September 17, 2003
Is it wrong to share music?
Katie Hafner in the New York Times: "Is It Wrong to Share Your Music? (Discuss)" (It's an article, not a discussion forum.)
I'm using a Userland RSS/NY Times link for the first time. With some articles, the different url means it's accessible after the regular version hits the pay archives. We'll see. (I'll have to check back in eight days, a month or longer to see if this is worth doing.)
Mary at bIPlog reminded me that I should do this more often by trolling this Userland partners directory, which is updated daily.
mary said:
Oh my, didn't mean to nag (smile). But for skeptics, here is a test link of an 8+ day old article for your perusing:
Many Voices Enriching the Broth.
Considering how fast those links die, I think it's worth the extra trouble.
Are emails private? And should bloggers scoop their interviewers?
Mark Glaser, a friend and columnist for the Online Journalism Review, has a small beef with bloggers, which he related to me by email and allowed me to share on this blog.
It's simply this: an increasing number of bloggers whom Mark has interviewed by email post their interview comments on their blogs -- before the interview even runs!
Mark says this has happened to him many times now, most recently yesterday when the irascible Jeff Jarvis posted his interview responses (scroll down) on Buzz Machine before they appeared in OJR.
Thereís another twist, too. Apparently Mark sent Jeff an email that expressed some disappointment with this, and suggesting that an exchange between reporter and interview subject is understood to be private. Jeff sent back a note saying that in the age of blogs, no one should expect an email to remain private. (I may be misrepresenting Jeff's thoughts here; if so, he's free to clarify.)
Says Mark: "If someone is writing a story that quotes you, often it's a promotion of you, your site, blog, etc. Why would you want to upset that journalist by posting stuff without their permission? I'm not really sure what to make of it, other than to take your advice and always put something in emails to bloggers like: THIS IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION ONLINE UNTIL AFTER THE STORY POSTS. I understand the transparency angle, but sometimes that should be counterbalanced by common courtesy. Why not just ask for permission? The interview involves two people, and they both should give consent for seeing their words posted somewhere."
This post-your-own interview thing is spiraling into interesting new directions, and the trend cuts both ways. Sheila Lennon today posted an item on her blog ("Me and my different drummer") recounting her email exchange with Mark G. and recalling the transcript of the New York Times interview she posted on her personal blog one year ago, which helped kick off this trend.
Now, here's the thing. I'm one of the early proponents of posting full transcripts of interviews. (In January I posted transcripts of interviews I conducted with others, and sometime before that I posted transcripts in which I was interviewed.)
But to post an interview before it's even published by the publication that initiated the interview is a slap at the reporter. (Afterward is fine, but before?) Iím not sure whatís to be gained by doing that. And youíre sure as hell certain to be crossed off his or her list of sources the next time around.
As for emails being private or public, that's a big subject and could easily fill an entire column. Joe Clark had a very public run-in with the folks at Edelman PR for publishing their email exchange without their permission. And there was the case of the reporter (whose name escapes me) who sent some off-the-cuff observations about a conference she was covering (including comments that a speaker was kind of
cute) to a few friends by email and was mightily ticked off when one of them posted her thoughts to the Web.
My own view is that I think Jarvis is wrong if he believes any private correspondence between two people is fair game for publishing to the entire world. (I can think of many private emails I've received that I could have published because they were interesting or newsworthy, but doing so would have been hurtful or harmful to the sender.) I once mentioned to Doc Searls and Glenn Fleishman that I occasionally post snippets from emails to my weblog without asking the writer's permission, and they were aghast (although I suspect this is becoming a very common practice). I still do it on rare occasions, when it's fairly obvious that the writer is offering information intended for a wider audience and would have no problem with it. I generally email the person, letting her know I just posted her comments and that if she objected I would immediately remove them. Nobody has ever asked for a posting to be taken down.
As a journalist and a blogger, I have mixed feelings about all this. I've seen bloggers post email comments without permission often enough now that I'm circumspect in the wording I use to interview subjects or to approach potential sources. There have been rare occasions when Iíve attached legal wording to the bottom of an email that points out reposting my comments without permission would be a violation of copyright laws. Iíve done that only when dealing with someone who has ulterior motives or an axe to grind.
Having said that, I'll also add that some of the bloggers have a point, too. Part of the attraction of blogging is its transparency. By posting transcripts, exchanges with reporters and private emails, people get a much closer look at the guts of the research, writing and reporting that makes up the journalism process. Bloggers complain that their comments are sometimes taken out of context, or that the nuances of their statements are lost when they're quoted in an email interview that doesn't involve a full transcript. So I can't fault them for revealing part of the exchange with the reporter that led up to the publication of their words. The real bottom line is: Why did they feel the need to do this? Do they ascribe dark motives to the journalist? Do they think itís important to scoop the reporter whoís interviewing them? Is it carelessness, lack of time? Or is it simply done in the interests of full disclosure?
