This is a very sad story. This poor girl’s boyfriend must be traumatized for life also. (Via.)
This is a very sad story. This poor girl’s boyfriend must be traumatized for life also. (Via.)
Am I late to this party? This album has been lying around since April, and I’m only now discovering it? It’s awesome! A+++ super-fast seller! will use again!!1!
Sorry for the BoingBoing link, but THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE THING.
Sorry, one more j-related post: a blog entry by Google’s recently-departed director of consumer marketing comparing Google to another former employer, the San Jose Mercury News. Interesting. As are many of the other posts on Doug Edwards’ new blog. Checkitout.
PART III: Rick is totally right.
(First, see parts I & II.)
When we get past Rick’s sniping at the blogosphere and the broad practice of “citizen journalism,” he begins to make some points I completely agree with:
Some of the pioneer online efforts at community journalism sites suffer a different problem. At the same San Antonio conference, when the topic of super-local sites came up, display pages from NorthwestVoice.com of Bakersfield, Calif., and MyMissourian.com were projected on a screen. Lead stories included “Another Pet Missing, Perhaps Stolen,” plus “New ‘Harry Potter’ is Magnificent,” and pictures from a local family’s summer vacation.
Even as unperfected news forms, blogs and citizen journalism are exerting great influence.At a later meeting, publishers of the two sites were candid about what Clyde Bentley of MyMissourian.com called the banal quality of many submissions. But both sites, by policy, accept anything contributors think worth posting, since participation is a big part of the point.
Generally, whenever a news organization or longtime media professional announces a shiny new “citizen journalism” initiative, I’ve been underwhelmed by the result. It’s like they give everyone in town a blog and aggregate ’em all under a folksy, feel-good banner and bam! “Community news.”
Giving everyone a blog is awesome. Media orgs should absolutely do that. More voices speaking up means a better society, period.
Networking those blogs? Also a fantastic idea.
Lumping all the blogs together and proclaiming it news? Um.
Adrian H. announces the launch of Post Remix, the WaPo’s version of BBC Backstage. Yexcellent.
Yes, that’s Jarah Euston on the front page of Sunday’s L.A. Times, standing in front of the building that gave her super-hott website its banner.
Aside from providing an incredibly well-informed perspective on Fresno’s downtown development and arts-and-entertainment news, it occurred to me this weekend that Jarah is a fantastic editor. On the Fresno Famous blog, Sour Grapes, Jarah puled together bits and pieces of Fresno’s mediasphere that matched my information needs better than any other editor in Fresno could. I think citizen editing hasn’t been paid enough attention, but it’s as vital a function as citizen reporting is. And it can happen on multiple levels, from the collective story judgment of a broad community (see Digg and Tech Memeorandum) to super-savvy individuals like Jarah.
A dream-ish prose poem of reasonable length, by Haruki Murakami, on spaghetti.
PART I: Rick, read more blogs.
Rick Edmonds, a buddy of mine and Robin’s, takes the nascent “citizen journalism” movement to account in an article for Poynter Online. I’m rather disappointed. Where’s Rick’s typically razor-sharp, data-heavy commentary on the outlook of the journalism industry? This seems like Yet Another Meandering Rant Against Blogs. How could someone so smart produce something so wrongheaded?
I can’t blame Rick at all. His rant reflects how other folks from Big Media — including CitJ triumphalists — have come to view participatory media. And it gives me the opportunity to launch my own rant(s). Sorry, Rick.