculous, circular logic that repeats my point -- without
newsgathering organizations, there won't be any news for the re-
packagers to re-package and the bloviators to bloviate over.
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
Mike Peterson
> I think the void will be filled by the new breed of reporter. There is
> a reporter from the Huffington Post (online blog) at White House
> briefings now.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
So you're solution is one more reporter in the White House briefing
room? You just said we shouldn't have dozens of reporters at news
conferences, now you're praising the fact that the HuffPost -- a
collection of news repackaged from real news organizations, pictures
of nearly-nekkie celebrities and thumbsucking nonsense from Arianna's
celebrity buddies -- has added one more reporter to the scrum?
Let me ask you this -- Do you honestly think that, when the mayor of
Lebanon announces that there is a new company coming to town that will
employ X-number of people, that "dozens" of reporters are there?
When the town of Enfield makes plans to re-build a bridge and the
impact includes a year-long shut down of the existing bridge, which
will add about seven miles to a three-mile trip, do you think my
reporter got that story from CNN or NBC? Because it's going to affect
a lot of my readers, but I don't remember Andrea Mitchell being among
the dozens of reporters asking questions -- in fact, I don't remember
dozens of reporters. I think only my reporter was there.
We don't even subscribe to a wire service. We might have an article on
gardening from the state extension, but I think we've run maybe three
of those in the last six months. And we do get releases from the state
-- most of which, yes, we have to re-write to make them relevant to
our local community. Everything else that has appeared in our pages --
probably 75 percent at a bare minimum -- has been written within 40
miles of our newsroom.
So don't tell me what lazy assholes my people are, how worthless their
work is or how many dozens of people are writing about our community
and don't tell me you are able to get our news from Arianna and her
chums. We work our asses off for very, very small paychecks. The
bullshit from ignorant people who think they know how our business
works? It's a nice bonus.
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
Carl Fink
> When the town of Enfield makes plans to re-build a bridge and the
> impact includes a year-long shut down of the existing bridge, which
> will add about seven miles to a three-mile trip, do you think my
> reporter got that story from CNN or NBC? Because it's going to affect
> a lot of my readers, but I don't remember Andrea Mitchell being among
> the dozens of reporters asking questions -- in fact, I don't remember
> dozens of reporters. I think only my reporter was there.
Take things personally much?
Your interlocutor was saying that we need fewer reporters doing duplicate
stories, not that all reporters are redundant. Don't argue with a
ridiculous exaggeration of what was actually said.
JC Dill
> So you're solution is one more reporter in the White House briefing
> room?
No.
I was pointing out that bloggers are *getting access* that was
previously restricted to "official media", and that a new type of
reporter (and news reporting medium) seems to be overtaking traditional
news media. I was at an event today where a local blogger was taking
photos and notes, and blogged about the event later in the day. There
was also a photographer from the newspaper, but nothing on the newspaper
website yet. Maybe they will have an article tomorrow - 12 hours after
the blogger has the news and photos on his community website blog.
IMHO newspapers need to change - and fast - from their "issue"
mentality. People aren't going to be interested in reading in their
morning newspaper something they (or their neighbors, or other family
members) read in a blog the previous evening.
> Let me ask you this -- Do you honestly think that, when the mayor of
> Lebanon announces that there is a new company coming to town that will
> employ X-number of people, that "dozens" of reporters are there?
Here in my area it is not at all unusual for a very local news event
like this to be covered by more than one local newspaper. I was working
for the San Mateo Daily Journal last spring and went to several "local
news" events where we had reporters and photographers from the SMDJ, the
SMD News, the SM County Times, the SF Chronicle, etc. In some cases
there were more reporters and photographers than the people we were
"reporting" on such as the day when Jackie Spiers announced she was
being endorsed by Senator Lee:
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=88999&eddate=03/19/2008
One of the other newspapers there that day (San Mateo Daily News) is no
more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Mateo_Daily_News
This is for small-town news. Bigger news events have more reporters.
The memorial service for Tom Lantos had dozens of reporters and
photographers, including local and network TV crews etc. I was one of
about 10 photographers working in the wings, with more at the rear of
the assembly, and TV cameras all about the room.
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=89452
Did we really need that many people to report on what was said at a
memorial service? Is there some special way that each reporter
"reported" this news that made each news service's take on the event
special and different from what the others reported?
IMHO, the marketplace (the people who are willing to pay to get news or
willing to pay/advertise to support publication of news) doesn't think so.
> When the town of Enfield makes plans to re-build a bridge and the
> impact includes a year-long shut down of the existing bridge, which
> will add about seven miles to a three-mile trip, do you think my
> reporter got that story from CNN or NBC? Because it's going to affect
> a lot of my readers, but I don't remember Andrea Mitchell being among
> the dozens of reporters asking questions -- in fact, I don't remember
> dozens of reporters. I think only my reporter was there.
If you are covering news where no one else is covering it, providing
news that can't be found elsewhere, and if enough people are interested
in your news reporting, you will continue to sell papers or sell enough
ads to support a paper-free newspaper website. If not, then not.
> We don't even subscribe to a wire service. We might have an article on
> gardening from the state extension, but I think we've run maybe three
> of those in the last six months. And we do get releases from the state
> -- most of which, yes, we have to re-write to make them relevant to
> our local community. Everything else that has appeared in our pages --
> probably 75 percent at a bare minimum -- has been written within 40
> miles of our newsroom.
I haven't seen a daily paper like this in a long, long time. All of the
papers in my local area are full of wire service stories and
regurgitated features with less than 50% (sometimes far less) of the
articles genuine news.
> So don't tell me what lazy assholes my people are,
I said no such thing. That is absolutely uncalled for.
I spoke in generalities about the reporting *I* am familiar with, such
as I find in the papers in my area, such as the Monterey Herald, Santa
Cruz Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, San Mateo
Daily Journal, Palo Alto Daily News, etc.
> how worthless their
> work is or how many dozens of people are writing about our community
> and don't tell me you are able to get our news from Arianna and her
> chums. We work our asses off for very, very small paychecks. The
> bullshit from ignorant people who think they know how our business
> works? It's a nice bonus.
Dude, take a chill pill. I'm not some ignorant noob - look at the photo
byline in the articles I linked to above.
jc
JC Dill
> In some cases
> there were more reporters and photographers than the people we were
> "reporting" on such as the day when Jackie Spiers
Oops, that was Gina Papan.
JC Dill
> On May 25, 12:34 pm, JC Dill <jcdill.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Mike Peterson wrote:
>>> The idea that web
>>> advertising will support a system of newsrooms around the country and
>>> around the world is already being disproven and is obviously false on
>>> the face of it anyway.
>> Perhaps the idea is we don't need such a large system of newsrooms
>> around the country and world. When I see a press conference and I see
>> dozens of reporters, I wonder why? Why do we need *so many* people to
>> report on the same event? I don't think we do need that many people
>> reporting on one event. IMHO the news organizations need to diversify -
>> fewer reporters on any one event or topic, cover more topics. Or, we
>> simply have too many reporters (and too many news organizations).
>
> So what you're saying is that we don't need any reporters in, say,
> France or Germany. We'll just cover it from UN headquarters. And we
> don't need reporters in Iowa or Mississippi, because news only happens
> in New York, Chicago and LA.
If this type of reporting is typical of today's news reporters, then
what you propose is a far better alternative than what we get now -
because I didn't say anything like what you claim I said. I suggest you
retract and apologize for the statement you just made, mis-stating my
position as you summarize and restate what you claim "I'm saying".
> And one reporter in Afghanistan, because there's a war there. No
> reason to have dozens of reporters to cover any story, is there? Well,
> heck, why waste money on that one guy? Let the military send out a
> summary of what happened that day. I'm sure they'll be honest about
> it.
I'd love to have more reporting from war zones, especially reporting
from reporters who aren't "embedded" and under the control of the military.
What I don't want is 40 of them all staying in the same hotel and
reporting on the same events from their hotel windows which happens far
too often - not just in war zones but also in places like when a
hurricane is blowing in to a coastal city. I've seen many still photos
showing a line of reporters each recording their "live from CityX" 6 pm
news report just a few yards apart on the same wave-swept section of
pier. If you take a transcript of what they each "reported" you won't
find a single bit of news that wasn't covered in the first report.
> And one news organization. You want Fox or Huffington Post? It doesn't
> matter, as long as they cover the news.
As long as we have freedom of the press we will have far more viewpoints
and news sources than just one news organization. I hardly consider
Faux News a durable news source. I predict they will implode (loss of
network sponsorship and advertising as fewer and fewer businesses can
afford to to be associated with such a lunatic fringe) long before the
next presidential election cycle.
>> Most newspapers have very little actual new news (gathered from their
>> own investigation and reporting). Mostly they republish news gathered
>> from somewhere else and we can do that ourselves on the internet.
>
> This is nonsense. You can't republish news if nobody is gathering it.
Most newspapers regularly republish news nationwide that *one* person or
*one* news gathering organization gathered. All you have to do is
google for a news story and find dozens of newspapers reprinting the
same SINGLE wire-service article, over and over and over, verbatim.
Occasionally you find the same story with minor edits, and each version
(original and edited) copied time and time again.
> The ignorance of what is in the newspaper aside, this isn't even
> logical. IT HAS TO START SOME PLACE.
Yes. But it doesn't have to come from a "news organization". This is
where newspapers are missing the point. They think they are necessary -
they aren't. If they don't do a good job they will go out of business
and news will be reported on from some other source - such as a local
blogger.
> That's the point.
That's your point. My point is that the original source doesn't have to
be the source(s) we have been getting our news from for many years. If
the traditional sources don't adapt, they will be replaced by new sources.
I can't remember when I last picked up a phone book. I go online now to
do all the research I used to do with the phone book because I get more
information online, faster, easier. Some of this information comes from
the same source (e.g. superpages.com) and some comes from new sources.
News is undergoing the same type of change as information directories
have gone thru. The information directories embraced the internet early
on (superpages.com has been around for a long time) and are still going
strong.
>> Regurgitating press releases and rewriting news stories from the
>> articles that come down the wire are usually not producing anything
>> worthwhile. If a newspaper wants to survive (in print or online) you
>> need to tell me something *new*, don't just repackage something I can
>> learn about elsewhere from someone else.
>
> Why don't you go get a newspaper right now and try to actually read
> it. If it's all wire copy, then you are wasting your money. But I
> don't know a newspaper like that and I don't think you do either.
Send me your snail-mail address (my email address works) and I'll mail
you copies of my local rags for you to evaluate.
Here's some online examples:
http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_12436070
http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_12445423?nclick_check=1
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/news_listing.php?type=wnews
http://www.mercurynews.com/celebrities/ci_12447924
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/25/state/n161242D27.DTL&tsp=1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/25/national/a173544D74.DTL&tsp=1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/25/national/a062332D10.DTL&tsp=1
All of these are "front page" stories from their respective websites.
The Murky is the worst - it's now one of a local news conglomerate's
papers and they reprint articles and features from each of their local
reporters in all the papers instead of filling each paper with actual
local news.
> If you're going to criticize, take the time to analyze, please. This
> is ridiculous, circular logic that repeats my point -- without
> newsgathering organizations, there won't be any news for the re-
> packagers to re-package and the bloviators to bloviate over.
You keep assuming that bloggers are simply re-packaging news reported on
elsewhere. Many bloggers investigate and report on things first hand,
rather than simply regurgitate news written elsewhere, for example:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
http://factcheck.org/
http://mediamatters.com/
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/05/22
http://fuglyhorseoftheday.blogspot.com/
(about 50% of fugly's blog is first-hand or from material sent to her by
readers rather than passing on news previously reported by another news
source. Often she has or gets more information about an issue than was
reported by another news source.)
Or I can go to a source directly:
http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/05/millimeter-wave-whole-body-imager.html
OK, so here I'm "relying" on a government agency to give me some honest
news. OTOH, when was the last time your paper (or any paper you read)
wrote an article about the TSA, and how much of it was original
reporting versus repeating something that came down the wire? Compare
it with the amount of original reporting one can get from the TSA blog
every week.
It is my opinion that original reporting blogs are going to become more
and more common and eventually become a major source for news all around
the world. I won't have to rely on a US news service to send a reporter
to Baghdad, I will be able to read a blog written by someone who has
lived in Baghdad for years and get a first-person report of the news.
One big advantage of this type of reporting is that I don't have to
worry that the reporter has twisted what their source said into
something different from what was actually said. When the reporter *IS*
the source, what they say is what they say.
jc
PatONeill
> Here in my area it is not at all unusual for a very local news event
> like this to be covered by more than one local newspaper. I was working
> for the San Mateo Daily Journal last spring and went to several "local
> news" events where we had reporters and photographers from the SMDJ, the
> SMD News, the SM County Times, the SF Chronicle, etc. In some cases
> there were more reporters and photographers than the people we were
> "reporting" on such as the day when Jackie Spiers announced she was
> being endorsed by Senator Lee:
Did you read each paper's version of the story? Are you sure they were
virtually identical, with no specific angle for their particular part
of the area? The Chronicle didn't focus on major urban issues, while
the suburban papers dealt with the effect on their locales? Not to
mention differences in political perspective.
