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Analysis: The Rise Of Open Media
What's the future of media? What are all the rumblings about struggling online media?
Pundits and gossips and entrail-readers were asking one another (and me) these questions last week. It was a nervous few days, the jitters touched off by announcements of layoffs at Salon and NBC and CBS.com and by the near death experience of the strange crime-news site APB News.com, which dismissed its staff, then brought some back unpaid in an attempt to keep publishing.
Was all of this a watershed moment for new media? The ubiquitous analysts were warning that in the wake of the NASDAQ panic, money for new sites was drying up. Maybe old-time journalism could rebound, after all? Maybe these hordes or raucous digital pests would finally get their comeuppance, or even better, go away completely. Maybe the media universe would right itself.
Dream on. If there is a central idea that conventional media have willfully failed to grasp, it's that the future of information belongs to Open Media, even when AOL/Time-Warner gets its lawyers and lobbyists lined up. The meaningful distinction isn't old-versus-new, it's open-versus-closed.
What exactly characterizes the Open Media? Open Media sites embrace interactivity; they reflect ideas, commentary and information from a wide range of sources, especially their readers. They were shaped by the distributed architecture of the Net. Their agendas and political philosophies are rarely static, but continuously evolving, a gift of interactivity. Each reader becomes a highly-wired researcher and reporter, foraging for information. Stories can be reported originally, but most often stories are posted from other sources or posted and readers are given links. Links are a universal signature of an Open Media site, a way to use Net architecture to maximum advantage. Revenue comes from advertising or other sources, because the information itself is always -- always -- free.
Open Media are ascending all across the information spectrum. Closed Media -- newspapers, evening newscasts, even pay-per-use news websites -- have been in decline for years, facing aging audiences, shrinking revenues and marginalization by ferocious (and usually free) competitors. Open vs. Closed, shared vs. proprietary - these conflicting impulses have divided Net users for years, the Linux challenge to Microsoft being one of the more dramatic examples. Now that conflict is intensifying throughout media.
There was considerable if short-sighted rejoicing in old media offices with the spate of so-called "new media" problems. Conventional media has been battered for years now by new competing technologies like the Net, abandoned by younger consumers, struggling to re-define itself. There was more than a little glee in reports that new media was bleeding as well.
"For some people, online journalism is a path to interactive enlightenment and economic liberty," gloated the New York Times. "But to the puritans of the old media world, Web journalists are apostates who have confused liberty with license and whose delusional disregard for profit can only end in self-immolation. It was hard for the puritans not to act smug last week."
What an interesting statement. When exactly did "disregard for profit" become a journalistic liability as opposed to an ethical standard? And who conferred on mainstream journalism -- as greedy, non-interactive, incestuous and elitist an institution as exists in American public life -- this high moral ground?
The reasons for the smugness extended beyond the layoffs. Media watchers also cited Slate.com's struggles to become viable (it's massively subsidized by Microsoft and promoted on MS sites from MSN.com to MSNBC, and is still struggling for audience) and they were obsessively monitoring the super-hyped launch of Inside.com, a mega-media gossip and news site from a company that actually calls itself "PowerfulMedia, Inc."
You can check out this lavishly-funded site for yourself (www.inside.com), but all you really need to know is that its readers get to vote on what Inside.com considers most critical; the daily media "Power Index," which tracks whether Sumner Redstone of Viacom is gaining on Michael Eisner or Ted Turner on any given day. Part of Inside.com is free, but that's a lure. The part with the supposed original reporting is subscriber-only. This anomaly -- charging money in an environment where the volume of information grows by the hour and the price steadily drops -- is both arrogant and astonishing.
What was most interesting about last week's New York Times sneer was its focus on the rather few Web sites familiar to journalists. With perspective-narrowing narcissism, the Times described Slate as "the online magazine with probably the highest profile in online journalism?"
Slate - interesting though it can sometimes be - is actually one of the lowest profile sites on the Internet - except for New York or Washington journalists. They tend not to notice mailing lists, messaging systems or the countless individual sites far from media consciousness. Thus when Slate or Salon hits trouble, media pundits instantly conclude that online journalism must be failing. That's a big mistake.
"So who's winning?" asked the Times, "the puritans or the apostates? It may be too soon to tell, but certainly last week's upheavals were enough to try a Web journalist's soul." This bizarre framing of the issue -- a win/lose battle between worthy traditionalists and whacked-out rebels -- is silly, but it helps explain conventional journalism's problems in coming to terms with its favorite story: itself.
Mainstream media are fascinated with themselves. No story is more interesting than the people who publish or broadcast it. The press can't stop writing about itself, launching whole new publications -- Brill's Content magazine, Inside.com, much of Slate -- to chronicle its heroes, power-brokers and adventures. The media have a bizarre and shrinking geography in the 21st Century, despite the fact that we are all in the midst of an explosive information revolution. They pay rapt attention to certain aspects of life in Washington, New York and Los Angeles. No place between gets much attention unless a terrorist blows up a building, a plane crashes,or a river floods its banks. If you gather information on the Net, of course, your experience couldn't be more different, since you're connected to new kinds of journalists located in all sorts of places - college campuses, the bowels of companies and governments (as opposed to the executive suites), private homes in "flyover" land, foreign countries, hi-tech environments. The agenda is stunningly different. And there isn't much interest in the people who run media or their daily power standings.
How did the traditional media, once a populist, working-class information medium, fall so totally, even suicidally, in love with themselves? Or waste so much money and time chronicling their own comings and goings while missing so completely the real economic and cultural boundaries emerging between old and new forms of information distribution? Sometimes it seems that the real competition isn't between purists and renegades but between Narcissistic (and thus Closed) versus Open Media.
This narcissism is harmful because it shrinks the creative universe of media workers and disconnects them from the new global conversation taking place online. Open Media operate in striking contrast, thanks in part to the distributed architecture that makes up the Net's infrastructure. Instead of handfuls of editors closeted in offices dictating agendas, successful online media tend to be highly interactive, informal, diverse, often amateurish, yet quick, newsy and, therefore, useful.
Open Media can't claim anything close to perfection. These sites are often hostile, chaotic, and unreliable. But they're open in the most literal sense -- online, anybody with a computer and a modem can be a journalist and use the open protocols of the Net. In the techworld, people bring one another news, links, URL's, and information obsessvively -- the most basic definition of a journalist and of journalism -- and in a never-ending stream.
The architecture of the Net -- designed mostly for research -- was designed to be open. The architecture of conventional media, designed mostly to sell information, has been closed for generations. This has caused the widening rift between the two cultures that plagues the so-called "traditionalists" to this day.
When journalism comes online, the first mistake most editors and producers invariably make is to replicate the closed forms they know -- as Slate did when it tried to charge customers to subscribe. One of the first Web sites run by mainstream journalists -- its editor is Michael Kinsley, former editor of The New Republic, Slate became synonymous in many traditionalist's minds with Web journalism. It was the first and only site many reporters visted regularly, then and now. And the fact that it didn't have to break even or attract large numbers of readers -- Bill Gates made it clear that Slate had years, if not forever, to succeed financially -- gave it further license to practice traditional journalistic values rather than confront the Net's raucous interactivity. Slate never really had to come to terms with the Net -- it had a gazillion dollar safety net anyway. As a result, the magazine has always had a sort of grafted-on quality to it, although it has grudgingly become more inter-active.
Open Media have thrived on very different principles -- they offer decentralized, digitally-empowered media populism. Why are the conventional media so hobbled with it comes to grasping this?
Until the l960's, journalism was a distinctly unglamorous profession, a working-class, blue-collar alternative to civil service jobs or manual labor. But as the Boomers went off to college in increasing numbers, and encountered social struggles like the anti-Vietnam and civil rights movements, journalism began attracting a different sort of practitioner. It became a more elite profession. People who go to Harvard and Yale tend to believe that what they're doing is important, at least in part because they're doing it. Being a journalist, producer or magazine editor was suddenly fashionable.
And as information became a valuable commodity and entertainment a global, multi-billion dollar industry, media executives became more visible and powerful. The media industry itself became a huge story, especially as entertainment, news, information and popular culture began overlapping. Conventional media coverage of pop culture is either tepid, or still ghetto-ized in the back sections of magazines and papers. Landmark evolutions in new media culture -- gaming and animation, for example -- aren't yet considered culture at all in the traditional press.
Journalism has paid dearly for this endemic myopia. Many of the smartest, best-educated reporters in America seemed not to notice that an information revolution was bearing down on them like a tidal wave.
Even as the net spawned thousands of new kinds of sites -- including this one, started not coincidentally far from coastal media encampments -- the traditional press continued its focus on itself. Successful new media sites seemed more likely to spring up in places like Holland, Mich., or Portland, Ore., than in New York, L.A. or Washington. Rather than embrace new technologies, much of media began sounding alarms about them, from pornography to addiction. On the Net, Open media offered sites, reporters and commentary drawn from increasingly far-flung sources on an ever-widening variety of topics.
Closed media have at best only a vague sense of this transformations.
In a medium where amateur news and information sites routinely draw hundreds of thousands of hits a day, Slate was unable to get more than a relative handful of people to pay a modest subscription fee despite the movement of tens of millions of people online, and sooned abandoned the idea of charging readers. In fact, many "old media" sites on the Web, from Slate to Washingtonpost.com, remain subsidized media, a luxury rarely afforded new or Open Media. If Microsoft hadn't been so generous and rich, Slate would have folded long ago. In any other context, in fact, it would be considered a disaster. In the surreal world of media narcissism, it's failure somehow becomes virtue, even a triumph.
Salon, also founded by conventional journalists (in this case mostly from San Francisco) was always livelier and more Net-savvy than Slate, and is a different, more complex story. From the first, Salon established itself as a digital bastion of culture and literacy, which also understood interactivity. As good as the site can be -- its technology coverage is often outstanding -- one gets the sense that it has failed to grow creatively. The magazine seems stuck, almost marginalized, long on attitude but short on new ideas. Selling criticism, cultural and political commentary and point-of-view in a medium driven by cheap and plentiful information is rough.
That doesn't mean that Salon won't survive, or even prosper, despite the recent layoffs, but that it may have to reinvent itself. In media, this often seems the hardest thing for pulications to do, online or off.
Now, as those sites seem more and more like early prospectors overrun by a Gold Rush, there is no more meaningful distinction between "old" and "new" media. Almost every major paper, magazine and TV network has a Web site, and their reporters and producers continually cross-over frome one form to the other, as do their consumers.
On the Internet, there is no workable definition of what a journalist is. That's a good thing. Anybody who sees him- or herself as a journalist becomes one, which is the way it ought to be and, in fact, used to be. The kind of press conceived by Jefferson and Paine had much more in common with the present-day Internet than with the corporatized behemoths dominating the mainstream media. The press was always meant to be open, "point-to-point" in the Net sense, individualistic and outspoken. Journalism was never meant to be an exclusive elite, and the Net has re-democratized it. Online journalism may be adolescent and chaotic, but it is freer, more diverse and participatory than its offline predecessors. And a hell of a lot more fun and interesting.
Thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of people write and gather information on Web pages, sites, Weblogs, mailing lists and messaging systems. They post stories, start topics, engage in discussions and debates. By New York Times standards, they don't count as journalists. But they are the personification of the new journalism, and of its rebirth. The fact that they are practicing journalism in the most literal sense is precisely what's causing problems for the conventional media -- online or off -- still organized around outdated and nonsensical models of information dispensing.
These amateur journalists offer information on everything: weather, quilting, sports, movies, music, politics, and, of course, technology itself -- the seminal story online. Sometimes their coverage is brilliant, sometimes dreadful, just like old-style journalism. One Slashdot editor e-mailed me a list of just a few of the sites he visits regularly for news about software. These sites are bad news for traditional media practitioners -- newsy, teeming, useful, vibrant, telling examples of the ferociously interactive, information-stuffed open media mushrooming all over the Web. [His sites: cpureview.com; rootprompt.org; kuro5shin.org; macrumors.com; macnn.com;ompages.com].
On such Open Media sites -- there are thousands devoted to diverse topics ranging from teen women (www.chickclickers.com) to sports topics to music, TV, movies, consumerism, books, politics and Star Wars. Readers spot and suggest and link to stories continuously. Information moves in several directions -- top-down, laterally, and bottom-up. Readers have access to the reporters and editorial figures on the Web site. Through story ideas and discussion forums they have a say in how the site operates. And they are truly heard -- no Open Media site would last long otherwise -- in opposition to the pretend interactivity of Closed Media ("E-mail Peter Jennings. He wants to hear from you!")
Open Source is, of course, different, a technical term that applies to the sharing of software, not to media or culture. But it has far-reaching implications that go beyond code. OS was a significant, prescient idea. Like Dorothy in the final moments of the "Wizard Of Oz," OS pulled back the curtain on the biggest story in the world - the rise of computing technology, which is making information cheaper and more available by the hour. And transforming media.
Any successful media site of the future has to begin with that understanding, since it affects news consumers so directly. People in significant numbers won't pay for access to general news sites that charge for information. Nor should they have to. They will, however, regularly visit sites that organize some of the vast amounts of information now available online. And they especially value the opportunity to contribute -- to comment on articles, posts and features, and to contribute links, ideas and pieces of their own.
