A new home for New Media Musings

This blog has moved to a new address: http://blog.jdlasica.com. I've also moved from MovableType (750,000 downloads over the past 2-3 years) to TypePad (somewhere north of 3,000 paying subscribers). The advantages are several:

• It loads faster.

• Very cool photo album tools.

• TypePad hosts all the blog content on its servers, and I've been having mundo problems with my current ISP, Dreamhost.

• More pinging power, with state-of-the-art trackback tools.

I'll be finessing the design over the next several days, and the blogosphere links are a mess, but I've begun blogging over there since yesterday. Take a look.

And, apologies to those who recently updated their blogroll links to my site (I moved from Manila in Feb. and now from MT to TypePad). The blog.jdlasica.com should never have to change. And I'd appreciate it if you'd be kind enough to update your pointers to my new url.

When journalists don't credit their sources

Rafat Ali, editor of paidContent.org, makes a good point today that's worth underlining. Let him tell it:

It is amazing how major, respectable media companies like CNET News and AP don't know how to credit stories, especially stories done by small media/ trade sites. The Red Herring resurrection story was done by me on Sep 9, after a long, hard investigation. And they pick up the story, have no attributions, and never mentioned that I reported on it first. A very similar thing happened to me with the KeepMedia story: I did it on June 30, after another long investigation, and then the Wall Street Journal picks it up on July 21, writes this whole big story, and never credits me. I e-mailed the reporter, who said he never did know I did the story. I can understand that, but in this day and age of Google, any half-wit reporter would put some keywords in Google and find out if anyone else has done anything on it before. For instance, click on these Google keywords: "Red Herring Relaunch" and "KeepMedia". We call it research.

Anyway, I find it strange then when other blogs write about the stories I have done, they ALWAYS credit me, but when traditional news orgs pick it up, they never do (except CBS Marketwatch!). Some who do, fail to ever link back to the site, the most basic, fundamental backbone of the Internet.

Please, take this is a public warning and a challenge: all you journalists who read my stories and don't credit, I will hunt you down and bring it to the court of public opinion. Enough of you guys milking the actual people who break the news. All I am asking is for a credit, like I do religiously when I pick up news from other sources. My whole raison d'Ítre is crediting other news sources.

Right on, Rafat! As a newsroom veteran, I've encountered this on far too many occasions. I made a similar point in a panel discussion on weblogs one year ago:

[With weblogs] you can see the origins of a story as it works its way through the media ecosystem, whereas in traditional journalism you're taught to slap a second-day lead on a story, and the reader doesn't get the context of how that story originated.

When I made that remark, Dan Gillmor leaned over and asked me, "Do you really think that happens a lot?" Yes, and as Rafat suggests, it's happening more often with bloggers.

Thanks to Steve Outing for the original pointer on this.

Toward a weblogging empire

Wired News follows the story of Jason Calacanis, who is resurfacing as the would-be czar of a weblogging clearinghouse.

I hope Jason succeeds. As even he admits, it's an uphill climb. Nick Denton, creator of Gawker and Gizmodo, offers a reality check:

Denton ... fired back on his own site, "Jason Calacanis, founder of Silicon Alley Reporter and boom time hype-merchant, has re-emerged as a blog booster. God help us.... Calacanis is a smart and engaging guy, and I'm a believer in Web media, but the last thing the world needs now is his brand of late '90s enthusiasm. Here's a reality check: Gawker and Gizmodo do about $2,000 each in ad revenue a month. Roughly the earnings of a starving freelance writer."

Meantime, Tony Perkins of Red Herring and AlwaysOn fame pens a column today that might be better titled The Blogging Education of Tony Perkins. I've given in and added AlwaysOn to the blogroll at the right.

Jason Calacanis launches Weblogs, Inc.

From BoingBoing:

Jason Calacanis, founder of Silicon Alley Reporter and Venture Reporter magazines, launched his new venture this morning. Weblogs, Inc. is sort of a profit-based micropublishing system for niche, business-to-business blogs. Here's a snip from the company's manifesto.

Weblogs, Inc. is a B2B Web site dedicated to creating niche Weblogs (a.k.a. blogs) across niche industries in which user participation is an essential component of the resulting product. Weblogs, Inc. is creating a new layer on top of the traditional business-to-business media that:

* saves professionals the time associated with reading dozens of B2B publications by providing a non-stop, top-level summary of the news;

* provides analytical tools that allow users the ability to sort and search stories by subtopics inside B2B niches;

* gives users the ability to participate by engaging in discussions, ranking stories and by submitting their own ìblogsî (i.e., pointers and summaries of stories on other sites); and

* promotes fairness and truth in reporting by acting as a public forum where industry professionals can participate.

