J.D. Lasica has posted first impressions from the J-school panel:
Last night Dan, Rebecca, Meg, Scott and I participated in a 90-minute panel before Paul Grabowicz's and John Battelle's students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. About 75 folks showed up. (At one point I asked how many people there hoped to work in a newsroom one day; only 6 raised their hands. How many people had weblogs? A dozen raised their hands.)
While Rebecca Blood, one of the earliest bloggers, doubted that weblogs had much to do with journalism at all and estimated that 99.99 percent of blogs were unrelated to journalism, Dan and I took a different view, that while most webloggers aren't journalists, we're at the beginning of a greatly expanded media ecosystem in which gifted amateurs, niche experts and eyewitnesses giving first-hand accounts are all engaging in a form of journalism.... [P]rofessional journalists should look to weblogs as a new source of news and information and should welcome the participation of gifted amateurs into the news process.J.D. plans to post a partial transcript. I'd do the same if there was interest. We could triangulate. Dan Gillmor may have beat J.D. as the first panelist to post impressions of the discussion. J.D. also mentions Danny Dawson, who writes in Quasistoic, "Expect a loaded post later tonight on the panel discussion I just attended, my new ideas for this website, my ambitions, and other personal events. I've been inspired. Thank you panel. More to come."
J.D. also beat me to posting pics. That's my next mini-task.
categories: metablog
3:58:47 PM 
say what []
Process update: I've made it through the transcript once. I'll never get it letter perfect, but the exercise is reminding me of the flow of the various discussions and disagreements last night. The density and depth of what was said represents fairly heady stuff packed into a relatively short evening. It's tempting to try to narrate the entire flow, but that I think would do a disservice to the speakers, so I will keep trying to extract a story from the event.
Hence the title of this entry, an emerging theme that weblogs are nothing new, but that they are chewing away at the margins between big one-to-many media and its formerly passive audience. Speaking of audiences, the listeners asked excellent questions that inspired additional rounds of discussion.
I'm looking forward also to seeing what other people are writing about all this. I guess I should ping blogpopuli with the quotations and the longer entries as they get them done. Plus cropping and sizing the photos, oh my!
Anyway, here is an extract of some of the big idears I think were broached at various points last night: In my notes I used all caps to distinguish my own thoughts from the gist of what was being said on the dais or sometimes just for emphasis because it was all happening so fast. I've pulled out the interjections that I'll contribute when addressing the various ideas discussed in full, but I've kept the ones that commented on themes underlying various points in the discussion. As a reminder of the rawness, I am leaving the unpleasant capitalization as is:
BLOGGING ECOSYSTEM (METAFILTER BLOGDEX WIRED NEWS SALON NY TIMES TV GOOGLE DAYPOP) early webloggers FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOR THOSE WHO OWN A PRESS They don't need permission. {AN INTERACTIVE WRITING MEDIUM} CREDIBILITY vs. POLISH There's always someone who knows more about something than you do. AUTHENTICITY Are webloggers journalists? Are phone users journalists? HILER'S CORANTE ARTICLE ON THE ECOSYSTEM shows where blogging fits in with journalism today. ARE J'S NERVOUS WHEN SO MANY DO FOR FREE SOMETHING SIMILAR TO WHAT THEY EXPECT TO BE PAID TO DO?? MONOPOLY != CREDIBILITY SINGLE-SOURCE EXPERTS compared to GENERALISTS you don't need the resources of the new york times (but how does the reader judge??) A CONTINUUM - subcommunity - microcommunity - SPHERES OF DISCOURSE they checked county COURTHOUSES journalists on the WELL vs. the CYBERPORN cover story YOU DONT HAVE TO BE PAID TO DO LEGITIMATE THINGS Web AND WEBLOGS ARE COMPETITION FOR READERS My question: BLOG NEURAL NET?? TOOLS IN THIER INFANCY RSS - semantic web (xml, etc.) READERS who are also WRITERS ??TRADITIONAL MEDIA THREATENED BY THIS?? NETWORK REPUTATION CREDIBILITY WRITERS HOBBYISTS -KNITTING - MUSTANG CONVERTIBLES FROM 1965 scot: economy of ego (ATTENTION) SET MODERATION THRESHOLD HIGH (LESSIG via SCOT: THE SOFTWARE IS POLITICAL) TRANSPARENCY OPENNESS "SO J STILL HAVE GATEKEEPER ROLE??"
categories: metablog
2:38:19 PM say what []
"A blogger found the class description" on the web, "blogged it," a few days later Wired news picked it up, and "all hell broke loose."
Paul Grabowicz
"Blogger got the response 'Why does anyone need a tool for this?' "
"Clearly journalists should never do these things."
"Journalists should do them in large numbers. I'm amazed I'm one of the few.... I do it to take advantage of the fact that readers know more than I do."
Dan Gillmor
"I completely agree that readers know more than Dan does."
"No personal weblog seems to be trying to completely cover stories."
