Start of #webcredtrans buffer: Sat Jan 22 12:04:00 2005 * Now talking in #webcredtrans * Topic is 'See #webcred for more' * Set by _sjrm_ on Wed Jan 19 22:23:56 <_sj_> Karen Fisher's postings last week: <_sj_> One in particular struck me. "Communities can hold feet to the fire..." <_sj_> [ouch] <_sj_> It's very interesting for a librarian to see tihs... <_sj_> [karen schneider talking] <_sj_> I hear a lot about the begninning of the information tranaction <_sj_> wher news is gathered... <_sj_> I represent the other end. <_sj_> I was working at a small library in new york when we received a large check from our assemblyman? <_sj_> and we used it to buy our first internet computer. <_sj_> we set up one-half-hour sessions when you could use the computer. <_sj_> this is a town that has One public internet-access computer available to the public, <_sj_> available for forty one-half hour sessions [each week] <_sj_> when you're asking users to do more work, <_sj_> to do a lot of the leg work, <_sj_> how is a user on a half-hou session each week going to be able to do that? <_sj_> any ethical framework needs to address the needs of the people that you're ultimately serving. <_sj_> And I'm pleased by how many journalists today have talked about that... <_sj_> and I realize as journalists how much we share in common in our professions. <_sj_> Any ethical framework fo rinforamtion needs to be informed by the way it moves through time and space <_sj_> and is transfomred in a veyr lossy way. <_sj_> information has a way of growing legs, walking away from you, and becoming very different things. <_sj_> it starts on a blog, is pushed through aggravators^B^B^ aggregators <_sj_> (maybe that could be a new word :) (audience laughs) <_sj_> recoded, reprocessed, put into dbs where it could be taken out of context. <_sj_> But I think we can't rely on transparency <_sj_> b/c there is no metadata tagging to link that transparency back <_sj_> I love dan gillmor, <_sj_> and he said today that the audience is going to have a lot more of the work <_sj_> and I come from a profession where the code is that the users should do a lot *less* of the work. <_sj_> that MPR is doing a lot of community [interaction] is very exciting... <_sj_> information and people need their advocates, and I hope that doesn't get forgotten. <_sj_> If I as a librarian could assign any homework for today, it would be for you to go to the Digital Divide Netowrk <_sj_> and read what Andy Carvin has to say. <_sj_> The majority of people don't read blogs, don't use the internet... As my sister says, <_sj_> "what are these globs you keep talking about?" <_sj_> as for the student, teacher and librarian (re the tsunami) trying to sift through all of this information... <_sj_> [we need to consider their task] <_sj_> [jon bonne] <_sj_> I'm going to pick and choose bits and pieces: <_sj_> to bill mitchell's point of finding out not just disclosure but evne engaging in a conversation <_sj_> about uilding trust in relationships, <_sj_> he talked in his paper about bloggers... I wondered why this shouldn't apply as well to news organizations, to give some insight into the porcess: <_sj_> why things get pulished, who writes them, what decisios get made, whether the right decisions get made and better ones could be made in the future. <_sj_> conceptually, that's all very good. <_sj_> there's a couple notes of caution. <_sj_> going back to this notion of a relationship b/t the producer and a usre of information, if you will <_sj_> the relationship is inevitable. <_sj_> one of the things we're evolving towards is some sort of undertsanding that the relationship is good. <_sj_> It's also worth remembering that relationships can be manipulative: as you want to answer questions, <_sj_> you should be wary of the possibility of people who have agendas to keep you from putting things out [in whatever format] <_sj_> will not simply come ranting at you, but may be much more subtle; the <_sj_> quietly organized letter-writing campaigns to members of congress... <_sj_> you can't dismiss it, but there are larger and not necessarily good motives behind how these relationships get manipulated. <_sj_> just b/c a newpaper gets inundated with tons of questions about why they couvered a certain company a certain way, <_sj_> it could just be the company employees, someone sitting behind the green curetain manipulating controls... <_sj_> [or other people in town complaining] <_sj_> one other point: <_sj_> going to Karen Sch 's point about undrestanding your users <_sj_> the process of understanding ths notion that the relationship needs to be defined but can also have external detriments to it... I think that it's difficult to think that a news org [specifically] can serve all its users equally well <_sj_> by definition, if you're doing good journalims, someone's going to lose. <_sj_> So I think again as we talk about relationsihps with the end user... it's worth keepingi n mind that the users vary <_sj_> users include people you speak well of, people you speak ill of... <_sj_> part of the pro-journalists role has always been to know that bad things happen, * tscripttscriber has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> and even if the people doing the bad thing are powerful, and try to jump in and say 'were also readers' <_sj_> it's not intended to be a zero-sum game. <_sj_> one of the things we're going to have trouble dealing with is how to achieve that fairness while acknowledging that not everyone can win. <_sj_> [next: tom rosenstiel] <_sj_> [from the Comm. of Concerned Journalists: ] <_sj_> one thing I have to say as an idea: <_sj_> I think a lot of the issueas about what will make blogs creidble and ho journalistm will adapt and learn from the atis no t actually that complicated. <_sj_> that is* <_sj_> and elite members of the blog community (I hate to say it, but you will form elites like any other group) <_sj_> will form agreements to what those standards are. <_sj_> and the marketplace a few years after that will prove some of them right; some blogs will be popular and considered very crdible, that you think are awful. <_sj_> I have three small points by way of background... <_sj_> first: there's a sense in which the norms and codes of journalism came down from Mount New York Times <_sj_> from Moses Salzberger one day... <_sj_> that's not th way it happened. <_sj_> the norms of journalism evolved over the past 200 years... <_sj_> it's not as codified or as monolithic as it looks. the culture did stultify in journalism, and did get disconnected from its audience <_sj_> in large part b/c it became so focused on technique -- <_sj_> journalism was what journalism did. <_sj_> that's not where it started and not where it will end up, <_sj_> but whe you look voer the last 30 years, it will seem like its own unified time, with its own strengths and weaknesses. <_sj_> Secondly, if you look at the data, <_sj_> the public thinks the press is increasingly market-oriented... <_sj_> that media orgs are in it for the money, and individual [pundits] for self-aggrandizement. <_sj_> They may not watch, but that's not where the credibility loss is. <_sj_> the third thing is that commercialism changes everything. <_sj_> when money comes into play with blogs, that will change anything. We could be having this discussion in 1925, talking about radio.... and radio didn't end up where it looked like it was going. <_sj_> when money comes into play, this will all change. <_sj_> [mod2 - to that point, some people sya that when money comes into blogs, <_sj_> they will be able to replace traditional expensive blogging.. <_sj_> going out and producing news] <_sj_> [mod2 - my question for you is, blogging could act as a substitute for seomthing like FOX news with its expensive reporting. <_sj_> you say you go out and do this harrowing report every year on the State of the News. <_sj_> What do you see in the state of the news that reflects how blogging could be used as a vehicle ?] <_sj_> [TR] <_sj_> I think Tom had the right start: <_sj_> using blogging to increase exposure of journalists to their audience <_sj_> the more blogging can intrude on the newsroom, the better off we will be <_sj_> journalism 101: journalism provides society with a plumb line, tells us where the facts are. <_sj_> to do that, you need reporters that go and find things out, do digging, run between places... and give people an end-product <_sj_> that is their best available version of what was there that day. <_sj_> This is very different from blogs... the risk is that if we can't monetize this[research] enough, we'll have to shrink our nesrooms way down. <_sj_> It's not the blogs that are the risk there, <_sj_> they are going to help us reconnect <_sj_> and do the things that Jay and I and a lot of people have been thinking about for 10 years, for 15 years. <_sj_> The threat is that there will not be enough subsidy to sustain this. <_sj_> [Jill Abramson, NYT] <_sj_> Juts to make things real, <_sj_> to sustain a [news office] in Baghdad, I wonder if anyone here knows what that would cost <_sj_> I wonder if my blog colleagues know what this costs... <_sj_> [Dave Winer] <_sj_> that's a silly questoin. <_sj_> asking bloggers what this costs is silly <_sj_> if you want to tell us what it costs, that's fine... but there are bloggers in Baghdad! <_sj_> that's your competition, that's what you have to deal with <_sj_> [JA] <_sj_> But I think there is real value in having an office in baghdad... <_sj_> a tremendous public service, just to keep a group of jounralist safe, equipped, with drivers... <_sj_> $1 million dollars over the past year. <_sj_> that doesn't even factor in language classes, etc so that journlaists can speak [more effecively] <_sj_> and they go out all the time, out there, just to bear witness; there's a public service in that. <_sj_> and I don't think that's what bloggers are doing there <_sj_> I'm just making real tom's point that keeping the infrastrcuture real and vibrant, <_sj_> covering the perspectiv from iraq, the war... <_sj_> [Dave W] <_sj_> First of all, I want to thank you. <_sj_> b/c we're finally getting some blood flowing in this room] <_sj_> I heard the same conversation in 1981 form the manufacturers of parallel computers <_sj_> "we will always need huge staffs in the glass plaaces <_sj_> b/c the users can't be trusted with thehyir on data" <_sj_> 2-3 years later, thye were gone; b/c they were wrong. <_sj_> [JA = I'm hardly talking about glass palaces; I'm talking about public service] <_sj_> DW - well, I stick with the analogy... <_sj_> Rick K - well, don't, that's not fair. <_sj_> What Jill is NOT saying is that there's no place for bloggersin iraq.. <_sj_> what we're aying to you is, that part of what's necessary inth coverage of Iraq <_sj_> expoensive in coverag of human and dollar costs, <_sj_> is what a group of pro journlaists can bring to the story <_sj_> that plus what the whole new world of blogging can brig to a story - that's better! <_sj_> DW - so why did she ask the question she did? she directed it at the blogosphere!! <_sj_> JA - I'm asking... because Rick knows how expensive it is, I'm just curious if the world konws what it costs. <_sj_> RK - I'm just telling you that we need as much information... <_sj_> and you can't get what [you get] from the networks -- the ability to get in there and move about <_sj_> she's not trying to exclude anybody <_sj_> she's trying to get you to udnerstand that to get anybody in therei n a detailed, structured wa, is very expensive. <_sj_> [Jeff J] <_sj_> Last year, let me tell yo, there's a blogger named Zayed?... <_sj_> I sent him a camera. <_sj_> he went to cover a protest against antiterrorism... they were great photos. <_sj_> he put them up on his blog, they got posted all around. <_sj_> the WEekly STandard put up these photos. * escobarito has quit IRC (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) <_sj_> The NYT didn't cover that demonstratoin. <_sj_> why? b/c it was "unseen" <_sj_> well, at that point there were only 4 blogs in Baghdad. <_sj_> Dan Rather, when [...] said "oops, we made a mistake!" should have said <_sj_> "good, let's fix it" <_sj_> the Times should have said "good, let's work together to try to get MORE information <_sj_> and MORE facts..." * waerth has quit IRC (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) <_sj_> rather than trying to ghettoize people and say "they're not professional" * waerth_ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> JA - we're not trying to ghettoize anyone... <_sj_> JJ - so Why did you shake your head!? <_sj_> What was wrong with the story? <_sj_> JA - well, I know the story... he wasn't in Fallujah <_sj_> ... <_sj_> [I'd like to ask that we maintain a certin level of civility -mod2] <_sj_> [Dan gillmor] <_sj_> there's been an ongoing situation ther e[in iraq] <_sj_> where al ot ofjournalists have been getting their information from local folks <_sj_> there are a lot of journalists there, but... <_sj_> I'd like to see an experiment where journalists give laptops to these people they're seeing, <_sj_> and to have a symbiotic relationship that would be more visible <_sj_> to people outside the bureau <_sj_> and give us a more nuanced view of what's happening, <_sj_> if we start to ask the people who have lived their all their lives <_sj_> to be part of the distribution process. <_sj_> [mod2 - Dan, let me ask you, you've been a longtime trad journalist, you're now devoting yourself to what you call grassroots? journalism. <_sj_> what would a blog from a big organization like the NYT look like?] <_sj_> DG - I'd like to see a blog from some of the people the Times is looking to for its locl content, people who have lived there all their lives, translators... <_sj_> AND I'd like to see the times give a hand to them and say "we're not vouching for this content, this is from the people here... <_sj_> [but we're trying to broaden the dialogue to include more than the traditional reporters]" <_sj_> [JA] <_sj_> I think this gets at the root of what this conference is about: <_sj_> that we are trying to get away from the NYT tradition of not publishing anything where it could not vouch for its authenticity... <_sj_> [laughter] <_sj_> [?? - I think what Jill is saying is not that it is always correct, but that it is always accountable [through] the person who submitted the story...] <_sj_> [Dave Weinb] <_sj_> There is a very small range of vocabulary you're allowed to use to express nuanced belief - alleged, said to, reportedly... <_sj_> I know this is a big part of the brand of the NYT at all, restricting this vocabulary <_sj_> but it greatly reduces the capacity for voice. <_sj_> I want to suggest some [technical] changes: <_sj_> things like linking bylines to pages about the authors <_sj_> allowing reporters to blog on the site [not requiring them...] <_sj_> allowing links to pages off of your site <_sj_> letting [us] talk on occasion around topics <_sj_> showing ups what others are saying <_sj_> [I would *love* to see what bloggers are saying about what you've posted] <_sj_> letting us organize the site the way *we* want; <_sj_> I know the front page is an important part of your value, but... <_sj_> allowing us to manipulate your metadata... <_sj_> to let us pull out what is interesting to us <_sj_> reputation systems, recommendation systems, whatever is useful to us... <_sj_> making it incredibly easy for us to aggregate. <_sj_> I konw this is one of the things that is valuable to you, since there's money in that... <_sj_> one more thing that osme of you are doing: <_sj_> on occasion, write your drafts in public. <_sj_> there's a long-form article you're writing; write your draft, let us comment, let us suggest stuff... <_sj_> those are some rally straightforward things you can do. <_sj_> [...] <_sj_> Thanks to your ciruclation dept... <_sj_> I wouldn't be living in NC if we couldn't get the NYT to our driveway every day. <_sj_> Here's what I'd like to see: No press will ever write drafts in public. <_sj_> the NYT reporting from Fallujah was really, really great. <_sj_> just bumped down to #2 [on my list] last week. <_sj_> The report of an ambush in Iraq last week; the details were incredible <_sj_> the detailed sophistication of the ambush, everything belied all the storiees <_sj_> we were told about this "ragtag insurgency"... <_sj_> A week later, that email was a front-page story in the News and Record. <_sj_> The N&R looked at a site that had a blog, and said "wow, that's really amazing." <_sj_> what did the N&R do? They checked out, used their journalistic chops, that Nick ? was who he said he was (the marine reporting on it) <_sj_> they used their strength as a credible journalistic org to vet and publish it. <_sj_> It was in some ways more creible, b/c it was in print; <_sj_> it had the fporce of the media establishment behind it... <_sj_> and to go to a point that Bill and Dan have made: <_sj_> I want to see the NYt use its resources to gather more info from more sources and vet them and bring them to me. <_sj_> [mod2 - you've raised a very intersting question... should the blog have posted information about whether or not the [source] was real?] <_sj_> [what if there had been no authentication, just an anonymous post?] [mod2 = Alex Jones] <_sj_> I wouldn't have run it... <_sj_> [DW - wouldn't have run it] <_sj_> It would depend on the credibility of the blogger... <_sj_> Fascinating too, to me, was that the N&R ran the [entire] email. <_sj_> I don't know if the NYT is ready to do that, but if you have time to check out the facts... <_sj_> [Ethan speaking for two people, himself and ... <_sj_> ] <_sj_> I think in the future we're going to have the direct american voice, and a whole slew of raw unfiltered voices... <_sj_> AS william gibson says, the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet. <_sj_> As for very hard work, <_sj_> getting people in subsaharan africa blogging... there aren't a lot of them. <_sj_> there aren't a lot of people in the [Congo] writing about what's going on there. <_sj_> I *love* professional journalists.; <_sj_> I love that there are budgets to send people out to the EDC, to get stories <_sj_> that we really cannot get any other way. <_sj_> [DRC*] <_sj_> until we get [to a world where hundreds of people there are blogging from cell phones] while there are a lot of blogs breaking original material, <_sj_> there are significantly more commenting on existing material. <_sj_> especially in international blogs. <_sj_> [hoder] <_sj_> blogs are bringin gback the early promise of journalism:they want to change things the way they think is right. <_sj_> [journalism was originally designed to change things; now they are reduced to reporting things as they happen] <_sj_> [jay rosen] <_sj_> that's one thing bloggfers have the freedom to do: be activists. <_sj_> they also have the freedom to use their blogs as platforms for opinion. <_sj_> neither is necessarily what weblogging is about, weblogging could be lots of things. <_sj_> I don't think there's anybody in or outside of this room, who think blogging is going to replace traditional media. <_sj_> There are hundreds of people debunking this and I haven't found one who is really bunking. <_sj_> We know that we're dependent on the news media, bloggers are parasitic on the news. <_sj_> and it's expensive... we know that too. <_sj_> the NYT, my understanding is that its budget is $180M for 1200 people. <_sj_> the blogosphere isn't going to come anywheere close to that. we know that. <_sj_> Second thing: <_sj_> I don't care when the NYT blogs; from my point of view, the later the better; I won't have that competition; I don't really care. <_sj_> BUT <_sj_> the first reporter who realizes that a weblog is a great tool for drawing knowledge IN form the people <_sj_> the way reporters are supposed to do, <_sj_> and creates a reporter weblog <_sj_> that is strictly about the gathering of knowledge, <_sj_> is going to make a name for his/herself, * waerth has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> be an example for everyone in journalism, <_sj_> breaking stories nobody else has, <_sj_> and doing it al from a weblog, there will be no opinions in there. <_sj_> They're gooing to be outside the major metropolitan areas... <_sj_> When we learn how to do it -- I'm not saying we know how to do it -- <_sj_> that person's going to become famous. And it's going to happen. <_sj_> [Alex - I think the fellow next to you, the Socrates of journalism... has said *to my face* that journalism is over!] <_sj_> [Dave W] - I never said that... <_sj_> If I did say it... <_sj_> [there was a good joke in