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Saturday, February 16, 2002
News is cubed 
Constructive kvetching
| | Unlike Eugene, Chapel Hill, Madison, Ann Arbor and other great college towns, Santa Barbara suffers the absence of a full-time local public radio station — one that features a full schedule of NPR, PRI and local news and public affairs programs — and not just a few NPR news features sandwiched amidst long blocks of classical and jazz music. |
| | I think we have an opportunity to change that (especially since we already have plenty of local classical and jazz stations), so I just wrote it up, over in Skywave. |
Journals of Applied Journalism
| | In Threads of a Dilemma, Tom urges the "dying industrialists" of BigJo journalism toward "that elusive market model for the hybrid information commodity." He's using AND logic here, not OR. I like that. |
| | But we shouldn't lose sight of Deborah's original point, which is that too much of what we call authoritative in fact is quite full of shit. |
| | That's what we miss in the dichotomy Tom outlines here: |
| | They are thinking about different modes of editorial production - one loose, baggy, shitstormy, powerful, open to insight and intuition; the other surgically clean, picked over by "professional" standards, subject to criteria of verification and considerations of legality. The question is not which is better, but whether they are compatible. |
| | This describes the second alternative as an ideal. Again, a great deal of ordinary print and broadcast journalism is no less tendentious, ill-considered, poorly informed and outright wrong than the averge blog. It's just decked out in a suit of ink and an increasingly anachronistic hauteur. |
Where do you want to read today?
| | In time most weblogs will probably disappear. Like Tamagotchis, many are just techie toys that confer some short-term prestige but require lots of care and feeding over the long run. Weblogs that aren't updated every day quickly lose their audiences; keeping your blog fresh and relevant takes a lot of work. (Trust me on this one -- I ran a weblog from 1999 to 2000 but discontinued it when I realized I was spending hours every day working on the thing.) |
| | But within specific niches, some weblogs will continue to attract large, highly focused audiences, thanks to the thoroughness of their coverage or the strong personalities of their authors. That means your morning reading may soon include a few weblogs along with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal -- if it doesn't already. |
| | Up to several thousand readers a day stop by the blog you're reading right now. Are they in a niche? It insults them even to raise the question. Also to call them an "audience." Do books and magazines have audiences? No, they have readers. |
| | Consider the implications. |
And the Subaru lives to crap out some other day
| | Drove back in town last night just in time to go out and hear Diane Reeves sing in front of a terrific band and the Santa Barbara Symphony. She has an amazing voice and a sweet style, but I was hoping she'd be more of an entertainer. But her personality is too self-effacing for that. Still, a great show. |
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