June 30, 2003

A Cluetrain Moment?

Interesting response here to the June 22 New York Times story about corporate executives and blogging (which I discussed here).

Suckers in Portland

Portland, Oregon, is one of those cities that seems to fall for every liberal big-government central-planning idea that comes down the pike. "Urban growth boundaries," and expensive mass transit, and such. Readers of this blog and my newspaper columns in recent years know I'm basically appalled whenever Nashville city officials and business leaders talk about Portland in glowing terms and act like they want to copy its every move. Urban growth boundaries, for example - they just drive up the cost of housing by limiting the supply. And Portland's high-cost approach to mass transit - basically banning road construction and lane-widening and pouring billions into trains that, statistically speaking, virtually nobody rides - results merely in increased highway congestion. Portland is located in paradise, but the liberals are going to wreck it.

Portland blogger Jack Bogdanski says the local voters who voted to approve a referendum creating a local income tax for education (you knew that was coming!) were suckers - the city that said it was strapped and needed the bucks for education is now about to hand a local developer some $48.3 million, or as much as $71.9 million, in subsidies to help him build a bunch of new office buildings. Bogdanski has some tart words for all those Portland soccer moms 'who marched in the streets to save the schools. The city that just held you up for a big income tax increase now has $48.3 million lying around to [subsidize the developer's project]. ... These are the same politicians who are strutting up and down like peacocks croaking, 'Not a penny! Not a penny of public money for the baseball stadium!' Oh, yeah, they're such stalwart guardians of public funds. They would never - never! - give it away to private parties in the disguise of economic development."

Barnum was right. And a lot of them live in Portland.

June 25, 2003

The "Continuous Media Web"

Australian computer science researchers are developing tools to allow Internet users to surf rich media content as if it was a series of web pages. Dr Silvia Pfeiffer of the Mathematical and Information Science arm of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia calls it the Continuous Media Web. Says Pfeiffer: "It's long been recognised that, while we can easily surf from text page to text page, when we want to experience rich content like video and audio we have to jump out to a separate application - and then all we get is a slower, jumpier version of linear TV or radio. Instead of just selecting a file and viewing it, now surfers can activate links while viewing video and audio files."

This is going to give a boost to video-blogging - and make it a lot easier for the blogosphere to watchdog the broadcast media.

June 24, 2003

"An Enduring Desire... to Be Informed"

Here's an interesting job listing for "Journalism trainers, Baghdad, Iraq." It's from the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting.

IWPR is seeking journalism trainers for work in Iraq to assist in our project to strengthen the capacity of Iraqi media and individual journalists to cover practical humanitarian issues. Specifically, IWPR trainers in Iraq will lead intensive personalised training through a combination of workshop (knowledge-based) training and practical on-the-job (skills-based) instruction and mentoring.

Workshop training cycles will lead participants through a significant curriculum of basic and specialist training modules (from fundamentals of journalism, to humanitarian, peace and human rights reporting) to provide grounding in the core tenets of fact-based reporting. As part of the project, a training manual in Arabic and Kurdish will be produced to support the training process, and IWPR trainers will play a significant role in its development. Skills-based training will drive the lessons home through intensive editorial support and feedback in the process of developing, reporting, writing and editing real-time journalism as part of IWPR's ten-point reporting/training dynamic. The ideal candidate will have experience in international journalism, experience as an international journalism trainer and knowledge of Arabic or Kurdish language, though candidates with two of these three attributes may be considered. Shorter- and longer-term contracts are available, but the minimum in-country stay will be three months. Remuneration commensurate with experience.

To apply send a brief CV to Training Coordinator Andrew Stroehlein: andrew@iwpr.net Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

This IWPR report from IWPR executive director Anthony Borden says Iraqi media is in chaos and "the United States risks losing a major opportunity to forge an open media in the Middle East."

The central problem is a conceptual one: the US administration has not firmly separated its policies for media from its agenda for public diplomacy (otherwise known among hacks as spin).

