George Bernard Shaw died too early to enjoy the fruits of 24-hour TV news channels, but his famous condemnation of newspaper journalism would apply: "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." Tonight's election coverage is sure to provide plenty of fresh examples.
A new report from polling firm Zogby International has troubling signals for conventional media of all types:
70% of Americans think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities.
67% think traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.
32% said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information.
22% said newspapers are the most trusted.
21% said television is the most trusted.
15% said radio is the most trusted.
Mark Potts runs through the details of Philly.com's reborn commenting system, which takes a good-enough approach to the complex problem of encouraging conversation in a world where an unfortunate percentage of us are idiots. As I've said previously, pseudonymity is a reasonable Middle Way.
I'm increasingly concerned that print editors are either not evolving the print product, or evolving it in the wrong direction -- aping the Internet, which is ultimately a losing game. In trying to pull my thoughts together I assembled this little chart. Additions and comments would be appreciated.
If you've been shaking your head about those Pakistanis and other foreign powers that have been censoring net access, don't get too comfortable.
I was looking over the Miami Herald's snazzy new Drupal-powered Miami.com website and was struck (hard NOT to be struck) by the brand-repositioning links at the top of the homepage:
Old brands are hard to reshape. Sometimes you do need to use a cannon to kill a mosquito.
Robert Putnam's theories about the formation of social capital are foundational to much of what I've been focusing on for the last several years, especially the 2005 launch of BlufftonToday.com. Blogging for the Readership Institute at Northwestern University, Rich Gordon describes troubling new findings in Putnam's latest research, and declares:
