Journalism & Media:

The Future of News is Bloggy, May 6, 2008
And a blogger using Google shall lead them... (Congrats to Christian Grantham for the big scoop.)...

Deleting Trust, May 2, 2008
A reader of this blog sent me a cryptic message that one of our local dailies was actively deleting readers' comments posted to the paper's blogs, and in some cases was trying to "out certain subscribers depending on their viewpoint."...

ACK is BACK, April 18, 2008
A.C. Kleinheider, who blogged brilliantly for WKRN Channel 2 for nearly two years at VolunteerVoters.com before 'KRN pulled the plug for budgetary reasons, has returned to the blogosphere today with Post Politics, at NashvillePost.com. The direct link to the free...

The Blogger Protection Act of 2008, April 16, 2008
New legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, would protect bloggers from Federal Election Commission restrictions. The "Blogger Protection Act of 2008," (H.R.5699) would give bloggers permanent protection from FEC campaign laws when linking to campaign Web sites or...

Progress, April 15, 2008
Things have certainly changed at the first newspaper I ever worked for. But that was way back before Al Gore created the Internet....

Reinventing A Media Career, April 15, 2008
Her contract not renewed, ex-CNN anchor Daryn Kagan reinvented her career online with a website where she tells the stories she wants to tell, facilitated by cheap digital technology. How well did she do? Well enough to grab the attention...

Newsflash, April 13, 2008
The Newseum opened Friday in Washington DC. Search Google News for "newseum" and hundreds of stories pop up. Here's a selection from the Toronto Star, from Bloomberg News, from CQ Politics, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post. My impressions...

City Paper Goes Where Tennessean Will Eventually Follow, April 10, 2008
The Nashville City Paper is about to do what all newspapers will eventually be forced to do: Move more of their business online and evolve away from print. The paper is being purchased by the owner of NashvillePost.com, and will...

VolunteerVoters.com is Really Gone, April 3, 2008
WKRN Channel 2 has a new website and VolunteerVoters.com is not listed under the blogs tab. In fact, if you try to go to VolunteerVoters.com, it redirects you to WKRN's Nashville Is Talking blog. How sad. One can only hope...

Kleinheider Resurfaces, April 2, 2008
A.C. Kleinheider is blogging again, sort of, at NashvillePost.com. His new blog site isn't up yet, but he's posted a rather bloggish story on the main site....

ACK Comes Back, March 26, 2008
A.C. Kleinheider lands on his feet. The hole in the Tennessee political newsmedia landscape will be filled....

A Night at the Newseum 2, March 26, 2008
Here's a video report from the bloggers' Night at the Newseum....

A Night at the Newseum, March 24, 2008
I was privileged to join a group of bloggers, along with TV news executives and personnel from the Washington DC area, for a reception and private tour of the soon-to-open Newseum in the nation's capital. In a word, it is...

AP Does It For Money, March 24, 2008
Brian C. Ledbetter looks at the Associated Press's "Do as we say, not as we do" approach to copyright law when it comes to using other people's photos....

Future Attractions, March 24, 2008
I'm headed to Washington later today for a special blogger-oriented event at the soon-to-open Newseum. I'll have a report and photos sometime tomorrow....

Fair Use, March 15, 2008
Hoisting the AP on its own petard....

Gone, March 15, 2008
A.C. Kleinheider has signed off at WKRN's VolunteerVoters.com. Update: Budget cuts are to blame. Actually, I'm surprised WKRN kept Volunteer Voters going as long as it did after Mike Sechrist left the station and new, less new-media focused management took...

When It All Comes Together, March 12, 2008
YouTube's got video of Tampa Bay's MediaTalk - a webcast/podcast show - doing an interview with local syndicated columnist Joe O'Neill, who also publishes the OpinionsToGoOnline.com website. Let's recap: The Internet has video of a radio show-like webcast/podcast interview of...

The Anger Chronicles, March 10, 2008
A site for people who write for a living to write anonymously and vent their anger about their chosen profession. Yeah, AngryJournalist.com is going to be fascinating and, I predict, very busy....

Journalism, New and Old, March 8, 2008
A couple of stories about journalism caught my eye this morning, including this from PR Week:In the run-up to last month's Washington State presidential primaries, 16 young journalists covered the campaign events of nearly every Presidential contender to visit the...

Newsflash: AP Sues Blogger, March 2, 2008
The Associated Press has launched a legal jihad against a blogger who posted examples of photojournalism bias and fakery (faux-tography). My guess is they won't get far....

Dead Newspapers, February 19, 2008
Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of the death of the Nashville Banner, as I mentioned last week. I also mentioned that I had 10 copies of the final final edition available. Now I have six. Email me at bill-at-billhobbs-dot-com if...

The Blogs of Hazzard, February 16, 2008
Knoxville journalist Jack Lail has some thought about bloggers and Boss Hogg....

Looking Back at the Banner Years, February 15, 2008
Next Wednesday (Feb. 20) will mark the 10th anniversary of the death of the Nashville Banner. NashvillePost.com recalls the newspaper's life and death, with articles from Tom Wood and former Banner scribes Kay West and Beverly Keel. I moved back...

Flaying the Flyer, February 7, 2008
WSMV Channel 4 News in Nashville aired a story on the 10 p.m. news Thursday on the controversy over a doctored photo of state Rep. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, published by the Memphis Flyer. I'll link to the video when they...

Flyer Admits Error, February 7, 2008
The battle between Tennessee state Rep. Stacey Campfield and the Memphis Flyer over the paper's publication of a doctored photo slandering Campfield is over and Campfield won. Update: I just got word that the Knoxville News Sentinel is making calls...

Memphis Flyer: "We're Not Liars. We're Thieves!", February 6, 2008
The liberal alt-weekly Memphis Flyer may be trying to invent a novel new defense against a possible libel claim after defaming state Rep. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, with a doctored photo: the plagiarism defense....

The End of Investigative Journalism?, February 5, 2008
World Net Daily reports on the current state of a highly important legal case involving the First Amendment, the press and libel law that has been mostly ignored by the media....

City Paper Seeks Bloggers, February 1, 2008
The Nashville City Paper has added an interesting new feature to the blogs platform I built for them last year, before I started my current job: the option for registered users of the paper's website to create their own blog...

Bowing to The New Blogged Reality, January 17, 2008
The Associated Press reports that the state of New Hampshire is getting out of the business of issuing identification cards to members of the news media.The man who handled the chore - Jim Van Dongen of the state Department of...

He Needed a Fact-Checker, January 15, 2008
Former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, D-North South Dakota, speaking in Nashville Tuesday night said this:"(Issues and politics) are more transparent. The electronic media brings it into the living room. Internet and bloggers are another element. There are no editors on...

Unexcused Absence, January 10, 2008
Wednesday afternoon, a link to this story appeared on the home page of the website of The Tennessean, under the "latest news and updates" tag. A few minutes later it disappeared and, as of Thursday morning, it does not appear...

Cincinnati Post -30-, January 9, 2008
In the mail: A package containing two copies of the final edition of The Cincinnati Post, published on Dec. 31, 2007. It's a fine final edition, with a perfect headline. I once thought about collecting final editions of dead newspapers,...

NYT Seeks Bloggers, December 27, 2007
The New York Times Co. is looking for a blogger to write for LifeWire.com, its new "online content startup" that is intended "to create and distribute lifestyle-oriented articles to top Web publishers." Initial clients include About.com and Weather.com, for whom...