The media are dramatically affected by (and quite vulernable to) the wave of openness, much of it architectural rather than political, which OS helped fan. Open Media are not only the wave of the future, but the hot information commodity of the present. Open media are the only media that can thrive in the 21st Century, that can connect with young consumers, incorporate new information technologies, draw large numbers and make money in the Digital Age. Unlike traditional media, they don't have to adapt to the Net. They literally grew out of it.
Open Media sites grasp that online, news is organic, continuous, participatory. Open Media editors can be plenty autocratic, and they make lots of decisions. But they make more of those decisions in the open, and readers are taken much more genuinely into account.
Open Media aren't uninterested in profit - quite the opposite. Their advocates, understanding how new technologies operate, have simply perceived a radically different priniple with which to make money - by sharing information rather than controlling it.
Proprietary sites on the Net have particular problems with this idea. As Slate learned early on, and as Inside.com will learn soon enough, it's difficult to charge money in an environment awash in timely information available for free. Closed media -- online or on paper or on cable or on the airwaves -- try to set agendas rather than permit agendas to be set by others. They don't trust their consumers to really participate, and aren't willing to share the power such an ethic requires. Instead they project an outdated image: a formal, rigid environment occupied by people holed up in offices, preoccupied with increasingly irrelevant formats.
Like The New York Times, they don't seem to grasp that the very definitions of media are really changing. Until last year (when she tired of the workload), a housewife in Akron created a free-coupon/quilting Web site that drew more than a half-million visitors a day.
In the 21st century, Closed Media can't compete either economically or creatively with the vibrant culture of open information sites. When a handful of editorial instincts compete head-on with tens or hundreds of thousands of editorial instincts, the rabble may just win every time.
Can a human being actually write this bad? Is he a Slashdot Perl script?
We want to know.
thank you.
Dude, it's long as hell and most of us are at work, give us a while to read it. :)
From now on can we have a 'Katz Bashing Thread' in all of John's posts so I don't have to read through 100 posts of meaningless off-topic dribble to find somebody saying something about the damn article? The number of anti-Katz posts in the this story outnumber the ones about the content of the article by at least 5 to 1. If you don't like Katz, filter him out or don't read the freakin article! It's not that difficult. I for one like to hear many different opinions and don't want to have to wade through 10 pages of 'Katz sucks' or 'Katz is a hypocrite' or 'Another Katz article too long for me to read so I'll just complain about it being too long' blah blah blah blah. From now on, just stick your Katz bashing in one thread that those of us who want to read and post interesting stuff can ignore it more easily. Or better yet, if you don't like him personally, don't read his stuff!
And fellow moderators, please use the Offtopic setting like it's supposed to be used and get rid of stuff that isn't relevant to the article.
You can get a computer and internet access for less than the cost of a TV and cable and I know many, many people who are supposedly living from paycheck to paycheck who have cable and a TV (and quite a few of them play Bingo every week too). It's a falacy to think anymore that if you want a computer, you can't get one. There are too many free deals around or cheapo computer with free net access. The problem is educating people to that fact and getting them to give up something like cable or $20 a week in lottery tickets (a _very_ common occurence).
So on an Open Media site, the news flows from altruistic visitors, much as comments and stories flow here? Where does the news come from in the first place? 99% of the news here contains a link to another site, more often than not a "Closed Media" site like NYT.
Katz seems to believe that news is there for the taking, as ubiquitous as web pages. He's ignoring the actual process of obtaining news from the real world, which is where it happens; this is as different from finding web pages and submitting them as talking about cars is from actually building one. There's a reason "journalism" is a profession, not a hobby.
[insert IANAReporter disclaimer here]
Posted by 11223:
Did you read the Time collumn about the Salon layoffs? He/she/it (at work, don't have the issue of Time) talked about how the Salon people were only layed off for failing to attract enough eyeballs. Is that the future of this new media? Will slashdot sites be the same way? (You didn't get enough comments, therefore you get the boot?) No thanks, I'll take my hard-copy of Time anyway.
Posted by 11223:
/. eidtors aren't dumb. They don't take the ad-gluttony to the max, but they sure now how to tweak a little bit.
No, Slash is also tweaked to generate banner views. For instance, if you're not logged in (or just created a new account), you view in threaded, which means you have to click to view comments, insuring the maximum possible ad-views. The
I don't think so. Bandwidth is expensive. Ratings were never part of the hard-copy media model, which to a certain extent the closed-media model is a copy of. But the 'net throws a twist into it either way. Open or closed, on the net, the Salon layoffs (which you made reference to, and I was trying to address) were part of an inherent flaw of the medium - that the number of eyeballs can be judged, and the medium can be turned into a TV.
To tie this in, I think the Open Media model is a recipie for disaster. Bandwidth is expensive. Advertising is needed. Soon, sites only posts stories that generate alot of interest. (Notice how the front page of slashdot is decidedly biased towards Linux. The editors aren't stupid - they know that they generate readings of the articles - and thus ad eyeballs by Linux articles). It stays "open", but it defeats the purpose.
You claimed that the Open Media model leads to links of all kinds of information. But that ain't so, because the ad-eyeball-phenomenon (as witnessed by the Salon layoffs) is a big problem. You end up catering to specific types of articles that generate the most interest from people, instead of covering it all. I think mixing content coverage and Open vs. Closed is mixing issues, myself.
But of course, I could be very wrong. (Thanks for replying to the comments. You seem to be more interactive lately, and it helps!)
CNN's audience share problems have been extremely well publicized.
Where's another Gulf War when you need one?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Actually... I think what Jon was trying to say is that the open media responds to the whims of the readers...
;)
:) ) then it floats to the top
:)
Heh... and not by just sacking journalists
(necessarily!)
What I mean, is an open news article is open to online debate at the source of the article.
If you don't agree with the author.. Say it.
If your point is valid... or just sounds good... depending on the system (and perhaps how good it is... slashdot of course being particularly advanced
gems among the crap and all that stuff
Of course... you try this with a close media article...
say a small article about japanese uranium mishaps...
You have to send a letter to the editor.. and perhaps on his whim he'll put it in a small box somewhere... or just throw it in a bin so he can make room for an advert.. of course if he does put it in, then it goes in 2 months later...
And no one has clue what the original article was about!
The open media... you say it. It gets seen, and frozen for all time as part of the article...
So open articles are not finished when they are 'uploaded'...
Just like this article was more an introduction to the following comments!
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
...you should have gone running rather than pretending to have read the piece. Is e-fibbing a sin?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
...i'm pretty fond of this one. And I didn't write the Hellmouth series alas, a lot of kids around the country did. Still scrolling for one sign anybody's actually read the column..This one didn't, for sure.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I think it's really importiant to have both open media and open source. I'm one of the webmasters behind www.indymedia.org and we're working on building a new paradigm for news. One that is open and democratic, build on open publishing models and open source software.
That said the problems of a new open news media are very real. How do you organize all this content. What's worth promoting and what isn't? We've talked about building a slashdot type moderation system that molds and shapes how articles get listed. Kinda like a cross between kuro5hin's article moderation and slashdot's comment system.
One thing we've realized is that some people involved in the Independent Media Centers are trained journalists and some are less professional. You can really can tell the difference. Journalists will call up people for quotes, attempt to check their facts, writes in the second or third person, etc...
One of the things that has worked best at the IMC has been our comment system. We have an open publishing model, and when people post incorrect information it is quickly countered by somebody reading the site.
I think this kind of structured colloborative news is what makes a news site exist well within the internet as a medium. Much like the early TV broadcasts were just radio announcers on camra, most early news sites are just print or tv news jammed in to the new medium. Slashdot, kuro5hin, indymedia, and many others are starting to move forward in exploring how this new medium can really be used.
It's interesting that this push is coming not from journalists but geeks and the open source movement. It represents a potential major shift in power in who gets a say and control over this new medium. Take indymedia for an example, some of our tech collective members have worked on major commercial news sites, but because of the structure of those organizations we were only able to really use the medium in this seperate confrontational project. That the people who used to be minnions in the old world are taking power and shifting the terms of the public debate should scare the existing power structure as much as any molotov cocktail.
The power of technology is manifest in how it is applied within the social matrix.
He usually has something worthwhile to say but his style makes it so hard to take in...
A specific criticism of the article. It gives people too much credit. People hate to apply their critical thinking skills too liberally. Open media has a lack of obvious trust, this requires a larger investment of critical thinking skills on the part of the reader/viewer. People don't often like to do that.
Think about all the people who take anything MacOSRumors says as gospel on the Apple platform. Think about all those people who heard about the stock market, but didn't bother to figure out how it worked. The same people who felt that reading the company website was the same as research.
Siteing technical sites as proof of a new "Open Media" is misleading. Its like going to a medical convention and using the numbers as proof that people are starting to care more about medicine. Try finding unbiases general news sites. I hope you have better luck than I did, because I didn't find any. Any site I found is so skewed in one direction or another that it is nearly worthless. THIS is the face of the new "Open Media". However two biased opinions don't make an objective viewpoint.
You give "the public" too much credit. It isn't an accident that most of the web traffic is concentrated on only a few sites. It isn't an accident that people stay with AOL. The majority of people like being on-line because it allows them to make choices that TV doesn't. But making choices does not imply critical thinking. You only have to look at election results to see the truth of that.
The new "Open Media" will mean a wealth of biased information which is only useful to those who wish to apply their critical thinking skills on a daily basis and in a wide range. This used to describe the general Internet population until about 1995, but it no longer applies. The rest of the Internet population either just doesn't care enough to read the news, or go to sites that provide an orgy of gratification for their previously held viewpoints.
Maybe, but they don't call it the NYTimes effect. I can't tell about profit/loss, but I know which sites I visit. ... The number seems to be increasing. Perhaps they are all owned by the same company? If so, it must think they are a good investment.
Of course, my homepage is LinuxToday, which is more nearly a "closed source" site. And I don't feel Technocrat ever really took off. On my system it was slower than Slashdot, which may be the reason. Still, there are similar sites popping up in several places now. ApacheToday, BottomQuark,
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I didn't buy my home system to browse the net. I wouldn't have. Having the system, I can browse the net. I think that a computer system now is relatively a lot cheaper than an encyclopedia was while I was growing up. But we always had one in the house, even when we didn't bother affording a TV. I know people on welfare who have computers. Several years old, but they work. Since computers have such little resale value, many people give away their old ones if they know anybody who want it. Our company donates old computers to non-profit organizations to recycle.
Now, of course, you did say "decent", which depends on developed expectations, and these systems probably wouldn't meet your standards (they don't meet mine, that's why I replaced them). But people who haven't used computers don't yet have those standards. And older machines are frequently less flakey (the flakey ones are thrown away rather than donated).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ah, The Register, forgot about them. There's a counter-example. :)
The point I was making was that Closed media has its good points, points that will ensure its survival. I guess their biggest asset, now, is the size of the profit they make, allowing them to put out a quality product, which makes them more money, etc. I'm sure if enough people were willing to subscribe to The Register as a pay site, The Register could hire better writers, editors, columnists, etc.
The whole Closed vs. Open media debate seems abitratory, though. I don't see much different between Salon and Slashdot, for example, except Salon hires more writers and columnists than Slashdot, and, thus, covers a wider range of topics.
George Lee
...is that "closed" media tend to hire better column writers, have better distrubition channels, better access to people involved in the news (through on spot reporting and interviews), better overall professionalism, etc., and, IMHO, produce a better quality product that I'm willing to *buy*. Capitalism at work. The reason online "closed" media has been taking hits is the cost of producing content is more that the profits made off of them. Pure capitalism.
"Open" media tends more to consolidate stories from various sources into one place; "Closed" media either writes its own stories or get them off the AP. (I suspect it's cheaper to post stories from other sites and have readers submit their own stories than hiring professionals to write orginal stories.) I'll go to Macnn.com to find out news about Mac software, but I'll read the Wall Street Journal to find out how Apple the company is doing.
(BTW, why didn't Jon just come out and say "./ r001z. 51@73 5uX."?)
George Lee
The vast majority of the population remains lazy and passive about their news sources. If you think that Average American/Human Person will get off the couch, go to his box, and research news that interests him, you're sadly mistaken.
People like to have things come to them. Would you rather walk down the street and buy a pizza, or have it delivered? Easy answer. This is why CNN, MSNBC, and newspapers remain in the forefront of the media. They deliver news how and where the viewers want it: in short (Attention span? what's that?) soundbites, directly to the MediaViewer's door/TV/eyes.
Even though many people do read /. and other "Open" media sites, they don't all participate, so it's not truly democratic. Open Media(what a silly term) will keep going, for sure, but until the populace puts in effort, it won't overtake the big, pushed media that has persisted for decades.
People who go to Harvard and Yale tend to believe that what they're doing is important, at least in part because they're doing it.
And people from other schools don't? Look at your own article, you are basically trying to say how good and important your own work is.
iOpener, $100. This is the price of what 6 hits of crack?
iOpener service, $20/mo. You can go without your crack just once, can't you?
It may be hard to get a phone line in a crate though..
Lowmag.net
those both point to user 7654.
That is a curious number...
Slashdot is not unix.
