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2009by Jon GarfunkelHere's a question you don't ask everyday: how many people are the victims of human trafficking in the Boston area? by Jon GarfunkelWith the country focused on the theatrics of the Presidential transition, Ben Smith of Politico reminded his readers of some of the mechanics of it-- particularly the transition away from using instant messaging ("Obama staff will say cu l8r to IM"): 2008by Jon GarfunkelSome of my recent research led me to a book by Tom Rosenstiel, Strange Bedfellows: how television and the presidential candidates changed American politics 1992. 2007by Jon GarfunkelIn an ideal publication, every online article has a consistent URL format, which remain permanent, and every article allows threaded comments. In reality, few major newspapers follow these simple rules. This alone partly explains the popularity of weblog and CMS platforms like Drupal (used here), which support these. (Incidentally, Clark Hoyt announced yesterday that the Times will be supporting comments on every article.) by Jon GarfunkelPick any item that's been in the news. It's quite likely that a Huffington Post contributor has taken a stab at it-- and left it bleeding. by Jon GarfunkelIn Unread Alerts, I suggest that anybody with a cell phone ought to know the contact points for their local news organizations. Finding the contact information is a different maze on each site. by Jon GarfunkelThat somebody in America can publish antisemitic literature to encourage hatred and bigotry is regrettable, but it is protected by the First Amendment. That said, YouTube is a private service, and their community guidelines prohibit hate speech. Well, some user JewsWorldPower signed up three months ago, and this person does things like posting copyrighted video from the Colbert Report with antisemitic text in the description alongside. Surely Stephen Colbert has even less interest in being associated with antisemitism than he does in having his video pirated. by Jon GarfunkelThere are a few sites which provide a summary of, and a search within, print/online news stories: Google News and Topix are the obvious leaders. But there's nothing comparable for television video, let alone audio. by Jon Garfunkel “The Public Interest has had more influence on domestic policy than any other journal in the country - by far,” wrote David Brooks in his Times column in March 2005, after the quarterly had finished its forty year run. by Jon GarfunkelThis document lists the various groups I am inviting for assistance on the PONAR (Protocol for Online Abuse Reporting) project. As I get endorsements and sponsors I will update this document. Ordinary folks who are the aggrieved partiesI was directly motivated to start this effort based on conversations over the years with people who have been the victims of online abuse and harassment. I have expressed some of the early formative ideas of PONAR to members of victim's aid group are taking their considerations quite seriously. by Jon GarfunkelI thought up a number of concerns with CommResp; I may add to this list. Why bother? Can't commenting policies be written in plain English, or just applied ad hoc?The articulation CommResp is intended to serve two purposes. One, to serve publishers and readers in directly communicating what rules apply. But more importantly, it should suggest the realm of possibilities for what rules there can be. by Jon GarfunkelI had some questions for the Intellipedia project, the wiki-based, open-editable encyclopedia for use in the U.S. intelligence community. I'm a bit late in responding to Clive Thompson's article Open Source Spying in the New York Times Magazine from December. Naturally the subtitle "Could blogs and wikis prevent the next 9/11?” caught my eye, due to my work in teasing out the different claims of technology boosters claiming to have solved the larger problems of information retrieval. Case in point? It's not just the ability to find information; I was able to find the article by giving Google the search terms Thompson Times Magazine. I also needed to evaluate the quality of that article, and whether any information was out of date. That problem is hard (ie., not yet automated). The blogs, by themselves, don't do anything at all to solve it. The favored blog search engine, Technorati, lists 341 blog posts linking back. How do I find the needle in that haystack? (Wikipedia was at least helpful by suggesting related sources for Intellipedia.) The general problem of a blog community as an echo-chamber I have discussed at length in the New Gatekeepers series of two years ago. 2006by Jon GarfunkelOne of the more damning things about evidence is that there are usually parties who want it removed, such as by the accused. 2005by Jon GarfunkelI had thought of going to the Online News Association conference
in NYC this past weekend, but I passed and read the commentary
online. All I'd wanted to do was just ask some questions of some
members. I figured it's just as easy to ask on the mailing list.
by Jon GarfunkelSome questions to ask to help you determine one blog from the next. This is a short quiz to spare you from having to read the 5,000-word essay on Presenting Blogger Archetypes that I wrote in March 2005. This essay replaces one poorly titled The Four Questions-- as there are now five questions for five categories.
by Jon GarfunkelWhile the podcast medium has not ushered in much of a revolution so far-- downloadable audio files have been around for years now, and their marriage with RSS has not made it that much easier to skim them, as it has for bloggus bloviatus, the common blog-- there is one use where the aspect where podcasters make a brilliant use of the format. by Jon GarfunkelAs I've missed much of the debate over site syndication (RSS), I just wanted to put this brief question out there: will RSS ever take into account that Internet content may change over time, and thus it's helpful to indicate the recent change, and reason, explicitly in the RSS summary?
by Jon GarfunkelInterviews are very underrated in the world of online media, and there's a great potential for doing more of them. It's a way to write if you don't know what to write about. I think also there's a good way to avoid the self-focus inherent in blogs. An additional person forces an additional perspective into the story. So I thought I'd ask to see what other people in online news are doing in this area.
