It’s FISA Day in your Senate – amazing how this was scheduled for Potomac Primary Day, huh? – and Matt Browner Hamlin has the agenda up at Holdfast. My big issue is item #4: retroactive immunity for telecoms. Verizon and AT&T have done all they can to pretend that they had no idea that their participation in warrantless wiretapping might
Read moreHave you ever noticed how social networks don’t do a very good job of representing how our personal networks actually function? Sure, places like Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn have their utility, but their flatness is a problem. Think about your Facebook, for instance. If it’s like mine, you have friends there who run the gamut from “real life best
Read moreThe left blogogentsia is all blowed up this afternoon over the story Martin wrote about earlier today. Since that post, more info has come to light that makes Sandeep Kaushik, the campaign spokesman in question, look considerably less guilty and that makes the cub reporter in training look like somebody who walked into the room knowing what story he was
Read moreHey, what’s that in our stocking? It’s Ron Paul! Oh joy – we got The Truth® for Christmas! Ahem. So those of you who thought Ron Paul was going to go away once the big boys got serious have probably been surprised by his staying power so far. He’s polling in the high single digits (something Ronald Reagan Fred Thompson
Read moreAs Martin noted earlier, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) is filibustering ill-conceived legislation that would give telecommunications companies a pass for engaging in illegal spying activities on behalf of the Bush administration. Those of you who were hopeful in the wake of last year’s sweep of both houses of Congress by the alleged opposition party, and those who are hopeful that
Read moreLast week I joined a legion of business bloggers in poleaxing the shizizzle out of a self-satisfied new project called The Blog Council. Josh Catone of Read/WriteWeb stomped them. Dave Taylor, who’s probably forgotten more about blogging than the entire council put together knows, took them to school. Robert Scoble – another guy who knows a thing or two about
Read moreScholars & Rogues has enjoyed some collective recognition in its brief history, and now one of our writers has been singled out for individual acclaim. Major props to Edmundo Rocha, whose Silver Star nod from the Texas Progressive Alliance is extremely well-deserved.
Read moreWhen a new innovation comes along, corporations typically follow a predictable arc. First there’s the “Ignore It” phase. Then, once it becomes clear that it’s actually important, they dive into the “Getting It All Wrong” phase. The first step in Getting It All Wrong is “pretend that the new thing works like all the old things.” Eventually they get past
Read moreOur friend Ubertramp sent along this little video, which certainly provides food for thought: There’s much to empathize with here.
Read moreI’m not 100% sure whether this is an argument for Net neutrality or against it, but it has to be seen. I have to go scrub my eyeballs with Clorox now. Thanks (?) to Lara Velarde for passing this on.
Read moreWell, here’s a fine howdy-do first thing this morning: an absolutely breathtaking bit of misdirection and pro-monopolist hackery masquerading as a good-faith critique of Bill Moyers. Moyers’ point seems to be that the opposite of more consolidation is the existence of more stations like this one in Chicago.This is absolutely false and Mr. Moyers should know it. The opposite of
Read morePart four in a series. I hope that by this stage of the discussion a few fundamental points are evident: Traditional journalism – the institutional form that most of us grew up with and the codes that governed it – is in decline. For a variety of factors it has lost (or is rapidly losing) its place as the dominant
Read morePart three in a series. In the aftermath of the 2004 election I wrote a fairly jaded op-ed for Editor & Publisher lamenting just how badly our brave new world of electronic media had failed us. I said, in part: In the “marketplace of ideas” model that gave rise to the First Amendment, rationally self-interested citizens would enter the market
Read morePart two in a series. Let’s begin with a brief look at how Americans view the press. A 2004 Gallup Poll says “Americans rate the trustworthiness of journalists at about the level of politicians and as only slightly more credible than used-car salesmen.” Only about one in five Americans “believe journalists have high ethical standards, ranking them below auto mechanics
Read moreIt doesn’t seem controversial to suggest that journalism in America (and beyond) is in trouble, and there are any number of factors contributing to the malaise. A particular concern of mine has been the decline in the efficacy of what we’ll call “objective journalism” – that is, the institutionalized press that dominated newsgathering and production throughout the better part of
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lullaby pit 