NewsTrust - Social Networks - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

News articles as assets and paths

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Buzzmachine - By Jeff Jarvis - May. 27 (Opinion) - This is the start of a new project I’m working on to brainstorm new forms, relationships, and (business) models for news. Responding to a current discussion on Twitter among @AntDeRose, @felixsalmon, @jayrosn_nyu & @davewiner about the form of articles, I’m posting it here. The discussion started when Jay challenged Anthony, as a representative of Reuters.

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We need to reinvent the article

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

seanblanda.com - By Sean Blanda - May. 27 (Opinion) - This post is outdated. Not the content, necessarily, but the way you are consuming it. Much of the discussion about reinventing media/journalism happens in a frustratingly small spectrum while instead we ought to be reconsidering everything. No really, everything. Perhaps the biggest reason traditional content creators are being usurped by seemingly unrelated and non-journalistic web services is because the foundation of journalism is broken. In other words: we need to reinvent the article.

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Andy Carvin on Twitter as a newsroom and being human

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - May. 26 (Interview) - In a discussion about his use of Twitter as a reporting tool, NPR strategist Andy Carvin made some interesting points about the value of crowdsourced journalism -- including the importance of being transparent about the process, and the virtues of being human.

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After Facebook fails

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Harvard Blogs - By Doc Searls - May. 24 (Opinion) - At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 90

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Social journalism research helps explain how information is verified on Twitter

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Poynter Institute - By Craig Silverman, Alfred Hermida - May. 16 (Interview) - Hermida, a founding member of the BBCNews.com team who now serves as an associate professor at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, also recently presented a paper at the International Symposium on Online Journalism about A

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Why Bob Woodward is wrong about the internet and journalism

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Mathew Ingram - Apr. 07 (Opinion) - Veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward said this week the internet would not be of much use in a case like Watergate, the story he helped break in 1972. But he misses the point about the value of using a multitude of sources instead of just one.

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How Hypothes.is is going to fix online Identity and Reputation

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

ReadWriteWeb - By Jon Mitchell - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - There are two fundamental, related cultural problems with the Web that Hypothes.is wants to address: identity and reputation. Reputation is the main problem, but you can't approach it without fixing identity. A reputation doesn't refer to anything withou

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Pair Programming Considered Harmful?

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

TechCrunch - By Jon Evans - Mar. 03 (Opinion) - Coding has always been seen as lone-ranger work; witness the opening scene in The Social Network. Despite managers’ dreams of programmers as fungible units, it’s nearly universally accepted that a great developer is ten times as productive as a mediocre one, and/or that a small team of the software equivalent of the Special Forces can code rings around an army of hundreds of grunts. The flip side is that one cowboy coder’s bad decisions can cripple you — maybe immediately, or maybe next year, when you suddenly discover that your organization has quietly racked up so much technical debt that it has become the software equivalent of Greece.

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Cooperatives Over Corporations

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

nationofchange.org - By Jim Hightower - Feb. 23 (Editorial) - “While it’s rarely mentioned by the conventional media, completely missing in the political discourse, not considered by economic planners and chambers of commerce and not known by most of the public, there are 30,000 cooperatives in America (with 73,000 places of business). A 2009 survey by the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives found that these energetic enterprises have 130 million members, registering $653 billion in sales and employing more than 2 million people... They function in every sector of our economy — manufacturing, health care, transportation, banking, fa

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The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Timothy Messer-Kruse - Feb. 20 (Opinion) - For the past 10 years I've immersed myself in the details of one of the most famous events in American labor history, the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886. Along the way I've written two books and a couple of articles about the episode. In some circles that affords me a presumption of expertise on the subject. Not, however, on Wikipedia. The bomb thrown during an anarchist rally in Chicago sparked America's first Red Scare, a high-profile show trial, and a worldwide clemency movement for the seven condemned men. Today the martyrs' graves are a national historic site, the location of the bombing is marked by a public sculpture, and the event is recounted in most American history textbooks. Its Wikipedia entry is detailed and elaborate.

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Fact-checking in the Echo Chamber Nation

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. "I listen to Rush and read NewsMax," he said. "And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox." My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources — Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links — from their liberal friends. This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies. The paradox ...