> Did we really need that many people to report on what was said at a
> memorial service? Is there some special way that each reporter
> "reported" this news that made each news service's take on the event
> special and different from what the others reported?
>
> IMHO, the marketplace (the people who are willing to pay to get news or
> willing to pay/advertise to support publication of news) doesn't think so.
Depends. Did the local reporters talk to officials at the service from
their local areas? Did they get a local perspective on what Lantos
meant to their areas? Wouldn't a single reporter/photographer just
have given you a homogenous "so-and-so spoke at the service" report,
full of facts but not much life?
And they'll think that way until they only have one news source for
local coverage and discover that lots of what they thought was
important isn't being covered anymore.
PatONeill
> Yes. But it doesn't have to come from a "news organization". This is
> where newspapers are missing the point. They think they are necessary -
> they aren't. If they don't do a good job they will go out of business
> and news will be reported on from some other source - such as a local
> blogger.
And who's going to pay the blogger for all that time and effort? For
going to every local town council meeting and school board meeting?
For spending hours on the phone with the police and local officials?
Or is he/she doing all this out of the goodness of his/her heart?
aemeijers
'Lone Ranger' bloggers? While many or most papers have a definite
political bent, those that want to be taken seriously strive to at least
be accurate about the facts of a story. And one or more layers of
editing serve to rein in any reporters that start using their byline as
a soapbox. I don't read a lot of blogs, and none on a regular basis, but
the ones I have seen range from well-reasoned op-ed pieces to
stream-of-conscientiousness drivel. Almost none resembled
well-researched news stories. More like on-line versions of columns in
the paper. Which isn't a bad thing, but it isn't a replacement for
actual news.
--
aem sends...
Mike Peterson
NOT get holidays, but our photographer went into the hospital Friday.
I had to do my job and also got to attend five parades in three days.
Yesterday, I shot three in a row, which meant pushing off a lot of my
normal work onto the assistant editor. It's fun and I enjoy my job,
but I do come home at the end of the day a little frazzled from time
to time. Last night more than usual.
And since you're normally pretty thoughtful, the generalities pretty
much pushed every button I've got that still works.
Howsoever ... some remaining points to address, perhaps less
hysterically ...
1. You live in one of the nation's major megalopolises and it's
natural that you'll have big numbers of everything. Dozens of
reporters in the Bay Area covering a major story is not a big deal.
Vermont recently saw a little burst when the captain of that nearly-
hijacked ship was a local boy, but it came and went pretty quickly.
Most of the time, five people at a newser is a big deal around here --
and generally justified by the impact of the story, though a grisly
murder will do some of the same.
2. We're a weekly. We do a mix of news, trend and features. In a
market our size, you still need daily coverage to tell people what
those sirens were all about, to let them know who died before the
funeral is over and so forth, but most of what happens works well
enough in a once-a-week format. Our local daily uses way too much wire
copy, the daily our company owns about 20 miles south of here banished
most wire copy to the back and is producing more local. It can be
done, and I agree it's lazy not to. But there's still plenty of
relevant local copy being produced, and since you can't predict the
amount of news that will happen, you need the other stuff in a daily.
(You probably don't need to post it, granted.)
3. As Pat said, just because the big boys are swarming on a story,
that doesn't mean you should passively accept their angle on it. Aside
from a conflict between your disdain for wire copy and your dislike of
multiple reporters on the same story, it's not the same story. If, in
the funeral oration for the Great Man, there is some mention of
something he did that had particular impact on our area, the big boys
won't carry it. We need to. And there will be local dignitaries there,
and it could be that someone in his family lives in the area or has a
vacation home here or went to school here and will have a particular
relevance to our readers. Cookie-cutter coverage is not good coverage.
4. I just had a conversation with a former assignment-desk person from
CNN about cutbacks and their impact on foreign coverage, but it's
nothing new that the networks no longer have boots on the ground. They
parachute in some reporter and hope the local stringers can fill them
in on what's happening. That is far removed from having real reporters
working the beat and we are being robbed by it. Having a local
blogger, as you suggest, can be a partial answer, but just as, on the
Internet, nobody can tell you're a dog, it can be hard to pick out the
stooges, fanatics and incompetents among bloggers. I thought riverrun
did a great job of blogging from Iraq, but she drew a lot of fire from
those who wanted a different point of view expressed. At least if CNN
or Fox or whoever vets and hires a local, you have some sense of where
they are coming from, even if you don't find them entirely credible.
5. You still have to pay for good coverage. My favorite sports blogger
is an attorney who also covers the Houston Texans, but she does a fair
amount of aggregation rather than original reporting, because she's
keeping up a law practice between posts. To actually work a beat
requires being there, and 99% of bloggers either don't have the time
to be there or else aren't qualified to report on what they're seeing.
You want someone with some background, seasoning and judgment, and
such people do not dwell in their parents' basements and eat for free
-- they real lives and real families and they need real jobs. The
number of blogs that can afford in any way to replicate real
newsgathering is tiny. (I don't count either HuffPost or Drudge as
replicating real newsgathering. They repackage, rant and selectively
report.)
6. Much of your criticism is of post-collapse practices -- I had a
friend in the Oakland Tribune group of papers and she was quite
disheartened at the lack of thought, resources and effort that (new)
ownership decided to expend on coverage throughout that chain. Robert
Maynard must be spinning in his grave. And the whole situation with
the Chronicle is a joke. But when you talk about what newspapers ought
to do, go back to Maynard rather than spinning fantasies that can't
happen. Much of the toothpaste is out of the tube, but there are
principles that remain in place and they need to be emulated, albeit
with adjustments for the passage of time.
7. About that toothpaste -- when my job was to help kids learn about
newspapers, I came to realize that their teachers were not going to be
very good allies, because we missed an entire generation and they
didn't know how to read the paper, either. I'm not joking or making an
exaggerated point. My counterpart at one substantial newspaper offered
free papers and materials for the classroom, but only if the teachers
attended a workshop. She found that they didn't know the parts of the
paper, the functions of the different sections, how to use the index,
how to evaluate what they were reading. And they'd be very excited by
the end of the workshop because they didn't know all that information
was available on their doorstep. But it's a fact that a lot of people
in the 18-34 age group don't understand how a newspaper actually works
-- for instance, we'd constantly be asked "What is the reading level
of the newspaper?" and have to answer, "It depends on the section. The
editorial page is fairly high. The features section is kind of low.
Sports is somewhat high because of the amount of jargon used." And
they though we were avoiding giving them a simple answer -- they
didn't understand that the paper wasn't just one big undifferentiated
thing like a textbook.
Which probably means we're doomed. But I've still got a dozen years
before I can even think about claiming Social Security, so I think
I'll get to the office and try to dig out of the problems caused by
three days of trying to cover for that hospitalized photog ...
Mike Peterson
http://nellieblogs.blogspot.com
JC Dill
Because the SMDJ ran 4 of my photos with this story (only 1 is shown
online, but there were 4 in the printed paper), I did follow how it was
reported in the other papers. There was no substantial difference in
what was reported in any of the papers. Everyone wrote about the
wonderful things Tom did in his life, and the papers noted the important
people who attended and spoke (Nancy Pelosi, Larry Ellison, etc.).
Most people:
1) Will only watch or read one of these stories.
2) If/When they come across the next story they will say: "I already
read about the Tom Lantos memorial, no need to read it again."
3) They don't know, and further they don't *care* that a different
version of the story might focus slightly more on a tiny detail than the
story they already read.
4) If you ask them if they are willing to support a news gathering
organization that sent dozens of reporters to the memorial to gather on
and produce dozens of different newspaper articles and TV news stories,
most people would say: "Hell No!"
Yes, there are some people who will seek out and read more than 1 story,
who care about the details they might learn in a different version, who
care that they can read different versions, and who support this by
buying multiple papers. They are a tiny minority of the population. If
your business model is all about targeting this customer, but pretending
that the entire population of your coverage area is this customer, you
have a problem.
The marketplace is discovering #4. IMHO this is why the "demand" for
duplicated news is so low and why all news gathering organizations are
bleeding red ink. It's not just about the decline in advertising
dollars and the decline in people who read the "paper" - it's about
inefficient news gathering processes that have produced an abundance of
duplicated news.
It's like a tragedy of the commons in reverse - every news organization
is flooding the market with news and there's too much news and too
little money for funding their news gathering services. They each seem
to think the way to survive is to flood the market with *even more
duplicated news*, further devaluing all news. The opposite is the path
to success, make sure your news coverage is unique, so people come to
you for news they can't get anywhere else. This is how the WSJ does it,
how they get people to *pay* for the news online via subscriptions.
If part of your news coverage is copying news from the wire, pay someone
to EDIT the wire stories, even better to pull the information from more
than one story or wire service, and write a brand new article with
information pulled-together from these various sources rather than just
regurgitating a wire store verbatim. Give me a reason to prefer your
organization as a news source, because I can get dozens/hundreds of
copies of that wire service article from your competitors.
jc
JC Dill
If you don't understand the blogger business model, it's going to eat
your newspaper alive.
jc
JC Dill
> JC, you caught me at the end of a very busy weekend -- not only do we
> NOT get holidays, but our photographer went into the hospital Friday.
> I had to do my job and also got to attend five parades in three days.
> Yesterday, I shot three in a row, which meant pushing off a lot of my
> normal work onto the assistant editor. It's fun and I enjoy my job,
> but I do come home at the end of the day a little frazzled from time
> to time. Last night more than usual.
Sorry you had a rough weekend. You have my understanding, and sympathies.
> 4. I just had a conversation with a former assignment-desk person from
> CNN about cutbacks and their impact on foreign coverage, but it's
> nothing new that the networks no longer have boots on the ground. They
> parachute in some reporter and hope the local stringers can fill them
> in on what's happening. That is far removed from having real reporters
> working the beat and we are being robbed by it. Having a local
> blogger, as you suggest, can be a partial answer, but just as, on the
> Internet, nobody can tell you're a dog, it can be hard to pick out the
> stooges, fanatics and incompetents among bloggers. I thought riverrun
> did a great job of blogging from Iraq, but she drew a lot of fire from
> those who wanted a different point of view expressed.
I predict that in 5 years we will have many in-country bloggers
providing different points of view, and news from different regions
around the world. I happen to follow a blog in Egypt - not a lot of
political news on this blog but when there is political news I know it's
coming from someone who has lived there for years and who truly
understands the situation, not a reporter who was flown in yesterday.
> At least if CNN
> or Fox or whoever vets and hires a local, you have some sense of where
> they are coming from, even if you don't find them entirely credible.
Both Fox and CNN *pretend* to be fair and impartial, but they aren't,
and the people they hire aren't, or at least they are paid to be partial
to the network's vision rather than really impartially reporting the
news. (This is a problem more with Fox than CNN, but it exists in
both.) With an in-country blogger they don't pretend to be impartial.
You can follow several bloggers and make up your own mind about the
situation, or you can follow several bloggers until you find one that
analyzes things the way you do, and then follow their reporting the way
people who like how Fox analyzes and reports on things follow Fox.
> 5. You still have to pay for good coverage. My favorite sports blogger
> is an attorney who also covers the Houston Texans, but she does a fair
> amount of aggregation rather than original reporting, because she's
> keeping up a law practice between posts.
My favorite bloggers no longer have $dayjobs. As people figure out how
to make money from blogs, this trend will continue. ObComics, I believe
Joshua Fruhlinger (The Comics Curmudgeon) is making real money from his
blog and no longer has a $dayjob.
> To actually work a beat
> requires being there, and 99% of bloggers either don't have the time
> to be there or else aren't qualified to report on what they're seeing.
> You want someone with some background, seasoning and judgment, and
> such people do not dwell in their parents' basements and eat for free
> -- they real lives and real families
true
> and they need real jobs.
false
> The
> number of blogs that can afford in any way to replicate real
> newsgathering is tiny. (I don't count either HuffPost or Drudge as
> replicating real newsgathering. They repackage, rant and selectively
> report.)
They don't need to replicate "real newsgathering" the way it has been
done. They can approach the problem differently. The primary way
bloggers are developing a high-earning blog is by micro-specializing and
covering one small topic with far more detail than anyone else. Your
lawyer friend could probably turn her blog into a business that
out-earns her law practice, if she put her heart into it. She might end
up having her blog carried by the newspaper in both their print and
online versions!
I have a friend whose retired father started a website in the mid 1990s.
The website has thousands of pages of information now on various
topics such as gardening, bird watching, etc., but it's very, very web
1.0 boring to look at. Yet, the advertising revenue he gets from google
ads on his website is greater than his pension! (The ad revenue $$
passed his pension $$ several years ago, and at the time he had ads on
fewer than 50% of his pages. He was adding the ad code by hand, a few
pages a day. Updating his website is his hobby.) He had absolutely no
idea that this site he was building as a hobby and former teacher would
end up earning him so much money.