A Refresher Course in the First Amendment, December 14, 2007
University of Georgia journalism professor (and former NBC correspondent) David Hasinski needs a refresher course in the First Amendment. Hasinski wrote a column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asserting that Big Journalism should "monitor and regulate" bloggers, and J-schools should "certify"...

More CNN/YouTube Debate Plants, November 29, 2007
Michelle Malkin is exposing more of the planted Democrat questioners in the CNN/YouTube Republican Presidential Debate. The questioner who asked about abortion is a declared supporter of Democrat John Edwards. The "Log Cabin Republican" questioner is, it turns out, not...

The Risk of Media Downsizing, November 23, 2007
Terry Heaton is writing about the unintended consequences of media downsizing. Additional thoughts here....

Switcheroo, November 7, 2007
The Tennessean has changed its mind and will sponsor the Middle Tennessee Regional Spelling Bee after all. Kay Brooks has the details....

Blogs and the Business of Business Journalism, November 1, 2007
Knowledge@Wharton has a very good article looking at rising competition - and the fragmenting audience - in the business of business journalism (broadcast and print). The impact of blogs on business journalism gets a pretty good discussion......

Niche-Picking the News, November 1, 2007
As I mentioned I would last week, I participated in a panel discussion today for the 2007-2008 Leadership Nashville class on its "Nashville Government and Media Day." Also on the panel, moderated by WKRN's Bob Mueller: Nashville Scene editor Liz...

Let's Hear It For Open Government, October 29, 2007
The Memphis Commercial Appeal had an excellent editorial Sunday regarding the attempt by Tennessee Democrats to gut the state's open meetings law. Here is what the Tennessee Republican Party had to say about that same issue:This week state Democrats have...

Wild Fires Fan Citizen Journalism Flames, October 27, 2007
The Baltimore Sun reports on the big role that citizen journalists played in the MSM's coverage of the Southern California wildfires.From dramatic cell phone camera images of flames as they choked off neighborhood escape routes to chilling online narratives of...

MSM Blogs Alter Campaign Coverage, October 27, 2007
Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz says the mushrooming number of political blogs on newspaper and magazine web sites "has altered the terrain of the 2008 election."Campaign officials have learned to feed the bottomless pit of these constantly updated compilations,...

Leadership Nashville, October 24, 2007
I'm scheduled to speak to the 2007-2008 Leadership Nashville glass on its "Nashville Government and Media Day" panel a week from tomorrow titled "Sorting Out the Voices." The panel discussion will be moderated by WKRN's Bob Mueller, Nashville Scene editor...

Media Myths and the Jena 6, October 24, 2007
Craig Franklin, assistant editor of The Jena Times, says the national media got the Jena 6 story horribly wrong, and he exposes the media myths one by one in a powerful indictment of bad journalism run amok......

Cell Journalist Announces Ohio Deal, October 23, 2007
Nashville based Cell Journalist announced today that it has a multi-year agreement with The Dispatch Printing Company of Columbus, Ohio, which owns several broadcast and print media properties including WBNS-TV and the Columbus Dispatch newspaper in Columbus, and WTHR-TV in...

The Scene Saves the Spelling Bee, October 19, 2007
Looks like the Nashville Scene may soon be picking up the ball that The Tennessean purposely dropped as Scene editor Liz Garrigan tells WKRN's Bob Mueller the paper has applied to be the new media sponsor of the Middle Tennessee...

Becawz Thay Dont Caar if There Fyucher Reeders (an Riters) Kin Spel?, October 19, 2007
Some sad news from Kay Brooks' corner of the Interweb: There won't be a Middle Tennessee Regional Spelling Bee this year, unless somebody steps up - fast - and makes it happen. Update: I didn't explain the story because I...

Watch It While You Can, October 19, 2007
See the video that Dallas television station KDFW is trying to suppress. Breitbart.tv has a good discussion of the ethics of KDFW reporter Rebecca Aquilar's story and her behavior toward her subject....

Monetizing Memphis, October 19, 2007
The Memphis Flyer explores the flap over "monetizing content" at the Memphis Commercial Appeal....

No Regrets, October 10, 2007
Delivered by UPS today: Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech, by Montreal newspaper columnist Craig Silverman, with a forward by Jeff Jarvis. I look forward to reading it. I've mentioned Silverman and his...

ConvergeSouth, and BlogWorld Expo, October 9, 2007
This year's ConvergeSouth is once again drawing close. It's Oct. 19-20 in Greensboro, N.C. Sadly, this will be the third year in a row that I've missed it, although this year's conference agenda seems less applicable to my new job...

What's Old is News Again, October 5, 2007
What's old is new again in the world of media these days as IDG, a technology media company, "plans to revive that hallmark publication of the dot.com era, the Industry Standard," says this report on the New York Times website,...

Less ACK, September 27, 2007
The Nashville Scene reveals how the new regime at WKRN is altering its approach to the blogosphere.The station has also made relatively sweeping changes in the way it uses blogs, eliminating a substantial number of them, creating a new one...

Change or Die, September 27, 2007
Blogger Robert Laird says, "journalists have a hard lesson to learn about the Internet," warning, "If they refuse to restructure their minds to accommodate it, they will become obsolete curiosities within a few years, no matter how superior they feel."...

Atlas Mugged, September 25, 2007
Ed Driscoll has written an excellent essay on the relationship between blogs and the mainstream media, with an eye, too, on how that relationship will continue to evolve. The article is Atlas Mugged: How a Gang of Scrappy, Individual Bloggers...

Gunga Dan, September 21, 2007
Jonah Goldberg, in a hilarious piece, points out that if Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS related to Memogate (the scandal surrounding Rather's 60 Minutes story about President Bush's National Guard service which was based entirely on forged documents) goes to...

Empty Suit, September 20, 2007
Dan Rather sues CBS, turning his professional tragedy into farce. Rather's book The Camera Never Blinks was one of the things that got me to go into journalism. It's just plain sad to see him plunge off the deep end...

Dead Newspapers, August 28, 2007
Located the other day in my attic storage: about a dozen copies of the final-day edition of the Nashville Banner, which published its final edition almost 20 years a decade ago, on Feb. 20, 1998. I bought them that afternoon...

Need a Blogging Job?, August 28, 2007
My current workload makes it very difficult for me to post at ElephantBiz.com with any consistent pace, and I've offered to help the publishers find a new blogger to carry the load. ElephantBiz.com is a blog about the business of...

I Want At Least the Bronze, August 24, 2007
I'm currently in fourth place in A.C. Kleinheider's poll asking who is the best political writer in Nashville, behind The City Paper's John Rodgers, NashvillePost.com's Ken Whitehouse, and NewsChannel 5 commentator Pat Nolan. We're all dusting The Tennessean's Larry Daughtrey...

A Gatekeeper Who Doesn't Realize the Fence is Gone, August 24, 2007
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Managing Editor David McCumber says of his paper, "We get to decide what is news, and what isn't." But he's wrong about that....

All the News that Fits a Haiku, August 23, 2007
I was a guest on the Dori Monson show on Seattle's KIRO 710 Wednesday afternoon, discussing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's decision to refuse the FBI's request to publish a photo of two men seen acting suspiciously on a number of Seattle-area...

How irrelevant. The Post-Intelligencer. Goodbye Dinosaur, August 22, 2007
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is continuing to refuse to publish the photos of two men the FBI says it needs to talk to in connection to a probe of possible terrorism-related activity on the Seattle ferry system. I've got the latest...

