http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article my notes on the blogging and journalism article for Cebu Press Freedom Week 2005 en-us http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#SiteTitle MaxNotes maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#SiteSubtitle my notes on the blogging and journalism article for Cebu Press Freedom Week 2005 maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#MainMenu HelloThere [[Draft]] [[Draft article]] [[Scratch pad]] [[Ideas]] [[Jay Rosen]] [[article outline]] [[Harvard conference]] [[Bob Cauthorn]] [[ConnieVeneracion]] [[Other notes]] [[Article notes]] [[NiemanNotes]] [[Questions for e-mailing]] NewTiddler <<tiddler OptionsSideBar>> maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#ZiddlyWiki ZiddlyWiki is a hack/adaptation of TiddlyWiki thrown together by TimMorgan. It provides ServerSide storage of the wiki (tiddler) content by combining the power of TiddlyWiki with [[Zope]]. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#TimMorgan Tim is the hacker behind ZiddlyWiki and some other [[neat projects|http://timmorgan.org/wiki/Projects]] (some are even original). Find out more at http://timmorgan.org. Email: [first name]@timmorgan.org maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#SaveChanges ZiddlyWiki saves its changes in real-time, after each tiddler edit. If you want to reuse this site, you can GetYourOwn. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#UpgradeZiddlyWiki To upgrade your ZW folder, perform the following steps: # ''Rename'' your existing ZiddlyWiki folder to something else. # ''Cut'' your existing //tiddlers// folder. # ImportZiddlyWiki. # ''Delete'' the //tiddlers// folder from your newly imported ZW folder. # ''Paste''. Now you can delete your old ZW folder you renamed in step 1. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#SnapshotNumber The SnapshotNumber is the number representing the snapshot of ZW you downloaded. Take the following number for instance: <<ziddlySnapshot>> This number communicates one thing: when the snapshot was made. It breaks down like this: YEAR.MONTH.DAY.HOUR+MINUTE Only the last digit of YEAR is used, so the first part will be "5" until the end of 2005; then it will become "6". HOUR and MINUTE are combined to form a four-digit number representing the time. I'd like to point out that //every time you download ZW, you're going to get a different snapshot number//. That doesn't mean anything has changed in ZiddlyWorld. The ChangeLog will be your friend and help you to know when your snapshot of ZW has reached its expiration date. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BScratch%20pad%5D%5D http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002889.php CBS News launches Public Eye CBS News has launched Public Eye, an unprecendented effort to bring transparency to the editorial operations of a major news network, and part of CBS News' attempt to regain the trust of the public after last year's "Memogate." Public Eye is built around a blog format, in which the journalists who make the editorial decisions at CBS News and CBSNews.com will now be asked to explain and answer questions about those decisions in a public forum. "Public Eye will be run by a team of independent and experienced journalists," says CBSNews.com Editorial Director Dick Meyer. "They will take questions, criticisms and observations from our vast and articulate audience to the people of CBS News and try to come back with some answers, explanations and analyses. The Public Eye team will also report on CBS News, working sources, talking to the reporters, producers and executives who make the news, not just to the press office.... ------------- http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002869.php Knight Ridder launches citizen journalism site Knight Ridder has launched a stand-alone citizen journalism site in South Carolina to complement its newspaper there, The State. TheColumbiaRecord.com will feature 25 local experts to blog on topics ranging from astronomy to classical arts to forestry. In addition, users will be able to post items, upload photos and submit events the community calendar. "We are harvesting the power of the Internet to use readers as writers," says Ann Caulkins, president and publisher of The State Publishing Co. "They also can submit photographs to our photo galleries. The content will be segmented by area, which makes it easy to use. Bloggers also will be segmented into areas of interest." ----------------------- Start of blogging in philippines http://blogged.the-protagonist.net/2005/03/21/tracing-back-the-philippines-blog-histor/ http://gigaom.com/2005/09/08/inherent-truths-and-value-of-community/ http://cyber.law.harvard.edu:8080/webcred/wp-content/CONFREPORT2.htm http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050825lafontaine/ http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/Writing/8/ http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/Writing/8/ Beyond 'blogs': Can we create a new vocabulary for online journalism? http://susanmernit.blogspot.com/ http://www.ojr.org/ojr/blog/archive.cfm?start=600 From the Interactive Media Conference: Blogging vs. Journalism http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/041112kramer/ Journos and Bloggers: Can Both Survive? http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/stories/2004/11/05/notesForBloggerconJournalismSession.html Notes for Bloggercon Journalism Session maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#HelloThere This wiki holds my notes and transcripts of interviews on the Sun.Star Cebu article on blogging and journalism for the 2005 Cebu Press Freedom Week. Please consider this site confidential until the publication of the article next week. Thank You. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |>|>|>|>|>|>| !September 2005 | |Su|Mo|Tu|We|Th|Fr|Sa| |||||1|2|3| |4|5|6|7|8|9|10| |11|12|13|14|15|''16''|17| |18|19|20|21|22|23|24| |25|26|27|28|29|30|| |>| !Deadlines etc. | |>| September | |Sept 13|Must start sending e-mails| |Sept 14|Check for replies to e-mails / follow up| |Sept 15|Deadline First draft/ revisions| |Sept 16|Submission| |Sept 18|Press Freedom march - stay away this year. You can't make it. Your knees will give up | maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#RebeccaBlood Let's start with the Weblog—a frequently updated Web site, with posts arranged in reverse chronological order, so new entries are always on top. ''The creation of software that allowed users to quickly post entries into predesigned templates led to an explosion of short-form diaries, but the reverse-chronological format has remained constant. It is this format that determines whether a Web page is a Weblog.'' Note that ''the form preceded the software''. Easy-to-use software has fueled the fast adoption of the form, but Weblogs may be created without it. ''The Weblog is arguably the first form native to the Web''. Its basic unit is the post, not the article or the page. Bloggers write as much or as little as they choose on a topic, and although entries are presented together on the page, each post is given a permalink, so that individual entries can be referenced separately. Hypertext is ''fundamental to the practice of Weblogging''. When bloggers refer to material that exists online, they invariably link to it. Hypertext allows writers to summarize and contextualize complex stories with links out to numerous primary sources. Most importantly, ''the link provides a transparency that is impossible with paper. The link allows writers to directly reference any online resource, enabling readers to determine for themselves whether the writer has accurately represented or even understood the referenced piece.'' Bloggers who reference but do not link material that might, in its entirety, undermine their conclusions, are intellectually dishonest... ''Perhaps the biggest reason millions of amateur writers produce Weblogs is that the easiest-to-use Web publishing tools produce only that format. Blogs have become the default choice for personal Web publishing to such a degree that the two ideas are conjoined'' Instead of inflating the term “journalism” to include everyone who writes anything about current events, I prefer the term “participatory media” for the blogger’s practice of ''actively highlighting and framing the news that is reported by journalists, a practice potentially as important as—but different from—journalism'' It is unrealistic to apply the standards of journalism to bloggers who rarely have the time or resources to actually report the news. In my book, “The Weblog Handbook,” ''I deliberately reject the journalistic standards of fairness and accuracy in favor of transparency as the touchstone for ethical blogging''. As media participants, we are stronger and more valuable working outside mainstream media, rather than attempting to mirror the purposes of the institution ''we should seek to analyze and supplement''. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#PaulAndrews Though reportorial contributions have been made by the Web generation, it is fair to ''say the vast majority of blogging does not qualify as journalism.'' If journalism is the imparting of verifiable facts to a general audience through a mass medium, then most blogs fall well short of meeting the standard. Many blogs focus on narrow subject matter of interest to a select but circumscribed niche. And the blogs that do contain bona fide news are ''largely derivative'', posting links to other blogs and, in many cases, print journalism. The top “news” blog, Jim Romenesko’s Poynter Online site, is composed almost exclusively of linked references. Consider Google searches: When you search on current news topics, you get established journalism sites. By contrast, searches on abstruse topics are often headed by blog links. Without the daily work of print journalists, one wonders if even the newsconscious blogs would contain any real news. -- max note: but many turn out news by covering televised events -- To the extent that a blogger knows something about a particular topic, ''he or she can take a news report into a more detailed and illuminating realm''. And the personal viewpoint tailored to Weblogging has always played a vital role in journalism, from standing columns to the op-ed pages. Bloggers, in general, know little about independent verification of information and data. They lack the tools and experience for in-depth research. They don’t know how to fact-check. Assigned to do an investigative report on, say, police corruption, a typical blogger would not know where to begin. Calling a typical blogger a journalist is like calling anyone who takes a snapshot a photographer... tell me that there is something unique to blogging’s contributions, but it is discrete and separate from what we think of as journalism. ''The Weblog does not lend itself to factual documentation as much as to observation, analysis, background— the kinds of amplitude that lend greater interpretations and understanding to raw information''. And blogs, because they offer instant interactivity, are much better at engendering dialogue and exchange. In the sense that many minds contribute to greater understanding, ''blogs can take journalism’s who-what-where-when and how pyramid better into the realm of why.'' It might be that mass media of tomorrow will evolve further toward the blogging paradigm and journalism will expand from a centralized, top-down, one-way publication process to the many-hands, perpetual feedback loop of online communications. For now, to the extent that bloggers’ efforts prod journalists to be better at what they do, ''they are a valuable adjunct to—but not substitute for—quality journalism.'' Seattle Times columnist www.paulandrews.com maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#BillMitchell Weblogs will not save journalism as we know it. However, they might end up improving journalism as we know it. They can help news organizations become more interesting, more credible, even essential in the lives of the people they serve. Especially when big news breaks, it’s tough to beat a Weblog. Weblogs also help journalists serve different niches within their audience. A newspaper is