Many websites and blogs have become well-paying enterprises in this
fashion. New websites and blogs are starting up all the time, emulating
these sites that *earn money*. Newspapers need to do the same.
> 6. Much of your criticism is of post-collapse practices
When do you define the "collapse"? I've seen these problems for many
years (at least 10 years), not just in the past few months.
> But when you talk about what newspapers ought
> to do, go back to Maynard rather than spinning fantasies that can't
> happen. Much of the toothpaste is out of the tube, but there are
> principles that remain in place and they need to be emulated, albeit
> with adjustments for the passage of time.
You can't "go back" to the way it was. The old business model for news
- get advertisers to pay and people to subscribe to the paper is not
working anymore. You have to start with a clean slate and look at what
is working and emulate what is working, not keep trying to shove the old
business model at people.
> Which probably means we're doomed.
You are doomed if you don't adapt. I truly and sincerely hope you adapt.
I believe that in adapting newspapers will become far fewer, and that a
glut of reporters (and photojournalists) will be looking for new jobs.
This is one reason I'm not focusing on photojournalism - there are a lot
of photographers out there with far more experience than I have looking
for photojournalism jobs. I'm adapting and taking my photography in a
different direction.
jc
PatONeill
> PatONeill wrote:
> Because the SMDJ ran 4 of my photos with this story (only 1 is shown
> online, but there were 4 in the printed paper), I did follow how it was
> reported in the other papers. There was no substantial difference in
> what was reported in any of the papers. Everyone wrote about the
> wonderful things Tom did in his life, and the papers noted the important
> people who attended and spoke (Nancy Pelosi, Larry Ellison, etc.).
Then the local papers in your area aren't doing their job. Please
don't use them as exemplars of all local journalism. Example: When
sportscaster Harry Kalas died recently, every paper and news outlet in
the Philly area covered it. But only one--the Delaware County Times--
devoted extra space to his ties to the small town of Media, the county
seat. THAT is how a local paper should be covering such a story.
I am really troubled by your idea of having only one or two reporters
cover the story for all the media. This is what is usually called
"pool reporting" and it is, IMO, the worst kind of journalism. First
of all, it means the event winds up being nothing more than a speech
and couple of perfunctory questions. There's no one there to ask the
surprising question, the one from a reporter with an unusual angle
because he also handles some other "beat" for his organization.
PatONeill
What "blogger business model"? You mean, living off your employment as
an office grunt, while posting on your lunch hour? News reporting--
real reporting, not copying stuff from the AP or Reuters website and
then commenting on it--takes time and effort. That means, to do it
well, you have to be paid to do it.
Who's going to pay the blogger in your model?
PatONeill
> You can follow several bloggers and make up your own mind about the
> situation, or you can follow several bloggers until you find one that
> analyzes things the way you do, and then follow their reporting the way
> people who like how Fox analyzes and reports on things follow Fox.
>
> They don't need to replicate "real newsgathering" the way it has been
> done. They can approach the problem differently. The primary way
> bloggers are developing a high-earning blog is by micro-specializing and
> covering one small topic with far more detail than anyone else. Your
> lawyer friend could probably turn her blog into a business that
> out-earns her law practice, if she put her heart into it. She might end
> up having her blog carried by the newspaper in both their print and
> online versions!
>
OMG--this is precisely what I hope doesn't happen. In this model,
every person only seeks out the info about stuff he is already
interested in...and never learns much, if anything, about anything
else. Further, his biases and prejudices are constantly reinforced,
because he never encounters much, if anything, that contradicts them.
This nation is already polarized enough, thank you.
JC Dill
> I am really troubled by your idea of having only one or two reporters
> cover the story for all the media.
That's not my idea. That is a mis-characterization of my idea. I said
"fewer" not "only one or two" reporters.
> This is what is usually called
> "pool reporting" and it is, IMO, the worst kind of journalism. First
> of all, it means the event winds up being nothing more than a speech
> and couple of perfunctory questions. There's no one there to ask the
> surprising question, the one from a reporter with an unusual angle
> because he also handles some other "beat" for his organization.
I'm not just talking about press conferences. I'm talking about news in
general. All the news media chase after the same hot stories and for
the most part they report on them the same. Meanwhile other stories go
unreported. This is how original news blogs are gaining steam on
traditional media, by going after under-reported topics and stories.
jc
JC Dill
You are confusing reporting with following. Those who want to know what
is really going on will follow a variety of blogs on topics that
interest them so that they get a variety of news, and viewpoints.
jc
JC Dill
> On May 26, 12:24 pm, JC Dill <jcdill.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> PatONeill wrote:
>>> On May 26, 4:11 am, JC Dill <jcdill.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Yes. But it doesn't have to come from a "news organization". This is
>>>> where newspapers are missing the point. They think they are necessary -
>>>> they aren't. If they don't do a good job they will go out of business
>>>> and news will be reported on from some other source - such as a local
>>>> blogger.
>>> And who's going to pay the blogger for all that time and effort? For
>>> going to every local town council meeting and school board meeting?
>>> For spending hours on the phone with the police and local officials?
>>> Or is he/she doing all this out of the goodness of his/her heart?
>> If you don't understand the blogger business model, it's going to eat
>> your newspaper alive.
>>
>> jc
>
> What "blogger business model"? You mean, living off your employment as
> an office grunt, while posting on your lunch hour?
No.
> News reporting--
> real reporting, not copying stuff from the AP or Reuters website and
> then commenting on it--takes time and effort. That means, to do it
> well, you have to be paid to do it.
True.
> Who's going to pay the blogger in your model?
Like I said, if you don't understand the blogger business model, it's
going to eat your newspaper alive.
If you are in the news gathering business and you don't have the ability
and haven't actually gone and learned what I'm talking about, you are a
Dead Paper Walking.
jc
PatONeill
Oh, so just a couple of reporters at the big fire? Or the arrest of
the mobster? And who does the follow-ups?
PatONeill
Dreamworld. Nobody has the time to do that. And I'm also talking about
discovering things you don't even KNOW you find interesting until you
see them.
For instance, in today's Philly Inquirer there was a feature article
about all the "big family" TV series on the TLC channel. The info in
it was fascinating. If I'd been simply searching the web for stuff,
I'd never have come across it, because I don't watch TLC and hence
would have no particular reason to look for it. This happens to me
with newspapers all the time--I turn the page and bam! there's an
article with intriguing information I'd never have known even existed
without the newspaper.
PatONeill
So, explain it to me. Tell me how this blogger is earning a living and
still has the time to do the reporting you're talking about.
JC Dill
> For instance, in today's Philly Inquirer there was a feature article
> about all the "big family" TV series on the TLC channel. The info in
> it was fascinating. If I'd been simply searching the web for stuff,
> I'd never have come across it, because I don't watch TLC and hence
> would have no particular reason to look for it. This happens to me
> with newspapers all the time--I turn the page and bam! there's an
> article with intriguing information I'd never have known even existed
> without the newspaper.
That's what the bloggers who are aggregators (as opposed to those who
post original news) do - they bring your attention to articles they find
interesting. Between those who originate news articles and those who
aggregate information originated by others, one can setup an RSS feed
following a number of blogs with many points of view and many news
sources, customized to specific topics that interest you as well as
following people who find things you find interesting (people who have
the same "taste" in interesting news as you do).
For instance, I read Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools blog. Every day there's a
new post about something cool and useful. Some days I scan it and move
on to the next article in my RSS feed because the tool isn't
particularly interesting to me. Other days it's a real find.
It's one of the 30-40 RSS feeds I follow (reading or scanning each new
entry, usually within a few hours of it being posted) every day. I have
about 70 more feeds that I scan periodically, every few days or a few
times a month. I also have 2 news link pages (customized iGoogle and
my.yahoo pages) and the SF Gate home page that I check daily. ObComics:
I read about half of my favorite comics via an RSS feed, and the other
half on a webpage. I read the RSS feed comics more frequently -
sometimes I don't get to the webpage every day.
Based on all your objections that show a basic misunderstanding of many
fundamentals of blogging, it appears you really don't understand how
blogging and RSS works. I suggest you subscribe to a few feeds and
learn how this works from a subscriber basis. When a newspaper loses a
subscriber, this is what you are competing with. Ignore it at your own
peril.
jc
JC Dill
> So, explain it to me. Tell me how this blogger is earning a living and
> still has the time to do the reporting you're talking about.
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+earn+a+living+blogging
Earning a living blogging is much like earning a living as a freelance
writer. There's the research part, the writing part, the networking
part, the business part. As with all self-employment it takes a while
to ramp up to earning a living - you don't start today and earn a living
from it tomorrow. The research and writing parts are a lot like
freelance writing, however you usually deliver a finished product in
frequent and short bursts rather than longer and less frequent intervals
(as when writing for weekly/monthly publications).
The networking parts are similar to freelance writing, but of course are
tailored to blogging and the internet - linking to other blogs,
following and commenting on other blogs, guest blogging on other blogs
(which brings their readers to your blog) and having other guest
bloggers on your blog, configuring your blog in ways that optimize your
content for search engines (called Search Engine Optimization or SEO),
engaging your readers thru the comments, etc. The business part is
signing up for advertising (google ads and similar ads) and seeking
sponsors. When it all gets to be too much for one person, you bring in
help (e.g. to help manage the blog infrastructure, moderate the
comments, adjust your SEO, work with advertisers and sponsors, help
arrange guest bloggers, etc.).
For examples go to any site that ranks blogs and check the top 10 blogs
in each category.
http://www.google.com/search?q=top+ranked+blogs
jc
PatONeill
> That's what the bloggers who are aggregators (as opposed to those who
> post original news) do - they bring your attention to articles they find
> interesting. Between those who originate news articles and those who
> aggregate information originated by others, one can setup an RSS feed
> following a number of blogs with many points of view and many news
> sources, customized to specific topics that interest you as well as
> following people who find things you find interesting (people who have
> the same "taste" in interesting news as you do).
>
You don't understand...this is usually stuff I had no idea I'd find
interesting. It's a total surprise to me. It's what keeps my world
from being limited to that which I already know about. What you're
proposing is, IMO, like going to a library and only scanning the same
shelves over and over.
PatONeill
I'm sorry, I read those links and I see a lot of pie in the sky. I
don't see anything one can depend upon as a regular salary (especially
if you expect to support a family--or do you envision a news business
composed entirely of single 20-somethings who have to go on to a real
job when they have a spouse and kids?). News gathering is a labor-
intensive business....something people like you have yet to learn,
despite being in the business.
Good luck on selling your photography in the future you envision; good
luck on getting paid for it when somebody uses your on-line posted
pics without payment or permission.
Mike Marshall
I almost missed your advice, what with USEnet dying and all...
-Mike <g>
Mike Marshall
>One of the things I loved about the Dewey Decimal System was how the
>computer science books (001.642) were right next to insane ranting
>loonies like Velikovsky.
HEY! The manager at the car wash where I worked in High School
thought Velikovsky was *the man*...
-Mike
Invid Fan
<3d36419b-bcfc-4d6d...@k8g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
PatONeill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
> I'm sorry, I read those links and I see a lot of pie in the sky. I
> don't see anything one can depend upon as a regular salary (especially
> if you expect to support a family--or do you envision a news business
> composed entirely of single 20-somethings who have to go on to a real
> job when they have a spouse and kids?). News gathering is a labor-
> intensive business....something people like you have yet to learn,
> despite being in the business.
>
> Good luck on selling your photography in the future you envision; good
> luck on getting paid for it when somebody uses your on-line posted
> pics without payment or permission.
>
There are probably comparisons to web comics here, and I'd love to know
if someone has come up with a blogger model that works in most
situations (much as the 'Web Comics Weekly' podcast tried to do for
comics). How many web comics are truly self supporting for their
creator? With no t-shirts or books to sell, what besides ad space gives
a blogger income? Can such a market really support the large number of
local bloggers needed to cover the news? Even a small city like Buffalo
would need probably 6-12 to give a wide range of viewpoints and
specialty areas...
--
Chris Mack *quote under construction*
'Invid Fan'
JC Dill
You don't understand, sometimes you GET surprise stuff, especially if
you follow a blogger whose focus is bringing you surprise stuff.
I suggest you start out by following Cool Tools.
You also don't understand because you keep trying to take what I'm
describing and deciding you know what it's like simply from the
description so you don't need to experience it for yourself. Go
EXPERIENCE it, setup an RSS feed for some blogs. Until you do this you
won't understand blogging and why it's making inroads on "traditional
media".
jc
JC Dill
> I'm sorry, I read those links and I see a lot of pie in the sky. I
> don't see anything
To a man with a hammer in his hand, every problem looks like a nail.
I have explained screws to you, and told you how a screwdriver works.
Apparently you keep walking up to screws, trying to bash on them with
your hammer, and remain baffled at how these new fasteners can possibly
be easy to use or hold things together. Put DOWN the hammer, take up
the screwdriver (RSS feeder) and try this stuff out. Add a few blogs,
follow them daily, look for new blogs, drop the ones that don't interest
you. Learn how it WORKS by experiencing it. Until you do this, your
hammer-centric philosophy will keep misleading you about how the new
technology actually works.
