The biggest news affecting the newspaper business today is about a blog — the Huffington Post, to be precise. The popular political blog is gearing up to offer original reporting, hiring print journalist Melinda Henneberger to head up the newsgathering efforts.
Flush with $5 million in venture capital from Softbank Capital, the Huffington Post will hire journalists “with attitude” and make them do all the things that journalists do — travel, meet deadlines…and receive paychecks. So far as I can see, a lot of bloggers already do the work of journalists (of course, many, if not most, top-notch bloggers once were or currently are journalists), albeit most set their own deadlines and typically get paid squat.
Which raises an interesting question about the difference between blogs staffed by top-notch journalists and newspapers staffed by top-notch journalists. The question is: what’s the distinction between those two?
The Huffington Post’s decision to hire “real” journalists only further blurs the boundaries between newspapers and blogs, but there are plenty of other ongoing developments, such as the recent departure of two high-profile Washington Post reporters to an online start-up, that cumulatively make it difficult to decide what’s a blog, what’s a newspaper.
As the prolific journalist/blogger Mathew Ingram writes “In my view, newspapers had better get their running shoes on, because online media like Huffington Post and PaidContent [Rafat Ali’s PaidContent.org] are already halfway down the track.”
Although newspapers are clearly facing all kinds of challenges (the rise of blogs being only one of the growing mound of problematic new competitive developments), traditional newspaper reporters are, perhaps, under even more pressure, and the advent of blogging doesn’t help. As blogger and former journalist Mark Evans writes:
The typical reporter, for example, writes one or two stories a day over a nine-hour shift, which gives them time to think, interview, have a coffee, and talk with their editors. But the Web means reporters have to dramatically change how they work. They’ll have to write stores in minutes rather than hours; they’ll have to do blogs, podcasts and videoblogs at a time when changing economics means they’ll have to work harder than ever because the size of newsrooms are shrinking. To really get reporters to buy in, it may take another generation that is more comfortable to multi-task.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:56 AM | Print | Comments (1)
Anne Sweeney, head of Disney’s entertainment and news television properties, says there is a limit to the company’s patience with YouTube and the hassle of continually requesting that YouTube take down Disney’s copyrighted content. Speaking at Reuters’ New Media Summit, Sweeney said there’s got to be a better way of resolving copyright infringement disputes and thinks the two companies should start talking. (Umm…presumably Sweeney has the swack to pick up the phone and call Google’s people.)
“It’s not efficient and I think there is a larger conversation to be had. But this is the world we are living in. This is the reality,” she said. “It is not the efficient way to deal with it. I think a larger conversation is in order.”
Although YouTube has said it is working on a “fingerprint” technology that automates the process of identifying audio copyrighted material, Sweeney might also be interested in a new technology just licensed by Audible Magic that purports to do the same thing for video. Audible has licensed something called Motional Media ID, created by former RIAA executive David Stebbings, which scans video files and blocks users from making copies.
Motional Media ID scans moving images and identifies its content by looking for something called “sector vectors,” which sound like fingerprints, and then compares those vectors to vectors stored in a database of copyrighted material provided by the rights holders. If the vectors match, the content cannot be copied. (Good news for rights holders, but what about fair use or educational use?) Motional Media ID is slated for availability in 2007.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:51 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The New York Times’ John Markoff has this upbeat piece today about Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative, a project of MIT”s Media Lab, which aims to provide low-cost (currently $150 per unit, dropping quickly to $100 per unit) laptops to students in developing nations.
Five countries - Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand - have already made tentative commitments to buy the devices and Taiwan’s Quanta Computer is gearing up for mass production of millions of the simple machine — the project has commitments for three million units and big-scale production will begin when it hits five million units. Boosting the prospects for broad distribution of the laptops is the November 15 agreement by the Inter-American Development Bank to supply both loans and grants for the machines.
If momentum continues, the stripped-down units, which contain no hard drive, no Windows software and a 7.5 inch screen, could become the top selling PC in the world, albeit one that ordinary consumers can’t buy.
Although there seems to be continued controversy over whether giving kids equipment is better than spending the money on teachers and curriculum development, One Laptop Per Child is clearly going to help some remote, unconnected areas gain access to the Internet. The laptops are designed to stay wirelessly connected to each other within a range of one-third of a mile, delivering a self-assembling mesh network of sorts. Each laptop will functions as a “repeater” of its neighboring machine, extending Internet access throughout the range of laptops.
Update: Dave Weinberger got a close-up look at the new laptop and has posted some interesting photos. Chris Blizzard has a video of himself (?) Dan Williams playing a video game on one of the new laptops.
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