Seattle Paper Offers Haiku Contest - But No Help - in FBI Terror Probe, August 21, 2007
Is political correctness causing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to refuse to assist the FBI in its probe of a possible terror plot? The answer appears to be yes - though the paper is running a haiku-writing contest about the incident. Really....

The Soros Connection, August 21, 2007
I mentioned yesterday the decision by PBS to air a biased documentary regarding a proposed gold mine in Romania. Today's Wall Street Journal exposes more facts about that "documentary," including its connection to famed investor and funder of liberal causes...

Unbalance at WNPT, PBS, August 19, 2007
PBS is scheduled to broadcast nationally Tuesday night a biased documentary about a gold-mining project in Romania. The PBS series Wide Angle, titled "Gold Futures," in which the ongoing controversy over the proposed gold mine in the village of Rosia...

Could Newspapers Adopt "Total Quality Management"?, August 17, 2007
In a post yesterday headlined Rarely Regretting the Errors, I discussed new research showing that the newspaper industry only corrects about 2 percent of the actual errors that make it into print, and wondered why newspapers don't implement one of...

Busting Bias, August 16, 2007
I have a new article at NewsBusters.org today on media bias in its coverage of a complex securities law case pending before the Supreme Court....

Rarely Regretting the Errors, August 16, 2007
A misleading headline in today's paper: Skipping Sunday School costs jobs at religious publisher. The headline makes it appear that a religious publisher fired employees who skipped Sunday school. The story, though, is much different. On a related note, new...

Fake But Accurate, August 14, 2007
John Leo has a must-read column on various incidents in which the mainstream press has stubbornly used "a preferred story line" even when "facts are shaky or nonexistent." And Eric Scheie has blog post about a story where it appears...

U.S. Public Sees News Media as Biased, Inaccurate, August 9, 2007
From Breitbart.com:More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed. And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of...

Comments on Comments on Google News, August 9, 2007
Yesterday I mentioned some big news from Google regarding its Google News service and how Google will be allowing people mentioned in news stories linked on Google News to send in comments regarding those stories, which Google will then publish...

Regret the Error, August 9, 2007
The website of Media Ethics magazine has a long and very in-depth look at the newspaper industry's record on correcting errors, based on a review of all of the many newspaper corrections collected in 2005 at RegretTheError.com - a fantastic...

Big News from Google, August 8, 2007
Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion comments on some very big news from Google News, in a post today titled Google News Now Has Feedback, Editing and More Risk. Read on for details......

Journalistic Quality Control, August 7, 2007
The Washington Post has either redefined the meaning of the words "war veteran," or failed to do some basic fact-checking about DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas, who likes to link his military service to the Persian Gulf War even though his...

Congress Aims to Extend Shield Law to Bloggers, August 2, 2007
Here's some ">good news for bloggers - and for the First Amendment: A House panel voted Wednesday to shield journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources in many situations - and extended the protection to bloggers who derive "financial...

Sprechen sie Deutsch? *, July 30, 2007
Here's a nice bit of citizen-journalism investigating the demise of German language classes at Wilson Central High School in Lebanon, TN, a bit east of Nashville. A nice video news report - and, really, about as good as what you'll...

Blogging the NCSL Convention, July 25, 2007
Aldon Hynes, a liberal blogger in Connecticut, reports that he's registered to cover the National Conference of State Legislatures' 2007 convention, August 5-9 in Boston. Thanks to the work I did last year to convince the NCSL to media-credential bloggers...

First Amendment, The YouTube Debate, And Fred..., July 25, 2007
Thoughts on where the presidential candidates stand on First Amendment issues, on CNN's YouTube Debate, and on misleading reports of disarray in Fred Thompson's campaign, today at ElephantBiz.com....

How to Build Media Credibility, July 24, 2007
The Chicago Tribune considers the link between transparency and credibility and urges the news media deploy more of the former in order to increase its share of the latter. The link, and my thoughts, at Mesh Media Strategies today....

The Truth Is..., July 22, 2007
Penelope Trunk, a writer for the leftwing The Huffington Post who also writes a regular column for the Boston Globe, says journalists are supposed to misquote people because "the journalist gets paid to tell her own stories," and "journalists who...

Harper's Versus the Bloggers, July 21, 2007
BlackFive takes a hatchet to an attack by Harper's magazine on bloggers."You're not a real journalist" is his way of saying "only professionals like me should be allowed to talk to high officials, not uncredentialed folks like you." This is...

Over the Backfence, July 18, 2007
I'm writing about hyperlocal journalism vs. citizen journalism, and the failure of Backfence.com, over at Mesh Media Strategies. Click here for the latest....

Backfence Down, July 16, 2007
My latest post at Mesh Media Strategies looks at the impending demise of Backfence.com....

Small Town News, July 13, 2007
Interesting public records access story in the Cookeville, Tennessee, Herald Citizen today: "An Internet journalist who says he was denied access to public records in Livingston has filed a court petition asking a judge to order that access." Read the...

The UnFairness Doctrine, July 8, 2007
John Seigenthaler looks at the push from Senate Democrats to revive the "Fairness Doctrine" for radio, in a commentary in the Sunday Tennessean....

Buh Bye NashvilleIsTalking.com?, July 6, 2007
WKRN Channel 2 in Nashville is apparently no longer committed to the blogosphere in the way it was when Mike Sechrist was the station's general manager. I have a look at the situation at Mesh Media Strategies, and a business-model...

Value-Added Blogs, June 30, 2007
I've written some additional thoughts about The City Paper's new blogs and revamped web site over here at Mesh Media Strategies....

That's Meshed Up, June 30, 2007
I have launched a revamped website for Mesh Media Strategies....

Free Daily Pays Readers to Blog, June 30, 2007
Have you heard about the free city daily newspaper that has launched a cool new blogging project? Well, yes, you say, The City Paper is launching four new blogs. That's true - and I'm anticipating good things from the Nashville...

Extreme Web Makeover: The City Paper, June 29, 2007
The Nashville City Paper's revamped website is set to go live sometime later tonight, last I heard. The new site has links to four new City Paper blogs. You can see them here. I built them, though I won't be...

The New Nashville City Blogs, June 27, 2007
The Nashville Scene reports on the coming makeover of the online presence of Nashville's The City Paper, a makeover I'm proud to say I have been involved with. My involvement, via my Mesh Media Strategies, has been designing and building...

MikeSechrist.com, June 27, 2007
WKRNGM.com, the blog of former WKRN Channel 2 General Manager Mike Sechrist, who integrated blogs with WKRN's newsroom, now redirects to MikeSechrist.com, and he recently posted his first blog post since leaving WKRN on May 4....

"Freedom of the Press" Doesn't Mean the Media, June 26, 2007
Gene Policinski, vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, writes in an essay published by the American Press Institute about the impact of bloggers and other grassroots media on the definition of the "free press" discussed in...

The Media is Watching You, June 18, 2007
A Scarborough Research study commissioned by the Newspaper National Network has found a high degree of overlap in the use of online and print versions of newspapers, with 81% of respondents saying they regularly consume both kinds of media, reports...

Exit, June 7, 2007
WKRN's Brittney Gilbert, the first full-time paid blogger the history of local teevee news has resigned from the station. The City Paper covers it. Let the inevitable speculation about the future of NashvilleIsTalking.com begin. Although, as the City Paper writer...