Both are important objectives - the occupying authority has a responsibility to communicate with the population to allay fears, provide basic information and explain the purpose and potential of its intervention. But independent and reliable reporting is entirely different and must be structurally separate, which is not the case in Baghdad. In particular, the Iraqi Media Network, the authority media team, has been tasked both with broadcasting and with regulatory authority, with producing media and with providing information for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Compounding the problem, bitter rivalry between the US State Department and Department of Defence have led to an absence of strategy, bad hiring practises and purchasing, and debilitating internal dispute. TV programming, in particular, has been poor. As a result, the IMN television news neither provides clear and basic information to the population, nor serves as the flagship fresh face of a new and democratic Iraq.

It will not be easy to overcome years of censorship and brutal repression of dissent. Yet Iraqis are confronting this huge challenge with considerable energy and initiative. The population has a whole, highly educated, has shown an enduring desire, even through the stultifying decades of Ba'athist rule, to be informed. The potential for a responsible press, and sophisticated audience, is evident - a potential revolution in open media for the regional as whole. This only makes the loss of such an opportunity all the more disappointing. The information chaos in Iraqi undermines both Iraq's interests, and America's, and urgent steps to chart a fresh course for a clear new democratic media voice in the region must not be missed.

UPDATE: IWPR is looking for help in Kabul, Afghanistan, too.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis has some related thoughts about Iraqi media and blogs.

Blogging Made Easier?

As most everyone knows, blogs are hot and Instant Messaging is fast replacing email as the online communications tool of the younger generation. Now, two University of Maryland students have launched a blogging tool that combines blogging with Instant Messaging by allowing users to update their blogs via IM. It's called MindSay. Here is the press release. Interesting concept. I suspect, however, that the more robust blogging tools like Blogger and Movable Type will incorporate an IM updating tool soon. If not, they should.

June 23, 2003

The Corporate World, The Internet and the Blogosphere

Two interesting stories in back-to-back editions of the New York Times. The first, published yesterday, looks at how corporate executives are increasingly tiptoeing into blogging – and the risks and rewards of doing so.

The second story, published today, says the speed with which critical comments and positive reviews spread online is drawing more scrutiny from both the business world and academia.

Regarding corporate executives blogging, the Times says...

For companies and executives, blogs provide a way to talk informally to customers, vendors and employees. But the so-called blogosphere can also be a minefield. Saying the wrong thing or revealing trade secrets could come back to haunt a company. And public companies need to worry about disclosure rules.

Meanwhile, today's story looks at how "word-of-mouse" communications can impact a company's reputation for better or worse.

Although it is difficult to quantify how much online reviews affect sales of particular products, the Internet's ability to quickly tarnish or gild reputations has interested businesses for many years. Academic interest in the field has grown recently, spurred by the availability of more data as the Internet ages and by recognition of the importance of understanding the dynamics of online reputations.

Given how blogs affect Google searches, corporate execubloggers may soon be joining the blogosphere in droves, seeking to counteract negative word-of-mouse and enhance positive mentions online.

June 20, 2003

Al Just Doesn't Get It

Kevin McCullough explains why Al Gore's Liberal News Network is doomed to fail. Says McCullough: See, despite all the efforts of Mr. Gore working behind the scenes with his liberal Hollywood friends - and despite all of their yammering about how unfair it is that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, and Dennis Prager are on the air - the leading lefties still don't get the fact that they indeed are behind the curve when it comes to "leading the pack" in getting an ideological message out. They still believe that the biggest way to even the score is to knock Bill O'Reilly off the air. What they don't understand is just how "old" traditional media is - even the 24 hour news channel. ... While limousine liberals are trying to get a 24 hour news network funded (which they had for the '80s and '90s ... it was called CNN) ? conservatives are on to the next cultural wave: weblogs.

Ideally, from my perspective, taxes would be cut down past the government-optimal point and government revenue would then continue to fall. My own optimal point is different from the government's; I don't want to maximize government revenue, I want to maximize my freedom and quality of life. I believe that eliminating many functions of government would benefit me greatly, and so my optimal tax rate is lower than the Laffer optimal rate.

In a sense, a tax rate below Laffer's optimal is "benignly sub-optimal", since the lesser government revenue isn't due to harm inflicted on the economy (and should actually benefit the economy as a whole). "Lost" government revenue that's caused by a tax rate that's too high, however actually reflects a real economic loss.

June 16, 2003

Blogs as Corporate Marketing Tools?

