Category Archives: Media ecology

Journalisted.com

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This is an interesting development — a website funded by the Media Standards Trust which enables users to find out more about working British (er, and Irish) hacks. I’ve just run a search on myself (purely in the interests of research, you understand), and it comes up with the interesting factoid that I’ve written 59,700 words in 75 articles spread over 14 UK news websites since 2007. Not sure how accurate this is (and there is another John Naughton who writes about film and stag night videos for outfits like the Sunday Times and Radio Times so some of his stuff may be wrongly attributed to me — and vice versa). What is impressive, though, is that the site correctly identifies my most recent pieces. It also claims that I write more about Google than about anything else (with Microsoft a close second according to the tag cloud), which may well be true. But then those two companies are the biggest threat to our freedoms, so no apologies are called for.

En passant, Bobbie Johnson of the Guardian has just tweeted to say that Journalisted.com is claiming he’s written 250,000 words in the same time. Ratebuster!

Interesting Twitter application #257

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From Steven Johnson.

A few months ago, I flew into London to give a talk at the Handheld Learning Conference, which had put me up at the Hoxton Hotel. I'd arrived late at night, and when I woke up, I realized that, for the first time in my life, I was waking up in London with no clear idea what neighborhood I was in. That seemed like precisely the kind of observation/query to share with the Twittersphere, and so I jotted down this tweet before heading out to find a coffee:

Waking up at the Hoxton Hotel in London — strangely unclear as to what neighborhood I'm actually in…

When I came back from coffee, I discovered, first, from a batch of Twitter replies that I was apparently in the neighborhood where half my London friends lived and worked. And then I noticed the envelope that had been placed on my desk. I opened it up, and it turned out to be a note from a producer who worked with Sir David Frost. They had noticed on Twitter that I was in London, and said they were very interested in having me talk with Sir David about Everything Bad Is Good For You for his show on English-language Al Jazeera.

Wapping comes to Wall Street

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This morning’s Observer column.

You might think this is all a storm in an online teacup, but in fact it's a revealing case study of how our media ecosystem has changed. What happened is that reporters on a major newspaper got something wrong. Nothing unusual about that – and the concept of "network neutrality" is a slippery one if you're not a geek or a communications regulator. But within minutes of the article's publication, it was being picked up and critically dissected by bloggers all over the world. And much of the dissection was done soberly and intelligently, with commentators painstakingly explaining why Google's move into content-caching did not automatically signal a shift in the company's attitude to network neutrality. Lessig was able instantly to rebut the views attributed to him in the article.

Watching the discussion unfold online was like eavesdropping on a civilised and enlightening conversation. Browsing through it I thought: this is what the internet is like at its best – a powerful extension of what Jürgen Habermas once called "the public sphere".

And the Journal’s response? A snide little “roundup” on its website about critical responses to the article which – it observed – “has certainly gotten a rise out of the blogosphere”. Instead of an apology for a seriously flawed piece of journalism, it produced only a celebration of the outrage its errors had generated. Verily, the Sun has come to Wall Street.

Because my Observer column is limited to about 800 words, there’s a lot more I’d like to have said about this episode. It would have been nice, for example, to have been able to point to some of the more illuminating commentaries on the WSJ story. For example:

  • Google’s response
  • Scott Rosenberg’s comments
  • Larry Lessig’s scathing remarks on how he was misrepresented
  • Siva Vaidhyanathan’s observations
  • Timoth Lee’s comments in Freedom to Tinker
  • John Timmer’s ArsTechnica post
  • Tim Wu’s observations

    I could go on, but you will get the point. This was about as far as you can get from the LiveJournal-OMG-my-cat-has-just-been-sick media stereotyping of blogging. It was an illustration of something that has always been true — that the world is full of clever, thoughtful, well-informed people. What has changed is that we now have a medium in which they can talk to one another — and to newspaper reporters, of only the latter are prepared to participate in the conversation.