This from the Weblogs, Inc. site:

Traditional journalism is, in a word, broken. We've spent the last decade working in publishing (online and offline) and we believe that traditional journalism is imploding.

Interesting, and something to watch, perchance to participate in.

'An edited blog is a contradiction in terms'

Tim Rutten of the LA Times jumps into the controversy over the Sacramento Bee putting the editing clamps on Daniel Weintraub's blog. (See the past two days for prior entries on the subject.) I disagree with most of Rutten's conclusions, but he ends the piece nicely with this:

"An edited blog is a contradiction in terms," said Orville Schell, dean of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. "It's a characteristic of the Internet in general that forms like the blog emerge with great exuberance and edgy promise and then the overseers move in. That's a pity. We need frontiers of plain-speaking, even it's politically incorrect. I understand why the Bee did what it did, but it leads to a restraint on free-thinking, which is lamentable."

I suspect Schell wouldn't have a problem with the kind of Editing Lite for blogs that I proposed in February.

Sheila Lennon, one of the best newspaper bloggers in the land, has more on this here and here.

A free blog traffic analyzer

From the Shifted Librarian comes word of a new service, Lumberjack, that analyzes your blog traffic -- for free. (Do you really want to know?)

A new Dem blog, but where's the Bush countdown?

The Democratic National Committee has a new blog: Kicking Ass.

Here's an idea (and I'm surprised I haven't seen this on any site yet): A java countdown ticker to the days, hours and minutes remaining in George W. Bush's administration, which is due to end at noon on Jan. 20, 2005.

Update: Just came across this Bush Countdown Clock via the Drudge Retort.

Can newspapers handle blogs?

Doc Searls weighs in on the Sacramento Bee's bloggergate. Says Doc: "My belief is that [small media] will be the first to learn how to use blogs, and bloggers, as symbiotic sources of both news production and editing services."

Blogging the WTO summit

In the Guardian UK, Victor Keegan reports on the Guardian's experimental linking of editorial comment and the world of the blog during this month's WTO summit.

Thanks to Gary Price for the pointer.

Transitioning to TypePad

OK, I've tracked down the source of my problems with MovableType. There may be a small warning in here for other MT users.

Over the weekend I received an email from my ISP, Dreamhost, warning me that I had exceeded my storage limit. This explained why my blog started behaving strangely last week (the right nav often disappeared, and then reappeared, ghostlike). And it explained why I could no longer receive email from my ISP yesterday afternoon.

I was taken aback by Dreamhost's claim that I was a storage glutton, because I have a relatively modest website (OK, 1,800-plus pages and many photos) and have only seven months' worth of blog entries (almost entirely text) on the Dreamhost servers. So I figured my 200 megabytes of storage should suffice.

As it turned out, one MovableType folder -- the archives folder -- contained 333 megabytes of data all by itself. This, despite the fact that when I exported all my 1,600 entries, it amounted to only 3 megabytes. So what's the deal? Anil Dash told me that MovableType's archive doesn't throw away anything. So every time you rebuild the site (and I index my entries by daily, monthly and individual entry), it adds to the data storage.

I just emptied the 333-meg archive folder and rebuilt, and it seems to have gone smoothly.

Saturday I signed up with TypePad, another blogging service from Ben and Mena Trott, and I like what I've seen so far. (My friend Ernie the Attorney turned me on to it originally.) It has additional funcitonality, some cool photo blog tools, and other streamlined features. It also lets readers copy and paste from my main page (something that MT has balked at). So I may hop over there. On the downside, I would have to change my blog's url for the second time this year. (I should have originally chosen blog.jdlasica.com, it seems, and not jdlasica.com/blog).

To import all my MT entries on this blog over to TypePad, I've had to change the comments function to keep them hidden instead of displaying the reader comments in the main blog area. Once I export my MT blog, I'll switch it back, both on this site and the TypePad site. Stay tuned.

Later: A reader notes that the inability to cut and paste is a template/CSS issue, not a MovableType issue. Perhaps, but it happens on a lot of MT blogs, I'm told, and no one has come forward with a fix. If you have one, I'd be glad to hear it, and if it works, I'll be happy to spread the news of your prowess. (I only recently discovered that virtually all stylesheets are publicly accessible.)

