Digital culture
ddobbs | February 1, 2009In an interesting essay at Slate's The Big Money, Jill Priluck argues that book authors must "transcend their words and become brands" if they're to sell books. Andrew Sullivan agrees :
My own view is that the publishing industry deserves to die in its current state. It never made economic sense to me; there are no real editors of books any more; the distribution network is archaic; the technology of publishing pathetic; and the rewards to authors largely impenetrable. I still have no idea what my occasional royalty statements mean: they are designed to be incomprehensible, to keep the…
ddobbs | January 27, 2009
The Neiman Journalism Lab ponders the question:. :
Why has Rich embraced linking when his peers have not? "CThe theory was: Why not be as transparent as possible by showing sources, when we could?%u201D he told me recently.
and
Rich says his linking is as much about backing up his argument as it is about adding background. If oneâs argument is only as good as oneâs facts, Rich sends you to his facts. âNow, sometimes itâs unlinkable material,â he says. âBut why not give the reader, if he or she wants to, the opportunity to see the sources, or a source, when itâs available? It helps…
ddobbs | January 27, 2009
I'm rapidly seeing that Twitter isn't all bad after all. I've little taste for it when used primarily as a social net -- though I can see the attraction for some, especially people with free time in big cities. (I have no time and live in a tiny town...). But as this story shows, it's a tremendous resource for tracking breaking news and discussing issues or topics. Like being in a big room with lots of conversations going on around you; you can pick which to track, drift in and out, chime in or even get insistent, or close the tweet window and step out for some quiet.
Plus you get a…
ddobbs | January 23, 2009In explaining How Not to Fix the New York Times, Felix Salmon identifies many assets that help make the Times so invaluable -- and which may be hard to replicate in a more fragmented media world.
The challenge for a New Media that seeks to replace newspapers rather than supplement them will be to either replace those assets, which include not only sources and clout but long-digging reporters and ever-vigilant editors -- or somehow find substitutes that get the same jobs done.
Hat tip: Daily Dish
ddobbs | January 22, 2009"'I would die if I had to live here." - Tweet from a PR consultant landing in Memphis to give a presentation.
"A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write." - Email sent soon afterward to PR consultant from client he was visiting in Memphis.
Careful what you tweet. Read the whole story.
Hat tip: Ben Goldacre ... via Twitter.
ddobbs | January 20, 2009While some have chided Michael Hirschorn for offering the Huffington Post the as the most promising template for replacing print newspapers, another candidate Hirschorn mentioned has been strengthening its bid to combine access, clout, and experience with a Media 2.0 agility and energy (as recommended by top self-appointed MSM/blogosphere observers). Talking Points Memo just launched TPMDC, a DC office, and just substantially strengthened its DC bureau by adding the print-journo veteran Matt Cooper, most recently of Portfolio.
The premise is simple. Though the phrase is endlessly…
ddobbs | January 19, 2009I stirred some ire last week when I asserted that the Times (for -- disclosure dept -- whom I sometimes write) and similar mainstream papers offer a public good through their unique combination of a) access to information and 2) clout with the public and government. Several readers took me to task (see the comments section of the post linked above), arguing that these papers have failed their public mission by dropping the ball several times lately, most notably during the run-up to the Iraq War. "Let the dinosaur die," is the argument. In a similar vein, some science bloggers (see this post…
ddobbs | January 13, 2009
Caleb Carr Crain on why he remains pessimistic about reading despite the recent National Endowment of the Arts report showing a reversal last year in a 25-year decline in reading. It's a good consideration of several ways i which the data might be a mismeasure or a misleading anomaly.
Why aren't I celebrating the new numbers about the reading of literature? First, the numbers are good, but they're not that
Second, another of the NEA's measures shows a continued, stubborn decrease. To the question "With the exception of books required for work or school, did you read any books during the last…
ddobbs | January 13, 20091. Andrew Sullivan trashed Bono for his Times column (judge it yourself and summarize it in a contest if you'd like) -- and trashed Bono's lyrics as well.
2. A reader objected, saying Bono's lyrics weren't ALL so bad.
3. Sullivan half-conceded -- and posted this video.
Mess not with Andrew.
ddobbs | January 13, 2009
Steven Waldman: Why the Huffington Post Can't Replace The New York Times
The idea that the Huffington Post, or the explosion of interesting internet news or blogging sites, can replace journalistic institutions like the New York times or other newspapers or dinosaurs of the mainstream media truly misunderstands the web, newspapers, journalism and the serious threat posed to democracy if the news gathering institutions fail.