    I’m searching for metaphors to capture what has happened. One image that comes to mind is that of a vast auditorium or sports arena which is packed to the rafters. In the centre is a stage with a very powerful public address system capable of generating tremendous amplification. Only a few people are allowed onto the stage to speak. When they do, everyone in the stadium can hear them. But they can’t hear the audience; or if they can it’s only as an undifferentiated roar. The performers cannot hear any individual voice.

    That’s how it was when newspapers and broadcasters were in their prime. As someone who was first invited onto the stage in 1987 (and has been performing on it continuously ever since), I always felt that it was a privileged position, which carried with it commensurate responsibilities. No doubt many other journalists and columnists felt like that too. But as a group we took our privileged position for granted, and most of us didn’t notice that our technological advantage — the amplification provided by the mass-media publication machine — was eroding. Nor did many journalists notice that network technology — the ‘generative Internet’ in Jonathan Zittrain’s phrase — was busily providing members of the audience with their own global publishing machine. So suddenly we find ourselves in an arena where our amplifiers are losing power, and individual members of the audience can not only talk to one another, they can shout back at us.

    But actually, most of the time they don’t want to shout. They want to talk. They think we’re wrong about something that they know about. Or they feel we haven’t done a subject justice, or maybe have missed a trick or even the point. The challenge for mainstream journalism now is whether its practitioners want to participate in the conversation that’s now possible. My complaint about the WSJ’s reaction to the blogosphere’s reaction is that it evinced a refusal to participate. The errors made by its reporters were serious but for the most part understandable; journalism is the rushed first draft of history and we all make mistakes. The tragedy was that the Journal saw the blogosphere’s criticism as a problem, when it fact it was an opportunity.

    • Google’s Gatekeepers

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    Sobering piece by Jay Jeffrey Rosen exploring the critical role that Google’s corporate gatekeepers play in deciding what can and cannot be shown to audiences.

    “Right now, we’re trusting Google because it’s good, but of course, we run the risk that the day will come when Google goes bad,” [Timothy] Wu told me. In his view, that day might come when Google allowed its automated Web crawlers, or search bots, to be used for law-enforcement and national-security purposes. “Under pressure to fight terrorism or to pacify repressive governments, Google could track everything we’ve searched for, everything we’re writing on gmail, everything we’re writing on Google docs, to figure out who we are and what we do,” he said. “It would make the Internet a much scarier place for free expression.” The question of free speech online isn’t just about what a company like Google lets us read or see; it’s also about what it does with what we write, search and view.

    Source: NYTimes.com.

    Ed Felten adds this:

    Rosen worries that too much power to decide what can be seen is being concentrated in the hands of one company. He acknowledges that Google has behaved reasonably so far, but he worries about what might happen in the future.

    I understand his point, but it’s hard to see an alternative that would be better in practice. If Google, as the owner of YouTube, is not going to have this power, then the power will have to be given to somebody else. Any nominations? I don’t have any.

    What we’re left with, then, is Google making the decisions. But this doesn’t mean all of us are out in the cold, without influence. As consumers of Google’s services, we have a certain amount of leverage. And this is not just hypothetical — Google’s “don’t be evil” reputation contributes greatly to the value of its brand. The moment people think Google is misbehaving is the moment they’ll consider taking their business elsewhere.

    Pulitzer Prizes to Accept More Online Work

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    NY Times story:

    Bowing to the rapid rise of news distributed digitally rather than on paper, the Pulitzer Prizes will begin immediately accepting submissions from online-only publications.

    The Pulitzers, administered by Columbia University, are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards for American newspaper reporting and commentary. Beginning with the 2009 prizes, which cover work done in 2008 and which will be presented in April, Internet newspapers and other news organizations that publish online will be considered for all 14 of the journalism awards, from international reporting to criticism. The deadline for submission for 2009 is Feb. 1.

