CitizenSpin

Blogwatch: Why is the BBC getting involved in blogging?

Why is the BBC getting involved in blogging? It's a question that was raised in a session I was running the other day. Followed by the comment: 'Blogging is for amateurs, and provides an easy way for them to put their opinions, however flaky, online.'

It's interesting that the comment came on the day that the Baghdad Burning blog was nominated for an award a measure of how some blogs can be credible and offer a new perspective, not often portrayed by 'big media'.
But it's not just individuals getting into blogging. Big business is there too ­ with GM, IBM, Microsoft etc. using the Internet to connect with consumers. Connecting in a way that allows consumers to enter into a dialogue.

The BBC too has just started to expand it's blogging operations. The first was political editor Nick Robinson, Paul Mason of Newsnight and the World Have Your Say programme from the World Service have recently joined him.

When the BBC already operates chat forums, message boards and community sites, and lets people add comments to some news stories ­ - so what's the point of adding blogs to the mix?

It's early days and hard to tell how blogs at the beeb may develop, but some of the ideas delegates suggested were inspiring. Blogs needn't be just personality based, but could also be built around events, or the genre of programme. They'd be more interactive ordinary web pages, provide more insight to the production process and journalistic process and more depth to programming.

It's similar to the way that big business is using blogs to get closer to consumers, big media can use blogs to engage with the audience in a more one-to-one way.

Matt

Do bloggers have any power?

As part of the Today Programme Christmas poll about who runs the country they broadcast a short discussion on bloggers, and what kind of power they wield.
Judy of adloyda and Tim Ireland of bloggerheads took part in the discussion and raised some interesting points:

> Britain leads the way in constructive use of weblogs – MP’s and councillors are engaging in public meetings which take place in cyberspace.
> This compares to the US where blogging is predominantly a tool for people to shout from outside of the system – making noise but not necessarily engaging in debate.
> Blogging also provides a forum for people to stand-up to the establishment and tell the real story – Iran and Iraq were quoted with bloggers playing a role in countering the news stories and the government line.

You can listen again to the discussion here.

Matt

Word of mouth is where it’s at, so is that blogs are better?

Word of mouth promotion is much more effective than TV and print advertising, according to leading researchers. The results of research carried out by Millward Brown – Understanding the role of Word of Mouth – was presented at the 2005 Word of Mouth Marketing Association conference.
Ian McKee of Vocanic posts the link to the presentation and points out:

“Another key fact they present (and remember they are well respected for their print and TV ad testing)  is a table of payback relative to investment of various media. 
Indexing below 1 are Print and TV at 0.74 and 0.97 respectively (ie they destroy value) and indexing above 1 are online 1.36  and word of mouth at a massive 2.46 – which means that according to Millward Brown WoM is over 2.5 times better than TV and 3.3 times better than print.”

When Ian and I last discussed word of mouth promotion, I explored the connection between word of mouth and blogging – blogging being a powerful channel for WoM. I suggested that PR departments are best placed to handle this relationship.
And just as PR has become more measurable over the past few years the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is hoping to improve the ability to track and quantify word of mouth marketing with a new set of standards.
ComScore Networks, GfK NOP, Millward Brown and Experian-owned Simmons Market Research Bureau were among those sitting on WOMMA’s Research and Metrics Council, which has published a terminology framework.
The framework is designed to provide a common language that can be used to plan, buy, and measure and describe word of mouth marketing. It also introduces the “WOMUnit” – the term given to a piece of marketing information exchanged between consumers. (Not so sure about the WOMUnit – Matt).
You can download the research here.
So are we any nearer to being able to quantify the impact that blogs can have?

Matt

Study warns politicians of blog power

The internet is an amazing way of bringing together people with common interests and concerns. I’ve written before about the BBC’s attempt at promoting political activism – a site which both brings people together and provides material for programmes if they raise significant issues or achieve anything.
Now research by the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC) suggests that websites played an important role in swinging public opinion against Europe’s constitutional treaty in the recent referendum.
The Financial Times (13/07/2005) quotes Franck Ghitalla who led the study:

“I hope that politicians realise that the internet is a political territory that must be used. In terms of political marketing, the Yes campaign did not have a good strategy.”

Many of the sites set up during the French referendum on the European constitution contained a mass of documentary information. 2.5m web pages were analysed for the study. It also found that the web was mainly an instrument of the left – anti-globalisation campaigners, trade unionists and radical leftwing parties. The study concluded that few websites set up by established media organisations were deemed authoritative.

Matt

Will podcasting do for audio what blogging did for text?

Is podcasting the latest subject of media hype, or will it become the audio equivalent of the online blog? That’s the question posed in The Economist’s – Intelligent Life (Summer 2005, p93).
Adam Curry is quoted as the ‘father of podcasting’, and his ‘Daily Source Code’ has 95,000 subscribers. And there is considerable excitement around the potential for growth – new research from The Diffusion Group (TDG) quoted by BBC News claims a US audience alone of 56 million by 2010. And that’s before you take into account Apple’s latest release of iTunes which includes a directory of 3,000 shows.
But the Economist article goes on to suggest that commercial interests will win out – and the commercial potential of podcasting will be exploited. On a small scale it highlights the Lascivious Biddies, a four woman band from New York, who let the audience join them backstage in their ‘Biddycast’. “The band was inspired to podcast when guest-appearances on other podcasts quintupled their album sales.”
At the other end of the scale I’ve already highlighted the growing interest of mainstream media – and my own employer, the BBC, has started trials of podcasting established programmes - my article here, and details of BBC trial here.
However, Charles Arthur writing in the Independent, takes a much more measured view – highlighting the shortcomings of the Podcast format:

“Podcasts take contend and put it into a form which can’t be indexed by search engines or be speed-read, and which you can’t hyperlink to (or from). A podcast sits proud of the flat expanse of the internet like a poppy in a field.”

So – a niche form of distribution for radio? An democratisation of broadcast media which will allow much more choice of programming? A fad which will be exploited by mainstream media? The Economist article asks: “Will big new players squash the eccentric vitality of the small-scale podcasters who started it all?”

Matt

Podcasting as a promotional tool

Enough of blogs! What about podcasting as a promotional tool?
I read that Virgin Atlantic is offering free podcasts to customers with content relevant to the Virgin routes. The first 4 podcasts are New York audio guides - produced by Loudish.com. As a radio producer I find this an interesting development.

The BBC is already podcasting many programmes. Highlights of the Today programme and From our own Correspondent. In fact the fantastic Peter Day devoted the whole of an edition of In Business to PodCasting back in May: listen again.

I’m planning a trip to the The Portable Media Expo conference in California in November. It's the first conference to examine podcasting – covering the complete range of business and marketing issues that must be addressed for podcasting, time-shifted media and portable content.

There is plenty of scope for the use of podcasting to enghance the BBC’s programme output:

• Reach new audiences:
  Podcasting provides opportunities to connect with new, hard to reach audiences. American research indicates that minority groups are more likely to own iPods/MP3 players than whites (16% of African Americans and Latinos compared to 9% of non-Latino whites in the US - Pew / Internet).
• New distribution opportunities:
  According to the US research - IPods/MP3 players are gadgets for well-off, 18% of those earning more than $75,000 own one (Pew / Internet). This provides an opportunity for some programmes / departments to connect with this upscale audience. For example – The Financial World tonight is broadcast on BBC Radio 5-Live, having previously on BBC Radio 4. It sits uncomfortably on the network. Would it make more sense to broadcast FWT as the programme of financial record as a podcast?
• New content for additional services and programme material
  Podcasting provides an opportunity to create additional content for audiences. This has not yet been explored; currently the BBC provides copies of programmes as broadcast for podcasts. There is a creative opportunity to look at what else could be provided – longer versions of interviews for speech programmes, artist profiles for music networks or a weekly digest for busy people who don’t catch a daily strand?

But the promotional aspects are fascinating. I’ve produced programmes for corporate radio which was delivered over phones and networked PC’s. This allowed staff to hear lively accessible content at their desktops – this kind of corporate broadcasting could adapt well to the iPod, and indeed the Virgin scheme which adds value in a way which complements the corporate offering is a very good idea. I wonder what other applications there could be for commercial podacsts – and if there’s a business in it for a BBC producer?
:-)
Matt

Media: The bloggers have all the best news

Media: The bloggers have all the best news: In America, the first major study of web diaries reveals that they are shaping the political landscape like never before, but what of their British counterparts?

From Guardian - 06/06/2005
Owen Gibson

The former CBS anchor Dan Rather last year experienced at first hand the power of the blogosphere. After his controversial report on the clouds over George W Bush's military service, US bloggers from both sides of the political spectrum swarmed all over the story.

And after the White House released the relevant memos, which had purportedly been written by Bush's commander in the Texas Air National Guard, it was the blogging community that was credited with leading the news agenda as it speculated on their provenance. Two weeks later, CBS announced that the man who supplied the documents had admitted lying about their authenticity and Rather was forced to publicly apologise.

