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From the Wall Street Journal, by William K. Bulkeley and James Bandler:
"Howard Dean's presidential campaign hired two Internet political "bloggers" as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals, according to a former high-profile Dean aide.
Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for Mr. Dean's campaign, made the disclosure earlier this week in her own Web log, Zonkette. She said "to be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment — but it was very clearly, internally, our goal." The hiring of the consultants was noted in several publications at the time.The partisan Democratic political bloggers who were hired by the Dean campaign were Jerome Armstrong, who publishes the blog MyDD, and Markos Zuniga, who publishes DailyKos. DailyKos is the ninth most linked blog on the Internet, according to Technorati, a measurement service, and in October, at the height of the presidential campaign, it received as many as one million daily visits.
The two men, who jointly operated a small political consulting firm, said they didn't believe the Dean campaign had been trying to buy their influence. Both men noted that they had promoted Mr. Dean's campaign long before they were hired and continued to do so after their contract with the campaign ended."
From the Washington Post, by Howard Kurtz:
"No one seriously thinks that the Bush inaugural festivities, scheduled to transpire two weeks from today, are going to be called off.
But there's some chatter on the Web about it.The leading deep-six-the-parties voice is that of Mark Cuban, the fabulously wealthy Internet entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who blogs in his spare time. He writes:
"It's up to President Bush to set an example.
"How about it Mr. President? Can you take the first step? I can help you figure out where to start. Start by canceling your inauguration parties and festivities.
"Could there be anything more confusing and shocking than to read that our country was offering $35mm in aid to the areas affected by the Tsunamis, but that the cost of inauguration parties would be about $40mm? Does anyone else think that this is wrong?"
"No one seriously thinks that the Bush inaugural festivities, scheduled to transpire two weeks from today, are going to be called off.
But there's some chatter on the Web about it.The leading deep-six-the-parties voice is that of Mark Cuban, the fabulously wealthy Internet entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who blogs in his spare time. He writes:
"It's up to President Bush to set an example.
"How about it Mr. President? Can you take the first step? I can help you figure out where to start. Start by canceling your inauguration parties and festivities.
"Could there be anything more confusing and shocking than to read that our country was offering $35mm in aid to the areas affected by the Tsunamis, but that the cost of inauguration parties would be about $40mm? Does anyone else think that this is wrong?"
From Fortune, by David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth:
"Early in the evening of Dec. 1, Microsoft revealed that it planned to take over the world of blogs—the five-million-plus web journals that have exploded on the Internet in the past few years. The company's weapon would be a new service called MSN Spaces, online software that allows people to easily create and maintain blogs. It didn't take long for the blogging world to do what it does best: swarm around a new piece of information; push, prod, and poke at it; and leave it either stronger or a bloody mess. The next day, at the widely read Boing Boing blog, co-editor Xeni Jardin opted to do the latter.
She titled her critique of MSN Spaces "7 Dirty Blogs" and hilariously sent up the fickle censoring filters Microsoft appeared to have built in. MSN Spaces prohibited her from starting a blog called Pornography and the Law or another entitled Corporate Whore Chronicles; yet World of Poop passed, as did the educational Smoking Crack: A How-To Guide for Teens. Within the first hour of Jardin's post, five blogs had linked to it, including the site of widely read San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor. By the end of the day there were dozens of blogs pointing readers to "7 Dirty Blogs," a proliferation of links that over the next few weeks topped 300. There were Italian blogs and Chinese blogs and blogs in Greek, German, and Portuguese. There were blogs with names like Tie-Dyed Brain Waves, Stubborn Like a Mule, and LibertyBlog. Each added its own tweak. "Ooooh, that's what I want: a blog that doesn't allow me to speak my mind," wrote a blogger called Kung Pow Pig. The conversation had clearly gotten out of Microsoft's hands."
From Poynter Online, by Steve Outing:
"Big media has to learn to be more honest," says Jeff Jarvis, a media executive who moonlights as a blogger, "that is, to level with its public, to reveal its prejudices, and process as citizen journalists (bloggers) do."
The popularity of bloggers is leading to a new way of thinking about news. Jarvis said in an e-mail interview that the most profound thing he learned when he started blogging is this: News is a conversation, not just a lecture. The story doesn't end when it's published, but rather just gets started as the public begins to do its part — discussing the story, adding to it, and correcting it.
Jarvis is by day president of Advance Internet, the new-media arm of Advance Communications; by night he is the popular independent blogger behind BuzzMachine. As a 50-something media executive with a lengthy print-journalism background (including as a reviewer for TV Guide) and a new-found enthusiasm for blogging, he's well suited to advise the profession on striking a middle ground between traditional journalism and blogging.
"The news isn't done when we print it," he says. "That's when the public can add questions, corrections, perspective. That will improve news. And it also will change our relationship with the public."
Steve Outing suggests that mainstream journalists can learn a few things from bloggers in Poynter Online:
"Big media has to learn to be more honest," says Jeff Jarvis, a media executive who moonlights as a blogger, "that is, to level with its public, to reveal its prejudices, and process as citizen journalists (bloggers) do."
