Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled yesterday.
In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of the NightJack blog. The officer, Richard Horton, 45, a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary, had sought an injunction to stop The Times from revealing his name.
In April Mr Horton was awarded the Orwell Prize for political writing, but the judges were unaware that he was using information about cases, some involving sex offences against children, that could be traced back to genuine prosecutions.
His blog, which gave a behind-the-scenes insight into frontline policing, included strong views on social and political issues.
The officer also criticised and ridiculed “a number of senior politicians” and advised members of the public under police investigation to “complain about every officer . . . show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it”.
Some of the blog’s best-read sections, which on occasion attracted half a million readers a week, were anecdotes about cases on which Mr Horton had worked. The people and places were made anonymous and details changed, but they could still be traced back to real prosecutions.
In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr Horton had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”.
The judge also said that even if the blogger could have claimed he had a right to anonymity, the judge would have ruled against him on public interest grounds.
The police officer, the judge said, had argued that he should not be exposed because it could put him at risk of disciplinary action for breaching regulations. But Mr Justice Eady criticised that argument as “unattractive to say the least”.
He added: “I do not accept that it is part of the court’s function to protect police officers who are, or think they may be, acting in breach of police discipline regulations from coming to the attention of their superiors.”
He added: “It would seem to be quite legitimate for the public to be told who it was who was choosing to make, in some instances quite serious criticisms of police activities and, if it be the case, that frequent infringements of police discipline regulations were taking place.”
The action arose after Patrick Foster, a Times journalist, identified the NightJack blogger “by a process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information on the internet,” the judge said.
Hugh Tomlinson, QC, for Mr Horton, had argued that “thousands of regular bloggers . . . would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them”. Mr Tomlinson said that Mr Horton wished to remain anonymous and had taken steps to preserve his anonymity.
But Mr Justice Eady said that the mere fact that the blogger wanted to remain anonymous did not mean that he had a “reasonable expectation” of doing so or that The Times was under an enforceable obligation to him to maintain that anonymity.
Antony White, QC, for The Times, argued that there was a public interest in non-compliance by a police officer with his obligations under the statutory code governing police behaviour and also with general public law duty on police officers not to reveal information obtained in the course of a police investigation other than for performing his public duties.
Lancashire Constabulary said: “He has been spoken to regarding his professional behaviour and, in line with disciplinary procedures, has been issued with a written warning.”
[the article was originally published at http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6509677.ece]
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Friday, June 19, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Every blog becomes a cinema
Former AOL executive Ted Leonsis was frustrated: He'd produced a critically acclaimed documentary called Nanking, a film that looked at some Westerners who had protected Chinese civilians during a brutal, six-week attack by the Japanese army in 1937. But he was pretty sure the film, which premiered in 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival, would reach a relatively small audience.
Only a few hundred movie theaters in the U.S. will even show documentaries, and even those cinemas don't always give non-fiction films prime spots on their schedules. Distribution is a source of aggravation for many documentarians.
Unlike most filmmakers, though, Leonsis, who stepped down from day-to-day management at AOL at the end of 2006, had the wherewithal to do something about the situation. Last year he launched SnagFilms, a company that aims to distribute documentary films via the Internet. But rather than just stream its library of 650 titles through the SnagFilms site, the company is enabling portals, news sites and individual fans to share the movies through their own Web sites, blogs, Facebook home pages and other sites.
"Everyone talks about user-generated content," says Leonsis, who also is majority owner of NHL's Washington Capitals. "Let's talk about a new category called user-distributed content,"
Leonsis' Nanking, which will be available online for the first time Memorial Day weekend, is the centerpiece of an 10-film slate Snag is presenting during the holiday; each of the movies commemorates the heroism of soldiers and civilians during periods of war and conflict.
For films released in theaters Snag provides an opportunity for the documentaries to find new audiences. A blogger who is writing about alcohol abuse on college campuses, for example, might seek to embed in her blog a Snag video player that shows the movie Haze, a look at a drinking-related hazing incidents.
Filmmakers who make their movies available to Snag benefit in a few ways: For each film it includes a "Buy DVD" button that takes a viewer immediately to the documentarian's DVD distributor. Leonsis contends that many Snag users will only watch a portion of the film via the Internet, and that true fans will end up purchasing the film to watch on their home televisions.
Snag also sells advertising in the documentaries, and splits the ad revenue with the filmmakers. "We are writing checks to filmmakers every quarter," Leonsis says. "They're not always big, sometimes as small as $20 but sometimes more than $1,000."
