Owlspotting

The journalism world has been wrestling its future for a while. The future is looking strong so far, having slammed traditional journalism through a proverbial table a great many times. This future goes by many names: “citizen journalism,” “we media,” “participatory journalism” etc. It is embodied by technology more than method and its franchises are […]

I just returned from a 10-day trip to my home country of Romania. Although most of the time I spent in the motherland was devoted to family and friends, I did find a few hours to write an op-ed about my home country. The piece ran today in the Christian Science Monitor. It was originally […]

You might have heard of the whole Wikipedia/Seigenthaler controversy — a famous retired journalist smeared in a fake bio by an anonymous dude who later claimed that it was a prank. Well, today (around 1:30 PM) I noticed that a Wikipedian is trying to do something to the sexual reputation of Washington Post media critic […]

So Bob Woodward is a liar. He lied by omission in his book “Plan of Attack.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, “Media Lies” has been scribbled on Washington Post boxes for years. So now that we all know that Bob Woodward is just as big a hack as Judy Miller, we should […]

Do you believe in letters to the editor? I ask myself that question a lot recently — mostly as a result of paying closer attention to the letters printed by the Washington Post. It’s refreshing to see readers complain very articulately about the problems journalism faces today, some of which I already bitched about earlier […]

I started dating American media in the fall of 2003. We became serious in early 2004 as she started kibitzing about the lack of restraint shown by a former Democratic governor and presidential candidate who, she said, blew up in front of an Iowa crowd — yelling as if the whole world had fallen in […]

A hot story on deadline can provide interesting mistakes, such as the one below from an AP story tonight.

There are several things that excite me technologically, but few manage to amuse me. Sending SMS to Google (46645) or Yahoo (92466) is pretty funny. Today, you can bypass the money-hungry 411 and text message Google (or Yahoo) and ask about movie showtimes, the nearest bars in your zip codes, or even recipes for cocktail. […]

Citizen Journalism @ We Media A discussion moderated by Dan Gillmor, featuring Lex Alexander (Greenboro News & Record), Susan DeFife (Backfence) and J.B. Holston (Newsgator). Gillmor: Is “big media” getting it? Alexander (Greensboro News & Record): To the extend media organiztaion of any size are really listening, the closer they are. Where we got off […]

We Media conference, continued. Jay Rosen (PressThink): We’ll talk about our sites. Earlier, Gore had something in his speech for everyone. The world I grew up in was mostly hierarchical. All our ideas, inluding all our aspiratins were based on a pattern of vertical atomized mass distribution. This was a pattern of mind. Along comes […]