The furore around "Rathergate" brought the blogging phenomenon to the fore during the presidential election as well, and gave rise to a slew of newspaper stories suggesting that a seismic shift was taking place in the American media landscape. Could blogs, they asked, become the fifth estate?

In an effort to test that hypothesis, researchers from the respected Pew Internet & American Life Project have conducted the first in-depth academic study of 40 of the biggest and most respected political blogs and the extent to which they influence and are influenced by other media.

"We tracked not just the political blogs but also what the US mass media was saying and what general internet chatrooms were saying," explains Michael Cornfield, the senior research consultant on the project, named Buzz, Blogs and Beyond.

Its results show that bloggers are generally following another agenda, whether that of a political party or another medium, but also highlights the extent to which they can now influ ence the mainstream media on certain topics. "Sometimes blogs lead and can be very influential and other times they're followers," he says. While it remains too early to tell how the medium will develop, he says, the report offers an intriguing glimpse of how bloggers are starting to shape the US news agenda.

Rathergate showed that when bloggers were able to access primary evidence in the same way as newspaper journalists, they could run with a story. "One of the reasons they were so influential was because they were able to put up what they called 'the smoking memo'," says Cornfield, referring to a version of a document reconstructed using Word, and suggesting it had been faked.

"In one sense it's classic investigative journalism but what's new is that the clues are out there in the open. It would be as if the Watergate tapes themselves were online and we could all listen to them and hyperlink to them. This is the change."

According to the study, there are now "A-list" bloggers in the US, such as Andrew Sullivan and Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis, who are capable of setting the news agenda because they are habitually referred to by journalists in the mass media who rely on them to break stories. "Journalists, activists and political decision-makers have learned to consult political blogs as a guide to what is going on in the rest of the internet," the report notes.

Accordingly, for a certain breed of US political animal, blogs now perform the same function as mass market portals do for the rest of us - sifting and disseminating the morass of material on the web and pointing to interesting stories and primary sources elsewhere.

However, Cornfield also thinks it is important not to overstate the impact of blogs on political life. Apart from the relatively few and far between "swarms" such as Rathergate, he believes that blogs have had a limited impact on the national conversation. "The influence and impact of blogging has been felt much more by journalists than by politicians," he says, pointing out that a group such as the Swift Boat Veterans had a far greater impact on the election than the blogosphere.

The report notes that a number of other potential scandals - such as the apparent bulge in President Bush's jacket during the first presidential debate - failed to ignite in the same way. "For a conversation to acquire the intense simultaneity of buzz, and for buzz to register with force in public affairs, requires a number of other factors to be present, few of which are likely to be at the disposal of a single blogger, or even a blogging collective, ready to activate at will," it concludes.

Also, Cornfield says, the power of a particular blogger can quickly "wax and wane" depending on how hot a particular news story is and how much information they are able to acquire from other sources. On their own, the power of bloggers remains "circumstantial and contingent", the report argues.

In the UK, there was a feeling that the general election would provide domestic blogs with a similar spark to Rathergate. There was no shortage of primary material, such as the attorney -general's advice on the war in Iraq, but there was little sense that the internet impinged on the mainstream media.

While Belle de Jour got the mainstream media speculating on her (or his) identity, and the likes of Scary Duck greatly amuse, there is a sense that the Americans take their blogging more seriously than we do. With the odd exception (Guido Fawkes' Order-Order.com and Mick Fealty's Slugger O'Toole blog on Northern Ireland for example), there is little heavyweight comment and it is rare to see a blog break a story or substantially move it on.

One of the most persuasive theories for this contrast is the far more rambunctious nature of the British national and regional press compared to the mostly regional, generally staid, US titles. So, the argument goes, American bloggers are fulfilling a need for a heated national conversation among competing viewpoints, whereas we can arouse much the same feelings of empathy or revulsion by reading Richard Littlejohn or Polly Toynbee.

For all that, Neil McIntosh, the assistant editor of Guardian Unlimited (responsible for introducing a series of blogs allied to this newspaper), says that a breakthrough Rathergate moment is inevitable sooner or later. "You'd be daft to say never. All that it takes is someone to see that a properly produced Private Eye-style blog would work brilliantly on the web. You'll get something like that in Britain." Cornfield also points to evidence of bloggers mobilising the "No" vote in the French referendum on the EU constitution as proof that it just takes the right kind of issue to spark interest.

Meanwhile, Cornfield notes a new threat to the burgeoning number of influential one-man-band political bloggers in the US - the growing tendency for mainstream media to cotton on to the possibilities. "If everyone blogs, what about that fictional soap-box blogger in Hyde Park? Who knows whether they'll be able to keep their mainsteam audience or they'll be pushed to the edge," he says. And given the pace of change online, it is entirely likely that a new technology will come along and supersede the blog, he adds. "Not many people are going to dive into a 300-page document, but they're more likely to dive into a two-page document. And once homemade video content takes off and is shared, they're perhaps even more likely to dive into that."

Copyright 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Date: 06/06/2005

DIY media - print, radio etc.

The amazing rise of the do-it-yourself economy
From Fortune - 30/05/2005 (1479 words)
Daniel Roth

IT'S DOUBTFUL THAT STEVE JOBS EVER FACED these kinds of interruptions. "Daddy, I want to take a picture," says Owen Misterovich, motioning to a digital camera on his father's desk. "Okay," says Pat Misterovich, handing it to his 5-year-old son, who proceeds to snap a few self-portraits. Then it's back to the work at hand: producing the next great MP3 music player. Only instead of the simple, elegant lines of the iPod, Misterovich's device will look just like a Pez dispenser. Oh, and instead of working from a corporate campus in Cupertino, Calif., with nearly 12,000 employees, Misterovich is a stay-at-home dad, creating his Pez MP3 player from the basement of his Springfield, Mo., home.

Misterovich is the former head of IT at the University of Detroit Mercy. He has few of the engineering skills necessary to build a device like this, no marketing experience, and absolutely no corporate infrastructure. And yet he's got two factories--one in China, one in the U.S.--vying to build the player. He has a small Austin company started by an ex-Apple engineer designing the innards. And on his blog, pezmp3.com, he uses prospective buyers--some 1,500 people have already expressed interest--as an R&D-center-meets-focus-group. What's better, he asks, AAA batteries or Li-Ion? In come dozens of replies ("Go for the AAA with a USB NiMh recharger if possible," suggests one reader). What's a good slogan? Some 50 ideas roll in (one of the best: "Candy for your ears"). By the end of this month the first prototype should be in Misterovich's hands. "I don't know that this product could have come to life years ago," he says. "I seriously doubt it. And if it did, it wouldn't have come through a guy in his basement."

It used to be that a tinkerer like Misterovich could, at best, hope to sell his idea to a big company. More likely, he'd entertain friends with his Pez-sized visions. But a number of factors are coming together to empower amateurs in a way never before possible, blurring the lines between those who make and those who take. Unlike the dot-com fortune hunters of the late 1990s, these do-it-yourselfers aren't deluding themselves with oversized visions of what they might achieve. Instead, they're simply finding a way--in this mass-produced, Wal-Mart world--to take power back, prove that they can make the products that they want to consume, have fun doing so, and, just maybe, make a few dollars. "What's happened is a tremendous change in awareness," says Eric von Hippel, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of the recent Democratizing Innovation. "Conventional wisdom is so strong (in business) about find-a-need-and-fill-it: 'We're the manufacturers; we design products; we ask users what they need; we do it.' That has begun to crack."

Numerous currents have converged to produce this reaction. Bloggers, those do-it-yourself journalists, showed big media that the barriers to entry (like owning a printing press, say) didn't much matter. Podcasters took radio into their own hands, creating audio shows and putting them online. Amateur music producers, using software that was once the province only of major labels, invented mash-ups: combining songs into totally new ones, then giving them away or selling them. And with the advent of services like Google AdSense, which let people easily put advertising on their sites, these tinkerers could--while not vaulting themselves into Bill Gates territory--at least break even.

"Before, only the rich had access to tools and so only the rich were professionals, and the rest were amateurs," says Noah Glass, the co-founder of Odeo, which offers a free service for making, hosting, and distributing podcasts. "But now, as the creation tools have become easier to use and more freely distributed through open source, through the Internet, through awareness, more people have more access to more tools, so the whole amateur-professional dichotomy is dissolving."

Citizen engineers are taking this even further, trying their hand not just in the digital world but in the physical world too. Much as eBay transformed distribution, they're redefining design and manufacture. The infrastructure is there: Yahoo Groups make it easier for people to trade ideas and learn quickly; free or cheap computer-aided-design (CAD) programs allow users to cobble together blueprints; and inexpensive manufacturing in China allows the idea to go from file to factory. There are even websites like Alibaba.com that will help these small-timers find Chinese factories eager for their work, meaning that the amateur nation has its own Match.com.