there] <_sj_> there's always a gap between what's heard and what's said. <_sj_> I don't have a stake in journalism stopping or continuing... I"m passionate about nes, and want more information, and want it to be avalable to everybody <_sj_> if there's a way to do it, then I support that. the joke - someone said "Dan Gilmor always says my readers are smarter than I am". Gillmor responded "They _KNOW MORE_ than I do", which got a good laugh <_sj_> But I don't support, as Jay just told, that we need $180M for the NYT to have a staff of people <_sj_> and tell them, you need to go there and do that... <_sj_> the cost of publishing has just been going down inexorably. <_sj_> It's called Moore's Law, and it's been dropping every year <_sj_> you can't get away from it. <_sj_> "we will always be using mainframe computers" <_sj_> "we will always be publishing with desktop [presses]" * rubenrp has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> ... now web publishing has made everything so much less expensive, you CAN'T depend on [maintaining a budget for such newsrooms] <_sj_> [..] <_sj_> The funding/support for such newsrooms is unravelling, and that is going to be a major topic today. <_sj_> [agreement by Jeff J] <_sj_> [Alex] - If this happens, I think something incredibly important for our democracy will have disappeared. * waerth__ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> Traditional journalism is going batshit trying to figure out how to survive. <_sj_> Maybe, David, blogging, some of the mechanisms you suggest would be helpful -- I don't think that threatens what the NYT does. <_sj_> [Jan Schaefer] <_sj_> we're talking bout blogs as the end game here... <_sj_> I hope theyr'e not! they're just the beginning... <_sj_> because they're a very inefficient way to get information. <_sj_> But it seems to me we should be working in both the blogging and journalims world towards a bette end-product <_sj_> and the better endproduct might be meaningful commentayr and meaningful [conversations] <_sj_> operhaps through better links.. <_sj_> my ideal for doing this would be through a mindset rather than a skillset if you will, and a mindset for harvesting information <_sj_> to [use] the expertise in your community... you would seek participation that would check and balance your story <_sj_> not only did you get the story right, but did you get the right story? * jpr_ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> you would try to [identify] "did I get it right" and it seems to me that's a paradigm that applies both to mainstream journ. and to the blogging world. <_sj_> [Rick Kaplan] <_sj_> I want to get at your view that mainstream journ is somehow threatened by the blogs <_sj_> or doesn't want them around... <_sj_> we don't have a program starting that doesn't have a blog. <_sj_> we use bloggers and our newsshows sometimes even involve blogging. <_sj_> when I was listening to your suggestions before [david w] I was thinking, we do all that... <_sj_> though even microsoft doesn't give you the ability to staff a blog the way you wish. <_sj_> then again, when someone says that A-Rod gets a new $7M contract, <_sj_> it doesn't do any good for 7 out of 8 journalists to get that worng. <_sj_> we really highly prize anything that has our name on it... <_sj_> we do protect our brands, our names... everyone in our bureaus, in baghdad or anyhwere else, <_sj_> have a great deal of input. <_sj_> and if we don't let them blog, it's because wer really do want to do a lot of cfact-hecking on anything before letting it go out on a blog that would have MSNBC's name on it... <_sj_> ew don't want ot have 15 mistakes pointed out on a piece that we're doing on a blog... <_sj_> it just muddies the brand. <_sj_> I htink the greatest thing in the world is the increas in blogging... <_sj_> and that all these attempts to organize - you know, it's not going to work. <_sj_> you're not going to have federal licenses [like TVs have licenses] when I was listening to people talk about "maybe some blogs could get together and [check one another]" <_sj_> there's just going to be infinite blogs, that'll be great! <_sj_> that's what's going to save my butt, save th eNYT's butt. <_sj_> there will be more people to collaborate. * jpr_ has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> we're looking for ways to collaborate with the blog world in a huge way... <_sj_> and we do want to keep a separatio b/t what is blogging and straight / uninvolved / traditional journalism <_sj_> we do want to keep a wall b/t them, b/c at some point <_sj_> people are going to want to know, "what's the straight line?" <_sj_> there are a thoushand/million/infinite number of opinions on the blogosphere <_sj_> and that's where I think the NYT would like to be the arbiter of [the plumb line], to be the place that [people] come to to get a sense for which blog is kinda on the straight and narrow. <_sj_> I will tell you that we work undre an assumption: we believe [Jill does, CBS does] there is no room in the public's mind anymore for an honest error. <_sj_> any kind of wrong will be seen a illegal, as an attempt at wrongdoing. nobody makes honest mistake anymore. they're all planned, preconceived, felonious mistakes. <_sj_> so we are brutally careful with everything that we do. <_sj_> one day you're going to have to live undert hat umbrella too. <_sj_> Going forward, the idea that you are energizing thr ocuntry <_sj_> --you rae -- we are -- you are <_sj_> that's going to save our country in the end, b/c we are needed. <_sj_> there rae things we can bring to the table (strange, dangerous places you can't get to) <_sj_> and there are places you can get to that we can't. <_sj_> during the tsunami, we ran 19,000 video clips from citizens that sent them around the world. <_sj_> I don't care how rich you are, you won't have enough Euros to shoot 19k video clips... <_sj_> [alex - so rick, is the line you draw b/t commentators for MSNBC and SCarborough, etc... but a journalist for MSNBC canont?] <_sj_> no, we let journalists blog. <_sj_> we don't let them do their drafts [online] * waerth_ has quit IRC (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) <_sj_> because, once you correct it, how are you going to tell the 15 million people who saw it you made a mistake? <_sj_> [Jimmy wales] <_sj_> I've been waiting ever since she commented on how much a news bureau costs <_sj_> I wanted to say that 5 yrs ago, if I sat before this or any other group, <_sj_> and we discussed the EBrittanica <_sj_> (1986: budget of 15M) <_sj_> and I said, I'm gonna get a whole bunch of people on the internet to write an encyclo, <_sj_> you would have said you're crazy, it will cost M and M of $ <_sj_> but it didn't cost that much; we did it. <_sj_> I don't thnk you can say blogging is never going to replace this... <_sj_> I think it's very unlikely the biz model of the NYT is sustainable over the next 20 years. <_sj_> I hope I'm wrong about this too, but it may be a fact. <_sj_> [JA] - I don't know if you point about the britannica is valid or invalid... I don't know if five years ago I would have though it were possible or impossible. <_sj_> if hte iz model is as you predict, and there isn't going to be ap aying audience for the kind of wideranging global emprical reporting that the NYT or other mainstream news orgs do now, <_sj_> the point tI was makinga bout the ost of or Bahad buereau is that I feel <_sj_> that would be a tragic loss, real public service value... <_sj_> JW - it's only a tragic loss if it isn't replaced by something far better... <_sj_> [???] - You don't really konw what you're talking about. <_sj_> JW - thank you, that was very helpful <_sj_> ??? - have you ever been in a place like Baghdad? <_sj_> it's not fair to say that <_sj_> JW - it's not about fair or unfair... <_sj_> as the world changes, people organize themselves... <_sj_> ?? - and you're saying the NYT will just sit there and do nothing as this changes? <_sj_> JW - Oh, you can adapt -- IBM adapted and survived thd death of the mainframe, it's just not doing what it did 20 years ago. <_sj_> Alex - will the new model be a replacement, or will it be a variation on what's there today? <_sj_> ?? - we just don't want to be cavalier about predicting that kind of demise. <_sj_> Alex - I think it's interesting to look at Cable news (and how it's replacing or not replacing network news) * jpr_ has joined #webcredtrans * waerth has quit IRC (Nick collision from services.) * waerth__ is now known as waerth <_sj_> ?x - powerline - * jpr_ has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> what is the coolest tool in creating trust? <_sj_> linking to source data <_sj_> every time we refer to economic data, we linnk directly to the source; <_sj_> when we quote a speech, we both excerpt quotes, but we also link to the original, so the readers can see the entire ething. <_sj_> I think a fundamental change or the mainstream media, instead of seeing th e internet version of a paper as the stepchild - well, ew also make it available on the net -- <_sj_> start taking advantage of that medium to make it better than the original. <_sj_> if Paul Krugman wants to refer to economic data, he should link to it! <_sj_> I think there are some important columnists who, if they had to link to their data, would go out of business or change their ways. <_sj_> I don't see any reason why the[se journalists] shouldn't link to their data [which is often available in the Public Domain] <_sj_> there's no reason they can't do as pros what we do as amateurs. <_sj_> This not only gives greater reliability, but demonstrates a different attitutde towards your readers. <_sj_> See for yourself! dont take our word for it! go to the source... <_sj_> Instead of editors saying "take it from us". <_sj_> [Susan Tifft] <_sj_> I just want to bo gack to baghdad <_sj_> and people in iraqon the streets reporting hat was happening to them. <_sj_> people in baghdad for the WSJ wrote a long email letter home to her friends about how hard it was to geather news in baghdad, how she was under house arrest... <_sj_> and other reporters were too. <_sj_> many readers of the WSJ wrote in to say she wasn't a credible journalist, was biased... <_sj_> I think mainstream journs should be able to write these pices; the are very powerful. <_sj_> In a sense she was writing a LiveJournal... <_sj_> at the time, afriend of mine, an editor of a major newspaper, said <_sj_> "you know, in my day, that would have made it into the paper" <_sj_> and Abe Rosenthal, a long time ago, said the best story <_sj_> -- he wanted to find a way to get in to the NYT the kinds of stories journs would tell one another at cocktail parties <_sj_> when they got together, not limited by the straightjacket of convention that some of us [know?] has outlived its usefulness. <_sj_> that's a case where the writer was plumb, and the newspaper was not. <_sj_> [alex - I want to give everyone a chance to speak... ds] <_sj_> I think what we're ultimately talking about is the wintess and the importance of the narrative. <_sj_> in the way that one person can tell a story photographically, in text, what hae you. <_sj_> i hink when ed was describing how a paper took hat beganb as a witness acct and vetted it, put it online... there is inevitably a role for that in journalism <_sj_> [that=objective facts] there's also a role for narrative, tying threads together <_sj_> this notion that reporters are stenographers, just thying things to gether, isn't right... <_sj_> ther eare news orgs where journalists run down a story, tracking down the bad guy, and not just verifying that X said <_sj_> Y said Z said. * danja has quit IRC (Read error: 60 (Operation timed out)) <_sj_> admittedly there may not be as much activist jounralims [today] but I think there is a role for all these things. <_sj_> [Alex - I agree there's a place for bad guy/good guy. I think that objective journalis doesn't mean you avoid that.. <_sj_> it means you acknowledge [that's what you're doing] ] <_sj_> [Joe Cox] <_sj_> re: linking to NYT stories, that's already availabe, through things like Technorati, or [Mimia Random?] <_sj_> I would say if you're not going to do it, it doesn't bother me, b/c someone else will. <_sj_> Going back to sth else people said: at the DNC, <_sj_> all these people pulled something together <_sj_> Dave had something, and Rick had it do, Dave had something on CNN... <_sj_> there are somethings where bloggers and news orgs work together well. <_sj_> [Dave Sifry] <_sj_> we may have fallen into a false journ/blogger dichotomy. <_sj_> let's get back to... what happens whe we get from 6 million to 60 million [bloggers] <_sj_> how can we motivate trust? <_sj_> I'm a blogger, but continue to read the NYT eery single day <_sj_> b/c I know they're putting al ot of time and effort into something approaching objectivity <_sj_> and I know there's a huge # of other people also watching and catching them. <_sj_> The same thing w/other bloggers. <_sj_> to me what's relevant is the power of many: the wisdom of the group. <_sj_> doesn't always mean the group is right, but if we can build systems, <_sj_> the media, with all the time and effort and monye it puts into this has a treemendous role to play. <_sj_> sometimes bloggers break stories... but how do we make sense to the guy or gal who has fifteen minutes in his day. <_sj_> to me that is the fundamental problem, and I don't think we've solved it yet. <_sj_> [jack sch] <_sj_> {ds above = ed cone} <_sj_> it's clear the media and bloggers can't replace one another. we've been really looking into ways to [collaborate]; <_sj_> it wasn't just the 19k film clips; <_sj_> I was reading this guy from malaysia witnessing the use of offroad vehicles, in a daybyday blog about <_sj_> what it was like to try to get by along roads washed out... <_sj_> places we couldn't have sent reporters to, frankly you wouldn't waste the resources, <_sj_> but they were amazing stories. * waerth__ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> It seems to me a lot of stuff going on with blogs has always been there. <_sj_> consider ohio: the debate whether or not the election was stolen. <_sj_> before the blogosphere, there were all kinds of dsicussion about Illinois, whether Joe K bought or not that eleciotn. <_sj_> we never had a way to see how many Americans had a disagreement or worried about it, * waerth has quit IRC (Read error: 54 (Connection reset by peer)) <_sj_> the main thing we did was witness the blogosphere, see our blogging... <_sj_> that's what we as mainstream media do best. * waerth__ is now known as waerth <_sj_> get to the documents, get the guys and sources, better than anyone else. <_sj_> It's clear there ought to be some melding, some synergy... I don't know how the NYT does that. <_sj_> who the hell are these guys who write all the columns? <_sj_> why not once a week, pick out a great blog column, and run that in the paper? * danja has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> [chris lydon] <_sj_> [last speaker: trippi] <_sj_> I want to remind you tha part of the game here is: build this trust; particularly at this point in our history. <_sj_> I've been sitting here looking at that picture up behind david sifry, * The_bellman has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> and thinking it's a hilarious commentary on what we're talking about <_sj_> a photograph of john f kennedy in the oval office <_sj_> entitled The Loneliest Job in the World <_sj_> it was taken by George Tames?, the institutional photographic Times presence in Washington <_sj_> and he'd taking the [first-class stamp phoneo] at that time <_sj_> and he was ushered in to the oval office, and knew the pres pretty well... <_sj_> he saw the president leaning over a table, a NYTimes laid out... <_sj_> and the president said to him, <_sj_> "Where the Christ does this Crock get the crap he puts in this column of his?" * <_sj_> the funny thing was that Crock was a [prize-winning columnist] who won the pulitzer prize for writing about [Kennedy??] so there was a funny circularity in this. <_sj_> Liberate the media from the mass! We don't need to defend the mass media... * waerth__ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> we need to train them to spend more than 15 minutes a day, David; <_sj_> we've got to train them to think for themselves. <_sj_> we've meanwhile got a tremendous machine to realize this; we've got to reach for it! <_sj_> [Cameron?] <_sj_> Technology hits different industries at different times An Individuals goal: improved mental map of reality. Methods: people (blogs) AND the press. Why? Because the brain is the only tool you've got to plan your best future. And you get help where you can. <_sj_> there was a time when the Times was going to give laptops to its reporters and send them out to do stories, and later synthesize them into a single report... <_sj_> when tape recorders were small enough that [Dave Isay?] realized he could give small tape recorders to subjects [kids in cities] to do their own recordings... <_sj_> and he won a number of awards doing this, since he got interview he could never have gotten himself. <_sj_> This kind of synthesis is possible; it didn't destroy the institution of public radio, or NPR... <_sj_> [Ethan for Hoder] <_sj_> Specifically to Jill and Rick : about the conversation of having pro journalism in the field: <_sj_> why are the people who are out in the field in the middle east, why are so few arabic speakers? <_sj_> how can they expect to undretsand what is going on locally without cultural knowledge/ <_sj_> ? <_sj_> Compare this to reporters who learn persian to go and write articles in persian! and then send reports back... <_sj_> should we be doing more to give people going into these countreis such skills? <_sj_> [Jill A] - I'd say we should have more people going into these countries who are native speakers... <_sj_> we use a blend of local journalists and pors working with our journs at the bureaus... <_sj_> to be honest we'd love to find more arabic speaking pro correspondents. * Kuja_ has quit IRC ("ChatZilla 0.9.58p [Mozilla rv:1.5/20031007]") <_sj_> [Alex - it's interesting he raised this, b/c one of the luxuries of th eNYT is that it frequently will send a correspondent to school for a year to do nothing but learn the language [and culture? -ed]... ] * waerth___ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> [JA - the problem with the urgency of nes in the middle east is that you don't have the time to do that...] * waerth__ has quit IRC (Read error: 54 (Connection reset by peer)) <_sj_> [Rick K - our lead journalist in the area is fluent in arabic...] <_sj_> [RMack - while you have locals who know the local language and culture, they can't contextualize it in a way that makes sense to the audience] <_sj_> do pakistani reporters konw enough about what the people back home know and don't know to write articles that will make senes to them? <_sj_> [Alex - quick 5 min break] <_sj_> [for cell phones, bathrooms, etc] * dyer has quit IRC (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) * dyer has joined #webcredtrans * waerth has quit IRC (Read error: 60 (Operation timed out)) * waerth has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> new subject <_sj_> we're talking about the issue of money in a more explicit way <_sj_> "the new business model" and what this means for blogging standards <_sj_> Jeff J is up.... and Rochelle? has just joined us. <_sj_> yikes! JJ is climbing into th emiddle <_sj_> of the big rectangle of tables... <_sj_> JJ: I actually don't want to blather at first. <_sj_> I want you to blather at me. <_sj_> my background: media man by day, blogboy by night. <_sj_> I want to energize journ and keep it healthier. <_sj_> we agree about that. <_sj_> let's figure ot ow to do that better. <_sj_> there are ec problems with journalism. <_sj_> [looking at boston.com online] <_sj_> I wrote blog blather about economics of blog ojurnalism. <_sj_> theyr'e bad, we know <_sj_> 1st : classifieds, toilet. retail rev, not looking good. <_sj_> upfront costs going u, audience goin down <_sj_> [?] <_sj_> then I wrote a bunch of questions: <_sj_> there are issues of ethics etc from one medium to the other which we should think about <_sj_> I'm wrong about this list, but we can correct it... <_sj_> I saw gillmor and others added in to say the ethics of journalism, thouroughness, accuracy, transparency, fairness, independence, accountability. <_sj_> ethics of blogs: <_sj_> not a code placed on the, but the ethics of the community by its ctions. <_sj_> ttransp, conversation, humanity, * sbw is now known as