connecting*the*dots

Is that Jamo under there?

Media Matters for America
Do Washington Post editorial writers read their own newspaper?

Last week, The Washington Post editorial page put forth numerous falsehoods in defense of President Bush’s reported authorization of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s disclosure of classified information. The funny thing is, the Post’s own reporters had already debunked many of these falsehoods, including in the very same edition of the paper in which the editorial appeared.

That’s right: the Post’s editorial included claims that are directly contradicted by previous Post reporting. The Washington Post editorial board is entitled to its own opinions –- but not its own facts.

Help us encourage The Washington Post editorial board to do a better job. Use the contact information below and politely urge it to do more comprehensive research on the issues it writes about.

Contact information

The Washington Post
1150 15th St. NW
Washington, DC 20071
202-334-6000 or 800-627-1150

Email Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt

Email Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell

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When Technorati began pimping blogs on articles pages of Newsweek and WaPo, the blogosphere moved one step closer to credibility. This move by Reuters pushes blogging — specifically bridge blogging — into a whole new stratosphere.

Reuters partners in comment blog
Mark Sweney

Reuters has formed a partnership with an international network of bloggers to provide public comment alongside its own news coverage.

The alliance has been struck with Global Voices Online, an international network of bloggers co-ordinated through Harvard University, that will see blog content used when there are large general interest events such as elections.

“We need to open our website to other voices,” said Dean Wright, Reuters’ global managing editor for consumer services. “There are a lot of conversations going on around news these days and we want to tap into that.”

The blog content will be displayed in two ways - either as clearly labelled posts within the company’s own websites, or as a link to a separate website placed at the end of a Reuters story offering readers a broader perspective.

The material will be made available through Reuters.com and Reuters.co.uk.

Global Voices Online will be taking part in the forthcoming London-based We Media event forum that will examine trust in media and citizen journalism.

Congratulations, Ethan.

Jesus’ General hit his stride a long time ago, but he’s in the zone this week. If you don’t know the General by now, well, you’re going to hell.

Repent sinners.

Some of the General’s recent classics:

• My response to the vile bastards who are trying to destroy America by destroying me
• Red State Jesus
• Three Years

Let’s play a game that I call, “Guess Who’s Masturbating.” Read the following quote and try to guess who wrote it (and don’t cheat).

Quoted three years ago, a week into the invasion of Iraq:

The people of Eastern Europe stared into the abyss of tyrannical evil for decades, and recognizing the Iraqi regime for what it is, they stand with us today. Some people may mock the fact that Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, and other minor countries are part of this coalition — but they remember what life was like without freedom. They remember what it took to climb up from the rubble.

They remember what it was like to hear the words of Vaclav Havel (who would go on to make more than 100 official speeches, with no speechwriters), on his New Years address as first President of the free Czech Republic:

“My people, your government has returned to you.”

Soon, the Iraqi people will hear those words. The sound you hear, Saddam, is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your doom.

So what’s your guess? Dick Cheney? Someone else from the PNAC gang? Not even close.

Give up?

I’d like to introduce you to Ben Domenich, the 24 year-old founding father of the RedState blog and freshly hired blogger at the Washington Post.

Only someone this young and naive could actually believe the bullshit he espouses as fact. In this particular case, Eastern Europe does what they’re told, or maybe he missed the memo on the New World Order?

While I’m a huge proponent of citizen media, and completely support young Ben’s right to publish his perspective, his track record is obviously partisan, and at times, skirting an extreme position. What is WaPo thinking? Are they trying to create a loose cannon, ideological microcosm of the political blogosphere within their walled garden?

Media Matters’ David Brock seems to think so.

The thing that WaPo doesn’t get is that by hiring Ben Domenich, they’ve taken away his blogging ID; both his credentials and his independence. In their haste to capitalize on his partisan readership in this 2.0 world, they haven’t just lowered the bar — they’ve replaced it with a hula-hoop.

Aloha, WaPo.

Just who are these fuckin’ guys anyway?

vnunet.com
RIAA aims to ban CD ripping
by Iain Thomson

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has reversed its position on CD ripping and now wants the practice outlawed.

In a filing to the US government concerning digital rights management the RIAA and other copyright industry associations said the fact that CD ripping is widespread does not make it legal.

“Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization,” the filing stated.

“In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.”

This is a complete reversal of the RIAA’s previous policy. In last year’s Supreme Court MGM v. Grokster case a representative of the RIAA described ripping a CD and putting it on an iPod as “perfectly lawful”.

“It is no secret that the entertainment ‘oligopolists’ are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a statement. “But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster.”

Unbelievable. The RIAA is Exhibit A as to why I financially support the EFF. Didn’t we get past this litigious moment in time when we were passing mix tapes between friends in the early 80’s?

