Category: Journalism

Bob Sellers for the Huffington Post:

Yes, terrorism is a threat. But nobody died with the bomb that didn’t go off in Times Square. Twenty-three people lost their lives in the flood, and roughly twenty-thousand individuals so far have applied for federal aid to get them back on their feet. And while the oil leak in the gulf allowed cable networks to fill hours of programming by calling upon their usual political guests inside the Beltway to talk about the blessings and curses of drilling offshore, the reality is that the debate over drilling will not end with this spill — or the next.

Continue reading ⇢

Lindsey Turner:

If we keep monkeying with the way we treat content (blurring lines between advertising and news, cutting newshole way down, burying important yet unsexy stories, etc.) because we think the content is responsible for the lack of money made in our industry, we are dooming ourselves. I am not saying that the way we do content is perfect or doesn’t need work. I am saying that it’s possible — nay, likely — that in a better economy (that didn’t also hit at the same time as a total paradigm shift in information transmission), we would not appear to be in the throes of death. Because people would be advertising as robustly as ever, people would have extra cash to spend on internet experimentation, our space wouldn’t be shrinking and therefore making it look like we don’t have things to put into the paper, etc. etc. etc.

Continue reading ⇢

The Tennessean has posted over 100 photos taken around the Nashville area of record-setting floodwater. Memphis really dodged the bullet this weekend.

Continue reading ⇢

Wired:

Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, says although he was paid by tech site Gizmodo, he believed the payment was for allowing the site exclusive access to review the phone. Gizmodo emphasized to him “that there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,” according to his attorney Jeffrey Bornstein.

He seems to be throwing Gizmodo under the bus, unsurprisingly.

This part is interesting:

Continue reading ⇢

Kara Swisher:

Apple CEO and Co-founder Steve Jobs will appear at the eighth D: All Things Digital, in an interview on the opening night, kicking off our tech and media conference that will also include famed Hollywood director James Cameron, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, among others.

Too bad I want to stab my computer every time I see Kara Swisher on the screen.

Continue reading ⇢

A Brief Journalism Lesson

In place since 1972’s Branzburg v. Hayes Supreme Court case, shield laws are in place to keep journalists from being legally obligated to expose their sources in court. This is from the court’s finding in the case:

The First Amendment does not relieve a newspaper reporter of the obligation that all citizens have to respond to a grand jury subpoena and answer questions relevant to a criminal investigation, and therefore the Amendment does not afford him a constitutional testimonial privilege for an agreement he makes to conceal facts relevant to a grand jury’s investigation of a crime or to conceal the criminal conduct of his source or evidence thereof

Continue reading ⇢

Gawker CEO Nick Denton has chimed in on Twitter about the police raid on Jason Chen’s house:

Do bloggers count as journalists? I guess we’ll find out.

The bigger question is “Did Gawker break the law?” If the answer is yes, then it doesn’t matter if bloggers have the same rights as butchers, really. Stolen property is stolen property, no matter whose hands end up on it. Denton’s question is a straw man, nothing more.

Continue reading ⇢

Neven Mrgan:

The purpose of a chart is to illuminate; if it’s harder to read than a raw-data table or a paragraph of text saying the same, then don’t use a chart. And if your goal is simply to create a pretty graphic, then don’t try beefing up your science cred with this “information” stuff.

Arranging data in an aesthetically pleasing way with no regard for how the arrangement affects the viewer’s understanding is simply dishonest.

Continue reading ⇢

Gizmodo:

Last Friday night, California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team entered editor Jason Chen’s home without him present, seizing four computers and two servers. They did so using a warrant by Judge of Superior Court of San Mateo. According to Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media LLC, the search warrant to remove these computers was invalid under section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.

I would go with the judge’s interpretation of the law over that of the COO of Gawker’s.

Continue reading ⇢

Kirk Cheyfitz:

Technology, of course, can’t save publishing unless publishing gets on board and saves itself. The industry, however, has not been up to the task. Their heads are so far up their old approaches that they can’t (yet) see a way out.

Continue reading ⇢

Chairmen Gruber:

First, I’m fascinated by their apparently cavalier attitude regarding the legal implications of their actions. I’m not offended by their decision to obtain this unit and publish everything they were able to ascertain regarding it. It simply boggles my mind the stakes they have effectively wagered that Apple will not pursue this legally.

Second, publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves. Gizmodo is, ostensibly, a gadget site. The interest of their readers in this saga regards the phone. Publishing his name did not clarify in the least bit how they obtained the phone. The people whose identities I’d like to know are those who obtained and then sold the phone, not the guy from Apple who lost it. There is no interest served by outing him other than taking sociopathic glee in making a public spectacle of someone who made a very serious but honest mistake.

Continue reading ⇢

Jesus Diaz is a jackass.

In other news, Github user digdog has posted a Cocoa app that will block Gizmodo via DNS. Brilliant.

Continue reading ⇢