    “This is an important step forward, reflecting our continued commitment to American newspapers as well as our willingness to adapt to the remarkable growth of online journalism,” Sig Gissler, the administrator of the prizes, said in a statement. “The new rules enlarge the Pulitzer tent and recognize more fully the role of the Web, while underscoring the enduring value of words and of serious reporting.”

    The changes to the rules were approved in a board meeting last month. The online publications must publish at least once a week and be “primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing stories,” according to the revised eligibility rules. Web sites that exist primarily to aggregate news or post commentary will not be eligible, and decisions about eligibility will be made on a case-by-case basis, the board said. Print magazines, television stations and their Web sites will remain excluded.

    The Pulitzers began to accept submissions of print newspapers’ online material in 2006, in two breaking news categories.

    Link: NYTimes.com.

    Blogging’s mid-life crisis?

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    I missed this post by Nick Carr. Thoughtful, as ever.

    I was a latecomer to blogging, launching Rough Type in the spring of 2005. But even then, the feel of blogging was completely different than it is today. The top blogs were still largely written by individuals. They were quirky and informal. Such blogs still exist (and long may they thrive!), but as Boutin suggests, they’ve been pushed to the periphery.

    It’s no surprise, then, that the vast majority of blogs have been abandoned. Technorati has identified 133 million blogs since it started indexing them in 2002. But at least 94 percent of them have gone dormant, the company reports in its most recent “state of the blogosphere” study. Only 7.4 million blogs had any postings in the last 120 days, and only 1.5 million had any postings in the last seven days. Now, as longtime blogger Tim Bray notes, 7.4 million and 1.5 million are still sizable numbers, but they’re a whole lot lower than we’ve been led to believe. “I find those numbers shockingly low,” writes Bray; “clearly, blogging isn’t as widespread as we thought.” Call it the Long Curtail: For the lion’s share of bloggers, the rewards just aren’t worth the effort…

    He also draws (and discusses) an interesting between blogging and amateur radio in the early years of the 20th century.

    Managing spikes

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    Fascinating post about current traffic patterns on the Net.

    Lately, I see more sudden eyeballs and what used to be an established trend seems to fall into a more chaotic pattern that is the aggregate of different spike signatures around a smooth curve. This graph is from two consecutive days where we have a beautiful comparison of a relatively uneventful day followed by long-exposure spike (nytimes.com) compounded by a short-exposure spike (digg.com):

    The disturbing part is that this occurs even on larger sites now due to the sheer magnitude of eyeballs looking at today’s already popular sites. Long story short, this makes planning a real bitch.

    And the interesting thing is perspective on what is large… People think Digg is popular — it is. The New York Times is too, as is CNN and most other major news networks — if they link to your site, you can expect to see a dramatic and very sudden increase in traffic. And this is just in the United States (and some other English speaking countries)… there are others… and they’re kinda big.

    What isn’t entirely obvious in the above graphs? These spikes happen inside 60 seconds. The idea of provisioning more servers (virtual or not) is unrealistic. Even in a cloud computing system, getting new system images up and integrated in 60 seconds is pushing the envelope and that would assume a zero second response time. This means it is about time to adjust what our systems architecture should support. The old rule of 70% utilization accommodating an unexpected 40% increase in traffic is unraveling. At least eight times in the past month, we’ve experienced from 100% to 1000% sudden increases in traffic across many of our clients.

    The Digger: You dug yourself a huge hole

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    It’s always a mistake to under-estimate Rupert Murdoch. Here’s what he’s been saying recently.

    “My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the Internet is this: It’s not newspapers that might become obsolete. It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers,” said Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corp. He made his remarks as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corporation.

    Murdoch, whose company’s holdings also include MySpace and The Wall Street Journal, criticized what he described as a culture of “complacency and condescension” in some newsrooms.

    “The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly–and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception.”

    The 77-year-old Murdoch, recalling a long career in newspapers that began when his father’s death forced him to take over the Adelaide News in 1952, said the profession has failed to creatively respond to changes wrought by technology.

