Monthly Archives: September 2007

End of an experiment, start of another at the NYT

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So the rumours/unnamed sources had it right: The New York Times really is dropping Times Select. Not only that, they will also open their archives all the way back to 1987. From the announcement letter:

Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online landscape has altered significantly. Readers increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources. In light of this shift, we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers, our brand and the long-term vitality of our journalism. We encourage everyone to read our news and opinion – as well as share it, link to it and comment on it.

Many will be watching this new experiment. From a media business point of view, the interest is in how much ad revenue the Times can build from the increased traffic to the columnist pages and the archive. But there is the cultural significance of an open, rich newspaper archive to consider as well, as Dan Gillmor notes:

Presumably, each article will have a perma-link. If so, watch what happens. The Times’l stories – many of which are definitive moments of journalism – will become the de facto primary sources for people around the Web, and around the world. On topic after topic, the Times story (or stories) will move near or to the top of the search engine rankings.

The people at the Times deserve praise for the way the have removed the subscription wall around the archive. As a coincidence, I had bookmarked quite a few older NYT stories. And the old URLs all work perfectly — they really were permalinks, it turns out. Websites with less foresight could easily have broken all those links.

Now we can research our way through the archive all the way back to 1987 (opening up, to take some examples, unique material from the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Or, why not, the first mention of the Mosaic browser in the NYT.)

Recently Information, the Danish newspaper, opened their archives. Which Norwegian newspaper will be first?

UPDATE: Many weigh in on this one, of course. See Jay Rosen — Jeff Jarvis — posts tagged “timesselect” via Technorati…

Det er bare å stålsette seg. Det kommer mer.

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Forfatterens taushet i møte med reaksjonene var øredøvende etter Morten Strøksnes’ første angrep på borgerjournalistikk, bloggere, nettavisjournalistikk etc. Når Bergens Tidende nå har donert spalteplass igjen, gjentas mønsteret. De mange påstandene om internetts og den brukerstyrte publiseringens ødeleggende virkning på samfunnet blir ikke stående uimotsagt. I artikkelens kommentarfelt og i blogger — se Hjorthen og JonblOGG — strømmer det på med velformulerte motargumenter. Men Strøksnes er like taus, og det er logisk. Han må holde kjeft, for hvis han engasjerer seg i dialogen som meningsmotstanderne inviterer til, vil han begynne å undergrave sine egne teser. Det ville jo vise at rasjonell og intelligent debatt på nettet er fullt mulig. Det kan han ikke tillate, for det begynner å bli åpenbart hva denne BT-serien skal lede fram til: en bok om internettkulturens elendighet, utgitt på Kagge Forlag. Her kommer et gratis forslag til tittel: “Amatørkulten. Hvordan internett perverterer demokratiet og gjør oss alle til egoister”. Det kunne nesten ha vært noe Strøksnes hadde funnet på selv!

(Pedantisk note: Time kåret sin årets person 2006 i desember, ikke januar.)

Quality in Wikipedia: what scientists can do

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“Wikipedia isn’t generally useless, but its usefulness is rather limited, especially when one needs information that can be trusted,” Norwegian Associate Professor of philosophy Lars Fr. H. Svendsen claimed this week.

I’m afraid this is a representative attitude among Norwegian scientists and scholars to Wikipedia, if they have an attitude at all. Wikipedia is kept at arm’s length. A study would probably find that few of them know how Wikipedia is edited and how the process of quality control works.

More constructive approaches are possible. German public service broadcaster ZDF reports from a seminar called “Wikipedia-Academy” in Mainz on how some humanities scholars in that country engage with Wikipedia (the German language version is the second largest overall). Translator of literature Josef Winiger (64) received a prize from the German Wikipedia community for his work on the article about the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. Now there’s a challenge for Svendsen and his colleagues.

In another ZDF article, Professor Peter Wippermann says that the scholars in reality need Wikipedia more than the encyclopedia needs them. The humanities are facing a growing legitimation pressure — the ivory towers that scholars can retreat to are getting ever more scarce. Because of that, scholars in the humanities need to market their knowledge through Wikipedia, he says: At Wikipedia they can legitimate themselves again and give something back to society. (Thanks to Daniel for the tip).

UPDATE: Svendsen’s article is being discussed at the Tinget (Village Pump) page of no-Wikipedia.

Re: future of newspapers

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You don’t often hear that Apple is getting pushed too little by the media, but Dan Gillmor says that is the case with the new iPod touch:

News-folk: You should be aiming at least some of what you produce at the screen on this WiFi enabled audio/video/Web machine. This is breakthrough territory, way beyond what the iPhone even suggests.

And it looks hübsch indeed. All the video and music presentation aside, I wonder how well it works for web browsing and reading of texts.

Ruglete nettvalgslalåm

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Med sin kombinasjon av oversiktlig og hyppig oppdatert resultatside og stødig strøm av TV-bilder gjennom bredbåndet, er NRK nettvalgvinneren hos denne blogger. Særlig stort pluss til tickeren på resultatsiden, der fylker, småkommuner og valgkretser i byene kommer om hverandre. Det er jo dette som er spennende ved lokalvalget. På valgvaker blir man en ekte politikernerd, og jeg vil gjerne vite resultatet både i Sirdal, Askvoll og Alta, for ikke å snakke om St. Hanshaugen bydel. Dette er kvelden for å hylle de regionale og lokale forskjellene.

VGs side så bra ut i de sekundene jeg fikk den opp, men gjentatte forsøk over en time nyttet ikke. Jeg kom ikke inn! Når skjedde det sist på en av de store nettavisene? Aftenposten hadde en resultatside som ikke virket i Firefox, mens NTBs vanskelig lesbare søylegrafer som mange nettaviser hadde satset på, fikk stå i fred for meg. På TV 2/Nettavisen savnet jeg essensiell informasjon om hvor stor andel av stemmene resultatene var basert på.

