EUREKA MOMENTS

I love my iPod. Picked it up yesterday, loaded it up and started listening this morning, primarily getting caught up on the podcasts piling up in iTunes. First up was an old Dave Winer-Adam Curry Trade Secrets, which produced a eureka moment and the first glimmer of hope that I'm starting to understand this new mediascape.

Winer and Curry were talking about podcasting and one of the things they got onto was the congeniality of it all. They were finding people in radio interested in and supportive of the whole idea, unlike Blog World with its outright antagonism between large swaths of the blogging community and "professional" media. Here's some of the thinking that kicked off:

Blogging is the most collaborative thing I ever done. It works (for me) on the spread of ideas: passing along what I've learned from somewhere else (blog, web site, book, magazine, podcast, walking around), adding some thoughts about the significance of it, or arguing with it, or linking it to other ideas and putting it out there. I've always approached this as part of a conversation. Most often, it's me passing on something I've learned; occasionally someone else picks up on what I've written, expands on it and send that out.

I haven't seen any desire in blogs for exclusivity: it's not the scoop, it's the content, and what can be done with the content. Correct it. Fight it. Build on it. The fact someone else has written about something, doesn't automatically put it off limits for the rest of us who feel we have something to contribute.

Which is the opposite of how media works. The base unit isn't the story: it's the scoop. If the local newspaper has done a feature on me, the competition isn't interested (unless the story is too big to be avoided). Nothing gets built, no new voices get added, except and only occasionally through letters to the editor.

Newspapers (and other media) that understand this are the ones that will survive. The ones that are inviting the reader inside the tent, saying "Hey, we need you. Come join us."

Those that continue to insist there is a divide, that a medium like newspaper stands apart from the conversation that is the new mediascape, whether it's blogs or podcasting or whatever comes next (video casts are arriving in a few small ways now), or who think they can somehow reach a place where they take advantage of the conversation while controlling it, will be out of luck.

The new question for media isn't "are blogs (podcasts, etc.) journalism?" but "where do I fit?"
1:55:19 PM  LINK TO THIS POST  

PRIMING THE PUMP

Journalism is on the hot seat again this week, with the news that tough questions asked by troops in Kuwait of US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were fed to the soldier by a reporter.

The Washington Post (registration required) has the story. The lede:

Was what Pitts did ethical? The debate rages and, not surprisingly, where some of the debaters stand on the issue depends on their political leanings. Examples of the Blog World chatter:

I don't see what the fuss is. The "town hall" meeting between Rumsfeld and the troops was a media event, designed to be reported on but without the ability of the media to ask questions. That it went south on the U.S. government (in that actual, critical questions were asked) is the risk run by those who try to control what the media reports.

Too much of politics (and business and sports and entertainment, et al) is about attempts to shape the message. Good reporters find ways to disrupt the phony narrative that the controllers are trying to write.

You can read more at CJR Online and in the forums at Poynter.org.
10:59:40 AM  LINK TO THIS POST  

KEEPING IT TRADITIONAL

Back when I was a newspaper editor, a staple of the Christmas season was the holiday special section and the chance to republish "Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus," the classic 1897 New York Sun editorial.

I'm not going to publish it here, but I will point you to The Newseum, where they've posted not only the editorial, but a link to an image of the original newspaper page and a photo of Francis Pharcellus Church (above) who wrote those classic lines: