Rogue Columnist - I should investigate this gent's writings more, but here's a link from BoingBoing to his post on what's really wrong with the modern newspaper's business model: its ad sales mentality.
Threat Level - "Afghan Student Sentenced to Death After Downloading Report." Reporters Without Borders has a statement on the situation here.
Chris Anderson, EiC of Wired, just blacklisted a large number of PR email addresses for sending him crap. Then he posted all those addresses on his blog.
Zing!
"I've had it. I get more than 300 emails a day and my problem isn't spam (Cloudmark Desktop solves that nicely), it's PR people. Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of Wired because they can't be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they're pitching. Fact: I am an actual person, not a team assigned to read press releases and distribute them to the right editors and writers."
HP (Hewlett-Packard), already in a lot of trouble for spying on some of its board members, is being sued by five reporters that, allegedly, were also spied on.
Here is CBS's story on the issue.
Utterly fascinating.
"More than a decade after the Internet went mainstream, the world's richest information source hasn't necessarily made its users any more informed. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans, on average, are less able to correctly answer questions about current events than they were in 1989. Citizens who call the Internet their primary news source know slightly less than fans of TV and radio news. Hmmm... maybe a little less Perez Hilton and a little more Jim Lehrer."
The questions asked were:
Who is the vice-president?
Who is your state's governor?
Does the US have a trade deficit or surplus?
Which party controls the House of Representatives?
Is the chief justice of the Supreme Court a liberal, moderate, or conservative?
Click through for data charts... one of which is titled Daily Show viewers are more up on current events than Fox News fans.
Patricia reminded me to read this story in Wired that concerns this online journalism project that deals with collaborative, online, "open source" reporting. Crowd-sourcing. That kinda stuff.
Fascinating reading really. I wonder how and when this will explode?
Associated link: NewAssignment.net.
Edit: July 9, 2007
-Wired just published this follow-up (reprinted from Assignment Zero) that gives a state of the union on the project under the headline Open-Source Journalism: It's a Lot Tougher Than You Think.
Edit: July 16, 2007
-Another follow-up entitled Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back and Lessons Learned.
...or at least, that's what Wired is saying. Be sure to check out the PowerPoint slides on page 2. This particular item caught my eye.
Why?
-MySpace users previously had to leave the site to find comprehensive news, gossip, sporting news, etc. With MySpace News, we bring the news to them.
-Advertisers can now align their brand with news categories that best fit their brand goals