Lowmag.net
You better check you figures. The share of tax money supporting most stations is under 25% and falling. The stations fund NPR through fees for programs.
This project needs some work more work on it - OpenLeft.org
slashcode is running and the plan is a international non-sectarian left wing discussion web site.
--
Check out MKDoc a mod_perl CMS
I don't think that journalism SHOULD provide an opinion. I just think that in almost all cases, that is actually what you get. What you want and what you get are not always the same.
Since there are no objective sources of news really, I try to choose a wider range of sources and then base my thoughts on the whole.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ok, so maybe this was not the best article Katz wrote, but does he really deserve the critizism that he is getting? (When I browsed at +3 all I got was flame)
Really people, if you don't like what he writes, then click here and turn him off! Please try to be a bit kinder, I know I would not keep coming back to a crowd that heckled me every time I said something.
Geez...
(Score -1, defended Katz)
END
Okay fellow /.-ers, I think we need to step back and gain a bit of perspective here... entering rant mode. (moderate down as flame-bate or inciteful, as you see fit.)
...and I'm spent.
First of all, Jon is a journalist by trade -- he sees things through the tinted glasses of a journalist. As a journalist and free-lance author, he has to have a habit of being a bit winded. To blame Jon for being winded would be comprable to blaming one of us when we go off about how this latest technology is so cool because of ___...
I like Jon's work, even though it's a bit long quite a bit of the time. My thoughts are, if you don't like Jon's style, then you probably ought save yourself the time and effort of reading the articles. The second part of not reading Jon's work is, don't post unless you've got something incitful to say. Generally speaking Jon's articles are written to pormote constructive communication between people with like minds that wouldn't otherwise have occasion to communicate. That being said, I think the bitching and moaning over Jon's articles are a complete waste of space. (I'm eager to see who will follow this with a, "You're a complete waste of space you trashy ass-fucker!")
-C
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
But either way, I decided to check out what I was shooting my mouth off about after doing so (of course), and am prepared to retract my "jonkatz != JonKatz" statement and replace it with another completely unsubstantiated equation:
JonKatz the author != jonkatz the poster
Thank you.
jonkatz != JonKatz
IMHO, 'media disgust' is higher than ever and the success of open media is just a symptom of that. CBS News has for decades (at least since the Vietnam War) espoused a "no enemies to the left" viewpoint. Big media has gotten completely out of touch with the populace they supposedly serve. The rise of fly by night open sources (or more specifically, the survival if not thriving of same) need be interpreted as a sign of nothing less.
Bill Clinton is incredibly popular with mass media reporters and no other significant group. That CBS News can't keep this slanted view and compete effectively with open source media is merely symptomatic of the problems with big media.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Jon, you missed an opportunity to expand your buzzword catalog.
Not to be too squishy, but sites like /. and k5 might very well be the future of news dissemination. The content for news, is just that, news, all the extra fluff is just that, fluff. So with new media (Defined in the article as /.) the fluff comes from the viewers or readers and not the producers of news. This has two effects, first: it cheapens the news creation process (no need for an attractive talking head), second: it cheapens the value of the product (both for consumers and sellers).
So, Katz is pandering, but only because (like many people here believe) Slashdot is really, really, cool.
--
+&x
Yes, my original point exactly.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Sounds like Dan Dierdorf doing football analysis...
"I think the keys to this game are moving the ball, and playing tough defense. The team that can dominate the scoreboard will come out on top."
Ah... so whoever scores the most points wins... that's deep...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
>levels of testosterone, since I don't have any.
Well, you must have *some* level of testosterone... regardless of other factors...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Well, you must have *some* level of testosterone... regardless of other factors... - think about it.
~ppppppppö
Recently several 'Open Media' companies have suffered setbacks and some have laid people off.
Old media companies think/hope this means that they are unlikely to survive, this thought makes them happy.
Jon Katz doesn't believe this is so.
Open media is interactive and dynamic and of the net not on it.
Closed Media is smug and anochronistic and think they can succede by replicating themselves online without adapting to the new environment.
~ppppppppö
Perhaps the real issue here isn't so much open and closed media, but that the person paying the bills has the say.
And just for fun, and because it might actually be relevant, a link to Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky, a guy who makes reading Jon's stuff feel short and refreshing.
~ppppppppö
Ho Hum
~ppppppppö
The exception to this could be sites where the journalists have day jobs and do the work in their spare time, e.g. Declan McCullagh's Politechbot site, but these are likely to remain fringe affairs.
In this light it seems very fortunate that the traditional media is slow in moving forward (?!?) onto the internet, as when it does the chances are that all media is going to tend towards the lowest common denominator, democracy in action. Add this to the fact that there are plans afoot to add banner adds to free movie downloads to pay for the developement...
Possibly a bit of a bleak outlook, but I'd think there could be a real danger that the media is going to become seriously dumbed down, and from there it becomes a vicious circle, with a widening gap between the general populous and the technocracy needed to keep the system running.
once read (well ok several times) a great book on a similar theme, set in Britain, and largely written in the second person, also there were Gypsies?
~ppppppppö
ok ok I know, me stupid, should check facts on things I have absolutely no idea about.
Although for what it's worth, it means my day wasn't totally wasted, I've learned something, in fact far more about testosterone than I could ever wish. Someone actually mashed up several tons of bulls balls just for a couple of drops?? Hunter S would be proud.
And in a vain attempt to keep this on topic, one of the great advantages that open media has in allowing instant discussion is that it allows a much broader range of sources and opinion to be added via hyperlinking, creating a tree of the event rather than an isolated report.
Thanks though.
~ppppppppö
While I agree with what you say, I'd like to point out one important, opposite idea. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that the NBC news company (and others) are owned by corporations, and damn well know that certain stories either end up on the cutting floor, or possibly tamed down.
I'm not going to blame them or anything. Back in the days when I was printing, and started a magazine, do you think that i'd have a breaking news story that damned my best advertiser?
I read Slashdot, TomsHardware, Anandtech, and Sharky Extreme, because I can get the REAL dirt. Want to read some extreme stories on why Intel and Rambus are evil? Go to TomsHardware for a step by step technical review! Open up a fucking magazine owned by Ziff Davis (Oh wait, what else is there?) and you'll reading stories talking about how awesome RAMBUS is, and we should all buy this Intel matchup crap! See that is mainstream influenced by big bucks. (Wait, not that example... that is mainstream influenced by Intel hype.)
So, although there are trolls on slashdot, and Jon Krapz posts here once in a while, and ABC can spend the bucks to investigate some evil lawyer or something, I still know that on certain subjects I can get an unbiased opinion ONLINE instead. Whew!
Rader
--Does anybody here actually have any specific comments about the article--
Yea! Your article was a waste of our time. Why don't you post this crap to a main-media source? Oh.. because they'd reject it? I see. Well, we're rejecting it here. It's a little different, see, because you get a 100% chance of the editors posting your crap. They say, "ooh, Jon Katz, we have to publish some 'mainstream' artist to look professional". This article is proof. So if the editors won't reject your trash, then we have to. I hate troll responses in articles I care about, but today, I'd rather read all the responses about your article than the article itself.
If you really really really want some good responses, post something intelligent. You article is so noncommital that there's no chance of a discussion.
Rader
If new media isn't going to fail despite the hopeful predictions of old media, then will it succeed? And if so, will old media fail because of it?
Since we all seem to agree that old media starts the stories, and new media links or takes or talks about the story (and in a better way, since we can post about it, link to better sources about it, and simply discuss it), that it has to begin somewhere, old media may still have 2 legs to stand on. Obviously they'd rather have their finger in the pie of new media too. But why have they failed so miserably in that aspect? Are their standards of success too high? They're not getting a billion dollars online like they do on TV, so it's a failure? Must be, if they're directly relating it to hits and banner ad hits.
One thing I did like about these Old Media's web sites were the video clips. Now that's something that the new media guys can't do well. Takes bandwidth, space, etc. Plus, the old media owns these clips! And lots of them. Copyright-able too I'd imagine. New media might steal the story, but probably can't steal the broadcast clip of it.
Rader
Newspapers are HURTING! They're hemorraging! The cost of printing is up, the cost of paper is up, and without a doubt, if you can only get one thing from this: the cost of postage is up.
The distribution of online news is a nickel compared to mailing paper. The post office is an evil place. They're REALLY hurting the small guys too. If aren't U.S. News with 2,000,000 subscribers, then screw you, you don't get the preferred 2nd class discount, you just get the normal 2nd class mail discount, which goes up 14% every other year!
Every time the stamp goes up, people get interviewed and say...yea no problem, it's been years since the stamp was increased. But they put "rider clauses" on it and tack on all kinds of other postage increases that the masses don't care about. Ooh, 1 penny for a stamp, but $1000's more for a small newspaper or magazine.
Rader
Here is the quote you probably are refering to:
--The digital tide is having less of a direct negative impact on cable TV news, radio and print outlets. The Pew Research Center survey finds no evidence that Internet use is driving down regular use of cable news channels, daily newspapers, or radio news. However, all news outlets are being affected by the public's slowly declining appetite for the news. --
The first thing that came to my mind was where is their data? Oh well, I'll tell you where mine is... simple first-hand experience. My family has owned their own newspaper for 26 years, I've helped start a newspaper, and my girlfriend of 6 years has worked for a large daily newspaper. And I could draw a chart, but all I can say is that newsprint is hurting in all directions. However, since I'm on the inside, maybe what I see as a problem isn't apparent to the people that just get the newspaper. After all, you can't see that some of the advertisement in the newspaper was given away for free just to intice or keep advertisers, or maybe remember that there used to be this one guy on page 3 every week for the last 10 years, but now he went to cable advertisement, etc. Or see that postage rates are twice as much as they were 6 years ago, or that paper prices fluctuate as wildly as gas prices.
It's possible that subscriptions are staying the same. However the things that make a company "successful" such as making enough money, are being hurt. I highlighted the word "DIRECT" up in the quote above. Even the place you quoted know that Indirectly the internet affects almost everything.
So I'll say it again, maybe people still turn to the newspaper to read news, but the advertisers still aren't. (However, it's not just the internet that is causing this problem. Radio and TV have directly affected my past advertisers. Sometimes just because they want to "try" it out.) Advertisement is important, because subscription fees barely pay printing and mailing (if at all). I know of a specialty newspaper that does no advertising and all fees are payed by subscription cost: $250 a year for only 12 issues. The paper is no more than 40 pages, also. I give this example just incase someone wanted to argue that subscription monies help pay the bills. They don't, unless it's expensive like I mentioned.
TV & Radio have increased competition. And now the internet is too. Here is one indirect example of how the internet is affecting newspapers: People's time. I don't care if people AREN'T reading their news on the internet, they're spending a percentage of their waking days to it. And that cuts into newspapers too. One of the newspapers I listed up above as first hand is a world-wide hobby newspaper.(To simplify, I'll just say it was about antiques). Not only is EBAY hurting this old-style marketplace, but people are just farting around on the internet now and now "playing" with their other hobbies. And on a last last note, even daily newspapers (that you are familiar with) do more than just show the news. They are a place to get your Movie listings, to get your classifieds, to get your sale prices, etc. And the internet does it too, and even better sometimes. FREE classifieds, free movie listings (with descriptions, reviews, etc), places to buy wholesale instead of retail.
Sorry, that all the proof I have. I was just reacting to the comment that the internet doesn't affect newspapers.
Dustin
You know... I think that whole day was kind of weird. I don't think anyone behaved or acted normally after Katz's last "article". No one should be held accountable for their actions that day!!
I can see it now... Instead of pleading insanity for the rampage, I can plead "Katz".
You comments were a breath of fresh air, so no apologies, mmKay.
Rader
Open source relies on professionals contributing their time and skills freely.
"Open media" a la Katz won't be a reality until journalists are doing the same thing.
Until then much "open media" just leeches information from closed media sources. This is particularly so for genre such as news reporting.
Great Windows SFTP Server!
There's a great book "The Media Monopoly" that talks about this very thing.
The news is certainly skewed not to offend advertisers. This is the natural result of advertising-driven media. It is not a conspiracy, only the result of more ads==more money. If you piss off the advertisers, they leave and you make less. So you don't piss them off next time.
----- Leghorn "Not responsible for program content"
Here's a thought: (and it may just be related to the article, whodathunkit?) Human civilization has been a progression of moving from the specific and practical to abstractions of the specific and practical in order to better enable us to manipulate and control the specific and practical using less work because, fundamentally, we're all lazy.
Thus, computers evolved because doing math was hard. The computers are an abstraction of our thought processes when we're doing math. Programming evolved because doing everything in machine language was hard. Thus, C++ is an abstraction of lower-order code in order to make it easier for us to manipulate that code. Similarly, the Internet evolved as an abstraction of the research process, with searching, Uniform Research Locaters and such because slogging halfway across the country to get a bit of weapons research from a fellow technician was a pain in the ass.
Ultimately, doing good reporting is a pain in the ass. So what we are seeing is people doing meta-reporting, such as posting stories on Slashdot from various 'real' reporting sites. Similarly, if people are doing their own writing and reporting, it's probably because doing that reporting is an easier abstraction than doing something practical. i.e., reporting on technology is easier than DOING technology.
