Undercurrent

Evgeny Morozov delivers a good analysis, as usual, of the Twitter hype. Beware:

Twitter use in authoritarian countries comes with major drawbacks. Twitter creates an extensive online paper trail that can be easily used against dissidents. In fact, as Twitter use becomes more common, authoritarian governments are likely to exploit Twitter to gather open-source intelligence on the opposition — not a difficult task for anyone with an Internet hook-up. So Twitter could help authorities identify dissent at very early stages, tracking not just individual activists, but entire activist networks. An online friend list could enable a serious crack-down.

New concepts for voluntary user payment — or more effective donations — keep turning up. The latest is Sprinklepenny (via Steve Outing). I’m intrigued by the possibilities, and I like this approach much better than the current “force the user to pay“-approach of the mainstream media. But will it work? Will there ever be enough users, so publishers will make more than, ah, pennies?

Iran is moving fast, the best source for breaking news right now is Twitter, but don’t forget to be a brilliant analyst at the same time!:

There’s plenty of misinformation out there, like rumors that Ahmadinejad is going to stage an assassination attempt, so we need to be careful about how we judge the information. If we’re a savvy analyst, we need to be careful about the weight we attach to photographs and video accounts. They’re the most immediate and emotionally powerful, but they can distort our understanding of the situation, particularly of about the importance of specific developments.

Every major news story these days has its own user-driven information logic, Iran is no exception. The realtime criticism of CNN’s coverage is a good example. Now we debate the news judgement of the media as it happens, and this opinion exchange again influences the news coverage and maybe even events. Some news media have been good at reflecting this shift via their news blogs, a format that turns out to be very useful:

NYT/The Lede

Guardian News Blog

HuffPo

(Thanks to Etterretninger for alerting me of the story — late, while doing other things!).

When your exclusive story can be quoted by all other media online seconds after you have published it, it no longer pays to invest in good journalism. Some say. Even government ministers. I have never understood that argument. If you consistently can produce good, exclusive, intriguing, appealing journalism, the audience will recognize it and reward you. A piece of evidence from Britain:

One of the most interesting aspects of the scandal is the revelation that old-fashioned scoops can still sell papers. Many publishers have assumed that in the Internet era, “exclusives” stay that way for about three seconds, so they are not worth pursuing. Instead, they have shifted the emphasis of their papers toward analysis or opinion. But The Telegraph’s exclusives, serialized like popular 19th century novels, have made a big difference at the newsstand. According to unaudited industry figures, The Daily Telegraph sold a cumulative total of about 900,000 additional copies in the first two weeks of its reports. On some days, its circulation jumped more than 10 percent from the official April level of about 818,000.