Unchanneled, unbundled, uncontrolled music distribution can tremendously benefit three out of the four constituents in the music industry — the fans, artists and labels — if the technology is enabled and monetized properly. Citizen media and file sharing software has already provided the inroads to extrapolating the concept of personal mix tapes by exponential factors, but since the RIAA is a cabal of thug lawyers, knee-deep in the politics of the power structure of the record industry and big business — busy hawking the propaganda of “musicians starving by the thousands” due to copyright infringement — artists are left out of the conversation surrounding their own work.

From the RIAA self-descrption on their About Us page (emphasis mine ):

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. Its mission is to foster a business and legal climate that supports and promotes our members’ creative and financial vitality. Its members are the record companies that comprise the most vibrant national music industry in the world. RIAA members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

In support of this mission, the RIAA works to protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists; conduct consumer industry and technical research; and monitor and review - - state and federal laws, regulations and policies. The RIAA also certifies Gold®, Platinum®, Multi-Platinum™, and Diamond® sales awards, and recently launched Los Premios De Oro y Platino™, a new award celebrating Latin music sales.

The RIAA are suits providing a perceived value service for a constituency of labels. Innocuous transfers, such as cd-rom to iPod, shouldn’t even be a part of the conversation, but the legal hawks at the RIAA need to keep their battle alive, cash in their hours on the job and make further cases for battles in this war, one that is bound to fail.

Why?

When we reach the tipping point for successfully monetizing a post-modern world — where citizen media receives micro-payments for media views and not click-throughs or micro-purchases instead of bundled viewing through industry channels — this argument will simply become moot. As new technological systems for production and distribution are built, the creative talent inside and out of the development community will begin to leverage the services.

• It’s already happening at myspace.com
• Have you seen what you can do with iLife?
• Hell, even I’m a movie director in my spare time

The evolution of citizen production technologies, along with rich forms of free advertising, networking, marketing and sharing delivered by blogs, will not just simply come to a screeching halt.

And that’s why the RIAA is stepping up their “intelligently designed” game.

I tend to sit on the optimistic side of this battle. Explicit, absolute hierarchy expressed via controlled management will not survive this explosion of technological innovation. It simply can’t. For as much energy and resources it takes to create, manage and govern a structured, old-money universe with closed systems of infrastructure, it takes a fraction of such time, energy and resources to release expression into the newly networked ether.

But these facts won’t stop the lawyers of the world from doing their best from stopping it. Check out this snippet from the bio of one of their leaders:

Mitch Bainwol
Chairman And CEO
Recording Industry Association of America

Mitch Bainwol joined the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as Chairman and CEO in September 2003. As a seasoned policymaker, he is one of the Washington’s most recognized and respected strategists and possesses a unique blend of political, legislative, and communications skills.

The Washington Post recently called Bainwol a “Top D.C. Lobbyist and Man in Demand.” Several years in a row, Capitol Hill’s Roll Call newspaper hailed Bainwol as one of the 50 most influential “politicos” in Washington. He was also named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the most powerful people in show business and Campaigns and Elections magazine named him a “Mover and Shaker.”

[…]

Bainwol is a “recognized and respected strategist” in Washington DC; he’s a lobbyist. Music is reinventing itself from too many directions for him or anyone else representing this controlled system to make it last long-term.

Fuck the RIAA!

Deborah Howell, the much maligned Ombudsman for The Washington Post, has created a stir; she reported that Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. Whether one wants to believe it or not is not my concern. Her column created an outroar in the blogosphere and incindiary comments began to fill the editor’s blog. Jim Brady, Executive Editor of The Washington Post, tried to deal with the situation:

As of 4:15pm ET today, we have shut off comments on this blog indefinitely.

At its inception, the purpose of this blog was to open a dialogue about this site, the events of the day, the journalism of The Washington Post Company and other related issues. Among the things that we knew would be part of that discussion would be the news and opinion coming from the pages of The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com. We knew a lot of that discussion would be critical in nature. And we were fine with that. Great journalism companies need feedback from readers to stay sharp.

But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we’ve decided not to allow comments for the time being. It’s a shame that it’s come to this. Transparency and reasoned debate are crucial parts of the Web culture, and it’s a disappointment to us that we have not been able to maintain a civil conversation, especially about issues that people feel strongly (and differently) about.

We’re not giving up on the concept of having a healthy public dialogue with our readers, but this experience shows that we need to think more carefully about how we do it. Any thoughtful feedback on that (or any other issue) is welcome, and you can send it to executive.editor@washingtonpost.com.

Thanks,
Jim Brady
Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com

So, the ombudsman of an institution can erase comments and lobby to shut down their feedback channel from customers? Can someone please explain to me the purpose of the role again, specifically for an institution that supposedly sheds light on critical matters to the public?

Here’s my email in response:

jim,

people who are online, commenting on your blog, are used to being flamed. they’re participating elsewhere, and have been for years. don’t try to turn this into a case where WaPo is “protecting” anyone.

as backwards as it might sound, lower your commenting standards, remove the worst when they are submitted, and go on about reporting the news.

welcome to the world of free expression. “adding blogs” to your realm comes with the price of bringing one channel of WaPo down to street level. it may not be the salad fork you’re used to, but it’s still a vehicle for consuming necessary roughage.

