Monday, June 23, 2003

Monkeytime wants to know what the Bush administration's definition of “is” is.   “(I)t's nearly impossible to prove legally that Bush "lied" about, say, the al-Qaida/Saddam connection…even as his cronies were using every advertising trick in the book to create the impression in the American public's mind that such a link was real…(W)ere Bush & Co. being honest with us about the link? Yeah, tell me another one.”   Monkeymaster Todd Morman also wonders where the critics of the Times and other “liberal” media are when it comes to the lack of skepticism at big papers: “I'll send $10 worth of Krispy Kreme donuts to anyone who can point me to a post where anyone in the rightwing blogger amen chorus has addressed this particular point.” 3:11:04 PM    comment []

Bill Gates in the WSJ (registration required): “I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so irritating.”   Just the way I feel when I get those spams promising to make me a better lover… 8:23:24 AM    comment []

One topic we won’t spend much if any time on at BloggerCon is last year’s question: are weblogs journalism? That’s settled (affirmative). The interesting questions deal with what kind of journalism weblogs can produce.   But not everyone has gotten the memo. Last week I spoke with one of the most powerful execs in online journalism, someone who has a leadership role in defining the traditional media’s use of the Web. He was ready to concede that weblogs could be journalism – of a sort. “Weblogs are for opinions,” he said when I asked if he foresaw newspaper reporters using them.   I countered that although weblog software has made its biggest early impact on journalism as a medium for opinion writing, the software is a tool, not a definition, and the tool is not inherently inhospitable to news reporting. He seemed to grasp the concept.   The next day I interviewed Rick Boucher for my weblog. The article I posted before noon on Wednesday moved the Orrin Hatch vs. the Web story well past the version the bigtime exec’s paper posted at its site that evening. It didn't just feel like reporting, it felt like a scoop.   And the day after that I had lunch with Jim Capo, who began blogging last year to support his run for the NC senate. I told Jim, a small businessman turned political activist, what the newspaper poobah had said about blogs being for opinion, not reporting. “Doesn’t he know you can post photographs on a weblog?,” asked Jim. “They are worth a thousand words, aren’t they? Wouldn’t that count as news reporting?”   Interesting – a non-journalist, eating lunch with my dog and me in Greensboro, has a better understanding of weblogs and their impact on journalism than one of the most powerful media execs in the country. 8:16:46 AM    comment []