The popularity of bloggers is leading to a new way of thinking about news. Jarvis said in an e-mail interview that the most profound thing he learned when he started blogging is this: News is a conversation, not just a lecture. The story doesn't end when it's published, but rather just gets started as the public begins to do its part — discussing the story, adding to it, and correcting it.
Jarvis is by day president of Advance Internet, the new-media arm of Advance Communications; by night he is the popular independent blogger behind BuzzMachine. As a 50-something media executive with a lengthy print-journalism background (including as a reviewer for TV Guide) and a new-found enthusiasm for blogging, he's well suited to advise the profession on striking a middle ground between traditional journalism and blogging.
"The news isn't done when we print it," he says. "That's when the public can add questions, corrections, perspective. That will improve news. And it also will change our relationship with the public."
One significant difference between mainstream journalism and blogging is the way each handles its mistakes. On this one, the bloggers seem to have an edge.
Although the working styles of bloggers varies considerably, some of today's leading bloggers take a similar approach to mistakes: They prominently post corrections to errors, publishing them quickly. Reynolds typically posts a correction of an earlier item as a new item at the top of the blog if the item in error has scrolled down the page, so his readers are sure to see it.
And because most bloggers embrace interactivity with their audiences, they hear about it when a mistake is made (via the comments areas on their own blogs, and from other bloggers noting and publicizing the error if it's significant) — and so do all the other readers.
Contrast that with how the typical old-media news organization handles mistakes. It's a rare day when a TV news program announces a mistake in the previous day's coverage; newspaper corrections typically are relegated to an inside page in a special corrections area, unseen by many readers."
By Joshua Kurlantzick in the New York Times:
"Like many aspiring authors, Marrit Ingman had a tough time convincing publishers that her big book idea—a wry, downbeat memoir of postpartum depression—could sell.
"I had to convince the publisher that an audience for the topic really did exist," said Ms. Ingman, a Texas-based freelance journalist. "The big publishers kept telling us that mothers only wanted prescriptive or 'positive' books about being a parent."
But Ingman had her own persuader: her Web log. She'd been writing it for two years and had attracted a following of mothers.
"I turned to readers of my blog," she said. "I asked them to comment on whether a book like mine would be relevant to them. Readers wrote back expressing why they wanted to read about the experience of maternal anger. I stuck their comments into my proposal as pulled quotes."
Her readers were convincing. She and her agent, Jim Hornfischer, sold her memoir, "Inconsolable," to Seal Press in August. "The blog showed publishers she was committed to the subject matter and already had an audience," Hornfischer said."
By Adam L Penenberg in Wired.com:
Great - just what bloggers need. Assholes with money to buy them out, strip them of their moral value, add commericals and make them just like - yup - MAINSTREAM MEDIA. yuck. ing glossy weekly tabloid. Go for it, Jason - your wet dream come true.
"So with MarketWatch sold and Slate likely getting sold soon, could MSNBC, CNET, Salon.com and all the other dot-com survivors be next? Nah, unlikely. But there could be a spate of other media properties for sale.
Namely blogs. You heard me.
According to Sam Whitmore, editor of Sam Whitmore's Media Survey, over the next 12 to 24 months you will probably see big media companies scarf up these cult destinations, where a growing number of people are going for opinions, analysis and community. "Look at what happened politically," Whitmore said, when blogs hit the big time during the presidential campaign. "The same thing will happen in business, because people know they don't need to head to branded sites for good information. Bloggers can be trusted to be independent and people will turn to self-published experts for information."
Whitmore, a former editor and chief of PC Week, believes that established media brands will have no choice but to adopt blog strategies — and acquisitions will be a part of it. He predicts that by this time next year, Nick Denton, founder of Gawker and Wonkette, or Jason Calacanis, who co-founded micropublisher Weblogs, will have sold a couple of their blogs.
In fact, it may have begun. Last week, while MarketWatch attracted most of the headlines, one of the first blog acquisitions took place: Military.com, a unit of Monster, bought Defense Tech, a popular weblog operated by freelance writer and Wired News contributor Noah Shachtman.
I'm sure there will be more blog-to-riches stories."
From Mercury News, by Dan Gillmor:
"In recent times, Republicans have been adept at raising money from small donors, and this cycle was no exception. However, the Democrats began to catch up. Howard Dean and his team raised tens of millions of dollars via online pitches, with most of the donations coming in small amounts. John Kerry followed suit.
Dean's campaign was also profoundly decentralized in other respects, largely because he had no choice when he was unknown to most Americans. His team, led by strategist Joe Trippi, used the Net to organize volunteers — and let the volunteers organize themselves.
The Dean forces also used the Internet to have what amounted to a conversation with their supporters. The campaign had an official blog, which became a touchstone for media and potential primary voters. Its informality provided a view inside the campaign, and there was evidence that the politicians at the center were actually listening to the people out at the edges."
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