This may seem like a lot of effort to, say, create a funny-looking MP3 player. But that's not this group's ethos. "DIYers do things for irrational reasons," says Saul Griffith. "If it's your passion and your love, you don't count how many hours you spend doing it. That's why so many of these things end up being great."

Griffith should know. A dedicated kite-surfer--the sport involves riding a small board through water while attached to a parachute-like "kite"--he was unhappy with the goods on the market. In 2001 he started Zeroprestige.com, a website where he posted his kite designs. Soon other amateurs submitted their own concepts, and sail manufacturers with excess capacity offered to make kites from the plans. The amateur designers kept coming back to make exactly what they wanted to buy. And though no one got rich, a few small businesses popped up to sell the finished products. Since then, kites have become commodities, but Griffith hasn't let go of the spirit. His four-person engineering company, Squid Labs, is launching a site this summer tentatively called iFabricate, "a Wikipedia for atoms," he says, referring to the user-created online encyclopedia. Do-it-yourselfers of all stripes will be able to go to the site to trade ideas and work together, get easy access to programs for manipulating materials, and eventually use it to pool their resources for buying raw materials from suppliers.

A few large companies, too, are finding ways to tap into the movement. While most of the leading-edge DIYers view open-source software as their inspiration, Microsoft sees a role for itself. The company's Visual Studio Express software--slated for official release later this year--is designed to bring coding to the masses. Microsoft is also talking about working with things like Phidgets, inexpensive, easily manipulated electronic parts like RFID components--a radio chip expected to supplant the bar code--that would allow you to, say, make your own keyless home-entry system. Microsoft estimates there are six million professional developers and 18 million amateurs: hobbyists, tinkerers, students. The company hopes to make Visual Studio Express the Esperanto of amateur builders. Brian Keller, product manager for Visual Studio, says he looks forward to the day when "my mom can sit down and watch a video and learn how to build an RFID reader for herself."

For those moms who can't wait for the video, publisher O'Reilly Media recently launched what has already become the bible of this new movement, a magazine called Make. It features page after page of geeked-out--but not unachievable--how-tos; the latest issue details the finer points of crafting your own printed circuitboard or building your own teleprompter (anticipating the inevitable rise of video blogging). O'Reilly initially estimated that it could snare about 10,000 people willing to pay the steep $ 35 a year for the quarterly. Now, four months after the launch--and with almost no advertising--it already has 25,000 subscribers.

To be fair, all this amateur energy isn't exactly a new force. When exciting technologies emerge, Americans have always pounced and created something original. In his 1936 New Yorker article "Farewell, My Lovely," E.B. White eulogized the Model T and the creativity it inspired in its owners: "When you bought a Ford, you figured you had a start--a vibrant, spirited framework to which could be screwed an almost limitless assortment of decorative and functional hardware Gadget bred gadget. Owners not only bought ready-made gadgets, they invented gadgets to meet special needs." The difference today is simply the technology, says University of Virginia technology historian Bernie Carlson: "I would call it the Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau theme, that it's as important to produce as it is to consume."

And so Misterovich, from his not-quite-Walden, keeps at his goal of building the kind of MP3 player that he wants to carry around. One with a collectible head and AAA batteries and a user-created slogan. And even if he pulls it off, it's doubtful that he'll get rich. That's fine with him. The purpose in the amateur economy isn't always the same as in the big-company economy. "My main goal is not to lose my house," he says. "You put it on the line and you want to be rewarded. But when it comes down to it, I just don't want to go broke. It's an amateur attitude--you're doing it for the love." ?

FEEDBACK droth@fortunemail.com

Copyright 2005 Time Inc.
Date: 30/05/2005
Publication: Fortune

The People's News Source

The People's News Source
From Time - 06/06/2005
Donald Macintyre/ Seoul., With reporting by Yooseung Kim/Seoul

When Korean university student Chang Je Hyung did a brief stint at Samsung's office in Berlin last year, it made him angry. He had to help prepare a holiday trip to Germany for chairman Lee Kun Hee and his family. According to Chang, dozens of Samsung employees spent two months sweating over details of the private visit, even going to fancy restaurants to try out food the chairman might eat. Instead of tipping off the mainstream media, Chang sent a first-person account to online newspaper OhmyNews earlier this year. It created a sensation.

Chalk up another scoop for OhmyNews, the feisty phenomenon that is rewriting the rules for Korean media and, if founder Oh Yeon Ho has his way, may soon be doing the same outside Korea as well. Part blog, part professional news agency, OhmyNews gets up to 70% of its copy from some 38,000 "citizen reporters" like Chang--basically anyone with a story and a laptop to write it on. Editors vet the articles, rejecting nearly one-third. Launched in 2000, it has snowballed into a kind of raucous online mall for Korea's wired younger generation--a place to get news, absorb the buzz or just hang out. It is also giving young Koreans a political voice, upending the conservative traditional media models of their parents' generation.

Oh isn't ready to stop there. An English-language edition launched last year draws on more than 300 "world citizen reporters," and he wants to have 10,000 by next year. He's getting ready to launch OhmyNews in Japanese this year and is eyeing a Chinese version. The vision: turn OhmyNews into the world's water cooler, where anybody can talk about issues like global warming and North Korean nukes. Says Oh: "OhmyNewsshould be the epicenter of world public opinion."

Sounds ambitious, but the website is already extremely influential at home. After two schoolgirls were crushed to death in 2002 by a U.S. military vehicle, OhmyNews provided blanket coverage, triggering widespread demonstrations against the U.S. troop presence. As South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun rode the surge of anti-U.S. sentiment to victory in the 2002 election, OhmyNews portrayed him as the voice of the younger generation. Roh gave his first exclusive interview as President to the online upstart.

With Wikipedia offering a similar citizens' news service, OhmyNews won't be alone in international cyberspace. But Oh has already pulled off a trick that has proved elusive for many other online media outlets: turned a profit. OhmyNews says it made about $ 400,000 last year, more than two-thirds from advertising. Mainstream media will be watching closely--as will big conglomerates with anything to hide. --By Donald Macintyre/ Seoul. With reporting by Yooseung Kim/Seoul

Copyright 2005 Time Inc.
Date: 06/06/2005

UK election blogging

The Editor: What they said in ... the election blogs
From Guardian - 07/05/2005
William Cederwell

Labour may have enjoyed a historic third consecutive election win on Friday, but there was only muted cheer from the election blogs. A common complaint - as aired by "Enigmatic" at the election2005.bravereflections blog - was the "wild" distortion caused by the first-past-the-post electoral system. "So, it's four/five more years of New Labour. Well, tarnished Labour, to be precise. The really bad news is that we have, again, a government which only about 36% of the nation supports. Read that again. For every Labour voter there are two who didn't vote Labour."

Labour "are still going to end up with a 10% majority of the seats", wrote "Sliver" at sliver.objective2k.com . And "the Tories with 33% get around 50 more seats but that percentage of the vote is exactly the same as it was last time. The Liberal Democrats get a consistent 6-7% (going as high as 17%) swing against Labour . . . yet only come out with 10 or so more seats."

So which party had most cause to be triumphant? None of them, reckoned the self-confessed "utopian, dreamy anarcho-capitalist", Guido Fawkes, at 5thnovember.blogspot.com . "Labour's victory came on the back of the smallest winning share of the vote ever recorded." The "poor showing" of the Lib Dems meant they were "not a real alternative", and "the Tories failed to break 200 seats, which was the target. So no victory parade for them."

Perhaps the real winners were "the 'others' - smaller parties and independent candidates" who scooped a "remarkable 8%", reckoned redpepper.blogs.com . "A similar pattern has been seen elsewhere in western Europe," where "major parties have been haemorrhaging support".

For a sense of triumph, one had to visit toryscum.com , which crowed: "Michael Howard conceded defeat at 4.20am this morning. Our work here is done."

A posting at the notapathetic.com message board, meanwhile, had a sharp word for the abstainers. "If you don't like any of the political parties, either join one to change it, set up your own, or stand yourself as an independent. Or return to this website and change your posting to I'm too lazy and stupid to do anything about my own dissatisfaction." William Cederwell

The Wrap is Guardian Unlimited's unique digest of the best of the British newspapers. An annual subscription - 260 issues - costs 14.95. guardian.co.uk/thewrap

Copyright 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Date: 07/05/2005
Publication: Guardian

Blogging ethics

The Latest Rumbling in the Blogosphere: Questions About Ethics
From New York Times - 08/05/2005
By ADAM COHEN

Bloggers like to demonize the MSM (that's Mainstream Media), but it is increasingly hard to think of the largest news blogs as being outside the mainstream. Bloggers have been showing up at national political conventions, at the World Economic Forum at Davos and on the cover of Business Week. Establishment warhorses like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. are signing on to write for Arianna Huffington's blog collective. And Garrett Graff, of FishbowlDC, broke through the cyberceiling recently and acquired the ultimate inside-the-Beltway media credential: a White House press pass.

