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  • Pete Ashton 12:38 pm on July 24, 2009 | 1 Permalink
    Tags: davewiner, journalism, power

    Sifting Dave Winer for the good quotes. Sometimes he gets it spot on. (Not always though!)

    What worked for HBO won’t work for news

    I love The Wire. It’s the best TV series ever. I’ve paid for it twice, once on HBO and once on DVD. So I not only believe in paying for content I love, I practice it. Redundantly!

    [Redundant practice is an interesting concept. Buying a CD because you want to reward the band even though you already downloaded the mp3s is a redundant act.]

    I just don’t think the reporter model is working. All it does is inflate the self-importance of these people, turn them into gatekeepers, and often bullies. People who behave like the power brokers they’re supposedly covering.

    [I've been thinking for a long time journalism is too tied up in power. The Murdoch factor trickles down to the front line. Just as we need to remind politicians they are servants to the people who elect them, so we also need to imbue that sense of public service into journalism, at least if it wants to be supported as an essential service.]

    I also think there’s a need for aggregation, but it’s a practice people like Simon often mock. In fact reporters base their work on generous people who contribute their knowledge for free — sources.

    Seeing the social web as your rolodex on steroids with ESP is a no brainer.

     
  • Pete Ashton 9:39 am on July 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink
    Tags: journalism, ,

    Today the Birmingham Post published a rather silly article about social media. Interestingly while it was mainly about Facebook the title was John Lamb: Banalities of Twitter. Soon enough the Twitter-using folk of Birmingham picked up on this and piled into the comments making it the Post’s biggest story of the day according to the editor. That alone is interesting (is traffic to the Post’s site so low that a few hundred hits from the likes of us can tip the balance?) but it was the phenomena that really got me. And since it’s complex and nuanced I decided it would best be explained with a couple of captioned photos.

    poortwitterjoke1

    baby%20prairie%20dogs

    M’fellow traveler Chris Unitt used the first one in his riposte which was nice but they really were supposed to be read as a pair, so here they are.

    Yes, they’re not that funny. Yes, I can do better. That’s why they’re on this blog rather than ASH-10 proper.

     
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