I donít know. You tell me.
Mark Glaser said:
I think the missing element to this conversation is that of common courtesy. Personally, when I email something to someone -- whether it's an interview or just a comment -- I don't expect it to be posted somewhere without at least the courtesy of asking me first. In a few unrelated experiences, I've had bloggers post just my questions, my questions and answers, and even just an email comment, without checking with me.
I don't know that there's a "best practice" with blogging, but it seems like one would be to ask someone's permission before posting their words from an email correspondence online for the world to see.
There's the aspect of scooping me -- which is stupid for any subject of an interview if they want to be interviewed again. Most bloggers are getting something out of being interviewed, at the least exposure to their blog. Why would I want to interview them again?
But I think JD's comment about "I do this and usually check with the person first" shows just how casual this is -- it's really a vague idea to bloggers about checking first. It's just post an email, and remove it and say sorry later.
That's stupid and makes the blogger and journalist both look bad. I am not a blogger, but if I was, it would pain me to see others flaunt common courtesy in the name of transparency.
I'm totally fine with people running full interviews on their blogs after the story posts. I realize they own their own words and all that. But in these cases, it had nothing to do with transparency and everything to do with ego and simple lack of courtesy.
If these are supposed A-list bloggers who want respect, they should show some respect to the people they work with. Or is this some exciting groundbreaking thing about blogging that I'm missing: the new new rudeness?
Tim said:
I'm going to shed whatever new media aspersions I have and answer with my old media, grumpy newspaper self: Use the phone. You hear tone, inflection, doubt, arrogance, humor -- in short, you get more than information and response, you get a portrait of the person talking that adds context to his or her words.
If that's what you want, of course.
Uncle Bob said:
If I were the reporter, and a one-on-one interviewee trumped my story by running the interview transcript in public like that, I would be damned inclined to simply not do the story (assuming I could maintain good relations with my editor).
Needless to say, it's just reverse public relations by the blogger.
The Digital Revenue Shock Tour
Andrew Nachison, director of the Media Center/NDN, sends along word of the Digital Revenue Shock Tour coming to San Francisco on Nov. 4-7:
Our seminar opens with an after-dinner conversation with Larry Kramer, founder and chairman of CBS.Marketwatch.We'll be focused on revenue strategies, innovation and lessons that you may want to emulate or translate to enhance the online bottom line in your markets. The CBS.Marketwatch headquarters is one of the stops during our seminar, along with PCWorld.com and SFGate/ The San Francisco Chronicle.
A president's lack of candor
President George W. Bush is an incessant liar bent on destroying America's social safety net, central bank guru Alan Greenspan should shut his mouth on issues unrelated to monetary policy and the U.S. media have done a terrible job of keeping the public informed.If those opinions seem stark, they are meant to be. The New York Times pays op-ed columnist Paul Krugman to ruffle feathers. The Princeton University economist has been writing for the Times since 1999 -- work now compiled in his latest book "The Great Unraveling."
In it, Krugman says Bush lied during his 2000 presidential campaign, lied once he took office, turned a record budget surplus into the biggest deficit to line the pockets of the rich and abused the public's patriotism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"Bush is a leader of a movement that wants to smash the system as we know it, the social contract, the safety net that was built up since Franklin Roosevelt," Krugman said in an interview late on Monday before a party to launch his book.
He believes no U.S. president has lied as much as Bush, who he says has fibbed on everything from taxes to the case for war against Iraq. "Certainly there is nothing in modern American history that resembles this." ...
The news media still have a hard time reporting on a dissembling president, though op-ed columnists like Krugman have free rein to call it like he sees it. Look for an increasingly ugly shootout between the media and the administration between now and November 2004, with the media leaving it to partisan Democrats to challenge the president's veracity.
Gen. Clark running, his site isn't
Big day for Gen. Wesley Clark, who announced he's running for president, as well as his grassroots supporters, such as DraftWesleyClark.com. The site may need a bigger server -- can't access it because I assume it's getting slammed. (Another grassroots site, DraftClark2004, is up. His official site is AmericansforClark.)
Spiers leaving Gawker for New York mag
Elizabeth Spiers is "selling out" and leaving Gawker for New York magazine. Gawker will carry on, with Choire Sicha as its new editor. And New York magazine tells Elizabeth it wants her to launch a blog there. Cool.