The Boston Globe's Hiawatha Bray says corporate America is increasingly using the weblog format as an internal information tool, allowing CEOs to better understand what their employees are thinking about, and as an external marketing tool. Bray:

It's a clever way to give Internet companies a human face. But is it really blogging? Sure, the corporate weblogs use the same technologies, but their hearts are not really in it. The best blogs don't just deliver authoritative information; they resonate with the personalities of their creators. How can any commercial or government agency match that?

June 11, 2003

"Open-Source Media"

Business Week is running a five-part special report on "the social web" with stories on the growing integration of the Internet into people's daily lives, the latest in online matchmaking, blogging, the battle against spam, and Google. The story about blogging - titled The wild world of "open-source media" - is a very good primer on the blogosphere and how it contributes to the global dialog. Not to be missed.

Also don't miss Glenn Reynolds' column on the revolution in media economics, and how the dynamics of what economists call "contestable markets" may encourage Big Journalism to be more responsible and less biased. We can hope.

Was Tennessee's Tax Revolt Nuked in Oak Ridge?

Frank Cagle explains why the movement to enact an effective tax-and-spending limitation in Tennessee isn't off to a rip-roaring start. The movement suffered a setback in Oak Ridge, "an unlikely place to launch an anti-government and lower taxes movement," says Cagle.

"It's a government town. The people of Oak Ridge have always supported higher taxes for education. It has a world-class school system to go with one of the highest property tax rates in the state. Some of the best organized and some of the most vigorous public debates for a state income tax have been in Oak Ridge."

The small-government conservatives around the state are continuing to fight proposed property tax increases in a half dozen counties. A group called the Tennessee Tax Revolt is organizing e-mails and faxes to county commissioners considering tax increases. There is legislation, yet to be pushed, that would make it harder for the General Assembly to raise taxes. The movement to limit government spending and thus lower taxes will continue. But, if the movement is to have success, it has to learn how politics work.

Picking battles. Learning to compromise. Taking what you can get when you can get it. Winning short-term goals. The status quo has been built up over decades.

Revolutions scare people.

I spoke at the Crossville conference Cagle mentions - a conference that aimed to launch a statewide movement to enact a Taxpayers Bill of Rights similar to the one in Colorado, where citizens must approve tax increases by referendum and government revenues that exceed a cap are returned via tax cuts or rebates.

At the Crossville conference, I delivered a speech based on this white paper, explaining the history of tax-and-spending limitation laws in general and the Colorado Taxpayers Bill of Rights specifically, and showing how Tennessee's budget problems over the last few years were the result of over-spending, not under-taxing. Indeed, if the state had lived with its current constitutional cap on spending growth over the past decade, instead of exceeding it by $1.096 billion during the eight years of the Sundquist administration, there would have been no budget crisis. But that constitutional cap has a loophole that governors and legislators have exploited for years, and all that extra spending has proven to be unsustainable during the economic downturn. Laws like the Taxpayers Bill of Rights prevent profligate spending during the boom years that is unsustainable over the long term - and that reduces the pressure for tax increases and imposition of new taxes.

I left the Crossville conference with high hopes and, indeed, legislation to create a Colorado-style Taxpayers Bill of Rights has been filed in the Tennessee General Assembly, though no effort has been made to push it forward in the legislative process.

I agree with Cagle that the movement is not moving along well at all. And that's a shame. Momentum from last year's defeat of the income tax - and subsequent defeat or retirement of several pro-income tax legislators, replaced by anti-tax conservatives - has been squandered, and a chance to enact a workable tax-and-spending limitation or at least put it on the ballot for voters to approve or reject, has been wasted. That's sad, because the political climate is right for it. After four years of being harangued for higher taxes and told it was their fault the government could not afford its spending binge, Tennessee elected a new governor who has proven that the state can, it turns out, balance its budget without resorting to tax increases or gimmicks, by applying smart fiscal management and spending restraint. The time to codify that approach in the state constitution is now. But the movement is blowing it.

