Watching the news has always been a necessary evil. It seems filled with tragic and depressing stories. On occasion I have doubted the wisdom in showing what is shown. In an unofficial and unresearched opinion, it seems to me that the more murder suicide stories they show about a man and his family, the more that occur. Sick people are not helped and deterred by seeing the stories. Healthy people are no safer. I’ve had the unfortunate task of going with the police to give news of a murder suicide to a family. Should I Twitter, Facebook, or blog about it?
Paul Carr over at Tech Crunch has written a second time about the subject of unwise and foolish micro-bloggers. My summary: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. We have had storm chasers, now we have Twitter and blogging chasers? It frightens me. Many times I’ve heard Todd Cochrane, the host of GNC, say “I’m not ready to comment on this until I’ve thought it through.” How can we pass on some of Todd’s common sense to the rest of the world?
Censorship and regulation frightens us. Anarchy and absence of accountability scares me much more. I have friends who are citizens of countries other than the United States. They know what it is like to live in a dictatorship or close to it. As a matter of fact I am currently touring countries with much less freedom. I am not speaking without a foreign awareness. The same freedom of the press and freedom of speech that we hold dear, we could be using as a weapon of destruction upon ourselves. We must act responsibly. Hold our tongue. Getting the news out is secondary to immediate concern for the people involved.
This week in Florida a missing baby was found alive. Further news revealed that the mother was part of the disappearance. That baby will forever be etched in the inter-webs and sought after for interviews when she is a teen. “How does it feel to have had your mother fake your kidnapping when you were a child?” Maybe it should be a live Twitter interview.
Well enough of the rant. Next article I’ll give some of my opinions on responsible blogging and micro-blogging. Thanks for reading and taking a few minutes to think through it all before you react.
bloggers
Web Reporting. Can doesn’t equal should.
Posted by Nolan at 5:04 AM on November 8, 2009
Bloggers have it. Newspapers want it.
Posted by Nolan at 6:58 AM on May 23, 2009There are many articles comparing the pros and cons of physical print news versus the online/blogging news. The following lists are not pros and cons but what each group has that the other side wants. What could happen with the merging of the two? Thanks to Tech Crunch for stirring my brain.
What Newspapers Have and Bloggers Want/Need:
- Bloggers have less official access to many press conferences and meetings. Who gets the press pass? How do you get the press pass? Will it not eventually recreate a few sources for news as different agencies pick and stick with favorites? Newspapers made narrowing it down easy.
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Bloggers have less incentive/time to investigate and search out multiples sources. Bloggers seem to surf the web not pound the streets and interview people face to face. Newspapers live that way. - Bloggers write about what interests them, not what interests others. With no boss giving assignments, who will report on those needed but sometimes mundane happenings? Will we be stuck piecing together all of our news from 500 RSS feeds? Newspapers make basic world, national, and local news easy.
- Bloggers are not the one “go to” place for news. Difficult to find a local blogger. I do not know of a single blogger reporting on news in our area of 175,000 people . I guess I would have to look if the paper shut down.
- Bloggers have less accountability/oversight to preserve the truth. I know, I know, that the community could police itself just like Wikipedia. I’m not sure they will or really have the ability. Besides, most people believe whatever they read and probably won’t go back to see any updates or corrections.
What Bloggers Have and Newspapers Want/Need:
- Print Media has a narrow chain of command that dictates what and when news is published. It is no wonder why dictator, communistic, and extreme governments want control of the media? Why are news agencies tending to endorse political candidates? The news has been far from fair and balanced for a long, long time. Blogs are more numerous, yield less individual influence, say what they think, and allow more free interaction.
- Print Media has a need to make a larger profit. Bloggers hope to pay the bills. There is nothing wrong with this. It is the goal of every business owner to make money. Why should newspapers be any different? The problem is that it is a very low margin/no margin business that is about to go on a ventilator. The motivation and ability to survive is decreasing.
- Print Media has a high overhead for getting the news to the reader. Ouch this is number one. Manufacturing and delivery is expensive. Presses are extremely expensive, paper is expensive, labor is expensive, management is expensive, delivery is expensive. The web does it on the cheap. I can deliver the same news to as many people for pennies on the dollar as a blogger. And it won’t take much ad revenue to pay for that delivery.
- Print Media has few ways to guage how much of their content is read. The newspaper does not create a log file ever time my eyes read a certain article or ad. Advertisers are left to subjective decisions on whether business increased because of the ad most of the time. The web brings freedom and analytics.
- Print Media locks down the content and its distribution. There is no open source in this land. Republish the AP article and receive a DMCA. Everything is copyrighted.
- Print media now publishes old news. 24 hours is not soon enough. 12 hours is not soon enough. 2 hours is not soon enough. What do you mean “The game was not finished as of press time”? By the time your article reaches me 36 hours after the game, you have lost me. I can visit a site, use an RSS reader to get the headlines, or subscribe to email updates and text alerts. I do not even have to wait for the “top of the hour”, “quarter of the hour” news on the radio.
Enough of my opinion. What is the real truth? Will you, the community, let me know? Are we really ready for this new world of news?
Mark Cuban. MLB Savior?
