Dead Parrot doings

Ryan Pitts -- whose paper, the Spokesman-Review, is hlighlighted in my piece today on digital editions --, has been busy lately on the Dead Parrot Society media blog. (Gotta ask him about that name one of these days.)

Just today he's blogged about How blogging can actively improve journalism, instead of just reactively criticizing it. ("I'm concerned about better connecting the blogging world to the journalism world, because reaching the reading public is actually a part of making that happen. As more people read more blogs and become more dissatisifed with the problems that do exist in today's news culture, they'll demand a media that is informed by what blogging has to offer.") This intriguing idea popped out:

Ill-formed idea: If tracking tools can compile lists based on scans of thousands of blogs, couldn't a meta-tool merge the results of all that tracking? So create this tool under the auspices of a media group like Poynter or OJR, display it in real-time and archive each day's meta-list. Perhaps assign a staffer to cover the memes that this list highlights. Then take advantage of the journalists who are plugged into the blogosphere, and distribute this information within newsrooms: "This is what the reading public is talking about." Start the groundswell from within the media.

Also, Ryan delves into The FCC Gold Rush begins. Offers a fuller list of pointers to NY Times editor Howell Raines stepping down. And has some thoughts on Scholars who blog.

Glaser on Dowd and Bush

Mark Glaser in OJR: Transcripts let readers decide veracity of Maureen Dowd column on Bush. Excerpt:

Coming on the heels of the Jayson Blair scandal, this Dada-esque quote caused concern for Times reader Robert Cox, who e-mailed the paper and went through voicemail hell to get little help from the staff. "I couldn't believe the hypocrisy of people at the paper saying they were disappointed about readers not alerting The Times to errors [by Blair], and then they won't acknowledge this problem [with Dowd]," he told me. (The Times and Dowd did not return my queries.)

Slate, NPR Partnership Blurs Line for Public Radio

The RNC wants my contributions

Today I received in the mail a "Census Document Questionnaire" from the Republican National Party. (Boy, have they got the wrong guy.)

Among the loaded questions (which they'll no doubt spin for their own propaganda purposes):

1. Do you support President Bush's initiatives to promote the safety and security of all Americans?

Yes No Undecided

2, Should students, teachers, principals and administrators be held to higher standards?

Oh, they also want me to send a check up to $500 made out to the RNC.

Will you join the Republican National Committee by making a contribution today?

Yes, I support the RNC and am enclosing my most generous contribution of ...

No, I favor electing liberal Democrats over the next ten years.

Buying a wide-screen computer monitor

My aging Dell 17-inch monitor is on its last legs, sputtering and hiccuping like an octogenarian with pneumonia, so I've decided to splurge on a wide-screen flat panel computer monitor.

My first thought was to go the Apple route. I can switch hard drives with my wife, who has a G4 in the next room that we use for multimedia, mostly. And the 23-inch Cinema HD Display. with a 1920 x 1200 screen, is drop-dead gorgeous.

But switching from my PC to our Mac for the bulk of my work would have more drawbacks than advantages right now. Blogging would be tougher (no bold, italic or url buttons, for example). Wouldn't be able to use ActiveWords. A lot of my apps, like Photoshop, have later versions on the PC.

So now I'm leaning toward a 1600 x 1200 flat panel display for the PC. Some of the ones that look outstanding include the ViewSonic VX2000, Samsung SyncMaster 210 T, the Planar WS231. I would have included the Formac Gallery 2010 were it not for its track record of terrible customer service.

Anyone out there have a wide-screen monitor you're happy with?

The FCC Minister of Information

Here's the outstanding online cartoonist Mark Fiore in SF Gate on The FCC Minister of Information -- starring Michael Powell as the general protecting the citizenry's interests against media consolidation. Absolutely hilarious, and spot on.

And check out his brilliant spin on Total Information Awareness. Big Brother is back ... but in a nice way.

Incidentally, Fiore just won his second straight award as the nation's outstanding new media cartoonist in an annual awards competition held by the National Cartoonists Society.

Items from hither and yon

• Wish Find A Grave was up and running when I was researching my thriller a few years back.

• NY Times: More than 290,000 people have joined Friendster since the service became publicly available in March, and its ranks are growing by 20 percent a week ...

• NY Times: Counteracting the Internet Rumor. How Starbucks was put on the defensive by an attack on the Internet rumor mill that would not go away.

• NY Times: Senators Move to Restore F.C.C. Limits on the Media. (We can only hope that some common sense will prevail.)

Finding wi-fi hot spots

NY Times: Traveling to Europe or Asia this summer? A look at places and service plans for wireless Internet access overseas.

A sidebar points out these websites to find wi-fi hot spots: hotspot-locations.com, wi-fizone.org and wifinder.com. For noncommercial networks, try wififreespot.com or nodedb.com, which provides maps for each one.

