Sunday, April 24, 2005

Edward George Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873), an English novelist, wrote this for the first time in 1839. He wrote, "Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword."  [BYU page] Salmon Rushdie pens a powerful commentary in the LA Times today.  Highly recommended reading.  In particular: ... The old idea of the intellectual as the one who speaks truth to power is still an idea worth holding on to. Tyrants fear the truth of books because it's a truth that's in hock to nobody; it's a single artist's unfettered vision of the world. They fear it even more because it's incomplete, because the act of reading completes it, so that the book's truth is slightly different in each reader's different inner world, and these are the true revolutions of literature, these invisible, intimate communions of strangers, these tiny revolutions inside each reader's imagination; and the enemies of the imagination, politburos, ayatollahs, all the different goon squads of gods and power, want to shut these revolutions down, and can't. 8:47:00 AM

	Wednesday, March 16, 2005

I attended a hearing on a bill (HB 340) that the news media is opposing through the Georgia First Amendment Foundation.  One of the arguments put forth was that the bill would make it harder for the public to have "access" to information on how the government works (in this case who the anonymous donor is). I made an amusing note to myself - If the press doesn't cover the issue, does the public have access? As if to beg the question, Bill Shipp writes a column today asking where was the press, the tv cameras, when budgets for additional security and training of the Fulton County Sheriff department were denied?  In deed, where are the media when the boring, dirty details of governing are discussed?  Is the media being responsible when its hired pundits castigate the public officials (after the fact) for not doing a better job when the media failed to inform the public beforehand? BTW, why does an organization that supports open government fail to disclose its contributors as required by law for any group affecting legislation or campaigns? 7:06:03 AM

	Tuesday, March 15, 2005

I want to write some on Media Assertions - a topic broached by the latest study on Media trends by The Project for Excellence in Journalism and highlighted in a USA Today article.  I will give you a hint -- look for facts in this editorial.  Can't find them -- well try this one.  But that will have to wait on my day job. The point of this post is to update the side links -- Kevin found a typo on his blog name.  Some folks can never be satisfied! 7:39:05 AM

	Sunday, March 13, 2005

The current debate (see Are online reporters the real thing?) waging over whether bloggers, or online reporters, are journalists seems to be missing the big picture.  That picture is that the current breed of journalists, or perhaps more appropriate the news media in general, do not report information -- they report gossip, inuendo, intrigue -- material that was relegated to the tabloids not too many years ago. For example, yesterday's AJC contained an article  summarizing 16 hours of legislative meetings as one where "tempers flared" because of the deadline imposed for legislation crossing from one chamber to the other. If you read the article, you find very little information on the substantive issues debated.  Consider these 4 sentences used to describe more than 2 hours of debate over HB 501, a bill esigned to demolish the Department of Motor Vehicles: State Rep. Alan Powell (D-Hartwell) led a passionate and failed effort to derail the governor's plan to reorganize the Department of Motor Vehicle Safety in an attempt to reduce the driver's license lines. Powell said the move will shatter an effective agency. ''Death is in the details, ladies and gentlemen,'' Powell warned. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." He almost prevailed --- Speaker Richardson had to step in and cast the deciding vote for the governor's plan. One other news article appeared on this debate (House votes to disband DMVS).  Missing from the articles are references to memos from the Office of Planning and Budget declaring that DMVS "is not broke" and therefore, doesn't need fixing.  Also missing are detailed statistics on the impact to highway safety that the breakup of DMVS will bring.   Nothing is said about the lack of response from the leadership managing the bill on the floor.  Finally, nobody in the media reported on the almost two hour hearing where this particular legislation was set to die in committee until the "Hawks" flew in to pass the bill out (Hawks are people the Speaker appoints who can vote on any committee they wish -- yes, another essay). Rep. Powell's arguments were so compelling so as to force the Speaker to vote twice to save a major piece of the Governor's legislative package. The "Real Media" didn't tell you that, did they?  Tom Crawford, a respected journalist whose main medium is 'online', has published two pieces on the DMVS bill (Rep. Powell provides links to both).  The information provided by the 'unreal' reporting of Mr. Crawford is siginificantly more enlightening than the paper press.  If the "Real Media" is not giving us the information we need to conduct the business of a democracy, who is to question the whether online reporters are the "real thing"?   4:24:14 AM