A friend once described Burning Man as famously indescribable. This is
very true. No matter how many times one has gone to Burning Man, or how
well you try to describe it to someone, their experience will never
match what you tried to describe it as. To understand Burning Man you
have to experience Burning Man. The internet is that way, and blogging
is that way too.
> Good luck on selling your photography in the future you envision; good
> luck on getting paid for it when somebody uses your on-line posted
> pics without payment or permission.
You keep missing the forest for the trees. Good luck surviving "in the
wild" in this digital age. I've given you all the road-maps I can -
it's up to you to actually follow them into the forest and experience
the forest for yourself.
As for someone using my photos without payment - the one time that
happened I had a contract! (Long story about how they kept stringing me
along on the payment. Right now it's actually in my best interest to
keep them on the books as a dead-beat client as it helps keep them in
line with their underhanded business tricks.) Everyone else has asked
for permission, and provides me with credit and links back to my site,
bringing me business. I register my works with the copyright office so
if someone makes commercial use of my photos without my permission and
without their use being "fair use" then I have the ability to demand
payment more than they would have had to pay if they had approached me
for license rights in the first place.
The problem that old media has in this new digital age is that they
don't really understand fair use (as it applies to others using their
content - they are all too happy to make use of fair use when they want
to use content themselves), and they don't understand how to use the
various tools and services to their best advantage. If you don't want
Google indexing your news, don't waste your time trying to sue Google,
just use robots.txt to stop Google from indexing your site, problem
solved (instantly)! But when your traffic plummets because people can't
find your content when they search Google, don't be surprised. You
can't get the traffic (from Google) without the indexing (by Google).
Blogging is the same thing - you can't get traffic from blogs without
blogs using (fair use) some of your content. If their use exceeds fair
use (e.g. reproducing a substantial amount of your content), then tell
them to stop using more than "fair use" allows. Excessive copying
(beyond that allowed with fair use) without license or permission is not
very common on the internet and cases where it caused serious financial
harm to the copyright owner are quite rare. Being afraid of this to the
point that it paralyzes your ability to use the internet to your
advantage is self-defeating.
jc
PatONeill
And how do you KNOW when someone has used your work without
compensation or permission? Do you have time to search the whole web
on a daily basis?
My wife works for NFAIS--look it up. The whole fair use/copyright
issue is a major headache for her members. I know all about it. I also
know you can't prevent misappropriation on the web. I also know nobody
has come up with a workable business model for news gathering and
reporting on the web...including the model you present.
Because the model you present isn't for news gathering and reporting.
It's for pontificating and marketing.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Well, there are long reported pieces like this
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/05/the-future-of-i-1.php
that are done on a sort of personal National Geographic Society model.
I don't know how many such are supportable -- and the fact that admittedly
I have never contributed makes me somewhat sceptical, but apparently
enough people are.
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
JC Dill
> How many web comics are truly self supporting for their
> creator? With no t-shirts or books to sell,
What?
This is like saying "how do musicians make money if they have no albums
to sell?". Just as some musicians have learned to embrace file sharing
and use it to build their brand, their audience and sell other, scarcer
items (live concerts, t-shirts), bloggers can do the same. (Cue 100
rants about how file sharing is "stealing" by people who are ignorant
about this topic and parroting old-media objections without having taken
the time to learn How This Stuff Works for those who have figured out
how to Make It Work For Them.)
If you think "I just write stuff and that's all - pay me" then you won't
figure out how to make money on the internet. You need to be more
creative and flexible than that.
It's something I'm working on myself with my photography business. How
can I expand my brand and make money on more than just selling photos or
being hired to take photos? How can I build it into more than that?
I'm following blogs of photographers who are doing just that, and
looking at what is working for them, and considering which ideas will
work for me.
jc
JC Dill
> And how do you KNOW when someone has used your work without
> compensation or permission? Do you have time to search the whole web
> on a daily basis?
For writers, they can setup google searches on key phrases of their
work, and then use Google Alerts to show them when those key phrases
show up on new sites. If someone is wholesale copying (not just
fair-use excerpts) it will show up.
As a photographer I use TinEye a fair bit. So far the SOLE
"unauthorized" use of one of my photos is an un-attributed copy in a
blog in the middle east. This is for a photo that got international
publication online and in print, and I made a fair bit of money for the
licensed uses. I also found one customer that purchased a print
(personal use) who scanned the print and put it on her (non-business)
website. I just sent her a web-sized jpeg to use, as the full-size scan
wasn't helping anyone. And I asked that she provide a link to my website.
> My wife works for NFAIS--look it up. The whole fair use/copyright
> issue is a major headache for her members.
In what way? In what way has their ability to be paid for their work
been damaged by copyright violations, by un-fair use by others? Can you
cite some examples?
> I know all about it. I also
> know you can't prevent misappropriation on the web. I also know nobody
> has come up with a workable business model for news gathering and
> reporting on the web...including the model you present.
How can you possibly know, when you don't *understand* the model I've
described, and which IS working for many bloggers?
> Because the model you present isn't for news gathering and reporting.
> It's for pontificating and marketing.
There you go again, deciding you know about something without having
experienced it. This is like deriding a controversial movie that you
haven't actually seen, based on what others say about the movie, even
though most of *them* haven't seen it yet either. (E.g. the uproar over
"The Passion".)
The smart move is to see the movie for yourself and THEN decide what you
think about it. Start following blogs and after a few months THEN you
can decide what you think about the future of blogging. Making a
decision based on what you have read (and mis-understood) is only
hurting yourself.
jc
PatONeill
You make the assumption that I don't follow any blogs. I do. I also
know that only two of the dozen or so I follow are full-time jobs for
the people involved...and both are employed by major organizations
(The Atlantic and Media Matters) to do so. The ideas you set forth for
making a living as a news-gathering and reporting blogger are
laughable to anyone who has ever been a reporter for a living (and,
yes, I have been--both on staff and freelance).
A full-time reporter works eight to ten hours a day first gathering
the news and then writing it. You would now add to his task editing
it, uploading it, responding to comments, linking to other reports,
marketing it, selling advertising to support it, and doing all the
other myriad things that come with running a business. Tell me, when
does he eat and sleep?
Give me some solid numbers, JC: How much can a blogger expect in
revenue from such a site on a, say, monthly basis? Take the rosiest
scenario, if you like. Now, subtract a decent salary for him just for
the central job of news gathering and writing. (If it comes to less
than $8000 a year, he's making less than I did as a starvation level
reporter for a small-town radio station 25 years ago--and I was
working, on average, a 10-hour day.) What's left for all the other
costs? Like the broadband line? The servers? The maintenance on same?
Other utilities (try being a reporter without a phone). Car?
Invid Fan
<jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Invid Fan wrote:
> > How many web comics are truly self supporting for their
> > creator? With no t-shirts or books to sell,
>
> What?
>
> This is like saying "how do musicians make money if they have no albums
> to sell?".
I'm just asking a question. Web comics have a model that a) does turn a
free newspaper product into an income generator and b) depends on
selling things that aren't the comic strip. I was just seriously asking
if there was a model for bloggers, given they can't sell even those
items it would seem to me. I'm sure there ARE ways to make money, I
just don't know them or how much they can really bring in thus my
question.
PatONeill
> In article <gvjubb$1s...@news.eternal-september.org>, JC Dill
Chris:
Even under this model, how many web cartoonists are doing it as a full-
time gig, earning enough to support a family? That's the relevant
comparison.
JC Dill
> In article <gvjubb$1s9$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, JC Dill
> <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Invid Fan wrote:
>>> How many web comics are truly self supporting for their
>>> creator? With no t-shirts or books to sell,
>> What?
>>
>> This is like saying "how do musicians make money if they have no albums
>> to sell?".
>
> I'm just asking a question. Web comics have a model that a) does turn a
> free newspaper product into an income generator and b) depends on
> selling things that aren't the comic strip. I was just seriously asking
> if there was a model for bloggers, given they can't sell even those
> items it would seem to me.
Many blogs do sell t-shirts, and books, and other items.
> I'm sure there ARE ways to make money, I
> just don't know them or how much they can really bring in thus my
> question.
Each blog is different. I suggest you find a few blogs to follow, and
then when they link to a different blog follow the link and take a look.
As you expand your familiarity with blogs you will start to see the
ones that are clearly full-time enterprises and make money for one or
more bloggers at the blog.
Here are some successful blogs to take a look at:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
http://www.fool.com/
http://www.dooce.com/
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/
http://strobist.blogspot.com/
jc
PatONeill
Can we at least TRY to come up with some examples that match what
we're talking about--a news-gathering and reporting blog? You come up
with one that analyzes political stats, another that deals in stock
analysis (BTW, the blog is hardly The Motley Fool's full-time gig;
there's a very successful newspaper column attached), a couple of
cooking blogs, and one on technology.
Find me a blog--just one, mind you--covering local politics, crime,
social events, and schools that is a full-time gig for the blogger and
making him enough to support himself without other income (and that
includes living off a trust fund or the like). Then you'll have an
example that can replace a newspaper. (Hell, find me one of each--
politics, crime, social events, schools--for any locality. Blogs being
done by reporters for newspaper websites don't count.)
PatONeill
> Invid Fan wrote:
> > How many web comics are truly self supporting for their
> > creator? With no t-shirts or books to sell,
>
> What?
>
> This is like saying "how do musicians make money if they have no albums
> to sell?".
It's called live performance...and it predates every form of recorded
music, or even music publishing.
The only comparison in news would be the town crier.
Invid Fan
<d554bb15-c2a6-45c6...@j12g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>,
PatONeill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
And one I asked about above as you'll see :)
Invid Fan
<jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Invid Fan wrote:
> > In article <gvjubb$1s9$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, JC Dill
> > <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Invid Fan wrote:
> >>> How many web comics are truly self supporting for their
> >>> creator? With no t-shirts or books to sell,
> >> What?
> >>
> >> This is like saying "how do musicians make money if they have no albums
> >> to sell?".
> >
> > I'm just asking a question. Web comics have a model that a) does turn a
> > free newspaper product into an income generator and b) depends on
> > selling things that aren't the comic strip. I was just seriously asking
> > if there was a model for bloggers, given they can't sell even those
> > items it would seem to me.
>
> Many blogs do sell t-shirts, and books, and other items.
>
Can't see myself having interest in those from a blogger, but I'm glad
there's a market :)
> > I'm sure there ARE ways to make money, I
> > just don't know them or how much they can really bring in thus my
> > question.
>
> Each blog is different. I suggest you find a few blogs to follow
You've lost me there, as I honestly have no interest in any. I've found
that when I do sign up to an RSS feed I only check it every couple
days, and news web sites never get checked. Hell, I'm lucky I follow
the 5 web comics I do :)
JC Dill
> You make the assumption that I don't follow any blogs. I do.
Based on the many questions you asked, you don't seem to have a good
grasp of the media. Do you follow any blogs outside of traditional news
reporting?
> I also
> know that only two of the dozen or so I follow are full-time jobs for
> the people involved...and both are employed by major organizations
> (The Atlantic and Media Matters) to do so. The ideas you set forth for
> making a living as a news-gathering and reporting blogger are
> laughable to anyone who has ever been a reporter for a living (and,
> yes, I have been--both on staff and freelance).
>
> A full-time reporter works eight to ten hours a day first gathering
> the news and then writing it. You would now add to his task editing
> it,
This enterprise isn't for everyone. If you can't write well enough to
blog it without endless edits or needing someone else to edit your words
then it may not be for you.
> uploading it,
This takes 1 click.
> responding to comments,
Not all bloggers respond to comments. Many have volunteers who help
moderate and read comments for them (letting them know when there's a
comment they might want to read/reply to) at no charge (as a hobby).
> linking to other reports,
You do this as part of the research and writing.
> marketing it, selling advertising to support it, and doing all the
> other myriad things that come with running a business.
All of this is part of being a freelancer.
> Tell me, when
> does he eat and sleep?
Why don't you ask? Oh, and many of them are "she" not "he".
> Give me some solid numbers,
There are no solid numbers. I don't know of anyone gathering the data
on blogger income. Why don't you research and report on it? It would
make for a great blog, and would be certain to draw a large audience (of
people wanting to know how they, too, can make money blogging :-). For
research, you could start here:
> JC: How much can a blogger expect in
> revenue from such a site on a, say, monthly basis? Take the rosiest
> scenario, if you like. Now, subtract a decent salary for him just for
> the central job of news gathering and writing. (If it comes to less
> than $8000 a year, he's making less than I did as a starvation level
> reporter for a small-town radio station 25 years ago--and I was
> working, on average, a 10-hour day.) What's left for all the other
> costs? Like the broadband line? The servers? The maintenance on same?
> Other utilities (try being a reporter without a phone). Car?
There are many bloggers who are supporting themselves and their
families. For an example see:
Also see:
and note how many times Heather/Dooce is mentioned in the Bloggie awards.
