Wednesday, February 02, 2005

I loved my friends like brothers. They died at the hands of terrorists. Their memory is insulted by this guy. They were not imperialists, or even imperialist dupes. But you know what? The slandering bastard should be allowed to speak. 6:35:36 PM    comment []

They say he's a model prisoner... 6:13:05 PM    comment []

NYT's Daniel Okrent responds to criticism of Iraqi blog article. Not exactly rigorous self-criticism, except when compared to culture editor Jonathan Landman's contribution. Landman calls Jeff Jarvis, who complained the loudest to the Times, a "conservative blogger," as if that was why Jeff went Jarvistic on reporter Sarah Boxer. Does this mean that Lisa and I are conservatives, too? Jarvis responds to Okrent here. 3:50:17 PM    comment []

An article on blogs that make are making a difference in local politics, at Personal Democracy, written by Sam Hieb and yours truly. "In a nation of one newspaper towns and muted local discourse, bloggers are pushing traditional journalists by gnawing hard on local issues. They're reading legislation, attending city council meetings, questioning the coverage and editorial posture of the local press -- and forcing people to take notice of issues that might otherwise be ignored." 3:37:53 PM    comment []

I've had this conversation many times -- isn't the real revolution the Web, or the Internet, not blogs? Yes and no. There comes a moment where a technology becomes so cheap and easy to use that it becomes ubiquitous, and that's a new thing, a social change built on the original technology change. Think about the brick-sized car phones that were so amazing in the '80s, versus the routine use of mobile phones now. Blogs make personal publishing ubiquitous, and that is a huge new thing. I think journalist David Akin, who makes the first point -- the one about the net being the real revolution -- in the conversation cited above, sets up the second point about ubiquity by saying, "It seems wholly unremarkable to me that I'm blogging. I've been online for more than 15 years and reporting on the Web for almost 10. Whenever a new tool pops up to let people communicate, I jump in. That's my job." Right, he's the guy with the brick-sized car phone. The next revolution -- the one about blogs -- is the social change. Now everyone can do what the journalist has always done. People who know nothing about the history of the web that birthed blogging can now publish online with free, simple software. I really don't care if it's called a revolution or not. I think I'm adopting as my progress-of-blogging motto the line I used at the end of my post on whether Greensboro's blog culture is overhyped: It is what it is. Related: Akin at his own blog, in a post titled "Why do I blog? Why would any journalist blog?" "I write; I publish. And that used to be the end of it. Now, I write, I publish and a community of people who have special knowledge or who are deeply interested in the topic amplify, correct, modify, or extend the reportage." 11:41:34 AM    comment []

Ministry of Propaganda update from the Boston Globe: "The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his website. Jeff Gannon calls himself the White House correspondent for TalonNews.com..." 11:20:55 AM    comment []

Happy birthday to Ayn Rand and James Joyce, special mention to Bill Murray. 7:20:44 AM    comment []

NYT book reviewer William Grimes, on Simon Singh's new tome: "'Big Bang' is a happy book. More than the history of a single theory, it is an argument for the scientific method and for the illuminating power of human reason...From Eratosthenes to Einstein, as Mr. Singh tells it, is not such a big leap. It's a big series of small leaps, a golden chain of reasoning that links all the cosmic travelers in his sweeping drama." 7:12:15 AM    comment []

Alessandra Stanley on the legacy of Johnny Carson: "It would be nice if the late Johnny Carson could be remembered a little less reverently; then perhaps some other talk-show host could shake up a format that has not been altered or improved upon since Mr. Carson retired." Special shout-out to Ms. Stanley: congrats on making a non-breast-related appearance at my blog! 7:08:30 AM    comment []