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Shirky: Many news orgs must choose between ‘radical restructure and outright collapse’

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Poynter Institute - By Julie Moos, Clay Shirky, Steve Yelvington - Dec. 03 (Opinion) - In response to an essay by Dean Starkman, NYU professor Clay Shirky has reiterated his belief that newspaper organizations are being disrupted at a rate that requires radical reinvention. Saying newspapers will provide a stable home for reporters, just as soon as we figure out how to make newspapers stable, is like saying that if we had some ham, we could have a ham sandwich, if we had some bread. We need to support the people who cover hard news, but when you see a metro daily for a town of 100,000 that employs only six such reporters (just 10% of the masthead, much less total staff), saving the entire edifice just to support that handful looks a lot harder than just finding new ways to support them directly.

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Why Parents Help Tweens Violate Facebook's 13+ Rule

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Danah Boyd - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - "At what age should I let my child join Facebook?" This is a question that countless parents have asked my collaborators and me. Often, it's followed by the following: "I know that 13 is the minimum age to join Facebook, but is it really so bad that my 12-year-old is on the site?" While parents are struggling to determine what social media sites are appropriate for their children, government tries to help parents by regulating what data internet companies can collect about children without parental permission. Yet, as has been the case for the last decade, this often backfires. Many general-purpose communication platforms and social media sites restrict access to only those 13+ in response to a law meant to empower parents: the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This forces parents to make a difficult choice: help uphold the minimum age requirements and limit their children's access to services that let kids connect with family and friends OR help their children lie about their age to circumvent the age-based restrictions and eschew the protections that COPPA is meant to provide.

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Social Media -- 4 Trends To Watch in 2012

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - I am on a mission to help Fortune 500 companies answer the question, "What is a social media and how can it help our company?"

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Best Media Watchdog Experiment: NewsTrust

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

City Paper - Sep. 21 (Editorial) - We got used to NewsTrust Baltimore’s e-mails very quickly. More than a thoughtful amalgam of Baltimore stories from around the web, the alerts came with an invitation to think about the stories in a critical way and comment via a strict form included on the site. Inveterate web commenters might at first be offended by this kind of formalism, but it worked: The idea of rating which news sources are “trustworthy” is, of course, not new. But in using this form to guide self-selected readers, NewsTrust helped its readers (and itself) understand something about the news ecosystem from the point of view of both newsmakers and consumers. NewsTrust, launched via a now-concluded six-month pilot program but with its site still active, was filled with thoughtful, constructive criticism of stories and articles both local and global, and was blessedly devoid of moronic flame wars. In this age of partisan rancor, that is no small thing.

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Why Do They Do It?

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - Why do politicians persist in peddling exaggerations, twisted facts and outright falsehoods? Here's a theory from a veteran political reporter. Jon Keller of WBZ in Boston offered up his explanation in his "Keller @ Large" commentary for Sept. 15. It was prompted by our coverage of the recent Republican presidential candidates' debate and our criticism of President Obama's jobs speech. We were flattered by the nice mention, of course. But what really caught our attention was Keller's conclusion: Jon Keller, Sept. 15: The president and all his allies and enemies have one thing in common — they frequently cite and repeat falsehoods that reflect, at best, sloppiness and carelessness, and, at worst, outright dishonesty. Why do they think they can get away with this reprehensible behavior? Because we do it all the time ourselves. We repeat gossip and rumor, forward garbage e-mails, and convince ourselves that falsehoods which fit our world view are actually the truth. So I’m wondering – why would we expect the people who represent us to not reflect us in this way as well? We see evidence of that every day at FactCheck.org. Readers forward to us an endless stream of chain emails they have received containing false claims. The emails come from family, friends or acquaintances who either don't know that they are repeating falsehoods, or don't care. Some of these messages have been circulating for years, despite being debunked by us and often by other myth-busting sites as well. So do we, the public, get the politicians we deserve? That's a question worth pondering before sending on that viral email that so perfectly confirms your opinions, but which you haven't really checked out for factual accuracy.

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Google’s +1 Button Gets Its Treat: Now Lets You Share To Google+ Circles

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Jason Kincaid - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - Over the last several months you’ve probably come across Google’s +1 quite a few times. You may have even clicked it, only to wonder what exactly you’d just accomplished. Because, at least from the user’s perspective, there hasn’t been any reward from clicking on it. You’d push the button for the treat, only to leave empty-handed. That hasn’t stopped the +1 button from getting huge distribution — it’s now on 1 million sites and appears in 4 billion impressions every day, but that growth has had more to do with the fact that it’s Google than it does with the button being useful. The +1 button has always had a subtle purpose, of course: Google says that it impacts search results, so pages you +1 may show up in your friends’ queries more prominently than they would otherwise. But who knows how often that happens. And while these +1 clicks also get saved in your Google+ profile, they’re not anywhere your friends are going to see them.