Successful bloggers write about what they know, what interests them. To
be a successful news blogger, you need to pick a focus, develop an
audience. Perez Hilton (entertainment news is news, right?), Drudge
Report, Politico, etc. As traditional media reporting falls off, expect
more original news reporting to show up on blogs.
jc
PatONeill
Perez Hilton isn't doing original reporting; he's aggregating. Drudge
is nothing but a right-wing provocateur, finding the most outrageous
thing he can and posting it. There's no follow-up, no asking the next
question. Politico is largely commentary on others' reporting, not
original stuff.
And "picking a focus" gets us back to my original problem with your
view of the future. Where's the general interest source of news for
the average person? The single place to get a good look at the world
in full? Again, if I'm only looking for the stuff I already know
about, how do I find out about the stuff that may be important to me
that I don't know about?
In a world of "narrowcasting," we all wind up living in our own little
niches; no wonder we can't talk to each other.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Can we at least TRY to come up with some examples that match what
> we're talking about--a news-gathering and reporting blog? You come
> up with one that analyzes political stats, another that deals in
> stock analysis (BTW, the blog is hardly The Motley Fool's full-time
> gig; there's a very successful newspaper column attached), a couple
> of cooking blogs, and one on technology.
>
> Find me a blog--just one, mind you--covering local politics, crime,
> social events, and schools that is a full-time gig for the blogger and
> making him enough to support himself without other income (and that
> includes living off a trust fund or the like). Then you'll have an
> example that can replace a newspaper. (Hell, find me one of each--
> politics, crime, social events, schools--for any locality. Blogs being
> done by reporters for newspaper websites don't count.)
You lost me there. Why does a blogger have to do it full time and
make enough doing it to be able to support himself solely by doing so
in order for it to be able to replace newspapers? I understand why it
might not meet *your* standard of quality, but if enough people enjoy
doing it as a hobby, for the fame and a bit of extra income and enough
others are satisfied getting their local news from what they consider
to be (sufficiently) trustworthy amateur sources (or at least sources
with understood biases), it may well replace local newspapers.
If the high school basketball coach has a blog, it won't be his
full-time job, but it will probably be a better place to turn to about
last night's game than the local paper. And there may be a couple of
high school students who also have worthwhile takes. When there's a
contentious political issue in my neighborhood (such as the fight over
re-zoning a property for residential development), there will be
articles from time to time in the local paper, but I get much more
detail (biased on both sides) from the local Yahoo Groups list.
Nobody makes their living writing for it, but regulars manage to turn
over most of the issues, and the ability to challenge authors means
that it's usually possible to determine where you believe the truth
lies. And when there's actual news on the issue (say, a council
meeting or an announcement from the developers), it's reported there
long before the print media says anything about it--and in much more
detail.
I suspect that there will be some who do manage to support themselves
full-time, either by (becoming popular and) charging web sites for
including them, by selling ads, or by some subscription model. But
most will do it either as a hobby or a way to get a little extra cash,
or as a way to get their name out there and, by doing so, promote
something else that is their main source of income, such as speaking
engagements, books, albums, concerts, or the team they play for.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |To find the end of Middle English,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |you discover the exact date and
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |time the Great Vowel Shift took
|place (the morning of May 5, 1450,
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |at some time between neenuh fiftehn
(650)857-7572 |and nahyn twenty-fahyv).
| Kevin Wald
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Evan Kirshenbaum
> And "picking a focus" gets us back to my original problem with your
> view of the future. Where's the general interest source of news for
> the average person? The single place to get a good look at the world
> in full?
There are several URLs for that. I turn to
It does a pretty good job of giving me a broad overview of the topics
I'm interested in. Of course, that's because I've told it what I'm
interested in, and when I find new sources, I add them.
> Again, if I'm only looking for the stuff I already know about, how
> do I find out about the stuff that may be important to me that I
> don't know about?
Actually, I'd say that's more of a strike against the newspaper model
than against the blog model. If my local newspaper editor doesn't
think something is important, how do I find out about it? I grew up
in Chicago. If I'm interested in news from and about Chicago, how do
I go about keeping abreast of it in the _San Jose Mercury News_ that
gets delivered to my door?
With the blog model, it's much easier. Once I've found a source, I
can simply add it to my aggregator page. And since they refer to each
other all the time, finding them is typically no problem. All I need
to do is have one blog I follow note something interesting on
another. If I follow the link to find the original story (and
discussion), I may well say "Hey, this looks worth keeping tabs on."
Or I may be searching for something else I'm interested in and stumble
upon it. Or a friend may send me a pointer to something they found
interesting.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There are just two rules of
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |governance in a free society: Mind
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |your own business. Keep your hands
|to yourself.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | P.J. O'Rourke
(650)857-7572
PatONeill
> PatONeill <patdone...@verizon.net> writes:
> > Can we at least TRY to come up with some examples that match what
> > we're talking about--a news-gathering and reporting blog? You come
> > up with one that analyzes political stats, another that deals in
> > stock analysis (BTW, the blog is hardly The Motley Fool's full-time
> > gig; there's a very successful newspaper column attached), a couple
> > of cooking blogs, and one on technology.
>
> > Find me a blog--just one, mind you--covering local politics, crime,
> > social events, and schools that is a full-time gig for the blogger and
> > making him enough to support himself without other income (and that
> > includes living off a trust fund or the like). Then you'll have an
> > example that can replace a newspaper. (Hell, find me one of each--
> > politics, crime, social events, schools--for any locality. Blogs being
> > done by reporters for newspaper websites don't count.)
>
> You lost me there. Why does a blogger have to do it full time and
> make enough doing it to be able to support himself solely by doing so
> in order for it to be able to replace newspapers? I understand why it
> might not meet *your* standard of quality, but if enough people enjoy
> doing it as a hobby, for the fame and a bit of extra income and enough
> others are satisfied getting their local news from what they consider
> to be (sufficiently) trustworthy amateur sources (or at least sources
> with understood biases), it may well replace local newspapers.
>
Because to do it well you have to spend time doing it. Reporting the
news isn't a "hobby"--it's a profession. Would you get your medical
advice from someone who did it as a hobby? The problem with the
"trustworthy amateur sources...with understood biases" is twofold:
One--how do you know they are trustworthy? If you weren't at the event
they are "covering," how do you know they got it right? Or even told
the whole story? Two--we tend to gravitate to the sources that match
our own biases. So, eventually the right wing is reading only the
right-wing sources, the left only the left-wing sources, and nobody
has any idea of what the reality is if they weren't there.
> If the high school basketball coach has a blog, it won't be his
> full-time job, but it will probably be a better place to turn to about
> last night's game than the local paper. And there may be a couple of
> high school students who also have worthwhile takes.
Yeah...if I want the "home-team" story every time. If I want to read a
CYA on last night's loss.
> When there's a
> contentious political issue in my neighborhood (such as the fight over
> re-zoning a property for residential development), there will be
> articles from time to time in the local paper, but I get much more
> detail (biased on both sides) from the local Yahoo Groups list.
> Nobody makes their living writing for it, but regulars manage to turn
> over most of the issues, and the ability to challenge authors means
> that it's usually possible to determine where you believe the truth
> lies. And when there's actual news on the issue (say, a council
> meeting or an announcement from the developers), it's reported there
> long before the print media says anything about it--and in much more
> detail.
Why not just attend the meeting yourself then? My experience is that
such on-line discussion of local issues is dominated by the NIMBYs,
and the anti-taxers, and the people with an ox being gored. I'd much
rather have an objective source for such information if I can't be
there myself.
PatONeill
> PatONeill <patdone...@verizon.net> writes:
> > And "picking a focus" gets us back to my original problem with your
> > view of the future. Where's the general interest source of news for
> > the average person? The single place to get a good look at the world
> > in full?
>
> There are several URLs for that. I turn to
>
> http://my.yahoo.com/
>
> It does a pretty good job of giving me a broad overview of the topics
> I'm interested in. Of course, that's because I've told it what I'm
> interested in, and when I find new sources, I add them.
>
> > Again, if I'm only looking for the stuff I already know about, how
> > do I find out about the stuff that may be important to me that I
> > don't know about?
>
> Actually, I'd say that's more of a strike against the newspaper model
> than against the blog model. If my local newspaper editor doesn't
> think something is important, how do I find out about it? I grew up
> in Chicago. If I'm interested in news from and about Chicago, how do
> I go about keeping abreast of it in the _San Jose Mercury News_ that
> gets delivered to my door?
Again...that's something you already KNOW you want to read about: News
from Chicago. How about discovering something completely new? The
little tidbit that opens a whole new area of interest for you? Or the
item about a tangential interest that you didn't even think to look
for, because you didn't know it was there?
In the paper, I find those nearly everyday just by turning the pages.
Evan Kirshenbaum
It's currently a profession.
> Would you get your medical advice from someone who did it as a
> hobby?
You mean like reading a blog written by a doctor? Sure. Or do you
mean getting medical advice from somebody whose only medical activity
was a hobby? Probably not. But I'm not sure I see the comparison as
valid.
> The problem with the "trustworthy amateur sources...with understood
> biases" is twofold: One--how do you know they are trustworthy? If
> you weren't at the event they are "covering," how do you know they
> got it right? Or even told the whole story? Two--we tend to
> gravitate to the sources that match our own biases. So, eventually
> the right wing is reading only the right-wing sources, the left only
> the left-wing sources, and nobody has any idea of what the reality
> is if they weren't there.
This seems to cover traditional journalism just as well. I read three
local papers reasonably regularly: the _San Jose Mercury News_, the
(free) _Palo Alto Daily News_, and the (weekly, free) _Mountain View
Voice_. (I subscribe to the first and pick up the second in
restaurants; the third is mailed unsolicited.) Other than by forming
my own opinions based on their content and by hearing what others have
to say about them, how do I know they're trustworthy? How do I know
they told the whole story? How do I know what their biases are?
Blogs, at least, tend to wear their biases on their sleeves and
comment on one another's.
>> If the high school basketball coach has a blog, it won't be his
>> full-time job, but it will probably be a better place to turn to
>> about last night's game than the local paper. �And there may be a
>> couple of high school students who also have worthwhile takes. �
>
> Yeah...if I want the "home-team" story every time. If I want to read
> a CYA on last night's loss.
Right. I forgot how much the local paper digs into stories like that.
Seriously: Pretend you're a reporter for the _Voice_ covering a
high-school game. What precisely do you do besides attend to be able
to jot down what happened and maybe ask the coach a couple of
questions after the game? You don't dig for "the story behind the
story"; you just report. Because, frankly, you probably don't care,
and most likely there isn't anything behind the story. If there is,
it's the (amateur) student paper that I'd expect to dig for it.
>> When there's a contentious political issue in my neighborhood (such
>> as the fight over re-zoning a property for residential
>> development), there will be articles from time to time in the local
>> paper, but I get much more detail (biased on both sides) from the
>> local Yahoo Groups list. Nobody makes their living writing for it,
>> but regulars manage to turn over most of the issues, and the
>> ability to challenge authors means that it's usually possible to
>> determine where you believe the truth lies. �And when there's
>> actual news on the issue (say, a council meeting or an announcement
>> from the developers), it's reported there long before the print
>> media says anything about it--and in much more detail. �
>
> Why not just attend the meeting yourself then?
No time. Not enough interest. Until somebody convinces me there's
reason to.
> My experience is that such on-line discussion of local issues is
> dominated by the NIMBYs, and the anti-taxers, and the people with an
> ox being gored. I'd much rather have an objective source for such
> information if I can't be there myself.
I'd like a pony. Oh, well. I was going to say that the change was
that people these days don't really believe that newspapers are
objective on many issues, but thinking back, it's not really a
change. I grew up in Chicago in the '70s when we had the _Sun-Times-,
the _Tribune_, and (at the beginning), the _Daily News_. Very few
people took more than one paper, and the choice was made at least as
much based on perceived bias as on which columnists and comics they
ran. You just didn't expect to see the same story covered the same
way in all of them.
I'd like an objective source that chooses to include all of the
information that I'd have found relevant had I been there. Failing
that, I'd rather have both sides present their case in a way that
seems fair to them and let me decide. With blogs, even when somebody
writes "Can you believe what this idiot says?", they typically
actually link to them saying it, so I can go and see for myself if I
believe it's being correctly characterized.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Sorry, captain. Convenient
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |technobabble levels are dangerously
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |low.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On May 28, 12:52�am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>> PatONeill <patdone...@verizon.net> writes:
>> > And "picking a focus" gets us back to my original problem with
>> > your view of the future. Where's the general interest source of
>> > news for the average person? The single place to get a good look
>> > at the world in full?
>>
>> There are several URLs for that. �I turn to
>>
>> � �http://my.yahoo.com/
>>
>> It does a pretty good job of giving me a broad overview of the
>> topics I'm interested in. �Of course, that's because I've told it
>> what I'm interested in, and when I find new sources, I add them.
>>
>> > Again, if I'm only looking for the stuff I already know about,
>> > how do I find out about the stuff that may be important to me
>> > that I don't know about?
>>
>> Actually, I'd say that's more of a strike against the newspaper
>> model than against the blog model. �If my local newspaper editor
>> doesn't think something is important, how do I find out about it?