Finally Snag offers users a chance to make an online donation to a cause of the documentary maker's choosing.
But for most directors who work with Snag, the main benefit is the opportunity to reach more people. "Filmmakers have never had this kind of opportunity before," says Steven C. Barber, whose film, Return To Tarawa, is part of Snag's Memorial Day slate. "I can get my film to every single country this way."
Barber's film has already run on Discovery's Military Channel, and many of the films in Snag's library have traveled a fairly conventional path for documentaries (film festival, theatrical or television premiere, DVD) before landing at Snag. But Snag CEO Rick Allen says the company is looking for more documentaries to launch on Snag, a concept that would upend the traditional theatrical distribution model.
(Entrepreneur Mark Cuban has also sought to disrupt theatrical release windows, showing films on his HDNet Movies channel two days before the film appears in theaters.)
Allen says it is too early to know if Snag's Internet-distribution efforts will cause major movie studios to think differently about their current models, but he does believe the film industry will go through lots of experimentation in the coming years.
"I think everybody believes that digital distribution is the wave of the future and they're all trying to figure our how it affects content delivery and content creation," Allen says. "I think people in large media organizations have seen the success of something like Hulu and its broadened people's ideas about how to get content out there and consumed."
[the article was originally published at http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/18/technology/mehta_docs.fortune/?postversion=2009051810]
Only a few hundred movie theaters in the U.S. will even show documentaries, and even those cinemas don't always give non-fiction films prime spots on their schedules. Distribution is a source of aggravation for many documentarians.
Unlike most filmmakers, though, Leonsis, who stepped down from day-to-day management at AOL at the end of 2006, had the wherewithal to do something about the situation. Last year he launched SnagFilms, a company that aims to distribute documentary films via the Internet. But rather than just stream its library of 650 titles through the SnagFilms site, the company is enabling portals, news sites and individual fans to share the movies through their own Web sites, blogs, Facebook home pages and other sites.
"Everyone talks about user-generated content," says Leonsis, who also is majority owner of NHL's Washington Capitals. "Let's talk about a new category called user-distributed content,"
Leonsis' Nanking, which will be available online for the first time Memorial Day weekend, is the centerpiece of an 10-film slate Snag is presenting during the holiday; each of the movies commemorates the heroism of soldiers and civilians during periods of war and conflict.
For films released in theaters Snag provides an opportunity for the documentaries to find new audiences. A blogger who is writing about alcohol abuse on college campuses, for example, might seek to embed in her blog a Snag video player that shows the movie Haze, a look at a drinking-related hazing incidents.
Filmmakers who make their movies available to Snag benefit in a few ways: For each film it includes a "Buy DVD" button that takes a viewer immediately to the documentarian's DVD distributor. Leonsis contends that many Snag users will only watch a portion of the film via the Internet, and that true fans will end up purchasing the film to watch on their home televisions.
Snag also sells advertising in the documentaries, and splits the ad revenue with the filmmakers. "We are writing checks to filmmakers every quarter," Leonsis says. "They're not always big, sometimes as small as $20 but sometimes more than $1,000."
Finally Snag offers users a chance to make an online donation to a cause of the documentary maker's choosing.
But for most directors who work with Snag, the main benefit is the opportunity to reach more people. "Filmmakers have never had this kind of opportunity before," says Steven C. Barber, whose film, Return To Tarawa, is part of Snag's Memorial Day slate. "I can get my film to every single country this way."
Barber's film has already run on Discovery's Military Channel, and many of the films in Snag's library have traveled a fairly conventional path for documentaries (film festival, theatrical or television premiere, DVD) before landing at Snag. But Snag CEO Rick Allen says the company is looking for more documentaries to launch on Snag, a concept that would upend the traditional theatrical distribution model.
(Entrepreneur Mark Cuban has also sought to disrupt theatrical release windows, showing films on his HDNet Movies channel two days before the film appears in theaters.)
Allen says it is too early to know if Snag's Internet-distribution efforts will cause major movie studios to think differently about their current models, but he does believe the film industry will go through lots of experimentation in the coming years.
"I think everybody believes that digital distribution is the wave of the future and they're all trying to figure our how it affects content delivery and content creation," Allen says. "I think people in large media organizations have seen the success of something like Hulu and its broadened people's ideas about how to get content out there and consumed."