Why? Partly tactics, strategy and political naivete. And partly because some in the movement have a go-for-broke, all-or-nothing mentality - they want the world's toughest tax-and-spending limit and aren't willing to work incrementally and, as Cagle puts it, take what they can get. Rather than get behind a simple Taxpayers Bill of Rights that would be easy to explain to voters, they seek a massive set of reforms to put not only basic caps on taxes and spending into the constitution, but numerous government "accountability" measures that turn the whole thing into a complicated mass that will confuse voters, and give opponents too many targets to shoot at.

What Tennessee needs is a simple Taxpayers Bill of Rights amendment that:

1. Forbids future tax increases, creation of new taxes, or increases in state debt unless approved by voters in a referendum.
2. Caps the rate of state government revenue growth to the rate of economic growth as determined by the formula of baseline spending adjusted for inflation and population growth.
3. Requires excess funds above a defined reserve funds limit be returned via an across-the-board cut in the state's primary tax (currently the sales tax).
4. Allows the legislature to seek approval in a referendum to spend surplus funds on a specific list of projects or programs.
5. Sets the same restrictions on city and/or county governments if approved in a local referendum - with local referendums required within one year of enacting the Taxpayers Bill of Rights.

The bad news is, the movement suffered a setback - okay, a massive failure - in Oak Ridge. The good news is, as Cagle mentions, when tax-and-spending limits are put on the ballot, voters general approve them. And the failure in Oak Ridge may turn out for the good - failure is always a better teacher than success. Maybe, now, the movement will see the wisdom of simplicity.

June 9, 2003

Rise of the Memex

Ed Felten has some interesting thoughts about blogging, privacy, a potential conflict of interest, and something called a Memex that was first proposed in 1945. DARPA's LifeLog project plays a starring role. Don't forget to read the whole thing.

Blogs: Truth Serum for the Media

David Warren says blogs are truth serum for the media and academia...

A revolution is happening in journalism, right now; a revolution with huge political implications. Blogs are the cause. And the fall of Howell Raines this last week is like the first brick in a Berlin Wall. It will not stop tumbling. Though made of words, a blog is a different thing, in kind, from printed articles in a newspaper or magazine, in which sources of information may be stated but must be taken by the reader on faith, unless the reader has the time, ability, and personal connections to retrace them. And if he does, what he finds must then be taken on faith by his readers. The blog may be updated by the minute or the hour, it remains accessible and searchable through its archives, but most crucially, it contains those Internet links. Through them, the bloggers are universally networked. They link each other's precise words, and - comes the revolution - are able to reference most of their sources almost instantaneously, in the original form.

In principle, it is a reversion to and extension of the invention of the footnote, by the scholastics in the High Middle Ages. This was one of the great advances of Christendom - the idea that the truth should be sourced, precisely - though it entailed, as Ivan Illich argued, a compensating loss - the transformation of "reading as prayer" to "reading as learning".

That aside, the political implications expand, as the possibilities for news management by an overwhelmingly glib and "liberal" media establishment contract. And likewise in the nearly closed shop of academia: for the rapid advance of academic blogging will soon put paid to much of the rubbish which passes for scholarship today. For those living under tyrannical regimes in the "Third World", access to alternative information improves with imported technology. In Iran, for instance, the number of bloggers has recently exploded, leaving the ayatollahs with only the bad option of unplugging the entire country from the outside world. Truth and freedom have usually marched together. In the larger view, blogging does not threaten print, but enhances and extends it. The web is now offering both media and world a new and powerful truth serum.

The Real Iraqi WMD

The Sunday Los Angeles Times reported an interesting possibility regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

Saddam Hussein's intelligence services set up a network of clandestine cells and small laboratories after 1996 with the goal of someday rebuilding illicit chemical and biological weapons, according to a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer. The officer, who held the rank of brigadier general, said each closely guarded weapons team had three or four scientists and other experts who were unknown to U.N. inspectors. He said they worked on computers and conducted crude experiments in bunkers and back rooms in safe houses around Baghdad.

He insisted they did not produce any illegal arms and that none now exist in Iraq. But he said the teams met regularly and put plans on paper to quickly develop weapons of mass destruction if U.N. sanctions against Iraq were lifted. "We could start again anytime," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he fears for his life. "It's very easy. Especially biological. The point was, the Iraqis kept the knowledge," he explained during a lengthy interview Friday in which he offered tantalizing details of secret programs. But U.S. weapons hunters "will never find anything here. Only oil."