YouTube Troubles Pharmaceutical Companies, June 4, 2007
AdAge.com says YouTube is "more worrisome to the pharmaceutical industry these days" than Congress and the Food and Drug Administration. Hyperbole, of course, but, "the online-video site famous for exploding Diet Coke bottles is blasting Big Pharma as YouTube gains...

Researching State-Focused Political Blogs, June 4, 2007
Emily Metzgar, a doctoral student at Louisiana State University, is doing research on impact of blogs on state politics around the country. She has an online survey here, designed to gather information about partitipants' political views; their state-focused, politically-oriented blog...

Help Wanted, June 1, 2007
The Tennessean is looking for a new religion reporter. I can't figure out why the turnover in that position is so high - it's a fascinating beat. So is the automotive industry - or at least that's the way I...

Tennessean Seeks "Diversity" Reporter, May 30, 2007
The Tennessean is seeking a new reporter to cover "diversity and social issues"....

Blogger Sued, May 24, 2007
A Hawaii blogger is being sued by someone who wants to force the blogger to give up her confidential sources......

Another Blogger Threatened With Lawsuit, May 17, 2007
Texas blogger Sal Costello, who takes on the powerful and the politically connected, is being threatened with a lawsuit by the powerfully and politically connected target of his recent blogging. He does not appear to be backing down....

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!, May 15, 2007
The South Florida Sun Sentinel has appointed one of its columnists, Howard Goodman, to be the paper's "blog editor." EditorsWeblog.org comments:While some newspaper people still condemn blogs' lack of professionalism, here's one that is following the tide and making its...

Taxpayer Ignorance is Legislators' Bli$$, 2, May 15, 2007
I had an interesting email exchange Monday afternoon with Knoxville News Sentinel political reporter Tom Humphrey regarding the subject of this post, which asked why Tennessee's news media regularly fails to inform its readers and viewers regarding the provision in...

The Century Mark, May 14, 2007
The Tennessean is celebrating its centennial with a special section that includes brief articles from as far back as the 1900s. It's good stuff. In a similar move, NewsChannel5 is celebrating Chris Clark's 100 years as anchor of the...

The Database of Model Citizens, May 9, 2007
Les Jones has an excellent follow-up post on handgun-carry permits in Tennessee, following up on the publication by The Tennessean yesterday (and subsequent de-publishing) of a database of Tennesseans who have carry permits. Jones:Publishing lists of [handgun carry permit] holders...

Open Window, May 8, 2007
It's just a thought triggered by today's brouhaha over The Tennessean publishing (and then taking down) a database of Tennesseans who have handgun carry permits, but it's obvious that many people don't realize what all is a public record these...

Gun Permits Database No More, May 8, 2007
I just visited the homepage of The Tennessean at about 1:35 p.m., and it appears they have taken down access to the database of handgun-carry permit holders that the publication of which had sparked a large massive negative reaction. The...

Shooting One's Own Foot, May 8, 2007
Just because you can publish something doesn't mean it's a smart business move. In an age when the deer have guns, especially. ACK has more here and here on The Tennessean's decision to publish a list of Tennesseans who have...

The Left's Assault on the Golden Age of Media, May 8, 2007
Adam Thierer explains why America is in a "golden age of media," - and why and how the Left is trying to regulate it away - in an excellent article in City Journal......

Legislation Would Create Journalism Shield Law for Bloggers Who Do Journalism, May 6, 2007
Bloggers engaged in journalistic pursuits would be granted immunity from divulging confidential sources under a new bill pending in both chambers of Congress. The proposed federal shield law would extend to anyone engaged in journalism - not just to reporters...

Clueless in South Carolina, May 6, 2007
The South Carolina Press Association kicked a blogger out of an event the impact of blogs on the legislative process was discussed. Ironic, huh? Well, not really. The SCPA represents the state's newspapers, which no doubt feel threatened by the...

Blogging for Dollars...and Other New-Media Stuff, April 21, 2007
Blogger & Podcaster is a new magazine about, well, you can guess. On the mag's home page, click the cover image to read the premiere issue free online. Also, the Boston Globe recently published a story about blogging for dollars....

Virginia Tech, April 20, 2007
Matthew Ingram at WebProNews.com looks at how citizen journalism covered the Virginia Tech massacre.As horrific as the circumstances at Virginia Tech were, as a journalist it was fascinating to watch the information about the shootings filter out through the students...

Settlement, April 18, 2007
Nashville City Paper reports on the settlement of the Coble/JL Kirk case in which JL Kirk Associates threatened to sue Nashville blogger Katherine Coble because she criticized them on her blog....

Suing a Blogger: Sixth Update, April 16, 2007
The Nashville City Paper covers the story of the blogger and the company that threatened to sue her, giving yet more bad publicity to JL Kirk Associates. Among the quoted: Media Bloggers Association general counsel Ron Coleman, who is representing...

Suing A Blogger: Fifth Update, April 14, 2007
WKRN's Brittney Gilbert reports on the saga of JL Kirk Associates, a critical blogger, and a lawsuit threat that backfired big time. Also, "S-Town Mike" at Enclave has more on JL Kirk Associates' new-found online fame. And it's not good...

Suing a Blogger: Fourth Update, April 13, 2007
Ripples from the threat of a lawsuit against Nashville blogger Katherine Coble over a blog post she wrote critical of JL Kirk Associates, a "career search" firm that tried to get her and her husband to pay nearly $4,500 up...

Suing A Blogger: Third Update, April 12, 2007
Katherine Coble, the Nashville blogger threatened with a lawsuit, now has legal representation, arranged by the Media Bloggers Association. (For background, see the two prior posts.) If you're a blogger and you're not a member of the MBA ... you...

Suing a Blogger Update, April 12, 2007
With the fallout continuing for Nashville law firm King & Ballow and the Nashville office of the "career search experts" firm JL Kirk Associates over the law firm's ill-advised decision to threaten a blogger with a libel suit because she...

I Could Do That, March 30, 2007
Apparently, Nashville's WTN radio has sacked talk host Kevin Miller, who replaced Steve Gill when Gill went (back) to WLAC. I've never done radio, but I'm informed, opinionated, connected, and love to talk, so if WTN calls, I'd be happy...

Sleepwalking Past the News, March 20, 2007
My regular readers know that from time to time I write about Sao Tome & Principe, a tiny island country off the coast of Africa that is pro-American, largely Christian, and sits atop potentially vast oil resources. It's an interesting...

"No More Noble Missions", March 18, 2007
"Puppies for Peace" was my favorite hand-scrawled sign among those held by the 100-150 antiwar protesters who marched through downtown Nashville Saturday. It was carried by a man with a dog on a leash. The dog's true feelings about the...

Bloggers and Libel, March 15, 2007
The Thursday edition of The Tennessean has a rather good story on bloggers and libel law. If you blog, read it. Then read up on libel law. Then make sure that the facts you state on your blog are, indeed,...

Gatekeepers Without a Fence, March 11, 2007
Mark A. Phillips: Traditional journalists don't get to decide who's a "real journalist" anymore.. Not that they ever should have in the first place. The First Amendment wasn't written for "journalists," it was written for Americans. Journalism is a craft,...

Breaking News, March 9, 2007
Michael Silence, the reporter/blogger at the Knoxville News Sentinel is running rings around the The Tennessean's political reporters and their blog on the Fred Thompson story. Like I said the other day, there's a difference between a newspaper having blogs...

Spiked, March 7, 2007
Bob Krumm has the nitty gritty details on the collateral damage from the Al Gore Energy Hog story that I mentioned was coming. As the Nashville Scene reveals today, The Tennessean had Gore's utility usage data for more than a...