NY Times' exec editor resigns

Lots of items to cover, starting with this big news:

Executive Editor of The Times and Top Deputy Step Down.

Former New York Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld has been named interim executive editor.

Here's some coverage in other publications:

Newsweek web exclusive: Shake-Up at The New York Times

Memo to the staff from NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (via Jim Romenesko)

Wall Street Journal: Top New York Times Editors Resign Over Blair Scandal

AP story in the Washington Post: New York Times Executives Resign

MSNBC blogger Eric Alterman: The other shoe drops

CNN media analyst Jeff Greenfield: Analysis of 'New York Times' Resignations

Digital editions: Friend or foe to new media?

I wrote an article that went up on The Online Journalism Review site a few hours ago. I've written dozens of articles for OJR over the years, and this is the first time I've had serious disagreements with the editing of one of my pieces.

In the spirit of transparency, I've published my version of the article, which has a different headline, slant, thrust and emphasis than the heavily recast OJR version. (And, of course, they're free to edit as they please.)

Digital editions present an important issue that has gone largely unexplored until now: the growing trend toward paid electronic editions in conjunction with closing off parts of the free news site to non-subscribers.

Excerpt from my version:

While most newspapers see digital editions as modest adjuncts to their Web operations, a handful are going a step further. They're eyeing digital editions as a possible solution to the dilemma facing the vast majority of online news providers: the mindset of "if it's on the Internet, it must be free."

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette scaled back its Web site, adopted a subscription model and launched a digital edition one year ago. The Montreal newspaper La Presse pulled the plug on its free news site in March and launched an electronic edition alongside a scaled-down Web presence that features teasers and wire service stories.

Following that same path, Spokane has decided to put all its newspaper content behind a pay wall on SpokesmanReview.com when it debuts its digital edition. And the Orange County Register is pursuing similar plans this fall. ...

And a different ending:

The day may come in a few years when digital editions and Web sites meld the best of both delivery systems into a hybrid of the two, with an online edition that offers breaking news, today's comics and day-old commentary in a contextualized and personalized format.

But until that day arrives, we're likely to see tensions between staffed websites and digital editions continue to grow, particularly if more news organizations wall off their free news sites in favor of the clones.

Back from oblivion: The domain name blues

Here's the strange, sad saga of the disappearance of New Media Musings for the past week:

In May 2001 I registered jdlasica.com with an outfit in the suburbs of Houston called enameco.com, aka e-names.org. I paid two years up front and selected the option for recurring payments when the domain name comes up for renewal.

Last Thursday, without warning, enameco pulled the plug on my domain, for reasons I've never been able to ascertain. I tried visiting their website -- gone. Tried emailing them -- emails bounced or went unanswered. Tried phoning them. First number was disconnected. Second number reached an employee, left him six voice mails, all of which went unanswered. Third number reached the main office. An automated greeting. "Operator assistance ... Sorry, no one is available to answer the call. Please leave a message." Then: "Sorry, there is no space to leave a message."

After hitting this brick wall, I tried to switch my registrar. I was astonished at the insurmountable roadblocks I faced. I spoke with a customer service representative for the company that handles new registrations for GoDaddy.com and SpinWeb. The fellow there told me I was essentially out of luck for 60 days. Because enameco placed a "register lock" on my domain, putting it on "register hold," it couldn't be switched to another registrar.

At that point we were operating under the assumption that enameco may have gone out of business -- and this is a cautionary tale for anyone who registers with a registrar in a precarious financial situation. Said the customer rep:

"If your registrar has gone out of business, chances are your domain will be taken over by Verisign (Network Solutions). You won't be able to do anything for 30 days. After that, you have the option of paying $250 to Verisign to get it out of redemption. A cheaper option is to back-order the domain. After 60 days, the domain returns to the general pool, and anyone who back-orders it has dibs. Even at that, and even if you order it today and someone else orders the same domain 59 days from now, you may not get it."

I contacted Network Solutions, where a supervisor told me the same thing. A transfer probably wouldn't go through if a domain is on register hold, unless the original registrar approved the transfer. And if they were out of business, I was stuck.

Absolutely jaw-dropping. I contacted Doc Searls, who put me on to Eliot Nass and Ross Wm. Rader of Tucows, both of whom tried valiantly, but without success, to get this resolved.

In the end, it turned out that enameco (may they burn in hell) merely had its site down for several days. Apparently, answering urgent phone messages is not a priority for these jokers. I managed to pay a renewal fee (not sure why this didn't happen in the first place) through their online form, and today my domain reappeared.

I'll be transfering registrar responsibilities for my domain to another company later today. Came this close to losing my domain for 60 days, or more. So there's a lesson in here somewhere about making sure your registrar is on solid financial footing.

Thanks for all your emails expressing concern and puzzlement at this blog's temporary disappearance. It's good to be back.