UPDATE: A reader, posting comments to this silly post over at SKB, says the notion that Saddam's regime was the weapon of mass destruction is a "transparent dodge" because we were sold the war based on stories of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He's implying the Bush administration lied about the WMDs. But did they? The United nations, the Clinton administration, the intelligence services of most world governments, and most Arab governments all believed Saddam still had large WMD stockpiles. We KNOW Saddam did have them at one point, and not only because he admitted to the UN having large stockpiles. After all, he used a bunch of WMDs on the Kurds and the Shia, and on the Iranians.

If you carefully read the UN resolutions, you'll find that Saddam was not only banned from having actual WMDs, he was banned from having the means of production of WMDs, including labs, materials, equipment, etc. So, a clandestine program of small labs and research, as outlined in the LA Times story, is a violation of all the applicable UN resolutions including 1441, the one that authorized member states to apply "serious consequences" if Iraq did not come into compliance.

Saddam's regime was itself the weapon of mass destruction in two ways: 1. (see all the mass graves). 2. It held the knowledge and the plans for building WMDs once sanctions were lifted (hence its relentless campaign to get the sanctions lifted - a request long backed by France, Russia and Germany, all of whom had previously sold Saddam WMD-making equipment and materials and longed to do so again, in return for cash and lucrative oil deals.

Saddam was the key to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. By going to war to remove Saddam from power, the United States ended the Iraqi WMD threat. And, oh by the way, put an end to a regime that, as Instapundit put it, was "shoveling children into mass graves." There's the cold, hard reality of it. Those who opposed the war favored keeping Saddam in power - in power to reconstitute his WMD programs. In power to gas more Kurds. In power to send dissidents screaming to their deaths into shredding machines. In power plunder his nation's wealth and impoverish his people. In Power To Shovel More Children Into Mass Graves.

Instapundit has a long, link-filled, must-read piece on Iraq, WMDs and the claim that "Bush lied." Don't miss it - especially the letter from U.S. Army Maj. Diggs Cleveland, Camp Doha, Kuwait, who writes:

I say that one only needs to look into a mass grave, filled with the bones of children scattered among dolls and toys, to know that this war was necessary. Time will show that we did the right thing, and those who opposed it, fervently, completely and eternally, were wrong. We may never find WMDs in Iraq, and I don't give a shit if we ever do. My world, my children's world, my grandchildren's world (when it comes) will be better because we fought this fight and won. I will never change my mind on this, I have seen the graves.

June 6, 2003

The Continuing Crisis

The Continuing Crisis
So, Howell Raines has left the New York Times building, and the NYT's credibility crisis has reached its nadir, right? Soon, the Jayson Blair fiasco and its fallout will be all be behind Times, right? It's clear sailing from here, right?

Wrong, bucko.

The Jayson Blair scandal of fabrication and plagiarism was only one piece of the Times' ongoing credibility crisis.

Long before Blair, weblogs had revealed how many of the NYT's polls were reported in a way that was, ahem, short of the truth and spun for political advantage. Bloggers exposed NYT columnist Paul Krugman's lucrative ties to scandal-plagued Enron and continue to expose how he lies about the Bush administration's tax policy. Bloggers and an Internet news site exposed how the Times lied on its front page about global warming in Alaska and other news and commentary sites exposed how the Times lied when it said Henry Kissinger was against the Iraq war. Even now, the blogosphere continues to ridicule NYT columnist Maureen Dowd for altering a quote from President Bush in order to alter its meaning - a scurrilous tactic now called "Dowdification."

And that's just the beginning. Raines is gone, but the blogosphere isn't. The NYT - and the rest of Big Journalism - are now being watched, 'round the clock, by bloggers from the political Left, Center and Right, and errors, bias and spin will be exposed.

It's often said that the press is a free society's watchdog on its government. But who watches the watchers? Thanks to the Internet and blogging software that has lowered the cost of publishing almost to the vanishing point, the answer to that question is We, The People. As it usually is when things are set right in America.

June 5, 2003

Blogosphere as Big Journalism's Fact-Checker?

Online Journalism Review says bloggers are becoming the fact-checkers of Big Journalism.

