Monday, October 20, 2003

"The most powerful piece of software inside Microsoft may be the $40 application from a tiny vendor called Userland that Robert Scoble uses to write his weblog."   Corporate America is behind the curve on blogging. So when the mad genius asked me to start writing a column for Baseline, I knew right away what the first one would be about.    The Scobleizer vs. Cerberus the Hound of Hades appears online today, and will run in our upcoming print edition.   Many of the ideas in the column were hashed out in Halley's great Sunday session at BloggerCon. Thanks to Halley, Doc, Dr. Weinberger, Phil Wolff, and all the others who helped frame this discussion -- drinks on me next time you're in Greensboro. 1:02:48 PM    comment []

Glenn Reynolds, who's been all over the Easterbrook donnybrook, makes one of the best points I've seen about Easterbrook's sacking by ESPN -- the writer might have saved himself had he used his webblog quickly to explain and apologize for his remarks. Lawrence Lessig sees a problem of media consolidation in Easterbrook's firing by Disney-owned ESPN after criticizing Disney boss Eisner. Jay Rosen accepts Easterbrook's apology, but guest blogger Jeff Sharlet does not. And Josh Marshall reminds me of a key reason I don't live in DC or NY -- the clubby journalistic culture. Lost in all the navel-gazing is the essential awfulness of Easterbrook's TMQ column. It's been sent down the memory hole at ESPN, but you can read the older version by searching the Slate archives. The guy does for football what George Will does for baseball. 11:10:56 AM    comment []