'Free the Bee blogger!'

Kevin R. in LA Observed asks: Has Sacramento Bee political blogger Daniel Weintraub been reined in? The Bee's ombudsman reported yesterday that Weintraub's blog will now be subjected to the editing filter, after complaints from the Legislature's Latino Caucus.

I worked at the Bee for 11 years (I left in '97, before Weintraub got there) and I'm in agreement with Kevin's bottom line:

He's their opinion columnist, and his blog -- by design -- is more analysis and personality than it is factual reporting. Some readers may accept his insights as truth, but many don't. It's informative anyway. The point of a blog is personal insights, and as Kaus points out, if the Bee wants to broaden the spectrum of takes, it can add more bloggers. ...

I'm pro editor and have yet to meet the journalist, myself included, who wouldn't benefit from a good collaborative editor. Even so, I think the Bee erred. Spontaneity may be overrated in some bloggers hands -- I prefer thought-out posts -- but quickness to break or react to news is part of why Weintraub and the Bee have drawn so much positive attention.

I also tend to side with Mickey Kaus on this:

Even if the Bee's move is just for show--to placate the Latino caucus with a procedural reform--and even if the editors involved have privately assured Weintraub they won't change a thing, it will have an inevitable degrading effect on Weintraub's blog. The whole point of blogging is that you get someone's take right now, when it can make a difference. What if Weintraub has a good idea at 7:30 P.M. and the editors have gone home? By the time they come back in the next day to "review" his idea, history may have moved on--the idea will be stale, even if it might have actually made a difference if it had been posted in time. ... But I actually doubt the editorial approval process will be completely benign. Read the ombudsman's pompous report ("no newspaper should publish an analysis without an editor's review") and you can see an edge-dulling, anti-controversialist mindset at work that is inimical to sound and well-established blogging practices. ... As long as nobody's libeled, why not publish analyses without an editor's review? ... If Weintraub's too much of an anti-liberal blogger, add a liberal blogger! Don't supress them both under a smothering blanket of bureaucratic timidity!

Over at Condor Blog, David Jensen had a lot on this yesterday. Instapundit, Hewitt (who had it first), Simon and Matt Welch are among those who have also weighed in.

As for me, I blogged about the overall topic last winter: Should newspaper bloggers be subjected to the editing filter? Short answer: After-the-fact copy editing and reviewing content for libel is fine, but this kind of pre-publication editing review tamps down the very thing that makes blogging special.

More on email interviews

Regarding last week's blogosphere discussion about posting emails and scooping email interviewers (Are emails private?), Matt Welch and Sheila Lennon add their two cents on Jeff Jarvis's blog. But a more enlightening posting, in my view, comes from Kevin Roderick over at LA Observed. Writes Kevin in part:

It's discouraging because email interviews are a great tool that should be encouraged. They are fast, accurate, often convenient for both parties, no transcription needed, no long distance charges. They foster more accurate and improved journalism, and afterward both interviewer and subject have a permanent record they can use for whatever. But there are many legit reasons a journalist might not want the world to know what he's working on weeks or months before a story (or book or "60 Minutes" segment) is completed.

Lazy competitors is number one. Or you might need to conduct initial research under the radar to see if there even is a story, or to get the story, especially an investigative story. A project can also involve considerable expense and time, and put a writer's reputation at stake, so why should it get out half-assed and incomplete? It's akin to publishing a partially written, unedited story, only worse since the questions that a given subject sees may reflect only a small piece of the larger puzzle. The story itself could shift dramatically based on what you learn. Not all stories cycle in hours like on the Web, nor should they. Journalists who take time to research are a good thing, not something to be disparaged.

So writers beware -- know the trustworthiness of your subject before you reveal too much to them in email. I try to be open and forthcoming in email introductions, figuring it's only right since I'll be asking them to reveal themselves. I'll be more guarded and cagier in email now, especially with bloggers -- who seem to be the main,if not the only, adherents to this cause. I'll get a commitment of confidentiality, and if in doubt I'll try to use the phone or go in person, or if it's sensitive I'll try to interview somebody more honorable. So in a way everybody loses.

For the record, my general principle is "you talk to me, not my blog."

Hear, hear. If I want to talk to your blog, I'll say so.

