Listics

Vlogging is what’s now I guess.  Here’s a link into Vimeo…

Tom’s coming out of hibernation.  You read it here first. 

Jeneane Sessum announces that pre-registration opens next week for the spring Blogging and Media (BloMe) Conference.

There’s a blogger named Hugh Hewitt who has an ax to grind.  The webcred conference didn’t invite any faith based bloggers.  I think they should have invited somebody who maintains a teardrop trailer wiki, but NOOO… so much for sensitivity to design, sensitivity to cultural nuance.  Intolerant, that’s what I call it.  But enough about me.  Let’s talk about Hugh.

Ed Cone shared portions of an email exchange he had had with this right-wing guy, and Hewitt called it unethical.  Of course nobody would have known it was Hewitt if he hadn’t outed himself.  Cone ethically provided his correspondent with anonymity. 

I’m reflecting on the conscious use of blogs and news media to influence rather than to reveal.

Surfing some blogs that thing happens… a moment of synchronicity.  Maria at alembic muses about Walter Benjamin.  And  wait!  Wasn’t I just just having a Walter Benjamin moment with Tom Matrullo?  And of course it is likely that Maria had her WB synapses fired by the same post some time in the last week and so Benjamin rose to the surface for her as she crafted the post in question, but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is, is it art?  Is journalism art?  Is blogging?  Why and when and when not and why?  Art both defines and transcends credibility.  That "Voice thing" that bloggers are always so on about, that’s about art isn’t it?  And that inverted triangle of a news story they teach the high school kids to write… isn’t that just another genre?  Here’s what Maria shares as she ponders the value of building an "audience" for her blog.

In the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of
the receiver never proves fruitful. Not only is any reference to a
certain public or its representatives misleading, but even the concept
of an “ideal” receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consideration
of art, since all it posits is the existence of and nature of man as
such. Art, in the same way, posits man’s physical and spiritual
existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his response.
No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no
symphony for the listener.

Walter Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator" (Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt)

Thanks to Norm Jenson for this link to Monbiot in the Guardian:

George Monbiot
Tuesday   January   18, 2024

 
 On
Thursday, the fairy king of fairyland will be recrowned. He was elected
on a platform suspended in midair by the power of imagination. He is
the leader of a band of men who walk through ghostly realms unvisited
by reality. And he remains the most powerful person on earth.

In this article, Monbiot, a journalist who also blogs, makes persuasive arguments about the lack of credibility of mainstream American media.  Norm quotes the passages beginning, "The US media is disciplined by corporate America into promoting the
Republican cause The role of the media corporations in the US is
similar to that of repressive state regimes elsewhere: they decide what
the public will and won’t be allowed to hear, and either punish or
recruit the social deviants who insist on telling a different story."  This speaks directly to the question of credibility of American journalism.  The article is illustrated with examples that reinforce Monbiot’s point.  As an American, I bristle when I hear the US called a "repressive regime," and this kind of labeling detracts from Monbiot’s ability to make his point here.  Nevertheless, his point is true.

I’m particularly grateful for the link because I’ve been puzzling over this from Tom Matrullo a few days ago:

Another possibility holds that the middle class was already given all the necessary
tools in the Constitution. Still, the aggressive affirmation of its
ideology should at least betray itself in history in the form of some
State-determining manifestation.

E.g., the one we have now. So
long as we do not think of history as a merely linear series of events,
howsoever justified in remembrance, but rather consider that causes can
follow effects, as well as precede them, that, indeed, as Benjamin and others
have noted, the future can be what is shaping the past, it’s possible
to argue that Mr. Bush and his incestuous Goonsquad are shoring up
USian middle-class protectionism with every breath they take. This
administration was necessitated by the gawdfearing millionaires whom it
both affirms and metaleptically heralds.

Paul Lukasiak has posted an open letter on the Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility conference web site in a comment thread where it might get lost.  (Update: 1/20 - here is the link to the comment thread where the "open letter" first appeared).  It speaks to the financial interests of one blogger, but there are many bloggers attending who have interests to advance.  The market for innovation on the web remains wide open, and the potential for discussing the merits of options for investment in the blogging community is probably greater in the blogs than in the dead-tree financial pages that necessarily focus on large cap enterprise with a nuanced treatment of venture and start-up efforts.

This is the fourth estate that’s under discussion, a part of our culture that arguably should be publicly financed and not for profit… there’s a strong sentiment and good arguments for a public press that go back to the 18th century. Paul’s issues deserve an airing even though I don’t really agree with him.  I think credibility is an implicit conveyance of truth.  I don’t see why market based local web pubs shouldn’t have a place in the panoply of news products available on the net.  Still, it would be interesting to hear from people at the conference how they think market driven funding issues will affect our ability to communicate credibly.

Here is the letter Paul wrote:

Jeff Jarvis, JoBloCred, and Conflicts of interest

An Open Letter to the Journalism, Blogging, and Credibility Conference:

This
is not about Jarvis’ political views. Its about how his personal
financial interests interact with the JoBloCred conference.

