I'm director of a new Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. (Here's the official announcement.) We're working to help create a culture of innovation and risk-taking in journalism education, and in the wider media world. I'm also the school's Kauffman Professor of digital media entrepreneurship.
I remain director of the the Center for Citizen Media, a joint project with ASU Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. I also write articles and have published a book called We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People(2004; O'Reilly Media), and am working on a new book about media in the digital age. The paperback version of We the Media was released in January 2006.
The reliance on unnamed sources gives the reader no reason to trust this, especially given the likelihood that the sources are a) close to the prosecution and b) working hard to assure that public opinion is solidly against DSK before he goes to trial or into plea negotiations.
The story could have done more with the larger topic of whether professional journalists can and should do private blogs, and how they do them. There have been a number of similar or related cases, and some mention of them would have been useful.
This story is one data point, and doesn't provide absolute proof of what readers already suspect. But the data point is highly revealing nonetheless, and the supporting comments from other lobbyists tell more of the story.