necessarily a smorgasbord; readers with intense interest in one area sometimes go away hungry. A Weblog can provide the added depth and detail they crave. Sometimes it’s the readers who provide the depth and specialized knowledge. Dan Gillmor, technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and author of the eJournal Weblog6, is writing a book about what he describes as “We Media … what happens to journalism and society when every reader can be a writer (editor, producer, etc.).” As Gillmor explained in a recent Columbia Journalism Review article7: “Our readers collectively know more than we do, and they don’t have to settle for half-baked coverage when they can come into the kitchen themselves. This is not a threat. It is an opportunity. And the evolution of We Media will oblige us all to adapt.” Weblogs also enable groups of journalists to join forces on a common topic, as Poynter’s Steve Outing and 20 contributors do in their daily briefing on new media issues. Says Outing: “Some of the best Weblogs aggregate the collective intelligence of a group of journalists or an editor-led Weblog group that brings in the expertise and voices of community members. It’s an exciting new form of journalism that’s just barely been tapped.” ------ Like most new things, Weblogs carry risks. In the hands of an inexperienced journalist, a Weblog can degenerate into a pool of personal opinion even less interesting than last night’s meeting of the zoning board of appeals. Unchecked, it can jeopardize the good name of the paper or the station. Weblogs are not for newsroom beginners. Done right, Weblogs require an extraordinary combination of skills not usually demanded of any single journalist in the newsroom—reporting, writing (including headlines), editing and news judgment, to name a few. ----------- So why would a journalist want to venture anywhere near such a neighborhood? Clues can be found at the Readership Institute, that says nothing about Weblogs but characterizes various attitudes as typical motivators of readership: “regular part of my day… looks out for my interests … something to talk about … makes me smarter… touches and inspires me … I connect with the writers … all sides of the story … guides me.” Produced with those kinds of comments in mind, a Weblog can help journalists build stronger connections to readers. The Institute also lists comments reflecting why readers are drifting away from newspapers: “wasting my time … drowning in news … too much … makes me anxious … bothered by errors.” Weblogs can help journalists address these concerns, too. -------- Weblogging pushes journalists to do their work on the edge. Gone is the safety net provided by prior editorial preview and additional time to think and rethink before publishing. ------------- That’s a risk for journalists working on any platform, of course, and it highlights the importance of such core journalistic values as precision and transparency. -------- If journalists are going to expose readers to the risks of real-time reporting, credibility demands discussion and disclosure when the process falls short. --------- Bill Mitchell has been editor of Poynter Online since 1999. He has also worked as director of electronic publishing at the San Jose Mercury News and as a reporter and editor at the Detroit Free Press. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#TomRegan Blogs are quickly becoming a very influential media tool, one that can challenge conventional notions of who is a journalist and what journalism is. But if bloggers are to continue to help shape the political, cultural and media arenas, they will need to adopt some of journalism’s practices that they now eschew, often because of laziness. To better understand why journalists often hide their fear of bloggers behind masks of professional indifference, turn to Michael Lewis’s “The Future Just Happened.” Lewis explores how technology, and the Internet in particular, has created dramatic upheavals in three worlds that previously existed with rigid codes and ''were ruled by a kind of “priesthood”'': Wall Street, law and the music business. Two important lessons can be gleaned from what Lewis discovered: ''Creativity almost always happens at the edges of society, not in the center, and the one thing the Internet does more than anything else is to allow small groups or individuals to undermine elites''. In Lewis’s book, he showed several examples of how these quite powerful institutions found themselves on the defensive because “untrained” people outside the traditional circles of power—and who were often bored high school or college students—were able to duplicate or surpass the services they offered. --- Weblogs now present a similar threat to traditional media. This ''threat—to the gatekeeper role that big news organizations have played—represents a more immediate challenge than the large-scale introduction of the Internet did during the mid-1990’s.'' Back then, the fear was that the Internet would take away huge chunks of readers and audience from traditional media. (That hasn’t really happened yet, but it will during the next two decades as the Internet generation ages.) ''What skillful bloggers are demonstrating to traditional media is how they no longer get to decide on their own what is news anymore.'' ---------- Blogs also ''threaten to expose journalism at one of its weakest points—its lack of personal contact with readers and audience and the sense that journalism and its practitioners are disconnected from the communities they are supposed to serve''. As young people begin to be interested in the news, ''they are finding that blogs can be a better place to keep up with events than their local or national media outlets''. -------- At The Christian Science Monitor, our blogs are edited, often by two or three people, before they are posted. I have no doubt this editing process improves the quality of the blog without sacrificing its freshness. If the feedback we’ve received from our readers is any indication, they believe this as well. ''Adapting the role of an editor to the blogging situation seems an example of how traditional media and bloggers can learn from each other''. And when they are willing to do this, then the work of each will be improved. -------- While editing is a useful way to improve the quality of a blog, ''overediting a blog will kill its sense of voice and community''. Learning to let go is going to be very difficult for a lot of editors ''who are used to an almost Stalinesque control over their writers’ output and the way that output is presented to the public''. Meanwhile, the rest of us in traditional journalism, especially those who care deeply about what’s happening to the media, can be thankful that bloggers exist. At a time when media control is more concentrated and when presenting “fair and balanced news” can be just another way to limit voices and disguise a corporate or political agenda, ''bloggers are the dam-busters of the media world''. Long may they blow open holes in the gatekeepers’ firewalls so that all the voices that are being ignored or silenced can find ways to be heard. ------ Tom Regan, a 1992 Nieman Fellow, is associate editor of csmonitor.com, the Web site of The Christian Science Monitor. Regan cowrites two Monitor blogs: Daily Update, a blog about the war on terrorism and in Iraq, and SciTechblog, about science and technology. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#JDLasica And that’s the real revolution here: In a world of micro-content delivered to niche audiences, more and more of the small tidbits of news that we encounter each day are being conveyed through personal media—chiefly Weblogs. Call it participatory journalism or journalism from the edges. Simply put, it refers to ''individuals playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, sorting, analyzing and disseminating news and information—a task once reserved almost exclusively to the news media''. -------- Mainstream news operations are businesses supported by advertising. ''As hierarchical organizations, they value smooth production workflows, profitability and rigorous editorial standards.'' Weblogs adhere to a different set of values. ''Bloggers value informal conversation, egalitarianism, subjective points of view, and colorful writing over profits, central control, objectivity and filtered prose.'' -------- Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor at New York University who has consulted on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies, '' (note: must make major part of article) sees the difference between traditional media and Weblog communities this way: “The order of things in broadcast is ‘filter, then publish.’ The order in communities is ‘publish, then filter.’'' If you go to a dinner party, you don’t submit your potential comments to the hosts, so that they can tell you which ones are good enough to air before the group, but this is how broadcast works every day. Writers submit their stories in advance, to be edited or rejected before the public ever sees them. Participants in a community, by contrast, say what they have to say, and the good is sorted from the mediocre after the fact.” ---------- Shirky suggests the mainstream media fail to understand that despite a participant’s lack of skill or journalistic training, ''the Internet itself acts as an editing mechanism, with the difference that “editorial judgment is applied at the edges … after the fact, not in advance,”'' as he wrote on the Networks, Economics and Culture mailing list in January. ------- Weblogs should not be considered in isolation but as ''part of an emerging new media ecosystem— a network of ideas.'' No one should expect a complete, unvarnished encapsulation of a story or idea at any one Weblog. In such a community, ''bloggers discuss, dissect and extend the stories created by mainstream media.'' These communities also produce participatory journalism, grassroots reporting, annotative reporting, commentary and fact-checking, which the mainstream media feed upon, developing them as a pool of tips, sources and story ideas. The relationship is symbiotic. --------- Managing Editor Scott Rosenberg wrote in Salon last year: ''“Weblogs expand the media universe. They are a media life form that is native to the Web, and they add something new to our mix, something valuable, something that couldn’t have existed before the Web.'' “It should be obvious that Weblogs aren’t competing with the work of the professional journalism establishment, but rather complementing it. If the pros are criticized as being cautious, impersonal, corporate and herd-like, the bloggers are the opposite in, well, almost every respect: They’re reckless, confessional, funky—and herd-like.” But there’s another possibility: that ''journalists need to move away from the notion that journalism is a mysterious craft practiced by only a select priesthood—a black art inaccessible to the masses. We forget the derivation of the word journalist: someone who keeps an account of day-to-day events.'' Citizens are discovering how easy it can be to play reporter and publisher. ''To practice random acts of journalism, you don’t need a big-league publication with a slick Web site behind you. All you need is a computer, an Internet connection, and an ability to perform some of the tricks of the trade: Report what you observe, analyze events in a meaningful way but, most of all, just be fair and tell the truth as you and your sources see it.'' Over time, bloggers build up a publishing track record, much as any news publication does when it starts out. Reputation filters—where bloggers gain the respect and confidence of readers based on their reputation for accuracy and relevance—and circles of trust in the blogosphere help weed out the charlatans and the credibility-impaired. If the blogs are trustworthy and have something valuable to contribute, people will return. Now, is all blogging journalism? Not by a long shot. Nor is it likely that blogging will supplant traditional media or, as some have suggested, that blogging will drive news organizations out of business. When a major news event unfolds, ''a vast majority of readers will turn to traditional media sources for their news fix. But the story doesn’t stop there. On