Men kveldens mest sjarmerende var Haugesunds Avis’ utsendte Kai-Inge Melkeraaens live-kommentar til folkeavstemningen i Odda:

Jeg har fulgt med på tellingen i Odda og ja-bunken er klart høyest. Det må tas forbehold om at forhåndsstemmene og stemmene fra Tyssedal og Røldal ikke er med i denne tellingen, men foreløpig ser det ut til å gå mot et ja til Unesco i Odda.

Oppdatering: Melkeraaen var nok for kjapp på avtrekkeren. Hardanger Folkeblad melder at det ble nei til at Odda skal opprettholde søknaden om Unesco-status for sine industriminner. Det var knappest mulig margin – 99 stemmer!

Blog Action Day: October 15

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I like the simplicity of this initiative: mobilize as many bloggers as possible to write about the same topic on the same day. The environment is the chosen issue, and the organizers do not try to push a specific environmental agenda. Thus they avoid the controversy that would come with an activist approach, but might instead achieve more in terms of attention and awareness. Is this one of the ways to organize a global public sphere? Good luck!

Kjapt notert

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I lett blanding, noe av det jeg har notert i det siste som det ikke er tid til å fordøye, ennå:

  • Talentspeiding i 2007: …foregår for eksempel på YouTube. Dagbladet Magasinet om hvordan Tommy Dales amatørvideo fant veien til en Dunkin’ Donuts-reklame.
  • Gratis sms-nyhetsvarsel fra BBC: Andreas Lunde lærer bort hvordan man får dette til via Twitter.
  • Bedre web-klima i DN?: Dagens Næringsliv er en utmerket avis, men de har liksom aldri fått det til på nettet. Satsingen har vært for liten, for stor eller konseptet har vært feil. Med sin klima-serie med globalt perspektiv tar de revansj. Men bare delvis. Det er flott at disse gode reportasjene gjøres tilgjengelig i nettutgaven, men det er tydelig mest klipp og lim fra papirversjonen. Noen optimalt tilpasset web-presentasjon er ikke dette.

Backlog clean-up: From newspapers to shrimp farms

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Impossible to digest all the news and views I would like to comment on, so here are just some of the most recent links for now:

  • Newspapers in 2020: Jeff Jarvis and Dave Morgan write essays for the World Association of Newspapers. File under “future of newspapers” (via Blogspotting)
  • Citizen journalism in Germany: Peter Schink reports from a German journalism seminar session on myheimat.de, a citizen journalism concept out of Southern Germany. An editorial team of 15 picks stories from 4500 contributors for printed freesheets which reach a combined circulation of 120.000!
  • Video virus: Viral Video Chart is a way to browse all those videos that spread faster than you can say H5N1. Currently based on tracking of videos from YouTube, MSN and Google Video.
  • The columnist game: James Fallows on a critique of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat by economist Edward Leamer (thanks, I didn’t know about that one). Friedman explained to Fallows how a successful columnist works (in Fallows’ words): “In the columnist game, you don’t sell things 51-49. You decide what you think is right, and you push that all the way. So, he could have more accurately said that the world is “flattening,” but that wouldn’t have had the ooomph.” That 51-49 formula probably works just as well for blogging, but what do you do if your motivation is to question and probe? (i.e, if your formula is, say 60-40?)
  • Shrimponomics and “carbon” banks: Passport at Foreign Policy magazine is one of those few indispensable blogs. A couple of recent posts: On shrimponomics where we are told that shrimp farming is one of the reasons mangrove forests are dying. And on Morgan Stanley’s carbon bank, a partnership with Norwegian Veritas.
  • E-books, finally? Googlezon give it a try.

Lokale borgerjournalister i tidsklemme?

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Stavanger Aftenblad skal lansere 40 ultralokale nettsteder primært basert på brukerskapt innhold, melder Dagens Medier (via Mediefunderinger). Noe av motivasjonen skal være konkurranse fra VG Nett. Også Dagbladet er jo i gang med å engasjere de brave lokale borgere via sin Blink Lokal, som meldt her før. Og det er kjent at lokalaviser som Firda har sine bidragsytere rundt omkring på bygdene. Det finnes sikkert enda flere eksempler.

Hvor skal dette ende? Det blir åpenbart kamp om den skrive- og kameraføre amatør framover, selv om konseptene er forskjellige (Aftenbladet skal deske bidragene, mens det går rett ut på Blink). Hvem vinner? De store har musklene og ligger foran teknologisk, men en skal ikke undervurdere verdien av de ultralokales tilknytning. Og hvis de lokale vinner fram, står vi kanskje foran en oppkjøpsbølge av den siste rest av uavhengige lokalblekker?

Danish Information: open archive, open source

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The venerable Danish newspaper Information has just relaunched their website, and they have done it in style. Editor Palle Weis writes that from now on the archive will be free (containing articles going ten years back), making Information’s choice another example of the enduring power of free. The newspaper will use tagging to help the user navigate in the new and old material, and the site will link to external sources, because, as Weis says, Information cannot cover everything themselves:

The most important thing for newspaper readers is not whether we or anybody else have written the article. We believe that the internet user will return to information.dk — as long as we send them to substantial articles that are worth reading.

And maybe the most original: Information is made completely with the open source publishing system Drupal. They must be one of very few traditional newspapers to choose such a radical solution. In fact, there is a small club forming — The Open Source Newspaper.

Information began its existence as an illegal newspaper in Nazi-occupied Denmark. It is left-leaning but has always been fiercely independent and is well-known in Scandinavia as a quality newspaper. (via Dagens Medier).