Thus maybe, just maybe, It's not an open-vs-closed thing, but rather a natural progression from doing hard work yourself to making it easier to mooch of someone else's hard work. The merger between AOL and Time-Warner makes it easier for AOL folks to mooch of Time-Warner's hard work and vice versa. It's not a matter of their being 'closed' because we, in turn, mooch of their work when articles from a T-W source are posted.
It's all about maximizing laziness. Perhaps the replies to this article are the best example of this: it's a helluva lot easier to post a two line complaint about Katz' article than to refute it, defend it or critique it...
Paradox !-)
We may be mixing trends here. I think it's more likely that ALL media is slimming down and consolidating as media becomes global. It's not just that Salon had layoffs, but also that most major cities no longer have two competing daily papers. The Washington Post doesn't compete with the Washington Times, it competes with the New York Times and MSNBC. Similarly, Salon and Slate don't necessarily compete with Inside.com, but rather with The New Republic and Brill's Content. And all of them are also competing with the BBC online, CNN.com and such. The medium isn't important, the content is. The content is spreading and broadening, making media compete against each other (or consolidate!).
Think of it like expansion in baseball, for a few years after expansion, pitching always sucks. Similarly, we have expansion in media, as the 'Net lets them compete against each other, so for a while we're gonna see reporting drive to a low common denominator and fracture into highly-targeted niches until the market stabilizes again.
Ranting,
Paradox !-)
Perhaps, Jon, because of the last of substance, people are left to comment on the form.
I saw someone do this for Jon before. I thought I'd continue the tradition by running it through MS Word's AutoSummarize. It went from 4 pages to 1. Enjoy!
-------------------------
Media hotshots and junkies were breathing heavily last week after Salon and CBS.com announced layoffs and APBNews.com had a near-death experience. These and other new media "setbacks" prompted some gleeful, almost poignant predictions that old media might return from the grave. The media war of the future isn't between "old" and "new" media, already meaningless terms, but between Open and Closed media.
What's the future of media? What are all the rumblings about struggling online media?
Was all of this a watershed moment for new media? Maybe old-time journalism could rebound, after all? Maybe the media universe would right itself.
If there is a central idea that conventional media have willfully failed to grasp, it's that the future of information belongs to Open Media, even when AOL/Time-Warner gets its lawyers and lobbyists lined up. What exactly characterizes the Open Media? Open Media sites embrace interactivity; they reflect ideas, commentary and information from a wide range of sources, especially their readers. Links are a universal signature of an Open Media site, a way to use Net architecture to maximum advantage. Open Media are ascending all across the information spectrum. There was considerable if short-sighted rejoicing in old media offices with the spate of so-called "new media" problems. Media watchers also cited Slate.com's struggles to become viable (it's massively subsidized by Microsoft and promoted on MS sites from MSN.com to MSNBC, and is still struggling for audience) and they were obsessively monitoring the super-hyped launch of Inside.com, a mega-media gossip and news site from a company that actually calls itself "PowerfulMedia, Inc."
With perspective-narrowing narcissism, the Times described Slate as "the online magazine with probably the highest profile in online journalism?"
Mainstream media are fascinated with themselves. How did the traditional media, once a populist, working-class information medium, fall so totally, even suicidally, in love with themselves? Open Media operate in striking contrast, thanks in part to the distributed architecture that makes up the Net's infrastructure. Open Media can't claim anything close to perfection. These sites are often hostile, chaotic, and unreliable. The architecture of conventional media, designed mostly to sell information, has been closed for generations. One of the first Web sites run by mainstream journalists -- its editor is Michael Kinsley, former editor of The New Republic, Slate became synonymous in many traditionalist's minds with Web journalism. Open Media have thrived on very different principles -- they offer decentralized, digitally-empowered media populism. Why are the conventional media so hobbled with it comes to grasping this?
The media industry itself became a huge story, especially as entertainment, news, information and popular culture began overlapping. On the Net, Open media offered sites, reporters and commentary drawn from increasingly far-flung sources on an ever-widening variety of topics.
Closed media have at best only a vague sense of this transformations.
In a medium where amateur news and information sites routinely draw hundreds of thousands of hits a day, Slate was unable to get more than a relative handful of people to pay a modest subscription fee despite the movement of tens of millions of people online, and sooned abandoned the idea of charging readers. In fact, many "old media" sites on the Web, from Slate to Washingtonpost.com, remain subsidized media, a luxury rarely afforded new or Open Media. Selling criticism, cultural and political commentary and point-of-view in a medium driven by cheap and plentiful information is rough.
In media, this often seems the hardest thing for pulications to do, online or off.
Thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of people write and gather information on Web pages, sites, Weblogs, mailing lists and messaging systems. Readers have access to the reporters and editorial figures on the Web site. Any successful media site of the future has to begin with that understanding, since it affects news consumers so directly. People in significant numbers won't pay for access to general news sites that charge for information. Open Media are not only the wave of the future, but the hot information commodity of the present. Open media are the only media that can thrive in the 21st Century, that can connect with young consumers, incorporate new information technologies, draw large numbers and make money in the Digital Age. Unlike traditional media, they don't have to adapt to the Net. Open Media sites grasp that online, news is organic, continuous, participatory. Open Media editors can be plenty autocratic, and they make lots of decisions. Open Media aren't uninterested in profit - quite the opposite. Proprietary sites on the Net have particular problems with this idea. In the 21st century, Closed Media can't compete either economically or creatively with the vibrant culture of open information sites.
Slashdot, bless it's heart is committed to giving teens a release for their violent impulses. This probably saves lots of windows.
/. has been accused of saving Windows.
This is probably the first time that
I think if you pay close enough attention you'll notice that the story was posted by JonKatz, but there have been a whole lotta thread posts from jonkatz (who strangely seems to have an automatic +2... methinks a global karma whoring conspiracy is afoot).
Jon, I think you're being unfair about the narcisism thing. A good community, like any cybernetic system, needs to spend a certain
amount of effort on self-monitoring / self-awareness. The Open Source software is always fascinated by the political interplay of the ESRs and RMSs.
That's very true, but that's more of a forum discussion, I don't think I agree with his "open"/"closed" idea. i mean, it's not a software model. We're commenting on articles, not quite adding to them. These articles and such on NYTimes and Salon are complete, finished works. We're acting more as commentators and editors than anything else.
-V
I really do believe that while he has talent, the articles he's putting up on /. are pretty much crap.
-V
Jon,
The only thing I'm going to take offense at is the "post without reading." Sue me for being a quick reader.
Now, I'm going to wax serious, and attempt a coherent reply: I have enjoyed some of your articles Jon. In fact, I think you're decently talented (read some of my other comments attached to your older articles.. if they're saved that far back, I'm not sure). At the same time, you are not without flaws. Almost every article I've read of yours has had a flagrant sense of oversimplification and sensationalism. You consistently take ideas and stereotype them.
One of the specific themes I got from this particular article is that "closed" media is dying, in part because it doesn't understand open information models. You paint a picture of all these dying news agencies that can't stand against the new, smarter "open" groups. I submit that it's not that cut and dry. I still love to get some of my news from places like the NY times and IBD.
One also finds that you take common buzzwords and sprinkle them throughout your articles. The words "open," "closed," and "geek" are just a few of the words that one is likely to find. Again, you paint a picture of all things linux being beset upon by a sort of old guard. Let me rephrase that: when I say "all things linux," I am trying to convey a sense of.. the many social/emotional causes that are oft times found to be important to readers of this site.
I do apologize for the.. ah sarcastic nature of the last comment I posted, but at the same time, I think it's sortof characteristic of things I often find in your articles. Please, reply if you've the time & inclination. I'd like to hear your thoughts (seriously, I mean only respect).
If you want, e-mailing me would also work.
-V
Where are you getting your statistics from? You haven't once (to my knowledge) actually given any proof.
-V
-V
man. everything's open and closed. I can see the next jonkatz article: the war in the fashion industry: open or closed clothing! fashion designers refuse to see the revolution in their industry started by linux. open clothing allows the skin to breathe easier, something linux advocates and geeks everywhere have been saying is important for years.
It can only get worse from there. I mean, what else can he do? do they just pickwords with a random number generator and then feed them into the katz-script??
-V
Isn't part of the problem with the old/closed media is that it is often controlled by corporate interest? That alone is reason enough to fear the new model. It is hard for corporate America to control open media and is perhaps a reason why many of the amatuer media sites are prospering. People want the fresh perspective, not pandering.
News at it's heart is really just an important event that somebody felt like sharing. The fact that there are institutions out there that exist soley for sharing and "creating" news doesn't alter the fact that for the most part, it's humans trying to communicate important ideas to each other.
<p>Net news is hampered more than any other news form, I think, by advertising. Where advertising is absolutely necessary on television and perhaps print, Net users are used to not having to wade through mind boggling amounts of garbage to get where they're going.
<p>But the Web, which is the basis for most current online news, has been turned almost entirely into a forum for advertising, solid spam, and this seems to me to conflict directly with most older attitudes on net travel.
<p>Add to the constant advertisement that most sites seem to pundit directly from a certian viewpoint (moreso than most newspapers, which while certainly accusable of being "conservative" Or "liberal" still tend to avoid a lot of the high minded views or pretentions of the web) and you've got yourself a selection of flavors...not necessarily news, or even communication.
<p>Sift through Katz as you choose. Or CNN.com. Or any of the other sites, salons, etc. I often think that The Onion is perhaps the best on the net, because their only real objective is to be funny, and they always succeed fairly well. Actually finding news organizations that succeed across the board in a pursuit seems rather difficult.
<p>Must they all have agendas? Politics to support? Apparently so. Would they be so naked, so pointless, without them? We may never know.
Listen to me Peter, I want this bench. You go sit on that bench over there, and if you're good I'll tell you the rest of
Katz's definition of "Open Media" isn't fact-based news, it's Op-Ed. Sites that thrive on the contribution of readers "foraging for information" (like Slashdot) might be an entertaining read, and once in a while they provide something to think about. However, they don't provide any original-content objective reporting on anything.
If I want to learn about stuff that REALLY matters - for example, how should I invest my retirement fund so I'm not eating dog food in 30 years - I'm not going to sit back and wait for Signal 11 to enlighten me. I'm going to get factual, clearly written information from a reliable, (relatively) impartial new source such as CNN, FP, my local newspaper, etc.
For those of you who would argue that CNN isn't completely impartial and fact-based - well, you're right, but it's nothing compared to "Open Media". This article from Katz is a perfect example.
Jon simply has a monstrously inflated sense of self-worth if he thinks the entertainment value of Op-ed sites is going to replace the newsworthy content provided by sources such as CNN or NYT. In this case, my sig says it all.
Slashdot is entertaining like pro wrestling is entertaining
I didn't say that /. doesn't provide original content - there's plenty of that (including our exchange here). I did say that it doesn't provide any OBJECTIVE original content - i.e. "Just the facts, ma'am". Sure there are all sorts of interesting aspects to stories to be found here, and everyone who is reading this enjoys the "cherry on the top" aspect of these little journalistic treats, but that doesn't mean we should be going on a diet of 100% cherries. The important stuff is the meat and potatoes that objective journalism provides.
/. for financial matters (fool.com message boards, for example). However, there is NO WAY I'm going to make fundamental decisions on information obtained from 100 anonymous (or pseudonymous) sources, each with their own unrevealed agenda. If I want to figure out the P/E ratio of a company, or its earnings growth over the past 5 years (i.e. FACTS), I want a reliable source for those facts. I don't want to take a poll of 100 financially oriented Signal 11's so they can tell me what they think the P/E ought to be.
The same is true for the specific case of financial research - there are all sorts of interesting tidbits out there, and there are plenty of places like
I think your view on objectivity is 180 degrees out of phase. Good journalism should be based on objective facts, and I as the reader should put those facts in a proper context and draw my own conclusions and value judgements. You appear to think it is the other way around - that journalism should provide an opinion, and the reader should try to see through a smoke-screen to figure out what the facts are. Opinion pieces may be interesting, but they are no replacement for facts.
Slashdot is entertaining like pro wrestling is entertaining
Good question. Why did you read it then if it didn't hold your interest?
You did not define them, you listed a lot of wooly characteristics and didn't give examples apart from Slate and /.
It seems that what you are really talking about is latency.
Conventional media have a high latency in the feedback loop, because of their long deadlines. (Byte magazine was notorious for this, as it had a 3 month lag between submission and publication, whcih meant it had to be given products 3 months before their planned launch date, so it was always publishing reviews of things that were postponed); daily newspapaers have a 1 day latency for readers comment, but a weekly/monthly latency for circulation figures and ad revenues, and insufficient granularity to tell whose column is attracting readers.
By this reading, Salon is acting in a very Open way by firing low-rated columnists. Personally, I find Salon a better read than slashdot, especilly the excellent Ruth Shalit, who writes wittily and thoughtfully about advertising and media excesses.
Tish Williams' old column at Upside was a great example of mediated feedback, when she would quote and heckle her readers emails every Friday.
You, on the other hand, can't even get your replies into the right thread.
John, you are trying to split media into two categories withut really defining them, which is a classic 'us and them' trick of demagogues (see Tony Blair's 'tforces of conservatism' speech, when he defined the latter as anyone who disagreed with him).