almost any major story, the Weblog community adds depth, analysis, alternative perspectives, foreign views, and occasionally first-person accounts that contravene reports in the mainstream press''. We need, then, to ''stop looking at this as a binary, either-or choice. We need to move beyond the increasingly stale debate of whether blogging is or isn’t journalism and celebrate Weblogs’ place in the media ecosystem.'' Instead of looking at blogging and traditional journalism as rivals for readers’ eyeballs, we should recognize that we’re entering an era in which they complement each other, intersect with each other, play off one another. The transparency of blogging has contributed to news organizations becoming a bit more accessible and interactive, although newsrooms still have a long, long way to go. -- The authors of a research study, “Interactive Features of Online Newspapers,” sum it up this way: ''“Journalists today must choose. As gatekeepers they can transfer lots of information, or they can make users a smarter, more active and questioning audience for news events and issues.”'' Journalism is undergoing a quiet revolution, whether it knows it or not. Readers will always turn to traditional news sites as trusted, reliable sources of news and information—that won’t change. But ''the walls are cracking. The readers want to be a part of the news process.'' We will always need a corps of trained journalists to ferret out important stories, to report from remote locations, to provide balance and context to the news. But beside big media journalism we are starting to see a mixture of commentary and analysis from the grass roots as ordinary people find their voices and contribute to the media mix. Blogs won’t replace traditional news media, but they will supplement them in important ways. ------------ Benefits blogging brings to news media Pushing the envelope. Weblogs are helping to expand the boundaries of experimental forms of transaction journalism. Freelance journalist Christopher Allbritton, a former reporter for The Associated Press, asked his Weblog readers to finance a trip to Iraq at the outbreak of hostilities there. Some 320 people donated more than $14,000 and helped him launch Back-to- Iraq.com. Readers served as editors. Enhancing reader trust. News organizations such as MSNBC, The Providence Journal, The Dallas Morning News, and The Christian Science Monitor have embraced the Weblog form in some part of their editorial operations. These news organizations realize that Weblogs offer an opportunity for newsrooms to become more transparent, more accessible, and more answerable to their readers. Fostering community. When journalism becomes a process, and not a static product, audiences discard their traditional role as passive consumers of news and become empowered partners with a shared stake in the end result. Weblogs offer one way to promote that kind of interactivity. -------------- J.D. Lasica, senior editor of the Online Journalism Review, publishes the Weblog New Media Musings at jdlasica.com/blog. He was an editor at The Sacramento Bee for 11 years. He edited a white paper on participatory journalism called “We Media,” released by New Directions for News in August 2003. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#DanGillmor This exchange—and its consequence— reflects the power of blogs that is central to the participatory journalism of tomorrow. We’re learning new techniques, and the “we” needs to be understood in its largest sense, because enormous new power is devolving into the hands of what has been a mostly passive audience. My audience is never shy about letting me know when I get something wrong. Over the years, they have made me realize something that is now one of my guiding principles: My readers know more than I do, sometimes individually on specific topics, but always collectively. This is similar for all journalists, no matter what their beat is. And having readers’ feedback and participation presents a great opportunity and not a threat, because when we ask our readers for help and knowledge they are willing to share it—and, through that sharing, we all benefit. Centralized newsgathering and distribution is being augmented (and some cases will be replaced) by what’s happening at the edges of increasingly ubiquitous and interwoven networks. People are combining powerful technological tools and innovative ideas that are fundamentally altering the nature of journalism in this new century. Not even a well-staffed big-city newspaper can hope to cover every aspect of civic life, but it has readers whose information and perspectives could contribute much to improving and broadening the coverage. But editors can still invite audience members to be part of the conversation in a much more genuine way. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#GlennHarlanReynolds But as James Lileks famously remarked, ''the Web is a conversation''. Communication of this horizontal nature is likely to have several impacts. First of all, ''the term “correspondent” is reverting to its original meaning of “one who corresponds,” rather than the more recent one of “well-paid microphone-holder with good hair.”'' Second, the realization that anyone (or lots of people, anyway) can report news or write opinion pieces just as well as famous people is ''likely to undercut the status of celebrity journalists and pundits''. Tiger Woods is a golf celebrity because he can play golf better than anyone. ''Most media celebrities, on the other hand, became famous because other people lacked access to the tools of the trade. That’s changing now.'' --- What this means, however, is that the most powerful application for 21st century media is likely to be ''hard-news gathering'', something that news media organizations are still better at than their atomized competitors on the Internet. If Big Media outfits want to compete with the blogosphere, ''they’d be well advised to beef up their foreign bureaus and start reporting more actual news''. And that, I think, would please both bloggers and traditional journalists. Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee, where he teaches constitutional law and Internet law. He publishes two Weblogs, www.instapundit.com, and www.glennreynolds.com at MSNBC.com. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#MarkGlaser This is where the blogging phenomenon really changes journalism. In part, ''because of Weblogs, journalists are being brought down from their ivory towers.'' Many journalists would like to think their reporting on a war or an election or a baseball game is the final word. But when reporters’ e-mail addresses were first published at the end of print stories, the dynamic started to change. Then, online forums and feedback loops gave readers more input and led to greater interaction. The Weblog format ''provides an even bigger voice for nonjournalist readers by giving them ways to attack, counterattack and fact-check stories in ways that did not exist before.'' The echo chamber aspect of the blogosphere means that unknown Joe or Jane Blogger can post a thought, which is then picked up by one blogger after another until a reporter at a major news organization responds. Whether it’s a scathing attack on a story or heartening praise, ''the attention of bloggers can’t help but make journalists do a better job in their reporting''. With bloggers breathing down their necks, only the most insulated media personality could ignore the avalanche of criticism (or praise) that comes from the blogosphere. When print journalists start to write blogs, they begin to look at issues on a daily, possibly hourly basis, creating a news cycle that’s more like cable TV news. When they allow comments on their blogs, they are opening up an important public dialogue with readers, creating a forum for their work that invites feedback for each story or blog entry they write. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BPress%20Freedom%20article%20notes%5D%5D Rebecca Blood: The reverse-chronological format has remained constant. It is this format that determines whether a Web page is a Weblog. Note that the form preceded the software. Easy to use software has fueled the fast adoption of the form. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BArticle%20notes%5D%5D People to interview *Manolo Quezon *Abe Olandres *Wilson Ng *Nimrodel *Alecks Pabico / Sheila Coronel *Ka Edong *EdwinLacierda Links to read: http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html http://www.journalism.co.uk/features/story604.html http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1017958873.php http://www.ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1017958873.php http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050825lafontaine/ http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050825cauthorn/ http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050804Kramer/ dooce verb for getting fired for blogging http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050719glaser/ blogging and poker http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050609Ulmanu/ smart mobs http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050526colombo/ LA times blogs http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/041221Glaser/ 2004: The year of blogging http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/041112kramer/ Journos and bloggers, can both survive? The end of objectivity http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/2005/01/the_end_of_obje.html Jay Rosen http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/01/15/berk_pprd.html http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2003/10/16/radical_ten.html http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2003/10/17/conserv_ten.html http://www.hypergene.net/blog/weblog.php maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#NiemanNotes RebeccaBlood MarkGlaser GlennHarlanReynolds DanGillmor JDLasica TomRegan BillMitchell PaulAndrews Articles written in fall of 2003 - check bios for changes and sites for changes in points of view maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#Ideas + News as conversation + Readers (collective) know more than I do (Gilmor and this other chap in Nieman reports) + Idea of "audience" changing because the so-called audience can now talk back through blog or through their own blog + cost of entry to media lowered by availability of blog tools and services .. group can now launch own online publication that can take on sections of mainstream media + compare emergence of blog tools to entry of desktop publishing software + read interview of Corante guy on how it is not on the medium - on how it is mainstream media's disconnect from readers .. blogs made this very evident because of feedback loop. + allow community papers to strengthen ties with the community it serves + allows community papers to be part of the conversation without dominating conversation + google ads, ad networks offering bloggers chance to earn from their sites cite proBlogger (caution though that only very high-traffic sites earn from their blogs.) maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BQuestions%20for%20e-mailing%5D%5D CONFIRMED RECEIPT OF E-MAIL (already okayed interview) ManoloQuezon - follow up ConnieVeneracion - already answered AbeOlandres - already answered KaEdong - follow up AlecksPabico - follow up EdwinLacierda lacierda@pldtdsl.net - already answered Wilson Ng (travelling - will call) Common questions for all: 1. Professor Jay Rosen of the New York University said early this year that the question of bloggers vs. journalists is over. He says the "question now isn't whether blogs can be journalism. They can be, sometimes. It isn't whether bloggers "are" journalists. They apparently are, sometimes." Do you agree with his statement? Do you see yourself as journalists in the mold of reporters producing original news content or more of opinion writers who comment on news items? 2. Editor Scott Rosenberg of Salon says: "journalists need to move away from the notion that journalism is a mysterious craft practiced by only a select priesthood—a black art inaccessible to the masses. We forget the derivation of the word journalist: someone who keeps an account of day-to-day events." Do you agree with him? Do you think blogging has shattered that perception of a select priesthood that defines what is newsworthy? 