From 'why?' to 'why not?', the internet revolution | Media The near future of the web is tied up with the logic of present media practice, and the logic of present media practice dates back to Gutenberg's invention of movable type in the mid-1400s. The problem Gutenberg introduced into intellectual life was abundance: once typesetting was perfected, a copy of a book could be created faster than it could be read. Figuring out which books were worth reading, and which weren't, became one of the defining problems of the literate. This abundance of new writing thus introduced a new risk as well: the risk of variable quality. Subsequent centuries saw further inventiveness in media. Though there are obvious internal complexities in this - editing is a type of creation as well as filter - the division of labour was clear: professionals managed the creation and filtering of media, both selecting and improving it; amateurs consumed and discussed it. The internet is, in a way, the first thing to deserve the label "media".
Assemblée nationale : Wikileaks : enquête sur un contre-pouvoir WikiLeaks a livré au regard du public, via Internet et la presse, des milliers de secrets d’Etat. Julian Assange et les hommes de WikiLeaks sont devenus des ennemis officiels du Pentagone. Sont-ils des héros des temps modernes ? Ou des pirates informatiques irresponsables, avides de célébrité ? Luc Hermann et Paul Moreira ont enquêté sur le réseau WikiLeaks, ses forces et ses faiblesses, son mythe et sa part d’ombre… A Londres, Berlin, Reykjavik, Washington et Paris, enquête sur ces nouveaux militants de la transparence qui bouleversent le rapport des citoyens à l’information. Retrouvez également en ligne le débat avec Didier Mathus, François Nicoullaud, Olivier Tesquet et Robert Ménard. Documentaire inédit réalisé par Luc Hermann et Paul Moreira (52’)Coproduction LCP / Premières Lignes
Clay Shirky: Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it. One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days. Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception.
A Campaign to Smear WikiLeaks Supporters Internal documents of a California computer security firm obtained by pro-WikiLeaks hackers have been made available online, suggesting various ways companies can help undermine the whistle-blowing website as it prepares to release material that could prove damaging to Bank of America and other financial entities. A cyber tussle between the hackers, largely grouped under the banner of “Anonymous,” and the California security firm led to the leaked e-mails. It has long been known that Bank of America and other financial institutions are the targets for the next batch of WikiLeak materials due for release. Also check out The New York Times coverage of the news here. {*style:<i>*}{*style:<br>*}{*style:<b>*}Salon:{*style:</b>*}{*style:<br>*}There’s a very strange episode being widely discussed the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on.
Clay Shirky: Society doesn't need newspapers, it needs journalism This is an extract from Clay Shirky's article, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. The full essay can be read here. If you want to know why newspapers are in such trouble, the most salient fact is this: Printing presses are terrifically expensive to set up and to run. This bit of economics, normal since Gutenberg, limits competition while creating positive returns to scale for the press owner, a happy pair of economic effects that feed on each other. For a long time, longer than anyone in the newspaper business has been alive in fact, print journalism has been intertwined with these economics. The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. Print media does much of society's heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the city council meeting, just in case. I don't know.
6 questions sur WikiLeaks, le Napster du journalisme » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism WikiLeaks est-il vraiment transparent? Fallait-il publier les mémos diplomatiques? Nous apprennent-ils quelque chose? Le processus est-il réversible? Assiste-t-on à une évolution structurelle de la société? Près d’une semaine après le début de leur mise en ligne, les mémos diplomatiques révélés par WikiLeaks continuent d’agiter le landerneau politico-médiatique. Transparence = totalitarisme, vraiment? NON. La transparence, ça veut dire qu’il n’y a plus d’intimité, plus de discrétion [...] Quel rapport? Tous ces télégrammes ont été publiés après que les cinq rédactions partenaires (le Guardian, le New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde et El Pais) les aient parcourus, étudiés, contextualisés, vérifiés. Fallait-il publier ces documents? OUI. Mais il y a une seconde question. C’est aux gouvernements, pas à la presse, de garder les secrets tant qu’ils le peuvent, et de s’ajuster vis-à-vis de la réalité quand ceux-ci sont découverts. Nous sommes là dans une zone grise. OUI. NON. PEUT-ETRE.
Sterft, gij oude journalistieke organisaties 13 januari 2012 | door: Geert-Jan Bogaerts, journalist, blogger, webontwikkelaar en docent aan de Universiteit van Groningen "De meeste journalisten jakkeren liever als een blind paard door op het pad dat ze het beste kennen." Onlangs werd ik door een artikeltje in de Guardian geattendeerd op een essay van Clay Shirky, de Amerikaanse professor die twee van de beste boeken over digitale cultuur heeft geschreven die ik ken. Here comes everybody en zijn opvolger Cognitive Surplus hebben mij veel geleerd over de manier waarop het internet onze economie, onze maatschappij, cultuur en politieke besluitvorming beïnvloeden. Shirky is een optimist – wat aardig aansluit bij mijn eigen levensvisie – en daarom ziet hij de toekomst rooskleurig in. Onheilsprofeten die waarschuwen dat het einde van de wereld nadert, neem je iets minder serieus. Optimalisatie We maken dagelijks een krant, niet wekelijks een magazine. Conservatief Shirky's duidelijke antwoord: nee, tenzij. Radicaliteit binnen een instituut
Why EL PAÍS chose to publish the leaks · ELPAÍS.com in English 1. The leak and its consequences. When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called my cellphone on a Friday afternoon in November, I could barely hear him. The powerful machinery of the state is designed to suppress the flow of truth and keep secrets secret It may yet emerge that the US Embassy in Madrid broke the law in pursuing its interests Assange, as far as I could tell at that time, was willing to give EL PAÍS access to 250,000 cablegrams sent between the US State Department and its embassies in around 30 countries, garnered as a result of the largest leak of secret documents in history. Nearly a month after The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and EL PAÍS began publishing the leaked information, we can draw at least one initial conclusion. Before a single line had been published, there had been a barrage of public and private admonishment, with grave warnings emanating from Washington about irresponsibility and illegality. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
The Future of the Press Lord Justice Leveson has one of the least enviable jobs in public life. His assignment is to adjudicate between the demand for privacy and the principle of free speech. He must do so against the backdrop of a public outcry, an unfinished criminal investigation and a galloping technological revolution. He has taken evidence from comedians making serious points and some serious people behaving like comedians. We make two points above all. It can ensure that newspapers treat people better; it should take a firm view on questions such as prior notification, the publication of corrections and the independent oversight of the press. The phone-hacking scandal The phone-hacking scandal has exposed a number of unpleasant truths about the press. As the evidence of wrongdoing came to light, News International, Rupert Murdoch’s company that also owns The Times, was unable or unwilling to police itself. It was, of course, the press that put Fleet Street in the dock. There has to be a major change.