Bloggers are not only getting access; they have also been getting results. The Drudge Report, of course, is famous for pushing stories, often with a rightward spin, onto the national media agenda, but it is not alone. Daily Kos did a brilliant job last fall of pressuring Sinclair Broadcasting not to show a hatchet-job documentary about John Kerry. And Joshua Micah Marshall has been rattling Congress with his entertaining and influential listing of where individual members stand on Social Security privatization. Blogs helped to shape, in some cases in major ways, some of the biggest stories of the last year -- the presidential election, tsunami relief, Dan Rather.

The thing about influence is that, as bloggers well know, it is only a matter of time before people start trying to hold you accountable. Bloggers are so used to thinking of themselves as outsiders, and watchdogs of the LSM (that's Lame Stream Media), that many have given little thought to what ethical rules should apply in their online world. Some insist that they do not need journalistic ethics because they are not journalists, but rather activists, or humorists, or something else entirely. But more bloggers, and blog readers, are starting to ask whether at least the most prominent blogs with the highest traffic shouldn't hold themselves to the same high standards to which they hold other media.

Every mainstream news organization has its own sets of ethics rules, but all of them agree broadly on what constitutes ethical journalism. Information should be verified before it is printed, and people who are involved in a story should be given a chance to air their viewpoints, especially if they are under attack. Reporters should avoid conflicts of interest, even significant appearances of conflicts, and disclose any significant ones. Often, a conflict means being disqualified to cover a story or a subject. When errors are discovered or pointed out by internal or external sources, they must be corrected. And there should be a clear wall between editorial content and advertising.

Bloggers often invoke these journalistic standards in criticizing the MSM, and insist on harsh punishment when they are violated. The blogs that demanded Dan Rather's ouster accused him of old-school offenses: not sufficiently checking the facts about President Bush's National Guard service, refusing to admit and correct errors, and having undisclosed political views that shaded the journalism. Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, resigned this year after a blogmob attacked him for a reported statement at the World Economic Forum at Davos that the military had aimed at journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them. Their complaint was even more basic than in Mr. Rather's case: they were upset that Mr. Jordan said something they believed to be untrue.

But Mr. Rather's and Mr. Jordan's misdeeds would most likely not have landed them in trouble in the world of bloggers, where few rules apply. Many bloggers make little effort to check their information, and think nothing of posting a personal attack without calling the target first -- or calling the target at all. They rarely have procedures for running a correction. The wall between their editorial content and advertising is often nonexistent. (Wonkette, a witty and well-read Washington blog, posts a weekly shout-out inside its editorial text to its advertisers, including partisan ones like Democrats.org.) And bloggers rarely disclose whether they are receiving money from the people or causes they write about.

A few bloggers have begun calling for change. There have even been fledgling attempts to create ethical guidelines, like the ones found at Cyberjournalist.net. Defenders of the status quo argue that ethics rules are not necessary in the blogosphere because truth emerges through ''collaboration,'' and that bias and conflicts of interest are rooted out by ''transparency.'' But ''collaboration'' is a haphazard way of defending against dishonesty and slander, and blogs are actually not all that transparent. MSM journalists write under their own names. Someone would be likely to notice if a newspaper reporter covering a campaign was also on the campaign's staff. But it is hard to know who many bloggers are, and whether they are paid to take the positions they are espousing.

Richard Hofstadter noted in ''The Age of Reform'' that American reformers had been prone to an ''enormous amount of self-accusation.'' Throughout history, reform movements have ostentatiously held themselves to higher standards than the institutions they attacked. The political reformers who took on Tammany Hall declared that they would not accept patronage jobs. Members of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union took a Temperance Pledge.

Many bloggers who criticize the MSM's ethics, however, are in the anomalous position of holding themselves to lower standards, or no standards at all. That may well change. Ana Marie Cox, who edits Wonkette, notes that blogs are still ''a very young medium,'' and that ''things have yet to be worked out.'' Before long, leading blogs could have ethics guidelines and prominently posted corrections policies.

Bloggers may need to institutionalize ethics policies to avoid charges of hypocrisy. But the real reason for an ethical upgrade is that it is the right way to do journalism, online or offline. As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves.$123

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Date: 08/05/2005
Publication: New York Times

Celebrity blogging

The Guide: Famous last words: There's no need to bleat about the rumour factory or protest about being misquoted any more. Publicity-conscious stars always have the final say on their blogs, finds Johnny Sharp
From Guardian - 14/05/2005

What kind of sad individual posts their own diary on the internet, as if thousands of total strangers would ever be interested in their lives? An arrogant, self-obsessed exhibitionist perhaps? That would surely be a harsh critique of the McBride family from Berwick-upon-Tweed, who innocently update the world on their garage extension and Chloe's mumps. But one rapidly growing group of web loggers have always had those qualities in spades. They are celebrities, and they've taken to blogging with great enthusiasm, as an ideal way of appearing to keep in touchy-feely direct contact with their public without having to wash their hands afterwards. Britney Spears, for instance, recently announced her pregnancy through her website, as if writing a letter to close family. Now the craze has taken the next logical step, with a US website which promises to commission a pool of 250 of "the most creative minds in the country" to take it in turns to write a blog on the pressing issues of the day. The American columnist and socialite Arianna Huffington is the genius behind www.huffington post.com, which promises contributors such as Norman Mailer, Warren Beatty, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Gwyneth Paltrow. Surely it can only be a matter of time before the Queen herself launches a blog, to keep us updated on the latest antics of the corgis and her state visit to Fiji, and to remind us: "Don't forget to watch me on telly on Christmas day, BBC1, 3pm." So which are actually worth reading? Well, they can be roughly divided into the following categories:

Self-promotion

The most obvious motivation for a celebrity blog is the same reason celebs appear on chat shows or agree to be gunged on children's TV. They have a product to plug.

David Duchovny has recently been plugging his directorial debut The House Of D by blogging at www.lionsgatedirectors.com/duchovny/. He posts daily, sometimes on video, but the entries can pretty much be summed up by the sentence "My new movie is out with a bunch of marvellous, talented actors in, I don't care what the critics say, no really I don't, go and see it and make all your friends see it."

It's a similar story with Jeff Bridges' blog at jeffbridges.com, but it's raised above the average by virtue of the fact it's handwritten, and accompanied by childlike and quite endearing doodle drawings. If you have a graphologist or Jungian psychoanalyst nearby when you view it, there could be a few insights to be gained.

Some, of course, are fighting the good fight. Jamie Oliver recently won an award for his blog at www.jamieoliver.com, where he has kept his "fans" in touch with his campaign to stop schoolkids eating deep-fried pigs' genitals.

But it's hard sell all the way from used-band salesman supreme Gene Simmons of Kiss. He has jumped on the blogging bandwagon to shamelessly plug his TV appearances (such as his presenting role in Channel 4's upcoming Rock School) and whatever Kiss-related merchandise he's dreamt up this week. Fans even suggest their own marketing ideas. With most other bands, if they so much as sponsored a range of plectrums they'd be accused of selling out. Kiss's fans such as Alain from France say: "How about Chicken McNuggets in Kiss talisman shapes?" Ye gods.

Urge to confess

Unlike their "civilian" counterparts, few stars are brave enough to say what they really think, let alone name names on their blogs. One exception is big-shorted Limp Bizkit frontman and all round farce-on-legs Fred Durst, who broke one of the celebrity stories of 2003 when he poured his heavily tattooed heart out about his undying love for "really cool southern girl" Britney Spears at www.limpbizkit.com. He probably felt he was "keeping it real", but Britney denied everything, while Durst's own fans were mortified at him dating, like, a pop star, dude. They're easily annoyed, mind. Last week their messageboards were suggesting boycotting the new LB album after he advocated they download it for free. Don't ask me why.

Fat-and-proud comedienne Rosie O'Donnell, (think "gay American Dawn French"), got into similar trouble in March after speaking her mind at www.rosie.com ("the unedited rantings of a fat, 43 year-old, menopausal, ex-talkshow host"). It's a strange enough affair at the best of times since Rosie writes her entries in free verse, but her meaning was clear when she mocked fellow tent-wearer Kirstie Alley for claiming to have been "201 pounds at my heaviest". "I am 220," she wrote, as if in competition. "'Fess up Kirstie, 201 my ass." After an angry phone call from Alley, the following entry was posted:

"The phone

Kirstie w/hurt feelings

I am sorry

4 that"

My life story

The logical conclusion to the confessional blog is the approach taken by former Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan, who not only offers diary entries, but is writing his autobiography at www.billycorgan.com. Freed from the probing of the untermensch journalists he hates so much, he's been surprisingly revealing about his traumatic upbringing, and battles with depression, drink and drugs. He even tells the tale of ending up in bed with a pre-op transsexual: "I beg off politely, saying it's not really my trip, and I'm *boom* out the door, on the street laughing to myself." He has promised to be similarly unflinching in his descriptions of his grunge-era contemporaries and former paramours such as Courtney Love. I feel a feud coming on.