Matt responds at LA Observed as well. And the comments attached to the posting are pretty interesting. I'm with David P.:

If someone interviews me about a subject that I have not written about and I scoop that person by writing about it before their piece comes out, I am an asshole. Period. It has nothing to do with blogging vs. old media or Alexis ratings (a statistical joke, btw) or ownership of an interview. It has to do with, as Cathy wrote, common courtesy.

More on posting interview transcripts

Chiming in on the topic of posting interview transcripts are both Jeff Jarvis (in an item titled, "Talk to me, talk to my blog," he calls it "inside baseball" stuff, but it's really not if we're talking about participatory journalism here) and Adrian Holovaty.

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.

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.

CNET, Bruce Sterling launching blogs

PaidContent.org: CNET's News.com includes some new weblogs in the site's new redesign, including six topical blogs. Here's my friend Jai Singh on some of the new changes over there. Also, Fast Company recently launched a blog. And Wired magazine will be launching some blogs at this url -- http://blog.wired.com/ (not active yet) -- including one by Bruce Sterling. Fantastic.

PressThink blog from Jay Rosen

Just learned from E-Media Tidbits, via Jeff Jarvis, that Jay Rosen, chair of the journalism department at New York University, has begun a weblog called PressThink. Good stuff, and I've added Jay to my blogroll.

Arianna staff admits spam mistake

Former blogger Victor Stone dug into the Arianna Huffington spam flap and writes: "I broke the fourth wall and actually called the Arianna hq and talked to the tech staff because I've talked to them before and spamming is something I know they were very, very sensitive about. They told me the spamming was a big "mistake" and that "it will never happen again" -- they sounded sufficiently freaked to me."

Techdirt, for example, portrayed GetActive (the campaign's isp) as the culprit in this, but Victor maintains, "They have nothing to do with it and they too are freaked at the unresearched allegations."

Gotta like it when Netizens take to the phones to get first-hand info instead of relying on guesswork.

Blogging goes corporate

This article in the Washington Post -- "Making Blogs More Than Just What's for Dinner" (c'mon, how many people really do that?) -- looks at how business blogging might succeed in ways e-mail never could, with companies such as Macromedia and Fast Company magazine using blogs to promote their businesses.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Introducing ... ads!

You'll notice over there on the right side (halfway down) that I've added a little bit of advertising. I've probably been devoting too much time to this blog -- often three or four hours a day -- and so I'm hoping to get at least a modest revenue stream going.

Google's AdSense program is just taking off, and I suspect we'll see it appearing on many more blogs. (Steve Johnson, for instance, added Google Ads a few weeks back.) I love the idea of context-based text ads. The results are often fairly interesting, as in the current crop of wanna-be Iraq reconstruction contractors. (Sorry, dudes, Halliburton has got the country sewed up.) Only complaint is that Google needs to come up with more flexibility on these ad widths -- 120 or 300 pixels wide, but nothing in the 200 range, and you can't jimmy it to adjust the width.

Sometime in the next day I hope to add a page of ecommerce links to books, DVDs and more. (Not sure if other book sellers, besides Amazon and BN.com, have affiliate programs. And shouldn't eBay consider some sort of commission-based viral grassroots "eBay best bargains" text links?)

Blogging and the PR invasion

The Boston Herald's Cosmo Macero has a column about Blogging and the PR invasion. He blogged about it here. The Herald has one of those absurd subscription-only policies for its web site, so can't point you to the entire article, but Cosmo blogged most of it.

Cosmo interviewed me and Glenn Reynolds. Here's what I tossed in:

"I've noticed an upward trend in the past six months of PR people sending me all kinds of items for mention in my Weblog,'' says media blogger JD Lasica.

"I suspect PR folks are catching on to the blogging phenomenon and plugging into the viral machinery at its core. They're now viewing Weblogs as legitimate news and information outlets.''

Lasica, who is senior editor of Online Journalism Review, says he gives a fair shake to blog pitches as long as they aren't garbage.

Indeed, a couple of PR teases led to recent Lasica blog postings about ActiveRefresh, a software program that tells users when their favorite Web sites have been updated, and a set of ethical guidelines for digital image editing.

"As long as it appears to be a legitimate product or service that would be of interest to readers, I'll blog it,'' Lasica says.

Of course, this does not necessarily mean I would welcome a flood of solicitations from the august public relations community.