La fin de l’autocensure » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism Selon John R. MacArthur, éditeur de Harper's Magazine, Wikileaks force les medias comme le New York Times à ne plus choisir l'autocensure quand ils ont entre leurs mains une information importante pour le peuple américain. J’avoue n’avoir pas été étonné d’apprendre, grâce à Julian Assange et à sa source dans la bureaucratie fédérale américaine, que le roi de l’Arabie saoudite souhaitait voir l’Amérique «couper la tête du serpent» iranien avec des frappes violentes contre son projet nucléaire. Il y a longtemps que l’on connaît la crainte d’Abdallah al-Saud à l’égard de son ambitieux rival iranien, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Aucune personne suivant de près la politique du Proche-Orient ne serait choquée de la candeur de ce puissant chef arabe, si à l’aise avec ses amis américains qu’il n’hésite pas à leur demander d’entreprendre une troisième guerre dans une région où — il faut le dire — les États-Unis n’ont pas brillé ces derniers temps. L’importance et la nécessité d’avoir un peuple informé.
De journalistiek moet zich beter profileren en verkopen - Serie: Toekomst voor de journalistiek (1) Hieronder volgt een verkorte versie van de oratie die Jo Bardoel, hoogleraar Journalistiek en Media, vandaag heeft uitgesproken aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. De komende dagen zullen een aantal mensen in een artikelenreeks reageren op zijn visie op de toekomst voor de journalisitek. De journalistiek staat momenteel voor de grootste omslag in haar bestaan. Met de media in de breedste zin van het woord gaat het goed, maar met de journalistiek gaat het in de algemene perceptie behoorlijk beroerd. Transformatie 1: Technologie Wat betreft de eerste transformatie: de technologie die traditioneel een belangrijke bondgenoot van de journalistiek was, wordt nu een geduchte tegenpool. Aan de nieuwe informatieplatforms komen echter minder journalisten te pas. Transformatie 2: Het publiek Naast deze technologische revolutie, heeft ook de tweede transformatie, in de samenleving en bij het publiek, haar weerslag op de journalistiek.
Tunisia, WikiLeaks And Food Crisis: Forces For A Global Revolution It would be hard to contest that our world is in crisis, or at least at a turning point. The models which were developed at the start of the industrial revolution have either failed or are crumbling in front of us in “real time”. If communism died in the 80′s with the collapse of the Soviet Union, capitalism is now on life support. The ruling transnational elites, either in the corporate, financial or political sectors, are now operating outside national boundaries with complete disregard for local populations. The global food crisis is expected to get worse in 2011. On the demand side the main factors responsible are commodities and land speculation by global financial markets, a demographic explosion and the use of crops for fuel. {*style:<b>Tunisia’s Revolution Effect: Igniting A Pan-Arabic Secular Uprising For Democracy </b>*} There is no more doubt that Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution is not only likely to succeed, but is also spreading quickly through the region like wildfire.
Liquid Newsroom Steffen Konrath @StKonrath Here's how the process of the Liquid Newsroom can be used to publish a summary (curated) article. The last piece I published here on this blog today was a teaser for the "Sun on Sunday" article by Peter Preston. The original piece captured my interest as Rupert Murdoch's Sun on Sunday has been discussed by The Guardian for quite some days now. The Guardian is one of the news sources I regularely monitor for media and journalism related news. That's why it is part of LNR's incoming stream of news items (left column, first screenshot next to this article). Peter Preston was the first (the first I noticed) to comment and review Sun on Sunday's first edition. The LNR works on an iPad as well, that's why I chose iPad views for the screenshots 1 and 2. The screen changes if you decide to enter editing mode (see screenshot 2). There is no need to wait and to save a draft first in this case, so I click on "publish" and the article gets instantly published. The Liquid Newsroom for niches
Juan Cole: The Corruption Game: What the Tunisian Revolution and WikiLeaks Tell Us about American Support for Corrupt Dictatorships in the Muslim World By **Juan Cole** From TomDispatch.com. Here’s one obvious lesson of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011: paranoia about Muslim fundamentalist movements and terrorism is causing Washington to make bad choices that will ultimately harm American interests and standing abroad. State Department cable traffic from capitals throughout the Greater Middle East, made public thanks to WikiLeaks, shows that U.S. policy-makers have a detailed and profound picture of the depths of corruption and nepotism that prevail among some “allies” in the region. The same cable traffic indicates that, in a cynical Great Power calculation, Washington continues to sacrifice the prospects of the region’s youth on the altar of “security.” State Department cables published via WikiLeaks are remarkably revealing when it comes to the way Tunisian strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his extended family (including his wife Leila’s Trabelsi clan) fastened upon the Tunisian economy and sucked it dry. No Dominoes to Fall