Putting the world to rights

While the world waits for the great and the good to deliver us from evil via The Huffington Post blog, some stars have already been fighting the good fight on the web for some time now. Barbra Streisand's website features 30 pages worth of "statements" by Ms Streisand featuring endless facts, figures and opinions on everything from corporate tax rates to Dick Cheney's congressional voting record. If it wasn't for the incongruous sight of our heroine sat at the top of the page on a shiny pink throne in an off-the-shoulder dress, clutching a bunch of roses, you could be forgiven for thinking there'd been a content mix-up with the official website for Rage Against The Machine.

Britney Spears, meanwhile, has been gunning for that traditional celebrity target - the press - at britneyspears.com.

"I'd like them to ask themselves the question, 'What am I lying to myself about?' Is it that you are 50 pounds overweight? Is it that your children aren't making wise decisions? Or is it maybe that your husband or boyfriend is cheating on you?"

I'm saying nothing.

Verbal diarrhoea

Of course, in the world of the rich and famous just as in the real one, there are people who simply wander aimlessly around talking to no one in particular.

Moby's blog is updated almost daily, full of his undeniably intelligent and quite often amusing observations on life, art, veganism and religion.

A somewhat looser cannon is Aki Riihilahti, a lesser known Finnish footballer with relegation-threatened Premiership club Crystal Palace, who has become a cult figure in the past couple of years with his deep-thinking and startlingly honest weekly musings in pidgin English.

How about this from September 2004?: "Someone tried to put their thumb in my arse last week. I've never before experienced such a gruel (sic) attack. I was only trying to block keepers view standing next to the wall. Luckily the finger was blocked by my shorts."

Or this from October: "I want to win. It is like a drug. I could never get enough of it. The feeling of it is something between the day of graduation, drunken laugh, your first kiss and Jerry Springer show: it is mad, un-describable and over-exaggerated joy. Hiroshima! That is how I feel after a lost game."

David Beckham, take note. If you'd spent your spare time blogging instead of texting, you might be far happier. *

Copyright 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Date: 14/05/2005
Publication: Guardian

Watch what you say!

Blog no evil;
Libel laws and angry readers make bloggers regret their online rants
From Straits Times - 15/05/2005
Ng Mei Yan

IF YOU think you can rant and rave on your Web log and get away with it, think again. Last March, Mediaah!, a media-criticism blog run by Pradyuman Maheshwari of India, was given a legal notice by the Times of India newspaper to remove 19 libellous posts from the website. The blogger chose to shut down the site instead.

And in Singapore, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) recently took former scholar Chen Jiahao, 23, and Jeremy Chen, 22, an engineering student, to task for allegedly making defamatory remarks about the agency in their online journals. While Jeremy settled the matter amicably with the agency, Jiahao was nearly served with a libel suit before he extended his unreserved apology to the agency.

Hands up, those who still think blogs are the cyber equivalent of your hardcover diary. 'Blogs cannot be considered personal space because everyone can see it. And because of that, the law of defamation still applies,' said Mr Bryan Tan, a lawyer at Tan and Tan Partnership, who specialises in IT law. And you're not off the hook even if you protect your blog with a password and give access only to certain people. 'As past experience with e-mail has shown, it can be copied and forwarded to the whole world in a matter of minutes,' he added.

And the Internet crosses national boundaries. Even if defamatory comments are posted on a website hosted overseas, the content publisher can be sued in a country where the website has been accessed. 'The latest thinking is that if someone in Singapore can read and has read the comments, then the act is committed in Singapore,' said Mr Tan.

So what can you say or not say on the Internet? One of the defences against the charge of defamation is for the comment to be fair. 'The law allows you to have an opinion about something,' said Ms Doris Chia, a partner at Harry Elias Partnership. 'The comment is fair if the facts that support the comment are true and that it was made without malice,' she added.

Said Mr Tan: 'If you think a play is not entertaining and you state the reasons why, then that's fair. But if you say the play is the worst in the world and you can't back that up, then you're in trouble.'

When found guilty of defamation, the compensation amount can range from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how many people had read the defamatory material, the nature of the content, the level of aggravation and the social standing of the victim, said Mr Wilson Wong, a lawyer at Drew and Napier.

And a person does not have to be of a minimum age to be charged. Even if the law doesn't get to the bloggers, other Netizens will. There have been cases of people taking their own 'action' against abusive bloggers. 'Brose' incurred the wrath of Netizens after he put up a long entry calling the girls in his university 'boring' and 'ugly'. The multitude of hate comments from other bloggers made him shut down his blog for more than a week.

He wrote: 'The reason why I decided to terminate this blog is because the original reason for its creation and existence is now gone. 'It was supposed to be fun for me to write and de-stress, to express my views on the Internet where free speech is being practised. Now this is no longer fun nor is it private.'

But young bloggers interviewed by The Sunday Times said they were not worried about getting into any trouble. 'I don't attack or put people down on my blog, so I am not bothered,' said Mr Ho Yong Min, 21, who is waiting to enter university. He posts reflective and philosophical entries rather than narrative ones.

Prominent blogger Wendy Cheng, 21, also known as 'Xia- xue', said: 'I know the people whom I criticise are not going to come after me and sue me. I don't write about companies and they are the ones that will sue.' One of the few who is more conscious about what she writes is 18-year-old Shandy Yeo, a student at a private school who blogs about her daily life.

She told The Sunday Times that she is not taking any chances with the law. 'I think I will be more careful about what I write, and won't venture into topics like politics, race and religion.' As veteran blogger Lee Kin Mun, 35, advised: 'I think the most important guideline is if you are prepared to put a strong statement out there, be prepared to receive a strong statement back and be prepared to defend it when people criticise, or be able to take the criticism with a thick skin.'

Said lawyer Tan: 'Do be sensitive about what you write. Even if it is not defamatory, would the person being targeted benefit from your views? 'Criticism is not wrong if it is constructive. I would advise bloggers to think about what they are putting out there and rectify it before it hurts anyone.'

But what if you need to rant? Said Mr Lee: 'The most secure blog you have is the Microsoft Word in your C drive.'

Copyright 2005 Singapore Press Holdings Limited
Date: 15/05/2005
Publication: Straits Times

Blogs are the future of news?

Come on in, the blogging's wonderful
From Sunday Times - 15/05/2005
Arianna Huffington

Blogs are the future of news, says Arianna Huffington, who is setting up 'a cultured conversation' on the web

I've been a fan -and an advocate -of the fast-moving blogosphere ever since bloggers started leaking juicy American political stories that wouldn't be touched by the chummy DC press corps. Simply put, blogs are the greatest breakthrough in popular journalism since Tom Paine (the original, not TomPaine.com, which is also great).

Lots of good stories get covered by newspapers and TV but, too often, there's no follow-up. Reporters for the big media outlets are always moving on to the next hot get. So, in America, having 500 channels doesn't mean we get 500 times the examination and investigation of worthy news stories. It means we get the same inch-deep, narrow conventional-wisdom wrap-ups repeated 500 times.

Paradoxically, in these days of instant communication and 24-hour news channels, it's actually easier to miss information. That's why we need stories to be covered, re-covered and covered again, with each person adding something to the last person's coverage -until they filter up enough to become part of the cultural bloodstream.

Almost every blogger works alone, but it's their collective effort that makes them so effective. They share their work freely and, because blogs are ongoing and hourly, bloggers will often start with a small story, or a piece of one -a contradictory quote, an unearthed document, a detail that doesn't add up.

Then there is the open nature of the form -the links, the research made visible, the democratic back and forth, the open archives, the big professorial messiness of it all. It reminds me of my schoolgirl days when providing the right answer wasn't enough for our teachers -they demanded that we "show our work". Bloggers definitely show their work. It's why you don't just read blogs, you experience them. You engage with them.

As someone who has spent her adult life toiling in the worlds of book and newspaper column-writing, where the Aristotelian verities of beginning/middle/end are the Rosetta stone of structure and form, it has been utterly liberating to find a place where the random thought is honoured. Where a zippy one-off is enough to spark a flurry of impassioned replies. And where reaching the climax too quickly -or too slowly -is okay.

All of which has made the blogosphere the most vital news source in our country - and has made me decide to take a flying leap into it with The Huffington Post. Our idea is to combine a breaking news section with an innovative group blog where some of this country's most creative minds can weigh in on topics great and small, political and cultural, important or just plain entertaining.

Ever since college I have enjoyed facilitating interesting conversations, around dinner tables, or at book parties, or on hikes with disparate groups of friends.