[the article was originally published at http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/18/technology/mehta_docs.fortune/?postversion=2009051810]
Friday, May 8, 2009
Biz Stone says Twitter's not for sale
Twitter Inc. co-founder Biz Stone said today the company is not for sale despite reports that Apple Inc. is in late-stage negotiations to buy the microblogging site.
Stone and co-founder Evan Williams were making an appearance on the morning talk show The View when host Barbara Walters asked about the recent flood of rumors that the likes of Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. all are vying to buy Twitter. Stone said, "No. We are not for sale."
Echoing his previous statements about sale rumors, Stone added that right now, Twitter is focused on developing new features on its Web site and on remaining independent.
Stone's comments come just a day after rumors flared on the blogosphere that Apple was laying down a $700 million offer for Twitter. This latest round of speculation comes on the heels of last fall's failed bid by Facebook Inc. to scoop up Twitter, which was followed by rumors that had both Google and Microsoft both casting an eye on the microblogging site.
Blog site Gawker.com reported on Tuesday that an unnamed source, who reportedly has been recruited for a senior-level position at Apple, said the company is in "serious negotiations" with Twitter. The story noted that Apple is trying to hash out a deal quickly so an announcement could be made on June 8, during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch also reported that a "normally reliable source" said that Apple is in late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter. However, that story also noted that other sources said they have no knowledge of any talks between the two.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said yesterday that if the rumors about Apple's interest are true, it could make for an interesting combination.
"Apple has the right 'attitude' to run something like Twitter, plus the ability to monetize it with advertising," Olds said. "I can see where Twitter might fit quite nicely into the Apple empire. It would give Apple a strong entry into the social networking market and also a very solid advertising vehicle."
[the article was originally published at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132602]
Stone and co-founder Evan Williams were making an appearance on the morning talk show The View when host Barbara Walters asked about the recent flood of rumors that the likes of Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. all are vying to buy Twitter. Stone said, "No. We are not for sale."
Echoing his previous statements about sale rumors, Stone added that right now, Twitter is focused on developing new features on its Web site and on remaining independent.
Stone's comments come just a day after rumors flared on the blogosphere that Apple was laying down a $700 million offer for Twitter. This latest round of speculation comes on the heels of last fall's failed bid by Facebook Inc. to scoop up Twitter, which was followed by rumors that had both Google and Microsoft both casting an eye on the microblogging site.
Blog site Gawker.com reported on Tuesday that an unnamed source, who reportedly has been recruited for a senior-level position at Apple, said the company is in "serious negotiations" with Twitter. The story noted that Apple is trying to hash out a deal quickly so an announcement could be made on June 8, during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch also reported that a "normally reliable source" said that Apple is in late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter. However, that story also noted that other sources said they have no knowledge of any talks between the two.
Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said yesterday that if the rumors about Apple's interest are true, it could make for an interesting combination.
"Apple has the right 'attitude' to run something like Twitter, plus the ability to monetize it with advertising," Olds said. "I can see where Twitter might fit quite nicely into the Apple empire. It would give Apple a strong entry into the social networking market and also a very solid advertising vehicle."
[the article was originally published at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9132602]
Thursday, April 23, 2009
New Stuff from Google Labs
Today, Google’s introducing some early-stage new products and services coming out of Google Labs at a press gathering hosted by R.J. Pittman, director of product management in search properties. I’ll be liveblogging the hourlong press conference being held at Google’s San Francisco (and there’s more here on the Google Labs blog):
Here’s Pittman: “We’re still not exactly sure where the economy is headed. But innovation is alive and well at Google.” The challenge is keeping the innovation framework going when the company is growing so huge.
Pittman mentions several recent innovations that are intended to “catalyze the Web,” such as Streetview and turn-by-turn directions, Audio Indexing, Picasa facial recognition, and Google Translate.
“The (innovation) garden is actually overgrown.” Lots of local opportunities getting built off Google’s overall platform. The key is getting users’ participation earlier in the food chain of product development, to get products in the hands of consumers as soon as possible. “We think it’s really important to engage the users as soon as possible.”
OK, now on to the products. First up is Radhika Malpani, director of engineering, on Similar Images. You can take a favorite query, say on Porsches, and specify the color. Now taking that further. You can do a search on Paris, say, and you get images of the city, the star, etc. Then you can choose which image for which you want more that are similar. Google looks at color, texture, and shape to determine similarity, with a little metadata (accompanying information) to help.
She shows a demo: Search on beaches, and you get a wide variety of images, most of which probably aren’t what you had in mind. So you can click on a Similar Images link under each image to get more of the same. You can keep clicking on images to get closer and closer. Hundreds of millions of images are in the database.
