STOLEN ELECTION MEMES

A couple of interesting things about a Washington Post article that sets out to fact-check claims Bush "stole" another election.

Mainstream media has been reluctant to acknowledge what happens on the web, or to devote much ink to stories that are driven by cyberspace. That's one of the things that makes the story interesting.

Even more interesting is that in the article, the Post reports that some the theories about election hijinks "are coming from respected sources -- college engineering professors fascinated by voting technology, Internet journalists, election reform activists."

That's the first time I've seen it acknowledged by a big newspaper that there are any such things as "internet journalists." Even if the Post article discredits much of what the web is saying, the acknowledgment that there are journalists operating on the web is an important one.
11:26:11 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

FACES OF WAR

Photographer Anastasia Walsh Infanzon has a touching multimedia piece on six Americans who have been wounded during fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel piece features black and white portraits of the six and brief audio clips of them speaking about their injuries and their futures. It's a wonderful example of how audio and photography can be combined to produce stirring journalism.

SOURCE: The APAD blog.
10:56:30 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

TATTOOS, FREEDOM, BASEBALL

The November issue of Digital Journalist is up and ready to consume a half-hour or so of your surfing time. This issue features two major photo galleries: an artistic look at the role of body marks (tattoos, scarification, etc.) in identity and an impressive spread of photos examining South Africa a decade after the end of apartheid.

Check out Dispatches for a look at the two big events in the U.S. — the World Series and the elections — and make sure to reserve some time for the article on the under-appreciated Gordon Parks.
6:18:01 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

GOOD GRIEF

From I Want Media:

CBS apologized to viewers Thursday for interrupting the last five minutes of "CSI: NY" with a report on the death of Yasser Arafat. The preemption prompted grumbles from viewers.

Grumbles I can understand. But apologizing!?
5:28:34 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

MEDIA FUTURES

Corante has kicked off an in-depth look at how the media world is changing with a lengthy interview with Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine.

Jarvis ranges over territory that's familiar to anyone who reads his blog regularly, but the whole thing is worth reading as the bits and pieces of this thinking on media and the internet are pulled together into one piece.

There's a nice use of the "technology" of the internet, too. Readers have the ability to comment after each section of the interview (and they have), turning the conversation between two into a conversation among many.

The most telling quote from the article?

Have you ever had so much fun in media?

No, never.

I feel the same way: I'm as excited about what's happening as I have ever been excited about anything in journalism.

The interview is the first in a series:

The Future of Digital Media is a two-month series, sponsored by Orb, that explores how the empowerment of the consumer over his or her media experience, coupled with technological innovation that's broadly democratizing media creation, is leading to a revolution in the way people access, consume, share and remake content.

PUSH VS. PULL

There's not much meat in what follows. It's more like a skeleton that I'll be hanging some ideas on in future posts. All part of the process of trying to figure out what this beast called journalism is all about.

I don't claim to being especially smart or have any idea where journalism is headed. Very astute observers and thinkers such as Jay Rosen and Dan Gillmor have offered some possibilities, maybe even probabilities, but predicting the future is a fool's game.

At the same time, I don't doubt that journalism is to some degree broken. There's a disconnect between media and audience.

Mainstream media is push: professionals create it and put it out into the world. Accept it or don't (and falling circulation and broadcast ratings show there are many who don't).

The web is pull: if I want information I get as much of it as it takes for me to understand the story. I go from blog to news site to source document. I read opinions and "interpretations" from every side of an issue, weigh and consider, poke holes in what I've read and then find sources to fill those holes back in. Some of those sources are professional journalists; many of them aren't.

Push and pull are old internet ideas. What's new, and what seems to be hard for many of the internet/blog bashers in mainstream media to grasp, is the idea that their audience is increasingly tired of push and much more willing to pull.
10:21:03 AM  LINK TO THIS POST  

TAKE THAT, INTERNET

From dotJournalism, the UK-based media blog:

The UK's best news websites will be excluded from the 2005 British Press Awards for the second year running.

Organisers have said that categories for best online news site and best online journalist attract too few entries, despite reporting a record number of entries for all other categories in the 2004 awards. They also claim that the standard of entries is not high enough.