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Facebook's Mysterious Hire: The Guy Who Designed Much of the iPhone

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ReadWriteWeb - By Marshall Kirkpatrick - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - Matas wasn't just one of many Apple designers; he designed many of the key interfaces you probably interact with every day if you own an iPhone, an iPad or a Mac.

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Why We Need the New News Environment to be Chaotic

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

shirky.com - By Clay Shirky - Jul. 10 (Opinion) - The business environment for newspapers continues to be grim. Pew recently reported that advertising revenue rebounded in 2010 for all forms of media, except newspapers.* This might just be a matter of transitioning from print to digital revenues but for the fact that the market values a print reader far more highly than a digital one. The more or less official label for this problem is “analog dollars to digital dimes”; because of the enormous difference in assumed value per reader, lost value from print is not made up for by gains in digital readership. The ‘analog dollars to digital dimes’ problem doesn’t actually seem to be a problem. It seems to be a feature of reality. Digital revenue per head is not replacing lost print revenue and, barring some astonishment in the advertising market, it never will. There is no supply-side scarcity to boost margins; power over aggregation has moved from producer to consumer; advertisers prefer selling cameras and shoes on purpose-built sites; readers feel the same about finding jobs and dates; and there are few commercial or geographic restraints on competition. The market values analog readers more highly than digital ones because the market is right.

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The Power Of Pull

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Alex Rampell - Jul. 03 (Opinion) - What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, notwithstanding the synapses that fire in your brain that make you check your email, your Facebook feed, or decide to research something on Google. In other words, people pull content themselves, rather than having that content be pushed — or foisted — upon them. The best way of looking at consumer web applications is as a complex stack of “pulls” and “pushes.” Lest these terms be confused with an earlier generation of push: a “pull” is an unsolicited action by a consumer, whereas a “push” is a solicitation by a seller/producer. The consumer ultimately “pulls” from a mobile phone or computer. Everything else is “pushed” to the consumer, through ads, e-mails or other marketing efforts from companies eager to get business and traffic.

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Why Is Zynga Rushing Towards Its IPO?

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Erick Schonfeld - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - The IPO window is now wide open, with everyone from Zynga to Groupon rushing towards it. Nobody knows how long that window will stay open (rule of thumb is 18 months), so better go public while you can. But today’s IPO filing from Zynga came particularly fast. According to one source, the actual writing of the 150+ page S-1 document was one of the fastest documentation processes for an IPO of this size, only taking two to three weeks.

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TED Fellows Friday with Jon Gosier

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TED - By Alana Herro - Jun. 25 (Interview) - To help journalists and emergency responders, Jon Gosier is developing SwiftRiver, a platform that sorts massive amounts of web and SMS data for accuracy. With his Ugandan innovation hub Appfrica standing on its own two feet, Jon has moved back to the US. Co-Founder of metaLayer, a company that adds visual data to real world scenarios, Jon continues to translate meta-data into digestible pieces applicable to users’ lives.

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Start Spreading the News

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Mark Briggs - Jun. 18 (Opinion) - ‘Word of link’s power is like nothing we’ve experienced before. It’s about how we pass along information, share ideas, and expand business in our digital times.’ Information, news, recommendations and yes, gossip, have always been spread by word of mouth. In the digital age when people share such things, the result is more immediate, expansive and powerful—and how it happens depends a lot less on conversation and more on the links we send. On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, the reigning method is "word of link," and this strategy also thrives in e-mails and on blogs and websites devoted to publishing news and journalism. Those "share" buttons on stories and blog posts do get clicked. Distribution—passing along what's of interest through personal networks—is only the beginning of our community-building impulse. Collaborative What sets word of link apart is its accelerated speed, broader range, and potential for stronger influence. journalism happens with a click as readers, listeners and viewers enlist themselves to be ambassadors for those who report, write and produce the news. How we function in digital communities isn't just changing journalism's ecosystem; it is having a profound effect on how business works—and this includes journalists.

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Is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Tone Deaf About Privacy?

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Jun. 15 (Opinion) - Remember the uproar when Facebook made your list of friends, pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region and networks publicly available to everyone? Now, the social networking behemoth has silently enabled facial recognition software without your permission under the rather benign tag "Suggest photos of me to friends." Even if you choose to disable the option, Facebook still will have the technical ability to connect your name with your image.

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No, Twitter Is Not a Replacement For Journalism

Tue, 31 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Matthew Ingram - May. 31 (Opinion) - With so much real-time reporting of news events via Twitter, some argue that we no longer need the traditional news article. But while reporting on social networks can be very powerful, we still need someone to make sense of those streams and put them in context.

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