Pittman says they’re putting this out even before they have similar images for each image search to get quick feedback.
Pittman again on another new product coming into GoogleLabs: News Timeline. This is legendary former Apple software engineer Andy Hertzfeld’s project. Hertzfeld: It’s Google’s mission to organize the world’s information, and certain information is best organized by time. That’s the purpose of this project.
The demo: It’s literally a timeline with stories listed under each date and you can scroll back and forward in time. You can also scroll up and down to get more stories. The stories include video and other rich media that plays when you click on them. And of course you can make a search and then those stories relevant to those queries show up. “It’s a visual map of what’s going on in the world.”
You can search by source, such as a range or magazines or specific magazines, newspapers, Wikipedia events, movies, blogs, sports scores, prizes, and so on—looks like about 15 or 20 sources or categories. Hertzfeld says Google might eventually eliminate that “corpus” selection so you don’t have to specify the specific sources. You can do the timeline daily, weekly, yearly, or even by the decade.
Lots of other interesting things to display on the timeline besides news. He shows how you can choose to look at Time magazine, with Time covers for each month decades back. Or Popular Science. And if you click on the covers (except for Time, which doesn’t make full content available for free), you go into the Google Books interface to see the full issue content that has been scanned in.
It’s essentially a new user interface for the same information already available through Google News (and in some cases Google Books or publications Google has scanned, under license from the content owners).
No plans to make money from it yet. “Literally we haven’t thought about it all.” Pittman adds: “We’re doing this to push the envelope on the user experience.”
OK, last announcement from Pittman: It’s a new Google Labs itself—that is, the site for the company’s products in development. You’ll be able to follow what’s new in Labs more easily. You’ll also be able to comment on and rate projects and engineer profiles. There are new “Meet the engineers” profiles.
And that’s it. Even with all the projects Google has cut or reduced in recent months, it’s clear there’s still a lot going on—at least that’s the impression Google wants to leave here.
After the event, Pittman added a bit more color that to my ears added up to this: Google wants to get products out faster, and to do that, it needs to get more people outside the company involved in providing feedback on early versions of products. Thus the redesign of the Google Labs site and today’s announcements on products that are being let out into the wild a bit earlier than they previously might have.
[the article was originally published at http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/04/live_new_stuff.html]
Here’s Pittman: “We’re still not exactly sure where the economy is headed. But innovation is alive and well at Google.” The challenge is keeping the innovation framework going when the company is growing so huge.
Pittman mentions several recent innovations that are intended to “catalyze the Web,” such as Streetview and turn-by-turn directions, Audio Indexing, Picasa facial recognition, and Google Translate.
“The (innovation) garden is actually overgrown.” Lots of local opportunities getting built off Google’s overall platform. The key is getting users’ participation earlier in the food chain of product development, to get products in the hands of consumers as soon as possible. “We think it’s really important to engage the users as soon as possible.”
OK, now on to the products. First up is Radhika Malpani, director of engineering, on Similar Images. You can take a favorite query, say on Porsches, and specify the color. Now taking that further. You can do a search on Paris, say, and you get images of the city, the star, etc. Then you can choose which image for which you want more that are similar. Google looks at color, texture, and shape to determine similarity, with a little metadata (accompanying information) to help.
She shows a demo: Search on beaches, and you get a wide variety of images, most of which probably aren’t what you had in mind. So you can click on a Similar Images link under each image to get more of the same. You can keep clicking on images to get closer and closer. Hundreds of millions of images are in the database.
Pittman says they’re putting this out even before they have similar images for each image search to get quick feedback.
Pittman again on another new product coming into GoogleLabs: News Timeline. This is legendary former Apple software engineer Andy Hertzfeld’s project. Hertzfeld: It’s Google’s mission to organize the world’s information, and certain information is best organized by time. That’s the purpose of this project.
The demo: It’s literally a timeline with stories listed under each date and you can scroll back and forward in time. You can also scroll up and down to get more stories. The stories include video and other rich media that plays when you click on them. And of course you can make a search and then those stories relevant to those queries show up. “It’s a visual map of what’s going on in the world.”
You can search by source, such as a range or magazines or specific magazines, newspapers, Wikipedia events, movies, blogs, sports scores, prizes, and so on—looks like about 15 or 20 sources or categories. Hertzfeld says Google might eventually eliminate that “corpus” selection so you don’t have to specify the specific sources. You can do the timeline daily, weekly, yearly, or even by the decade.