3. In a blogging conference early this year at Harvard University, participants agreed that "The acts of "blogging" and "journalism" are different, although they do intersect. While some blogging is journalism, much of it isn't and doesn't aim to be. Both serve different and valuable functions within the new evolving media ecosystem." Do you agree with this? Do you see this happening in the Philippines or will blogging still be in the fringes of that media ecosystem because of the low Internet penetration in the country? 4. Tom Curley of the Associated Press says there is a huge shift of balance of power in our world, "from the content providers to the content consumers." He says "professional journalism is no longer sovereign over territory it once easily controlled" and that its influence in the public discourse is no longer singular. He says: "When 90 percent of the op-ed style writing was done on actual op-ed pages, editorial page editors had sovereignty over that region of public dialogue. With blogging and the online space generally, that rule is gone. Opinion in reaction to the news can come from anywhere, and the bloggers are frequently better at it than the sleepy op-ed page ever was." Do you agree with him? 5. While mainstream media can find good use for blogs to re-engage themselves in the community conversation, they should use it in a way to draw in more outside voices. Bob Cauthorn says mainstream media misunderstand blogs because they "simply further expose the staff members who are already well exposed to the public." He says these efforts "scarcely register in the big picture because media company blogs adhere to the old top-down, we-talk-you-listen-punk publishing model." Do you agree with this? 6. Mark Glaser, in a 2003 Article in Nieman Reports, says that "because of Weblogs, journalists are being brought down from their ivory towers." He says that blogs provide an even bigger voice for non-journalist readers. He did say, however, that "the attention of bloggers can't help but make journalists do a better job in their reporting." Do you agree with him. Has this happened in the country? If not, do you see this happening soon? Did the "community conversation" in Philippine blogs on the Gloriagate scandal affect mainstream media's coverage of the issue? 7. In discussing the impact of blogging, Glenn Reynolds says "the realization that anyone (or lots of people, anyway) can report news or write opinion pieces just as well as famous people is likely to undercut the status of celebrity journalists and pundits." He says that "most media celebrities became famous because other people lacked access to the tools of the trade. That's changing now." Do you agree with him? The Sassy Lawyer is an example of how mainstream media was able to recruit from the blog world. Do you see more of this happening in the country, that mainstream media look to bloggers to improve its current staff? 8. Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, sees the difference between traditional media and Weblog communities this way: "The order of things in broadcast is 'filter, then publish.' The order in communities is 'publish, then filter.' The filtering is done through a Darwinian system of good blogs flourishing because readers keep returning to it. Do you agree with this statement? 9. Where do you think Philippine blogs are heading? Do you see it becoming a major part of the reading diet of Filipinos or do you think that the low Internet penetration rate will hinder it from becoming that? Do you see Pinoy blogs becoming as influential to society as their counterparts in the US are? maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#ManoloQuezon Manuel L. Quezon III (www.quezon.ph) * Did a 12 hour coverage in his blog on the House voting on the committee report on the impeachment cases vs. GMA. Passed out at 4:00 am posted again early afternoon while legislators were still voting. + get mood - where did he blog from? what was he thinking. Did he read comments posted on his site while covering the hearing. did comments affect post? How was he able to sustain it? Where was he during Edsa 2 (did he have blog then)? Do you think blogging has offered people another outlet to vent their frustrations - aside from just going to the streets to demand government officials' resignation? 1:358… Suspension going on. Very interesting huddles… Speaker making emphatic gestures. Serious opposition huddle… If I were opposition congressmen, I’d do one of two things: move to adjourn (non-debatable) or call the admin’s bluff and proclaim, “we lack the numbers, but you do. so kill it now. the rallies won’t stop. the trouble won’t stop. but you have the numbers. so kill it now. go ahead, we dare you, and may you be willing to live with consequences!” But I guess they’re not that brave. 2:30 Cayetano has fun running circles around Villafuerte…. Banter is rather good-natured. 2:40 Arguments are back to definitions of when an impeachment proceeding begins… (someone, by the way texts me: it’s raining heavily, ain’t it poetic? indeed -let justice be done, though the heavens fall! is the maxim) 2:56 Villafuerte beginning to wilt under the machine-gun style rapid fire delivery of Cayetano… Abante: Yes. (fire, brimstone, threatens damnation on pro-impeachment) (ANC TV coverage cut off!!!!!!!!!) Whee Channel 7 is on… 4:03 Abaya, Jun: No Abaya, (Harlene?): n my particular case, I have always been an opinion writer (either as a columnist or editorial writer), or have delved into history. Whether history (examples would be my pieces on Edsa One or say, the American period) or reportage (reportage, to me, is a kind of literary form of the essay, I've been influenced in this view by Ryzsard Kapuzsinsky, by Tom Wolfe, Nick Joaquin, etc.), or opinion-writing, which includes both analysis and commentary (analysis is putting together events and circumstances to come up with an educated guess of future trends, or a prognosis on ongoing events; commentary is a synthesis of personal views and that of other people on a specific person or event). Therefore, to me, blogging is merely a new, more direct, and more spontaneous venue for publishing the things I tend to publish anyway. The difference is that there is no editorial control in blogging except one's own definitions of what is suitable content. To Rosen's observations, I'd say, a journalist is a journalist is a journalist -so a journalist who blogs is merely embarking on a new medium; for those who weren't trained in journalism, can a blogger be a journalist? Certainly -if the bogger consciously embarks on journalism, as the blogger defines it (if the blogger;s definition of journalism matches or merges with conventional definitions, so much the better). Scott Rosenberg describes the aspirations of many bloggers; but what I've noticed is that blogging has actually elevated once more, written journalism above all other kinds, at a time when TV journalism was set to conquer all. What has happened is that professional journalists no longer have a monopoly on delivering the news and interpreting it; bloggers have amplified and widened the field for debate and interpretation. In some cases, they have overturned and subverted traditional media; but they remain firmly dependent upon traditional media for the basis of their discussions, either pro or against. What they have done is actually contributed to a dialogue between professionals and amateurs, and all media practitioners and their audiences. This is a democratizing experience unmatched perhaps since the invention of the modern newspaper and the modern TV and radio network. I agree that blogging may be journalism but not all blogging is journalism. In the Philippines, print media retains its authority as the definer, or arbiter, of what is news-worthy and deserving of comment. Radio and TV take off from the print media and widen the discussion. In truth, with circulations of 100,000 or so for the best-circulated newspapers, print media is miniscule in comparison to radio and TV. Even with a pass-on rate, a 100,000 circulation paper means half a million readers while radio and TV shows count their audiences in the millions. And yet radio and TV lack what print has, which is the ability to endure and serve as a record, as well as a venue for interpretation and reflection. Blogs can at the very least already equal print media in terms of statistics (PCIJ's unique hits have been impressive) and their ability to influence both media people, the professional political class, and then the public, may be indirect but will be felt. For example, my own blog is apparently read by media people, by the chiefs of staff and staffers of government officials, by diplomats, and then by students, teachers, and so on -this means an effect that is hard to quantify but which is there. Tom Corley is correct, in that institution distrust is so profound, that the more hard-hitting personal and personalistic style of the blog appeals to readers, rather than the careful, safe, and homogenized style of many editorials in many papers. Again, the biggesty impact of blogs, I think, has been to make an immediate link between a writer and his audience. In terms of newspapers, I actually see no room for blogging. The role of a newspaper is to have an online version of itself, since the traditional paper newspaper will be gone within our lifetime. But as for editors, writers, columnists, etc. Blogging should be left to them, and outside the institutional domain of the newspaper if they represent or work for one. This shields both the paper and the writer. However, if an institution that is not a newspaper, wants to undertake a blog, there I think the time and opportunity are perfect, as demonstrated by the PCIJ blog. They aren't a newspaper; they're an investigative outfit with clearly defined goals and a desire to uphold the public's interest. Newspapers as commercial entitites have legal considerations that to my mind, deter proper blogging. Blogs in the Philippine setting flourished under Gloriagate because of two things: timeliness, and a certain amount of legal impregnability. Blogs can both report and analyze, comment and expose, faster than even online mainstream media (because of not going through an extended editorial process); they can deliver news faster than TV and infinitely faster than the papers. The only thing as fast as a blog is the radio, and the radio sometimes beats the blogs. Also, analysis and synthesis aren't contrained by the expenses of paper and ink, or air time. The American experience with blogging is different from ours. In the Philippines, what exists is a gigantic gulf in terms of exposure between the old generation of journalists and writers, and two generations below them. Written media, in particular, suffers from an oversupply of geriatrics on top, and no successor generation even to occupy the bottom. Fifty years or so separates me, at 35, from Max Soliven or Armando Doronila. I am one of the very few opinion writers of my age with any exposure. Everyone else seems to be around 50 at their youngest, so certainly, if and when they all pass from the scene, very few will take their place. Blogging will hopefully help fill this pressing need. Clay Shirkey is absolutely correct; the reader is the final judge, and the success or failure of a blog is a referendum on the integrity and ability of a blogger. I am skeptical about just how low the internet penetration rate is, particularly in comparison to what? TV? Radio? Maybe. But as for print, and blogging is primarily the latest form of print media, it is the salvation of print media. It's reach and impact can only increase. --------------------------- Answers to follow up questions 1. I am in many ways the prototypical pajama blogger, blogging from home, with the TV turned on, the AM radio discreetly playing on my desktop, cellphone with reach for SMS alerts, and obsessively checking email every 15 minutes. I generally blog and work from home; during particularly active blogging times, I eat in front of the computer. On that particular day, I had other work to do, and my morning was spent, if I recall correctly, cramming work knowing the afternoon would have to be free. I general blog events I consider historic both for readers who appreciate it (they can't listen to the radio or watch TV at work, or they are overseas), as history-in-the-making and eventually, for whatever purposes it might serve for my writing. I was up, then from about 6 a.m. Of Sep. 5 to 4 a.m. Of Sep. 6. When doing coverage, I generally pass up replying to comments unless there's a lull. The worst thing one can do is pander to commentators in terms of content; you can clarify or counter, explain or comment on a comment, but unless a very good reason is given, I don't change ongoing coverage based on comments. In fact in times of exhausting coverage, I tend to deliberately set aside comments for reading and reflection during a less tense time. 2. Dan Gilmor is right. Every columnist assumes a target audience, and I'd suggest, a sort of idealized individual for whom they write their columns. To see people respond is to see how close or far one is from that idealized or imagined audience. I also think columnists and opinion writers get a malicious satisfaction from annoying or angering the sectors and people they have set about to combat, anyway, and one can see whether that group gets riled up or not. Then in fragile ego moments, the care and concern, the genuine empathy shown by commenters, becomes important to the columnist. Feedback loop though, is a good term. An interaction, in real time, with one's audience has been virtually impossible before; it exists now; it helps create a community of like-minded people or even people who disagree, but are drawn together by the writer. 