Thursday, December 23, 2004

Jay Rosen, Wonkette, and Scott Johnson of Powerline were on WYNC, public radio in New York City, talking about blogs this morning. Here's the link -- it's screwy at the WYNC page, but I guessed the address from the links that are posted...and voila. Jay spoke about what's going on in Greensboro, which he says has a "very active blogging culture," and a paper that is interested in creating a public forum where the community is informing itself. He thinks blogs will allow reporters for newspapers to extend their network of sources throughout the citizenry, beyond the traditional sources within institutions and power structures -- reporting will now extend horizontally into the citizenry, reporters will see blogs as "learning machines." Wonkette and Johnson have some trouble grasping Jay's point about the new citizen's press informing the larger media culture. Jay: "It's hardly an abstraction, it's happening now," says it's not that hard to understand. Johnson's tale of how Powerline busted Dan Rather was fascinating, but he sounds really arrogant. "Most of the people who do this for a living are not very smart," he blithely generalizes about professional journalists. Sydney and I caught part of this broadcast while running last-minute errands in the NY suburbs. Gratifying to know that folks up here in the provinces are catching up on what's going on in Greensboro... 2:22:23 PM    comment []

Hoggard on how he builds a blogroll. I've been thinking about mine -- have the local aggregators made it obsolete? At our conference this summer, I said all you had to do to be on my local list was have a blog, but the number of local blogs is already too great for that to be practical. My brain is displaying the little hourglass icon on this one. 11:29:22 AM    comment []

NYT: Michael Powell is expected to step down as FCC chair...but the next national nanny may be even stricter. Powell has evolved -- devolved? -- on the job. "Once an unbridled libertarian who championed the abolition of restrictions and expressed little confidence in the government's ability to oversee the media, Mr. Powell, 41, has become an aggressive enforcer who has expanded restrictions on broadcasters." We have standards at our house about what our kids are allowed to watch, what games they can play. Mrs. Cone and I set those standards, we don't need the government to do it for us. We are stricter than some parents, looser than others. The children and I do like to watch sports, and let me tell you that Janet Jackson's nipple was much less of a problem than explaining to my daughter what Cialis and Levitra do, and why all those old people are leering at each other in the commercials. 8:52:34 AM    comment []

Reporter suspended for blog. Think before you type, people. (via Romenesko) 8:13:34 AM    comment []