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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, 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.

More on bloggers being the best editors, from Chris Anderson. (Cf.)

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.

Read more…

Adrian H. announces the launch of Post Remix, the WaPo’s version of BBC Backstage. Yexcellent.

Awesome.

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.

Read more…

A fascinating New Yorker article last week profiled one of the many claimants to the title of forefather of modern conservatism, Peter Viereck. The article talks about how far conservatism has drifted from Viereck’s ideals, and how some of his greatest fears about the movement have been realized. But the profile ends with an extraordinary passage from one of Viereck’s lectures. It struck me as a wonderful summation of the value and mission of what many of us do, so I’ll share it with you:

What causes the greatest crimes in history? The greatest bloodshed? The most murders? I would say two things: sincere love and a sincere devotion to liberty. … If you kill out of love or for a perfect utopia, you never stop killing because human nature is always imperfect. Robespierre, rightly called “the incorruptible,” was more sincere than Danton and always found somebody deviating just a little bit from true liberty. …

I can think of nothing more gallant, even though again and again we fail, than attempting to get at the facts; attempting to tell things as they really are. For at least reality, though never fully attained, can be defined. Reality is that which, when you don’t believe in it, doesn’t go away.

The Adventures of Pete & Pete is coming to DVD! That’s awesome! That show was surreal in the best way.