Jarvis’s
latest scheme is related to his involvement in “Advance Internet”.
Advance is connected to a number of media companies. And they’ve
decided to get into the community blogging business.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_01_17.html#008902

Everyone
recognizes that journalism has deteriorated because media corporations
no longer see “news” as the product they produce, but are in the
business of manufacturing audiences for advertisers. And these
corporations are scared to death of the internet, and what it means in
terms of audience control.

So Jarvis has come up with a
“solution”, an aspect of a “new business model”. That solution involves
creating “a half-dozen town blogs in those markets – new, group blogs
(using iUpload) to which any neighbor can contribute. …The idea is
that… people may not want to start their own blog but they have plenty
of news to contribute to their communities: opinions, news updates,
sports reports, photos, calendar items, and so on.”

Jarvis is
upfront about the real goal here….not information dissemination, but
advertising. “The hope is also that once we have a critical mass of
content in a town from all these sources, a critical mass of audience
is sure to follow. This means, we hope, that we can target ads down to
the town level and automate them, saving the cost of sales and
production, and price them in such a way that we can serve local
advertisers who heretofore could not afford to market in big papers.’

Now,
the implications for journalism, and blogging credibility are immense
here. First off, its going to eliminate a buttload of jobs for
journalists, as “bloggers” do the “reporting” from town council
meetings, football games, etc. And when that happens, very real
questions of “blog credibility” will come into play. The average
journalist has no personal stake in whether East Podunk decides to
change its zoning laws, but the “news bloggers”, the people who will be
blogging about the town council meetings where the zoning decisions are
made will have a decided interest in those laws. But not only is the
very idea of objective local journalism at risk—the opportunity for
corruption of information rises exponentially when a community relies
on “news bloggers.”

Then, of course, there are the obvious
questions about what happens when a blogger criticizes “Joe’s Meat
Market” when “Joe” is advertising on the site.

Now, these
are all very important questions….but you are giving someone who has a
specific financial interest on these questions the “leadership” role in
the discussion of “new business models” and how “ethics and standards”
will be affected by them. Do you really expect that he is there to
discuss this from an intellectually honest position? Or is his
intention to give you a sales pitch for an idea that is going to line
his pockets if it receives your endorsement?

It is people like
Jeff Jarvis who are trying to destroy what it best about the
blogosphere, and what little remains of journalistic standards. And I
don’t understand why you are letting him get away with it!

Paul Lukasiak
awol@glcq.com

Having run down information on most of the participants in this week’s conference, I’m ready to share a crude matrix.  Participants may be thought of as round pegs, and these categories may be thought of as square holes.  My brute force assessment may be thought of as the hammer.

Categories that interested me were Media, Academia, and Funding/Policy/Support.  Each of these areas is represented by men and women who either maintain weblogs or do not maintain weblogs.  Let’s pick on Jay Rosen.  He’s a male blogger in the Academia category, one of five.  Berkman fellows (e.g. Dr. Weinberger) and fellowettes (you know who you are) may or may not be pleased to find the hammer pounding them into the Academia category.  But that’s how it is on this pass.

Of the 48 participants, I count 14 women.  Maybe this is the point to insert the error disclaimer.  It’s cold, i have my socks on, my computation is therefore limited to the fingers on my two hands.  And the thumbs.  All errors are my own.  But here follows a reasonable approximation…

14 women, 34 men.  Four of the fourteen women (less than 1/3) maintain blogs including one who picked up the tool this month.  Eighteen of the thirty-four men maintain blogs. 

This is a gathering of high achieving individuals, and in some ways they defy categorization. Fifteen people are primarily active in media efforts (13 men, 2 women) - writing, production, leadership.  Sixteen people are primarily active in Academia (10 men, 6 women).  And seventeen people (11 men, 6 women) fall into this awkward Foundation/Association/Support category, including five men who blog and are active outside Academia - Hinderaker, Trippi, Wales, Sifry, and Winer.  An argument could be made for moving Hinderaker and Winer to the media category, but let’s not for now.

The MacArthur and Pew participants, the people from the ALA, and the five blogging businessmen have abiding interests in the evolution of the fourth estate and how blogging may be playing a part in that evolution.  The journalists and the academics have perhaps open minds, but also perspectives shaped by industry influence and training.  The crossover bloggers among them (fifteen of the thirty-one people in those categories) can be expected to have had their perspectives altered somewhat by their blogging community experience.  Others, such as the MIT media lab people who do not blog, will still be sympathetic to the sociable experience of long tail bloggers.  Mass media afficionados will be more sympathetic to the work of achieving A list status.

What does this all mean?  Where will these people go with the opportunity they have to shape a conversation about how the media can regain a respected position in American culture?  Do these people even acknowledge that the press has been subordinated to the whims of powerful interests in business and government over the last ten or fifteen years?  Do they see that blogging can help restore credibility to public media, can help free the free press?

How can we get money to Gilmor and B!x to help them do the work they’ve set out to do?  How can we help a thousand B!x’s bloom?