WordPirates seeks to untwist the language
David Weinberger and Dan Gillmor have just launched a site called WordPirates where, as David puts it, "you can register and discuss words that you feel have been taken over by commercial and political rapscallions who twisted them to serve their own nefarious purposes. For example, people who share copyright mp3s may be many things, but they are definitely not 'pirates.' And when you stay in a hotel, you are certainly not their 'guest.' "
A worthy endeavor. Hope it flourishes.
The network-smashing future of television
From the October issue of Wired: The Fast-Forward, On-Demand, Network-Smashing Future of Television. What happens when digital video recorders give viewers control of the TV schedule, the content, and the ads? The whole world is watching.
On a related subject, Forbes has this: ZAP! The Day May Finally Be Near When Digital Technology Eviscerates a $60 Billion Ad Business. The networks could probably survive TiVo, but will they be able to survive the inexpensive DVR features of cable and satellite services?
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointers.
CT said:
It's funny how this Wired story is spreading so fast. The New York Times Magazine ran an insightful article with this very same theme about 2 years ago, when TiVo et al were just making the scene. I no longer have a copy of that Times piece, but in reading the Wired article, it appears that the outlook for a decentralized television-watching experience hasn't changed much.
JD said:
I think it was Michael Lewis who wrote it and it was actually the summer of 2000. None of my friends at the time had even heard of TiVo. Now, most have heard of it, but they still haven't bought it. So it's going to take a long while for the revolution to arrive.
News sites, linking, and opening the doors
Mark Glaser in today's OJR: News Sites Loosen Linking Policies. News sites that once staunchly refused to link offsite -- especially to competitor sites -- are now testing the waters with offsite links in blogs and e-mail newsletters.
Among those whom Mark interviewed are Jeff Jarvis, Adrian Holovaty and Jonathan Dube, all of whom posted transcripts of their interviews -- in at least one case (Jarvis') before the article came out.
Jarvis uses the Online News Association (not OJR) as the taking-off point for a rant about insularity vs. openness. I'm a member of ONA (which he called the Online Schmooze Association), but I think his points are well-taken.
What an "Online News Association" should be doing is expanding its worldview to incorporate and learn from new definitions of news and new challenges to old views of how news is gathered and how it is used.
That's pretty much the view I tried to get across five years ago in covering the ONA's formation: "Online News Association needs to open the doors." Things haven't changed much, alas.
Why the Web will kill RSS
Vin Crosbie: Why the Web will kill RSS. Spam is just one of a dozen reasons he cites.
Not sure I agree with Vin's bottom line, but he's a smart guy on all matters new media.
Vin Crosbie said:
Chris, it's indeed a parody of your original posting, and its inane logic is lifted almost-word for-word from yours.
If you truly think, "It didn't work; he killed his position through a poorly-crafted parody. Yet another case of I-make-money-through-email-and-I'm-afraid-to-change-itis. If he's an expert, he sure has a funny way of showing it," then may I suggest that we argue it out here in JD's comment pages. We'll use actual logic and actual data (I'll even use audited, third-party data and examples from which I have no business relationships, lest you otherwise think or claim that I'm using corrupted facts and examples).
Or, if you prefer, we can argue this out in true blogger style, on each of our respective blogs.
In other words, I'm calling you out: Either you're wrong or I'm wrong. Let's shoot it out in scholarly fashion, using logic and facts.
Or can't you back up your statements?
Roger Benningfield said:
Vin: The problem is that you've failed to demonstrate exactly what it is about Pirillo's argument that qualifies as "inane".
After all, he's fundamentally correct on a number of basic points: RSS *is* immune to third-party spam, user-control of subscription status *is* more complete with syndication, organization *is* easier for the user, RSS *can* be more easily archived and repurposed than email, RSS *can* be edited freely (unlike email that has been released into the wild), users *are* increasingly reluctant to surrender their email addresses, and aggregators *are* getting better every day.
Does all of that add up to "RSS will kill email publishing"? Not necessarily. But Chris has the basis for an argument to that effect, and all you've provided as a counterpoint is, well... nothing.
Actually, that's not entirely true. You *do* directly refute his claim about declining circulation, and for all I know, you're absolutely right. But carrying one point and essentially glossing over the other nine isn't likely to win you a debate.
Vin Crosbie said:
Roger, I'll be glad to oblige. Since Chris hasn't replied to my challenge, I'll simply begin late on Friday to demonstrate exactly what is wrong with his argument. Go to http://www.digitaldeliverance.com/ then for that.