by Jon GarfunkelThis should be the central obligation of any publisher: legitimacy to the readers, the audience, the constituency. Whether it takes priority over responsibility to the public at large, or even the truth, is a separate, though necessary, discussion. Here we try to help anyone new to publishing consider-- questions to ask in assessing how well they are serving their readers. It's absolutely necessary as the number of readers grows. Call it the Media Contract. (read a longer introduction on media legitimacy)
by Jon GarfunkelWhen Jay Rosen proclaimed that in 2004 News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation" it's clear that he values conversation. I'm still holding out for a good conversation on his PressThink site, so fortunately for us, Shelley Powers has submitted her own thoughts on conversation. I thought I'd ask some questions about conversations and news.
by Jon GarfunkelWhy study the Daily Kos? Is it possible? Is it necessary?
Quite simple. Consider it in evolutionary terms. There are some necessary long-term objectives of your community: grow. colonize. survive. (Paul Lukasiak suggested I rearrange this document so people can get right to the questions. For details about the questions, read the rest of the document.)
- Does dKos have room to grow?
- Among the "Big Five" most read bloggers by journalists (according to a study this past summer), there's only one liberal site-- Talking Points Memo. Is this a problem? dKos is further down the list. Should it crack the top five?
- Do the sheer number of contributors make dKos stronger?
- Why be part of dKos, and not be part of MyDD? From a handful of measures, dKos is 10x bigger; what if there were two equally strong collectives to crack the top 5?
- Do you consider yourself part of the blogosphere?
- Do you see any values or methods used on dKos which should be shared with the larger blogosphere?
- Would you see a benefit in extending Scoop to institutions which are considering setting up blogs?
- How much do you use the dKosopedia vs. the classic Daily Kos diaries?
- How about the citizenry and local party leaders/activists? Should they be engaged through dKos? or through scoop-like sites, or through anything in the netroots?
- Do you understand what Kos's ethics are?
- Are you worried that, given Kos's penchant for saying what's on his mind, he may put the entire website in jeopardy? considering all that you have on the website.
- Do you think that Kos is deserving of the revenue for the site? Has anyone considered a revenue-sharing program? Or, at least a way to offer reward top contributors with prizes?
I'd post on my own in Kos, but I don't have a diary yet, so Paul said he'd try to post this in his. I suppose it's easiest if dKos members want to post their answers on there and not here. I hope that this is even more helpful for the dKos community than it is for me. I originally started out writing a piece on Kos as an instution/advocate/observer, particularly related to the DNC Chair race and netroots efforts-- this had 7500 words by the end of Decemeber. I held onto it do a little more research, and to work on other things. I now realize I ought to continue the research after the DNC Chair race is decided. This discussion is incidental, but is very helpful in shedding light on the big picture.
2004by Jon GarfunkelThanks to the Rob Walker's article in the NY Times today -- the media does not get more elite or mainstream than that-- I learned about BzzAgent, the company that pioneered Word of Mouth marketing over two years ago. The article also the curious story of David Wallace, a London man who began a cult all by himself simply by asking people to sign up. They do good deeds.
by Jon GarfunkelJust how coordinated was the Kerry-Edwards campaign in Florida?
First, some background. A couple of weeks before Election Day, the Republican party obtained a hard copy of the Democrats' 46-page "Victory 2004 Florida Coordinated Campaign" and posted it online (in PDF format). The GOP claimed that this document, which had a page for signatures from the Kerry-Edwards campaign, the state party, and union groups, proved that the Democrats were engaged in illegal coordination betwe. The Democrats responded that the coordinating committee was in fact an independent entity allowed by the law, the Florida the Republicans were engaged in the same. The Republicans said they'd file suit with the FEC.
by Jon GarfunkelChristopher Hitchens left a particularly biting assessment of the fortieth President in Monday's " Fighting Words" column in Slate, including this characterization:
"Ronald Reagan was neither a fox nor a hedgehog. He was as dumb as a stump. He could have had anyone in the world to dinner, any night of the week, but took most of his meals on a White House TV tray. He had no friends, only cronies...."
by Jon GarfunkelWhen I heard that President Bush had given an interview on Al Hurra television, I recalled that this was the Arabic satellite channel funded by you and me, the American taxpayers. So I was curious what sort of programming we were sending out this evening, or any evening. How popular the 3 month old network is has not been well reported, but early reviews derided it as poor propaganda. by Jon Garfunkel"I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it."
--President Bush's immediate response to a question about what his biggest mistake was after 9/11, and what he learned from it.
Putting aside the question of where the Bush's quote ranks with other incredulous answers in uttered in Presidential news conferences (cf. Eisenhower on whether he could give an example of a major idea of Vice President Nixon's that had been adopted in his administration: "If you can give me a week, I might think of one."), as well as how grace under pressure is perceived as a reliable indicator of leadership (Eric Rauchway considers these in Altercation today), not too mention, after three years, is this guy still embarassingly underprepared for the most important job on Earth? let's actually consider the point.
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