For a scholarly journal, the recently published volume of First Monday has some really superb titles. Who can resist headlines such as “Loser generated content” or “Interactivity is evil”?
Category Archives: Blogs and the media
Frustrated Goliath
The saga of Bild-Zeitung vs. Bildblog has a new chapter. The huge newspaper wants the German press council (Presserat) to stop accepting complaints from the small, but famous watchblog. The workload those complaints (12 to date) place on the organization is just too large, and besides, the Bildbloggers just do this to generate fuzz which generates ad revenue for themselves. The Bildbloggers answer, while we just shake our heads in disbelief. What a mountain of arrogance a big newspaper can amass over the years.
See also:
A slow blog movement?
“Maybe it’ls time for a “slow blog” movement,” suggests Andrew C. Revkin in a post on the (excellent!) New York Times blog Dot Earth. Revkin has a very good point. Again and again we can observe this reflex-like reaction to statements and soundbites that are often already taken out of their context, such as the Bill Clinton quote Revkin refers to. No, it doesn’t seem like many people take the trouble to read transcripts to see for themselves what was actually said. But how much has this to do with blogging specifically? You could argue that politicians, pressure groups and what have you jump on such opportunities very willingly, and are in turn quoted by the media. The bloggers can of course join in and amplify the effect. On the other hand, the web has also made the opposite effect possible, the long tail, if you will. After a while, corrections and new interpretations can get “play” and be noticed, in the way that I noticed Revkin’s post and thought about it. Oh, and since the post is a few days old, this response must be proof that slow blogging is possible!
In medias craze
Borrowed the headline from Sarah Boxer. OMG (or ÅMG), I think it could be an advantage not to have English as a first language when blogging in English. Just have to exploit it more instead of writing like we learned in school. I wonder how the blog language of Norwegian-Americans on the prairie sounds. Lots of ja, ja, ja, like in “Fargo”?
Deserved election victory
Wonkette has some urgent and brilliant political analysis on the Ukraine election:
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is claiming victory in Sunday’ls national elections (in Ukraine) and the Orange Revolution blah blah blah oh my god she is still smoking hot.
It doesn’t get any worse in the commentaries. Tymoshenko’s website must be the most photo-heavy of any politician. OK… get serious now… here are the official results… (via Global Voices!).
Can bloggers free Burma?
No, but they have a role to play. There is a real danger now that the outside pressure on the generals will drop. A lack of new developments and the regime’s attempts to impose a news blackout will make it harder for the media to keep up the intensity of the coverage. That’s why I support the International Bloggers’ Day for Burma on Thursday October 4. By altering the visual impression of the web through as many participating blogs as possible, this campaign can help refocus the public’s attention. A selection of excellent graphics have been made available, or you can pick from the Flickr group or produce your own.
Meanwhile, the people at Why Democracy have posted a selection of ways to do something about Burma.
Economist feeding bloggers
The Economist has definitely left the laid-back mindset behind. Not content with opening their online archives and making the whole print edition available online, here’s another aggressive step to build traffic: Feeding bloggers stories from the upcoming print edition before publication. The top 100 US political bloggers, that is (hm, do we even have 100 political bloggers in Norway?). Placing stories in other media is something publications have been doing for ages. That bloggers now get the “honour” is an example of how important they are seen as producers of buzz and attention for the traditional media (via Medievärlden).
Blog Action Day: October 15
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!
Backlog clean-up: From newspapers to shrimp farms
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.
The enduring power of free
The ongoing discussion about Murdoch turning WSJ.com into a free site and the rumours about the NYT dropping Times Select and making all their material freely available — it’s so familiar. The media business worldwide has been discussing the question of free/ad-based vs. paid/subscription on the web for at least 12 years. But it keeps coming back at us, and the free model wins — almost every time. I think this is because audiences are still growing online and web publishing is becoming more and more dynamic. More and more people are using the web actively, and this keeps driving innovation and new possibilities for those media companies who understand the power of free.
It’s so clear when you read Jarvis’ analysis. What sounds more like a winning strategy — trudging along with the WSJ.com subscription model, gaining a few thousand new customers per year? Or this:
By going free and with Murdoch’ls investment in the product – that is, in the reporting and services and with his promotion – WSJ.com can become the unquestioned leading financial information brand worldwide, winning over its many competitors: Yahoo, Reuters (now stronger with Thomson), AOL, FT.com, Forbes, MSN, CNBC. But that will happen only if it goes free. (…) The reason to go free is to explode the brand and make it many times bigger – internationally – than it is today.
Related: The Freakonomics blog is moving to the New York Times site. A scoop for the site. And a model for the future; big news sites hosting popular blogs and enhancing them with journalistic resources?
UPDATE Aug. 14: Advertising Age with another in-depth piece on the same topic, that also mentions The Economist and CNN dropping their online subscription models and going free. Note the trade-offs that have to be considered, as Jeff Lanctot of Avenue A/Razorfish puts it: “As demand grows, your prices can rise more quickly (…) In a subscription business, your pricing is pretty stable.” The Norwegian example is relevant here: For years, the most popular sites have at times been fully booked on their most valuable ad space; hence they have increased the prices.
(Times Select rumour via Tid og Tanke (in Norwegian). Ad Age story via Martin Jönsson).