With The Huffington Post we're taking those conversations -about politics and books and art and music and food and sex -and bringing them into cyberspace, which is where so many of us spend so much of our time these days.

Also unlike the gatherings of old -where the conversations, bons mots and repartee unleashed would evaporate as soon as the guests went home -the thoughts, jokes, ideas, photos, videos and insights being shared on The Huffington Post are archived, open to be reviewed, revisited, shared, linked to, and commented on by everyone.

This week you might come in for David Mamet instantly "reviewing" theatre critic John Simon's departure at New York Magazine: "In his departure he accomplishes that which during his tenure eluded him: he has finally done something for the American theatre." You can see why he might feel this way, because we link to Simon's bare-knuckled review last week of Mamet's revival of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Then there's Quincy Jones with an entirely different take on the Michael Jackson case.

Blogs are only just catching on in Britain but, believe me, they'll change your life.

*www.huffingtonpost.com

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Limited

Date: 15/05/2005

Commercial blogging in UK

Life: Online: Blog watch: Mink Media grows
From Guardian - 10/03/2005
Jane Perrone

Mink Media - one of a small clutch of British-based outfits creating blogs written by paid bloggers - has added two new blogs to its trio. Bleepblog, a technology blog, is the work of William Anderson, who "believes that all the really cool things go *bleep*". Meanwhile, Closet Spy is trying to corner the market for UK fashion and shopping, by getting Maddy Pickard to choose bargains and must-haves.

www.bleepblog.com

www.closetspy.com

www.minkmedia.com

Copyright 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Date: 10/03/2005
Publication: Guardian

Blogs in the UK election

Duncan Smith is right: Tories must embrace the web Notebook
From Daily Telegraph - 08/03/2005
by Vicki Woods

Please excuse my unparliamentary language, but if you type "f**kwit" into Google, the internet search engine, something funny happens. Made me laugh, anyway. I'm afraid you have to spell out the vulgarism in full and then press SEARCH. Up pops a list of 68,000 websites all referencing the word. Except for one.

The topmost site on the page is the official website -- www.number10-gov.uk -- of the Rt Hon John Prescott MP, with his besuited official picture and all the links to his many jobs as Deputy PM and Lord Comptroller of the English Regions. Naturally, the offending word doesn't appear anywhere on his site.

This is what computer geeks call a Googlebomb.

Mr Prescott has been Googlebombed purely for the fun of making other geeks laugh. And it will take yet another geek, working on behalf of the Labour Party, to defuse the bomb and cleanse his website.

I mention this because we have an election coming up in which the internet -- specifically that part of it called "the blogosphere" -- may play a big part, as it did in the presidential election.

Most people find out about the blogosphere by accident, after doing a Google search for something personal (Atkins diet, villas in Corfu, bursitis, whatever).

My own discovery was via the Iraq war, when the son of the house was in Mosul last year. I would Google "101st Airborne", say, and up would come websites by the hundred thousand. Some were official sites, but others were "personal online weblogs" (shortened to "blogs", hence: blogosphere).

I read blogs by madmen, armchair generals, GIs on the front line, computer-literate Iraqis, law professors, political activists, all sorts.

Most were American; the biggest had a million readers a day. They divided pretty sharply into Left and Right, either vigorously pro-war ("Go, Marines!") or anti ("Bush = Hitler").

Came the presidential election and the blogosphere grew. As Iain Duncan Smith pointed out (in the Guardian in February), Bush's electoral supremo, Karl Rove, used the internet brilliantly: "Visitors to GeorgeWBush.com were invited to join e-mail lists that offered regular information on everything from gun ownership to school prayer. The Bush campaign collected 7.5 million e-mail addresses and amassed 1.4 million volunteers."

However, the American Left's relationship with the internet was "disastrous," he wrote, mostly because of the troubling Howard Dean's "stridently anti-war message". The online Deaniacs raised so much money to power his candidacy that "all of the other contenders for the Democratic crown soon pandered to his base". Thus Kerry was left hamstrung by the anti-war agenda.

Duncan Smith believes that conservatives (big or small C) are marginalised by the mainstream media -- and anyone who heard Jim Naughtie's slip last week about "when we win the election" must agree. He believes that conservatives will spot the potential of the blogosphere as the American Right did. I wish! But I doubt it.

The most interesting British political blog I read at the moment is www.backingblair.co.uk. It lists constituencies that are Labour-held but vulnerable, names the Tory candidates and urges readers to vote for them.

So far, so upcheering, eh? But backingblair is not a conservative blog. Or even a Right-wing blog. It's an anti-Blair blog, and was set up "to register a highly visible and damaging protest vote against Tony Blair, his style of government, his Right-wing leanings, and his lies about the 'war' on terror and Iraq".

The Number 10 geeks hate this blog, and no wonder: it's a lot sparkier than their official stuff. But it leaves questing, small-c conservative voters like me in a pickle. Nobody knows what's Left or Right any more in Britain. Only in America.

Copyright 2005 Telegraph Group Limited
Date: 08/03/2005
Publication: Daily Telegraph

Get it off your chest in a blog

Blogging By Moonlight
From Billboard - 07/03/2005
MINDY CHARSKI

Mario Schulzke was enjoying his weekly steam session on Feb. 19 when a naked man walked in with a handful of towels and began doing yoga. Two minutes later, Schulzke, manager of business development at WongDoody in Los Angeles, headed for the door. Ten minutes after that, he chronicled the encounter on his online journal at themarioblog.com for the site's estimated 5,000 monthly visitors to enjoy. "With that kind of topic, it's important to get it off my mind as quickly as possible," he says.

People at ad agencies spend their days communicating their clients' messages, and now, with the proliferation of blogs, some of them can be found during their free time broadcasting their own opinions--much like others in the blogosphere. The 23-year-old Schulzke began his blog three years ago as a way to share the events of his daily life with his mom who lives in Germany, but now a significant number of strangers read his thoughts. Others use these forums, which generally cost less than 20 a month to maintain, to muse on ads, rant about industry news and respond to gossip.

Freelance copywriter Gari Cruze is a ranter. His Feb. 21 posting on adblather.com links to a story about a lawsuit regarding Blockbuster's new "no late fees" policy, which he calls "a lie of epic proportions." "Thanks for harshing the ad industry's credibility that much more, you idiots. Who's your VP of Marketing? Karl Rove?" writes the 35-year-old Chattanooga, Tenn.-based blogger.

Though most blog for their own enjoyment, many are aware of sites' potential to draw employment. "I thought it would be fun to do," Cruze says. "If freelance business comes along, that's icing on the cake." Likewise, Jack Cheng didn't start his blog intending to land a job, but the University of Michigan senior does mention it (jackcheng.com) during interviews. "A blog is one of the best self-promotional tools I have because it really lets people see my personality and how I think," says Cheng, 21. "At the very least my blog shows other people I'm passionate about advertising, and passion is something that doesn't always come through in a portfolio or one-page resume."

Indeed, sending his blog address with a resume helped Piers Fawkes get hired at the brand development agency Satori Partners in New York last October. His blog about cultural trends, psfk.com, interested his future employers. "My impression was they were very impressed by it," says Fawkes, 33. "They loved the insight, speed of thought and passion." Started last June, PSFK draws 5,000 daily visitors--at least a quarter of whom work at agencies across the world, says Fawkes. He's careful not to write anything that could breach the confidentially agreement he has with Satori, so readers will never find posts about the agency's clients or methodologies. "I'm considerate of my employer," he says. "You have to be careful."

For this same reason, Gareth Kay, director of planning at Modernista!, makes it clear that the views expressed on his blog are his own and not those of his Boston agency. Nevertheless, he does think Modernista! may benefit from his creation. "You get on the radar of clients looking at blogs and a talent pool of employees," says Kay, 31. Like most blogs, his (garethkay.typepad.com/ brand_new) encourages readers to post comments. "The great thing about it is I can put out a point of view about a brand ... and see how people react to it," he says. For example, in a recent posting, he ranted: "Isn't the new Toyota tagline the dummest (sic) thing? 'Moving forward' ... well I suppose it's better than 'standing still' or 'moving backwards.'"

Men are behind most ad-related blogs, but there are some exceptions: Boston-based freelance copywriter Jane Goldman runs Cup of Java (caffeinegoddess.blogspot.com), and Copenhagen, Denmark-based freelance art director ask Wappling operates Adland (ad-rag.com). Like many bloggers, they keep their identities somewhat a mystery. "People don't know who I am and it's cool," says Wappling, 32. "But they think I'm a guy, and that gets annoying."

"You could talk to 30 people about one campaign and they could all have different opinions," says Goldman, 27. "In that respect (a blog) is a good sounding board, and having a little bit of anonymity isn't a bad thing."

Copyright 2005 VNU Business Media, Inc.
All Rights Reserved

Date: 07/03/2005
Publication: Billboard

At a Suit's Core: Are Bloggers Reporters, Too?