3. Blogging is very expensive not only in terms of equipment (connection to the internet, wear and tear on the computer) but time. It must be viewed as an investment in one's self -career, exposure, credibility, influence and reach- but there will be times when blogging must take the back seat. I have earned a tiny amount from advertising ($100 in one year from google ads!) and have received no donations on paypal or a single gift book from my Amazon wishlist. However, there is an ongoing project among bloggers to create a new kind of blog income, but I can't reveal it yet (I signed one of those non-disclosure agreements). maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BOther%20notes%5D%5D The Harry Potter generation has no problem with attention span. It does have a problem wasting its time on media that fails to engage it. We no longer live in a world of two daily newspapers, three TV networks and a dozen radio stations. What some misread as poor attention span is more accurately, in my view, explained as a public trying to shift through millions of media options in the same 24 hours of a day. Robert Niles http://www.ojr.org/ojr/blog/archive.cfm?start=600 maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#Draft Blogging is "a new online narrative" Robert Niles see [[Other notes]] Robert Niles: With millions of readers becoming writers online, the number of voices available to the reading public online now dwarfs the number of writers working in print. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity for professional writers. First, the challenge: we have much, much more competition for readers' attention than ever before. Some critics make the mistake of insisting that the modern audience suffers from stunted attention spans. I reject that hypothesis. Next month, hundreds of thousands of children across this country will run to bookstores, buy a 672-page book, take it home and read it cover-to-cover, staying up through the night to finish it in many cases. After that, many of those readers will go online, writing their own dispatches to discuss, analyze or just to share the collective experience of having read this book. The Harry Potter generation has no problem with attention span. It does have a problem wasting its time on media that fails to engage it. We no longer live in a world of two daily newspapers, three TV networks and a dozen radio stations. What some misread as poor attention span is more accurately, in my view, explained as a public trying to shift through millions of media options in the same 24 hours of a day. So why should we hide our work in a medium and in a narrative form that so many readers are moving away from, when we could expand our readership by publishing in new online narrative forms? ----------- Paul Graham author, programmer That's why the business world was so surprised by one lesson from open source: that people working for love often surpass those working for money. ----------- Ken Sands, online publisher of the Spokesman-Review http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/ paper publishes 23 active online-only columns “In my experience it is easier to teach a blogger to be a good journalist than it is to teach a journalist to be a good blogger. Bloggers understand the social network.” ------------ The reaction towards blogging as a medium recalls that to the New Journalism movement, pioneered by writers such as Hunter S Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. The New Journalism movement transformed the conventional wisdom of news writing by presenting stories as features with greater colour, vibrancy and permeated with the personal experiences of the writer. The sense of detachment between the writer and reader disappeared. At the time of the movement the sound of guffaws and sneers from news writers and real journalists resonated just as loudly as they do today towards blogging http://www.journalism.co.uk/features/story604.html ------------ Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker Media, suggested that newspapers ought not to blog, given that newspapers' traditional objection to linking to, or even acknowledging, their competitors made them unable to engage in meaningful online conversations. Sands adds: “The best blog reduces the amount of work a reader needs to do, even if it means linking to all your competitors.” sidenote: Reinforcement of what I said last year, hah. ----- Heather Armstrong, who blogs as Dooce and whose firing over her blog created the Internet verb "dooced", threw me a little by talking openly to a room full of people about details she decided not to publish on her blog. Armstrong, who is number 10 on the Technorati 100, uses a PO Box and obscures pictures of her home but posts photos of her toddler daught --------- Filter - publish v. publish - filter part But journalists are not the only ones who know how to speak the truth, according to JD Lasica: "Bloggers are increasingly engaging in random acts of journalism whenever they report on events they witness first-hand or when they offer analysis, background or commentary on a newsworthy topic. Those who publish rumour and present it as fact will be burned fairly quickly." http://www.journalism.co.uk/features/story604.html ---------------- "If news organizations don't embrace this, it will embrace them, and they'll become less and less relevant," says Michael Tippett, founder of NowPublic.com. "Citizen journalism is not the future, it's the present." --------- ManoloQuezon, ConnieVeneracion, JohnNery blogs on impeachment - particulary voting on committee report on impeachment cases. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BBob%20Cauthorn%5D%5D former vice president of digital media at the San Francisco Chronicle, and was the third recipient of the Newspaper Association of America's prestigious Digital Pioneer Award. He launched one of the first five newspapers web sites in the world and is generally considered to have delivered the first profitable newspaper web site in 1995. ---------- media blogs simply further expose the staff members who are already well exposed to the public. And that's the fundamental failing of media company blogs: they aren't blogs in the proper sense and they utterly misapprehend what is fascinating about blogging. The majority of the time, media blogs deliver more staff voices that are already published and broadcast ad-naseum. Occasionally, you might hear from, say, a copy editor or section editor or librarian who otherwise does not make it into print or on the air. And yes, that can have marginal appeal. But it scarcely registers in the big picture because media company blogs adhere to the old top-down, we-talk-you-listen-punk publishing model. ''The DNA of blogging is a complicated matter that touches on being outside voices and taking personal control of the media. But at minimum the DNA of blogging has to do with distributing the conversation. Contrary to that, the DNA of mainstream media – to date – is all about dominating the conversation.'' The notion that a media company should populate its blogs with with staff writers comes directly from the Academy of Stupid Old Ideas. The real opportunity doesn't involve spewing more of the same on the street, it involves inviting the outside voices to come inside. --------------- Cauthorn envisions weeklies embracing a model where they publish their print version to establish which issues are at the forefront. Then the weekly's Web site becomes the host for the discussion by the community. "I think this would be really interesting, because then you have a really dynamic model where you're flowing readers back and forth between print and online," Cauthorn said. "The kind of thing that we could do be doing in metro markets, but that would require – oh my God – creative thought. "Newspapers in their glory days – at the height of the power of modern journalism, in the 60s and 70s, when newspapers really made a goddamn difference – their circulation was exploding," Cauthorn exclaimed. "Trust me, people who were reading about civil rights stories and Vietnam and women's rights – these people were not reading fluff stories, you know? http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050825cauthorn/ http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050825lafontaine/ The companies that run newspapers and make the decisions, they're the ones that are in error. It's not the concept of journalism. It's not the concept of newspapers. It's the companies who are producing a product that is failing. That people don't want. -------- The other reality is that, particularly with small-market papers, these people are aligned with their readers because they are part of their community. The practice of modern journalism, at anything from a mid-size market up, takes place over the telephone. Newsrooms and editors have done everything possible to insulate themselves from the public, which is why they have focus groups. I'll tell you what. If you have your ass on the street where it belongs, you don't need a focus group. Simple as that. And the reality is that Point Reyes proves it. Of course your instincts are right if you're aligned with your readers. And if you're aligned with your readers, your circulation grows. Simple as that. ---------- I guarantee you that if you were to study this (log files), most of the stories in the top 10 would not be one of the stories on the front page. Because we're not aligned with our readers. We've got this wonderful daily focus group with real readers called the Weblog, but newspapers are afraid to see what's in them. They don't want to know. They don't want to know what the most popular stories are. It's terrifying to them. Because it means that their news judgment might not be right. -------- Our public wants us to survive. Our public wants us to thrive. Our public wants newspapers that matter. Our public is leaving us because we are chasing them away with a stick. ----------- The mistake people are making is that they say that the reason people are leaving newspapers is because they just want a different distribution mechanism. Well, that's nonsense. They were leaving newspapers for 15 years before the Internet arrived. They're leaving newspapers because newspapers don't matter to them. And if you look at any market where innovative new news products have been introduced, particularly in Europe, you'll find that people flock back to print. This isn't a media choice. Certainly people love digital media. They love it for different reasons, though. The simple fact is that they're walking away from papers because it doesn't work from an editorial standpoint. The argument that someone is leaving newspapers because of lifestyle choices and the Internet is like somebody making steam engines in the 1940s saying, that "Hey, we're making the right product, it's just that lifestyles have changed." No. Why don't you make a different goddamn product. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#AbeOlandres Top Pinoy tech blogger getting to be online publishing "mogul" Without blog tools would you have been able to start an online publication on tech? (would probably write own script) Now planning other group blogs. Are you earning from blogging? Are your sites (albeit still new) earning? Do you share income with contributors? Do you see Pinoy Tech Blog as competitor of online editions of tech RP tech publications? Do you think tech companies should start inviting blog contributors to press conferences of briefings? 1. Although I tend to make opinions on news, I find myself making the news or passing it up so that more people can be made aware of it faster. In that sense, one might consider the blogger a journalist. 2. Over the years, the line that separates the bloggers from the journalist has blurred. Yet one thing remains the same, journalists are part of the establishment while bloggers are the alternative to the mainstream. 3. Filipinos will still rely heavily on traditional media. The major stumbling block in our country is the low penetration rate of connectivity to the masses. This may be possible for western countries but until the time that the Philippines is vastly wired to the net, we will get stuck with the same old ecosystem. 4. Exactly. Bloggers are inherently voracious readers and more passionate about their opinions. It has become an open season -- journalists are always outnumbered by their blogging critics. 5. The establishment has always been that way. It's always one way, downstream. Blogging encourages and thrive thru interaction. Maintreams media can be very authoritative in spreading information and opinions while blogging has democratized it. 6. With blogging, everyone has a voice, everyone can have their turn and give a piece of their mind. It's all the matter now of who's more credible and who's more believable. 7. If you're a blogger who joins mainstream media, are you a blogger first and a journalist second? Or is it the other way around? A journalist who becomes a blogger is common but a blogger who becomes a journalist is rare and Connie is a first in the Philippines. However, I find that there will come a time that conflicts of interest will eventually arise with this kind of setup. It's still unchartered waters to me. 8. Survival of ths fittest. It's by this natural selection that makes the more appealing bloggers more prominent and more trusted by the reading public. There's no censorship. What you get is raw and unadulteration commentary -- this is more palatable compared to the often bland delivery of mainstream media. 9. If we talk about numbers, pinoy bloggers are still a very small minority. However, we're seeing that political blogs are fast becoming the major source of information by the Filipino surfing public. My Pinoy Top Blogs Project has 3 political blogs consistent on the top 5 list. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#KaEdong Online authority on RP mobile issues. How do you assess coverage of mobile technology in mainstream media? Do you see yourself doing a better job? Said he still has to get first Google check. 1. I see myself more in the realm of opinion writers who comment on news items. News is fine as blog content. It sends the message across many times over, more quickly. Of course blog news can be simple replication, linking or even gossip. Bloggers are quicker than the more formal media channels like newspapers, radio or TV because these formal media channels need to go through an editorial process. But I think the art in blogging emanates from critical opinion and not speed of news transmission. I would rather be an opinion writer than one who just simply spreads the news. 2. Definitely! 3. The low Internet penetration in the country will be a challenge in making blogging a mainstream medium. What blogging has done, in the interim, is to develop a larger group of opinion makers who are not necessarily connected to any broadsheet, TV show or radio show. Whether blogging will be in the fringes of the media ecosystem, I don't think it is anymore. Blogging is no longer in the fringes. Blog reading and writing now comprise a large part of Internet usage and we couldn't consider that fringe. Blogging has crept in already, with blogs being the source of the Hello Garci ringtones, with blogs being the source of information for OFWs, with blogs being featured in TV shows, with blogs being quoted in broadsheets and online publications. There's no other way for blogging to go but up. Blogging is not a fad, blogging is here to grow and here to stay. 4. Agree 5. Definitely! I think that event exemplified how blogs could sometimes communicate a whole lot more effectively than broadcast or print media. 6. Yes. And rightly so. Who's the best judge of what is relevant to people than people themselves? The world of media is changing and we need to help people to adjust to it. We call this information literacy. In the past, media chose for people what people read. Now its people themselves who have to learn to choose, to discern, to discriminate. This is something that needs to be taught and learned. Otherwise, people will drown in a deluge of information useless to them. 7. Let's talk in terms of what I imagine OFWs do when they access the internet. Undoubtedly, one of the first sites they visit is inq7.net. Then what? At the speed that bloggers are putting up content, no other company or institution or agency can keep up with bloggers. There will come a time when more than 50% of Internet content will be in blogs. I think Phlippine blogs will more and more be the connection of the millions of Filipinos around the world. I think that blogs are taking away some of the viewership of the most popular Philippine website: inq7.net . With the emergence of thousands of Philippine blogs, people are turning to sites other than inq7.net to get the type of information they want and need – through blogs! Let me illustrate. There is this popular Pinoy blogger, BatJay, who has a very personal blog named Kwentong Tambay. He blogs because he loves blogging. He blogs about his life and he tickles the funny bone like a pro. His regular readers, perhaps more than a hundred of us, have a connection with BatJay. I have exchanged a few emails with BatJay, we've traced a few common friends. People feel for BatJay. His readers know when he's not happy, when he's senti, when he's just being silly (which he is most of the time). People know him through his blog. Filipinos love connecting with others. Isn't that precisely the reason we are the text capital of the world? That is what has made Friendster very popular among Filipinos. Blogging has become another way for Filipinos to connect. It is a journal of life that we share with others. Through this journal, we get to know people and the way they think, the way they feel, the way they live. We will want more and more. That's soooo Filipino. That's what will make blogging very popular in the Philippines. But it is true that the low Internet penetration will affect the growth of blogging in the Philippines. But here's the thing. In the future, first time Filipino Internet users will be doing three things: surf around, check e-mail, and read or write blogs. --------- How do you assess coverage of mobile technology in mainstream media? Mobile technology has a large aspect to it. Mainstream media tends to focus on news, on what's new. We only have a handful of articles that come up with more in-depth reviews of products or services. That is the property of mainstream media. It cannot dive into too much detail that alienates a large part of their readership. They have to stay within bounds of relevance. What I look for is concepts and analysis of mobile technology. Where is it going? How can the farmer use mobile technology? What values do mobile services bring to users? How useful are these services? These are questions that mainstream media do not involve themselves in. This is the kind of discussion I look for. I do find some of these discussions on online email lists, but not on mainstream media. This is the kind of discussion I try to create too. When I blog, I always try to imagine what a certain technology could do to serve people. Beyond the entertainment value, beyond the monetary value of a service, how can these technologies truly become useful for the average pinoy. Some of my ideas get some visitors to thinking. That's all nice. But what's really nice is when somebody walks up to me and offers to help make my ideas real. This has happened a couple of times. It continues to amaze me how ideas can become reality just by communicating them through my blog. That's not just nice, that's awesome! ''Do you see yourself doing a better job?'' Better job? I started blogging for myself. Just for myself. But I found that some people regularly visit my blog. I found in my blog a powerful communication tool that has opened many doors for me. Had I not been a blogger, there would have been many opportunities that wouldn't have found their way to me. Better job? I do have plans of creating better blog content. Content that continues to be useful for others. It's an evolving process. I'm learning along the way. Google check That's right. I have yet to reach the US$100 mark as far as Google revenues is concerned. When I started blogging, Google revenues were nothing central. I just thought it was nice that through my blogging, a few cents come my way through visitors who click on Google Ads. But through the inspiration of other bloggers, notably Abe Olandres of yugatech.com, I am trying my hand at reaping more from blogging, not just regular visitors, not just comments from visitors, not just global opportunities. -------- I think blogging is giving Filipinos a way to connect with each other. It can help us keep an open mind, what with the varying ideas and opinions we will come across through blogs. It will also connect us with our past. On a personal note, it will allow me to look back and see how much I have grown in knowledge and in thinking. I took sheer pleasure in reading the handwritten love letters of my grandfather to my grandmother, people who I did not have the chance to interact with. I am looking forward to the time when my own great grand children will have the chance to go back and read what their grandfather was doing in 2005. On a wider perspective, blogging as a medium will be a chance for true democracy in speech. Where everybody can say what they want, no matter how silly or profane. But it's up to readers to select, to filter, to judge for themselves what truth they will subscribe to. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BHarvard%20conference%5D%5D Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility conference at Harvard University. January 21-22, 2005. Conference sponsored by: The Berkman Center for Internet & Society (Harvard Law School); The Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy (Harvard Kennedy School of Government) and Office of Information Technology Policy, American Library Association. Report on event written and prepared by Rebecca MacKinnon We are entering a new era in which professionals have lost control over information – not just the reporting of it, but also the framing of what's important for the public to know. To what extent have blogs chipped away at the credibility of mainstream media? Is credibility a zero-sum game – in which credibility gained by blogs is lost by mainstream media and vice versa? Conference participants believed the answer, ultimately, is no. Bloggers and professional journalists alike share a common goal: a better informed public and a stronger democracy. So now what? The new emerging media ecosystem has room for citizens' media like blogs as well as professional news organizations. There will be tensions, but they'll complement and feed off each other, often working together. (See Session 1 and Jay Rosen's essay in Appendix A1) The acts of "blogging" and "journalism" are different, although they do intersect. While some blogging is journalism, much of it isn’t and doesn’t aim to be. Both serve different and valuable functions within the new evolving media ecosystem. (This theme recurred and was reinforced in all sessions.) Ethics and credibility are key, but extremely hard to define. There are no clear answers about how credibility is won, lost, or retained – for mainstream media or bloggers. It's impossible and undesirable for anybody to set "ethical standards" for bloggers, but it's also clear that certain principles will make a blogger or journalist more likely to achieve high credibility. Transparency is key but isn't enough. Credibility also depends on a relationship of trust that is cultivated between the media organization or blog and the people it aims to serve. (See Session 3 and Bill Mitchell's paper in Appendix A2) Many media organizations now see blogging – or the use of some form of participatory citizens’ media – as a way to build loyalty, trust, and preserve credibility. They are still experimenting with ways to do that. Examples include: *Relationships between local newspapers and local blogger communities One example is the close relationship between the Greensboro News & Record and community blogging site, "Greensboro 101" (See Session 1) *News organizations such as MSNBC are starting their own blogs within their own websites, some written by their own journalists and some by guest bloggers. (See sessions 3 and 4) *Some news organizations such as Minnesota Public Radio are working to build databases and communication systems in order to tap the expertise of audience members who do not blog, but who would like to help with stories. New experiments in citizens' journalism are emerging. They include: * Wikinews: an all-volunteer, distributed effort to build a new site. (See Session 7) * Dan Gillmor's grassroots journalism project: an effort – still under development – to harness the best of citizens' efforts with quality editing and reporting by experienced journalists. (See Session 7) *Jeff Jarvis' hyper-local citizens' media project: a news project that uses weblogs to target very specific local niche audiences. (See Session 4) Strengthening the public discourse, and strengthening democracy, is indeed the common ground shared by professional journalists, bloggers, wikipedians and others involved in the creation of grassroots media. The conference established two important things: 1) that this common ground does indeed exist, and 2) that all are eager to work together. The goal is to create a better society and better means of giving citizens both the information they need and the forums of discourse required to hold their leaders truly accountable. Now we need to figure out how to achieve that goal. This conference has helped point us in the right direction, but the journey has only just begun. ''Rick Kaplan of MSNBC then took a few minutes to describe how blogging has become an integral part of what MSNBC does. MSNBC has staked its future on blogging and participatory media: it puts bloggers on air regularly, and the anchors of all new shows must have a blog. he says that there is a direct correlation between audience growth for a particular show and the amount of attention that the people involved with the show give to their blogs.'' maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BJay%20Rosen%5D%5D Profile: http://www.poynter.org/profile/profile.asp?user=102644 http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/01/21/berk_essy.html * Bloggers vs. journalists is over. I don’t think anyone will mourn its passing. * The question now isn’t whether blogs can be journalism. They can be, sometimes. It isn’t whether bloggers "are" journalists. They apparently are, sometimes. We have to ask different questions now because events have moved the story forward. *For this is an exciting time in journalism. Part of the reason is the extension of "the press" to the people we have traditionally called the public. *They all sense it, what Tom Curley, the man who runs the Associated Press, called "a huge shift in the ‘balance of power’ in our world, from the content providers to the content consumers." If there is such a shift (and Curley didn’t seem to be kidding) it means that professional journalism is no longer sovereign over territory it once easily controlled. Not sovereign doesn’t mean you go away. It means your influence isn’t singular anymore. (noe link to curely's speech is: http://journalist.org/2004conference/archives/000079.php * When 90 percent of the op-ed style writing was done on actual op-ed pages, editorial page editors had sovereignty over that region of public dialogue. With blogging and the online space generally, that rule is gone. Opinion in reaction to the news can come from anywhere, and the bloggers are frequently better at it than the sleepy op-ed page ever was. Newspaper op-ed pages can still have influence; they can still be great. But they are not sovereign in their domain, and so their ideas, which never anticipated that, are under great pressure. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5Barticle%20outline%5D%5D I Intro II What is a blog III Blogging vs. journalism debate IV Blogging as journalism tool V Road ahead for Philippine bloggers and mainstream media maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#ConnieVeneracion Top RP blogger (Technorati blog search Philippines - based on number of blogs linking to Sassy Lawyer. ) Made transition to print as columnist of Manila Standard Today 1. ''Do you agree with his statement?'' Yes, in essence, I agree. But the validity of his observation has to be based on a set of “givens”. First, I have to posit that a journalist is not necessarily a reporter who goes out to experience an event first hand, record the details and write them down in the form of a cohesive report. I agree with the statement if we define a journalist as someone who documents events based on actual experience or as someone who weaves various reports together and makes an analysis based on them. That would be in consonance with the practice of calling editorial writers and op-ed columnists journalists despite the fact that they do not go out to gather and write the news the way reporters do. Second, a journalist is not necessarily a person who is employed in the news industry. In other words, my agreement with the statement is based on a “given” that a journalist is defined by the nature of the work he does rather than his affiliation with the news industry. ''Do you see yourself as journalists in the mold of reporters producing original news content or more of opinion writers who comment on news items?'' No, I do not see myself as journalists in the mold of reporters producing original news content. In the first place, it isn’t what I want to do nor what I was trained for. Personally, my blog is about my opinions. Opinions not in the context of mere reactions to certain news reports but more of reading between the lines. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, really. You take, say, three different and seemingly unrelated news items and try to see whether they are not in fact related. However, I do have blog entries that are more in the nature of research. Those I do not consider as mere opinions because writing them did involve investigative research. Still, they are not news in the same way as front page news. They would be more like feature stories. http://houseonahill.net/index.php/blog/permalink/the-meralco-saga-part-1/ http://houseonahill.net/index.php/blog/permalink/the-meralco-saga-part-2/ Finally, there is this animal called real-time blogging. For instance, I watched that marathon session on Congress overnight, at least most of it, and I was blogging about the debates in real time. Was that reporting? Well, no, because my opinions were right there along with the facts. And I could write in that manner precisely because I know that I am posting an entry in my blog rather than submitting a report for publication in a newspaper. 2. I think this is a dangerous precedent. In my experience as a lawyer, whenever I interviewed witnesses to draft their sworn statements, it was quite common for them to relay facts and their opinions all in the same breath. In short, many cannot distinguish between the two. In the course of an interview, the witness has to be “steered” back to track by reminding him to stick to what he actually saw and heard, and never mind his conclusions. I suppose that journalism necessarily became a specialized field because it takes the proper training to prepare a layman for the chore of limiting reports to what he saw and heard, when and how. Of course, the way news reports get editorialized these days, the “specialization” angle may not mean all that much anymore. 3. The difference or “sameness” of blogging and journalism can be viewed from many perspectives. From the writer’s intention, for instance, or from the effect on the readers or even society as a whole. I always like to use Anne Frank as an example. Or even Salam Pax, for that matter. They were both keeping diaries—Anne Frank, by writing in her book; Salam Pax, by publishing in his blog. They were both merely recording events in their everyday lives along with their feelings and observations. They didn’t intend to report, apparently. But what is the effect of their diaries? They became a sort of documentation on what transpired during two important (infamous) periods in human history. So, to say that “While some blogging is journalism, much of it isn't and doesn't aim to be” might not be as relevant as we like to think. They may serve different functions now but in fifty years, we don’t know whose words will be remembered or will be given more credence. We should also note that history books are based on official documents as well as on personal journals of people who lived during a certain a period. ''Do you see this happening in the Philippines or will blogging still be in the fringes of that media ecosystem because of the low Internet penetration in the country?'' There is a presumption here that what are published in blogs are not discussed beyond the sector of society that has internet access. We do not know this for sure. While blog readers are limited to those with internet access, each one of these readers has family, neighbors, colleagues, friends and acquaintances, and we do not really know whether they discuss with these people what they read in blogs. Names of bloggers or the URL of blogs may not be mentioned but issues raised and discussed in blog entries and discussed extensively in comment threads may be remembered and introduced in formal and informal forums outside the internet. 4. Yes, I agree with him although I should add that the ensuing ineffectiveness of many editorial pages also has a lot to do with stale styles of writing and the (wrong) choice of people writing opinions. 5. I agree in part. We are seeing it in the Philippines, aren’t we? How many media personalities started their “personal” blogs this year alone? Of course, these may not be media-sponsored but really more of their personal efforts. Yet, we do not see their employers dissuading them, do we? In my observation, that is an acceptance of the effectivity of blogging as a medium to kind of recapture the audience that media once held exclusively. I do not agree with the observation that these efforts “scarcely register” though. Filipinos are generally a star struck people. They will pore over anything that has the name of someone they see on TV or hear over the radio. 6. I disagree. At least, that isn’t true in the Philippines. Generally, media still does not accept blogs as an information/opinion medium. In fact, media tends to ignore bloggers as though we don’t exist. In those few instances when our existence was acknowledged… Oh, okay, some columnists (in online versions off newspapers) quote from blogs but conveniently forget to create a hyperlink to the page where the quote came from. That’s a “sin” no blogger worth his salt commits. It’s really a question of pointing to the source to give readers a chance to see the quoted portion in its original context. Even college students are required to use end notes and foot notes for sources. With regard to Gloriagate, specifically, well, I had been reading the news all throughout and blogging and I still saw all those editorialized news reports. TV coverage was just as bad as before. 