We are now ushering in the era of the Internet in general - and blogosphere in particular - as quote checkers and quote debaters. ... So perhaps journalists, playing Wizard of Oz for so many years behind the veil of assorted editors, fact-checkers and media executives, are now feeling a bit naked out in the open. It doesn't help that media companies have cut fact-checking down to the bone (if it exists at all). With the Net and bloggers breathing down their necks, journalists will just have to try harder, especially when it comes to quotes.

UPDATE: Be sure to check this out from Andrew Sullivan, via the professor. (Follow the links to Sullivan's complete piece - it's worth it.) Also, Ryan at The Dead Parrot Society has some thoughts (and links) about two ways blogging can improve journalism, not just react to it: "broadening coverage into areas the media misses, and improving contact between journalists and sources." [Hat tip: Corante]

UPDATE: Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times credits the Internet and blogs for hastening Howell Raines' departure from the New York Times. He lays out a convincing case.

Accelerating the Internet

No doubt, Hollywood is already drafting the lawsuits and the legislation to try to stop this technology from ever reaching the mass market:

>Scientists in California are working on a fast new Internet connection system that could enable an entire movie to be downloaded in a matter of seconds. The Fast TCP system, designed by a team of researchers at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, runs on the same Internet infrastructure currently used but is designed to be much quicker.

Journalists Gag on Blogs

Blogging is going to change journalism in profound ways. Here's another leading indicator of the coming changes.

UPDATE: Dave Winer wonders when Big Journalism reporters like the WSJ's Walt Mossberg will "figure out that an intelligent person with a weblog is a reporter."

Department of Homeland Insanity

Oregon is using eBay to sell "surplus" items the government wants to get rid of, including government property and items confiscated from the bad guys. Oh, and "thousands of Swiss army knives, nail filers and tweezers, all confiscated at Portland International Airport," report the AP.

Don't you feel safer now?

June 3, 2003

Taking Blogs Seriously

The PR industry is starting to take blogs seriously. But not all blogs. Just blogs by "accredited journalists."

MediaMap, the industry leader in delivering Communications Management (CM) solutions to corporate communications departments and public relations agencies, today announced that it will begin adding information about weblogs and their authors to its media directory available through its award-winning application, MediaMap Performa.

"Weblogs are quickly becoming a popular way to exchange information among media professionals, particularly journalists," said Ed Foster, author of the GripeLog weblog available at http://www.gripe2ed.com or through InfoWorld's Web site at http://weblog.infoworld.com/foster/. "Reporters use weblogs to cover interesting stories that primary outlets such as mainstream magazines and newspapers may pass up. weblogs are also being used by opinion-makers, both journalists and their sources, to quickly and interactively explore controversial topics in depth."

"Weblogs are new influencers on the PR landscape that can often result in quick, electronic ink for corporate communication professionals," said Ruth Habbe, executive vice president, MediaMap. "As more and more corporations depend on non-traditional media, blogs will continue to grow in importance. As an industry leader, MediaMap continues to listen to the needs of our clients and offer solutions that will help them improve overall corporate communications results."

MediaMap will cover blogs written by accredited journalists in the MediaMap North American Media directory, and provide its customers with tips on how to best communicate with each blogger.

Second: the best ways to communicate with bloggers are usually: email, the comments board if the blog has one, and starting your own blog and linking to them. Third: why only "accredited" journalists? Oh. Because you still have this mindset that only Big Journalism can do journalism, and haven't figured out that blogging tools have lowered the cost of publishing almost to the vanishing point, democratizing journalism and beginning to alter it in very fundamental ways so that journalism is not longer a top-down, one-way, non-interactive, form of spreading the news and the standard approach of feeding PR into the media machine isn't going to work as well anymore when bloggers can fact-check, discuss, debate, add to, expand on, comment on, and otherwise dissect the news, rather than just passively accept what Big Journalism tells them is true.

UPDATE: JPReardon's blog is pointing to some more more blogged thoughts about PR and blogging, including one that explores whether the "strong synergy between journalism and blogging" means "there should also be a strong synergy between PR and blogs" and says PR is generally "clueless" about blogs - as evidenced by the PR-ic notion that you can "pitch" bloggers on story ideas.