"A few years ago, I posted something with a typo. Someone wrote back about spelling or a comma. I fixed it and posted 'Omigod, the grammer queen is after me today,' and misspelled grammar. ... another e-mail ... so yes." [in answer to "Do you feel like your readers are your editors? Do webloggers improve over time getting feedback from regular people?"]
Meg Hourihan
"Other webloggers tell me about things ... feedback. I get thoughtful commentary, not a lot of pushback, 'you're wrong.' My content is thoughtful and so are the notes that come back."
Rebecca Blood
"I've never considered myself a journalist."
Rebecca Blood
"Why is it not groupthink?"
"I'm disturbed by echo chambers in the weblog universe... when people link only to people who agree with their own point of view."
Rebecca Blood
"I've stopped reading newspapers, but Nick Denton's blog ... business and tech ... makes me read more than i used to."
Mihail S. Lari (founder of the Blogging Network, from the audience)
"The architecture of the stuff determines a lot about how it's going to look."
Dan or Scott? (notes are hazy)
Weblogs are a lot more honest in a lot of ways [than the traditional media]. When is the last time you saw the New York Times credit the Washington Post for a story they broke the day before?"
J.D. Lasica
categories: metablog
1:54:43 PM say what []
Thank goodness tweneyblog ran it down. Scot Hacker alerted me to the LJ threads where the (now familiar) anti-weblog "what's the big deal?" backlash debate was taking place, in the blog context.
I mentioned it the other day, something that made me want to start cataloguing frequent utterances about blogs (blogFU's) such as "They just link to teach other" or whatever (that was made up but there's a public record to sift through).
I was feeling like I should put in the links (reading Rebecca's book makes me feel guilty when I don't always insert the link to a site, even when I've mentioned it already in another post that day) and lead readers to the good debate even if I didn't have the cycles available to weigh in and tackle again whether there's any there here. I think I'm on the record as thinking that blogs are worth discussion in that, oh, I publish a blog about blogging. I've also said why and I'll keep doing so but I detest my urge to conciliate every debate.
But the blogosphere is vast and mighty and it does not any of it fall on any one Atlas's shoulders, at least not for long, and Dylan Tweney has boiled own the discussion. Thank you!
There's a very thoughtful debate between Scot Hacker and Sean Graham about the significance of weblogs. My horribly reductive summary: Graham says, what's the big deal? Weblogs are not significantly different from other forms of media. Hacker argues that actually, there's a lot that's new:Tweney also notes, as I should have by now (if I haven't) that Scot has migrated foobar blog to MT at the birdhouse.This is a serious, thoughtful discussion that covers a lot of ground (including the tired "journalists-vs-bloggers" debate) with careful argument and insight.
- "Self-publishing has never been this easy.
- The editorial/filtering role is now in the hands of every person (in a way that it wasn't two years ago).
- RSS has moved the newswire feed from a push model to a pull model, and everyone can now have their own news feed.
- Blogs are so popular that old media is concerned about the eyeballs moving away from centralized media companies and out into the field.
- A journal was almost always a private thing. Now the concept of the public journal, with links, is an established part of the landscape.
- Two years ago the phenomenon (you yourself describe it as a phenomenon) didn't exist - now it does. Clearly something is different from the same old shit."
categories: memewatch metablog
11:42:51 AM say what []
Here's my process: during the panel last night I took notes on my powerbook straight through, not pure verbatim, but gettting the gist (I hope, and they'll tell me if I got them wrong) of what each person said to each question. I also interjected my own unspoken points in all caps to remind me to put those two cents in. I did capture some verbaitn quotations when I thought they were telling or, more often, funny.
Back to the process: Today I'm working on a copy of the text file (in Word with smart curly quote-making turned off goddammit), fixing all the numerous typos, etc. and trying to boil it down to something more like a story than a transcript. (Since the j-school recorded and plans to webcast the proceedings, I don't think the world needs an amateur transcript.)
When I'm done, probably later today, I'll post the story as a Story and then blog a link to it with an excerpt, or—you know—my usual shtick.
I took a bunch of digital photos, most of which are blurry or dark, but I will try to crop out at least head shots of as many of the panelists as I can do.
But meanwhile, to feed the beast, I'll post choice quotes as I stumble on them, unfairly out of context and all.
categories: metablog
11:30:25 AM say what []
(via Rebecca's Pocket) I can't wait to hear reverse cowgirl's analysis of this map.
categories: memewatch x-pollen
9:24:23 AM say what []
I got to meet Meg and Rebecca and Scott and J.D. (missed a chance to talk to Dan Gillmor, who was very impressive). They had both Perseus books available at the merch table so I finally bought them and rcb signed hers for me. Meg says she hasn't got her author copies of We Blog yet! What's going on over at Wiley?
I took notes throughout the discussion and will post excerpts and highlights later today (that is, after I've slept).
categories: metablog
12:27:33 AM say what []