"Blogger Day" at Legislative Plaza, March 5, 2007
The Tennessee House Republican Caucus is inviting all Tennessee political bloggers to a caucus-sponsored "Blogger Day On The Hill" at Legislative Plaza in Nashville on March 26th and 27th (Yes, Blogger Day On The Hill" is spread over two days,...

Rivals Try To Lure YouTube Stars, February 28, 2007
Rival web sites to YouTube are trying to lure away the most popular YouTubers, reports Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times....

In the Mail: Wikinomics, February 27, 2007
In the mail today from Amazon: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, a book that explains what MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and the Human Genome Project have in common. Also, a CD from Jack's Big Music Show for my son, who...

Good Advice for Bloggers, Too, February 24, 2007
Jeff Jarvis has good advice for newspapers: Cover what you do best. Link to the rest. That's good advice for bloggers, too. As always with a Jeff Jarvis posting, read the whole thing....

A Digital Demonstration, February 22, 2007
Environmental activists planning a day of distributed demonstrations April 14 across the country are also hoping to employ social media to multiply the impact: From WorldChanging.com: In the spirit of the age, we've designed this be a distributed day of...

Come To Alaska Tennessee, February 22, 2007
The Tennessee Department of Tourism is advertising Tennessee with a picture of Alaska. Anchorage, Alaska, blogger Tim Woody spotted it first and blogged it yesterday The Tennessean followed up with a story today. Memo to the Tennessee Department of Tourism:...

Capital Trembles as TCPR Hires Seibert, February 20, 2007
Trent Seibert, last seen rocking the state capital with his investigative political reports for The Tennessean and then WKRN Channel 2, just joined the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. I guess the folks over at the Tennessee Department of Revenue...

Ignoring the Coming Ice Age, February 19, 2007
They had a social-media conference at Kennesaw State University recently similar to the BlogNashville conference of May 2005, and the Atlanta media ignored it. Just like the mastadons ignored that increasing chill in the air. (Hat tip: Ben. C.)...

Oops, February 18, 2007
The Sunday Tennessean has a pretty good story on the problem of misinformationon Wikipedia: Wary of Wikipedia Global search engine's accuracy questioned. Except, Wikipedia isn't a search engine....

Paper: We Ignore Some News, February 15, 2007
A big feature story in the Thursday Tennessean about the growing use of video blogs, or vlogs, in political and other marketing efforts, begins with an indictment of the paper itself along with the rest of the local mainstream media:When...

Does This Headline Grab You?, February 14, 2007
News.com had an interesting story recently about how newspapers are adapting to attract readers to their websites. The core of it: "Pithy, witty and provocative headlines - the pride of many an editor - are often useless and even counterproductive...

Public Fight Brewing?, February 12, 2007
State Sen. Joe Haynes may have just picked a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel. The Nashville Democrat has filed legislation that would end the monopoly that newspapers have on the business of publishing "public notices" that...

Tennessean Seeks Auto Biz Writer, February 9, 2007
From JournalismJobs.com:The Tennessean, the Gannett-owned daily newspaper in Nashville, Tenn., is seeking an experienced business reporter to cover the automotive industry and its impact on the economy. The Nashville area is home to Nissan North America's HQ and a General...

Lessons Learned, February 8, 2007
Terry Heaton's partner Steve Safran looks at new-media lessons from the Boston bomb scare incident....

Seibert Exits WKRN, February 6, 2007
Well this is crappy news. I thought Seibert was doing good stuff and was on the road to being great....

Missed Opportunity, February 4, 2007
The Tennessee Press Association's Winter Institute is this week in Nashville and there's a session on Podcasts, Videocasts and Blogs where folks can "learn what's new in web-based media technology and strategies and how you can use them to improve...

Shifting Power, February 4, 2007
Jeff Jarvis:Perhaps the most important 'ding' moment I had at Davos was that the powerful are, no surprise, one step behind in their understanding of the true significance of the internet: They think it is all about individual action when,...

Memo to the Media, January 29, 2007
Hey MSM: There's a conservative "netroots" too....

Blogger Bags a Top State Official, January 29, 2007
Maine blogger Lance Dutson deservedly dances the happy dance over the firing of an apparently corrupt Maine bureaucrat brought down by Dutson's intrepid investigative reporting published on his blog, the Maine Web Report. Making the sacking of Maine Tourism Director...

AP To Carry Bloggers' Coverage of Libby Trial, January 24, 2007
WASHINGTON DC, January 23, 2006 - The Associated Press has partnered with the Media Bloggers Association to distribute its members' coverage of the trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, to the...

Round Four..., January 24, 2007
...in which Mick Wright slams Bill Moyers to the mat. Over and over and over and over and over again. If you want to know what was really the agenda of leftist media types gathered at the National Conference for...

Just the Facts?, January 21, 2007
Bob Cox compares Big Media and blogger coverage of the Scooter Libby trial...It was no small irony for me to watch this while reading some of the media coverage of the courts decision to credential bloggers to the Libby Trial....

Huh?, January 19, 2007
I just saw where the Nashville Scene took a bizarre shot at me in its un-bylined "Off Limits" column in this week's edition. The unseen Scene scribe wrote......

Blogs: "The columnists of Today's Consumer Web", January 18, 2007
Jack Lail, managing editor/multimedia for the Knoxville News Sentinel has written a must-read post over at his Random Mumblings blog about the growth of readership for blogs on newspaper websites. Read his whole post to find out why he says,...

Live-Blogging the Libby Trial, January 18, 2007
Media Bloggers Association President Bob Cox is one of the MBA-member bloggers live-blogging the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Check it out at WordsInEdgewise. The trial just began Tuesday and is in the...

Help Needed, January 17, 2007
The Tennessean is looking for a new assistant business editor, and probably a legislative reporter too....

Bredesen's Interview With The Tennessean: Hear It For Yourself, January 17, 2007
Last week, The Tennessean published a story based on an interview the paper did with Gov. Phil Bredesen at the start of his second term in office, which I blogged about here. While the paper is making some steps...

Media Marxists, January 17, 2007
Mick Wright attended the National Conference on Media Reform leftwing lovefest in Memphis over the weekend and reveals the organization's goals. Mick's second post from what Terry Frank has dubbed the "Marxists in Memphis" lead me to media blogger Richard...

Blogger-Legislature Relations Update, January 15, 2007
Nicole Moore has an update over at the NCSL's blog The Thicket to her story in the January edition of State Legislatures magazine re bloggers covering state legislatures....

Facts Matter, January 15, 2007
The Associated Press says: The United States is no longer bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001 The facts say: The United States was never bound by the Kyoto treaty, and it was not...

"The YouTube Effect Will Be Even More Intense", January 15, 2007
"Although the BBC, CNN, and other international news operations employ thousands of professional journalists, they will never be as omnipresent as millions of people carrying a cell phone that can record video," writes Foreign Policy magazine editor Moises Naim in...

Papers Chase, January 15, 2007
Chris Peck, editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote a very long column in the paper's Sunday edition defending traditional newspapers' place in the fast-changing world of media, squeezed by corporate ownership, shrinking readership and the emergence of citizens' media...

Jamil Hussein Update, January 14, 2007
Powerline has a pretty good summary of the state of things in the questions that still swirl around the Associated Press's mysterious source in Baghdad, Jamil Hussein. Powerline:The AP has made no attempt to explain how Mr. Hussein (or whatever...

