Recalled from last summer just as resolutions are tested.
NY Times: The Fat Epidemic: He Says It’s an Illusion.
Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University, argues that contrary to popular opinion, national data do not show Americans growing uniformly fatter.
Instead, he says, the statistics demonstrate clearly that while the very fat are getting fatter, thinner people have remained pretty much the same.
Learning Moveable Type is a good, self-paced site on the details of using Moveable Type with lots of tutorials ranging from controlling spam to converting to PHP. Today the blog is 1-year-old.
Pew memo released today: “By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture.”
Highlights:
Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004
6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators
But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is
Dan Gillmor’s decision last month to leave the San Jose Mercury News to work on a citizens-journalism project and the increasing roll of blogs (ABC News: People of the Year: Bloggers — Internet Phenomenon Provides Unique Insight Into People’s Thoughts)
in the news media has many writing about the evolving roll of “traditional” or “mainstream” media. Even today’s Opus was about blogs.
Steve Outing: What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers says news organizations need to recognize that the news cycle is shorter and that publishing a story is just the beginning of “news as conversation”, and not the end as too many organizations follow. Outing notes that bloggers may becoming more traditional as they deal with business plans and growing staffs.
A few days later, Outing wrote What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists advocating the role of the editor (as a second set of eyes), the value of original reporting, the evolving issue of blogger ethics, accuracy and tight headline writing. Outing also raises a risk solo journalists face of the costs of defending themselves from libel.
Jay Rosen writing in PressThink has Top Ten Ideas for 2004. He’s still publishing details of the 10, but “The Legacy Media”, “He said, she said, we said“, Open Source Journalism, or “My readers know more than I do“, and “News turns from a lecture to a conversation” gives strong encouragement for citizen journalists.
Philip Meyer wrote in “Saving Journalism” Columbia Journalism Review that the business model of newspapers has been irreversibly changed.
If we are to preserve journalism and its social-service functions, maybe we would be wise not to focus too much on traditional media. The death spiral might be irreversible. We should look for ways to keep the spirit and tradition of socially responsible journalism alive until it finds a home in some new media form whose nature we can only guess at today.
He suggests a foundation-supported, nonprofit model, such as NPR.
The financial pain traditional media feels grows. (ClickZ — Study: Craigslist Costs Bay Area Newspapers $50M/Year). I haven’t seen any recent estimates on revenue newspapers are losing to eBay, online car-buying sites, job posting sites, etc.
Jeff Jarvis in BuzzMachine touches on the various suggestions of how the citizen media can make money including vertical search, content distribution, hosting.
The bottom line to all this is: You can see why I’m not a VC. But that’s why I enjoy this discussion happening in public, for we all get to see the thought process — the betting process — VCs and entrepreneurs must go through (and I hope more join in).
There’s no question that there are big, society-changing things here and that people will make and lose big money on their bets. But which bets will win? Well, your guess is as good as mine. So guess, please….
Gillmor has a new blog about citizen journalism. Gillmor’s trigger for leaving was his book, published in the second half of 2004 We the Media declaration>We the Media, which will reports on the citizens media.
NY Times: Boston Mayor Wants Vehicles, Not Cans, in Parking Spaces. Talk about taking on a no-win issue. In Boston, St. Louis and elsewhere, the rule is if you shovel out the space it’s yours until the snow melts. I’ve seen people use traffic cones, milk jugs and lawn chairs to preserve those spots.
Business First of Louisville: Workers in their 40s look for stability, good benefits, challenges — and in that order
The Business Journal of Portland: Scrap-metal thieves, motivated by quick cash, plague businesses
St. Louis Business Journal: Edward Jones’ agreement expected to change industry
Current: “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson
Finished:
“Knoppix Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools by Kyle Rankin.
“The Burglar in the Library” by Lawrence Block.
“State of Fear” by Michael Crichton. Crichton includes a bibliography with many of his novels, which increases the credibility of his position. It tells readers: “Go ahead, check it out for yourself. See if I’m right.”
Audio Books
Current: “A short history of nearly everything” by Bill Bryson
Finished: “There must be a pony in here somewhere: the AOL Time Warner debacle and the quest for a digital future” by Kara Swisher.
1. Bloggers cover political conventions (Multiple related entries)
2. Blogs post exit polls
3. Sites create great presidential campaign interactives (Specifically: Great presidential candidate selectors and The best campaign interactives
4. Few newspaper readers visit papers’ sites
5. NYTimes.com launches blog-like features
(Also see this entry in which Times reporter Andrew Revkin discusses his blog-like diary.)
6. California paper undertakes ambitious participatory journalism project
7. Blogs still rare, but foster community
8. Could Google News be sued for libel?
9. CNN.com: More than 6 million paid video subscribers
10. NakedNews, porn goes wireless
Working Smart: How to Sell Your Boss.
As the president of a company, I spend a good deal of time listening to proposals. Those doing the pitching usually need my approval to proceed with their project. Frankly, I never cease to be amazed at how poorly most people do in this kind of situation.
Sometimes it seems it’s the only way to get things done. We call it multi-tasking; scientists call it cognitive overload. It’s become a way of life at the office and at home, but the question is whether in the end we benefit. Good article about this from Seattle Times. Interesting discussion at Slashdot.
Reading email or surfing sites is one common way people multitask. In Dec. 30 NY Times “Internet Use Said to Cut Into TV Viewing and Socializing” it says a current study shows “an hour of time spent using the Internet reduces face-to-face contact with friends, co-workers and family by 23.5 minutes, lowers the amount of time spent watching television by 10 minutes and shortens sleep by 8.5 minutes.” Article repeats something I’d read recently that younger people use instant forms of online communication and many only use email to communicate with older folks, like their parents.