Lots of other interesting things to display on the timeline besides news. He shows how you can choose to look at Time magazine, with Time covers for each month decades back. Or Popular Science. And if you click on the covers (except for Time, which doesn’t make full content available for free), you go into the Google Books interface to see the full issue content that has been scanned in.
It’s essentially a new user interface for the same information already available through Google News (and in some cases Google Books or publications Google has scanned, under license from the content owners).
No plans to make money from it yet. “Literally we haven’t thought about it all.” Pittman adds: “We’re doing this to push the envelope on the user experience.”
OK, last announcement from Pittman: It’s a new Google Labs itself—that is, the site for the company’s products in development. You’ll be able to follow what’s new in Labs more easily. You’ll also be able to comment on and rate projects and engineer profiles. There are new “Meet the engineers” profiles.
And that’s it. Even with all the projects Google has cut or reduced in recent months, it’s clear there’s still a lot going on—at least that’s the impression Google wants to leave here.
After the event, Pittman added a bit more color that to my ears added up to this: Google wants to get products out faster, and to do that, it needs to get more people outside the company involved in providing feedback on early versions of products. Thus the redesign of the Google Labs site and today’s announcements on products that are being let out into the wild a bit earlier than they previously might have.
[the article was originally published at http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/04/live_new_stuff.html]
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Public Turns To Twitter for News
Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a social media Web site that began with the idea that people could stay connected by "tweeting" each other short answers to one simple question: "What are you doing?"
And while it may have been a bit frivolous at first, Twitter is increasingly being used by companies as a marketing tool, and for many, it's become a source for news.
How we get news and who reports it is changing dramatically. Breaking stories sometimes appear on Wikipedia and Twitter before they are reported by mainstream news organizations.
Hanson Hosein, for example, gets much of his breaking news from tweets — the Twitter messages of 140 characters or less that dance across his computer screen.
"I know if something really crazy happens in the world or something really interesting happens in my world — which is technology and communication — someone is going to pick it up pretty quickly and let us all know about it," he says.
Hosein, a digital media expert at the University of Washington, follows about 250 people on Twitter and receives everything they post on Twitter's Web site.
The Silicon Valley startup doesn't have any reporters or photographers; rather, anyone and everyone who sees or hears just about anything can post it online. Sometimes it's nonsense; sometimes it's breathtaking.
Hosein says that while many New York City reporters were in their offices on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2009, many Manhattan residents and ferryboat passengers witnessed a US Airways plane land in the Hudson River.
"There were people there with their cell phones who could report on this," Hosein says. "Not necessarily professional journalists, but they're there, and that makes all the difference."
Hosein says that within minutes of the plane going down, an eyewitness snapped a photo.
"So that's the million-dollar shot — that's the money shot," Hosein says. "He's on the ferry, and he shot that. There's a plane in the Hudson, and I'm on a ferry going to pick up people. Crazy."
That and other Twitter messages were forwarded around the globe within minutes. They were picked up by traditional journalists who used that information as a starting point for their own reporting.
Similarly, traditional reporters sometimes take cues and get breaking news from Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia. Just about anyone can write and edit it, which explains, for example, how John Updike's death could be noted on the author's wiki page even before NPR could confirm that he had died.
Trusting News From Social Media
The big question: Can you trust the news you get from social media? Maybe not, says Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a training center for journalists.
"You know, just because a person says it, and says it online or says it on a Twitter page, does not make it true — not even close," Tompkins says.
Professional reporters, says Tompkins, have an obligation to verify information before they publish or broadcast it. But the widespread use of cell phones, computers and digital cameras has turned that tradition on its head. For non-journalists, he says, it's often "report first, verify later — if at all."
"The enemy of truth is speed, and in our business in journalism, we are always fighting that friction, aren't we? The Web, very often, has very little concern for truth and verification — let's get it out there, and then we'll sort it out," he says.
The challenge is to figure out what's true and what's not to be believed.
[The article was originally published at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103221268]
And while it may have been a bit frivolous at first, Twitter is increasingly being used by companies as a marketing tool, and for many, it's become a source for news.
How we get news and who reports it is changing dramatically. Breaking stories sometimes appear on Wikipedia and Twitter before they are reported by mainstream news organizations.
Hanson Hosein, for example, gets much of his breaking news from tweets — the Twitter messages of 140 characters or less that dance across his computer screen.
"I know if something really crazy happens in the world or something really interesting happens in my world — which is technology and communication — someone is going to pick it up pretty quickly and let us all know about it," he says.