The Changing Media Landscape, January 13, 2007
The Press-Herald in Portland, Maine, profiles Lance Dutson, one of the Media Bloggers Association member bloggers who will be covering the trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, in U.S. District Court in...

WaPo: Bloggers to Sit With Media at Libby Trial, January 11, 2007
Today's Washington Post reports that bloggers will be among the credentialed news media at the trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, which starts next week. Noting that "scores of...

Using a Podcast to Respond to a YouTube Attack, January 11, 2007
It's all new media all the time for presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as the former Massachusetts governor goes on the Glenn and Helen Show podcast to respond to video from a 1994 debate with Sen. Ted Kennedy that surfaced on...

Good Morning America Beckons, January 10, 2007
I don't watch TV in the morning. I get up, grab a bite to eat, and make the arduous 10-step commute from my kitchen to my home office and start working on the day's projects for my various clients. But...

Exposing the Insiders' Game, January 10, 2007
Mike Chapman, government affairs and public policy specialist at AnthonyBarnum PR in Austin, Texas, tells a fascinating tale of how the new media "injected itself into the process" of the "ultimate insiders' game" in Texas politics: the election of the...

The Future of Journalism Is Smaller, January 9, 2007
You're looking at a picture of a Nokia N93 phone portable multi-media computer. You're also looking at the future of journalism. Former newspaper reporter Trent Seibert, who left The Tennessean last year and is now a multi-media journalist with WKRN...

Time Waits For No Blog, January 8, 2007
Time magazine is "again reinventing itself online, this time by revamping its site to emphasize breaking news and blogs," revamping its website to include more-rapid news updates, news aggregation from multiple sources, and blogs. MediaPost.com reports. A key new feature:...

NCSL Surveys Blogger-Legislature Relations, January 4, 2007
The January 2007 edition of State Legislatures, the monthly magazine of the National Conference of State Legislatures, has a lengthy story about whether bloggers who cover their state legislature should be granted press credentials. While the NCSL normally puts its...

Memphis' Best Investigative Reporter Is..., January 4, 2007
Memphis Flyer political writer Jackson Baker profiles John Harvey, Memphis' best and most technology-savvy investigative journalist and explains why he is "feared by the Shelby County Election Commission." What media outlet does Harvey work for? None of them. He's a...

Federal Court Grants Media Access to Bloggers, January 4, 2007
The U.S. District Court in Washington, DC has agreed to provide the Media Bloggers Association with press credentials for two seats at the upcoming Scooter Libby trial. This is a big deal in the development of blog-based independent journalism. MBA...

Movin' On Up, January 3, 2007
New York Daily News journalist and blogger Ben Smith, who yesterday broke the news of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's leaked presidential campaign strategy book, announced today he is leaving the Daily News to write for The Politico, a...

The AP's Festering Credibility Problem, January 2, 2007
If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it - and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals...

No Wonder Their Circulation is Plummeting, January 2, 2007
A district attorney prosecutes the Los Angeles Times and finds it guilty of serial deception, arrogance and more. A long and delicious read....

Romney, Bloggers and the Boston Globe, December 31, 2006
The Boston Globe front-pages a story about Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's efforts to reach out to bloggers as he runs for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Read it here....

Person of the Year: Me!, December 18, 2006
Time magazine has announced its "Person of the Year" and, incredibly, it is me. William Beutler predicted as much....

Web Passes Newspapers, December 16, 2006
Media use has risen every year since the start of the decade, helped by faster and easier ways to get information and entertainment - and the Internet now has moved ahead of newspapers in usage by Americans, according to statistics...

Camp Update 2, December 15, 2006
The Baptist & Reflector, the statewide newspaper of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, has published a half-apology by editor Lonnie Wilkey to Lipscomb University theology professor Dr. Lee Camp for a column Wilkey wrote last week criticiing Camp based on a...

Who Is Jamil Hussein?, December 14, 2006
I've been following, but only lightly blogging about, the controversy surrounding an Associated Press report from Iraq that increasingly appears to have been a fabrication. But now it is getting interesting......

Follow The Leader, December 11, 2006
The Tennessean posted an interesting story on its website Monday morning - State offers data online about charities' records - which tells readers how to access the financial reports that charities are required to file with the goverment. The...

Shooting the Messenger, December 9, 2006
Michelle Malkin has been digging into the Associated Press's false stories coming out of Iraq and its use of "sources" that are connected with the insurgents and terrorists. The AP, rather than admit its journalistic failures and investigate itself, is...

An Army of Seiberts, December 7, 2006
WKRN investigative reporter Trent Seibert is teaching bloggers how to do original investigative reporting. I'll let Seibert explain, and then add a few comments of my own:But, to me, there are too few bloggers doing original reporting... or even additional...

Judge Not, December 7, 2006
The Refugee Baptist takes Tennessee Baptist Convention spokesjournalist Lonnie Wilkey to task for slamming a Lipscomb University professor over remarks that were badly mis-reported and taken out of context by The Tennessean last week....

Protest, December 6, 2006
The First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University has a very interesting in-house exhibition of photographs, paintings and other items related to the history of political protest through American history, from pre-Revolutionary War incidents such as the Boston Massacre to modern-day...

Associated With The Terrorists Press?, December 5, 2006
Mark Tapscott has a great summary of the credibility crisis engulfing the Associated Press over its alleged use of Iraqi "stringers" who may be peddling false stories on behalf of the insurgency. A la Rathergate, bloggers have played a key...

Playing Defense, December 5, 2006
Mike Chapman comments at Blogabilities about this article from Colin Delaney at ePolitics.com comparing the social media efforts of the Washington Post and the New York Times....

Online and Hyper-Local, December 5, 2006
Monday's Washington Post has a story about the Gannett newspaper chain's big experiment with a new approach to "newspaper" journalism that puts more emphasis on the Internet and local news. The Fort Meyers, Fla., News Press is ground zero for...

Sharing What They Find, December 4, 2006
Interesting findings from E-Voter Institute's 2006 Research and Findings from the Fifth Annual Survey of Political and Advocacy Communication Leaders and the First Annual Survey of Voter Expectations: Finding 1: There is an increasing awareness that web-based tools are complementary...

Running on Empty: Tennessean Gas Tax Story Rife With Misrepresentations, December 2, 2006
State Sen. Mark Norris wasn't the only person whose views on reforming the state's gas tax were grossly misrepresented by Tennessean transportation reporter Kate Howard in a story published in Thursday's edition. Comments by Drew Johnson, director of the Tennesse...

Strike Two: Tennessean Gets Gas Tax Story Wrong, December 1, 2006
It's been a bad couple of days for the credibility of The Tennessean - and also not a very good couple of days for many of Tennessee's conservative political bloggers, who blindly accepted the newspaper's account of two completely different...

Welcome to the Conversation, December 1, 2006
The Tennessean has launched two new reporter-written blogs, a traffic blog by Kate Howard and a Predators hockey blog by John Glennon. They appear to be real blogs, complete with permalinks and the ability for readers to post comments. It...

Missing a Big Story, November 30, 2006
Did you know that the Tennessee Supreme Court is hearing a huge defamation lawsuit against World Net Daily that involves former Vice President Al Gore Jr.? Did you know that other defendants in the case are the Center for Public...

"Brief news stories can seldom do justice to substantive conversations.", November 30, 2006
The Tennessean newspaper appears to be getting its first live demonstration in how the Internet has empowered its audience and its story subjects and enabled them to undermine the paper's gatekeeper-position in determining how news events are portrayed to the...