In the 80's, direct mail was the "killer app" for politicians.  In the 90's, the killer app was the combination of computer-aided research and fast-production of attack/response ads.  The 21st century has brung us the Internet, and in particular, the Blog as then next killer app for politics (I would submit blogs are a killer app for democracy -- but that's another essay). Anyway, Winer points to: Rex Hammock summarizes the online politics conference. [Scripting News] Bottom line -- few in the business (general consultants, media and research consultants) "Get it".  There's an opportunity there. 3:45:15 AM

Remember when I questioned why I didn't pay attention more closely to Georgia Bloggers?  Well, Robert Scoble reminds me.  In one of his many posts, he mentioned a fellow who ran the White House Web Site in 1994: Jock Gill is sitting in front of us. He's the guy who did the first Whitehouse Website back in 94. Now he's working on Greater Democracy. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger] Curious, as I had friends in the EOB then, I checked out Gill's site.  There I found a post from Dana Blankenhorn (Moore's Lore) drawing comparisons of Marx and Rand -- more precisely how the perversions of their respective philosophies led to totalitarianism (now, that calls for another essay).   3:34:55 AM

	Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Imagine, voters waking up every day, annotating the news and actually caring enough to save their papers for prosperity.  See Workbench: The First Blogger Died in 1794. On Scripting News this morning, Dave Winer nominates Harry Truman as the patron of bloggers. I'd like to go a bit further back to find the patron saint of weblogging: Harbottle Dorr. Dorr was writing a hyperlinked daily journal on current events two centuries before the technology existed: An average citizen marking up the news every day with his own opinions and furiously cross-referencing his work, Dorr was a blogger. Reading about this collection makes me want to park myself at a microfilm reader for a few months to read this hypertext. So many questions: Was he a warblogger? Did he fisk people? Would he have objected to autolinking? When Dorr died in 1794, his entire estate consisted of the four "newspaper books" that constituted his blog. They sold for 7 pounds and 10 shillings. [Workbench] Now, if information, and the free access thereof, is the cornerstone of democracy, is it not every citizen's imperative to be "informed"?  Ah, I feel an essay coming on... 5:11:54 AM

	Thursday, February 10, 2005

Ahh... a new campaign tool... Eliot Spitzer is running for Governor of New York. On his blog it says: "To listen to an audio podcast of Eliot's remarks, simply connect your iPod or MP3 player to your computer and subscribe to the RSS feed within Eliot's blog." But there's a problem with the feed they point to, it won't actually work. I'd be happy to help them get it working, if you know anyone who works on their stuff, send me an email and we can have a quick back and forth to get it working. This is a perfect application of podcasting, btw. Go direct. [Scripting News] 4:39:00 AM

	Sunday, January 16, 2005

WSJ: Dean Campaign Made Payments To Two Bloggers. [Scripting News] The above story does not dawdle about in inuendo, the facts speak for themselves.  So, why publish it?  Conservative pundits are having a field day pointing out that Dean "abused" the ethics of journalism trying to manipulate yet another form of media.  Of course, their statements are not couched in facts -- just rhetorical bombast -- such is not conducive to intelligent discussion of the issues -- never has, never will be. Anyway, I remember the Daily Kos disclosing their relationship with Dean (by the way, the nice thing about blogs is you can go back to such articles with ease -- a newspaper would charge you an arm and a leg to research past writings), appreciated the disclosure but it was clear from the writings in the blog where the author's preferences lay.  But, the criticism of some conservative pundits begs the question, doesn't it?  This isn't about journalistic ethics, this is about beating the other side. 8:30:41 AM