I think Waldman has this right. Michael Hirschorn's Atlantic piece pondering the death of the Times is plenty interesting, and good food for thought. But -- even aside…
ddobbs | January 13, 2009Rolling deadlines have kept me from the blogging desk, but I can occupy it long enough now to call out a few items that either haven't received as much coverage as they might have -- or that have gotten several interesting hits.
⢠At Huffpost, Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee offer the FDA a three-step program:
Step One: Admit that you are currently powerless over the industry you are supposed to be regulating. You have let Big Pharma take over your life. You have become dependent on drug company money that comes from the Prescription Drug Fee User Act (PDUFA) of 1992, and over the…
ddobbs | January 9, 2009The bloggers at the design firm Pentagram know how to write a lede:
During the financially dismal 2008 holiday shopping season, one product held up nicely: bras.
Some great design worth exploring there, from the outfit that did the signage for the front of the Times building and the Atlantic redesign.
ddobbs | January 8, 2009
When I lived in NYC and had the Village Voice close at hand, I loved reading Nat Hentoff, whether it was on jazz, politics, or whatever else excited him.
He got laid off yesterday, at 83. His farewell column makes it clear he's got more left to say.
Around the country, a lot of reporters are being excessed, and print newspapers may soon become collectors' items. But over the years, my advice to new and aspiring reporters is to remember what Tom Wicker, a first-class professional spelunker, then at The New York Times, said in a tribute to Izzy Stone: "He never lost his sense of rage."…
ddobbs | January 6, 2009Yikes. "Creepy" only starts to get at it. Will Saletan at Slate describes a program DOD hopes to develop that will give the children of soldiers sent away a sort of avatar parent to replace the one Uncle Sam is busy using:
For ages, we've been telling children that ghosts aren't real. But DOD has just put out a request for proposals to create what are, in effect, virtual ghosts. Another truism of parenting is about to become untrue.
The announcement, from the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, requests "a highly interactive PC or web-based…
ddobbs | January 5, 2009
With this post, and with pleasure, I bring the blog formerly known as Smooth Pebbles -- now Neuron Culture (mark your RSS readers!) -- back to Scienceblogs.
Seventeen months ago I said farewell to this Scienceblogs home, at least for a time, because I had not found blogging a comfortable fit. Since then, however, as I blogged off in the hinterland, I've come to better see how this slippery but flexible form can hold a valuable place in both my own writing and in the changing world of journalism.
I've been particularly swayed by the work of bloggers innovatively exploiting the immediacy,…
ddobbs | December 16, 2008Is there such a thing as internet addiction? Mind Hacks says the debate should be over:
A study just published in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior has reviewed all of the available scientific studies on internet addiction and found them to be mostly crap. And not just slightly lacking, really pretty awful.
To quote from the research summary:
The analysis showed that previous studies have utilized inconsistent criteria to define Internet addicts, applied recruiting methods that may cause serious sampling bias, and examined data using primarily exploratory rather than confirmatory…
ddobbs | December 16, 2008I don't play no stinkin' video games, but this is odd enough to be interesting Boing Boing reports, in two different posts, that
a) Some employers are apparently discriminating against World of Warcraft players on the grounds that their heads are always within the WoW and not fully in this one (a stance that some WoW players agree with),
but
b) Obama is apparently NOT one of those employers, as he hired at least one WoW player -- Kevin Werbach (aka Supernovan Jenkins to WoWers -- to head his FCC transition team.
I'm not brave enough to speculate on what this means.
Technorati Tags:World…
ddobbs | December 16, 2008Forgive if I'm obsessed with this death-of-journalism thing -- Andrew Sullivan has a nice piece in the Times of London about dying newspapers. Like Surowiecki, he fears the loss of the deep reporting that newspapers are already doing less of, and for which so far we have no real replacement venue.
Stunning stat from the story: The Baltimore Sun, a pretty big and renowned paper (and the basis for The Wire) gets about 17.5 million page views a month. Sullivan's blog at Atlantic gets 23 million:
The operation largely run out of my spare room reached many more online readers than some of the…