Saturday, December 04, 2004

ACC Hoops: How good is Carolina? 8:49:42 PM    comment []

BuzzMachine goes Jarvistic on Brent Bozell: "I am a parent and you do not speak for me." Another exquisite screed. 5:42:33 PM    comment []

Jeff Jarvis on how to make money with weblogs: "I don't know. Wish I did. But I don't. " He does round up some of the current wisdom on the subject. 12:39:42 PM    comment []

"Derrida was the bad reader par excellence, who had the gall to conceal his scholarly recklessness within a theoretical framework." From an un-appreciation of the late scholar and theorist, via the remarkable Greensboro blog Backwards City. 10:59:49 AM    comment []

Dave Winer says that "none of the professional reporters, in hundreds of articles about blogging, predicted the importance of bloggers before they became important." The continuing cluelessness -- denial? -- of some in the mainstream is a genuine phenomenon, but I think Dave paints with too broad a brush. Wired did spend several pages profiling Winer in May 2001. We didn't come out and say, we predict bloggers will be remaking mainstream journalism by 2004, but we did let Dave explain a little about this new phenomenon: Internet publishing, Winer contends, can be more powerful than print journalism, given its immediacy and lack of corporate or governmental filters. "I hope in the next war there are people with weblogs to let the world know what's really happening. It should be like a militia, like the Second Amendment. You can't beat the US government with handguns, but you can with information." And: "That's the immediacy of writing on the Web," says Winer. "You get strong opinions from people with authority, and it's what they really say, not what they sound like when they're talking to Fortune." And one of my favorite quotes: "To me, the Web is not about getting rich. It's about users, designers, stories, and pictures. It's a writing environment." I don't know that anyone could have predicted exactly how the weblog revolution would play out, but I think Wired (not me, I was just a reporter on assignment, although it was an assignment that would have a profound effect on me) deserves some credit for drawing a bead on Winer and his vision for blogs and journalism pretty early in the game. Subsequent to that article, I've written my share about the potential of blogs, and probably more important, I started blogging. I think the actions of pros like Josh Marshall and Jim Romenesko, who embraced the form early, speak louder than words... 10:33:29 AM    comment []

Adventures in (temporary) single fatherhood: I braided Sydney's hair before her show this morning. Somehow I made it to 42 without braiding anyone's hair, but Syd was clear on the instructions and patient along the learning curve -- to get a good, tight braid, you really need to pull harder than you think you should on your baby child's head. Now I know. 10:24:26 AM    comment []