sbw-away <_sj_> the link, immediacy. <_sj_> this led to a list of questions: <_sj_> now I'm going to call on you. <_sj_> the idea is, that the busines sof journalims is changing. <_sj_> there are new opps out there, how do we improve both, how do we imrpove our society doing this? <_sj_> 1st: how are e going to use citizen's media? <_sj_> to give us more news, info, viewpoints. <_sj_> [buzz b/] <_sj_> welll.. editors are busy, etc , you set up a skunkworks and do that. <_sj_> databases don't cost a lot to build. <_sj_> I don't htink htis is a huge cost area, only talking economics, but it is change in thinkinlg <_sj_> i think the idea has been restated a few ties around the table, the audience has more or better information than we do. <_sj_> then you have to think aobut getting that into the oournals themelves. <_sj_> we call them analysts -- they take in 600 emails, work on it, get it to the journalists that day. here's what we've got, three things we didn't know <_sj_> have the journalists use that in a report htat evening. <_sj_> [JJ : tsunami... how does citizen's media help jounrlims become more diverse, broadly defined?] <_sj_> [??] <_sj_> [hinderaker] they have been pretty selective about who they wanted to hire (trad media0)... <_sj_> so we're eating their pie. <_sj_> rick K : <_sj_> you know blogs better than ayone <_sj_> what advantage does it give you in a business sense? <_sj_> RK - <_sj_> you can chart the growth in one's tv audience as one's blog grows. <_sj_> if you look at those people who have blogs in their carreerrs; <_sj_> some networks started blogging before others. <_sj_> you can chart their growth from 0 audience to 2 million viewers <_sj_> based on how much attention they gave to their blogs. <_sj_> I'm tellin gyou, I don't understand whhy any of you don't realize that -- only a fool would not realize that the blogs are the thing that's going to reenergize -- <_sj_> we have spent Years chasing viewers away by covering shark attacks, by covering innocent murders, tabloid stories of the day... <_sj_> ew've rhased our readers, our viewewrs away, ecoming irrelevnat to all kinds of people. <_sj_> the average cable universe is 2-3M people. <_sj_> if you think that's significant in this country amongh the people who care about the news, that's ridiculous. <_sj_> the only way we'll recover our franchise is if our [audience base] grow[s], and we're working with you... <_sj_> we're all journalists; you can't ctually prove you're not a ournalist, since there's no card to prove you rae. <_sj_> if you pay attention to blogs, and the people at home understand, they care what I want, they care what I say, they even put us on... <_sj_> they give us time! attention time! <_sj_> then you will see your network grow. <_sj_> jeff j - I have to admit what I'm thinking right now is, I wish I were blogging that :-) <_sj_> [to gillmor] there's the fog of war, there are people on the ground getting these new stories; they've got to figure out their sources, and all sorts of things. <_sj_> but first a potluck (??) on news : how should they [bloggers? readers?] be retrained? <_sj_> [dan g] <_sj_> I think they'll have to recalibrate their BS detctors. <_sj_> we have good ones for the old world: <_sj_> the tabloid headline about Bush's newest alien love child is probably false, <_sj_> and the piece in the Times is probably true. <_sj_> but one of the problems among many is that any random website can look as good as any other website. <_sj_> we're going to be working this through for a long time. <_sj_> we're going to hvae to tell people, <_sj_> "be skeptical"' * waerth___ has quit IRC (Connection timed out) <_sj_> I hope we don't gt to the point where every old reporter tells every young reporter, "if your mother says she loves you, check it out <_sj_> "... <_sj_> [JJ] * judithmedia has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> healthcare journalism - (to hinderaker) * OliverWillis has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> is this the kind of skepticism that is going to help, or hurt readers? <_sj_> [JH] <_sj_> we intended to select what seemed interesting, and put out within hours something that was read by millions. * sbw-away is now known as sbw <_sj_> the world is full of smart people, and what the Net gives us is a way to reach out to them... <_sj_> if I didn't know about the internet, I would look at that and say, "wow, there's a lot of power there we have to mobilize" <_sj_> [zephyr jumps in] <_sj_> gaming is a big deal now. <_sj_> someone sent me a ink I didn't check about 50% of women in the country being into gaming. <_sj_> skepticism is fun! and its a crude form of a game... * awdcast has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> and it's incredibly profitable, the more intense and skeptical you make the game. <_sj_> [Rick K] - it doesn't have to be a story as *large* as dan rather. <_sj_> on any number of subjects a lot smaller than that... we have gotten a lot of really great leads <_sj_> about stories we have gotten off of, things we couldn't keep track of... * judithmedia has quit IRC <_sj_> all of a sudden, ew have another couple hundred thousand researchers. <_sj_> [JJ] <_sj_> now be brutally honest with us here: how hard was it for you to learn that? <_sj_> there's an old school of thought that we know what's true and others don't <_sj_> [RK] - I can't think of any incident... <_sj_> I think if I had said "let's take some blogs and just put them live on the site", it would meet with some push back... <_sj_> but we love blogs and use them all the time. <_sj_> [and you had me on 4 times on new year's eve, thanks a lot!] <_sj_> it's a busy night... <_sj_> but the truth about our interest in blogging is shown by the fact that we hired joe trippi. <_sj_> JJ - there is retraining in the newsroom [however] <_sj_> I know some of the fools who don't see the power of blogs, <_sj_> and I think you could help train them to do this. <_sj_> [bill mitchell] <_sj_> I think there may be al ot of readers who may be in the 15-minute situation Davi d was talking about. <_sj_> they want to be able to say "I have 15 minutes... I'm relying on this nes organization to tell me what's the case" <_sj_> the trick is to produce journalism that satisfies both kinds of consumers, if you will. <_sj_> [JJ] <_sj_> Tom ? of the AP [see flomaculus?] <_sj_> said, we have to separate the content from the container <_sj_> the essence is.. that the stranlgehold of distribution is ended. <_sj_> what we create makes us special [but not the container] <_sj_> but it' <_sj_> it's really hard in the newsroom to make this change. <_sj_> Who are the reporters in this room covering the story? <_sj_> [counts... 1,2,3,4...] Okay, heather, your hand was up the latest. <_sj_> What do people say to [your story]? Are you an evangelist in the newsroom? <_sj_> How do people respond to your work? <_sj_> [audience: aren't you so glad you came?] <_sj_> [Heather ? gets a mike ready] <_sj_> I think there's a huge learning curve, but blogs are hot hot hot... and people are very interested at BusinessWeek about what is similar, <_sj_> what is diff, and how we ave to adapt. we know about the Internet, people in ourTech dept know a bit further ahead than everyone else, but it doesn't take long for the rest to start reporting on that, and for people to go, "what does that mean for us?" <_sj_> we only started blogging this year, so it's totally a new experience for us... <_sj_> what you guys are talking about, mostly fascinating as a reporter, people woh don't understand where they're coming from... <_sj_> I was actually talking to Mary Hodder, who was talking about the different kinds of conversations we have... * Kombinat has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> you guys are sharing a language that we are just learning. <_sj_> (what are the rules of the BW blogs?) -- (I don't think there are any ) (other BW reporter: we just started them two weeks ago... <_sj_> they don't have an RSS feed, they don't have a good feedback mechanism... <_sj_> they're just getting started. ) <_sj_> [audience: are you being given any guidance? no guidance at all?] <_sj_> (I've just been told to do it...) <_sj_> JJ - is there a measure of success? a metric that will judge success? <_sj_> (well, traffic would be a good thing...) <_sj_> DW - I'm sending some right now... <_sj_> JJ - I'm told the IRC is saying "dammit, Jarvis, take the mike away from your face and SLOW DOWN) <_sj_> [not this chan! --Ed] <_sj_> Jay rosen <_sj_> : do bloggers need to be taught certain things, if so what and how? <_sj_> [Jay R] <_sj_> I think it would be useful if most bloggers used their real names, for ex <_sj_> and told you who they were, in an easy to understand way <_sj_> the idea of jounralists to make everything easy to use... <_sj_> information ergonomics,which is important in ojurnalism <_sj_> how to verify something; a regime of verif, which journalists really do specialize in, would bevery useful... <_sj_> the basics of libel law, what you can and cannot do, would be extremely useful for blgogers to protect themsevles. <_sj_> There's also, what successful bloggers learn as they do their blogs. <_sj_> that is soemthing I think journalists should learn. <_sj_> News orgs are terrible at capturing learning and sharing it among themsevles; <_sj_> journalists learn all the time, but when one learns, the org doesn't learn. * waerth_ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> It's very individualized; news rooms don't value intellectual capital; don't know uch about it, care much about it. <_sj_> [JJ - Dave W? Do bloggers need to learn things?] <_sj_> DW - Yes, DEFINITELY, definitely. <_sj_> I hate to sound as if news journalists need to learn all the time, b/c bloggers, boy. <_sj_> One thing they need to learn is, if you get the storywrong, and new facts come to light, you need to be able to say, well, I got it wrong. <_sj_> I know of one situation, whcih I happen to be at the center of, which was incredible, b/c the pro journalists were willing to look <_sj_> and, get new storeies <_sj_> [notably AP and WIRED news] <_sj_> abut the bloggers, who had completely jumped on my reputation, and said horrible things about me, personal statement, were unwilling to let go...] <_sj_> I called it, on my blog -- this was a shameful moment for the blogosphere. we've now seen very clearly that we can be beaten, and at a game we really shoudln't be eaten at... <_sj_> JJ - to Bob Cox <_sj_> [Bob Cox] <_sj_> To your point about training and Jay also brought up copyright: <_sj_> we have two initiatives. One a legal defense project; <_sj_> people have volunteered to be a first line of advice on what to do with one's blog [or how to respond to legal threats?] <_sj_> not telling members what they have to do to be members in good standing, but telling them what the risks are in doing what they're doing... <_sj_> and having the laywers that volunteered to help, to set up a code <_sj_> describing these risks. <_sj_> the second part of that: training * waerth__ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> var roups want to reach out to blog groups; I can tell you about the training, and computer-aided research and reporter training <_sj_> for bloggers: a 2-day bootcamp, on ein Nasville, and one in Wash (DC) <_sj_> if that's successful, we'll do more, and look for more types of orgs... [to work with] <_sj_> JJ - what kind of support do you want from people in this room? <_sj_> BC - any org that wants to make the knowledge, training, other resources they have available to journalists; I'd like to make them available through us <_sj_> to a group of bloggers - people who identify temselves as being interested in this kind of stuff, <_sj_> then [we can] raise awareness, hold events, etc. <_sj_> JJ - what can a law school do to help citizen journlaists? [asking Charlie Nesson] <_sj_> [CN] <_sj_> I think there's a great deal a law school can do. I wouldn't put the emphasis necc on law. <_sj_> we're a school; happen to be a law school. <_sj_> one of th emost fascinating aspects of the blogosphere ot us is the potential it offers to hear from all different parts of the world - that is, actually not to put our ovice out, but t raw voices in. <_sj_> our law schol has a grad program with ~150 students from all over the world; <_sj_> we are an immediate source of people who are literate, articulate in native language and english... <_sj_> they're also dying for projects to work on which connect their experience here with their home activity, where they're going back... <_sj_> What I keep hearing, is there's a demand for aggregating forces; that's my fascination at the moment <_sj_> I look at the Harvard Crimson, a newspaper; <_sj_> what if it were a newspaper of the net, and it too the 'Net as its source, and worked with that... <_sj_> we want to study the ocnstraints on internet communication in each and every country <_sj_> ew would like to do a little encyclopedia of constraints * waerth has quit IRC (Nick collision from services.) <_sj_> dealing with filtering, looking at what governments are filtering * waerth__ is now known as waerth <_sj_> the kinds of studies dones in Saudi, Iran, and keep exploring that. <_sj_> We'd like to in a sense explore the blog community as sth that could and should be adjunct, resonated by the traditional media environment. <_sj_> JJ - want to come back to a question: the protections that journalists enjoy that should [or not] be extended to bloggers. <_sj_> [?x?] <_sj_> it was stuning to me in my regular interactions with reporters <_sj_> was how much they knew, and how little they realized it was news <_sj_> (s/reporters/people as a reporter?) <_sj_> journalis is undersreving a lot of key markets; <_sj_> let's start with neighborhoods. <_sj_> as the number of mass media voices shrink <_sj_> there are innumerable icommunities that are underserved. <_sj_> bringint he skillset of trained journalists to citzen journalists in those places that will never [otherwise] be served <_sj_> woutl be an enormous value to those people and to the newsroom. <_sj_> [JJ] <_sj_> Just a little plug for my day job: * Constafrequent has quit IRC <_sj_> trying to get something going with town news sources... <_sj_> extends us as a news agency in ways that havent been done before. * waerth_ has quit IRC (Read error: 60 (Operation timed out)) <_sj_> [EdCone] - <_sj_> the most recent real training question we had,and this comes up recently <_sj_> was basically by our lawyers. <_sj_> "this is how you should do your training" so that you won't get sued, <_sj_> and if you do get sued, you've covered us. <_sj_> this is a huge concern in every newsroom now... <_sj_> but I'm wondering... htees fears have governed and to some extent squelched the mthodoloogy that ets used in what actually gets out <_sj_> there [via] reporting... <_sj_> we'll essentially put out there everything we can except what we know will get us in trouble, unless we want to stir the poit. <_sj_> I wonder, as loggers start ot get out there, whether they will feel squelched in the same way. <_sj_> JJ - Robert Cox, do you feel squelched? <_sj_> RC - you mean the NYT? <_sj_> JJ - no, not particularly them; not trying to pick on the Times <_sj_> RC - ok, CNN also [got on my case]... <_sj_> but I had my own arsenal, like Glenn REynolds and yourself, who could help pick up the fight and push back a little bit... <_sj_> [audience: could you explain?] <_sj_> RC - there was a May 2003 Maureen Dowd column that was inaccurate. <_sj_> I made an effortr to try to get a correction run <_sj_> It didn' thappen, and in the course of my (bloggers are obsessive, right?) I spent a year trying to corret this one error in one column <_sj_> There was a Times policy that in an op-ed piece, <_sj_> it was the author's decision what constituted an error and how. <_sj_> So I changed my tack to addressing the policy, not the person... <_sj_> it made sense for policies that affected the ret of the Times to affect these [columns] <_sj_> the [mis]quote was picked up in Asia, in Russia... <_sj_> two [other] papers picked it up and wrote editorials, quoteing the president on something he didn't say. <_sj_> So I was wondering how to ratchet up the pressure on them, <_sj_> and [someone] convinced me to run a parody of the NYT corrections page... <_sj_> I put up a parody using their format; it was widely linnked... <_sj_> everybody laughed except Gail collins, <_sj_> who told the Times lawyers to get ater me to take the page down and get my site shut down completely... <_sj_> In the end they went not to me, but to my webhost <_sj_> who said "we're taking you down... we don't want to be sued by the NYT" <_sj_> the response of the blogosphere was, dozens of bloggers offered to put up copies of the page; it wa mushrooming all over the place... some people just took it without asking me... <_sj_> it became a sort of fruitless chase to try and knock it offline. <_sj_> The way it was resolved was Dan Okrent talked to me about it, <_sj_> I explained where I was coming from; <_sj_> the net result was the suit was dropped, <_sj_> and in the end [??Dan Collins?] passed through a policy change that implemented basically what I had wanted, <_sj_> that corrections [to op-ed pieces] be handled by the same [editorial review] as other corrections. <_sj_> [Jack Shafer jumping in] <_sj_> I think this was courageous, and what RC did was [gutsy] * imajes has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I worked at Slate, and if we did the same thing, we would very likely have gotten a series of telephone calls from lawyers... * yonderboy has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I think the Times handled this very poorly; the lawyers should just have contacted him <_sj_> and said "listen, did you know about this clause of parody law?" <_sj_> [JJ, to Jill A] * Amgine has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> the NYT is going through a lot of discussion now about shield laws... * rachel_ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> In your view, if there is a shield law, is a blogger covered? <_sj_> are they and should they be? <_sj_> JA - the easy response is yes... <_sj_> but let me think about that. <_sj_> JJ - ok, let's go around this... <_sj_> Joe Trippi - one of the things about these hard questions is <_sj_> even when we say 'mainstream media', what is that? <_sj_> the NYT doesn't have the same standards as the Boston Herald... <_sj_> JA - I think.. can I just elaborate? <_sj_> what makes it so complicated is that shield law not only protects us, but also the process by which people come forward and speak truth to power through us <_sj_> which is not exactly the same thing... <_sj_> [Ed - did she just say "speak truth to power through [the NYT]?"] <_sj_> Trippi - from the National Inquirer, we know the boy from Mars is probably still alive... <_sj_> [note from the audience: maybe you mean the Weekly World News] <_sj_> it's even harder to place some standards or ethical onus on that situation [online] b/c there will be people who blog whatever they want to blog, including their mom's recipes... <_sj_> JJ - when we say bloggers are journalists... do we [mean they have the same privileges]? <_sj_> Trippi - I think it's gonna depend on who the blogger was. <_sj_> If there's a trial that says X Y and Z, and it goes to court... <_sj_> it's going to have to do with trust and all that we've been talking about... <_sj_> but one thing I've wanted to say : I had this really weird experience in th eDean campaiign: <_sj_> when the LA Times had a story that said, "Trippi paid $7M by Dean campaign" <_sj_> and man, <_sj_> [JJ - you *could* dress better, Joe] <_sj_> this thing ran, like every other paper picked it up... the blogosphere went crazy with it... <_sj_> and I have spent... $165,000 on that campaign. <_sj_> In fact I told the Governor I'd do it for free, but FCC campaign rules would have made it illegal... <_sj_> I'll never, ever, ever, no matter who -- no teven if the LA Times corrected it -- it will never be removed from the blogosphere. * danja has quit IRC (Read error: 60 (Operation timed out)) <_sj_> And I think - it was when we saw the exit polls - the media has figured out <_sj_> that you don't talk about exit polls, and you don't announce exit polls until you have results from the precinct. <_sj_> but the blogosphere grabs that and runs with it. <_sj_> That's my point with, hey can we *have* standards with the blogosphere? <_sj_> [..] well, the leak from exit polls would have to be from traditional media... <_sj_> [..] no, it wouldn't... <_sj_> [.