>> �I grew up in Chicago. �If I'm interested in news from and about
>> Chicago, how do I go about keeping abreast of it in the _San Jose
>> Mercury News_ that gets delivered to my door?
>
> Again...that's something you already KNOW you want to read about:
> News from Chicago. How about discovering something completely new?
I'll take it as read that you concede that newspapers don't do a
particularly good job at telling me about stuff that may be important
to me when I know the topic is important to me but it isn't important
to the person who runs the paper.
> The little tidbit that opens a whole new area of interest for you?
> Or the item about a tangential interest that you didn't even think
> to look for, because you didn't know it was there?
>
> In the paper, I find those nearly everyday just by turning the
> pages.
And I find them every day on the web. People send me links. Blogs I
follow write about them. Blogs I stumble on by following links from
other sites have them listed in previous stories. Google results for
searches for other things turn them up. Serendipity doesn't go away.
Indeed, I suspect it's far more common.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |It's not coherent, it's merely
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |focused.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Keith Moore
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
deto...@hotmail.com
> Again...that's something you already KNOW you want to read about: News
> from Chicago. How about discovering something completely new? The
> little tidbit that opens a whole new area of interest for you? Or the
> item about a tangential interest that you didn't even think to look
> for, because you didn't know it was there?
>
> In the paper, I find those nearly everyday just by turning the pages.
Pat, you are blowing right by Evan's most important point.
First, the newspaper editor/publisher already act as a filter. Your
serendipitous encounters are strictly limited by their editorial
preferences.
What do you do if your interests differ from those of the newspaper
staff? Would you keep reading a newspaper that published stories in
which you had no interest? How about one where you knew your
perspective was being studiously ignored? How about one that shovels
corrections to the back page on the infrequent occasions when they are
addressed?
Would you cancel your subscription? I know I would.
--
Regards,
Dann
Default User
> In article <gvkb9a$fb4$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, JC Dill
> <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Many blogs do sell t-shirts, and books, and other items.
> >
> Can't see myself having interest in those from a blogger, but I'm glad
> there's a market :)
One blog of interest to many here that sells such merchandise is The
Comics Curmudgeon <http://joshreads.com>
It is not a news blog of course.
Brian
--
Day 115 of the "no grouchy usenet posts" project
Jym Dyer
> newsrooms around the country and world. When I see a press
> conference and I see dozens of reporters, I wonder why? Why
> do we need *so many* people to report on the same event?
=v= Up until the 1980s the idea was that reporters would
actually investigate things and ask original questions rather
than play scripted roles as part of the conveyance of The
Official Story. That was damaged in the "On Bended Knee" era:
http://www.markhertsgaard.com/books/101
=v= There's been some recovery since then, though now it's more
of a situation where what we used to think of as "a journalist"
is more a sideshow to The Official Conveyance Of The Official
Story, generally someone in the "lone impudent questioner" role
whose personality becomes the topic of the discussion (rather
than, you know, the boring old questions themselves).
<_Jym_>
Jym Dyer
> it's natural that you'll have big numbers of everything.
> Dozens of reporters in the Bay Area covering a major story
> is not a big deal.
=v= Between mergers and layoffs, fewer than you might think.
In San Francisco, Hearst sold off the _Examiner_ and bought
the _Chronicle_, and threatens to shut it down if it doesn't
pull in more money. It's switched to a Large Print Edition
to hide the fact that they've only got about three writers
left (and, it would seem, no copy editors).
=v= The _Examiner_ is run by a right-winger in Coors country,
padding out local news (I think they've got two writers) with
newswire filler and celebrity fluff. They seem to be banking
on bloggers, whom they call "Examiners."
=v= The _San_Jose_Mercury_News_, _Oakland_Tribune_, and other
regional papers along with with quasi-neighborhood "dailies"
are all run by one conglomerate. I frankly see more local
reporting in these than in the San Francisco papers, but it's
not of the megalopolis variety. (San Jose is twice the size
of San Francisco and *used* to have a real newspaper, but
these days, meh.)
<_Jym_>
Jym Dyer
> _San Jose Mercury News_, the (free) _Palo Alto Daily News_,
> and the (weekly, free) _Mountain View Voice_.
=v= The first two have the same publisher. The third is a
weekly.
<_Jym_>
Evan Kirshenbaum
>> I read three local papers reasonably regularly: the
>> _San Jose Mercury News_, the (free) _Palo Alto Daily News_,
>> and the (weekly, free) _Mountain View Voice_.
>
> =v= The first two have the same publisher.
Yeah. Bay Area News Group. I should have said the _Daily News_
though. It appears to have changed a couple of weeks ago. I'm not
sure if it's just a renaming (it always served a somewhat broader
area) or an actual merging of several local papers.
They also do the _Oakland Tribune_ and a number of other smaller, but
not free newspapers such as the _Contra Costa Times_ and the _Sant
Cruz Sentinel_ and free weeklies like the _Cupertino Courier_ and
_Sunnyvale Sun_.
> The third is a weekly.
Hence the "weekly" above. The same local publisher also does the
_Palo Alto Weekly_ and a few others.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |choice between learning and using
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
|industry, let me just say it was
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |nice knowing all of you. :-)
(650)857-7572 | Randal Schwartz
JC Dill
>
> Can we at least TRY to come up with some examples that match what
> we're talking about--a news-gathering and reporting blog? You come up
> with one that analyzes political stats
Isn't that much like newspaper political news, only in MUCH more detail
and on a narrow topic?
> another that deals in stock
> analysis (BTW, the blog is hardly The Motley Fool's full-time gig;
> there's a very successful newspaper column attached),
Motley Fool was a highly profitable online "board" (on AOL, their most
profitable board) 3 years before it was a newspaper column, and when
they no longer have newspapers to sell the column to it will still be a
successful website/blog. Their publications (newsletter, then books)
were only a small part of their entire business.
http://www.fool.com/press/about.htm (scroll down to the history section)
> a couple of
> cooking blogs, and one on technology.
Don't newspapers have cooking columns, technology columns/sections?
> Find me a blog--just one, mind you--covering local politics, crime,
> social events, and schools that is a full-time gig for the blogger and
> making him enough to support himself without other income (and that
> includes living off a trust fund or the like). Then you'll have an
> example that can replace a newspaper. (Hell, find me one of each--
> politics, crime, social events, schools--for any locality. Blogs being
> done by reporters for newspaper websites don't count.)
Perhaps you weren't paying attention. I said I see it moving in this
direction. I never said we were there already. I said that successful
bloggers can earn a living from their blog, and I pointed you at some
that were. I said that I predict more bloggers move into the realm of
original news, over time, as newspapers fold and there becomes a need
for original news that is no longer well covered by newspapers and other
traditional media (TV/radio etc.).
If you don't understand this trend, by the time you see it happening it
will be too late, your customers will all be reading blogs, and there
will be no need for your newspaper reporting. You need to be doing this
NOW. You need to engage your readers the way blogs engage readers. You
need to make money of your online content (with appropriate advertising,
sponsors, side products) to support the site and authors as dead-tree
readership falls off. You need to find a new business model, and the
bloggers ARE finding this business model, or you will go BK like many
other papers have.
jc
JC Dill
> Jym Dyer <j...@econet.org> writes:
>
>>> I read three local papers reasonably regularly: the
>>> _San Jose Mercury News_, the (free) _Palo Alto Daily News_,
>>> and the (weekly, free) _Mountain View Voice_.
>> =v= The first two have the same publisher.
>
> Yeah. Bay Area News Group. I should have said the _Daily News_
> though. It appears to have changed a couple of weeks ago. I'm not
> sure if it's just a renaming (it always served a somewhat broader
> area) or an actual merging of several local papers.
This seems to be well researched and covered in wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto_Daily_News
Short version: As of April 2009, the San Mateo Daily News, Palo Alto
Daily News, Burlingame Daily News, and Redwood City Daily News became
the single "Daily News".
jc
PatONeill
>
> > The problem with the "trustworthy amateur sources...with understood
> > biases" is twofold: One--how do you know they are trustworthy? If
> > you weren't at the event they are "covering," how do you know they
> > got it right? Or even told the whole story? Two--we tend to
> > gravitate to the sources that match our own biases. So, eventually
> > the right wing is reading only the right-wing sources, the left only
> > the left-wing sources, and nobody has any idea of what the reality
> > is if they weren't there.
>
> This seems to cover traditional journalism just as well. I read three
> local papers reasonably regularly: the _San Jose Mercury News_, the
> (free) _Palo Alto Daily News_, and the (weekly, free) _Mountain View
> Voice_. (I subscribe to the first and pick up the second in
> restaurants; the third is mailed unsolicited.) Other than by forming
> my own opinions based on their content and by hearing what others have
> to say about them, how do I know they're trustworthy? How do I know
> they told the whole story? How do I know what their biases are?
> Blogs, at least, tend to wear their biases on their sleeves and
> comment on one another's.
A good newspaper, in its news coverage, keeps its biases in control.
Sure, there's some in terms of choice of stories to cover, how much
space (and where) they get but--on the whole--it reports the facts.
And it has years of material for you to look at to determine how well
it does it. In a world of blogs alone, where previous entries can be
deleted and edited constantly, that's not possible. (To me, it would
be like living in Orwell's 1984, with someone constantly editing
history to fit the current party line.)
> Right. I forgot how much the local paper digs into stories like that.
> Seriously: Pretend you're a reporter for the _Voice_ covering a
> high-school game. What precisely do you do besides attend to be able
> to jot down what happened and maybe ask the coach a couple of
> questions after the game? You don't dig for "the story behind the
> story"; you just report. Because, frankly, you probably don't care,
> and most likely there isn't anything behind the story. If there is,
> it's the (amateur) student paper that I'd expect to dig for it.
>
Again, depends on the paper. My local paper covers high school sports
very well...with in-depth stories about the games, regular columns
about the major sports in season, even coverage of the meetings of the
regional and state organizations that make the rules. If yours
doesn't, then it's not doing the job. It also has reporters whose only
job is covering high school sports.
PatONeill
A good newspaper has a staff with enough professionalism to allow for
a range of interests. That's why it has a national/world news section,
a local section, an entertainment section, a sports section, a
business section. It's why I at least scan all of them.
Here's a recent example: Monday morning, the NY Times had a front-page
story about how actress Donna Reed had carefully preserved some 350
letters she received from servicemen during WW2. They were discovered
recently by her daughter, who allowed the Times to see them, publish
some of them, and then track down info on the soldiers and sailors who
wrote them. I'd never have known of this story without the Times and
neither would anyone else.
I sincerely doubt Reed's daughter would have handed this precious
material to some blogger. And said blogger certainly would not have
had the wherewithal to investigate the people involved and get the
background on this "find".
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Look, I had a good bit of sympathy to your position at the start, but
it seems to me that you are just grasping at straws now. The New York
Times is a liberal paper, The Augusta Chronicle is a conservative one.
People understand that. It doesn't confuse them. The same is true
of blogs. Do you keep all your old newspapers on hand so you can
consult old stories? If not, I assume you get them through the paper's
site, and those stories are subject to revision and editing. The
Sacramento Bee famously replaced a whole online editorial and all its
comments last week.
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Frankly, that doesn't interest me that much -- BUT. If I were a big
Donna Reed fan, and if the daughter had simply posted them to a website
of her own or one devoted to her mother I would probably know through
google or otherwise.
PatONeill
> In article <5cae6744-4b9e-423b-a122-ae8e859b6...@n21g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
No--but I have read enough of the papers I DO read over the years
(more than a decade of the two local ones, much longer than that on
others) to have a perspective on their viewpoints. How do I do that on
a blog with a history about as long as the life of a mayfly...and a
history that can be altered at the touch of a keystroke?
PatONeill
> In article <7a218ff2-bb0b-4dad-a061-29f16998d...@t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>,
That's just it...I'm not a Donna Reed fan. But the story would be just
as fascinating if the person involved were Betty Grable or Rita
Hayworth.
Oh--and what resources would Reed's daughter be able to bring to bear
to track down those servicemen?
Default User
> On May 28, 6:01�pm, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
> > In article
> > <7a218ff2-bb0b-4dad-a061-29f16998d...@t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> >
> >
> > PatONeill �<patdone...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > Here's a recent example: Monday morning, the NY Times had a
> > > front-page story about how actress Donna Reed had carefully
> > > preserved some 350 letters she received from servicemen during
> > > WW2. They were discovered recently by her daughter, who allowed
> > > the Times to see them, publish some of them, and then track down
> > > info on the soldiers and sailors who wrote them. I'd never have
> > > known of this story without the Times and neither would anyone
> > > else.
> > Frankly, that doesn't interest me that much -- BUT. �If I were a big
> > Donna Reed fan, and if the daughter had simply posted them to a
> > website of her own or one devoted to her mother I would probably
> > know through google or otherwise.
> That's just it...I'm not a Donna Reed fan. But the story would be just
> as fascinating if the person involved were Betty Grable or Rita
> Hayworth.
>
> Oh--and what resources would Reed's daughter be able to bring to bear
> to track down those servicemen?