You say that subsidised media is anomalous, but surely slashdot is subsidised by Andovers stock float. Also, many online news sites are subsidised by sales of print versions (and the ads therein), such as the excellent www.telegraph.co.uk, which has great UK and international news and editorial, derived from large UK sales.
I agree with this idea; I think that its a great description of the current situation in journalism. I think people don't even realize how much they are tied to "closed" media just because they always have been. Many critics dismiss online journalism as being unreliable and adolescent, but how often do these people make critical decisions solely based on what they read in the local paper?
Huh? I guess JonKatz is fully buzzword-compliant now.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
I must admit, this article does seem like a perfect example of media being fascinated with itself.
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Do you think the drop in Linux stock prices were in any way a surprise? I think we were all expecting them. It isn't that big a deal, we were all expecting it, so if the stories weren't intesting why post them?
And whether or not you may like anime, that was one of the longest discussions I've been in in quite some time. Obviously there's a healthy bit of interest in anime on Slashdot, so there's nothing innappropriate in posting something about it.
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
After reading Slashdot for a while, I decided that I should get in on a new media information site myself, one that I can meaningfully contribute to. Being a geek, I thought maybe I could add something in the tech world, but after further reflection I decided to do something a bit more specialized. I grabbed the slash code, muddled about a bit, and voila! Now I have my own site, with news processed through the eyes of a doctor.
What I see as truly revolutionary is the change that is possible with such sites as Slashdot and my own--no longer are we stuck with just getting journalists' views or their judgements of what's important. I don't have to slap the newspaper and rant to my wife about how clueless/wrong/brilliant/etc. some article is. Now I can actually do something about the news, even if it is just filtering it through the eyes of an MD. It's participatory, fluid, and I think it's a fundamental change in the way to get news.
Lucky me. I managed to figure out it was crap fairly quickly. Yay, Open Media, Yay Matt Drudge letting Lucianne Goldberg post trash on his site(stuff she later admits was plain false). Sure Large media institutions get things wrong, that doesn't make an internet version of talk radio any better(or nearly as good).
-Every time I see you flourishing with a metaphor I experience the same anxiety I feel watching a child with a razor-
Jon, please don't stop posting to your own article. We need to see authors interact with the people they are talking to. Thats what makes places like /. great, there can be real dialogue between parties. Please don't let the trolls drag you down, they really are the vocal minority.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Ah, the old "lurkers agree with me in email" argument. Very good.
Uh, no, I think he means most people who email him have taken the time to be rational and respectful, and have read the article. You jerks just wait for his stories so you can post your drivel and get a kick out of everyone seeing your cheap troll. There's no audience when you send a private email...
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Sorry pal, but people complain when Katz doesn't respond, and when he does, we get people like you complaining. He can't seem to win.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
I can walk into my neighborhood coffee shop and pick up a newspaper and read it with my coffee in the morning... without paying a cent.
This is off the topic, but I find it interesting that if you changed the media, say from "newspaper" to "music CD", you would be violating someone's fair use policy.
How can you trust an organisation you tacitly admit picks and chooses it's stories not necesarily on the basis of newsworthyness, but on the basis of what they (corporate interests... liberal my rosy red ass) want us to know. The buyer beware aspect of online, 'open' news is there but at least the 'buyer' can, and is encouraged to, research the thing himself rather than relying on the word of some pompous ass on the evening news backed not by an interest in the truth but an interest in the bottom line.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Perhaps nobody has read it. I've certainly not, since I found it unreadable.
Ah, the old "lurkers agree with me in email" argument. Very good.
Did princess Di have a choice, really? I mean, how do you say no to the prince of England? Did Elian Gonzoles have a choice to get shoved into the public eye and be whored by reporters? Guess again.
I don't know about everyone out there reading this, but most people I know, despite what the media thinks, hates the liberal media's idea of good media, when they're beating down the doors of public figures and even some private figures and defend their actions with "we have the right to get into their lives since they're public figures." Whatever (Maybe someone should tear into their lives and see how they like it)
My point is that on many web sites that are open media like Jon Katz defined, people do have a chance to voice their opinion and if there are columnists and editors who do post stories people generally don't like (And I've seen some pretty nice figures - however much they've been molded - to support people don't generally like gossip), the people will let them know.
So maybe the new open media will put a stop to bad stories or reporters / paparazi chasing around unwilling people and driving princesses off the road.
You say that people don't watch TV during dinner, etc... I can buy that. very true.
They are forced into some interactivity..zappers, switchers, multi-channels, cable, the Net. I think most people do want to receive info passively
I think that the biggest problem is the distinction between "passive" and "active". The remote-control has done much more harm than good. And most TV news is all sound-byte crap anyway. So what if people "act" by flipping through 9 second clips on cable?
The real way to stay "active", informed, etc.. isn't to rely on a certain type of media outlet, but to engage in discussion with real people. Argue the material, don't just accept it. People can do this on /., but you can just as easily be "active" at the dinner table. Like you said...
That mitigates against the total passivity of previous generations.
I'll give you all of that, via old media. Just click here and choose your area.
All sorts of stuff that mainstream media doesn't/won't cover.
Well, a Jersey student who'd like to work at NPR one day.... heh heh.
TALK RADIO is definitely OLD media, but is probably the closest thing i can think of that has the same level of interactivity as NEW media. Sure, you can't really email Peter Jennings and expect him to read it or respond, but you sure can talk w/ Rush Limbaugh or some local talk show host if you don't mind pressing redial a bunch of times.
The main problem w/ Katz articles is that they don't say anything new. But then again, this is new media, and you get what you pay for.
In contrasting these two types of coverage I have inoculated myself from the propaganda techniques of mainstream broadcasting. Mainstream broadcasts come with a specific agenda, a determined spin that filters the information down to sound bites and images. These impressions are targeted to leave an emotional charge. The goal of this emotional charge is to impress upon the viewer viewpoint of right/wrong.
A most interesting contrast was the "60-Minutes" shmear job of the independent media at the WTO. They aired raw "indie" footage of the protests sandwiched between discussions with skinheads and images of previous Oregon violence, and they labeled the whole episode "The New Anarchists." Anyone paying attention would quickly get the sickening message that the WTO protesters were terrorists-to-be. It was cleverly crafted and it's emotional impact was further heightened by following with a horrific story on the atrocities in Khmer Rouge.
When discerning media messages I ask myself "What is the goal of this communication?" and "How does this make me feel?" We can fine tune our internal lie detectors, but we must first turn them on.
I don't pretend that the Indymedia reporters were not holding the point of view of the person on the street. My point is that the coverage was authentic. It felt real. Open media/closed media: I'm not sure this is especially critical when compared to authentic media.
He's basically preaching to the choir - about how the net allows people to filter their news sources for free, and all we can do is bash on him for stating the obvious.
"I swear, you guys rank on me 13 or 14 more times and I'll stop writing stories" Jon 'Little Bitch' Katz
What an interesting statement. When exactly did "disregard for profit" become a journalistic liability as opposed to an ethical standard? And who conferred on mainstream journalism -- as greedy, non-interactive, incestuous and elitist an institution as exists in American public life -- this high moral ground?
I think that the more interesting statements here belong to Mr. Katz. Why use the term 'gloated' to describe what appears to be a statement of fact without value (either negative or positive) being ascribed? I think the Times' characterizations of the two sides are fairly accurate and balanced.
As far as disregard for profit being a journalistic liability, that battle has been waged in editorial meetings from the dawn of time (in the early days, profit meant you kept your skin intact by using discretion). The only publishers who have a total disregard for profit are those who have an agenda to push that they see as greater than their own well-being. That agenda may well be the unbiased, balanced reporting of the facts, but usually is not.
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Matt Drudge would not fit JonKatx definition of "open sou.. opps.. open media". Matt Drudge decides what will be on his web page, and does not actively seak the contributions of his readers. He is the writer and editor. Slashdot works using a system of open contribution, editors, moderators, and trolls.
No, It's right there.
Drudgereport.com
Sometimes it hangs when he does an update.
It is clear that there will be an immediate future where both "open" and "closed" news/media will tentatively co-exist, but as more people use the net, learn to share their experiences and learn from others, "open" media will become more powerful and influential.
Photo.net is an ideal example of the power of open media/news/community on the web. If you have any questions about photography, there is really no other site worth visiting. Spend a few hours there and you'll immediately see the parallels between /. and photo.net
Another great aspect of open media is that at least for Photo.net and Slashdot.org, the code that runs these sites is free and "open" for use by anyone who can get it to run properly. As OSS community/news platforms become easier to use and administer, powerful sites such as photo.net and /. won't be the domain of the web 31337. I look forward to the day that those of us without a significant CS background can easliy run Slashcode or ArsDigita Community System on the powerful OSS platforms we have today.
Although I agree with most of what Katz was trying to say, I would argue that Slashdot, in so far as it is an open news site, is supported by Andover.net- perhaps not to the extent that Slate is by MSFT, but let's not forget who's paying the salaries of the Slashdot folks.
Also, it's a little ironic that Katz skewers traditional "closed" media for navel-gazing when what he is doing here, (albeit for a good cause) is navel-gazing at "open" media/news.
I read about this article at scripting.com because Tim O'Reilly sent it to Dave Winer (of Userland fame.)
Gen
The war being waged now is between old and new media. Grandfather media houses are realizing that one day we will decide that euthenasia of the old and static will be best for our evolution in this new, Tech-oriented age(in certain facets of course: why aren't there more encyclopedias or novels || 'classics' online? etc) . Don't get me wrong, although the smell of a new book doesn't get me high, I still would rather having the choice of both having it backed up on DVD and then curl up read the paper version by a cosy fire.
My point is now that we are redefining how we see and use information and how we treat media should evolve from different ideas and considerations than being closed minded to limiting it to how we treat applications, services and software systems.
Nuff Respec'
DeICQLady
7D3 CPE
One area that Jon fails to truly address in his article is the fact that running a website is cheap only to a point.
It's divinely cheap as long as you get 200 hits a day. Perhaps even at 2000 hits a day. What happens when you get popular enough that you outstrip your bandwidth quotas, and your site becomes the equivalent of a denial of service attack on your ISP? Well, that's easy- your ISP tells you to turn your site into a "commercial" site, or you have to bugger off and go elsewhere.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Regardless of whether this is a 'movement' for open media - or just another part of the infotainment fad that has remodeled television and the internet into the flea market it is today, the variety of information sources is invaluable in itself. Today's television media has an overdeveloped sense of self-importance. Whenever they are criticized for focusing our attention to one trivial thing or another (Willie's willy, O.J. trial of the week) they react with the ferocity of a grand inquisitor. Of course they are defensive, recent events have shown that the television news media is suffering from lackluster ratings, and gossip oriented content.
The fact is that the media's main purpose is to transmit raw, unmediated information, which open media does without commercials (sorta), and without the hype-driven events of the day. What's more, the Internet is interactive enough where users can get back to arguing about topics rather than simply taking Dan Rather's word for it. Down with the idiot box!
I think we must remember the purpose of Jon Katz, and that is to write summaries of the current cultural upheavals related to new technology as they happen. Sure, it's old news and obvious to many of us, but to many others it is a shock and revelation. I have to admit, I am having some trouble finishing some of Jon's recent articles, my main critism being that he is becoming redundant with the message "Old media doesn't get it." I can see why Jon felt compelled to write another such article in response to old media snickering at the troubles of some online news sources. Remember Jon's purpose, he is the chronicler of the cultural changes around us. He sits at the nexus between the old and the new, the open and the closed, the alpha and omega! . . . Excuse me, I lost a little control there. Anyway, Jon, I think it is confirmed and chronicled that old media is going to whither in the face of the new interactivity. Could you please try to explore something else for awhile?
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
If that's a troll, then so be it.
BTW, this is coming from a /. reader who isn't the archtype, alienated haxOr. No need to blame inflated levels of testosterone, since I don't have any.
This is another view of the world.
How did the traditional media, once a populist, working-class information medium, fall so totally, even suicidally, in love with themselves?
Katz, the answer to that one is taped to your back like a 'Kick Me' sign. Happy hunting.
Favorite typo: "pulications". Indeed.I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
Before they [MSNBC and CNN] die out, Pacifica and NPR will probably be totally sold out to corporate interests, as if they aren't enough already. The local news shows are the ones that bother me the most, however.
[pink beam of light]
I was extremely excited to read this article, especially on slashdot; let's take a moment to reflect on the fact that what you're doing right now -- engaging yourself in a public discussion about a public essay -- is an exciting, important, and actually very old phenomenon that has been almost entirely negated by the rise of the mass media (Katz's Closed Media).
I can see why people are suspicious of Katz's assertions: we still live in a world where most people come to understand the world through a few standard troughs, peppered with sensationalism and corporate values.
But let me tell you: there is an Open Media movement. Slashdot is part of that movement. Hundreds of other sites are part of that movement.
But I hear you still: reporters reporting, for free? photographers photographing, for free? video reporting, for free? It's not happening.
