Blogs will supplement, not supplant, traditional forms of media

This column appeared May 31, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. See Part 1: Blogging as a new form of journalism.

Parts 1 and 2 of this series were included in the anthology We’ve Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture (Perseus Publishing, 2002).

By J.D. Lasica

Will Weblogs displace established media organizations as a source of news, information and opinion? Not in this lifetime. But they will continue to make inroads as a supplement to traditional news sources.

As Doc Searls, one of the deep thinkers in the blog movement, says: “It’s a matter of ‘and’ logic, not ‘or’ logic. Weblogs will inform old media. They will increasingly be a source of information that traditional media will rely on.”

The first Weblog has generally been ascribed to Dave Winer (interviewed below) in 1997. Blogs began taking off in 1999 with the launch of sites like Blogger, Weblogger and LiveJournal, which made self-publishing painless for the masses. While tens of thousands of blogs have blossomed, mainstream media have only recently shown a glimmer of interest in the form.

“Journalism is going to have to get used to making room for lots of other people who are not journalists by training but who are just moved by whatever their nature happens to be.”

– Doc Searls

That’s hardly surprising. Weblogs are the anti-newspaper in some ways. Where the editorial process can filter out errors and polish a piece of copy to a fine sheen, too often the machinery turns even the best prose limp, lifeless, sterile and homogenized. A huge part of blogs’ appeal lies in their unmediated quality. Blogs tend to be impressionistic, telegraphic, raw, honest, individualistic, highly opinionated and passionate, often striking an emotional chord.

Sometimes they veer toward immediacy and conjecture at the expense of accuracy and thoughtful reflection. But the best news blogs offer a personal prism that combines pointers to trusted sources of information with a subjective, passion-based journalism. If nothing else, Weblogs are about personal publishing – people sharing what’s in their gut and backing it up with facts or persuasion.

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ABCNEWS.com straddles the line with its Pearl Harbor package

This column appeared May 31, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.

By J.D. Lasica

Visitors to ABCNEWS.com’s “Pearl Harbor” package may be forgiven if they roll their eyes a bit at an increasingly familiar sight in the media universe: synergy. Like a raid of Japanese torpedo bombers, synergy was splattered all over the place this past week as the news site devoted a slick, handsome package to Pearl Harbor, the historical event, and “Pearl Harbor,” the movie from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures.

But when does synergy morph into conflict of interest? What happens when a news operation begins to internalize some of the traits of an entertainment giant that happens to be its corporate parent? And what happens when history and fiction begin to meld in users’ minds?

Those concerned about the media’s mix of fact and fiction and the ethical entanglements posed by corporate influence over an online news operation had plenty to chew over with last Friday’s premiere of “Pearl Harbor,” the summer blockbuster that pulled in $75.1 million at the holiday weekend box office, ranking No. 2 on the all-time list for four-day openings.

The ABCNEWS.com Pearl Harbor package intertwined historical events with photos from fictitious Hollywood characters who never existed. And Sam Donaldson’s weekly Webcast, which originated from Pearl Harbor this week, also straddled the line between fact and fiction by splicing footage from the movie into a documentary scene.

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Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices

This column appeared May 24, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Also see Part 2: Weblogs: A new source of news.

Parts 1 and 2 of this series were included in the anthology We’ve Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture (Perseus Publishing, 2002).

By J.D. Lasica

Back around 1993, in the Web’s neolithic days, starry-eyed Net denizens waxed poetic about a million Web sites blooming and supplanting the mainstream media as a source of news, information and insight.

Then reality set in and those individual voices became lost in the ether as a million businesses lumbered onto the cyberspace stage, newspapers clumsily grasped at viable online business models, and a handful of giant corporations made the Web safe for snoozing.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Web’s irrelevance: the blogging phenomenon, a grassroots movement that may sow the seeds for new forms of journalism, public discourse, interactivity and online community.

“I think the Web is actually becoming more credible while established media are losing ground,” says Paul Andrews

While no one is really sure where this is all heading, my hunch is that blogging represents Ground Zero of the personal Webcasting revolution. Weblogging will drive a powerful new form of amateur journalism as millions of Net users — young people especially — take on the role of columnist, reporter, analyst and publisher while fashioning their own personal broadcasting networks. It won’t happen overnight, and we’re now seeing only version 1.0, but just wait a few years when broadband and multimedia arrive in a big way.

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Following is Disney chairman and CEO Michael Eisner’s internal memo to employees of Walt Disney Co. early in the week of May 21, 2001:

Dear Fellow Cast Members:

This Friday, the Touchstone film “Pearl Harbor” will open in the United States and Canada, followed quickly by its release in most parts of the world. Because the awareness of this film is so incredibly high, this e-mail will be brief. I don’t need to list the cast or give you the synopsis of the plot. I will just give you the synopsis of the film’s significance for our company: Enormous (enough said).

There are no sure things in the entertainment industry, but this comes close. It better, because I’ve already predicted this in the annual report letter I wrote in December. And I’ve been on CNBC and CNN in the last two weeks proclaiming it a smash. I’ve been telling anybody who would listen that this will be our biggest live action film ever.

Thanks to the passion, commitment and artistic drive of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay, “Pearl Harbor” is truly an epic film that was made on a less-than-epic budget. This is not to say it isn’t expensive, but I believe it will be profitable by Labor Day (he said, getting much too cocky!). Jerry, Michael and the film’s cast and crew were incredibly devoted to this project throughout the many months of development and production. And Studios chairman Peter Schneider, Motion Picture Group chairman Dick Cook, Motion Picture Group president Nina Jacobson, president of production Bruce Hendricks and their entire team have worked tirelessly to make this a really magnificent achievement for the entire studio.

In short, everyone at every level pulled together to make the best possible film. I think that one of the aspects of “Pearl Harbor” that motivated people so greatly was that this film represented a chance to honor the veterans of World War II. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the conflict truly became a world war, involving terrible suffering and sacrifice around the globe. This film pays tribute to the men and women who gave so much in so many places … theirs was a generation that made a difference.

Michael

New technologies target theft of online intellectual property

This column appeared May 1, 2001, in the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge. Here’s the version on the NAA site.

By J.D. Lasica

Spooked by the Napster-led peer-to-peer file-sharing movement, where computer users swap music files and other content in a free-wheeling data bazaar, an increasing number of Web publishers and businesses are taking steps to protect their intellectual property.

During the past several months, newspapers ranging in size from the Albuquerque Journal, to The New York Times have launched online permissions services. An entertainment Web site posted the script of a hot new movie — and installed anti-theft technology to prevent it from being copied to fan sites. A small weekly news site in Arkansas installed watermarking technology to protect news photos from being misappropriated.

These technological approaches to copyright protection, and others, all fall under the broad umbrella of digital rights management. DRM solutions available to online publishers run the gamut from encryption software that “locks down” a site’s text and images to on-screen forms that let users republish or redistribute stories for a fee.

Insiders at the technology companies spearheading the movement to protect copyrighted works say the field of digital rights management is ready to bust out in a big way during the next year.

A survey of the field suggests that DRM solutions fall into four overlapping categories:

• Reprints and permissions, in which a traditional rights and permissions department extends its service to cyberspace.

• Encrypted content solutions, where technology companies license software that prevents users from swiping any material a copyright holder deems off-limits.

• Content distribution, either through a contract with a syndication service, partner or programming language.

• Copyright enforcement, where software agents scour the Net to search for unauthorized reproductions of intellectual property.

Here’s an overview of these various approaches to copyright protection:

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