I don't know that one would need to. A well-crafted blog entry, on a
reasonably popular site, would have readers doing the legwork. Or
linking the article to veteran's blogs where others would pick up the
task.
brian
aemeijers
> In article <7a218ff2-bb0b-4dad...@t10g2000vbg.googlegroups.com>,
> PatONeill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> A good newspaper has a staff with enough professionalism to allow for
>> a range of interests. That's why it has a national/world news section,
>> a local section, an entertainment section, a sports section, a
>> business section. It's why I at least scan all of them.
>>
>> Here's a recent example: Monday morning, the NY Times had a front-page
>> story about how actress Donna Reed had carefully preserved some 350
>> letters she received from servicemen during WW2. They were discovered
>> recently by her daughter, who allowed the Times to see them, publish
>> some of them, and then track down info on the soldiers and sailors who
>> wrote them. I'd never have known of this story without the Times and
>> neither would anyone else.
>>
>> I sincerely doubt Reed's daughter would have handed this precious
>> material to some blogger. And said blogger certainly would not have
>> had the wherewithal to investigate the people involved and get the
>> background on this "find".
>>
>
> Frankly, that doesn't interest me that much -- BUT. If I were a big
> Donna Reed fan, and if the daughter had simply posted them to a website
> of her own or one devoted to her mother I would probably know through
> google or otherwise.
>
I guess this is as good a hook as any on which to hang a point that I
haven't really seen addressed in this thread- if papers go away, MOST
current readers won't have the time, interest, or expertise to track it
down online, set up RSS feeds, etc, and spend an hour a day reading it.
Most people don't sit down and read a paper cover to cover- they leaf
through it a minute here and a minute there. It was not mainly the
internet that killed newspaper circulation, it was TV, which has been
the prime source of news for most people for many years. The plethora of
24 hour news channels (which admittedly don't create much new content
any more), and most local stations having 2-3 hours per day of
semi-local news, make newspapers a non-reportable event for many people.
Gotta remember- the simple fact that we are regulars in a now-obscure
forum means we are not a good sample of the population at large. Most
people may hit a few websites and check their email, but they don't
spend hours online like we do. (modulo a few gamers and social website
addicts, of course.)
--
aem sends...
Mark Jackson
> Do you keep all your old newspapers on hand so you can
> consult old stories? If not, I assume you get them through the paper's
> site, and those stories are subject to revision and editing. The
> Sacramento Bee famously replaced a whole online editorial and all its
> comments last week.
I thought they'd outsourced *that* function to the Ministry of Truth.
--
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
Made up words don't belong in a collabulary.
- Michael Shepherd
Tove Momerathsson
[massive snippage because I'm going off on a tangent]
> And said blogger certainly would not have had the wherewithal
Key word: wherewithal.
A single blogger cannot withstand much of anything.
For example, see the slashdot mention of an Arizona blogger critical of the local police: "Jeff
Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems,
hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The 41-year-old software
engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending
lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment � which he says makes it obvious the raid
was an act of retaliation." A local publication quotes Pataky saying, "We have heard internally from
our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me... They took my cable modem and
wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem."
<http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/04/1515239>
Or see the boingboing story of a Guatemalan tweeter: "Earlier this month, a Twitter user in
Guatemala was arrested, jailed, and fined the equivalent of a year's salary for having posted a
96-character thought to Twitter. The tweet related to an ongoing political crisis in Guatemala
sparked by allegations that president �lvaro Colom ordered the assassination of an attorney, and
claims made by this attorney that government officials engaged in illegal, corrupt transactions
through the country's largest bank."
<http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/27/guatemala-conversati.html>
A newspaper has a little better chance. At least north of the Rio Grande or in western Europe,
since most everywhere else, the government feels free to clamp down on the uppity press.
Tove
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Google and the telephone I would think, though actually I would expect
the servicemen (or by now their grandkids) to find her instead.
Here's a sorta for-instance. Look at this post on my blog and read
the comments there from "Al Canterbury":
http://columbiaclosings.com/wordpress/?p=321
Ted
PatONeill
IOW, the "journalist" would hand off the real work to others. Please.
PatONeill
>
> >That's just it...I'm not a Donna Reed fan. But the story would be just
> >as fascinating if the person involved were Betty Grable or Rita
> >Hayworth.
>
> >Oh--and what resources would Reed's daughter be able to bring to bear
> >to track down those servicemen?
>
> Google and the telephone I would think, though actually I would expect
> the servicemen (or by now their grandkids) to find her instead.
>
> Here's a sorta for-instance. Look at this post on my blog and read
> the comments there from "Al Canterbury":
>
> http://columbiaclosings.com/wordpress/?p=321
>
> Ted
>
> Ted
Oh, yeah, 80-year-old men are just prime readers of blogs. And their
grandkids wouldn't know Donna Reed from Donna Summer.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
PatONeill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>On May 28, 7:20�pm, t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) wrote:
>
>>
>> >That's just it...I'm not a Donna Reed fan. But the story would be just
>> >as fascinating if the person involved were Betty Grable or Rita
>> >Hayworth.
>>
>> >Oh--and what resources would Reed's daughter be able to bring to bear
>> >to track down those servicemen?
>>
>> Google and the telephone I would think, though actually I would expect
>> the servicemen (or by now their grandkids) to find her instead.
>>
>> Here's a sorta for-instance. �Look at this post on my blog and read
>> the comments there from "Al Canterbury":
>>
>> http://columbiaclosings.com/wordpress/?p=321
>>
>> Ted
>
>grandkids wouldn't know Donna Reed from Donna Summer.
>
>
>
No, but they do google their grand-dads.
PatONeill
> In article <5dac3de7-a5b5-4b10-834f-62ee8ca20...@z9g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
And, again, this turns the whole thing from a fascinating story of one
actress saving precious material, of her connection to these men, and
their memories of her into a months-long back and forth. There'd be
nobody arranging it, writing it, making it into a coherent whole. It
would be the equivalent of comparing a novel to one of those on-line
"interactive stories" where each correspondent writes the next
paragraph.
I'm sorry, but I prefer my news to be done by people who know what
they're doing, not by a bunch of amateurs each contributing their bit.
Evan Kirshenbaum
Ah. That page also explains what the _Palo Alto Daily Post_ is. When
I first saw it, I thought that maybe the _Daily News_ had renamed
itself for some reason, then I decided that it was a cheap
imitation[1] of the _Daily News_, counting on people not being picky
about what they picked up. I now see that the _Daily Post_ is a new
paper, started last year, by the people who originally brought out the
_Daily News_. I wonder how many cities of less than 65,000 people
actually have two competing daily newspapers these days, even free
ones.
[1] A cheap imitation of something that's free?
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Theories are not matters of fact,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |they are derived from observing
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |fact. If you don't have data, you
|don't get good theories. You get
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |theology instead.
(650)857-7572 | --John Lawler
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
It is nice that the NY Times has done this story. That's great.
The NY Times does not have a better business model than selling its
building and borrowing money from Mexican Billionaires. The way
you prefer your news to be done is not a viable business option.
After that option is gone, there will still be ways to get the news
out.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> And, again, this turns the whole thing from a fascinating story of
> one actress saving precious material, of her connection to these
> men, and their memories of her into a months-long back and
> forth. There'd be nobody arranging it, writing it, making it into a
> coherent whole. It would be the equivalent of comparing a novel to
> one of those on-line "interactive stories" where each correspondent
> writes the next paragraph.
>
> I'm sorry, but I prefer my news to be done by people who know what
> they're doing, not by a bunch of amateurs each contributing their
> bit.
Sure. Nobody's saying that there aren't things that are better done
by current-model journalists. We're just saying that the emerging
models do some things better and enough (and most) things well enough
that it looks as though it's going to be hard for the current model to
compete without drastic changes. I understand that you prefer what
you prefer. For things like that, I prefer it, too. But I'm not
going to shell out a lot of money to pay for it, and if it doesn't
bring in readers, I doubt that the paper is going to pay much for that
sort of thing for long either. (Unless it turns into more of a
magazine, with that as its focus.)
My mom was a professional typist, at first for companies and then
freelance. She typed theses, reports, correspondence, you name it.
She studied hard to be good at what she did, not only typing and
taking shorthand, but turning the attrocious grammar and organization
that students, lawyers, and managers wrote into text that didn't make
you cringe (without changing the actual meaning, when it mattered).
When students and business people got word processors and began to
type their own documents, her job essentially evaporated. Did these
amateurs do as good a job as she, a trained professional with years of
experience, did? Don't make me laugh. Was there any point in
fighting the inevitable? Not at all. What amateurs could now do on
their own wasn't anywhere near as good, but it was good enough and way
cheaper. There was no way the old model could survive.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |"You can't prove it *isn't* so!" is
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |as good as Q.E.D. in folk logic--as
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |though it were necessary to submit
|a piece of the moon to chemical
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |analysis before you could be sure
(650)857-7572 |that it was not made of green
|cheese.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Bergen Evans
Invid Fan
Momerathsson <to...@voyager.net> wrote:
> PatONeill wrote:
> [massive snippage because I'm going off on a tangent]
>
> > And said blogger certainly would not have had the wherewithal
>
> Key word: wherewithal.
>
> A single blogger cannot withstand much of anything.
>
> For example, see the slashdot mention of an Arizona blogger critical of the
> local police: "Jeff
> Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three
> computers, routers, modems,
> hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging. The
> 41-year-old software
> engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents
> relating to a pending
> lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment � which he says
> makes it obvious the raid
> was an act of retaliation." A local publication quotes Pataky saying, "We
> have heard internally from
> our police sources that they purposefully did this to stop me... They took my
> cable modem and
> wireless router. Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable
> modem."
>
> <http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/04/1515239>
>
> Or see the boingboing story of a Guatemalan tweeter: "Earlier this month, a
> Twitter user in
> Guatemala was arrested, jailed, and fined the equivalent of a year's salary
> for having posted a
> 96-character thought to Twitter. The tweet related to an ongoing political
> crisis in Guatemala
> sparked by allegations that president �lvaro Colom ordered the assassination
> of an attorney, and
> claims made by this attorney that government officials engaged in illegal,
> corrupt transactions
> through the country's largest bank."
>
> <http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/27/guatemala-conversati.html>
>
> A newspaper has a little better chance. At least north of the Rio Grande or
> in western Europe,
> since most everywhere else, the government feels free to clamp down on the uppity press.
>
I have to say, actually a blogger has a better chance elsewhere as it's
much easier to shut down a printing press then some unknown person
putting up blogs to an out of country server via an iPhone. In the West
I agree that a news organization can offer protection to its reporters,
much the way a Union protects workers. Both seem to be fading nowadays,
as the world moves on.
--
Chris Mack *quote under construction*
'Invid Fan'
Mike Beede
<c563aa11-a484-4a82...@f16g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>,
PatONeill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > I don't know that one would need to. A well-crafted blog entry, on a
> > reasonably popular site, would have readers doing the legwork. Or
> > linking the article to veteran's blogs where others would pick up the
> > task.
> >
> > brian
> >
> > --
> > Day 115 of the "no grouchy usenet posts" project
>
> IOW, the "journalist" would hand off the real work to others. Please.
You mean that this is something bad? Why? Someone is being
harmed? Do you object to the fact that the postman doesn't
read your letters aloud to you? He's just handing the tough
work off to you!
I read the story you mentioned. It was an interesting story.
It could have been done in many ways by many different media.
Could it never have been published in another form by someone
else? Please.
Mike Beede
JC Dill
> And, again, this turns the whole thing from a fascinating story of one
> actress saving precious material, of her connection to these men, and
> their memories of her into a months-long back and forth. There'd be
> nobody arranging it, writing it, making it into a coherent whole. It
> would be the equivalent of comparing a novel to one of those on-line
> "interactive stories" where each correspondent writes the next
> paragraph.
You clearly don't have a fucking clue how this stuff works. You keep
imagining how you think it doesn't work, instead of learning how it DOES
work.
There are 1000s of examples of how a story like the Donna Reed
servicemen letters was developed thru a blog and blogger comments and
forwarding to other sites, and information flowing back, and then they
posted an UPDATE that gathered together all the info. Often the update
is interesting, gets picked up by other blogs, and becomes a hot story.
If you followed blogs you would see this happening. Instead you keep
insisting it can't happen.
OK, it can't happen. You are 100% right, the rest of us are
participating in a mass hallucination. You win. Happy?
jc
JC Dill
> I'm sorry, but I prefer my news to be done by people who know what
> they're doing, not by a bunch of amateurs each contributing their bit.
Here, read about bloggers who know what they are doing outing the
"professional journalists" who phoned it in instead of researching the
story:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1428
This is the type of story I find by following interesting blogs that I
would never find in the newspaper.
jc
PatONeill
Oh, yeah, because it's so important that somebody catch a writer and
publisher in a marketing/publicity ploy that may not be completely
true. In the course of harping on the exactitude of "millionth word",
the bloggers miss the more important point the writer is making--that
English has become the world's language.