Let me tell you, then, it is. Let me give you one example that I am involved with and excited about. During the Seattle protests, the Indepedent Media Center of Seattle (www.indymedia.org) drew a tremendous amount of web traffic because it provided a simple clearinghouse for news, editorials, photographs, audio, and video regarding the protests that were going on. Much of the corporate news at the time was confused and slanted; generally people wanted to know what was actually going on, and there were others that wanted very much to tell them what was actually going on. To be clear, the Independent Media Center was not a political organization, nor was it affiliated with an explicitly political organization. On the other hand, the IMC was an Open Media source; those who felt that they did not have an outlet in the mainstream media did use that opportunity to tell their story.
That precedent has been very exciting. There is now momentum behind the idea, and there are now quite a few (non-affiliated as such) Independent Media Centers throughout the US and, in fact, the world. The DC IMC, which largely covered the WTO/World Bank protests, was a vast success; many journalists convened and produced quite a few pieces of real quality and thoughtfulness.
We're hard at work, right now, extablishing a Philadelphia Independent Media Center; our jumping off point will be coverage of the Republican Convention in early August. There are a lot of tricky issues related to Open Media that we're struggling with -- the issue of moderation, for example, is important and hard to face with an effective but appropriately "open" solution. I'm on the web team, and -- let me say -- thank goodness for open source technologies. We're beginning an intensive coding process now, and we're actually thinking of trying to adapt the slashcode for our purposes. (Anyone interested in helping out with this effort would be greatly appreciated -- e-mail me at the address above.)
Keep your eyes out for the Open Media movement -- you're already a part of it, and it's not going away. --j
I see a future for both open and closed media.
With open media like /., you're dealing with people. This ranges from those who always get (5; Insightful) to those who get (-1; Troll) and everywhere in between. With any matters on law, the comments do more to obfuscate than enlighten. (/. should put sound in the background to chant "IANAL" over and over. It would save posters the trouble.) All news on /. is secondary, often taken from the NY Times or Wired.
Closed media has the reporters and the funding to give us news about the Foreign Enemy of the Week, but it loses a lot of the flavor of open media: there aren't any "real" people involved. The price of this is that the news is denser, and usually believable because of journalistic review. Also, you don't miss the news if you're working late. Their major problem is that when they put up a "partners" subdomain for their partners to get stories without an inconvenient login, thousands of karma whores start their Karma Generator auto-posting the link on an open media site. (Sorry, little sarcastic there.)
So what will happen is that closed media will have a certain audience, and so will open media. "Both" is also a viable option for many, especially when taking into account that /. is for geeks and doesn't carry any local news.
-- LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
Dear Jon, Please stop posting to your own article thread. I tried reading the article, I really tried, as I work at a "New Media" company where local voices are used to interact with the local communities that they live in. However, one point that must be made is this: news is about communicating. While you might have some interesting and valid points, you have to write to your audience AND the medium in which they will be accessing that information. /. readers are by definition reading on some type of monitor (unless someone prints out the whole thread....) and when our eyes hurt, we don't give our best effort to the import of what people are saying. Think Haiku instead of Epic Poem. -A
A LISP program, maybe.
The responses could have been generated by a BASIC program, picking from a list of "Jon Katz sucks [sucks/is stupid/is boring/is on crack]."
So, let me get this straight. Interactive media is open (and thus better) than closed media.
/. posts a story on their own, as opposed to linking to a closed media site such as CNN or NYT, they have to add a retraction or correction?
/. often uses misleading headlines and editorial commentary that doesn't even resemble the story that they are linking to?
/.'s stories involve linking to some closed media site?
If this is true, then why does it seem that everytime that
If this is true, then why does is seem that
If this is true, then why does the majority of
Closed media, for all of its faults, is still the best source for news. They check the facts and actually write the news stories.
I wish i could smoke as much crack is Katz. The inane ramblings of a mad man that doesn't ever see the sun or have any idea what he is talking about impresses me. Congrats Katz, keep that crack pipe lit.
patience is a virtue... anger is a gift
My apologies for reproducing what I read somewhere else without dissecting it properly...it's just that Katz guy that gets my blood boiling with his bad journalism. :-)
Best of luck and continued press runs throughout the new millenium...
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
"Open Media"? Balderdash and poppycock. Sure, every day, there are millions of people writing each other messages and posting information on the World Wide Web. This is not new, nor is it really different; after all, people have been gossiping and talking about the news for practically as long as we've had language. It's a part of what makes us human. The fact that it is taking place on the web only means that your innocent backyard gossip now has a wider audience (that mostly could not care less, though some enjoy the voyeuristic thrill) that, if anything, is less connected to you than before.
What's important here is that the Web is, in some ways, a powerfully divisive force in United States society. We must be cautious when using it, and careful not to let it absorb too much of our lives.
www.alarmist.org
Well this guy makes a helluva case against the first ammendment with his boring weak ass article. Free Press/Speech should not allow such crap.
Actually, it seems to me as if a lot of the sources for Slashdot articles are companies and organizations themselves. There are also a number of links to "half-closed" sites like CNET that are really more closed media but incorporate many of the ideas of open media.
FuckedCompany.com says everything you need to know about the IPO/.COM insanity.
It's possibly the most clever website I've ever seen... Vote on your favorite shitty "eCommerceIntegrationBizPortal"... When it dies, you get points! Or something.
DontBlow.com is an absolute good.
The fundamental question seems to be Open versus Closed Media. This is not the real question. There is a solid answer to what is the future of Media. "Hyper Media"-- of course, this doesn't sound so edgy since we've all been fairly hyper for years now. The problem is not that "closed" news solutions are failing. The problem is that business managers in larger media companies have not figured out how to generate ad revenue the way they did so easily in print and television.
This article lacks in the very thing which gives strength to the Slashdot approach, an abundance of hyperlinks to relevant information geared specifically to maintain and sate the interests of the readers/participants. Generally-- and this is why so many portal and search sites have problems-- it's the quality and usefulness of those links to your target audience that create worth in online. Being a general news source doesn't work as well because that is not a restrictive enough information filter.
Not to mention that the ability to chuck your own two cents into the public arena, replete with any relevant hyperlinks of your own, is a compelling participatory experience (though somewhat illusory-- "if I can't be in the news, at least I get to yack about it...").
I do not have a signature
Jon is preaching to the converted and making points which are generally useful within this subculture. But a subculture it is. Around the world are more people, however, than are dremt of in your philosophy. Many cannot read, have no electricity or toilets, have more pressing matters to consider... But even in the hypo-pathetical average parts of the USA - towns in Nebraska, Arkansas, Maine - do you really think that anyone cares about this subject at all? I know that many of my small town neighbors don't watch the news at all. Two of them get the newspaper so that they can clip the coupons. Some watch sports on TV. One gets depressed by the news and avoids it (but country music cheers her up). Few know the name of the mayor or even the governor. Unless the emerging media can reach them, it makes little difference what form it takes.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Why oh why must jon katz post such long, meaningless articles all the time? I don't even bother reading anything with his name on it any more. Why do slashdotters complain about trolls and assholes when there's a guy like jon posting to the main page?
That's another 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Too bad I couldn't have spent it reading a good article.
What are you talking about? Every post I've read (well, besides the usual "f1rst p0st" type articles) have been useful comments about the article. You have to realize that people aren't commenting on the specifics of the article because its a big pile of steaming BS that means nothing to anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass.
I'm always struck at how many times JonKatz posts one of these articles and pretends he has any idea what he's talking about.
I'm experienced with unix and familiar with case-sensitivity.
slashdot != unix
I dunno if there was a flaw in the code or something before, but it appears to be(I just tried a few times) that slashdot's account names aren't case sensitive.
Weather a real jonkatz or not, he was defending JonKatz's work, and I can't let that go unchallenged.
I think Katz could have summarized his article in a lot fewer words because his point is pretty simple.
People don't want to pay for their news any more than they want to pay for their internet service. The internet has provided users a way to gather a wealth of information and offers them the choice of what and who to listen to. Open Media is a success because it offers users a choice which closed Media does not. An example: The evening news. Not every one really wants to hear about British royalty or new ways to lose fat.
Open Media is a time-saver so the user can pick and chose the stories that he/she really wants to read about while the Old/Closed Media only offers the user a selection of news that the Media has chosen.
"its great to be an american geek and somehow make a living at it" - michael stipe
- Corporate media outlets tend to control content (duh!)
- Americans, by and large, don't care/don't know about the control
- Control allows re-direction/re-formation of thought/social values/perception
- Open Media/News allows for freedoms which won't exist through Corporate Media outlets (duh!)
Question1: Does anyone really care?
Question2: Does society feel safer when control is exerted?
Question3: Is it too late to re-educate North Americans away from controlled media/news/though directions toward freedom?
Keep in mind that NPR is largely funded by tax dollars; i.e., money that is forcibly extracted from the citizenry.
This necessarily separates it from (what Katz calls) open and closed media companies, which must actually earn their readership by offering a valuable product or service to those free to use or reject it.
..last post?
Mr. Last Post
Katz, What you describe as "open Media" is slashdot. And it has it's place. But /. reports almost exactly zero original news stories. What of Reuters and the AP and the other 'closed' media outlets that do such a good job of gathering and distributing news? What would /. have to report if they didn't exist? Not nothing, certainly, but there would be much less easily-available info to report.
As usual, your post is over-dramatized.
Steve
Think of it in a musical context. New media isn't about being better at bringing you the spice girls, it is about making it equally easy for you to find Lithuanian polka music or Noise or abstract serialism- things which are not 'covered' in the mainstream. By the same token, New Media isn't about covering mainstream news better/faster/deeper than the mainstream media- it is about providing access to news that would never be seen elsewhere, in comparable depth. The whole point of New Media is that on the net, you can get to anywhere with relative ease, so given the access to the information people do seek out their specialised interests, and no matter how specialised the interest, it's possible to have a network around it, news, a community. That wasn't possible in the heyday of Old Media, because the mechanisms for conveying media didn't allow for that kind of proliferation of meaning- there had to be a screening process and things had to suit a lowest common denominator. No longer.
If you choose not to do that, then it just shows that you're more interested in bitching about his writing than avoiding it, all your claims to the contrary.
If you don't like it, don't read it. Nobody's forcing you to.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Did you ask him?
Personally, I think he's trying the articles out here before he sends them on to a more mainstream publication. If he gets feedback which makes for a better article, then when he submits it to Rolling Stone or some other old-style media outlet that gets more attention, it has more impact there. (Of course, if he's not sending the articles, then I'm blowing hot air. I haven't asked him either.)
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Writes Jon Katz:
"Mainstream media are fascinated with themselves."
And let me see, this daming criticism comes in the middle of an article that is part (we assume) of Jon's much heralded 'Open Media', and which - oh gosh and golly - does no more than spout on endlessly about how important and wonderful 'Open Media' is.
So - fair to say that even non-mainstream media is fascinated with itself, eh? In fact, I would have to say that Jon Katz spends rather alot of time talking about Old Media, New Media, Slashdot, Himself, etc etc. I'd say a case of leopards not changing spots.
-----
What makes an OpenSource project bear that name has largely to do with allowing public contribution to the project -- thus, a more accurate defintion of Closed Media would include free sites that do not publish public comments (aside from letters to the editor). Since this covers even most "new" media, most of the points in this article become moot.
Besides, this seems like a sad attempt by the author to gain favor with Slashdot readers. As an earlier poster said (I paraphrase) - 'Gee, a Slashdot columnist says Slashdot is the best.' This would be like Nintendo publishing an article by one of thier engineers saying "the N64 is better than any other console." Regardless of wether that statement is accurate or not, it would come as no surprise, considering the source, and would probably be categorically ignored.
I bet if you asked your local newspaper editor which form of news media was the best (on record), [s]he'd plug his/her own media...
Besides, Slashdot is not exactly a News site, per se -- rather, it is an editorial site. The editors choose which stories (which come mostly from news media) to publish, and often contribute thier own opinions right on the front page. Readers are then allowed to make editorial comments as well. Yet another reason this article is moot.
--
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
OTOH, Kuro5hin is pretty much 100% user-maintained. The site's owner only has to write and tweak the scripts, and the rest is handled by the users. This is what I consider Open Media to be. What differentiates Slashdot from ZDNet anyway? The average IQ of the readers, and the way the scripts are designed. (Slash is designed to be more-or-less comfortable to use, while ZDNet was designed to generate banner views.)
--
is a self-parody as opposed to a complete parody. Does anybody here actually have any specific comments about the article, or are we doing to dance all day?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
..smoke as much crack as Katz? Money. Note that this far into the topic, there still isn't one comment that would even remotely suggest anybody has read the column or has a specific criticism of it. Or even an intelligent thought about it..I'm always struck at how much time these people have to pretend that they've read things.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Topics like this one are a good example of why
Still seeking a specific comment, criticism or sign of actually reading and/or comprehension. Coming via e-mail, as usual, and perhaps later...
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Am I missing something here? I'm a hypocrite for commenting on a story in Time, but you are not for reading it? Troll logic? I'm going to come on Threads more from now on in the hopes of encountering an actual reader..doesn't look promising though, but I'll stay with it..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Finally, somebody who actually read the column and posted an intelligent thought about it..Here we go, maybe even to the point of having an intelligent discussion (we can dream) A miracle..Thanks, dude. I think the pundit point is interesting. I think pundits have completely lost their power in traditional media and there really aren't any pundits on the Web. It's just not possible to dominate discussions that way.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
You're mixing two different issues. The corporate media model reduces workforces over ratings. That's not a new or open media model. Salon ambitiously expanded to try and be a major commercial media player. It overextended. Most open media don't make that kind of investment in staff and resources. They link to informed from all sorts of sites, closed and open.
