Saturday, March 24, 2007

nothing wrong with anonymity per se!

re: “People who don’t stand behind their words deserve, in almost every case, no respect for what they say. The exceptions come when someone risks life or freedom or livelihood by being a whistle-blower or truth-teller.”

Dan, this sounds a bit extreme to me… yes, there are situations when anonymity should be waved but it seems to me that *those* are the exceptions (and not the other way around).
…”almost any case”? why? in the vast majority of cases (the one you gave excluded, among a few others), there should really make no difference *who* the messenger is — the message should stand on its own…

Delia

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

chapter and verse or not... (we *need* the actual facts...)

Dan, if you can’t do it now, I hope you can give us the details later on… (it’s just impossible to comment without knowing what did he do, exactly…) D.
(http://citmedia.org/blog/2007/03/20/the-authors-privilege/#comment-127505)

Monday, March 19, 2007

(Dan sez) it's all about the goods!

and why not? isn't that what matters?

Dan, I was wondering about quoting Valleywag. I used it as a reference once but struggled with whether I should have done it — I decided it was ok in the particular context but thought there were a bunch of topics where it’s probably just not a reliable source… but is this making their whole reputation questionable? I mean… it’s not like quoting the Enquirer, now, or… is it? (I suspect they *too* can be reliable… at times…) D.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

looking forward to be proven wrong! (Jay's NewAssignment)

Jay,

as I already told you, I wish you best of luck with your project

doesn't mean I don't have doubts about it

the way I see it, you are starting with some serious handicaps:

#1 your project is NOT bottom-up (if it was bottom up you wouldn't need anybody to make it sound cool -- it would already be as cool as it gets!)
#2 your project is NOT on the ground (you are NOT building a geographic network of people that can meet in person and do things together that way); given this, I actually think you made the right choice for your first project (it's more of a theoretical pursuit, not exactly "hands-on")
#3 distributive reporting... well, anything that has "distributive" as the operating term sounds like an advanced project to me (not a bad goal to have for when you've already got your network together... but to *start* with it? I just don't see how it can be done -- your network is not going to...just spring into being ... it will take time and work and figuring out...)
but, of course, I'm looking forward to being proven wrong! (I hope you succeed in spite of my doubts)

Delia
(http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007/03/14/az_announce.html#comment38127)

Friday, March 16, 2007

(mindlessly) aggregate and prosper?

bunch of exchanges with Dan Gillmor

“In any event, the papers have an easy way to “fix” this if they choose. They can block the aggregators from including them on those sites with technology.”

well… that’s not exactly a fix (they would like to be compensated for the use of their content by aggregators who *make $* off of it… — it seems silly that aggregators would be able to make money from other peoples’ content but the producers of that content could not…)

“They’d be idiots to do this, of course. Because then they’d lose even more readers. Whoops.”

well… are they profitable users? (if you just look at them as “traffic” and they actually make money from that traffic through advertising, fine… — except for the idea that advertising revenues cannot be counted on for the long run — but if this is not the case, from the business point of view, why would they care that a large number of users who were just soaking-up broadband would no longer be doing that?)

Monday, March 12, 2007

Jay is back!

Good to see you are back, Jay! (I was wondering what happened) Great topic, as usual... (looking forward to more to come) oh... and best of luck with launching NAN! D.

(http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2007/03/09/libby_fdl.html#comment37713)

Thursday, March 8, 2007

newspapers in some form...

Dan, do you agree with him?

Delia

P.S. I’m not even sure what he’s really saying… re: “if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the Internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.”

well… yeah, hard to argue with the “newspapers *as we know them” part…” (that would be true for any innovation) but what does he mean by “newspapers”? the particular form of delivering of info (print on paper)?; the kind of topics covered? manner of presenting the news? without making clear what he means, his statement sounds empty to me… D.
(http://citmedia.org/blog/2007/03/05/buffett-writes-off-newspapers/#comment-109734)

... may have always sold

from as business perspective… as in… you couldn’t have possibly made money by selling printed newspapers if such forms of delivering info as cable, satellite and internet would have been around first…?

still, I’m not sure that’s true… it seems to assume a bunch of things: that everybody would have had access to cable/satellite/internet when they wanted to access news; that in all circumstances they would have preferred this form of delivery to print on paper etc.

Delia
(http://citmedia.org/blog/2007/03/05/buffett-writes-off-newspapers/#comment-109894)