The Ongoing Media Revolution, November 28, 2006
More people are downloading audio feeds, but few do it regularly, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Details in Business Week. The Pew study is online here. Also in media news, the Pulitzer...

The Ongoing Battle, November 27, 2006
Cappucino Soul spotlights a legal victory involving a blogger arrested by cops in Canada. Score this one for the independent journalists. ... Meanwhile, the "study committee" that the Tennessee legislature established for the purpose of delaying any meaningful reform of...

Use It Wisely, November 17, 2006
Terry Heaton may have moved to Dallas, but his Nashville connection remains strong. Read today's post, The Blogosphere Belongs to the Blogosphere. Also, Heaton weighed in a few days ago on some rather misguided statements by former New York Times...

Welcome to the Future, November 15, 2006
The Tennessean is looking for a new reporter to cover Nashville's metro government. Meanwhile, the Brunswick News, near St. Simon's Island, Ga., is looking for a broadcast journalist to anchor a news webcast on the newspaper's website. ...Also, the Star...

Blogs Becoming Advertising Force, November 13, 2006
This Reuters report says that, in Europe, "blogs are becoming a force to be reckoned with as a means of advertising products" according to a survey by Ipsos MORI . The Ipsos MORI poll "found that the Internet journals are...

Change in Chattanooga, November 6, 2006
JournalismJobs.com lists an interesting job opening at the Chattanooga newspaper:VIDEOGRAPHER The Chattanooga Times Free Press in scenic East Tennessee is seeking a videographer to produce spot news and feature video reports for the newspaper's fast-growing Web site, tfponline.com. Applicants should...

"Political Reporters ... You Don't Control the Media Anymore", November 6, 2006
The Monday Memphis Commercial-Appeal has this story regarding political campaings and media in the era of blogs and YouTube, complete with a fascinating and dead-on accurate quote from Carol C. Darr, director of the George Washington University Institute for Politics,...

Gannett Papers To Try Networked Grassroots Journalism, November 6, 2006
Wired has an amazing story about a paradigm shift at some Gannett newspapers in the way they gather news. It's called crowdsourcing, and it is a journalistic change for the better. The initiative is designed to "put readers to work...

If A Tree Falls In A Forest..., October 31, 2006
The Tennessean has a political blog. It's a week before election day, and I didn't know that until today, which tells you The Tennessean needs to learn a lot more about how to market a blog....

The 24-Minute News Cycle, October 29, 2006
The Sunday Tennessean has a good story on how cheap digital communications tools are changing the rules of the campaign game......

Fighting Media Misinformation, October 29, 2006
The U.S. Department of Defense is using the Internet to make public its requested media corrections and any refusals to correct, reports StrategyPage.com. The goal: pressure the news media to make corrections when it gets things wrong. Of course, it...

Questioning The Commander in Chief, October 28, 2006
My old college roommate interviewed President Bush Friday. The 8-minute video is on the Chicago Tribune's blog, The Swamp. Scroll down, the video link is on the right. Both guys do a pretty good job....

Thbbbt!, October 27, 2006
WKRN political blogger A.C. Kleinheider, whom I usually refer to as ACK, relates a heart-to-heart conversation involving a couple of journalists. Read the whole thing. Excerpt:I explained to The Journalist that the call letters I stated at the beginning of...

No Negativity, No News Coverage?, October 27, 2006
Friday's Tennessean has an interview with Vanderbilt University political science professor John Geer about negative campaign ads. This segment...What portion of campaign ads in presidential campaigns did you find were negative? Over the last 44 years there has been an...

The Real War, October 25, 2006
Don't miss Michael Fumento's excellent National Review article on media coverage of the Iraq war, and how it is being skewed by a brigade of "reporters" trying to do the impossible: accurately report a war in a country the size...

The Rise of the Blogs, October 24, 2006
Rob Huddleston:"The national media's inadequacy has been magnified by the rise of the blogs, for sure. That's why they interview bloggers, as a way of catching up on what has been going on in each race.He's right....

Killing the Milblogs, October 22, 2006
Boston Herald City Editor Jules Crittenden says the military's new regulations on soldiers' blogging may kill off milblogs. I fear he's right....

Bill Moyers Threatens to Sue a Blogger, October 20, 2006
Left-wing PBS journalist Bill Moyers is threatening to sue a blogger, claiming defamation because the blogger reprinted a statement first published by one of Moyers' interview subjects, who claims Moyers said something that Moyers says he never said. The Moyers...

Federal Court Ruling Called "Victory for Bloggers", October 19, 2006
Michael Silence calls it "a victory for bloggers," and I have to agree:Judge: Libel limit applies to Web DALLAS - A one-year statute of limitations for bringing libel lawsuits in Texas also applies to articles posted on the Internet, a...

Election? What Election?, October 18, 2006
Has a major daily newspaper in a state capital city ever done less to cover a state legislative election than The Tennessean has this year? With the Republican Party edging close to taking over the state House for the first...

Help Me Help Them, October 17, 2006
I am being interviewed tomorrow for a political magazine doing a story on bloggers covering their state legislatures. The central theme of the story is an exploration of whether bloggers should be given official legislative press credentials. I have my...

Have You Listened To Your Newspaper Today?, October 4, 2006
Readers of The Washington Times can now listen to their morning newspaper while they eat breakfast, go for a morning jog, or on the drive to work, thanks to a groundbreaking new service offered in conjunction with a new tech...

Let's Give Them Something To Talk About, October 3, 2006
Online Media Daily reports on a survey commissioned by Lexis Nexis that found consumers are more likely to turn to the mainstream media when they want information about urgent matters than to blogs, podcasts or Web-only publications. But will newspapers...

The Future of News, September 29, 2006
Michael S. Malone, who writes the "Silicon Insider" column for ABCNews.com, explores the future of news in his newest online column. My favorite part:A couple years ago I got into a lot of trouble when I used this column to...

Travel Blogs Enter the Mainstream, September 25, 2006
TravelWeekly.com reports that, "Travel suppliers, destinations and their marketing and public relations professionals are realizing that they have to deal with bloggers, those edgy, irreverent, sometimes dazzling, sometimes off-base voices on the Web."...

"The Best Test of Truth", September 19, 2006
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has published an Op-Ed by Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, titled "The best test of truth," as part of a series in honor of Constitution Day. The opinion editor at the paper asked...

USAToday.com overhauls travel section with "greater emphasis on consumer input", September 18, 2006
USAToday.com has relaunched its travel section today. Online Media Daily reports the redesigned site "will place greater emphasis on consumer input, travel tools, and blogs."...

Good Advice, September 14, 2006
John Kroll, deputy business editor for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, has some good advice for newspaper business editors considering adding blogs to their online business section. Basically it boils down to: Have a purpose and a plan, but not grandiose expectations....

Info Dump, September 13, 2006
Want to see the future of professional journalism? Check out this post from WKRN's former newspaper reporter turned broadcasting-and-blogging investigative TV reporter Trent Seibert......

What Dobie Be Doing, September 5, 2006
In case you've wondered what former Nashville Scene editor Bruce Dobie has been doing lately, turns out he's started a new company, Dobie Media LLC., described as a business that aggregates information for distribution on mobile devices. His focus is...

Transparent Bias, September 3, 2006
The editorial page of the The Tennessean Sunday offers up an apparently transparent example of the paper's liberal bias, via this editorial about the effort - lead by independent bloggers, not by newspapers such as The Tennessean - to identify...