-sean

I realize that WaPo might be stinging from harsh criticism and frank language, but this shouldn’t motivate Brady to react in such a drastic manner. I mean after all, it’s a WaPo blog, the editor’s blog at that. Not all of us peasants are good and proper; some are mentally malnurished, but we’re taxpaying peasants just the same, and obviously, interested enough in WaPo to spend our time flaming each other and WaPo staff on comment threads.

This is a healthy sign for an institution. It might register as backwards, or uncivil, but so is your average football game on Sunday when you’re not watching it from the comfort of your living room.

“Transparency and reasoned debate” cannot be managed, otherwise you’re just adding back the filters of mass consumption that blogs have removed from the web. Commit to the medium and over-engage in the discourse; it’s the only way to make a connection with the people that care enough to fire back at you.

We are the voices that will be heard, whether you like it or not. Deal with it.

UPDATE: After receiving a form response to my above email from Michael Golden, the Director of Customer Relationships (strange, the email was addressed to Jim Brady at executive.editor@washingtonpost.com), I stubled upon this great post from Jesus’ General.

Wake up WaPo.

A few years ago I ranted about my fear of a society where the media is absolutely controlled by corporate interests.

Now, my head wasn’t in the sand. I obviously realized that we were already living in a particular version of such a world, as money and power drives practically everything in this country. I was just a little concerned with the audacity of the FCC to even consider the type of deregulation it ended up approving. Sure, it happens every day; legislation lobbyed for by people in power turns around to increase the empowerment of those same people. I mean, this is how the free market works. But this legislation goes beyond just making money for the upper class.

If you view media reach as ephemeral noise in the ether, then the concerns of this post won’t bother you. Feel free to hop over to Amazon and consume away.

The fact is that Americans are glued to the tube and this type of conglomerate legislation — spanning all media (television, print, radio and the internet) — has now allowed for a greater possiblity to create a lasting, singular, corporate perspective in the psychology of the moment and beyond. Consume messaging has been given even more proximity to our children’s brains.

They Live shades are looking pretty good right about now.

So without the prospects of landing a pair of magic sunglasses, what exactly can be done to defend ourselves from this destructive approach to creating a consumer culture at all costs? As a contributor to public discourse, I’ve always believed that the ‘net (in 1997), and specifically, blogs (over the last five years) were a key development in the fight to present a perspective to battle corporate or government disinformation. Why?

• With blogging, there’s no managing editor around with advertising pressures to censor (or generate) a particular perspective. (Well, that is until the corporate structure tries to jack the nomenclature of blogging to dilute it’s effectiveness outside the reach of capitalism)
• Blogs are also a time permitting endeavor; you can publish many times a day or once a year. There isn’t a revenue figure to drive towards, which allows for individual perspectives to be expressed at will

This break from the days of publishing via the standard print revenue generation model is something akin to the advent of the printing press, yet with the merchant nation-state taking the place of the previously empowered Church. Okay, maybe that’s a little pre-mature, but the possibilities are there. And what are the possibilities?

Over the past few years, the blogging revolution has become more and more accessible and mainstream with the advent of RSS and aggregate readers. With Yahoo! adding access to RSS feeds to their My Yahoo! content modules, blogs are one step closer to being mainstream. But this last step is a big one, steeped in moral conviction… a belief in the common man. Why?

Until blogs are automatically indexed as viable, alternative feeds when running, say, a news query at Google or Yahoo!, they are going to, at best, sit on the periphery of the conscious of the world’s inhabitants. The average person does not have the time, nor the patience, to sift through the pedagogy of managing RSS. Bookmarks are about as much as they can handle. Blogs do return in general search queries, but this “general return only” pre-supposes a value level to the quality of the information being retrieved. You know, a perspective or opinion or even investigative research presented by a blogger has less value than a feed from the New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.

That’s why this information retrieval concept would have to be one generated out of moral conviction. By keeping news sources limited strictly to incorporated, staffed and vested (in the economic structure of society) newspapers, a Google (or any other news search engine) is basically saying that only these sources can report and editorialize news. Even though Google has gone a long way in presenting perspectives from small and foreign sources, providing the chance opportunity for conflicting perspective, it’s still not enough.

It seems to me that with a search capability, news aggregator and a blogging tool, Google and Yahoo! are best poised to create convergence between the “professional” news organizations and blogging communities, within the boundaries of their individual interfaces. How accessible blogs become in the presentation, will be a litmus test of their commitment to providing contextual channels within the information age, while creating usable interfaces for digesting a world of information overload and disinformation.

It’s completely doable and their historical commitment to data mining and information presentation doesn’t seem to indicate that they’ll shy away from heading in this direction. Well, as long as blogs don’t impact their institutional investors or advertisers in a negative light, that is.