Another blogger in Baghdad

Jon Carroll of the SF Chronicle had a column earlier this week about another blog out of Iraq, www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com. Says Jon: "It is written by a woman, a resident of Baghdad not otherwise identified, and it's funny and sad and constantly informative."

Meantime, just heard about the Baghdad Bulletin, an English-language magazine by Iraqis dedicated to covering the postwar redevelopment of Iraq.

Blogs make mark in workplace

Ecommerce Times: Blogs Starting To Make Their Mark in the Workplace.

Edwards for President Blog

The campaign for Sen. John Edwards has launched an Edwards for President Blog.

Heritage Foundation 'reaches out' to bloggers

Derek Willis got an unsolicited email from the Heritage Foundation, which is trying to influence the debate over Medicare reform on Capitol Hill (guess which side they're on?) by sending out missives to bloggers.

Blog audience still small

Paul Grabowicz over at E-Media Tidbits has a good reality check:

While many people, myself included, think journalists should be experimenting with weblogs, it's important to keep in mind how small the weblog audience is currently. A recent Forrester Research study found that only 2 percent of online households go to a weblog at least once a week, according to a summary of the findings in the San Francisco Chronicle. And 79 percent of people surveyed hadn't even heard of weblogging. This is consistent with a report last April by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that only 4 percent of the U.S. online population used weblogs to get information and opinions during the Iraq war.

Tips for candidates on blogging

Now that nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates have started up blogs, Dave Winer has some suggestions on what to do and not do.

Leo goes for TypePad

Tech TV's Leo LaPorte is among those who've migrated from MovableType to TypePad.

Portals get hip to blogs

From today's SF Chron: Internet portals catch on to blogs. AOL, Yahoo, Google and Lycos begin providing services for online journals.

'Stop the blogging madness'

Jimmy Guterman (a friend who, as far as I know, doesn't blog) writes in his latest Media Notes column for Business 2.0: Stop the Blogging Madness. It only seems as if everyone is doing it. A new survey suggests that blogging may always be more for fun than for profit.

The merits of his argument aside -- and I disagree with his premise; new forms of corporate blogging are just now being formulated -- isn't it a bit odd that Jimmy's Web-only columns can be accessed only if you subscribe to the print magazine?

Yahoo dips its toes in the blogging waters

InfoWorld: Yahoo dips its toes in the blogging waters -- in South Korea.

Archiving by subject in MovableType

When I moved from Manila to MovableType back in February, I didnít fully appreciate the power of MT's categories function, and thus didnít give much thought to assigning stories to a particular bucket, or grouping postings in a thoughtful way.

Well, I just spent the weekend doubling back and assigning categories to many of the postings Iíve made over the past 6 months. I owe a debt of thanks to MT programming wiz Damien Newman, who smoothed out the kinks I encountered in setting this up.

When I look at my referral logs, I see a lot of people coming in from Google and other search engines. And I have a growing sense that bloggers who post frequently will soon be doing more of the sort of thing that new media publications have done for years: structuring their archives, organizing material, pulling out and highlighting popular and useful postings -- all necessary steps when serving up content to time-challenged users who may not be stopping by day after day.

I've tested out the subjects archive on the PC and the Mac with a couple of different browsers, but let me know if you see anything funky. And let me know if you want to learn the trick of setting up Category headings on those archive-by-subject pages.

Ex-LA Times journalist shines in the blogosphere

David Shaw in the Los Angeles Times profiles Kevin Roderick, a former LA Times editor and reporter who runs the media/political weblog LAObserved, which has long had a place of honor in my blogroll.

The blogger on the bus

Looks like my bud David Weinberger has become the first blogger ever to travel in a presidential candidate's press bus. Check out David's dispatches from Howard Dean's Sleepless Summer tour.

Blog indexes help journalists track stories

Mark Glaser in OJR: Weblog Indexes Help Journalists Track Stories -- and Boost Their Egos. Daypop's Top 40, Popdex and the other services allow writers to see almost instantly how many sites are linking to their stories. Is such information useful, or simply a popularity linking contest?

Playing with MT archives

As you might have noticed, I'm playing with the archiving feature of MovableType. The documentation with MT is quite extensive, but it's also quite dense, and I don't understand a lot of it.

For example, can you archive your items by both date and by category? I haven't a clue. Thus, my category links at the right don't work. I'll dive into the MT message boards to see if I can get some answers.

