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Introduction – how to navigate this content
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First Time Visitor? Start Here
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The Media, old and new: here we focus only upon print or electronic media. There is not very much useful information for the researcher in the arena of television-media that merits discussion. The commentators that have been most useful in our efforts are Jim Miller, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor (no relative ranking intended, but we have to start somewhere). All of these gentlemen are making an impact on the New Media (see below for more on what I mean by the New Media)
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Jim Miller: SeekerBlog is mainly concerned with objective information sources. So a good place to start is withJim Miller on Politics . Jim is a reliable source himself, and is an acute observer of the media in general. His website offers a number of very useful resources for the inexperienced researcher, such as your writer. As an embarrassing example, during our uninformed-period, we had failed to read the Atlantic Monthly for too many years. We regretted that as soon as we read Jim’s brief, and since have read the Atlantic either cover-to-cover, or on-line depending upon our access to SnailMail or to the Internet.
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First note the resources listed in Jim’s left sidebar which is similar in it’s objective to this Resources section. For an initial orientation, please read at least these two:
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The big media briefly described here were chosen for their importance. They are too large and influential to be ignored, whether one agrees with them or not. Â Some of these organizations are also “smart”, even though I give that adjective to another set of sites.
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This group of links identifies small publications and columnists that I consider especially likely to have intelligent content.
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I suggest you skip Jim’s introduction to Blogs, only because it is dated. The domain of WebLogging, or Blogs is evolving at a very rapid pace – so we cannot criticize Jim Miller for failing to keep his sidebar absolutely current.
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But please do not ignore the wealth of resources in both of Jim Miller’s left and right sidebars. And, of course, bookmark Jim’s main page for insights on politics and other issues that are special, insightful, and we think objective insofar as anyone can be. Note: if when you read this section you discover that Jim has redesigned his website so the sidebar references are no longer relevant, you will have encountered exactly the problem that Jim has keeping his resource descriptions totally current!
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Jay Rosen: Jay is the current Chair of the NYU School of Journalism, and author of the essential Press Think blog. Jay is widely respected and quoted by insiders in the media field. The comments section on his blog can be quite illuminating – you get to see what working journalists think about various issues, how they analyze, etc.
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These are my top ten ideas for the year 2004. The year in press think, as it were. I chose not the “best” ideas, but the ones most useful to me in figuring out what’s going on. They weren’t necessarily born in ‘04, either. But they emerged this year. Some have authors; usually it is many authors. Ready? 1. The Legacy Media.
2. He said, she said, we said.
3. What the printing press did to the Catholic Church the blogging press does to the media church.
4. Open Source Journalism, or: “My readers know more than I do.” (Dec. 28)
5. News turns from a lecture to a conversation. (Dec. 29)
6. “Content will be more important than its container.” (Jan. 1)
7. “What once was good–or good enough–no longer is.” (Jan. 4)
8. “The victory of affinity over geography.”
9. The Pajamahadeen.
10. The Reality-Based Community.
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I also credit Jay Rosen with defining the term Legacy Media, which is much more appropriate than the commonly used Mainstream Media [MSM]. Legacy Media captures the concept that many of these institutions will go the way of the Dinosaurs if they do not scramble to adopt the appropriate standards. See: PressThink: Stark Message for the Legacy Media
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Jeff Jarvis: Jeff is one of my favorite media observers and all around sensible person. He is a former working journalist (he was Sunday Editor of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner). Jeff’s blog BuzzMachine is a reliable resource – probably one of the most widely-quoted.
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For example, today Jeff offered this text for a poster which should be prominently displayed on the wall of every newsroom: Welcome to the new world of journalism, where every witness to news can report the news, thanks to the internet; where every citizen can question the powerful, thanks to the internet; where every speaker can be a pundit, thanks to the internet. Journalism is no longer the closed society of the gatekeepers. Journalism can no longer just lecture; now it must listen. News is freed from the limitations of paper and schedules and reporters’ pens. Journalists should welcome the help, for journalists should believe that more information yields a more informed society and that is our goal.
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Dan Gillmor: Dan was a respected columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s daily newspaper. At the end of 2004 Dan left the Mercury News to found Grassroots Media Inc.,which is working on a project to encourage and enable more citizen-based media. He is the author of the new We the Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People , a 2004 book that is “widely credited as the first comprehensive look at way the collision of technology and journalism is transforming the media landscape” (from Dan’s blog bio). Dan’s new blog is another good place to monitor the development of the New Media.
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Other good sources: The top three in the 2004 Weblog Awards in the Best Media/Journalist Blog were these, all of which are recommended:
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New Media: To me, the “New Media” means “Open Source Journalism” (see Jay Rosen below for more background on this terminology) I’ll try to highlight just a few critical characteristics – most of which require that the publication have a Internet portal that is much more than an electronic version of their dead-tree publication.