+.] my phone was ringing off the hook on election day... <_sj_> the vice pres of CBS would want to know, "what do the election polls say?" ; they would trade them with campaigns, <_sj_> and share them with journalists. <_sj_> Slate was the first online publication to run with exit poll numbers in 2000 <_sj_> to illustrate the mockery of "oh, we have the exit polls and aren't sharing..." <_sj_> [.+. is Jack Shafer] <_sj_> [RK] why do we care about exit polls? they're not worth shit <_sj_> [JackS] well, Dan Rather thinnks so <_sj_> [RK] you expect me to defend Dan Rather? <_sj_> ...and Fox News was really [reporting exit polls] * The_bellman has quit IRC (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) <_sj_> but part of the reason is, it's become apparent to most of us: <_sj_> when you walk up to a republican (after an election) they tell you to get lost <_sj_> when you walk up to a democrat, they tell you the angst with which they went to the polls; <_sj_> they couldn't decide whether to press this button, or that button... <_sj_> you get a real skewed sample that way. <_sj_> It's not easy to do... and because of the blogosphere, and some folks on the 'Net and on cable, <_sj_> yu're stiting here going "everyone else seems to know what's going on" we cna't just come out and say 'polls closed; we don't know anything yet' <_sj_> "I hear the NYT is asking for a refund; is that correct Jill?" <_sj_> [JA] I can confirm that.. <_sj_> [JJ] blog that! <_sj_> [a refund for what? --Ed] <_sj_> JJ - Apple is asking bloggers who were blogging about their products before a release, for their sources. <_sj_> JJ - should we be defending them in court? Would we stand before them and say, 'we are with them and they are with us, koo-koo-ka-choo?' <_sj_> Dan Gillmor - ref's a 19-yr old student here (at Harvard) who posts about apple products that are appearing at a conference a few days later, <_sj_> and gets sued by apple... and only a few weeks later finds a lawyer who will take it pro bono. <_sj_> if big media don't drop into a case like this, the reporters will get screwed. <_sj_> details [from jj] : thinksecret and two other blogs... <_sj_> cf technorati, search for "apple"... <_sj_> they wanted sources, and so filed a subpoena; a civil case which could set a pretty bad precedent. <_sj_> [next: Jay, Alex, and then onto MONEY] <_sj_> [Alex] <_sj_> the world has changed. <_sj_> 40 years ago, the mainstream media went to bat to defend the people publishing information about the H- bomb. <_sj_> these days, if you get a bad case... those are the ones you have to watch out for <_sj_> a bad case defended on the bais of 1st amendment... <_sj_> with the kinds of courts, Supreme Court, administration we hvae now <_sj_> you have to be careful. <_sj_> I think based on what you told me, we have to defend these bloggers. <_sj_> but you hvae to be very careful about where you draw your lines in the sand on these things. <_sj_> [John H?] <_sj_> shield laws will define a universe of people who are ane xception to the rule <_sj_> that people have to tell what they know... <_sj_> if you're talking about a major blog that posts frequently, has a lot of traffic, is a news organ much as a paper or zine might be, <_sj_> there's a very strong argument that a shield law would apply. <_sj_> my point is simply that we have to be a bit careful; just b/c someone chooses a blog as a medium of dissemination, we shouldn't automatically <_sj_> decide that the right thing to do is asume a shield law applies to him. <_sj_> [Dave W] <_sj_> what should we do if a publication with a rep for integirty <_sj_> runs a story that's factually incorret, and won't respond through their <_sj_> own channels for redress? <_sj_> we talk about what to do when bloggers report bad info, but what about when pros do? <_sj_> JJ - anybody? <_sj_> Alex - I think the big change at the NYT since Jayson Blair <_sj_> is that Okrent is the person you go to when you have a complaint like this... <_sj_> DW - no, I'm referring to something like an article written in the UK guardian... * Amgine has quit IRC (Remote closed the connection) <_sj_> it was about a subject I"m an expert in, and referred to me. <_sj_> Isn't there more that we could do about that? <_sj_> JJ - I think you juts put pressure on them, which we do... <_sj_> on to Jay and then Mike? <_sj_> [Jay R] <_sj_> A legal defense fund is *definitely* necessary. <_sj_> we have the outlines of one... there are going to be [more] suits soon. <_sj_> we talked about the exit polls. the press made a big deal of the exit poll story as a breach of journalism ethics... <_sj_> its something we don't usually do, but we did this time. <_sj_> but actually, it was a conflict b/t two ethics. <_sj_> one was, the public should have access to what the pros have. <_sj_> the networks, the campaigns have it... * Amgine has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> vs a different ethic: if we release this data, it will disourage voting and confuse voters. <_sj_> I don't know what to do about this... I wouldn't have released it <_sj_> [JJ - I would have] but it was a conflict. <_sj_> [John H - it's not so much an ethical issue... in that press agencies had a contractual issue not to disclose, but bloggers did not] <_sj_> [Jay R] - when people say "bloggers have no ethics", do they mean this? <_sj_> [Rick K] - when I think back to this year, for the frist time we did not distribute exit poll data to all of NBC... we were glad it didn't get distributed anywhere <_sj_> (when it turned out to be so wrong) <_sj_> as I remember, at that point when we came on the air, precisely was "too close to call" <_sj_> [John H - ask tom brokaw what he said at a public function on election day... <_sj_> he gave the people at this private function a sense of what the exit poll numbers were saying] <_sj_> [scuffle b/t JH and RK about what Tom Brokaw did or did not say] <_sj_> [JJ - let's take this offline...] <_sj_> [JJ - Moving to financial support for bloggers] <_sj_> At bloggercon II, we had a session on how can bloggers make money, and the room was *packed*. <_sj_> Most bloggers hope they could make a living doing it and expand this ownderful media. <_sj_> Does anyone this this is possible, financially, <_sj_> and how does the mainstream media respond to this? <_sj_> [The Real Ed Cone] <_sj_> Someone (was ityou? ) once said, on the internet, everyone will be famous for fifteen people. <_sj_> I think many many bloggers will get a little money for their effor tif they want it... <_sj_> I doubt that [most] of us will become Andrew Sullivan, rttle the tip jar and get $100K. <_sj_> [Dave W] <_sj_> I'm a major contrarian on this one. <_sj_> I think that what I'm about to say will convince the mainstream journalists for once and for all that we're not doing what you do. <_sj_> To give a case in point: I ran a software company <_sj_> and had a blog for, hmm, 5 years. <_sj_> the only way people had to find out about the company was through my blog... <_sj_> and the company made, a couple million dollars over that period of time. <_sj_> and we had a session in bloggercon III about this, and took this angle... <_sj_> the people hated us, because they really insist on picking up these nickels and dimes. <_sj_> I had a little debate with chris nolan about this, a friendly debate of course; <_sj_> apply the model to a reporter who has a blog; she can get new contracts... there are all kinds of ways that a blog gets your name out there, and builds money, having nothing to do <_sj_> with the model used by journalist, which is advertising... <_sj_> [ed cone] <_sj_> I don't think what dave says is wrong, per se... <_sj_> If I weren't a blogger, I don't think I would be here imporving my brand today... <_sj_> and for some of these guys, the $200 or $300k these guys are making is not [small change] for these guys who did not sell their software company. <_sj_> For the others, you have to play th elong tail or sell another service or product. <_sj_> [Jill A] <_sj_> if you are blogging and have a private business, and there is an ice synergy b/t them, do you worry that your audience might perceive a conflict between them? <_sj_> [Dave W] is she asking me? she's looking straight at me... <_sj_> The answer is, you disclose. <_sj_> you say, "I have an interest in this." <_sj_> for instance, when google went public, I bought 100 shares of google. <_sj_> now, whenver I mention google, I have to say, btw, I'm a shareholder in the compnay. <_sj_> it's exactly like with the NYT, if I want to maintain the confidence of my readership, I have to disclose. <_sj_> [Faye A :] <_sj_> earlier today, I talked about transparency... <_sj_> As a blogger, I'm a *new* blogger... I write a lot about politics and voting writes.; <_sj_> I consult with a lot of nonprofit organizations with those issues. <_sj_> I'm not writing on /behalf/ of them; they would be horrified if they knew their name <_sj_> were asociated with my postings <_sj_> they would worry not about my content, but about what impat it would make on their funders. <_sj_> we don't have the luxury of institutionalized media of collecting a regular paycheck... but as long as we disclose, it shouldn't detract from our credibility. * rubenrp has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> Use the ex: of armstrong williams: he says that he supported No Child Left Behind before he was paid to do so... <_sj_> but he didn't disclose it. <_sj_> whatever had he wanted to wear [journalist, commentator, etc] he was wrong. <_sj_> [JJ - we have about 10 min left...] <_sj_> [Dave W ] <_sj_> I'm fanatical about disclosure. But it's not obvious to me that having an interest in things and disclosing, that the disclosure neutralizes the interest. <_sj_> Having said that, I'm more comfortable with somebody who is involved with the world and engages and discloses it, <_sj_> that somebody who says, I'm going to become a priest and disengage from normal human aticity. <_sj_> engagement is the natural state for humans. <_sj_> Though the transparency doesn't completely cancel out the engagement... <_sj_> [JohnP] - thanks a lot Jeff for your energy and your moderation; I wish I had your skills. <_sj_> For the peopl eout there in traditional media, <_sj_> what are some of your best ideas for using these new tools or media or whatever for bringing in new business?' <_sj_> I know there may be some things you can't say, but tell us what you can. <_sj_> When [the owner of the Atlanta Braves] died, I said to Ted Turner, you should buy it up; then you'll own all the sports teams in the town. <_sj_> For him, if the Braves didn't win the superbowl in the 7th game - even if they won it in the 6th game - it would lose money. <_sj_> but for him, it meant 200 hours of programming for his TV channel, so it was a great deal. <_sj_> I think that going into blogging and hoping it's like a Ford Motor Co. is a dream. <_sj_> blogging is great for us, in the same way... <_sj_> [Jeff J] - I'd like to see a way for the local ice cream parlor and [cafe], which have never been able to advertise in any of our products, <_sj_> now be able to advertise in some small way... <_sj_> [Brendan?] <_sj_> is there any room for bloggers in a traditional establishment like the NYT? <_sj_> [refers story about how he started blogging, got a job, bam!] <_sj_> [Jill A] - definitely, yes. <_sj_> we're looking for someone who has a voice and a style, <_sj_> but also brings in what I call empirical scaffolding? about [what they write] <_sj_> [Xiao Qiang] - I'm sorry I came in so late; I haven't heard anyone talk about RSS... <_sj_> [Jack S] <_sj_> When Slate was founded, a lot of people looked at it with wonder... It was just one knucklehead, living in LA and scraping this thing together... <_sj_> so we got 5 or 6 online journalists interested in [writing for it...] <_sj_> [Zephyr] <_sj_> Marquis? is giving bloggers about $800 a month to write about their products. It's engaging! It's interesting, it encourages bloggers to write about their product without necessarily any disclosure. * Kombinat has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> The pressure points are institutions in large companies, not necessarily the bloggers. * Kombinat has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I don't think it's reasonable to expect all blogogers to disclose everything. <_sj_> So we need to think about what we should do about this; otherwise there's no way for me to know, when someone says something great about a new IBM product, whether it's sincere or not. <_sj_> [JJ] - What about the sense [with content] that if the people distribute it for you (rather than you distributing it on your site), you won't reach a much wider audience?' <_sj_> The network that noone owns (bittorrent) is more effective than the network that is owned by someone... <_sj_> or put out content and let it be remixed by someone... <_sj_> if you put it out there, and you let everyone use it; what does that do to your stuff? what's the next frontier? <_sj_> Rick K : take the Imus interview yesterday with Dick Cheney... <_sj_> that's been cut up, put on MSN, MSNBC.com, distributed across all kinds of video servicese; <_sj_> you can download 90-s clips (download, not stream) <_sj_> from all over. on our servers, there are 10s of clips per day <_sj_> an dmany more you can order up. <_sj_> what we're edging towards is streaming our shows, I'll probably get into a lot of trouble for saying that... <_sj_> you have to provide a lot of material that is different and special and unique, thta isn't just the program re-cablecast, or re-internetcast. <_sj_> you have to provide... Matthews gets down, or Hoberman? gets down, and says "I should have said this...", when Zell Miller challenges you to a duel, "I should have responded with this..." <_sj_> and put that into the show so you can get extr added value. <_sj_> There's a whole different set of viewers potentially -- you have a limited amount of time in your paper to report a sotry; * pingswept_at_wor has quit IRC ("Chatzilla 0.9.66 [Mozilla rv:1.7.5/20041107]") <_sj_> our way of dealing with that is to go to the web and talk about it, and even shoot the preparation of it; how we decided who to talk to, and see what people say about it./ <_sj_> [JJ - now we're doing a lightning round, 3 minutes, winner gets nothing... DRM] <_sj_> [.?.] - we're heading for a world where the user's going to take the content and reassemble it on theri dektop, settop box, or ecll phone. thoes discrte bits of content have to carry either rightsw-bsaed management or avertising... that's the next fronteir <_sj_> [Xiao Q] my $0.02 of the new frontier: <_sj_> how to get from timely to timeless: we have news, media, blogs..,. but also librarians and wikis. <_sj_> there's a continuum now on the web, <_sj_> how to get this content worked out... integrated. <_sj_> [Chris L] <_sj_> We have the eqjuipment basically to empower citizen feedback (they know everything!) -- when are we going to embrace the Gillmor doctrine that our readership knows vatly more than the bst editors in the universe? <_sj_> [?-?] - If I were you Rick, I would get a group of citizens together, at a late-night hour, and let them loose with [their own video]... <_sj_> [*-*] a lot of what we're seeing is a rce to get something out *first*, and once it's out it doesn't matter... that's a lack of attention that we're seeing that we haven't seen in the past, that's [dangerous]. <_sj_> [...] <_sj_> [ethan] take a look at the countries of the world thta aren't handled well... <_sj_> set up blog severs in those countries in thoes languages <_sj_> (you can see this countries on my site...) <_sj_> these* <_sj_> [Dan g] * yonderboy has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> actually this is just a plug for tomorrow... <_sj_> b/c jimmy wales and I are going to talk about all the tools <_sj_> and training needed for people to get online and [involved] <_sj_> [zephyr] <_sj_> I'd push the creation of offline communities... <_sj_> [joe trippi] What I think the most interesting Dean thing we did, was Dean TV - 24/7, 150k people ubscribed to it at some point.. <_sj_> w were scared to death of how the campaign would do content 24/7 on our own channel. <_sj_> the amazing thing is by the end of the campaign, we were doing none of the content. <_sj_> the problem: it worked wonderfully on the way up; people taped dean speeches, making dance videos, etc... but then the scream! it wasn't just the mainstream media. there's a double-edged sword. <_sj_> [john (bracken??)] <_sj_> re: villianizing p2p networks, with all the problems that are inherent in them... <_sj_> that can cut back on the possibilities for making money from some of these plans. <_sj_> [ed cone] <_sj_> don't forget about Google ads and other systems that already exist and are being implemented... you don't have to reinvent yesterday's wheel... <_sj_> [david weinb] <_sj_> the really interesting blogging going on is not oly done by the ones we identify as journalists... <_sj_> the long tail has the real interesting stuff... <_sj_> [jonathan z] * Amgine has quit IRC ("") <_sj_> I respect something rick said earlier: giving an incisive assessment of the state of People News <_sj_> [on the screen: Ethan's map of world news report distribution in (some major newssource)] <_sj_> so maybe one piece of advice, if it doesn't seem too presumptuous: <_sj_> think about how to be a leader here., <_sj_> in the face of halftruths and news and fluff... <_sj_> hw to speak truth, how to seek truth with new technology, and refin what you'reseeking o the first round from all corners. <_sj_> hopefully people will be hungry for it, <_sj_> recognize it, and join and engage... <_sj_> [jj - thanks for giving me the floor, and back to jay rosen] <_sj_> [jay rosen] <_sj_> a few thoughts: <_sj_> 1) every piece of MSNBC content should have a permanent, stable URL, <_sj_> which includes individual blog posts. <_sj_> and should be syndicated as well. <_sj_> 2) I think it would be cool for MSNBC to develp a network of /affiliated/ bloggers; people with whom you establish some sort of relationship. <_sj_> they drive traffic to you, you drive traffic to them... <_sj_> [rick k - how do I pick that, without getting a circle of people pissed off b/c I'm picking an elite?] <_sj_> [rick k - just these people right here?] <_sj_> [jay r - no, I wouldn't join your network, actually, I wouldn't be part of msnbc] <_sj_> you have to work out what do we et, what do they get... say, access to libel insurance, or sth else a standalone blogger really needs? <_sj_> anyway, a network of affiliated bloggers is gonna help you. <_sj_> [and jeff jarvis finishes in very good time!] <_sj_> [segue to the Harvard Faculty Club for dinner] * jwales has quit IRC ("Leaving") <_sj_> [network permitting, we'll be back online for dinner (David Weinberger is talking at dinner...)] <_sj_> dinner starts at 19;00 * OliverWillis has quit IRC * sbw has quit IRC ("Quit") * RMacK has quit IRC ("Chatzilla 0.9.66d [Mozilla rv:1.7/20040707]") * ethanz has quit IRC ("bye!") * rachel_ has left #webcredtrans * waerth has left #webcredtrans * sannse has left #webcredtrans * awdcast has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> the first "ed cone" was jon bonne <_sj_> [?