Denver Post launches four blogs

DenverPost.com has plunged into blogging with four new blogs from unconventional sources, including a frequent caller to radio shows, Lou from Littleton, who hasn't quite grasped the blog format yet. Thanks to Steve Outing for the pointer.

A blog from the Santa Fe New Mexican

The Santa Fe New Mexican, which I wrote about here, has started an in-house blog.

A new blog from the Tribune's Eric Zorn

Another big-J journalist has joined the blogosphere. Chicago Tribune columnist and Net journalism pioneer Eric Zorn has started a new weblog called Breaking Views, despite the Trib's lack of blog functionality. Thanks to Jenny Levine, the Shifted Librarian, for the pointer.

A Samurai editor who made history

Sheila has the scoop on her experience with a Samurai editor. And she has a baseball history tidbit, to boot, about Nieman Reports editor Melissa Ludtke.

By the way, Jeff Jarvis told Sheila that her page was rendering in a funky, one-word-wide width. But it looks fine to me (on IE6 and Win XP Pro). If you see anything amiss, tell Sheila and let her know what browser you're using.

Speaking of formatting snafus, does anyone out there have a clue why users are not able to copy and paste from my weblog? I asked MovableType founder Ben Trott about this, and he basically said he didn't know. It must be something in the MT Cascading Style Sheet. And yet, on a search results page, anyone is able to copy and paste. Strange.

What makes a blog a blog?

This from E-Media Tidbits (which still lacks perma-links) today:

What Makes a Blog a Blog?

The Economist has a worth-reading story on the profit outlook for weblogs -- and the writer cites the conflict of cultures between those who see blogging as some sort of noble pursuit that can democraticize the masses and those who want to turn into a more capitalistic endeavor. A comment in the piece from weblog pioneer Dave Winer is controversial. Paraphrasing Winer, the Economist writer says, "The key attribute that makes a blog a blog and not some ordinary piece of web publishing is amateurism, says Mr Winer: if it is in any way edited, it is not a blog." Whoa! I'm not certain whether Winer's view was quoted correctly or not, but I think that's an erroreous view. The best bloggers will rise to the top because their content is brilliantly written and well edited. Some blogs will even be edited pre-publication (especially blogs published by news organizations). To say that an edited blog (and that would include this one) is not a blog is just bizarre, in my humble opinion. ...

For his part, Dave says the writer was off the mark, but did say, "Amateurism is an important part of blogging."

No one can possibly dispute that. But that's a big leap from the position that blogs connected with established news sites aren't really blogs.

Perhaps what we have here is a fear by one blog pioneer that the establishment media will try to coopt the blogging movement. That's not going to happen. Blogs will always be a primarily amateur-led part of the participatory media puzzle. But editing doesn't delegitimize a weblog (although I should add that I've argued elsewhere that the less editing, the better). Blogs on MSNBC.com, the Mercury News site and the Providence Journal are still blogs.

Dave is welcome to clarify his thoughts on this, here or on his site, if he'd like.

Battle of the blog

News.com: A power struggle erupts over a technology widely used to distribute Web logs, pitting blog pioneer Dave Winer against opponents at IBM, Google and others clamoring for a different format.

Waypath, a new blog search engine

Gary also sends along a pointer to Waypath, a new "blog only" search engine that looks interesting. It says it offers "contextual navigation of 6,102,945 posts from 714,338 weblogs," although I notice that a good many of its page results are websites and not blogs.

A new blog from MSNBC

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a former reporter for the NY Times, has launched a new weblog for MSNBC.com: TestPattern, covering the latest pop culture, television and Web news. Thanks to Gary Price for the heads up.

Can Johnny blog?

In today's NY Times: Can Johnny blog? "This may be the year that school blogs come into their own."

Blogging her way to culinary fame

Julie Powell is cooking every dish in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," and documenting it on her blog. Scott R. is among those quoted in the NY Times profile of her today.

Bloggers turn to advertising

So I'm thinking of possibly looking into adding some non-invasive ads to my page. Check it out:

• The other day author Steven Johnson added Google ads to his blog. He earned "a cool $15" the first week.

• Mitch Ratcliffe announced Monday he was beginning to experiment with Audible ads on his blog.

• Last month Glenn Fleishman bought a set of Google AdWords.

All three are journalists or authors. Mini trend in the making?

Microsoft entering the blogging game

Is Microsoft entering t