    “It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news–and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened,” Murdoch said. “Today, editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog, and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven’t always responded well when the public calls them to account.”

    To make his point, Murdoch criticized the media reaction after bloggers debunked a 60 Minutes report by former CBS anchor Dan Rather that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard.

    “Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively,” Murdoch said. “During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. 60 Minutes, he said, was a professional organization with ‘multiple layers of checks and balances.’ By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as ‘a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.’ Eventually, it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Rather and his producer to resign.”

    Murdoch continued: “Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone. A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let’s be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.”

    […]

    Despite the blemishes, however, Murdoch said newspapers can still count on circulation gains “if papers provide readers with news they can trust.” He added that they will also need to embrace technology advances like RSS feeds and targeted e-mails. The challenge, according to Murdoch, will be to “use a newspaper’s brand while allowing readers to personalize the news for themselves-and then deliver it in the ways that they want.”

    Murdoch concludes that “the newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world.”

    Dr Internet

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    This morning’s Observer column

    A detailed academic study some years ago estimated that 4.5 per cent of all internet searches were health-related, which at the time translated into 16.7 million health-related queries a day. Again, I’m sure that number has gone up.

    All of which suggests that people worry a lot about their health and see the web as a great way of becoming better informed. The medical profession is, to put it mildly, not over the moon. The more literate practitioners shake their heads and quote Mark Twain’s adage: ‘Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.’ But others are more righteous and wax indignant about what they see as the errors and misinformation peddled by many sites that purport to deal with health issues…

    LATER: I had a moving email from a correspondent who lives on the other side of the world. I’m quoting it verbatim except that I’ve anonymised it.

    In 2005, my second son, arrived in a hurry. We were living in Southern Japan at the time.
    Following what had been another wonderful pregnancy, my wife and I were not at all prepared for the shock of his arrival and his condition.

    It turned out our son was born with congenital cytomegalovirus. Once I learned the name of what it was that had ravaged his body, I obviously turned to the Internet, including PubMed. Alright, so I am familiar with research, indices, journals et cetera, I was at the time an Associate Prof., and I am fairly well read. So perhaps I am not your average punter, but nevertheless within 24hrs I had read almost all there was on the research and treatment of cCMV.

    The good folks at the National hospital, had similarly gone off to look this one up. But their research was almost entirely based on what was in-print in Japanese.

    We had both come to similar, but not identical conclusions. One, and only one treatment was available, a chemotherapy over the course of 6 weeks may save his sight and his hearing. The Registrar wanted to begin immediately. I said No.
    I had read about the dangers of the chemo in seriously compromised infants, and through the internet had managed to reach doctors at Mayo, U. of Alabama, Melbourne Sick Kids, Sydney Royal, and Great Ormond Street, never mind almost 100 parents of kids with cCMV, through a list-serv.

    The overwhelming advice, albeit guarded, and with lots of back-out clauses, essentially said, ‘Wait, let the infant recover from the trauma of birth, treat some of the minor conditions, and in a week or so’s time – then start the chemo. If you start it now – he will die.’.

    It was a very hard call – going against the doctor’s advice in Japan. But I did. To say they were not happy is a bit of an understatement. I subsequently moved my son a few days later to a newer prefectural hospital, and another NICU team.
    He began the chemo course at 10 days old, in a much stronger condition, and he got through it. He can see, and despite being told he was going to be severely deaf, he can hear.

    While I could have rung around using old fashioned telephones, there is no way I could have been as informed, and armed with knowledge without the Internet.

    I have no doubt it saved his life.

    My son is now 3, and is truly the happiest child you could care to meet.

    STILL LATER: Jeff Jarvis picked up on the column and added:

    In my book, I argue that – as with other apparent problems in industries – there is opportunity here. Doctors should act as curators, selecting the best information for their patients and making sure they are better informed.