(do I have to sign off three times?) THanks, thanks, thanks.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
This is sort of the point, though..Open Media takes info from lots of new sources (traditional media included). The NYTimes isn't interested in posting your comments. Slashdot, bless it's heart is committed to giving teens a release for their violent impulses. This probably saves lots of windows.
But it isn't a matter of altruism. On the Net, the news is there for the taking, for better or worse. That's what makes old info distribution models so difficult. And makes competitition so challenging. Anybody here can take this column and have their way with it..It is already, in fact, being linked all over the place, judging by my e-mail. So it is there for the taking.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
As a former Baltimore newspaper editor, I sort of agree. On the Net ivory towers don't last long either, one of the things I like about it.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
No, that's a silly argument, I think. Slashdot was successful before Andover bought it, which is WHY Andover bought it. Open Media isn't more virtuous than closed, just more timely and successful. Both mean to make money. But I'm not into the Andover/Slashdot paranoia thread, though it's a perfectly legitimate line of discussion. I've worked for too many true corporate beasts.
And I did define them, if you read the column. And at considerable length, according to some people here.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I think this is an interesting and important post. Media used to be tremendously passive..20 years ago, 94 per cent of all Americans sat and watched TV news in the evening. Now, 14 per cent do. They are forced into some interactivity..zappers, switchers, multi-channels, cable, the Net. I think most people do want to receive info passively, but the best open sites offer readers a number of options for participating. I think those will ultimately be successful. Certainly some passive sites will be as well. But media users have many choices and much new technology that requires choices to made..That mitigates against the total passivity of previous generations.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I see that many of you aren't aware that CNN and MSNBC are struggling mightily with tiny audiences and little revenue. They are not growing and prospering. They are in big trouble. I'm surprised so few people know this. If they wren't both owned and subsidized by behemoths with deep pockets, they be long gone. CNN has terrible problems when there isn't a huge story and MSNBC has never had much of a tv audience..a huge disappointment.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
...Must be cause it's from a Jersey person..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
...and I thank you for it.A perfect example of what I was writing about from somebody who actually read it. Can I send you a box of Twizzlers?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
..that people are posting inaccurate, self-righteous posts under their own names. If you read the comments of the choir, I don't see how you can argue that they are converted. And you are dead wrong. CNN, MSNBC and newspapers and magazines have very serious ratings and audience problems.Mainstream media audience's are aging an advertising markets are fragmenting. CNN's audience share problems have been extremely well publicized. Why would you make statements that are so demonstrably false as if you knew them to be true. These problems are widely known and discussed in the media industry and the media.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
he forget to pay NIC?
White House Cyberwar?
Throw in the Towell?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
currently failing DNS Lookup
???
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Even though these portal link-fest sites are great for a central point of news, they do not generate nearly enough CONTENT to keep themselves alive, they depend on these socalled closed sites for their content. I don't see how these sites can be critisized so, seeing as they are really the mothers of all of these 'news' sites.
There is a symbiance there. 'open' sites need the 'closed' sites to write and research the stories the 'open' sites just do not have nearly the resources to do themselves. consumers need the 'open' sites for a singular place to get the news they want, for example, if I want geeky news I come to slashdot, if i want gaming news i go to shugashack, hardware i go to hardocp.
Nonetheless this article shamlessly plugs that chickclickers site again, and nonetheless it rambles on about things that could have been condenced much more, saving on the world bandwidth.
Normally even I've been nice to katz, I've let him off the hook long enough. the substance to this story is nearly nil. This has become a series of articles by katz that show little research in general. Before and around the hellmouth series I was impressed with the number of people he sited in his articles but this is getting sad.
--onyx--
And what would you call a site like Themestream that lets anybody post anything they want and then pays them a dime a hit (during its 'preview'; will probably drop to two cents a hit afterward) for it? Open, because anyone can write for it? Closed, because it pays them by the popularity of what they write?
By and large, I think this article continues a trend I've already noted in your work of telling us what we already know. By and large, we're already net-savvy people, Jon. I think that many of the people who regularly bash you find your articles like this to be quite patronizing.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Indeed. I've had two full-fledged editorials published in my local paper, with by-line, photograph, and all. The more recent one, on Microsoft's culpability for the Love Bug (which I've posted the text of here) was given about 1/3 of a page, and they added an editorial cartoon to it. Very nice; even my UPS carrier has told me he liked it.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
However, it seems like those incidents have been coming less and less frequently lately, sad to say. Still, I can't help myself--his articles have that sort of viceral peeking-out-from-between-the-fingers-of-the-hands- over-your-eyes appeal of a hideous train wreck.
And for that matter, when I do directly criticize his work, I try to do so at least partly constructively, instead of just chanting "Katz go home! Katz go home!"
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I'll admit right up front that I totally disagree with just about everything you write (I mean overall, not just this article). In general, I find it to be silly, pie in the sky, rah-rah cheerleading, and usually devoid of any self-criticsm whatsoever. Your writing seems like it goes out of its way to throw platitudes to whichever group you currently want to be part of, maybe in hopes that you'll end up as their patron scribe or something. But.
I still sometimes read the articles, but you need to realize that you're asking a lot of your readers by foisting these unedited pieces on us. They drag out sometimes because there's no focus, and when there is a focus, they drag out anyway because you keep repeating the same thing over and over. You know good and well that the mags that you've written for wouldn't take an article like this, so why do we have to suffer through it. Just get a friend to run over your columns, or maybe hire a college intern on the cheap. If you're going to chastize people for making judgments without reading your entire articles, you need to do your part, too, and make it less of a chore.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Library access is generally slow and crowded, but it is free to anyone who walks in (at least in the libraries I've been in).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't see how you can say /. does not provide original content at all - many many times in /. stories I have learned interesting aspects to stories that would never have come up if I'd read the story just on news.com or CNN.
/. or CNN. In many ways I prefer a heavily biased source like many "Open Media" outlets over something biases in subtle ways at a place like CNN.
/. for financial matters, I'd use that in a heartbeat.
As for objectivity, I think that's almost always something the reader has to provide for himself - weither reading
And personally, if I want useful information on just about anything (finance included) a site like CNN is the last place I'd go - I still use newsgroups, interesting web sites, and a lot of input from many different people.
In effect, I would trust the input of 100 financially oriented Signal11's over one place like CNN. If there were a place like
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It has to be difficult for Katz not to write one of these every few days. A gush about /. (and a slam on slate)
/. collective) is about original content. This site does commentary great, but even the original content produced here is all commentary. Meta-news, if you will.
As a quick aside, I think I've visited slate maybe twice in 6 years of surfing. It sucks, like banner ads suck. A first idea that turned out to be way wrong.
One issue he doesn't really go into (too busy blowing the
Another issue that has been ignored is the activist element and freedom that comes from this style of news gathering. One is much more likely to hold an extreme opinion if one sees others who do the same. You don't get extreme opinions from networks news, you can't avoid them here. Personally, I think that is a VERY good thing.
The old media laughing at a couple on-line failures is funny in and of itself. Mainly because there are hundreds of other sites that can pop up instantly to replace them. Competition is so fierce (and looks to be so for a while) that some who have made poor decisions, or gotten unlucky will fail, this is the sign of a healthy marketplace, IMHO.
I guess that's enough for now. Like I said, it's a good read but misses some points and makes others redundantly.
--
+&x
The reason I like it is because I know that the sheep are reading, and just might learn something, or atleast become aware of it.
But why does this crap have to be published here? Go publish this crap in the old media world, where you might have a chance. We're not sheep, we're already a part of what's happening. We already know about it. I want a techie's perspective on it!! Know why? Because I'm one too, and there's a good chance that they'll explain something that I don't know about. And not only that, but they'll talk about the points that interest me too.
---These and other new media "setbacks" prompted some gleeful, almost poignant predictions that old media might return from the grave. Don't put any money on it--
--What's the future of media? What are all the rumblings about struggling online media? --
What a waste. Let's write 10 pages of nothing, hype it up with *big* words, and then ask rhetorical or meaningless questions. In fact, this whole style reminds me of the local newscasters here in Indiana that did their own pre-show for the Indiana Pacers in the NBA Finals:
Idiot #1: Well Harv, what do we have to do to win this next big game?
Idiot #2: First off, we have to score more in the first half, and then we should pump up our defense throughout the game.
Idiot #1: Great idea. What about Shaq, well he be a factor today?
Idiot #2: That's right Merv, the Pacers will really have to stop his game if they're going to have a change to bring it back to Los Angeles.
(Continue on for another hour--ack!)
Rader
If Open Media is supposed to reflect heavily on its readership, why are you still boring us to tears? Why are "Closed Media" institutions more reliable and trustworthy? There is no such thing as open/closed media -- every media source listens to its readership and the outside world, the only question is how much they do it. This is not new.
Open Media or Open Mouth? You decide. Jon should try the former and give up the latter sometime. He has done work for any number of "narcissistic" "Closed Media" entities, including Rolling Stone and Wired, but now you have "seen the light" that this style of journalism is wrong.
For a long time, newspapers and magazines have been "open". They're called LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, and are written by people who have taken the time to compose a note and drop a few cents on postage, rather than the knee-jerk reactions found so often in "Open Media". They pick the best, and print them -- even if your comments weren't published (ooh, you'd hate that, wouldn't you, Jon?), that doesn't mean you haven't contributed.
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
Original content.... this may not be where the money is, but it IS where the info is.
If you removed every link to an external news source from slashdot, what would you have?
Stories by Mr. Katz and thats about it.
I don't mind his work, but I prefer some facts in my reporting. I read slashdot for the links. I don't want to go to 27 other news sources daily. Press Releases are not news... half the time they aren't even accurate or informative.
The Associated Press has made most newspapers functionally Open. Most major headline stories are simply reworded AP text. The AP exists online... why don't we link to them?
Becuase on slashdot, we don't want to read about Rwanda. We want to read about geek stuff. Targeted reporting is the domain of the Closed media syndicate.
Thats the way it works. Thats the way it will work.
-Fungol
Sure, they do toot their own horn once in a while, but I think that while traditional in some sense, it is a stark contrast with "closed media".
Katz says: How did the traditional media, once a populist, working-class information medium, fall so totally, even suicidally, in love with themselves?
NPR beats this criteria to a pulp. News with a populist bent. Relying on no single source, doing their job because they enjoy it. Look, I'm studying journalism as a possible career path. Even top NPR people like Daniel Shorr, one of the most respected journalists in the world, make peanuts compared to the majors.
Not everyone in "traditional" media, as if NPR could possibly take that label, falls into your "open & closed" categories Jon. It's not that cut and dry. Some of the best quality journalism is what you'd call "closed".
Geez, it [NPR] was even founded in Wisconsin.
Back when the net was still young, there were few sites offering good gaming news.
Then came along a little site called VoodooExtreme.com. I've watched it grow from a small Provo, UT based "Isn't 3DFX a cool company?" to a full fledged "We got 50 billion news updates made every day".
Almost all of their news is reported from the readers, eager to be famous for 5 seconds with the tag line "Soandso reported this story to us...". The site had grown, and it now one of the biggest gaming news sites on the Internet. (It and Blue's News.)
I'd say both of these sites demonstrate with Mr. Katz is talking about - sites where the readers are the journalists, and the editors function as an error and fact checking system against them.
John "Dark Paladin" Hummel
We don't just like games, we love them!
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
In the beginning of this "story/post" by JonKatz, he talks about new media setbacks due to layoffs and "near death experiences". I call it survival of the fittest -- have you seen the number of people working at some of these places??? I mean, 150 or more people in some of these companies and what were there revenues again??? IMNSHO, they NEED to lay off about 1/3 to 1/2 of their staff because they are just-plain over-bloated!
I mean, I work at an electronics distributor/manufacturer (9 years) and we have about 75 people producing revenues of about $75 million per year. We could EASILY have 150 people, but it's just not economically feasible because we're not a Dot-Com and we have to live by real rules like, we can't hire another person because we don't have the money!!!
It's not like it's that bad any more (it was back when we had 4-20 people), but you get the point -- most of the Dot-Coms are simply being forced to live by the same rules as other companies and it's hurting. It may kill off the weak ones, but it can only be good for everyone in general -- from my own experience, I don't think they produce a better product by being so over-bloated, if anything they produce a worse product.
Instead of giving us his standard useless article filled with errors, Katz with this article and the last is giving us a useless article filled with errors that panders to us. It is any suprise that his description of "open media" is basically slashdot. Who can seriously like long lines at goverment offices? I think he is actually worried about his job, or at least the Katzbot has more AI functions than we thought.
Uhhh, I just seemed to remember that I read a Katz piece speculating about who was responsible for the LoveBug virus a few weeks ago in TIME MAGAZINE (the bastion of closed media).
I guess we should be happy that Katz is an equal opportunity "journalist", and doesn't discriminate against old media.
This is another view of the world.