Bill Harris
will be a sizeable percentage of the population that will not or can
not, access the net for their news. The newspaper provides an already
collated, pre-filtered, single point, portable news source. A healthy
society needs to have as many people possible informed as to what is
happening; the demise of newspapers will cut into that number.
LNER...@juno.com
There is also a sizeable--and I do mean sizeable--percentage of the
population that, for all practical purposes, has no access to
newspapers.
*They are functionally illiterate.
*They live too far from a carrier route to get local delivery, so
going out to get the paper is a "hardship".
*They live in a rural area where they may have to drive/walk/ride a
horse as far as they would for a library to get a newspaper, and once
there, at best they have access to one local/regional newspaper, the
Podunk Daily Courier, and no big-city paper. (From my home, I can
walk three blocks and find for sale ten or so big-city daily papers,
including the city's historic African-American paper, plus a couple
things like the local thrice-weekly suburban paper, the free daily
snot-rag published by the hometown big paper, the alternative "city
paper" weekly, the weekly gay paper, the local business journal, etc.
In much of the city, though, I can't find anything but the local daily
and its freebie rag, and maybe the historic A-A paper--no chance of
the alt weekly. Oh, you *can* find it, but you have to go way out of
your way.......)
*They simply lack the daily dollar, 80 cents, or whatever that it
would take to buy said paper (or at least can't spare that from their
lottery, beer, or cigarette money).
So explain to me how I'm supposed to feel sorry for these folks who
"don't have access to the net" when there are an equal (maybe greater)
number of people who have basically no access to any choice in printed
journalism.
For the record, last time I was out west, I visited an Arizona "ghost
town" that had come back to life with a three-figure year-round
population. Said town is thirty miles from the nearest paved road.
But thanks to one of the new locals, they now have high-speed internet
through a satellite feed--have had it for a couple years now, as a
matter of fact.
JC Dill
> On May 29, 7:11 am, Bill Harris <wkharrisjr_i...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> OK< here's the problem I have with blogs replacing newspapers- there
>> will be a sizeable percentage of the population that will not or can
>> not, access the net for their news.
That's a bunch of BS. Internet access is less expensive than a
newspaper subscription, and provides MUCH more. Even if all you have is
dial-up, you can set your browser to text-only and get the articles.
Used computers are thrown out every day. Go on freecycle and ask for a
free older computer and you will be flooded with offers by people who
hate to see them going into the landfill.
>> The newspaper provides an already
>> collated, pre-filtered, single point, portable news source. A healthy
>> society needs to have as many people possible informed as to what is
>> happening; the demise of newspapers will cut into that number.
You are assuming that a new news source (online news, from traditional
media and blogs) isn't going to fill the void as newspapers die. This
is a very unlikely outcome.
You are assuming that for some strange reason people are going to start
reading more and more newspapers, instead of the current trend where
people are reading fewer and fewer newspapers. Why would this trend
change? The quality of the content in your local newspaper has likely
declined, and the price has gone up.
> There is also a sizeable--and I do mean sizeable--percentage of the
> population that, for all practical purposes, has no access to
> newspapers.
> *They are functionally illiterate.
These people get their news from TV and radio, and from video on the
internet.
> *They live too far from a carrier route to get local delivery, so
> going out to get the paper is a "hardship".
Or the cost may be too high to get it delivered to their location vs the
cost for internet service (which includes news, and so much more).
> *They live in a rural area where they may have to drive/walk/ride a
> horse as far as they would for a library to get a newspaper, and once
> there, at best they have access to one local/regional newspaper, the
> Podunk Daily Courier, and no big-city paper.
Most libraries, even those in the boonies, have a wide assortment of
newspapers although they might not get them the same day as they are
printed (delivered via mail).
Most libraries also have internet access for library patrons to use. If
you can't afford a newspaper and you can't afford internet service, you
can get both for free at the library. Guess which one gets more use?
Guess which one libraries are trying to find ways to fund for increased use?
> *They simply lack the daily dollar, 80 cents, or whatever that it
> would take to buy said paper (or at least can't spare that from their
> lottery, beer, or cigarette money).
See above about libraries.
> So explain to me how I'm supposed to feel sorry for these folks who
> "don't have access to the net" when there are an equal (maybe greater)
> number of people who have basically no access to any choice in printed
> journalism.
>
> For the record, last time I was out west, I visited an Arizona "ghost
> town" that had come back to life with a three-figure year-round
> population. Said town is thirty miles from the nearest paved road.
> But thanks to one of the new locals, they now have high-speed internet
> through a satellite feed--have had it for a couple years now, as a
> matter of fact.
Much of the 3rd world is moving into the internet age with satellite
hookups and cell phones, skipping over land-lines entirely. There are
villages miles from nowhere with no electrical service that have some
form of generator (wind powered, solar powered, human powered, gas
powered) to power their internet service and computer. They may also
have a TV, but generally there's a lot more demand to use the computer
than to use the TV.
jc
JC Dill
> On May 29, 7:11 am, Bill Harris <wkharrisjr_i...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> OK< here's the problem I have with blogs replacing newspapers- there
>> will be a sizeable percentage of the population that will not or can
>> not, access the net for their news.
That's a bunch of BS. Internet access is less expensive than a
newspaper subscription, and provides MUCH more. Even if all you have is
dial-up, you can set your browser to text-only and get the articles.
Used computers are thrown out every day. Go on freecycle and ask for a
free older computer and you will be flooded with offers by people who
hate to see them going into the landfill.
>> The newspaper provides an already
>> collated, pre-filtered, single point, portable news source. A healthy
>> society needs to have as many people possible informed as to what is
>> happening; the demise of newspapers will cut into that number.
You are assuming that a new news source (online news, from traditional
media and blogs) isn't going to fill the void as newspapers die. This
is a very unlikely outcome.
You are assuming that for some strange reason people are going to start
reading more and more newspapers, instead of the current trend where
people are reading fewer and fewer newspapers. Why would this trend
change? The quality of the content in your local newspaper has likely
declined, and the price has gone up.
> There is also a sizeable--and I do mean sizeable--percentage of the
> population that, for all practical purposes, has no access to
> newspapers.
> *They are functionally illiterate.
These people get their news from TV and radio, and from video on the
internet.
> *They live too far from a carrier route to get local delivery, so
> going out to get the paper is a "hardship".
Or the cost may be too high to get it delivered to their location vs the
cost for internet service (which includes news, and so much more).
> *They live in a rural area where they may have to drive/walk/ride a
> horse as far as they would for a library to get a newspaper, and once
> there, at best they have access to one local/regional newspaper, the
> Podunk Daily Courier, and no big-city paper.
Most libraries, even those in the boonies, have a wide assortment of
newspapers although they might not get them the same day as they are
printed (delivered via mail).
Most libraries also have internet access for library patrons to use. If
you can't afford a newspaper and you can't afford internet service, you
can get both for free at the library. Guess which one gets more use?
Guess which one libraries are trying to find ways to fund for increased use?
> *They simply lack the daily dollar, 80 cents, or whatever that it
> would take to buy said paper (or at least can't spare that from their
> lottery, beer, or cigarette money).
See above about libraries.
> So explain to me how I'm supposed to feel sorry for these folks who
> "don't have access to the net" when there are an equal (maybe greater)
> number of people who have basically no access to any choice in printed
> journalism.
>
> For the record, last time I was out west, I visited an Arizona "ghost
> town" that had come back to life with a three-figure year-round
> population. Said town is thirty miles from the nearest paved road.
> But thanks to one of the new locals, they now have high-speed internet
> through a satellite feed--have had it for a couple years now, as a
> matter of fact.
Much of the 3rd world is moving into the internet age with satellite
Evan Kirshenbaum
Yeah. It takes a professional reporter to cover news like that. Or
at least to think it's "news".
But if that's the point the writer is making in the _Telegraph_
article being discussed
http://tinyurl.com/cubaxx
<URL:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5285085/
One-millionth-English-word-could-be-defriend-or-noob.html>
he does it in a very subtle way, since as far as I can tell, he never
comes close to mentioning it. The "widespread popularity of English
as a second language in Asia" is hardly synonymous with "becoming the
world's language".
In the article, the writer covers his ass with a single sentence at
the end of his article:
Other linguist have expressed scepticism about its methods,
claiming that there is no agreement about how to classify a word.
And that's all the reader of the newspaper gets. Skepticism exists,
and it's entirely about how to classify a word. The journalist's job
wasn't to interview them and present their arguments, so he didn't
bother. But he mentioned the skepticism, so his article is
"unbiased".
The blog, on the other hand *is* professional linguists expressing
skepticism about the word (and, more, that the complaint is far deeper
than simply how to classify words), so you get to see whether there's
merit in their position. It also links to earlier contexts, so the
reader understands that this keeps coming up. This is also covered in
a single sentence at the end of the article:
The organisation first predicted that the millionth English word
was imminent in 2006, and has repeatedly pushed back the expected
date.
The blog also links to (among other things) other papers' reporting on
the story in various years and transcripts of interviews on NPR. It
also links to Payak's (the article subject's) organization's website
and the Google Books version of his book, so the reader can see if the
blogger is being unfair to his arguments. And it links to other
blogs, including one written by an OED editor, which links to an audio
interview with him. The blog also has readers (including other
professional linguists) commenting on it (and each other's comments)
and bringing in other links that they find relevant, and it contains
the bloggers responding to the comments. And it makes it easy to find
other articles by the same author and categorized as being on the same
topic.
That's the difference that people are starting to expect. The
newspaper reader trips over it and may say "Oh, that's interesting"
and may notice that there's some controversy. Or may even say "Is
that as silly as it seems?" But that's all he gets. The blog reader,
on the other hand, once his interest is piqued, finds it easy to
explore the topic in as much depth as he wants and see what both sides
are saying about it.
My other question is where and when, in the professionally written
parts of the newspapers, you'd expect to find the story the *blog* is
telling: that a major daily newspaper wrote an uncritical story about
a crank. Or, at least, that professionals think that they did and
object. I'd guess that only if a stink was made elsewhere (e.g., on
blogs, in press releases, or, perhaps, in letters to the editor),
would they do so. Maybe.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |Usenet is like Tetris for people
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |who still remember how to read.
Palo Alto, CA 94304
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
JC Dill
> On May 29, 2:36 am, JC Dill <jcdill.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> PatONeill wrote:
>>> I'm sorry, but I prefer my news to be done by people who know what
>>> they're doing, not by a bunch of amateurs each contributing their bit.
>> Here, read about bloggers who know what they are doing outing the
>> "professional journalists" who phoned it in instead of researching the
>> story:
>>
>> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1428
>>
>> This is the type of story I find by following interesting blogs that I
>> would never find in the newspaper.
>
How is this any less important than the Donna Reed servicemen's letters
story? And why does "importance" matter here? Wasn't your point that
you wouldn't find stories like this if you just relied on blogs and not
newspapers for your news?
> that somebody catch a writer and
> publisher in a marketing/publicity ploy that may not be completely
> true. In the course of harping on the exactitude of "millionth word",
> the bloggers miss the more important point the writer is making--that
> English has become the world's language.
The writer has been scamming this "millionth word" thing for years.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=972
The writer's point is to sell books, not to discuss if (or how) English
has become the world's language. These traditional media journalists
(except for the Economist) didn't do any research - they each wrote the
article from a single source (the author). Isn't that shoddy
journalism? Yet, the online journalist (Slate.com) got to the bottom of
the story!
But now that you bring it up, why do you suppose English HAS become the
world's language? Is it because of newspapers? Or is it because of the
internet?
jc
Default User
> On May 28, 6:37�pm, "Default User" <defaultuse...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > PatONeill wrote:
> > > Oh--and what resources would Reed's daughter be able to bring to
> > > bear to track down those servicemen?
> >
> > I don't know that one would need to. A well-crafted blog entry, on a
> > reasonably popular site, would have readers doing the legwork. Or
> > linking the article to veteran's blogs where others would pick up
> > the task.
> IOW, the "journalist" would hand off the real work to others. Please.
Only if you define tracking down some veterans as "the real work". I
wouldn't. The real work would be crafting the story around the letters.
Then you can have follow-ups as people track down some of the letter
writers.
Brian
--
Day 116 of the "no grouchy usenet posts" project
Evan Kirshenbaum
I suspect that of that population today, a much larger chunk gets its
news from TV and radio than from newspapers. But I don't see
newspapers completely going away any time soon, especially not the
free advertising-supported locally-focused papers. For the main
papers, they'll be around for a while, but it's not clear how long
there will be a sizeable population that can't easily access the net
but can afford them. The _San Jose Mercury News_ is about $18 a month
if you buy it on the newsstand and $9.50 a month if you subscribe for
a year. That's going up and the cost of net access and startup
equipment are going down, even as the net is being perceived as being
more widely useful and even necessary. I don't see it being all that
long before precisely the people whose money is tightest start to
decide that it's the newspaper subscription that's the luxury they can
no longer afford.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |_Bauplan_ is just the German word
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |for blueprint. Typically, one
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |switches languages to indicate
|profundity.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Richard Dawkins
(650)857-7572