Posted by shane at 8:57 AM on August 8, 2008Mark Cuban is among many who are bidding to buy the Chicago Cubs. Whether you like this guy or not it would be fantastic for Major League Baseball, not to mention the Cubs. MLB has had all kinds of troubles over the past decade or so from steroids to player strikes to an incompetent commissioner in Bud Selig. While these things have hurt “America’s Pastime”, it is the refusal to do new things & let the status quo go unchecked that bothers me most. Mark Cuban is one of the brightest people on the planet so I’d be more apt to make him commissioner than just an owner of a single team. As owner of the Cubs he could affect change by changing how his team does things so others will follow suit. I think Mark would have better ideas than turning a blind eye to steroid use just to get attendance numbers back up. He might actually institute some new technology and ideas.
The first thing he could do is make baseball players more accessible to fans. Nascar blew up because the average fan could talk to the drivers and team members in the pit area. His personal blog often covers his NBA team so instantly the average fan will get thoughts on their favorite team from the top guy. The next thing he would do would likely get the Cubs on HDNET as well as their local WGN channel. That would expand the viewership which is already huge for the Cubs. Another improvement he could make is push for better technology for the strike zone which is subjective to which human umpire is on the job. Also he could try to improve the game by speeding it up with a pitch clock that keeps the action going instead of wasting time between pitches. No one has time for four hour baseball games anymore. The biggest thing Cuban could do for baseball is just be different than all the ancient owners that are currently there. These guys likely don’t care about high def, the internet, and have never heard of a blog. Even if you disagree with Cuban’s position on online videos and other issues relating to the web, at least he understands what is going on. He is not stuck in the 80’s or 90’s. As an owner he would have a voice in overall baseball policies. When Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks that team was a joke but he turned them into a perpetual winner with great attendance. Think about what he could do with a team that already has a great fan base.
Likely the powers that be in Major League Baseball won’t allow Cuban to get into their elitist club because they like things the way they are currently. People don’t like change especially when it threatens their powerful positions. It is similar to how old media is holding on for dear life resisting change that is already here. The current leaders in baseball would rather keep things “the way we have always done it” than make a change for the better.
Bloggers as journalists
Posted by todd at 5:20 AM on March 27, 2008I posted a few days ago about old media trying to change to look more like new media, and how this opened a gap for new media to take over the role of true journalism. A post in Gizmodo about the management disagreements within Motorola show that at least in some areas this metamorphosis is quite advanced.
The article shows a copy of a letter from a disgruntled senior manager to the new CEO Greg Brown. It is not a new thing for a disgruntled employee to release information about the company they are unhappy with. In this case the employee was unhappy with the actions in the executive that were driving the company he was dedicated to under. He turned out to be at least partially right.
What would have happened in the past is this would have been sent to a newspaper or TV, and it is a sign that things are changing that this went to a blog instead. What is disappointing is that even though Gizmodo had this before the trouble Motorola was in became public knowledge, it wasn’t until they announced their restructure that Gozmodo realised what they had. This is probably an experience thing though, Gizmodo is used to distributing the news rather than breaking it.
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Some PayPerPost Bloggers Punished by Google Tough Luck!
Posted by geeknews at 8:16 PM on November 17, 2007
All I can say, is that if the bloggers that were punished by Google are in the group of people who did not disclose in their articles that they were paid to post “tough luck”. If you have been disclosing in your post then tough luck for being associated with a company, that many of us thought was highly unethical.
If your pagerank was lowered because of sheer association with PayPerPost, then maybe next time you will pick an advertising partner that will not get your pagerank removed.
Google should go after SEO people like Neil Patel next, and punish bloggers that work under his model of paying for links within bloggers articles and not disclosing that they are paid links and whatever other schemes he and people like him have going.
The thing that is going to be tough for Google to figure out is that people like him work under the radar as much as possible, and he and others like him are part of a very disgusting bottom feeder group that only want to line their pockets with money from companies desperate to be found at the top of the Google search result without having earned that search rank.
The more I here about these Ponzi schemes one thing for sure is that if I read a article on the net today and I don’t 100% trust the source I will treat the article and the links within the article as suspect. IZEA Also Known as PayPerPost
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Microsoft gives Laptops to Bloggers with Vista Loaded!
Posted by todd at 8:12 PM on December 27, 2006The first question I have for those that got Laptops from Microsoft is this. Have you ever been critical of the company? My guess is that just like Santa Clause checking his list to see who has been naughty and nice, my guess is that those bloggers that got laptops have been pretty nice to Microsoft.
Don’t get me wrong I think companies sending out software and hardware is a terrific idea but usually when I get gear like that their is a 30 day time limit and I have to send it back. I hope that these bloggers all disclose the gift and manage to stay objective in the opinions they write.
The question is do these bloggers now have to disclose the gift on every article they write about Vista? It will be a interesting experiment to track the blogs and see how they report on Vista thats for sure. [Wired]
SpeciaL Live event at TechPodcasts.com!
Posted by geeknews at 3:24 PM on September 22, 2005I think the gang over at techpodcasts.com have really outdone themselves working through the agenda today we are going to have a really awesome event. If you are available on Saturday Sept 24th at 1:30 pm Pacific you will want to join us and our 3 guest for this live event.
This will be a comprehensive 90 minute event covering Podcast Hosting, Advanced BitTorrent, Weblog Setup for podcasting using Drupal, Movabletype, Wordpress and Radio Userland we will also discuss Coral and Dijer.
Signup Today
Guest include Peter York from downloadradio.org, Dave Chekan from libsyn.com and Stephan Uebelhor who will be showing us how to get Drupal podcast ready!
Tags: blog, bloggers, Podcast, podcasting, techpodcasts, training
Posted in Podcast, blog, bloggers, podcasting, techpodcasts, training