There is a line in the Balitmore, newspaper movie from the 80's "He Said, She Said" that goes "I've always wanted to write a newspaper column and change the way people think".
That is typical of the post-60's journalism grad we have today. They don't merely want to report facts (who, what, when, where, how and why), they want to present the facts in such a way they can "change the way their readers think".
Never has this been more evident than in the past 10 years as journalists sink to ever lower levels and biased reporting in order to "change the way we think".
It sickens me to watch stories on the economy, foreign affairs, pending bills and most important to me, the Internet, as presented by these so-called journalists who barely understand the issues at hand, who present only part of the facts and then make statements more akin to opinion rather than summerization of facts.
They smugly pat themselves on the collective backs as they coin words like "wonk", "pols", "Dems" and "pundits" and act as if they have discovered a cure for illiteracy in America. They disguise their obvious political leanings as "indepth reports" when actually they are extended propoganda presentations worth of Hitler or Stalin. They fawn over idiot Hollywood celebrities, career politicians (theives) and non-producing, worthless "intellectuals" and disconnect themselves from the working person in America.
In my world, we would drag people of this ilk from their ivory tower, elitist land of oz into the streets for random lessons and just come uppance. However, the best (and levelheaded) course is to turn them off: Don't buy the papers, use Time and Newsweek for puppy training and leave Peter, Tom and Dan to sulk over their sinking ratings.
Show me the data...I've posted where I get mine from -- where's yours? You are just making up numbers off the top of your head. News consumption is down across the board, but that is due to the fact that young people are not reading or watching news anywhere...not because the people who were reading it in papers have all moved to online content.
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
If you have data that refutes mine, go ahead and post it so I'll know that you really don't just pull this stuff out of you know where...
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
"closed" media tend to hire better column writers, have better distrubition channels, better access to people involved in the news (through on spot reporting and interviews), better overall professionalism, etc., and, IMHO, produce a better quality product that I'm willing to *buy*.
Excellent point, but who's to say "closed" media will be the only ones when some open media take off a bit more? The vast majority of people in the US who bother at all with the news do so via the TV; even CNN Headline News spends only 3 minutes on headlining stories. News reported online is often more up-to-the-minute and often more complex in its detail (links make that very easy to accomplish.) Many people whose primary sources of news are tv broadcasts are turning to the web instead or in addition, and many people who read the papers are turning the the web to augment their daily intake, or to get more depth.
The proliferation of news sources makes for a market where writing quality is held in high regard (the Economist, the Sunday New York Times and Wired should continue to do well, but watch out USA Today!) and so is instant gratification-- immediate and accurate reporting (Reuters, CNN, and BBC online should do very well, especially since they add more depth than your average radio or television 10 second news flash.) Open media is changing the nature of the market, not replacing it. Closed media will be in a different sort of demand.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
Not everyone is as open-minded as Slashdot readers, and even Slashdot readers are not as open-minded as they would like to think they are - just look how fast someone is moderated down for saying "Linux sucks". Advocates of the new media underestimate the inertia of the "establishment" and its desire to maintain the status quo. The average person does not want to encounter challenging ideas and shifting agendas and philosophies. People will read whichever newspaper agrees with their own philosophies and agendas, to give themselves that warm self-righteous feeling. Anything which challenges their own philospohy will be rejected as a heresy.
Although the new media will certainly be important (at least until the New New Media comes along), the old media will always remain more popular.
I can't believe how negative the comments are to this piece. I've been trying to define this distinction for a long time, and this is close, though using the "open/closed" metaphor may be a reach by a hard core opensourcer. Maybe micro/macro is better? Here are my experiences.
First indication that something was bad wrong with the media: During the tank assault on the Russian parliament some years ago, CNN was able to carry the video live over the air. Excellent. However, this exchange took place between the anchor and the reporter on scene:
Anchor: Amazing that we're able to see this story live as it unfolds.
Reporter: Yes, but it's a little scary that these images are being sent directly into people's homes without us to interpret for them...
Now can anybody tell me what that means?
Much later, I was building my first pc at home. Armed w/ the net, I thought it would be no problem. Search ZDNet, TechWeb... I got prices, but could I really make decisions based on what these sites have to say?
Then I discovered tomshardware, anandtech, even sharkyextreme and the lower tiers of tech sites, and the information was 1000x more useful. Now I go to techweb for press releases, and nothing more.
Now my primary source for entertainment news is aicn. Would anyone seriously refer me to e? Or Entertainment Tonight? I still get hard, international news from nytimes & bbc, but how long before that changes?
I think the article's most important point is that old/new media is a false dichotomy. Most "new media" sites (as they are commonly described) are just old media in a new medium. An online magazine is still a magazine. But there really is new media out there, and it's growing.
A similar thing happens with e-commerce sites. Sure, reel.com closed up shop, many front-line e-commerce co's are struggling. But a quick search at pricewatch reveals an enormous number of small, focused, cheap suppliers for anything you want.
When the story of the "internet revolution" is finally written, I don't think anyone will be buying it at Amazon.com
Kill, Tux, kill!
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I remember back in the Usenet glory days. It was like watching an amplified intelligence. Something would happen involving some topic, somebody would post something about it, and immediately (in usenet terms), people were all over it: reporting other instances, disecting and analyzing. I especially liked watching things like Urban Legends migrate around the country, and various reports popping up in the folklore newsgroups as the mainstream media picked them up.
To me, that's what the New Media ought to be in it's finest instance - totally decentralized, a billion eyeballs all on an equal basis. It was also self-selecting - you decided what news was important or interesting to you. You didn't get your news on a plate.
Slashdot is like this a little, at least in the area of the eyeballs and the analysis. It suffers the bottleneck of editorial picking and choosing of the topics, but it has the advantage of an attempt to reduce the noise level in the discussion by moderation. (Anybody notice an ongoing pattern of attack meta-moderation recently?)
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
No doubt I could have written it shorter, but we thought it was important to go into some history here, even though it strains some attention spans..But it isn't just about cost..People are willing to spend money in different contexts for information that is useful to them. So are advertisers. The larger point made in this post is true though..The closed media model works less and less well in an environment where the price of information is dropping and the availability of information is going up...People have always been willing to pay for useful information, the change here is that it's free.But new media like the Industry Standard, which has a print and e-component is making a lot of money, and charging as well. It isn't insider info, but useful info. Big distinction.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I find this a bizarre post.. To write about open media is hypocritical, because it's about open media? How precisely is one to write about an interesting subject if you can't write about it..I'd say this is a case of a leopard who hasn't thought this through..Now that we are deeply into non sequiturs..But let's get past Jon Katz for a sec..Do you think the column is right? Wrong? Flawed? Why so tough to not personalize a non personal subject?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I mostly agree with what you're saying, Jon, but I think there is one big thing missing in much online media: Credibility.
Deserved or not, "closed media" has credibility and the users of "closed media" trust the reporters and editors to root out the facts.
I'm no fan of conventional media, I work for a huge broadcasting conglomerate, and they do almost everything wrong when it comes to reporting the news.
"Open media" sources must be checked out for errors, omissions, and bad information. In the "open media" there is no one to do this except the individual user. This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because there are so many sources of information, but a curse since many users take what they read online at face value without doing any background research. Other users want to check out the information, but do not have the skills to root out the facts like someone with newsgathering or editorial experience.
Personally, I wouldn't cry many tears if "closed media" went away in favor of "open media", but in order for this to happen, users must become skilled in self-editing or online sources will never attain the necessary level of credibility.
----- Leghorn "Not responsible for program content"
You know, I've always been down on the people who are down on Jon Katz. I always thought they were being too whiny, too negative. But in all honesty, this piece could have been written by a program designed to generate articles Jon Katz-like fashion. It's such a complete parody of his writing style and attempts to make pop culture and mainstream events seem underground and hip.
Ok.. so Jon is saying that we should kill off the old media/new media buzzwords and replace with open media/closed media.. while I personally beleive that this is just an attempt for Katz to somehow tie himself in with the Open Source movement, by becoming an Open Journalist for the Open Media... I'll overlook that for the time being.
Now, Kat'z argument is that closed media has to be purchased, open media is free.. well wait a minute there Jon.. I can walk into my neighborhood coffee shop and pick up a newspaper and read it with my coffee in the morning... without paying a cent. I can also walk to my desk in the morning and read similar news on the web. I do not pay for the content in either of these cases. I can also read the newspaper at home, where I pay a small fee for delivery, content and the physical medium on which it is printed, OR I can walk over to my desk and read similar information on a web page. I pay for my internet access... I pay a fairly signigicant amount per month for the delivery of this content and arguably for the electronic medium on which it is printed.. and the company makes money off me with ad revenues. I don't see so profound of a philosophical different as Mr. Katz between Open and Closed media.
So quit trying to create more memes, do some research, actually give us some CONTENT.
Thank you,
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
If you have to make an investment of at least $600 for a decent internet capable computer, plus maybe $20/month for internet service to visit Open Media sites, how is that "open" to anyone except the priviledged?
ozone pilot
Open Media, Closed Media, what the hell's the difference when someone else is paying the bills?
/. is now a publicly traded company owned by VA Linux. /. derives its revenue by selling banner ads and affiliate programs. It is also supported by "corporatism".
So CNN is closed media. CNN relies upon advertising revenue to fuel its content and stories. It's supported by "corporatism"
/. is now supposedly "open media".
So what does it matter if one directly functions off of user feedback and commentary, or if the user feedback and commentary is more subtle?
/. directly functions off of the users reading the site, CNN functions off of determining the content that people would like to see and trying to show as much of an unbiased opinion based on the content available in the world and tracking "readership" to determine how much time to alot to a subject and what spot to give to that content.
Open, Closed, it's all the same. Just in different ways.
Combined with this is the fact that both the stock market and the venture capitalists have lost patience with money-losing dot-coms. I just ran an automated screen on a list of dot-com stocks, scanning for money-losers without enough cash to last another year. (This will go up on Downside.com in a few days.) Essentially all the money-losers have seen their stock go way down. It wasn't like that last year. From an investment perspective, the "dot-com/grab market share and don't worry about profitability" thing is over. Only the ones that have a business model that makes money will survive.
Sounds like my graduate school days, where to keep up with my research, my teaching, and my classes, I was snorting coke, popping speed, and guzzling coffee like it was good beer. Of course, when the weekend came around I would be so wound up that I would start drinking beer like it was coffee just to slow down my shaking. Somewhere along the line I found myself with a diploma and no marketable talents. But now I have found my calling in the new Open Media. Jon, once again you've changed my life.
Flame on
Why he insists on preaching to the choir like this is beyond me...although in deference to the newspapers (not this NY Times article in particular) all the recent stats show that they are not losing their audience to online news, only network TV news is suffering. That's because most newspapers are loaded with a lot of important, factual stories that continue to captivate those who want to know what's going on in the world, whereas network news is nothing more than ratings-driven entertainment with a thin veneer of content on top. CNN, MSNBC, et. al (on cable) are also not being hurt by the millions of people who are reading news online for the same reason.
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
Although I didn't have the patience to wade through that huge article, one thing Jon mentioned early in the artical was right on. The media's #1 priority is promoting itself.
Turn on your local news station one night and grab a stop-watch. It's funny, but also sad, to compare the length of time they spend talking about themselves with the length of time they spend on news. You will more than likely find that your local news station spends more seconds saying things like "LIVE! LATE BREAKING! CHANNEL 7 NEWS!!" than it spends talking about the story.
I think it's time you stop, now that you've just compared the Open Source/Closed Source movement with media. Step back, realize that not everything is related to this little political movement, (quite like the 60's movement, anyway). Then attack the issue again (which I'm going to do here).
In Time (this week or last, I can't remember) it was said that the Salon example was a foreshadowing of the state of new media - fired because the number of hits to the article wasn't high enough. It's almost like the TV-isation of journalism - just like TV anchors can be fired for not attracting viewers, 'net writers can be fired for not attracting readers (and thus ad hits). That doesn't happen in a traditional media format. I gets my subscription to Time, I reads the articles. You don't selectively browse a magazine, or read just parts "because you like the author". (Some people do, but that usually defeats the purpose - you bought the magazine, so at some point most people read it all). And nobody fired a magazine author for not being popular enough. That would manifest itself in other ways - writer isn't interesting, writer writes horribly. After a time, you get to know the regular columnists, whether or not you always agree with what they say.
The model of the new journalism is the model of the TV - getting rid of authors because their ratings aren't high enough, trying to attract eyeballs for advertising. It's not about openness. My static copy of Time is more vaulable to me than any article on Slashdot, simply because it's a well-thought out piece that's not incomplete without feedback (like this forum). And there's always a letters to the editor section.
[Insert good closing here...]
Strangely, the stock price of andover.net failed to react to this ringing endorsement of Slashdot by Slashdot.
Jon, the fact that /. editors get their news from "Open" media means damn-all, because where do these places get their information from? By and large, "Closed" media. How many links do you get from Slashdot to the New York Times in a typical week? And how many going the other way? To me, that says that people still want to know that their media is coming from actual journalists, with fact-checkers, standards, and all the other desperately "OLD" standards that stop, to take a wild example, stories about GNOME and KDE being integrated from being posted while they're about a quarter baked.
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