Archives for July 2001

Publishers and database vendors consider their next steps

This article appeared July 15, 2001, in the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge publication. The original article is below. Here’s the edited version on the NAA site.

Database vendors have begun pursuing different paths in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Tasini v. New York Times ruling June 25, with some purging their databases of unlicensed freelance material at the behest of their newspaper partners and others taking a stance of watchful waiting.

Jonathan Tasini, meanwhile, said newspaper publishers are making a mistake if they rush ahead with plans to delete freelance articles. “I’m sincerely hopeful that reasonable publishers will sit down and negotiate with us,” he said. “From day one our position has been to put out an olive branch to the industry and say, ‘Let’s sit down and cooperate.’ There are two ways to look at this. One way is to wind up in an all-out war of litigation. The second way is to look at the notion of partnership as a reality.”

[Read more…] about After Tasini: An online bonfire of the vanities?

AlterNet leads a resurgence of progressive news sites

This column appeared July 12, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.

Will a handful of big corporations control virtually all the news published on the Internet? On some days it certainly appears that way, especially in light of the report last month that four companies control half of all the traffic on the Web.

The prospects for independent content sites seem grim today, what with Salon running low on cash and the zines Feed and Suck closing up shop.

But one voice of grassroots independent journalism has recently begun to thrive. More surprising still, its point of view offers a decidedly left-of-center tilt.

[Read more…] about The wired left awakens

A look at the current state of online news’ credibility

When the Web first blasted onto the public’s radar screen back in 1994, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism wondered what it meant for the profession: Would journalists become obsolete in the new Net order? Would the Internet’s anything-goes dynamic dilute journalism’s core values and standards? What were the rules, and who would write them?

Things have settled down a bit since the Web’s Kitty Hawk days. Now that the high-tech bubble has burst and we’re moving into a period of retrenchment and reassessment, it seems appropriate to pause and consider how the Internet is shaping journalism ethics, and how the Internet ethic is steering journalism in new directions. [Read more…] about How the Net is shaping journalism ethics

Former LA Times newsman takes on role as reader representative at MSNBC

This column appeared July 1, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.

Online news has its first ombudsman. But to hear him tell it, the view from cyberspace doesn’t differ from terra firma as much as he’d expected.

“The thing that has surprised me most is that the kinds of concerns readers have on the Web track pretty closely with their concerns in traditional media,” says Dan Fisher, who began his job as ombudsman for MSNBC in mid-April.

[Read more…] about Cyberspace’s first ombudsman