7. I think I should abstain from answering this question. Baka maging self-serving. 8. “Good” is a relative term. Again, I go back to the star struck culture. Some blogs become popular not necessarily because they have “substance” but because they have popular themes. Blogs on reality TV shows and teleseryes are widely read in the Philippines. 9. Blogs are already part of the “reading diet” of many Filipinos. Perhaps, not that numerous yet considering the low density of internet access. ''Do you see Pinoy blogs becoming as influential to society as their counterparts in the US are?'' You know, I think this is an overstatement. True that the American blogging community was responsible for the resignation of one media guy. True that they were largely responsible for the dissemination of the Iraq videos and photos. They may have influenced certain events but, see, I define “influential to society” as something with deeper and more long-term effects. Like affecting a mindset. Or affecting perceptions of traditional institutions. And I don’t think that the American blogging community has done that. Yet. As to whether Pinoy blogs can be influential to society… as a medium, I don’t know. ----------- follow up Connie, Sorry for the ma'am stuff, it's a habit - I always call news sources ma'am and sir. One of the things I will be tackling in the article is the prospect of earning money through blog ads to support the operation let's say of an independent publisher. 1.) Do you think it is now feasible for an Independent Pinoy publisher to put up a blog publication and earn enough money to support the operation through ads? 2.) You now use a dedicated server for your sites because of the amount of traffic you have. A dedicated server is expensive - do you earn enough to cover this? Do you earn from blogging? 3.) Tech columnist Dan Gilmor says that one of the things that attracted him to blogging was the feedback loop and how his readers improve his columns because of the insight they share. He even went as far as saying that the readers (as a collective) know more than he does. Do you have a similar experience? maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#EdwinLacierda San Juan Gossip Mills Outlet http://www.lacierda.blogspot.com/ Currently teaching Constitutional Law at the FEU Institute of Law and a guest lecturer at the De La Salle University teaching "Freedom and Regulation in Cyberspace" in the Graduate Program of the Department of Communication. 1. To the extent that bloggers have the necessary resources to carry out reporting and what would otherwise be the province of journalism, the answer is yes. In the absence of those resources, a blogger would probably be more comfortable being an opinion writer and rely on the broadsheets for the newsfeed. An interesting development on this point, while not necessarily tangent to the question, is Yahoo's announced foray to news reporting. It has decided no longer to just get news from the broadsheets but I understand that it is going to venture into news reporting as well. This, it can do because it has vast resources. 2. Yes, I do. But you must remember, it is not blogging per se that shattered that perception. It is the fact that the internet was such a medium that tremendously liberalized the spread of information that blogging, as a consequence, just naturally rode on. Since the internet had no editoral controls or one main filter to speak of, blogging permitted the licentious spread, if you will, of personal journals and information. While the mainstream media can still define what is newsworthy, the reactions of bloggers on certain news items ultimately define what newsworthy is. That is the reason why Inquirer or the New York Times rates their most read online article. Why else do you do that if you want to know what were the most newsworthy items in the paper? 3. Since blogging is a necessary adjunct to the internet use, blogging will be confined to availability of internet access. But that augurs well for a possible explosion of blogging. The spread of the Internet is inevitable. Blogging will rise as costs and access as barriers to entry will descend. To that extent, the rise of multiple telcos in the country will enhance a competitive spirit to bring the costs of internet access down. We are now seeing that. Even the cost of purchasing a PC has gone down considerably as compared to 5 years ago. That said, I think we will know that blogging has arrived if and when (1) the public will not solely rely on the editorial opinion of the broadsheets or mainstream media; or (2) the opinion writers themselves decide to venture on the blogosphere realizing that there is an untapped audience there who would rather comment anonymously than bother sending a comment to the newspapers; (3) when the mainstream media or the broadsheets would quote from the bloggers, either for their opinions or their comments. Then, you will realize that blogging is beginning to have an effect on the media ecology as Marshal McLuhan puts it. 4. Yes, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king. The editorial board is no longer the one-eyed king. It is the bloggers. 5. There is a new paradigm in the media ecosystem. Maybe, it is not yet felt but if they bother taking a look at Technorati's numbers of bloggers arising on a per day-per hour basis, they might want to reshape their thinking. 6. This has happened in the States during Rathergate. Now, journalists need to be more accurate in their reporting because access to information is at your fingertips. Here in this country, giving comments in the blogs might still be far and few between but look at the hits that a blog gets and you will see that the public do read the blogs. It is an alternative medium that runs parallel to mainstream media. I do not think that the community conversation affected MSM's coverage of the Gloriagate because I think they were mostly anti-GMA already. The blogs, I think, were an affirmation of the same belief of the culpability of GMA. I made an article on my blog regarding the absence of pro-GMA bloggers and according to John Nery of Newsstand, the government took up the challenge and the administration set up its own site, rationalsphere.blogspot.com to counter all the anti-GMA noise. If anything at all, the beginnings of the blogs as a medium of influence is affecting even the decision makers in government. 7. When the Manchus from Mongolia invaded China and toppled the Tang dynasty (I think), they were so awed by the Chinese culture that they were eventually swallowed by it and adopted Chinese traditions and protocols. Perceptively, there does not seem to be any difference between opinion writers and bloggers but I think from among the mainstream media, there may arise what may be called, pardon my French, as "penis envy". Sassy Lawyer is a trained lawyer but not a journalist. It is the MSM practitioner that has to live up to the fact that yes, the possibility of hiring bloggers to improve their current staff. Bloggers, on the other hand, must be cautioned not to act like the Manchus, when they are already part of the MSM and not to forget their plebeian roots, as it were. 8.Yes, but however one puts it, Darwininian evolution is still at play even in the blogosphere. It is the survival of the best written blogs. And blogs are patronized not only because of the style of prose that may appeal to the readers but also, the originality of thought, the incisiveness of the opinion or analysis, the promotion of novel ideas and the invitation to the public to comment on the blogs. 9.I am a blogger and I think I have a jaundiced view of the bright prospects of Philippine blogging. It will become a staple reading diet because it is free, it is widespread and you can damn the government to hell while remaining anonymous and safely ensconced in your office cubicle. The blogs are as much an avenue for brave souls as much as it is a refuge for cowards. That is the beauty of comment blogging. Expressing yourself without disclosing who you are. maxlimpag 2006-01-10 http://maxlimpag.objectis.net/article/#%5B%5BDraft%20article%5D%5D WEAK LEAD - MUST REVISE FOLLOW UP E-MAIL TO MANOLO REWRITE LEAD (draft deleted) Manuel L. Quezon III (www.quezon.ph) provided a live coverage of the House proceedings in his blog. It isn't your regular news coverage. Consider the following entries: “1:358… Suspension going on. Very interesting huddles… Speaker making emphatic gestures. If I were opposition congressmen, I’d do one of two things: move to adjourn (non-debatable) or call the admin’s bluff and proclaim, “we lack the numbers, but you do. so kill it now. the rallies won’t stop. the trouble won’t stop...” Further on, Quezon wrote: “2:56 Villafuerte beginning to wilt under the machine-gun style rapid fire delivery of Cayetano… Abante: Yes. (fire, brimstone, threatens damnation on pro-impeachment) (ANC TV coverage cut off!!!!!!!!!) Whee Channel 7 is on…” Quezon started his coverage in the afternoon until he collapsed out of sheer exhaustion by 4:00 a.m. the next day. In her blog, the Phillippines top blogger Connie Veneracion (www.houseonahill.net), more known in the web as the Sassy Lawyer, provided analysis and opinion on aspects of the proceedings while it was going on. “The freedom of the press,” journalist AJ Liebling once said, “is guaranteed only to those who own one.” With weblogs, anyone can own his or her own press. The weblog has gone far since its inception as a tool for people to maintain online journals. A blog, according to author Rebecca Blood “is a frequently updated Web site with posts arranged in reverse chronological order, so new entries are always on top.” It is this reverse chronological format, Blood says, that differentiates a blog from a web page. The format eschews the usual arrangement of news articles in a news website – hierarchical based on the news organization's news valuation. But what's so revolutionary about blogging? Depending on who you ask, 2003 or 2004 is described as the year of blogs. Bloggers in the United States have become a media force. Bloggers were behind Rathergate, the scandal involving Dan Rather and CBS' report on President Bush's military service. Bloggers proved that the report was based on forged documents – damaging the network's and Rather's reputations as well as causing the dismissal of key executives. This month, CBS launched Public Eye – a weblog where journalists who make decisions at the network will be “asked to explain and answer questions about those decisions in a public forum.” In the Philippines, it was the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism blog that kept the issue on the alleged wiretapped conversations of former election official Virgilio Garcillano alive. The PCIJ blog hosted files of the purported wiretapped audio recordings. Blogs exploded into the mainstream when tools and services for its easy creation became widely available. The blog, Blood said, is the easiest to use Web publishing tool that it has become the “default choice for personal Web publishing to such a degree that the two ideas are conjoined.” Before its use became widespread, mainstream journalists used to dismiss blogging as a tool for amateurs. Now, many media outlets are putting out both staff-written or reader-written blogs. The journalism vs. blogging issue, according to New York University professor Jay Rosen, is over. “The question now isn’t whether blogs can be journalism. They can be, sometimes. It isn’t whether bloggers "are" journalists. They apparently are, sometimes. We have to ask different questions now because events have moved the story forward,” Rosen said in a paper he wrote for a blogging conference in Harvard University early this year. Veneracion says bloggers can be considered journalists if you define journalists by the nature of the work and not limit it to affiliation with the news industry. Kapuso vs. Kapamilya in the b maxlimpag 2006-01-10