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First, a Live Case History – the Greensboro News-Record
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For a promising example of what one publisher is attempting, see the Greensboro News-Record. The News-Record is innovating in a number of ways. For the a brief outline of the N-R plans, see Editor John Robinson’s January 15, 2005 column:“Editors here want the newspaper and its Web site to become a virtual town square, a trusted place where people can read and write the news, share information, talk to each other and engage in community building.”
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To keep abreast of N-R innovation, visit the staff blogs listed in the right sidebar. Of particular interest on the new media topic are:
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There are innovations throughout the News-Record. E.g., look at the bottom of each article for the “Were you satisfied with this story” where the reader can submit comments (private comments in this case).
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Transparency
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Who is the reporter who wrote this?. The first thing we do when we read a report with a byline we don’t know is try to search out their profile: why are they qualified to write on this topic?
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What is their CV? I would like to see a standard set of qualifications included. E.g., to understand many key policy issues, a report must have a basic level of competence in:
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What have they written before? A catalog on links to prior publications is essential.
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What is their political affiliation. Better – who have they voted for?
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What is the justification for using un-named sources? I.e., when the “most experts believe” dodge is used, document how the reporter deduced that.
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Corrections must be linked to the original text.
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Comments on articles should be grouped on-line with the original source.
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Empower the Readers
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Often readers know more about a story topic than the writer. By attaching a comments tool to every piece, the publisher can not only improve their work, but allow the readership to critique each piece. For some useful perspective read Jay Rosen’s “My Readers Know More Than I Do.”
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Public archives. This is obviously a sensitive issue for the publishers CFO. I’ve seen no analysis of the bottom-line contribution of a “pay for achival access” policy as at the New York Times. What I know is that it greatly frustrates the reader who is trying to assess the credibility of the writer, and the degree of accuracy of the article.
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Blogs: Few blogs are journalism in the common usage of the term. That said, some of the most useful sources are blogs written by people with access superior to most professional journalists. For example, see in this section Resources/Iraqi Blogs. Certain blogs are a very valuable adjunct to journalism – serving as critic, as a source of additional material, or as an aid to interpretation. I’ve ordered but not yet read Hugh Hewitt’s new book. Reviewers that I respect seem to think it is a valuable resource, not just on Blogs, but contributing to the discussion of the future of media: Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World
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9/11 Report
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9/11 Report: The report is some 585 pages, so some will consider it a formidable read. But it will reward the reader with one of the better, concise histories of Islamic extremism, and a very informative history of 9/11 and how it came about. We found the audio version to be a convenient way to digest the material (it’s only $4.95 at Audible.com). We consumed the Report standing watches on our recent Pacific crossing.
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Commentary (SmartMedia)
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Daily Blog Scan
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Environment
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Copenhagen Consensus & Bjorn Lomborg
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Bjorn Lomborg is a serious researcher, I assert. I decided, like many readers, to ignore his work upon reading Scientific American’s 2001 diatribe. I appreciate Scientific American, as a lay-person’s introduction to a range of scientific inquiry. Prior to their attack on Lomborg I also respected the publication. I still read it, but with the healthy perspective of an agnostic – perhaps they are publishing science, perhaps not. It was when I stumbled upon the work of the Copenhagen Consensus that I re-opened the question: is Lomborg doing serious work?
For a brief introduction to the Copenhagen Consensus, see Seeker Blog » Copenhagen Consensus.
For a bit of background on Lomborg’s work, and the controversy surrounding it, the following links will serve as a starting point. I still have lot more reading and thinking to do on this – but I think there is real significance here:
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Patrick Moore
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Greenspirit – Patrick Moore is a co-founder of Greenpeace who has moved on. On from being an against-person to being a for-person. Evaluating and promoting policies that make scientific, economic and social sense. I discovered Greenspirit while researching the Copenhagen Consensus and Bjorn Lomborg. No doubt there are many more sane environmentalists at work that I have also not learned about. Unfortunately, the Legacy Media seems only to be in contact with the PR people from the hugely wealthy NGO’s that promote only an anti-policy. That is not where human progress is made.
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Essay Blogs
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Foreign Affairs Blogs
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Media Blogs and Resources
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Arab Press
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European Press
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Media Bias
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Military Blogs
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Opinion Blogs
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Politics Blogs
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Search Tools
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Tech
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True => False
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More to come in category of “things we thought were true turn out to be false”.
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Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?
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There are a serious of iconic images derived from a France 2 videotape filmed on September 30, 2000, the second day of Arafat’s “second intifada”. The images are real in the sense they are stills from video taken on that day in that place. What is false is the claim by France 2 that the twelve year old boy was killed by Israeli soldiers. The post on James Fallows March 2005 Atlantic Monthly investigation.
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