Mark on Media

Sunday, January 2, 2005

WILD PING

If you've come to this site because of a ping related to an older item, sorry. For some reason, my blogging software went nuts and republished a year's worth of posts and seems to have sent out a number of pings based on links in them.
11:40:42 PM LINK TO THIS POST

REQUIRED READING

To help you understand what's going on in the madly, quickly changing world of journalism:

Mark Glaser at Online Journalism Review, surveys some of the best minds around for his Bloggers, Citizen Media and Rather's Fall -- Little People Rise Up in 2004. It's a look at some of the astounding changes in media in 2004 as well as a peek ahead, from such luminaries as Jay Rosen and Steve Rubel.

When you've digested that one, Tim Porter writes about why newspapers are unwilling to change in the aptly titled Rethinking the News Factory (Again). He says:

The value of a newspaper is its relevance to the community it covers and until the editors and reporters in the newsrooms examine their own work through the eyes of that community then all the publisher's millions spent on hardware will be good money tossed after poor journalism.

Finally, Jay Rosen will help you get your head further around what's happening with his Top 10 Ideas of 04: "Content will be more important that it's container. It's Number 6 in his continuing series on the trends and ideas that are reshaping journalism.

You may not see the value in keeping up with these ideas, which may seem to have little connection to the day-to-day reality of journalism. But journalism is being reshaped. The ideas expressed and explored by Glaser, Porter, Rosen and others are being put into practice. We are not far away from a time when major media is going to start adapting some of those changes, out of either a genuine desire to improve or out of self-defense as their readership continues to dribble away.
8:15:23 PM LINK TO THIS POST

SHOWING, AND HELPING

VII Photo, an agency that represents some of the world's leading photojournalists, has two galleries of photos from Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami. The photos, by John Stanmayer and Gary Knight, show the startling devastation, both to the land and the people. (Warning: some of the images are graphic and disturbing.)

The agency is doing more than bearing witness to tragedy: the photographers are donating 10 per cent from the sale of all photos of the disaster to relief efforts.
6:37:08 PM LINK TO THIS POST

GIVE ME REWRITE

The experiments in reader authorship continue. Lawrence Lessig, who wrote the essential Free Culture is updating and revising his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and seeking "expert" help.

Beginning in February, we'll be posting Version 1 of Code to a Wiki. "Chapter Captains" will then supervise updates and corrections. Depending upon the progress, sometime near June, I will take the product and edit and rewrite it to produce Code, v2. The Wiki will stay live forever (under a Creative Commons license). The edited book will be published in the fall. I have donated my advance for Code, v2 to Creative Commons. All royalties beyond the advance will be donated as well.

Reader involvement played a huge role in the publication of Dan Gillmor's We The Media and J.D. Lasica has also used the interactivity of the internet to great effect. These efforts show the power of conversation, the ability of a community of interested people to come together and create. (Lessig and the others walk the walk, using Creative Commons licenses to make the fruit of the collaborative effort freely available. I have two copies of Free Culture, the hardcover book and, on my laptop, a PDF version that I downloaded for free — legally.)

Newspapers could learn from this: bring the readers into the mix, not as consumers or receivers, but as full collaborators in the continuing process of covering community.
7:45:44 AM LINK TO THIS POST