-? - Brendan?] <_sj_> [*-* - Elspeth] * jz has quit IRC * srhodes has quit IRC ("good bye Snak 4.13 IRC For Mac - http://www.snak.com") * rubenrp has left #webcredtrans * rubenrp has joined #webcredtrans * rubenrp has left #webcredtrans * DanGillmor has quit IRC (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) /quit * Seth_ has quit IRC ("leaving") * Logging #webcredtrans to 'logs\#webcredtrans-2.freenode' <_sj_> [btw: hi aaronsw, tscripttscriber [how's that working, jesse?]] hi * cag2012 has left #webcredtrans * Disconnected * Attempting to rejoin channel #webcredtrans * Rejoined channel #webcredtrans * Topic is 'See #webcred for more' * Set by _sjrm_ on Wed Jan 19 22:23:56 <_sj_> wb all. nice job yesterday * fexx has joined #webcredtrans * srhodes has joined #webcredtrans * rubenrp has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> thx staci :) <_sj_> dave winer has decreed... <_sj_> (rmack is saying) <_sj_> that the word of 2005 is "faaahbulous" <_sj_> the word of 2004 is... not a nice word, and he won't announce it <_sj_> back to the topic at hand: <_sj_> POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODCASTING. * _sj_ decaffeinates quickly <_sj_> PRX is up on the screen. <_sj_> Brendan is here to talk more about what they do <_sj_> and the future of "non-text media" <_sj_> [brendan] <_sj_> am I on? <_sj_> you guys can tell that I'm a radio guy, right? <_sj_> clearly on top of this [audio thing] <_sj_> good morning! <_sj_> It's hard ot explain the public radio exchange without talking a bit about public radio. <_sj_> Podcasting. <_sj_> is everybody here familiar with what it is? <_sj_> I'm gonna tell you about it. <_sj_> it's putting media enclosures into an rss feed... <_sj_> little differences make everything change... <_sj_> putting media enclosures into rss feeds... it would show up on your desktop automatically. <_sj_> somebody procduces a stream in his baement... <_sj_> the next morning you wke up, see it on your desktop, put it on you ipod, walk away with hit. <_sj_> what it's done, this little difference, has turned anyone into a broadcaster. <_sj_> so anyone with GarageBand on a Mac and a 'net connection can have a radio show now. <_sj_> what's going on now in public radio is: <_sj_> everybody has these producing skills <_sj_> they know how to make something sond good <_sj_> they're just gettting ued to sharing this with eachoter over the internet. <_sj_> theyr'e very used to the satellite system... <_sj_> if you're a Pub radio station mgr, <_sj_> you're either accepting from the national stream <_sj_> or turning off the strem and turning the microphone one and producing yourself. <_sj_> the idea of moving files around is fundamentally alien to them. <_sj_> podcasters get distribution, but are just getting used to mixing things <_sj_> and making sounds... there are podcasts where you can actually hear them say <_sj_> "is this thing on?" <_sj_> which is charming.. <_sj_> but the basic profit model is, give something away and see if people will pay them for it. <_sj_> the basic model for both is "here's sth I've produced, take it!" <_sj_> "New voices" is now a catchphrase at public radio events... <_sj_> how are we going to do it? people ask. <_sj_> everyone agrees it's a good idea; nobody really knows how to do it; the system is really stacked against it. <_sj_> the audience has really grown since 9/11; basically people trust the Voice of Public Radio... <_sj_> the problem is thta, while ngendirng trust, public radio is used by some farmers to keep their cows mellow. <_sj_> we've all heard this voice, we're familiar with it... it was mocked on SNL... when what you dohas been mocked in an SNL skit, it's time to rethink what you do. <_sj_> and they are <_sj_> reasons they can't qucikly change the tone of public radio (PBR): <_sj_> 1) they prouce blocks of content. <_sj_> station mgnrs have to chedule this months ahead of time; easiest thing is to make one decision at the start of the year, filling in hour blocks <_sj_> makes it hard to change. <_sj_> it's also expensive to produce so much content. <_sj_> 2) ther's a community of people around who know and expect what pbr sounds like. <_sj_> it's good, makes support consistent, but it makes change hard. <_sj_> every station has trouble with say closing down the local folk hour; <_sj_> people call in all the time complaining. you ask them how many called in, <_sj_> they say "only five, but they wouldn't shut up!" <_sj_> we're going to pay something now... <_sj_> ira glass liked it enoug he wanted to shill for it <_sj_> it got all sorts of great reviews, and sounded funamentally different. <_sj_> garrison (keillor) sat down an decided he wanted sth new; he wanted to talk about pop music, without it sounding like pbr. <_sj_> all of a sudden, <_sj_> the program ends. <_sj_> and you start hearing this on a pbr station; <_sj_> : <_sj_> (playing clip) <_sj_> [[tech difficulties]] <_sj_> [pop music from the top 40s] <_sj_> this is pop vultures andthis week, ew're oing to get right with god <_sj_> oops <_sj_> "this is a PRX audition only mp2 file... not for bcast and distirbution <_sj_> those things are prohiited by your user agreement, <_sj_> thanks for using the PRX" <_sj_> [soft music] <_sj_> "I hate evanescence" <_sj_> (it's in the backgrond") <_sj_> two high-school girls talking about evanescence and all bands that are sort of religious <_sj_> "all I'm going by is the vibe, and it's very quasi-eligious" <_sj_> "you can sort of go, "did she just have her first orgasm, or did she see Jesus?" " <_sj_> ...our guetss will include gillian churchill, ... and kate wayland?? <_sj_> this song is like no joy at all.. <_sj_> pretentious, and no creatiity <_sj_> no interesting turns of phrase, imagery,new way of looking at things <_sj_> it's an insult to the lord, <_sj_> and it's an insult to th dark side <_sj_> if they think this crp is gonna get tem into heaven <_sj_> they've got another thing coming <_sj_> [playing 'wake me up inside' over the discussion] <_sj_> " <_sj_> [[end of clip]] <_sj_> [brendan again] <_sj_> this went around the system, to every public radio conference * jwales has left #webcredtrans ("Leaving") <_sj_> but nobody was running it [Pop Vultures] <_sj_> "I can't find on the site how [the narrator; a teenage girl] became a music commentator..." <_sj_> the idea is you hear peope talking to you on public radio, <_sj_> the idea is they have to have a degree in folk literature <_sj_> to let them talk about pop music. <_sj_> [so nobody would touch it] <_sj_> now we come to podcasting. <_sj_> there's an "Mbox" that everyone's excited about... <_sj_> it's this great thing that gives you great audio quality, <_sj_> [it's a preamp] <_sj_> [$120 now, Ethan says] <_sj_> it's supposed to be very light, you can take it around with you, you don't need a studio., <_sj_> but for podcasters, the differnce b/t getting this preamp and just using the mic on your computer <_sj_> [in sound quality] is minimal. <_sj_> If you have a mac, you can just use GarageBand... you don't need anything [else] <_sj_> you just filter out the bad noise, post-production... <_sj_> pod-casters use Skype: <_sj_> they just tell someone on the other end, download skype, I'll talk to you eompletely free. <_sj_> I'll listento a podcast interview, and I can tell, that's a Skype interview <_sj_> but it doesn't matter, b/c the content is the same. <_sj_> it turns out that ther are many things that are really simple to do that we make realy complicated for just al ittle bit of sound quality. * dberlind has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I've had the xperience of [oitching sth to NPR, getting it into production, and having it turned down post-interviw by <_sj_> people who are actually called "The Sound Nazis" * ethanz has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> because there's [this idea that sound has to be perfect] <_sj_> the first podcst I heard is by Adam Curry, along with Dave [W] the godfather of podcasting. <_sj_> for me, the moment I recognized what I was going to do: <_sj_> adam was tlaking, playig musci files... you hear him walking around, walking back... <_sj_> and suddenly he leans into the mike and says <_sj_> "I'm sorry, I have to go let my dogs out" <_sj_> and there' s just dead air on the podcast... he ends up talking to his plumber for a bit, in Dutch, and then he comes back. <_sj_> It makes his voice more reliable... I know that he's telling me the truth, b/c he had to stop telling me the truth to go deal with his dogs. <_sj_> [[playing another clip... ]] <_sj_> ~ <_sj_> singing... hard to parse <_sj_> tapdancing in the background <_sj_> it's about recent politics... * sannse has joined #webcredtrans * zwitter has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> "noone cares what bin laden thinks but promoters... <_sj_> voters are wary t o... endorsed kerry.... according to the demo...crats! ;let' <_sj_> s give congrats to whoever bats... a thousand.... house of representative .... <_sj_> stay tuned for late breaking updates <_sj_> that's the tap dancing podcaster neeeeeeeews <_sj_> yeah <_sj_> ~ <_sj_> [[end of cast]] <_sj_> this woman does this two or three times a week. <_sj_> I sort of did some digging on her; she was on a local LA station in the eighties,doing exactly this! <_sj_> she discovered podcasting nd discovered she can do whatever she wants. <_sj_> adam curry gets this feed... and puts it in *his* podcast; <_sj_> he picks up her material and puts it in his network, by analogy. <_sj_> (in podcasting terms, she's now a star) <_sj_> ... <_sj_> If you look into podcasting, eventually you'll hear of [this couple]: <_sj_> from Wisconsin <_sj_> they just talk about what they happen to be thining about. <_sj_> [[clip]] <_sj_> "dawn and drew 2105?" <_sj_> hey little children, gather round the fire... put your weenie on a stick and burn it... blakc and black and black and charred. <_sj_> dawn and drew show, jan 1, 2005... <_sj_> who am I? <_sj_> "I'm dawn roselli' <_sj_> now, you wish you wree, I'm dawn roselli.. <_sj_> h - "baby, I'm dawn roselli, I rule the world!" (faking his wifes voice) <_sj_> w - "no you're not..." <_sj_> [[end of clip]] <_sj_> form a radio produer's perspetive, it wold be easy to ignore this... <_sj_> but the interesting thing is, when [this drew?] decided to start talking about [bush], it really meant something <_sj_> because he had been building credibility for so long. <_sj_> ew oforget theter are real people out there talking about the news, and presenting the news. <_sj_> when I used to work in public radio, and commute to the bronx,... <_sj_> I used to listen to public radio and start shouting "wake up!" andl isten to howard stern for a bit... <_sj_> if you listen to the long-tail argument: <_sj_> The Family Guy went back on air, b/c it had such great DVD sales. <_sj_> it <_sj_> it's possible now to start talking about podcasting, and when there's enough demand, <_sj_> you can present your audience to a producer and say "I've built this audience; these people like me; it's a prven show' <_sj_> there was sort of an ap[prenticeship in public radio, <_sj_> there is a sort of priesthood, <_sj_> and it keeps you from finding new voices that we're so depserate to find. <_sj_> podcasting, like a blog, is going to find its own audience. <_sj_> the problem with pop vultures is nobody knew who it was itched towards... <_sj_> nobody knew who the audience was; <_sj_> it ended up being this very well produced, very expensive mistake. <_sj_> if you're podcasting, finding your own audience, you can develop it on the way up, and the present that to a broadcaster. * Matthew has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> A few thoughts before turning this over: <_sj_> I thnk podcatsing is going to be picked up a lot faster than blogging was. <_sj_> one of the reasons it'll be picekd up so quickly, <_sj_> is that people are aware (now) tha tthese things can change the way we look at media... <_sj_> 2) how do broadcasters find these voices and bring them into the fold? <_sj_> 3) where does the raw material come freom? <_sj_> oe of thereason s blogs work so well is you can go onto whitehouse.gov [or some site listing PD speech transcripts :) ] and grab a segment of a speech and comment on it. <_sj_> the fed government, the RIAA doesn't konw what to do about podcasting yet, so they're not commenting... <_sj_> there's am ovement within podcasting to avoid pushing out songs/podcasting songs that are rights protected, <_sj_> but the [verdict is out on that] <_sj_> and 4) just b/c the medium has changed, that odesn't mean we've thrown out the laws of presentation. <_sj_> the dawn and drew how: the intro was developed over a month. <_sj_> that's sth that has [a very long history] <_sj_> the first thing they do is give you the name and date of the show... <_sj_> these are very old techniques. <_sj_> it's not any different from leaving the station and timestamp oin a regular newscast. <_sj_> it's interesting to watch this hpapen an see what urles an be suspended and what rules can't. <_sj_> [[opening the floor to questions]] <_sj_> . <_sj_> [Rmack] <_sj_> thank you very much! <_sj_> [Alex] <_sj_> this is quite interesting to me <_sj_> I was in radio for a while; <_sj_> I posted a show in WNYC called "on the media" <_sj_> and it's wonderful. really believe the taber of a human voice does have huge credibility,. <_sj_> thta's why I think NPR makes a special connection with people, bc when they hear that vice they someties do, <_sj_> even more than on television, make a connection. <_sj_> this is interesting b/c it offers everyone th opporutinity to get theri voice out ther.e.. <_sj_> but based on what you said, anyone out there could go to their garage, buy an Apple, and make a pdcst. <_sj_> ut one of the limits of radio is time, there's ainite amount of it, <_sj_> and you have to liste to it; have to make a commitment there. <_sj_> is it going to be overwhelmed by choices, program effectively weeded out? <_sj_> [brendan] <_sj_> there are sites that have been developed that are starting to rank podcasts... <_sj_> people will isten to your stream and comment on it. <_sj_> that's one... <_sj_> the other interesting thing: <_sj_> what's fundamentally different from trrestrial broadcasts is you don't have to program in any specific chunk of time <_sj_> maybe you want a 37-min podcats b/c that's the avg commuter length. <_sj_> [alex] <_sj_> do you organize them by identifying the audience you're amimng for? <_sj_> if my wife and I decided to do a show just talking about world affairs? <_sj_> we would probably not be intersted in the things that you indicated. <_sj_> how would we reach them? <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> you would just use the channels avail to you to cmmjuicate about that... <_sj_> sending emails to peopl eyou think would be interested.. <_sj_> spoe podctasts dn't need to reah a lot of poeple <_sj_> there's an ag commissioner in txas <_sj_> who does crop reports on podcast <_sj_> not many people outside his district care about what's goin gon there, <_sj_> but for the poepole there it's a very imporatn way to do tis. <_sj_> then there ar eleaders to getthyem out htere.. <_sj_> adam curry [promotes good casts] <_sj_> he's been a poro his entire career; <_sj_> the relaxation of the rules cam about b/c radio amateurs like mysefl were doing it, not knowing the rules; we didn't have any idea <_sj_> th fascinating thing was adam broke lots of rules [too] <_sj_> doing things I as a software programmer never would have done <_sj_> that's how innovation comes about/... <_sj_> [alex] <_sj_> are there any limitations based on publi caccess? <_sj_> if you did some of these programs like they did, you couldn't do an ad for bertha's kitty boutique <_sj_> b/c they were a sponsor of you? <_sj_> [brendan] <_sj_> there are public radio statios that podcst; the urles are slightly different <_sj_> you don't have to obey FCC in terms of advertising <_sj_> as strictly as you do when you're streaming it terrestrially <_sj_> but for the most part, podcastst hemselve don't have anything to do wiht pbr <_sj_> there is no real proofit model yet; <_sj_> people ar doing it b/c they love it. <_sj_> I'm sure people will make money off of it like they do off everything else\but they haven't igured it outyet. <_sj_> [edcone] <_sj_> oen of the ay people find out about podcats is on their sibling/first cousin blogs. <_sj_> if I hear sth I like, then my readers are going to et pointed to it. * fexx has quit IRC ("( www.nnscript.de :: NoNameScript 3.81 :: www.XLhost.de )") <_sj_> i just did a podcats about ourwhole greensboro/chapel hill [thing] <_sj_> in the way it works with blogs, I'm sure my mom ctually listeened to the podcast of me, <_sj_> but my other readers will probably go to the site and find things that are cutally interesting to them <_sj_> weblogs to me are a critical tool <_sj_> I learned about it from david adam. <_sj_> I hate to say [weblogs] are th emarketing vehicle <_sj_> but they're a distrib vehicle for the idea. <_sj_> [??from nc] <_sj_> in adition to our blog, that's poretty well known, we also have a radio show! <_sj_> anyone who is intersted in [us] can listen... <_sj_> people have said to us in the past, you should podcast that stuff! <_sj_> we already have an RSS feed; I have no idea how many people subscribe to that, but It must be thousands... <_sj_> forget about all those commercials, which we're not getting paid for anywya <_sj_> we could just as easily do our radio shoiw without the radio station <_sj_> it would go out to everyone's rss feed that they could isten to at their leisure... <_sj_> it would give people a reason to promote it [via our weblog]... <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> you didn't metion something interesting: time-shifting <_sj_> and location-shifting... <_sj_> and domain shifting; any domain name could be a webloc [or a podcast] <_sj_> and I want to say that PCs can do this too; it's not just about macs. <_sj_> [RMack] <_sj_> one peorson I want to make sure speaks before we do anything else is Andy Carvin, <_sj_> who is doing work on the nest-- <_sj_> i think the next thing we need to do is integration of podcasting with mobile phones. <_sj_> people will record something on their phone and this will become a podcats. this has very interesting <_sj_> implications for 3g as everyone starts to get thing on their cell phones; <_sj_> in japan people are watching tv on their hones, <_sj_> listening to streaming music from their phones... <_sj_> people are not going to listen to streaming mpe3s fom their computer, but from their mobile phone... <_sj_> andy's been doing a ot of this, not only olooking at the US and what's happnening here, but the third world, <_sj_> and places where people don't havem uch in the way of connectivity. <_sj_> [andy carvin] <_sj_> thanks, I wanted to talk about two things: <_sj_> first, mobile podcasting <_sj_> (and then about where to find cointent) <_sj_> I was experienceing with audioblogs while travelling to converencs over the past year, <_sj_> using a service called Audlink <_sj_> which lets you set up an account, leave a msg to a ovicemail server, <_sj_> which then creates an mp3 file and sends it to you or hosts it for you, <_sj_> it doens' t have enclosure tag for an rss feed, but at leatst it gets the voice part on a server. <_sj_> then there's audioblogger.com <_sj_> which is a fee service to users of blogger.com... <_sj_> I used both a while ago, but then grew bored and went aback to text logging for many months <_sj_> but it was just in the last monht or so that I started freating my own podcasts <_sj_> just a week ago I published my exporeeice runing into an icestorm while going downtown to do a CNN interview. <_sj_> I sent this out to a group who said, 'its really reat htat you could to this on a mobile phone' <_sj_> and I said no, it wasn't am obile phone, I did it on my iPod <_sj_> but I thought that was very interesting, and wnet back over my notes... <_sj_> the missing tool [for doing this with phones] is sth called Feedburner. <_sj_> one of the things it can now do is add enclosures to your rss fee,d <_sj_> and so turn any links to audo files into podcasts. <_sj_> so sometime last sat morning I had this epiphany that you could stick <_sj_> all this stuff together and without spending a penny <_sj_> do this from yourmobile phone. <_sj_> so I immediatly set up a site called MobCasting, <_sj_> immediatly people though of Mobile phones; <_sj_> biut I was also thinking about smratmobs, <_sj_> the concet developed by howard rheingold <_sj_> the idea of groups of people at a protest, doing some activity, using comm tehnologies to linkn their [experiences] together.; <_sj_> I started to think what yif you could createe multople accounts on on eof these blogs, <_sj_> and let groups of people create a whole lot of podcasts at the same time... <_sj_> so ?? and Ethan and I have been podcasting little blurbs from the conference; <_sj_> there have been a few technical glitches, but so far it's worked pretty well. <_sj_> I set up sth called bushprotest.blogspot.com, and told a few people at the inauguration <_sj_> but nobody used it... <_sj_> I thinnk that may be b/c audioblogger failed... <_sj_> Ethan has been thinking a lot about mobcasting in developing countries; <_sj_> while people in ghana and other countries are likely not to have net access, they probably will have cell phone access. <_sj_> if we can [combine these] and allow you to type text while doing it, <_sj_> we would be letting a whole lot of people who had no access [to such channels] to create their own blogs. <_sj_> 2) as for source content for podcatss; <_sj_> the very first did were boring as all hell; <_sj_> they had no music, no sound effects. <_sj_> then I remembered that wired mag/cc have put out a cd <_sj_> that were all created using the new CC sampling license, <_sj_> which basiclaly allow you to sample songs that use this license, only non-comm or for some comm... <_sj_> so when I did that cnn-icestorm podcast, <_sj_> I sampled about 150 loops [from that cd] <_sj_> and spent and entire day doing this. <_sj_> and for the first time I was getting complicments about my podcasts as well. <_sj_> so I think CC is important, not b/c wired put up this one CD, but b/c you can go to the CC website, CC.org <_sj_> and do a search on it for [content under a variety of licenses] <_sj_> [RMack] <_sj_> and your other site is digitaldividenetwork, right? <_sj_> [AC] <_sj_> yes, after the '99 national digital divide conference, <_sj_> I launcehd this with pres clinton's help... <_sj_> we wnt to the EDC in Boston, <_sj_> our website is digitaldivide.net <_sj_> a community of people trying o tus eth e'net as a tool for themselves and their colleaues to help brigde the digital divide at their local leel <_sj_> so anyone who's invovled in this/net activism can get a blog on our site... <_sj_> and learn about creative comons and podcasting... <_sj_> hopefully we'll get rss included, since that's something we didn't thin of when we set up the site. <_sj_> [rmack] <_sj_> thaknyo. <_sj_> u* :) <_sj_> before we go on: <_sj_> ethanz is being a good boy and turning his table tent up like this [edgewise] <_sj_> indicating he wants to speak... <_sj_> [Ethan Z] <_sj_> I wanted to point out that in the same way that blogs started out wiht one particular mode of ocmmunication, and a very personla, chatty view of what's going on have divresified into expert newsletters, RSS feeds, ... <_sj_> the same thing will be true for audioblogging. <_sj_> we;ll not only end up with taodancing news, but in a lot of cases the repurposing of audio content. <_sj_> I have to say the pace where this has become morst important tfor me is <_sj_> a site calld "IT conversaiotns" <_sj_> going around, reconding conferences, and putting up the speech from individula conference.s <_sj_> I've realized that I spend so much time going around giving talks, <_sj_> this is replacing writing paper sfor me... <_sj_> so I now essentially just point people towards the podcast of those talks <_sj_> so it's intersting that this tech/culture make sit possible to repurpose as much of the audio as we can. <_sj_> [rmack] <_sj_> bill buzenberg, MPR : anything you want to add? you guys are podcasting, I know. <_sj_> [bill b]] <_sj_> I'm frascinated, and want ot play with it when I get back, since there are things I've learned here... <_sj_> we have a podcast, and [the related] radio show has been going crazy. <_sj_> I just want to say that what PRX is doing is amazing <_sj_> it's freeing radios from the satellite service, making it easy for people coming in... <_sj_> I have a son and his girlfriend? have a radio show... they're playing different documentaries, and it's a good show b/c they're doing [all kinds of stuff] on there. [and this wouldn't have been possible before] <_sj_> [. <_sj_> [jay rosen] <_sj_> you've bene saying that public radio was all about filtering information... but that's not how they operate[d]. <_sj_> they exist to maintain the barriers to entry... this is what keeps them the pros <_sj_> this is their thing! <_sj_> b/c when that goes (the need for high sound quality) <_sj_> what's left is the human voice, and that's common enough. <_sj_> they hang onto that (sound quality standard) b/c that's what makes the professionals! <_sj_> these technologies that are truly diruptive (that's what this is) -- you're going to see a split. soe will recognize immediatel that the sound quality barrier is being threatened, <_sj_> and will react to that. others will say "this is great!" <_sj_> but hte notion that before they wanted this flood of material... this isn't [what they wanted] <_sj_> has anyone ever tried to *speak* as an individual person on public radio? you can't do it. and you can't do it on public television either. <_sj_> people woh have more experience in pbr can tell me if I'm wrong, but this is my impression <_sj_> I've been on your show, on a lot of shows, I'm not hostile to pbr at all... <_sj_> [brendan, responding] <_sj_> re: the barrier to entry in pbr <_sj_> I only started working in pbr a year ago. <_sj_> my sense of it is, the leaderswhip does not have an accurate sense of what it has become <_sj_> when you hear them talk iat conferences, <_sj_> everyon ehas these great stories about * jonl_away is now known as jonl <_sj_> "yeah, I just walked in the door, and there was bob simon, and we went out for a cup of coffee, and the next day I was out there interviewing him" <_sj_> we get resumes all the tim.e <_sj_> we hvae people desperate to get some kind of job close to pbr. <_sj_> but I don't think the people in charge of making decisions hae a sense of this. <_sj_> [rmack for hoder] <_sj_> podcasting needs hosting, and it's not available in dev countries like iran... <_sj_> [celeste ?, reporter for New Scientist] <_sj_> Q for brendan: don't you feel threatened and terrified, b/c why should anyone litsen to the radio anymore? * cimon has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> [brendan] I don't... it's my jpob to get them to change what they do! <_sj_> they shouldn't feel threatened either. <_sj_> they love these communities.. <_sj_> its a dedicated community <_sj_> they've got these channels and should send people out to bring people to their websites. <_sj_> they've got these people who litsen on their frequency... they should start using the communities they already own. <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> wow, that was really stimulating what you just said. I don't believe a word of it! <_sj_> I used to live in boston; listened to wbur; I pledge to every station where I liave. * blobster has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> they kept repeating during a pledge drive that "you own the station" <_sj_> they kept reapeating it and rubbing my nose in it... <_sj_> to test this, I called the management of the station, <_sj_> and I said "well, this is my station, what can I do with it <_sj_> ?' * Matthew has quit IRC ("Leaving") <_sj_> [ac: did you tape this? :)] <_sj_> [dave w: I wish.. tihs was before we were doing podcasts] <_sj_> they [at the station] thought I was just being stubborn.... <_sj_> there's a technological seachange now. people were talking about onvergence a few yars ago... * Matthew has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> cellphones ar very good at communiating, adn this has a lot to do with podcasting... <_sj_> but iPods are really good for playing mp3s. <_sj_> btw, iPods have a really lousing interface for (listening?), try (?) on an ipod while driving, and youll die. <_sj_> but what's really interesting is that al ot of major cities re panning of doing WiFi for their entire downtown this year. <_sj_> coupe this with a wifi device, imagine an ipod that can do wireless; <_sj_> put the subscription software on the ipod itself... <_sj_> you can tun in in settle if you have wifi, to a channel that's in china if you want. <_sj_> you have infinite reachl <_sj_> this is all going to be happening so quickly, <_sj_> that any dragging of heels by pros at all will leave them wondering <_sj_> what happened when the dust settles. <_sj_> [john h, quick question] <_sj_> [he was the other speaker, above] <_sj_> sound strems are like a book... <_sj_> you can read it for a bit, [open and close it at a page], there's no reason we shouldn't have the same rights to do <_sj_> with our sound files what we can do with a book! <_sj_> [alex - blizzard's acomin... <_sj_> if you were planning on heading out today, you should maybe reconsider...] <_sj_> next session coming... no break. <_sj_> [ethan z] <_sj_> we've got a real treat this session <_sj_> we've been talking about revoutions in news media.. <_sj_> and we've got two peopl ewho have been very actively on the front lines of this revolution fomenting change as we speak <_sj_> what they're hoping to do with this session is rais a set of ethical issues, and have us debate about it; <_sj_> I don't want ot let them entirely off the hoook, and want to hear them tell us a bit bout their own projet, <_sj_> which I think are revolutionary and arechanging the face of news as we know it. <_sj_> so I want to introduce both of them befoire we open up a more general discussion of ethics. <_sj_> any pref of who leads off? <_sj_> jimmy wales is one of the founders of wikipedia. * Submarine has joined #webcredtrans * Mark_Ryan has joined #webcredtrans * JRM has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> if you'd asked people the question a few year back, "could you build an enyclo significantly larger than EB, in some cases deeper than EB,in a number of differnetlangs, for free solely with volunteres" <_sj_> for the omst part people would laugh at you. <_sj_> but he's gone and done significantly that, and a bunch of architecture for it... <_sj_> one of the intersting things that he's experimented with and the comunity as a whole has experimented with, is Wikinews: <_sj_> how does a group of contributors around the world come together to jointly produce news? <_sj_> there are a bunch of principles the community has adopted, one of which is NPOV; <_sj_> I want him to talk about about whta wikinews is trying to do, <_sj_> what's the role of NPOV within that, <_sj_> and what he sees as the future of wiki. <_sj_> What's Wikinews, Jim? <_sj_> [jwales] <_sj_> wikines is the lastest sinoff from the wp community <_sj_> ew view it as very experimentl; a lot of the social rules are left open-ended at the moment <_sj_> it's interesting: when we tarted wikipedia, ew followed the sme kind of openedned process, * sam has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> not prejudgng how we're going to do the work... <_sj_> with wikipedia noone was watching for the frist year or so... <_sj_> with wikinews, we didn't get around to announcing it before reporters were calling to ask me about it. <_sj_> we're just doing our wiki thing... oe of the centrl principles of wikipedia has always been <_sj_> NPOV - neutral point of view <_sj_> one of the ground rules I set at te start of the project. <_sj_> for two reasons: <_sj_> neutrality is the basic requirement for an encyclopedi; <_sj_> giving you all ith einformation you ned to think for itself. * dannyisme has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> but the deeper reason ist hat for a social community, it gives us a way to work together; <_sj_> if we say this is an encyclopeida written from a progressive epoint of view, <_sj_> a catholic point of view, <_sj_> we would significantly reduce the number of contribs adding to the proejc. <_sj_> as it is, the neturality policy which we rally stongly buy into as a community, lets us say: <_sj_> I don't agre with you on this or that, but wer canm present this in a wea that we both agree [on] <_sj_> its a real dirty, human, messy process, but we do our best. <_sj_> and people who cannot deal with this, who can't write neutrally, aren't veyr comfotable in our community. * JRM has quit IRC (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)) <_sj_> te ones who gin respect and become centrlal to our community treat eachother with respec.t <_sj_> that's a very important htings; we talk about this to a point - people in the tech world laugh at me - we talk about love and respect a lot. <_sj_> that's NPOV, and that's being applied a lot in the wikinews commuinty as well. <_sj_> this is diff from a lot oc citizen njournalism; take for instance indymedia. <_sj_> they're a pretty farleft group; they're very good at what they do, but it's not excatly neutral. <_sj_> that's very different from what we do. <_sj_> [ethan] <_sj_> I wondre if you can follow up on this... * JRM has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> we saw something very interesting yesterday with a news story in belize... <_sj_> I wonder if you could talk about this a bit. <_sj_> [jwales] <_sj_> this proj is veyr young, adn we're just gteting off the gorund <_sj_> thsi was one tim when I was very proud of our success on this story. <_sj_> yesterday there was a big protest, and a clash b/t protestors and the police <_sj_> we scooped all the media by 12 hrs. <_sj_> what happened was, we had people on the gorund; <_sj_> we had a respectd wikiedian who started talking about thes tory.. <_sj_> people said, is this true? ew can't find anything about this onlie... <_sj_> he went out and took pictures. <_sj_> we had 20 or 30 people looking into this on the web... <_sj_> we finally confirmed with the british government <_sj_> we ran a very simple story, with picutres... <_sj_> finally this morning, the AP ran a story. they didn't have any pictures, of course. <_sj_> yesteray people talked about the nyt and their bureau in baghdad; <_sj_> I don't know how many people they have in belize; it's a tiny country; <_sj_> but apparently there's no big operation of any major nes ervice there,so they didn't have a story. <_sj_> or, take a look at ethans work about what's of interswt to the media: bleize is just not that intersting. <_sj_> so, it wasn't a *big* story, there wasn't a coup, etc <_sj_> but it was a story, [and we got it first] <_sj_> so one of the things is, how do we determine accuracy and credibility?' * zen[zizi] has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> Ethan asked me how do I find this story on wp if I'm not used to wp? * Jill has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> and I said, maybe you can't b/c there was an edit war on the Current Events * Reene has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> page -- it wasn't confirmed... <_sj_> when we got the phoots, we said ok, it was legit. * mindspillage has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> we know th eperson who brought the photos; it was a known wikipedian, <_sj_> so we ran the story. * Project2501a has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> there's a vetting process going on trying to dtermine which stories are real or not, <_sj_> much like tehre would be in any newws room. <_sj_> [ethan z[ <_sj_> once yu have a nes service jointly written by potentially hundreds of people around the world, how does this chnge our thinking about what is credible journalism online or on wikis? <_sj_> something to thin about going froward. * Biekko has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> [the other moderator this session]: Dan Gillmor: <_sj_> he's recentl stepped down from one fo te great [bastions?] of journalism, the SJMerc, writing on technology. <_sj_> I'm going to ask hiem waht everone's been asking him over the past month since he stepped downb: <_sj_> [Dan; right, am I crazy?] <_sj_> [ethan: right, I already asked that...] <_sj_> no, what are you doing? what's news? <_sj_> [Dan G] <_sj_> I don't know aht I'm doing. that's part of why I stepped down. * britty has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I hae a bit of time to think about this citizen journalism business] * TimStarling has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> it will happen whether I do it or not, but I'm helping it along a bit. <_sj_> the high-level description of it... I really don't hae details. <_sj_> What I'd like to do is bring to... the ferver and energy and knowlege of citizens, the grassorots <_sj_> I'd like to bring ot that, orfer to it the best practices and principles that we've learned in a lot of decades of pro journalism. <_sj_> I want to be clear that I'm not setting "rules thou shalt follow" but just to marry the bes of each if it will work. <_sj_> the wya I hope to do that is working with soe folks to cerate a kind of methology /platform <_sj_> not like a sw development comany, just pieceing tgether the best stuff, and offer that to folks including some instruction or educational things <_sj_> and then put that to work on a couple of sites <_sj_> to start with, that look at community in several ways: <_sj_> communities of interst and geography. <_sj_> all my entrepreneur friends tell me that the plan will change before we get very far... so this will probabl be different within a short time. <_sj_> [ethan] <_sj_> any quetsions on wikinews or dan's model, before going on? <_sj_> [david w, to jimmy] * kzhr_ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I'm all okay for postmodern squabblin, and nttrality... but have a quesion about it <_sj_> it's ok for neturality ot mean it's where everyone stops arguing... <_sj_> it seems to work out well but raises the question of who this "we" is. <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> yes it does * tabby_mya- has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> a big part of that helping to ake sure this works out to be somthing good is a strong paralle ocmmitment to be as open as we can in the community <_sj_> first of all any woman on he plnaet who wants can come edit a page. <_sj_> you don't even have to log in. <_sj_> we try to make it as easy as possible to join the conversation. <_sj_> particularly once you log it, you gain within the community a certain degree of civil rights... you cn't be banned for disagreeing on a political issue, for anything but behavioral issues; <_sj_> drwing the line b/t thee and political arguments can be tricky, but by and large it's lear cut. <_sj_> there's a way to approach a conv and say " <_sj_> iI'm a catholic priest; I don't htink the way you present the pediphilia scandal in the Church is accurate, I'm going to come add information <_sj_> and back it up with arguments/sources" <_sj_> you can also come in and say "this is terrible, there's no such hting" and you'll get bane.d <_sj_> the openness is a part f that; if we had a system where the system admins could just block people b/c they don't like them, <_sj_> this could careen far off path. <_sj_> I don't mak any grand philos. claims to have solved for all time the bias/neutrality, <_sj_> but I think we've got a neat approach to it. <_sj_> [dw] <_sj_> yes, but this is a community... relatively small compared to the [rest of the world] <_sj_> do you have any demographics? how diverse is the group, what are you doing about it? <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> it <_sj_> its definitely an issue. <_sj_> one way of addressing it is opneness, social norms of kindness and htoughtfulness, tyring to be open to people... <_sj_> we don't always succeed; we have our share of annoying jerks. <_sj_> the demographics (in the englihs-lang wikipedia) are mostly white, male... <_sj_> [more americans than non-americans, but not by a large factor] <_sj_> we're in over 50 langs, <_sj_> but 12 of 13 have over ?thousand articles... [ to those in the room here: Daneil Okrent at NYT had a great column a few months ago addressing this: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06EEDC17 3FF937A25752C1A9629C8B63 ] <_sj_> in the ja wikieia, it tends to be male... <_sj_> in de: it tends to be german, swiss... <_sj_> it tends to show up it he wikipedia in terms of: <_sj_> if you go to an article about the USB standard, <_sj_> it's a fantatic article. <_sj_> if you go to an article about emily dickenson, <_sj_> it will be ok... it used ot not exist, <_sj_> now its getting better. <_sj_> we're trying to reach out to people in diff areas. <_sj_> one thing I'm reallly intersted in is reahin gout ot the arabic wp <_sj_> ther'ws a real need in that culture for a good, neutral encyclo. <_sj_> so we're trying to reach out, but it's difficult. <_sj_> [Ethan: lots of people have their flags up!] [Jimbo: Who defines what's neutral, though? aint "neutral" subjective?] <_sj_> [??] financials for wp: <_sj_> community groups of interest dan is trying to create. two questions. <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> ([[[ if anyone has questions for the speakers, post them in #webcred, not this chan!]]] <_sj_> the WP foundation is a [non-profit] foundation... the way we do things <_sj_> is unlike any other org I've ever hear of. it's completely insane.. <_sj_> we're all volunteers <_sj_> there are almost no defined roles <_sj_> runing the 40 servers (we have 15 more on order, we will have 55...) <_sj_> are managed by volunteer sysadmins all ove rthe globe <_sj_> most of whom i <_sj_> 've never met. <_sj_> we have people with root poasswords on the servers who I've never met... <_sj_> they could erarse everything but they don't; I trust them. <_sj_> we have a grant committee, we're applyin for grants... people always ask me "who's responsible for this? who did that?" <_sj_> I always say "I dunno... I'm just the person who gets credit for all the work" <_sj_> it's a big jieke in the commuinty that I barely know how to edit the website, befause I don't do that... <_sj_> it's so different from what you can imagine that, to ansewr the financial question, this changes the entire picture. <_sj_> there are a whole lot of things we'd love to do but we just don't have the money; if onobody wans to do it, it won't get done. <_sj_> but for things [perople are interested in] the costs are so low... we're probably gpoing to have to hire someone to look after the machines * britty_ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> b/c I just don't have enough time to insert new machines. * ayashii has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> but we've budgeted or spent about $250k this year. <_sj_> the BBC looks at us; they have a budget of $100M a year; so thy look at us and say <_sj_> you have 1/10 of our traffic, you must have a budget of $20M or so... well, no! <_sj_> so other institutions thinking about their business models, [you should really] take this into consideration. <_sj_> [Dan G] <_sj_> grant making organizations, I hope you'll really consider this [Wikipedia]... <_sj_> as for communities: I hope there's a way to franchise like sites; I don't want to be like McDonalds, that would defeat the purpose. <_sj_> to have people who are aligned in some sense, that would be really useful. <_sj_> but I'm [only] in week 3 of thinking about this. * britty__ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I'll put this out now - I'm looking for a really great person to join me on this... <_sj_> [q : ??] <_sj_> [jim kennedy] re: Wikinews, I'd like to know in particular what you are trying to accomplish. <_sj_> [jw] * britty has quit IRC (Nick collision from services.) <_sj_> what we'd like to be is... [a truste source of news] like CNN or the AP * britty__ is now known as britty wpidetn <_sj_> whether we'll succeed in that, I don't know <_sj_> we're going to see what the ocmmuinty comes up with. <_sj_> it grew from a demand wihtin the community <_sj_> that people wanted to try ths, and it sounded cool and interesting, <_sj_> so we're going to try it. <_sj_> if it ends up being a fntatic news resource that puts the NYT to shame, that's fine, <_sj_> if it ends up being niche journalism, that's fine too... <_sj_> if it ends up being magazine journalism, fine... we'll see. <_sj_> [xiao Q] <_sj_> this is to jim and wikipedia news: * FutureCrash has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> first, I admire your project tremendously. <_sj_> you're exploring a bottom-up collaborative effort, which i beleive many people in this room are also [pursuin] <_sj_> but, what are the challenges?