At a Suit's Core: Are Bloggers Reporters, Too?
From New York Times - 07/03/2005
By JONATHAN GLATER

In the physical world, being labeled a journalist may confer little prestige and may even evoke some contempt. But being a journalist can also confer certain privileges, like the right to keep sources confidential. And for that reason many bloggers, a scrappy legion of online commentators and pundits, would like to be considered reporters, too.

A lawsuit filed in California by Apple Computer is drawing the courts into that question: who should be considered a journalist?

The case, which involves company secrets that Apple says were disclosed on several Web sites, is being closely followed in the world of online commentators, but it could have broad implications for journalists working for traditional news organizations as well.

If the court, in Santa Clara County, rules that bloggers are journalists, the privilege of keeping news sources confidential will be applied to a large new group of people, perhaps to the point that it may be hard for courts in the future to countenance its extension to anyone.

''It's very serious stuff,'' said Brad Friedman, who describes himself as an investigative blogger (his site is bradblog.com). ''Are they bloggers because they only publish online? I think you have to look at what folks are doing. And if they're reporting, then they're reporters.''

Apple has long had a devoted following, and leaked information about new Apple products has appeared on Web sites for years. To combat this, the company filed the suit late last year against the sources of these leaks -- people the company assumes are employees or contractors.

Apple has asked the court to compel the Web sites that displayed the product information to disclose their identity. Bloggers are fighting Apple's efforts, which it has focused on three Web sites -- Thinksecret.com, Appleinsider.com and PowerPage.org.

The judge in the case, James Kleinberg, is required only to interpret a California statute that recognizes a privilege protecting reporters in keeping news sources confidential. A ruling could come as early as this week.

On its face, the lawsuit brought by Apple has to do with theft of trade secrets. But Susan Crawford, a law professor at Cardozo law school of Yeshiva University (and a blogger herself), says that the steps Apple has asked the court to take open a broader question.

''Under what circumstances should an online forum be forced to disclose a source behind information that they're posting?'' Ms. Crawford said. ''There is no principled distinction between a New York Times reporter and a blogger for these purposes. Both operate as news sources for wide swaths of the general public.''

Blogs, she added, are already becoming more and more powerful, and some have readerships that exceed those of small-town newspapers. ''We've seen it with Rather being brought down by bloggers,'' she said, referring to the CBS news anchor, who came under intense scrutiny by bloggers after a ''60 Minutes Wednesday'' segment on President Bush's National Guard service was broadcast .

Judge Kleinberg is likely to try to decide the case on the narrowest possible grounds, perhaps reading the text of the California law at issue to cover only people who work for traditional newspapers and magazines or television news programs, and to avoid deciding if bloggers are indeed journalists, Ms. Crawford said.

Whatever the judge's decision, it is all but certain to be appealed. But the question of who is a journalist is to many a matter of deeper concern.

Some bloggers want any protection available to journalists at traditional media companies to also be available to them, and journalists at those companies want to make sure that the reporter shield privilege is preserved.

Yet if recognizing a privilege for bloggers means that everyone online can maintain that they are journalists, judges may conclude that rather than giving everyone the privilege, no one should have it. That possibility worries reporters, who could find themselves at new risk for what they write or broadcast.

Apple has not sued the Web sites for damages for publishing the trade secrets, but it could try, said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at U.C.L.A. He is considering filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the case on the side of the bloggers, saying that the privilege should extend to them.

''This turns out to be an unresolved question of First Amendment law,'' Mr. Volokh said, referring to the issue of liability for the Web sites.

Attempting to draw a distinction based on the medium used by the blogger or reporter is misguided, said Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School (also a blogger). ''In 15 years, there may be no clear distinction between reporters on the one hand and bloggers on the other,'' he said. ''It won't just be an either-or, where you have a reporter for The Chicago Tribune on the one hand, and a guy sitting in his pajamas drinking beer on the other.''

Not all blogs are equally influential and not all blogs even try to report, in the usual sense of cultivating sources, actively gathering information and then organizing and presenting it to the public, Mr. Balkin added. ''There are millions and millions of blogs, and most of them are for gossip.''

Many states have privilege statutes like the one in California, and others may consider enacting them. To determine who should be able to claim any kind of privilege against disclosing news sources, he said, courts and lawmakers should look at exactly what the would-be reporter does.

''It should be extended on a functional basis,'' he said. So a blogger who interviews people and spends significant amounts of time gathering and organizing information could claim the privilege; a blogger who wrote about good and bad recipes, and who one day stumbled onto a copy of the Pentagon papers and printed them, might not.

Such a functional definition could prove elastic, and an enterprising blogger would have every reason to assert any available privilege. Mr. Balkin -- asked whether he would assert the privilege if a former student leaked information to him about a Supreme Court justice that then appeared on his Web site -- did not hesitate to claim it for himself.

''I would be willing to claim that if you look in my blog, what I'm doing is so similar to what Lewis or Krugman or Safire do,'' he said, referring to Anthony Lewis, Paul Krugman and William Safire, current and former columnists for The Times, that ''although it's done more informally and it's about a much narrower area, that I could claim that I was in the functional definition. That's what happens when you start taking a functional approach.''

Mr. Friedman, the blogger, said that ultimately, bloggers' role as purveyors of important information that traditional news organizations might ignore made online journalists more important than before, and so more deserving of protection.

''As the mainstream media has become more and more corporate and more and more like the governmental and corporate bodies that mainstream journalists used to report on,'' he said, ''a lot of this stuff has fallen now to the bloggers -- to do what mainstream folks used to do. It's still serving the exact same purpose: keeping the bad guys honest.''
$123

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Date: 07/03/2005
Publication: New York Times

Blog Tool Writing Its Own Story of Success

Blog Tool Writing Its Own Story of Success
From Los Angeles Times - 07/03/2005
Michael Hiltzik

The weblog has now reached the point in the cultural life cycle where the word is on everybody's lips, even if most people aren't sure what it is.

Perhaps the best way to illuminate the phenomenon is by introducing Ben and Mena Trott, both 27, respectively the chief technical officer and president of the San Francisco company Six Apart.

Mena, a web designer, is the voluble and irrepressible one whose bright office is filled with stuffed animals and gaily colored posters. Ben, the taciturn one, is an engineer who prefers an office cubicle where the only light comes from a computer screen.

They've been together since high school. They don't exactly finish each other's sentences like some married couples; rather, Mena mostly does the talking until she runs into a wall and prods Ben for help, at which point he composes an appropriate one- or two-word coda.

Together they developed a software tool for designing and organizing weblogs called Movable Type. Market statistics are rare in the informal blogosphere, which is estimated to include 8 million blogs. But considering that it's hard to find many weblogs, save for the most rudimentary, that don't run on Movable Type, it's not a stretch to say the product is probably the world's leading blogging tool.

It allows bloggers to generate pages, archive their postings by subject or category and distribute content in other Web-friendly formats. Six Apart says that Movable Type and TypePad, its paid Web hosting service, have at least 1 million registered users between them (though it doesn't break down the numbers further). Google Inc.'s Blogger weblog publishing program and BlogSpot hosting service are competitors, but they are largely free and aimed mostly at novices.

Movable Type was born in the high-tech bust. The Trotts spent the first two years of their working lives at Silicon Valley start-ups destined for the boneyard. After one Web design firm employing both of them went under, Mena found herself spending more time working on her own weblog, dollarshort.org.

The weblog then was a format used mostly by Web designers and software engineers, who viewed it as a kind of private tech-support networking tool. As users' personalities crept into their postings, the format evolved into something indefinably broader.

Frustrated by the plain-vanilla character of the earliest blogging tools, meanwhile, Mena had been submitting wish lists of features to Ben, who spent his own spare time implementing them in programming language. "I was her personal engineer."

At first they viewed Movable Type as a hobby. They designed it for individual use and planned to distribute it free to friends and associates. In October 2001 they posted a public version online. Within an hour it had been downloaded 100 times.

The 9/11 attacks had propelled blogging into an all-purpose social echo chamber. Over the next few years the format kept spreading -- cyberspace seemed to have given birth to a new entity called the blogosphere. During last year's presidential campaign, it seemed to burst into broad public consciousness; partisan bloggers' noisy role in some of the more contentious episodes of the election started people talking about whether blogging is good, bad or indifferent for society.

My own take is that the question is irrelevant. Blogs are tools for self-expression, no better or worse than the thought that goes into them. Some are indispensable, others vacuous; some brilliant, others infantile; some left, others right; some have things to say to the entire world, others seem to speak exclusively to their owners' navels. I couldn't say which way the balance tips in any of those categories, but I suspect that it's the same balance one will find among American newspapers, movies and the inventory at Barnes & Noble.