Hosein, a digital media expert at the University of Washington, follows about 250 people on Twitter and receives everything they post on Twitter's Web site.
The Silicon Valley startup doesn't have any reporters or photographers; rather, anyone and everyone who sees or hears just about anything can post it online. Sometimes it's nonsense; sometimes it's breathtaking.
Hosein says that while many New York City reporters were in their offices on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2009, many Manhattan residents and ferryboat passengers witnessed a US Airways plane land in the Hudson River.
"There were people there with their cell phones who could report on this," Hosein says. "Not necessarily professional journalists, but they're there, and that makes all the difference."
Hosein says that within minutes of the plane going down, an eyewitness snapped a photo.
"So that's the million-dollar shot — that's the money shot," Hosein says. "He's on the ferry, and he shot that. There's a plane in the Hudson, and I'm on a ferry going to pick up people. Crazy."
That and other Twitter messages were forwarded around the globe within minutes. They were picked up by traditional journalists who used that information as a starting point for their own reporting.
Similarly, traditional reporters sometimes take cues and get breaking news from Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia. Just about anyone can write and edit it, which explains, for example, how John Updike's death could be noted on the author's wiki page even before NPR could confirm that he had died.
Trusting News From Social Media
The big question: Can you trust the news you get from social media? Maybe not, says Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a training center for journalists.
"You know, just because a person says it, and says it online or says it on a Twitter page, does not make it true — not even close," Tompkins says.
Professional reporters, says Tompkins, have an obligation to verify information before they publish or broadcast it. But the widespread use of cell phones, computers and digital cameras has turned that tradition on its head. For non-journalists, he says, it's often "report first, verify later — if at all."
"The enemy of truth is speed, and in our business in journalism, we are always fighting that friction, aren't we? The Web, very often, has very little concern for truth and verification — let's get it out there, and then we'll sort it out," he says.
The challenge is to figure out what's true and what's not to be believed.
[The article was originally published at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103221268]
Bloggers for Hire - A profession in America
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.
Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's. And that's nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: "It's my work he'd say, I do it for pay."
This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth. The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.
What started as a discussion forum for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion, dentistry -- and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby and an outlet for volunteers is becoming big business for newly emerging sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry.
All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.
The barriers to entry couldn't be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.
Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.
As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.
Almost no blogging is by subscription; rather, it owes it economic model to on-line advertising. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed.
The United Kingdom has just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. But all of it was to be made up, and the friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an "absolutely brilliant" idea. Someone blew the whistle, but had the plot gone through, this blogstorm could have played a major role in the upcoming election.
As a political pollster, I always observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or whether the pollster had any track record. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn't seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.
The implications of bloggers for hire are substantial. While many bloggers probably support unionization in general, they have no union of their own. Most have no benefits, yet they work long hours in front of computer screens which could cause a variety of health ailments. And the owners of the big sites most often pay their bloggers as freelancers, avoiding all of those taxes and benefits that newspapers have to pay for their writers.
For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession.
It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can't be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.
And with millions of human-hours now going into writing and recording opinion, we have to wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy. Maybe all this self-criticism will propel us forward by putting us on the right track and helping us choose the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis. But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the "Wild West" eventually became just the "West."
[The article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html]
Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's. And that's nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: "It's my work he'd say, I do it for pay."
This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth. The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.
What started as a discussion forum for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion, dentistry -- and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby and an outlet for volunteers is becoming big business for newly emerging sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry.
All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.
The barriers to entry couldn't be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.
Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.
As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.
Almost no blogging is by subscription; rather, it owes it economic model to on-line advertising. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed.
The United Kingdom has just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. But all of it was to be made up, and the friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an "absolutely brilliant" idea. Someone blew the whistle, but had the plot gone through, this blogstorm could have played a major role in the upcoming election.
As a political pollster, I always observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or whether the pollster had any track record. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn't seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.
The implications of bloggers for hire are substantial. While many bloggers probably support unionization in general, they have no union of their own. Most have no benefits, yet they work long hours in front of computer screens which could cause a variety of health ailments. And the owners of the big sites most often pay their bloggers as freelancers, avoiding all of those taxes and benefits that newspapers have to pay for their writers.
For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession.
It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can't be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.
And with millions of human-hours now going into writing and recording opinion, we have to wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy. Maybe all this self-criticism will propel us forward by putting us on the right track and helping us choose the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis. But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the "Wild West" eventually became just the "West."
[The article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html]
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