[ <_sj_> if a project really matters, that is a contested pace. <_sj_> people will have interst; people will come in... <_sj_> how does politics pay out in your owndreful way of how tod o things? <_sj_> if someone had more time in their hand, be more stubborn, more self-righteous, will they get to write more? <_sj_> with google visibility and everything, will that be a contested thing? <_sj_> or, your project won't matter at all and people will just [read] something eles <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> to ansewr that, you should look into hwo this really works. <_sj_> [technically] <_sj_> the essential game theortic structure of how a wiki woks, is that <_sj_> 1 or 2 people can easily hold off an annoying army of trolls.. you can just revert until they go away. <_sj_> there are differentkinds of conferted effots we miht see... <_sj_> "what if MS wants to come in and edit any entry to do with them?" * Project2501a has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> that's very unlikely... we're big enough and have enough public voice that it would be very embarrassing to them to find out heey had some campaign to subvert WP <_sj_> I don't htink they would try that. <_sj_> for othe things, i's a lot mre decentralized (religious movement) <_sj_> we haven't seen a lot of that yet, but I'mconfident wr will be able to do with it. <_sj_> It's important to understand wp has a veyr tight-knitocmuinty; the vast majority of work is done by a tight-knoit grou of 200 people <_sj_> who [look after]the quality of the content. <_sj_> on eof the key answres is that we've alway sconsidreed the qulaity of the content ot be a cnetral organzing principle <_sj_> that tkes precdence over a lot of the things, such as allowing anyone to edit any article... * FutureCrash has left #webcredtrans ("Verlassend") <_sj_> a lot of people think when they hear that "oh, these must be relativists who allow anyone to say anything at all" * van_Flamm has joined #webcredtrans * ungaro has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> but no, if there's a problem, we'll find a way to deal with it. We may not lock the articles down, we'll find another way. <_sj_> [jane singer, neat stuff!] * Rdsmith4 has joined #webcredtrans * van_Flamm has left #webcredtrans ("Verlassend") <_sj_> jim - when you start to do news, is the idea things people have observed themselves/' <_sj_> I'm thinking of taking some things I've [done elsewhere] and contributing to you... legal issues? <_sj_> if there are rumours and other unsubstantiated things, perhaps you can work this out by verifying... * uwe has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> Dan: also an interesting project; what ar ethe htings you're taking from journalism and hoping to spread? <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> we're keeping things openended. * uwe has left #webcredtrans ("Leaving") <_sj_> i believ our early and pirmary strength will be synthesis of the news as opposed to orig. reporting. <_sj_> that's hard to do wb/c of our strong commuitment to neutrality and verifiability. <_sj_> in the encyclopedia we say "no original research" <_sj_> this came up originally b/c of physics cranks, of whom there are apparently an infinite number on the net <_sj_> instead of saying "you're a crakpot, go away" <_sj_> we say we don't accept orign research; please get this pubvlished in a journal somewhere and we can look at it. <_sj_> on wikinews, we're not limited to that... <_sj_> yesterday for the bleize story, we have a number of pictures, and some original statemnets... but its' from a trusted member of the community. <_sj_> on wikipedia, we don't violate copyrights, party as a matter of intellectual pride; we're not plagiarists, we're producing a brand new refernc work. <_sj_> if we catch it, we delete it; it's a very tight-knit ocmmuinty. <_sj_> someone can come in from outsdie the community and post a copyvio... it will bel ooked at and might be missed for a while... <_sj_> but for aonyone in the community to post a copyvio, it would be ... like a scandal in a newsroom; it would be horrifying. noone would do that. <_sj_> [q: so, re: primary reporting? how...] <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> it's a synthesis; <_sj_> if you thin about a newspaper, and the frot page ad editorial page: <_sj_> blogs are simialr to editorials; they're commentary.l <_sj_> genreally not frontpage reporting. <_sj_> wikinews is similarly a resonse to the front page. <_sj_> if the NYT and Wapo and fox and cnn are all reporitn ga story in different ways with different spings.. <_sj_> hopefully our process can synthesize that into something usefl. <_sj_> [q - do you list your sources?] <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> yes, that's a very imporant ting; if you come and add something and don't back it up, <_sj_> people are probably going to delete it. <_sj_> [.*.] <_sj_> [same q] <_sj_> dan: what do you want to take from citizen journalism/ <_sj_> ? <_sj_> dan: most people don't konw what the FOIA is. <_sj_> there are some very good sites that tell you how... <_sj_> part of what i want to do is this thing that journalists do every day... <_sj_> [zittrain] * paddyez has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I remember once scott bradner of the ietf giving a presentation, in which he smugly pointed out that ibm said you simply can't biuld a corporate network out of tcp/ip * KleinerPinguin has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> an dno his next slide he had a swarm of friendly bees, and said "why do you think I have bees on my slide?" <_sj_> b/c earo engineers [once] projected there is no possible way they could fly...l <_sj_> furry, tiny wings... <_sj_> I've been thinking about this for a wihle; the open process of net standards. <_sj_> all of this has led me to think about wp <_sj_> the more I look at wp <_sj_> the more truly amazed <_sj_> am <_sj_> my questino is how it an avoid flaling victim to catastrophic success: * dyer has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> now that it has enough Google karma that if youre seraching for, maybe not dickinson, <_sj_> but most any academic topic, <_sj_> you'll find wp... <_sj_> and someday soon, if it hasn't alreayd, businessweek is oing to do an article on you or on the cover, "Wiki: what you need to know!" <_sj_> it's one thng to deal with what you describe ads the annoying jerks... via the 'priesthood <_sj_> (and it is a preisthood - in that it's an idealogically unified community) <_sj_> what if ms comes in to edit it, <_sj_> the way they were psraypainting the butterfly on the sidewalks of nyc for a while? <_sj_> with enough money and undrstanding in pr... <_sj_> by hiring some consultants in this room... <_sj_> you'll have very sophisticated influences over the wiki from intersts that don't subscribe to neutrality, <_sj_> but aren't so hamhanded as to be easily exposed and embarrasee. <_sj_> what yo'dhear form ms and walmart (I was jlooking at its entry) <_sj_> and they haven't edited it yet, I gather it's b/c they're behind... <_sj_> and thye'll say 'corporations are people to' <_sj_> and you may say more powr to you... <_sj_> but I'm worried that the fraglile norms you've set up <_sj_> can get totally swamped through the catatrophic success of attention that the thing is bound to get. <_sj_> 'm wonderfing how to bateten down the hatches against that kind of influence <_sj_> the way the ietf has not battened down ITS hatches against similar influences. <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> two htings; <_sj_> 1) so far so good... we've been able to think of things in advance, <_sj_> but not solve them before they happen <_sj_> betterto wait an dsee if wre really hav ea problme. <_sj_> the comm scaled very much larger that I'd eever have imagined. <_sj_> somehwere there's a mialing list post from me saying <_sj_> "we're gonna put this u, but obviously soon we'll have to implement some osrt of passwrod sstem and not loet peopl edit) <_sj_> at the time I was thinking, "once ew're past 50 people or so, how will we keep track of things?' <_sj_> well, we've found other ways to keep track. <_sj_> 2) there's no magic way to cope with htis... <_sj_> I want to make a sarcastigc joke and say 'luckliyl this never happens in the media' <_sj_> noone's ever been accused of influencing that... <_sj_> [jz] <_sj_> fair enough.. but i f the foront page of the nyt was a wiki... <_sj_> and it was just frozen at 6am at some point... <_sj_> I think there would be real trouble. <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> well actually, we're now about as popular as the times... <_sj_> [dwiner] <_sj_> and the fornt page can't be frozen, actulaly, it doesn't hvae that feature... <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> its securit through obscrity, sufficient ot keep *me* from editing the front page... <_sj_> again it's - the key is, within the community we hae a verystrong commitment to the quality of the work we're dooing. <_sj_> that outweighs how the community is organized. <_sj_> if we came at this and said "we'll always be a wiki and if the encyclopedia goes to hell, that's ok, b/c its this open, crazy experiment" <_sj_> but as it isall that wiki stuff is a means to an end, and the high quality is that end. <_sj_> [&] <_sj_> look at wikipeida, but look at the discussions that go on *about* the articles... * cohutta has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> the community they have built around articles is amazing. <_sj_> (sorry, that's dan g) <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> wikipedia has a rule against original researhc, <_sj_> but wikinews *does not* have a rule against original reporting. <_sj_> (in response to such a question from faye anderson <_sj_> ) <_sj_> [FA] <_sj_> here's why I wsa so ecitd about wikines: <_sj_> in the 2002 midterm election,s <_sj_> the mianstrem reported that low black turnout was resplponsible for dem losses... <_sj_> i was very involved [withthat] <_sj_> our field operations [knew] that in the targeted states, there was an increasin black voter turnout. <_sj_> ??? in 2002 said they didn't have confidence in the data, and so didn't release the polls. <_sj_> then the pundits talked about low black turnout... <_sj_> the polling data wasn't released, os this was just sheer speculation. * KleinerPinguin has left #webcredtrans ("Verlassend") <_sj_> I wrote etters to the edior, talked to oped organizers... <_sj_> the storyline was fixed. low black turnout leads to dem losses. <_sj_> and what happens? FF to july 2004. <_sj_> the census bureau reports that in 2002 the only demog group that had an *increas* in turnout was black voters. <_sj_> the same thing reported about the 98 electin. <_sj_> if wikiews had existed in 2002 you can guarantee that I woul dhave been posting to this site. <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> in the long ru,n I think this is realy where it's hat, <_sj_> whether this innovation will take place in wikinews, the blo community, or something I haven't though tof yet. <_sj_> I haven't actually checked the stts on who's editing WN... <_sj_> it's not credible to say we have people weknow an d turst in vevery part of the world now. <_sj_> what will happpen whethn there are 300k people in the web of trust, <_sj_> and people can say, <_sj_> this person is as credible as any rndo news reporter, at least... <_sj_> if you were known in the community and posted observations, it wold stand. <_sj_> but it's gonna take time. we can' tjust open it up to that right away. <_sj_> [ethan] <_sj_> we asked dan and jim to be with us to help us focus on where we've been so far, and help us opne up <_sj_> I hope they'll forgive us for the interest... I want to turn it over to them. <_sj_> I know they had questions for the wohle room: <_sj_> [dan] <_sj_> our assignment was to find the brushfires and pour gasoline on them... <_sj_> what we wnated to do was to thorw out a few scenarios... <_sj_> see whether people would check out stories before posting them... <_sj_> sayyou get an email linking improprieties in a local gov, but can't verify the sender. <_sj_> would any of us just post it on our blogs, <_sj_> ? what if that weren't an email but rather an anon blog... <_sj_> jim, how would you deal with this? <_sj_> [jim ? ] <_sj_> we found images of navy seal abuse; the wife of a seal posted pictures... similar to abu ghraib.. <_sj_> a reporter found thoes pics, cheked it out, called the person who posted them, confirmed they were real, <_sj_> and did a story about them. <_sj_> the family's suing us for using those pictures... we're fighting it. <_sj_> we're using the rules we would if those pics had come into our possession some other way. <_sj_> whether you find things or it comes to you, you foollow the rules you normally would... * tabby_mya- has quit IRC (Success) <_sj_> [dang - jay? what would you do?] <_sj_> [jay rosen] <_sj_> I wouldn't run it... verification. I don't run thngs I can't verify. I can't think of a situation where I've linked to sth I can't verify... <_sj_> I'm very conservatitve that way. I tend to be slower, days after they're in the news <_sj_> my particualr niche is reflection. <_sj_> you'll find sth in pressthink 2 days after you see it in the news. <_sj_> maybe I'm not a good person to answer. <_sj_> [dg] <_sj_> dave you're a linking machine... do you post such things? <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> I do a bit of soul searching on a couple of axes. first is, what do you think? do you think it's true/ if you think it is, what are you basing it on? where did it come from, who is vouching for it? <_sj_> I guess a third axis is, I love getting a scoop! I'd hate to think that b/c of hesitation, I didn't get a scoop <_sj_> a fourth one is, how ontopic is it? if it's about the health of a chinese leader, <_sj_> it's probably never going to be on scripting news, even fully verified. if there was a securiyt hole in Win Server 003, and it came from a bugrracking service that hs claled them correctly in the past... <_sj_> that would totally go on SN, with a caveat: you have to say how much you know about it. * paddyez has left #webcredtrans ("Ewige Blumenkraft!") <_sj_> If I don't know it's true, I have to say "this has jjust crosse dmy desk, take it with a grain of salt" <_sj_> my readers know infinitely more than I do; they're gonna help us verify it. * jwales has joined #webcredtrans * mahu has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> I got emails, too; <_sj_> I got them aftere chris ran the retraction and apology. <_sj_> one thing is, they really hit you hard if they don't like what you wrote [chris pirillo] <_sj_> I've walked that line very carefully; I have been challenged bvy that publisher in the past; <_sj_> I did link to chirs p's thing, b/c I thought it took guts for him to challenge what he did. <_sj_> [RMack] <_sj_> going back to the previous case, they *had* verified the photos were real, they *had* checked they were available. <_sj_> [pub] * TimStarling has quit IRC (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) <_sj_> they had put their photos up on a site where they could protet them from the public, and they hadn't done it; of course they did later. <_sj_> we did the next steps, old-fashioned: calling up and verifying (the source) and all that stuff. <_sj_> just "I found sth aout, I'm pretty sure about it, here you go, join me in verifying this" is -- <_sj_> I'm not comfortable with that. <_sj_> [RMack] * waerth has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> you wren't content with linking it; you reproduced the photo and ran it on ap. <_sj_> publishing it on your own site, wherever it is, vs linking to it on another site whree someone else has responsibility for the content.. <_sj_> in what ways is it different? <_sj_> [Dave W] <_sj_> on a pragmatic level, there's no diff b/t pointing and copying <_sj_> if I write an article about sth and they take it down... <_sj_> I've een burned too many times by that to let that be ar ason that *my* archive goes bad. <_sj_> [Rmack] * Grunt has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> this leads back to sth that was going on before the conference.. <_sj_> can we blog on anything we can't verify?' <_sj_> I blog on north korea... I constantly blog about things there's no way in heck I can verify, since it comes from NK, <_sj_> but I want to gateher it an dlink to it so others can create their own pinions about what the bush admin'n is saying and what otehrs are saying. <_sj_> if I ony included facts in this, I wouldn't have a blog. <_sj_> [Dave w] <_sj_> I thnk Jim is right in this, b/c he's the AP. he's l[playing a diff role than a blogger. <_sj_> our philoso[hy is very much, put things out there andl et others hope to check it. <_sj_> if the AP started to do that, the world axis would be tilted in the wrong direction. <_sj_> [dg] <_sj_> let me ask bill mitchell, then david... <_sj_> [bm] <_sj_> in the pub industry, we do distinguish what we publish and what we link to <_sj_> we acknowldege that our pub and teaching guidelines are different... <_sj_> we teach to point out only in [unusual] instances. what we're trying to do on the romanescu? site, is <_sj_> give people in the business news about news. <_sj_> we think in the spirit of reality people need to konw what's being recorded about the business. <_sj_> [jill a] <_sj_> I want to point out that in the old journalims craft, just verification isn't enough. <_sj_> re: a company with layoffs, even if were were sure it was true that there were layoffs, that would have to be combined as a fairness isue with comment. <_sj_> you need comment from the company beore the news article would be ready for either the web or the paper. <_sj_> [john h] <_sj_> as bloggers, we do things idff from what we might do in a newspaper. <_sj_> at powerline, we don't go with anything anonymous. <_sj_> we have a source I've talked to on the phone, I know he exists, he's widely known as someone doing military