In any event, by 2002 it was evident that Movable Type had commercial potential. The Trotts incorporated as Six Apart, an allusion to the time span separating their September birthdays. They soon heard from Joi Ito, a Japanese venture capitalist with his own blog that ran on Movable Type.

Ito and a consultant, Barak Berkowitz, a former executive at Apple Computer Inc., Infoseek and Walt Disney Co.'s Go Network, had concluded that the blog space was worth an investment. Movable Type looked like the best opportunity in the field.

Their first lunch meeting with the young couple almost ended the venture before it began. "Ben and Mena had, on paper, everything you do not want to invest in," Berkowitz recalls. "They were inexperienced. They were married to each other. They'd been working by themselves. They had a cult-like status in a community that was very protective of the technology. They had very little motivation to do something big. Both their fathers were lawyers."

The Trotts, for their part, weren't even sure they wanted to own a business. As lunch wrapped up, Berkowitz remarked that they didn't seem to have much ambition. He didn't know it at the time, but his remark got under their skin.

Within a week they were back in touch. Ito's firm, Neoteny Co., put up $1.2 million as seed money. A later investment round brought in $10 million from Menlo Park-based venture firm August Capital. Berkowitz eventually moved up from a board seat to chief executive.

In the last two years the hobby has become a business. Movable Type is licensed to multinational corporations that use it for internal communications and offer it to customers. In January, Six Apart acquired LiveJournal, a largely free service that hosts online diaries and journals for about 6.5 million members, of whom a small percentage pay a fee for enhanced features. The acquisition (for an undisclosed sum) brought the company's payroll to about 70 employees, including sales teams in Europe and Japan.

What's next? "The future of blogging is not about bloggers who want audiences of thousands," Berkowitz says. "The majority will be those communicating with four others or so." He may be right: The key to making an invention useful is to turn it from a technology into a tool.

Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and read his previous columns at latimes.com/hiltzik.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Date: 07/03/2005
Publication: Los Angeles Times

Blogger alert: Election regulators are watching

Blogger alert: Election regulators are watching ;
Politics on Internet is being reviewed
From International Herald Tribune - 07/03/2005
Anne E. Kornblut

Federal election commissioners in the United States are preparing to consider how revamped campaign finance laws apply to political activity on the Internet, including online advertising, fund-raising e-mail messages and Web blogs.

Anyone who decides to "set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet" could be subject to Federal Election Commission regulation, Bradley Smith, a Republican commissioner, said in an interview posted last week on the technology news site Cnet.com.

"It becomes a really complex issue that would strike deep into the heart of the Internet and the bloggers who are writing out there today," said Smith, who opposed regulating Internet activity when the commission originally addressed it in 2002.

But it is unclear how much appetite the FEC, criticized in the past by advocates for election reform as being dysfunctional and ineffective, really has for trying to govern Internet activity. In interviews last week, several commissioners warned about the complexities of trying to assign a dollar value to online campaign activity and said they hoped any new regulations would not stifle personal political involvement.

"People should not be alarmed," said Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic commissioner.

"Given the impact of the Internet," Weintraub said, "I think we have to take a look at whether there are aspects of that that ought to be subject to the regulations. But again, I don't want this issue to get overblown. Because I really don't think, at the end of the day, this commission is going to do anything that affects what somebody sitting at home, on their home computer, does."

After the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was passed in March 2002, the commission, which is in charge of its enforcement, issued extensive rules to accommodate the law's provisions, including a blanket exemption for all Internet activity. But a federal judge ruled last year that many of the rules were too lax and specifically asked it to address the question of Internet activity.

Although the commission appealed several elements of the judge's ruling, the Internet provision was not included, which means it must now address it.

"I don't know how we get out of it at this point," said David Mason, a Republican commissioner. "We have a ruling ordering us to go back and define a rule."

The six-member commission is divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans; their vote not to appeal the part of the judge's ruling dealing with Internet activity broke along party lines, with Democrats voting not to appeal.

Commissioners said they could consider several questions, including whether political Web sites were technically coordinating with official campaigns by posting links to a candidate's Web site, and whether partisan bloggers were making in-kind contributions by donating their expertise and computer equipment to a campaign.

By law, contributions of more than 1,000 or services of an equivalent value must be made public. Individuals are permitted to volunteer their time, and there is an exemption for newspapers, broadcast networks, magazines and other periodicals. It is unclear whether political news sites would meet the exemption test, or whether the commission would go beyond regulating Internet advertisements bought by the campaigns.

In an interview, Smith said he did not believe that the judge's ruling limited the panel to regulating only paid advertising on the Internet.

"In theory, there's no reason why everything that goes on a blog advocating a candidate wouldn't be an independent expenditure and subject to regulation," Smith said.

But Weintraub cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying the goal was simply to address the Internet in some way.

"We are looking at whether there is something short of a complete exemption for Internet activity," she said.

"One really good question that needs to be asked is, 'How do you value this stuff?' " she said. "Because we only track money campaign money that people spend on campaigns not their thoughts or their beliefs or their statements. Just when they spend money. So if something is done really cheaply, it's not going to rise to the level where it will meet our regulations anyway."

The Republican commissioners interviewed agreed that it would be difficult to place a value on most political activity conducted online, and thus to determine whether it fell under the campaign contribution limits. "If you have a very successful blogger who attracts a lot of attention based on the commentary he or she is undertaking, and maybe that activity is coordinated with a candidate, what is the value of that?" said Michael E. Toner, the third Republican member of the commission.

Copyright 2005 International Herald Tribune

Date: 07/03/2005
Publication: International Herald Tribune

Posting for profit

Life: online: Posting for profit: As weblogs soar in number and influence, their business potential lands many in the money.
From Guardian - 24/02/2005
Bobbie Johnson

Chalk another one up for the bloggers. Less than a month after claiming that American forces had deliberately targeted and killed journalists during the war in Iraq, CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, resigned.

A typical media story, except his comments were not reported by the mainstream media, but on a weblog, an online diary. The remark, made in an off-the-record briefing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was blanked by most news organisations, but picked up by webloggers and disseminated across the internet. Jordan soon resigned, saying he did not want the company to be "unfairly tarnished".

Jordan's is not the first scalp claimed by these vociferous armchair pundits, and it is unlikely to be the last. Over the past year or two, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone watching the web to ignore the rise of blogs. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith has even said they offer the British right the chance to challenge perceived left wing media bias. "The internet's automatic level playing field gives conservatives opportunities that mainstream media have often denied them," he wrote in the Guardian.

Weblogs, usually a parade of the author's private peccadilloes, have been hailed as a phenomenon by a host of supporters. Many claim they are the web's coup de grace, the heart of a personal publishing revolution to rival desktop publishing or the appearance of the first printing presses.

For all the hyperbole, the heart of the weblog movement has always been driven by amateurism - hobbyist pundits voicing their passions or wannabe writers giving us a window into their world. There are now millions of bloggers creating a network of interesting voices. Despite the grassroots "free" ideology, the hype has expanded further ever since it became clear that some people were making money out of the medium.

Top-ranking webloggers such as American law professor Glenn Reynolds (www.instapundit.com) and transatlantic journalist Andrew Sullivan (www.andrewsullivan.com) have managed to elicit money from readers eager to give their support. Sullivan, probably the most successful blogger on the block, raises thousands of dollars a time from his regular subscription drives. Both have used their popularity to hook well-paying work. Reynolds, formerly an unknown lawyer in Tennessee, has written regular columns for MSNBC and Guardian Unlimited, while Sullivan has seen his writing career pick up again.

"It's possible for an individual, skillful blogger to have income from a blog," says Adriana Cronin-Lukas, a consultant for fledgling firm the Big Blog Company (www.bigblogcompany.net), and a serious weblogging evangelist. "But ultimately it is the communications aspect of the blog that brings money in - by blogging about a company or expertise."

Others have found fortune in different ways. The anonymous writer behind Belle de Jour, the notorious and disputed diary of a London call-girl, has made a mint from her salacious stories, recently publishing a book and subsequently signing a deal for a TV series on Channel 4.

A handful of budding entrepreneurs have even taken the bait and tried to cross blogging with traditional publishing to fish for profit. Nick Denton, a former Financial Times journalist and experienced dotcommer, is recognised as the king of commercial bloggers.

Although he remains cagey about the cash his ever-expanding Gawker Media empire brings in, his stock is high and the company's business model is profitable. The high-profile sponsorship from consumer electronics giant Sony for his latest project, www.lifehacker.com, shows how weblogs are gaining legitimacy with the traditional business community.

Thanks to these high-profile success stories, thousands of bloggers hold out hope of turning their hobby into a paying job. It has become their digital El Dorado. Even top-ranking blog pioneer Jason Kottke (www.kottke.org) has decided to ask his readers to pay for him to be able to concentrate on his site full-time.

In fact, for all but a select few, this city of gold will always prove elusive. Instead, it seems the real way to make money from weblogs is not from producing the final product, but in delivering services to