commentary... <_sj_> if I were doing a piece, I don't think I'd link to him... <_sj_> sorry, I don't think I'd quote him (in a print piece) <_sj_> but we view him as basically a good source, and we do link to him. <_sj_> [dan g: let's speed up, get to the 2d scenario!] * advance has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> [weinberger] <_sj_> I absolutely report on rumors and gossip and speculation on my weblog * mahu has quit IRC ("Quitting") <_sj_> I try always to qualify it with some english language; rumor, speculation, etc. <_sj_> but its fun. <_sj_> I AM NOT A LITTLE JOURNALIST. it is NOT a continnum... <_sj_> my weblog is NOT reporting. <_sj_> my weblog is a way of talking to my friends over the watercooler... <_sj_> "I hear jen and brad are breaking up!" <_sj_> 0 or 1% of weblogs think of themselves as journalists. <_sj_> it's a TINY sphere. <_sj_> it's like jimmy said: <_sj_> look at the EB, look what they've built up... <_sj_> the existence of infrastructure is not a guarnatee it is going to continue. <_sj_> I think you should look, not at the people who are trying to be journalists, but the vast majority of people who AREN'T writing articles, they're just blogging. <_sj_> [xiao q] <_sj_> ...you're putting up a product, that's the difference. <_sj_> another way to look at it: in the digital wold, it's not that there's a truth out there and we're going to get it; there's something deeper. <_sj_> [zephyr] <_sj_> I want to point out a site: "this is rumor control.org" <_sj_> I'd love to see an experiment with this... <_sj_> one thing you ese happening, is a lot of people put "8" next to their stories <_sj_> that's wehre people feel comfortable <_sj_> [rumor level on the stories?] <_sj_> [dan g] <_sj_> don't forget the snopes site, <_sj_> and brooks' factcheck.org <_sj_> we need omre of these, debunking/verification things. <_sj_> ok, jon, jay, ethan, then we've got to go on. <_sj_> [jon bonne] <_sj_> I was hearing [this] on pbr recently, and was really impres that a) the AP found it, and b) you guys didn't protect it, were out there publishing it. <_sj_> going back to verification <_sj_> [[what was jb referring to?]] <_sj_> back in 2003, a story was circulating about an MS conract worker * advance has quit IRC ("Chatzilla 0.9.66 [Mozilla rv:1.7.5/20041107]") <_sj_> who was dismissed b/c he was caught posting a picture of Macs being unloaded at a loading dock... <_sj_> and there was some question whether this was related to his being laid off * danbri has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> I went out htere to interview him, talked to his contract company... <_sj_> obviously bloggers were way out there ahead of us. <_sj_> but we finally did publish the story, *with* the photo that got him dismissed, *on* a site [Slate] owned by MS. <_sj_> obviously the guy's out there, his story is out there... but what RM was getting at is, when you're stuck with unverifiable stories, <_sj_> and your ability to verify is opaque... <_sj_> how do you shade things you can't [completely] verify? <_sj_> [jane singer] <_sj_> one thing we haven't mentioned is: there's a real ethical issue here. <_sj_> particularly with the first issue, a local councilmember who did something wrong. <_sj_> if you pass on sth you can't verify, you've done real harm to that person [which may not be warranted] <_sj_> information is poewr, and that's all true, but there's an ethical obligation to the people about whom you are writing.. <_sj_> you're going to harm that person. if it's true and needs to come out that's public info and is important, BUT. <_sj_> [dg - and attorneys are champing at the bit for that one] <_sj_> [ethan] <_sj_> I wanted to challenge my friend dr. weinberger. <_sj_> I agree there shouldn't be this continuum b/t blogger and ournalist, <_sj_> and if we blog to a big enough audience, we've become journalists. <_sj_> but the idea that what we're doing is the online version of water cooler gossip, I don't think that's right. <_sj_> I just checked techonrati, you have 2200 links... <_sj_> you have an *extremely* effetive water cooler. <_sj_> anything you say shows up immediately, and is indexed. <_sj_> so because you are indexed so well, anything you say about a popular subject shows up and is [often] indexed higher than anything journalists are going to say. <_sj_> [dg - are you properly chastened?] <_sj_> [jay rosen] <_sj_> the on ly definitoin of information that I trust is that information reduces uncertainty. <_sj_> the kind of information we've been talking about *increases* uncertainty, but the it i reduced online. <_sj_> it used to be, this reduction took place behind the scenes. <_sj_> that's what journalists were for. now, we need a new kind of person, maybe we need a new name for it, who says "there is uncertainty out there that needs to be reduced!" <_sj_> then we work on that and tryto reduce the uncertainty, moving [forward] online. <_sj_> my weblog, I consider my personal magazine. <_sj_> Idon't want anything in there that increases uncertainty... <_sj_> but I have to admint the world is changing, and I"m using an outdtaed notino of the editorial process; <_sj_> it's not going to be the only way we deal with information anymore. <_sj_> [dg - you probably need to turn off your comments then... <_sj_> after i rad one of your posts and all the comments and the things people put in there... <_sj_> I don't generally feel more certain.] <_sj_> [dg- jimmy has something he wants to raise, and it's important.] <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> - yesterday I mentioned free licensing at the end, and since we're supposed to pour gasoline on the explosion, thta's something we should really bring up <_sj_> If your biz model is based on eyeballs to your website, and based on free (as in beer, not as in speech) <_sj_> then free licensing doesn't do you nay harm at all. <_sj_> there are alot of different kinds of licenses out there (from CC,...) , you can find oue that suits your particular circumstance <_sj_> and youcan find a license that requires attribution back to you, b/c it will increase trffic to your ewbsite <_sj_> if you think your content is so proprietary and special b/c people only come to your site for it since noone else has it, you're fooling youreslf. <_sj_> particularly for commodity news, the bulk of your traffic, I can get it here or there, it doesn't really matter to me. <_sj_> but if you put a free content license on it and people link back to you, you'll be very popular. <_sj_> at wikipedia, we see a lot of benefit from this: <_sj_> people say wow, you have so much google power; well, it's because we have all these mirrors and we let them do what they want and they link back to us; * mahu has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> that populariy is eithre from the inks back or indirectly from having [the content out htere] <_sj_> [dg - back to jim first; picking on you today] <_sj_> [jim] * zwitter has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> we worry about certain things people might do, <_sj_> for instance just as an ap or nyt story would be changed or rewritten and presented as an AP story * Gaspar has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> if you're set up to police copyright against those kinds of [fake] uses... that's good <_sj_> but I'm worried about what kinds of abuses would occur <_sj_> and where the brand would be taken/hijacked by people who felt they had a license to do so <_sj_> the other issue I hvae: different media types <_sj_> I think text is one thing, headlines one thing, <_sj_> when you start talking about images, video... <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> images seem to me the simplest obvious case; it's indirect: <_sj_> you're not trying to get people to your website [via the AP photo] <_sj_> [jim] <_sj_> I think it would be a horrible thing to say 'here are these pictures, do what you want to them in photoshop' <_sj_> [dave w] why? <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> there are a variety of licenses... you can say 'tke our content exactly as we gave it to you, and attrivute it to us... <_sj_> f you change it, don't attrivute it to us' <_sj_> maybe this doesn't apply so much to the ap, but if you're a newspaper with a photog on scene, <_sj_> and you have some cute crazy photo you're going to run in your paper; <_sj_> noone's going to find your paper with this funny photo if you just post it and say noone can copy itl.. <_sj_> but if you post this image and say 'feel free to copy it' you'll have a whole bunch of people linking back to you. <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> re: the picture of the huge trooper in the elian photo... the blogosphere loved it. <_sj_> I decided to crop it, take the boy and soldier, move them closer together, <_sj_> associated them with the AP story, and used a little piece of [your] picture as an ad. <_sj_> an the blogosphere erupted as a riot, "how dare you use their picture?" <_sj_> meanwhile it was passed all around the blogosphere, and everyone visited you... <_sj_> and the AP ended up getting huge negative pr for being such stinkers about that picture <_sj_> its' not a licensing issue; nobody's given us permission to do this, but we've done it anywya. <_sj_> [dg] <_sj_> I've decided to use on images larger than what google uses... and if they rethink this, <_sj_> bc they've been litigating this, I'll rethink it. <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> it depends on your biz model, but I'd say: newspapers with their own photogs, going out and taking pix, and runinng them on the paper or website: <_sj_> they should let go of 10% of their content. <_sj_> maybe not their pulitzer prizewinning content, but routine news photos? <_sj_> what a fantastic way... if the LATimes, just to pick a rando oaper, put half of their photos on a free license... so many bloggers would link to it, their popularity would just skyrocket. <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> the photos (and articles) come down and are available for pay, after a couple of weeks <_sj_> (AP : 14 days) why is that? <_sj_> it's terrible. how can we link to something that's going to come down? <_sj_> [jim] <_sj_> b/c we sell archive access to the reporter... <_sj_> information is valuable when it's old and when it's brand new? <_sj_> [jay r] <_sj_> you will, in 5 years you will * fpzilla_ has joined #webcredtrans <_sj_> [dave w] <_sj_> how can we verify the authenticity of an author, if we can't see their history? <_sj_> [jim] <_sj_> we don't have a place for it right now... I agree with you, dave, <_sj_> if we can fid a way to store the content where we can maintain control over it [[and not lose its value? --Ed]], we might do that <_sj_> but we don't right now. <_sj_> [dg] * Rdsmith4 has quit IRC ("Lord, what fools these mortals be!") <_sj_> I used a license that says "you can do what you want with it, for non-comm purposes [re his book] <_sj_> and... I think it increased book sales. <_sj_> [dave sifry] <_sj_> technorati: rather than pulling content our or using full-sized pictures, we link back to them. <_sj_> ftsearch engines have worked that way, and not gotten nailed for it... <_sj_> but we'll see what happens. <_sj_> the second part of the quetsion is; what happens if you change the photo when you thumbnail it? <_sj_> NG got into a huge discussion when they moved things around re: pyramids [image manipulation] <_sj_> if i'm thumbnailing I'll try to always maintain the integrity of the picture... <_sj_> by moving elian and the guard closer together, doesn't that affect the integrity of the picture? <_sj_> and b/c I don't get a chance to talk much, one more point: <_sj_> there's a big elephant in the room, and it's about business omdels: <_sj_> and why peopl edo and don't do things <_sj_> theres a big discussion about how current journalism['s biz model] works <_sj_> until we discuss how can people continue to make money doing this, <_sj_> we're avoiding this issue and bouncing off of it <_sj_> I rally hope before the conf is over, we actually talk about business models. <_sj_> I'm a *hug* fan of CC and free content..., <_sj_> [jw] <_sj_> are you going to release your tags under a free license? <_sj_> an rss feed doesn't actually help me that much for what I want to do with it <_sj_> [ds] <_sj_> every single page (and tags) are licensed with CC... <_sj_> NC-by <_sj_> (it's a little smaller, the link at the bottom of each page, but there) <_sj_> [dg - let me set up the business thing: <_sj_> [dg] <_sj_> journalism is under challenge less b/c of blogging, which I thin will make pro journalims better, <_sj_> but the buisness model: it's unravelling to places like ebay <_sj_> [the world's largest classified ads site] <_sj_> and a hwole bunch of other things; <_sj_> attacked by people woh arenimble, well-funded, able to work on smlaler margins, <_sj_> and worked on by people for whom real Journalism would be a ridiculous distraction <_sj_> [jay] <_sj_> let me talk about archives. <_sj_> most paces produce content which after some poeriod of time goes behind a wall, <_sj_> becomes lost to bloggers, google, cultural memory, high school student doing papers. <_sj_> lost to the power of permanence on the web. <_sj_> I don'thtnk most jurnalists around the country know that if they do a great 6-part series on a polluting oil company in their backyard, that it's gone after 2months and will really always be gone... <_sj_> b/c it's not gone for them... they have lexis/nexis... they can get it whenever they want! <_sj_> the journalists weren't involved at all iwth the original discussions that created this policy.l.. <_sj_> they didn't really know much about it, still don't <_sj_> they don't see it as crucial for them <_sj_> but obviously it IS crucial for them. <_sj_> I see 2 possibilities; the entrenched people at news co's who made these decisions, <_sj_> don't want to back away form them b/c they were wrong <_sj_> or are addicted to the revenue they get from this... <_sj_> they keep the journalists in the dark about it [what has happened so far] <_sj_> and conitnue denying the journalsits work to the rest of the web. <_sj_> OR <_sj_> journalists will get enlightened aobut this, join up with bloggers, and put pressure on their companiees... <_sj_> moving journalims outside those industries, which *will* reduce revenue for these companies <_sj_> . <_sj_> the place to watch, is (eg) greensboro, NC: <_sj_> the editor of the paper has a suggestion on his desk by a suggestion that the paper shift to a new format, permanent URLs, forever. <_sj_> as far as I know, ed left, it hasn't made a decision about this yet. <_sj_> but really, how much revenue ar we talking about, that the GN-R gets from their archive?' <_sj_> I think it's probaly mnimal, and there's no reason why they should make things retreat behind a pay wall. <_sj_> for other places, it may be more substantial [this amount] <_sj_> newsj ournalists should be involved in this discussion. <_sj_> they should *demand* to know how much revenue is really being gained by this wall... <_sj_> it's a crucial part of [their jobs as journalists] <_sj_> when I wrote to [a colleague] about a piece that he wite [the media writer for the LA times] <_sj_> and asked him, "do you know that this piece you wrote (a wihle ago) is unavailable now?" <_sj_> and he said "no!" <_sj_> what I want to know is: how did ALL THESE smart people get left in the dark about this? <_sj_> it's really important. <_sj_> for the bloggers, it's [just] an annoyance. <_sj_> [[but for the journalists themselves... it's more than that -Ed]] <_sj_> [.^.] <_sj_> my experience is that when I link to the nyt, it's a py link, it's cumbersome to link through and actually get to the article [even though I'm a subscriber] <_sj_> and the $2.50 price that I recall for an article seems /high/ to bloggers... <_sj_> the thid piece is, just a thought,bloggers are probably delivering value (collectively driving an awful lot of traffic) fcfreating traffic there. there ought to be a way this could be recognized, <_sj_> so that the times could make arts available in some reciprocal traffic... <_sj_> hey, we've driven a lot of traffic to you, so give us something in retur. <_sj_> [Dave W ] <_sj_> we ewnt through this to them, and they *do* provide bloggers with access to their [articles] <_sj_> if you get the link from an RSS feeed, you'll have direct access to them. <_sj_> their worry is that lexis-nexus somehow was distributing things that made the archives open [via their service?] so there was this workaround <_sj_> [?? form nyt.com] * ayashii has left #webcredtrans <_sj_> I think we always have had control over our archives... <_sj_> [?%?] <_sj_> I came in[to journalims[] with the veiw that archies were the primary source of revenue for these firms... <_sj_> at least that was true of a few major companies. <_sj_> but the more I hear about the social discussion here, <_sj_> for instance the desire for advertisers to lock in ad space on old pages <_sj_> for high-traffic news stories... <_sj_> I think if there were some way to recognize this traffic, we could change this before it becomes so difficult <_sj_> [Rmack] <_sj_> I thnk part of the way the jurnalists fell out of this negotiation process is, <_sj_> if the journalists rae involved in the negotiatoin dicsussions, <_sj_> they might not be as objective in reporting; <_sj_> if as bureau chief in china I had something to do / knew about the deals the copmany was making with the olocal government... I might be more wary about reporting on certain things. <_sj_> but most of the rank andd file journalists [were] in journalism b/c they wanted to serve society, <_sj_> our democratic discourse... <_sj_> the execs, when I asked them... <_sj_> I asked richard parsons of [now aol/time warner] <_sj_> I asked, do you view thingssuch as cnn/time mag any differently from your other properties, <_sj_> like mad magazine, ... <_sj_> he said "no! you're a product, like everything else". <_sj_> there's a huge disconnect b/t what the management views <_sj_> and what the rank-and-file journalists wish it was. <_sj_> [jay r] <_sj_> here is a piece simon waldman did for the [guardian review?] on "the Importance of Being Permanent" <_sj_> everyone go read it... <_sj_> Bob, what do you think would happen if every news reporter knew that their work was <_sj_> disappearing... and then argued with their companies about it? <_sj_> [bob g] <_sj_> I think most people know about this... after a few weeks, the articles go offline... <_sj_> but I don't know, what do you think, jill? <_sj_> [jill a] <_sj_> I don't know, these things don't come to me... ] <_sj_> [rmack] <_sj_> and they do know; I knew tat content I was sending in from our office [wasn't always getting used] <_sj_> but I put up with it, I made do... <_sj_> and you have a whole field of people who are just making do [with things they don't like] b/c they don't want to be unemployed... <_sj_> [alex] <_sj_> I think old stories would have a huge appeal if they didn't have to be paid for, <_sj_> and they would then pay for themselves in advertising... * Mark_Ryan has quit IRC <_sj_> and i thnk it would have a huge impact, then everyone would do it <_sj_> it would do things that papers esperately want; it would bring people! <_sj_> I konw they make a littlemoney withthis archive busienss, but if they could draw people to their site... <_sj_> that would be a tremendous value to them, an increae in their authority... <_sj_> [jim] <_sj_> In our case, we *do* have enlightened management about this; we're just stuck on technologies... <_sj_> we're moving an old telegraph model to a database model... links between all that stuff. will it all be free, and cost nothing? no. <_sj_> but will it be free and open? yes, and it will be that way within... two years. <_sj_> [dan g] <_sj_> I just want to go around the room, [at the end] <_sj_> and talk about the tools authors need, around the world <_sj_> and I'd like to create a wiki, and talk about it there... <_sj_> I think that might be more productive... <_sj_> [ethan] (applause) <_sj_> thanks to the moderator of the morning session! <_sj_> [john p] <_sj_> any changes to what we're doing, moving into the last session? <_sj_> [agreement on a one-minute break...] <_sj_> [john p, before] <_sj_> the berkman center is going to race jimmy to creating a wiki [for that purpose] <_sj_> [jwales] its already up. <_sj_> we won :) <_sj_> [john p] well, that's because you're in the business of doing it... <_sj_> [[end of flahback]] <_sj_> [wacky music in the background] End of #webcredtrans buffer Sat Jan 22 12:04:00 2005