The Truth Hurts, September 1, 2006
Mark Rogers makes an excellent point:The next time someone suggests that the people of Nashville don't have the information necessary to make decisions about property taxes, just remind them who holds the key to solving that problem.Ouch!...

The Future of Traditional News In a Craigslist Media World, August 29, 2006
Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, has an excellent column at the Washington Examiner's website asking, "Can traditional news organizations cope with a Craigslist media world?" The answer: Only by adopting "Craigslist media world" strategies....

Blogging for Dollars, August 25, 2006
The cover story of the new issue of Business 20 is headlined "Blogging For Dollars, and if you're a blogger it'll have you trying to come up with the next profitable blog idea. You can read the story online here....

Some Things Need Changing, August 21, 2006
Danny Glover, who writes the National Journal's excellent Beltway Blogroll blog roundup, notes my battle to get the National Conference of State Legislatures to grant me a press pass to cover a session on legislative blogging, and recounts his own...

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join Em, August 21, 2006
The Washington Post has formed a "blog network" designed to boost lesser-known blogs - and also to carry WaPo ads. Details here from Online Media Daily. If you're a blogger, you can submit your blog for review and a possible...

NCSL Notes, August 18, 2006
The blogger at Music City Oracle blisters The Tennessean for its failure to cover much of the substantive stuff going on at the National Conference of State Legislatures' annual meeting at Nashville's Opryland Hotel. The Tennessean's coverage of the NCSL...

Sizzle, August 18, 2006
NASHVILLE - At the National Conference of State Legislatures annual meeting this week at Nashville's Opryland Hotel, some media cover the sizzle, and some cover the steak....

Blogging the NCSL Annual Meeting, August 16, 2006
State Rep. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, is blogging from the National Conference of State Legislatures' annual convention, which is in Nashville this year. He reports here on a session on eminent domain reform in the wake of the Supreme Court's misbegotten...

Moving On, August 16, 2006
The Tennessean has started the search for Trent Siebert's replacement....

Exposing Earmarks, August 15, 2006
The Washington Examiner is inviting readers and bloggers "to help uncover which members of Congress sponsored the 1,867 secret spending earmarks worth more than $500 million in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriation bill now before Congress."These earmarks average more...

Leaving The Tennessean is Becoming a Trent, August 14, 2006
Blake Wylie breaks some news today, becoming the first media outlet to report that WKRN Channel 2 News has snagged top-notch political reporter Trent Seibert away from The Tennessean. Wylie's praise of Seibert is, if anything, too faint. WKRN General...

Reuters admits altering of Beirut photo, August 7, 2006
By Rick Forman First the AP allegedly used staged photos from Qana. Now Reuters has been forced to withdraw a doctored photo coming out of Beirut. Adnan Hajj, is dis-credited with the doctored photo and some of the earlier photos...

Critiquing the Media, August 3, 2006
Bloggers Charles Badger and Terry Frank both are taking the Tennessee news media to task for failing to adequately cover the election campaign....

Leftist Blogger Jailed For Refusing to Provide Video to Grand Jury, August 2, 2006
The New York Times is up with a story, Blogger Jailed After Defying Court Orders, about a videoblogger who is facing jail time "after refusing to turn over video he took at an anticapitalist protest [in San Francisco] last summer...

He's Back. He's Statewide, August 1, 2006
Nashville radio talk show host Steve Gill returns to the air - and statewide - August 12, in time to make some waves in the current election season. This isn't good news for liberals running for re-election. Gill, who left...

Media Content Provider Opportunity, July 26, 2006
The Tennessean is chumming for new freelancers for its All the Rage entertainment publication.All the Rage, Nashville's go-to weekly entertainment and lifestyle guide, has several openings for talented, creative freelancers based in our city. We're looking for independent writers who...

Bad Move, July 25, 2006
Nashville Business Journal (and, I'm assuming, all of the other 41weekly city business journals owned by the American City Business Journals unit of Advance Publications Inc.) has started putting all of its news and feature from its print-edition online -...

Public Relations Reaches the Blogosphere, July 24, 2006
The New York Sun takes a look at the work that Edelman Public Relations is doing in the blogosphere.Known as "emerging media," blogs began as diary entries by individuals to be read, and replied to, solely by friends. Because they...

Study Finds the Obvious Is True, July 20, 2006
A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that bloggers tend to read online news accounts, join listservs, and scour other blogs at rates that far surpass their non-blogging counterparts, reports Online Media Daily."Bloggers are avid...

Credit Where Credit is Due, July 20, 2006
A Nashville blogger nailed the campaign manager for the Bob Clement for Mayor campaign for setting up several political action committees to allow individual donors to give more to the Clement campaign than allowed to individually by law. The Nashville...

Gill Joins WKRN, July 13, 2006
Proving once again it is the Nashville news operation that is "thinking outside the box" the most, Nashville's WKRN News 2 today announced that Nashville attorney and radio talk host Steve Gill has signed with the station to serve as...

Stay Tuned..., July 13, 2006
Major Nashville media announcement coming at 6 p.m. Stay tuned......

Puff Piece, July 12, 2006
It is unfortunate that incumbency is so powerful in Tennessee that there is only one state senate election - in the 21st District, which includes parts of Nashville - where there both primaries are contested. It is even more unfortunate...

A Trend, July 9, 2006
In response to this recent post of mine criticizing a Tennessean editorial that supporting restricting individuals' free speech rights, Scott Clark over at Music City Oracle spots a trend. Says Clark, "That editorial continued an assault by the Tennessean on...

Music City Podcasts, July 8, 2006
The Saturday Tennessean has a nice feature on podcasts and the Nashville music scene, including Candace Corrigan's excellent regular podcast "The Nashville Nobody Knows," which features interviews with non-mainstream musicians who call Nashville home....

WKRN To Accept Bloggers' Video Stories For Air, July 7, 2006
Big news from WKRN today. I'll let Rex Hammock explain:Michael Sechrist, general manager of Nashville's blog-friendly ABC affiliate, WKRN, announced that the station is starting an initiative to encourage bloggers to submit edited news or feature stories to the station,...

Kentucky Blog Ban Update, July 5, 2006
The Christian Science Monitor updates the latest in the Kentucky state government's attempt to keep state employees from reading (some) blogs.Central to the constitutional case - which Nickolas says he may challenge in court - is the question of whether...

Newspaper: We Need Less Speech, July 3, 2006
Now that Tennessee's "Choose Life" license plate has been ruled constitutional, The Tennessean proposes a solution to this egregious use of free speech: get rid of the whole specialty license plate program! It's odd to see a newspaper come out...

Some State Governments Releasing Data in XML, July 2, 2006
InfoWorld reports that the District of Columbia has begun releasing data on city government operations on the Internet in an analysis-friendly format. InfoWorld's Jon Udell quotes the director of the DCStat program, Dan Thomas, on the release of data, such...

USA Today Admits Error on NSA Telecom Records Story, July 1, 2006
A few weeks ago, I posted a brief post questioning the credibility of the big USA Today story claiming that three major U.S. telecom firms were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any...

The Handwriting Is On the Blog, June 30, 2006
Jason Mohr writes for the Helena, Montana, Independent Record, and also writes for the paper's Town Blog. Or did. He's leaving the paper, and ending the blog. His final blog entry made me chuckle:When you see your job advertised in...

The Platform Doesn't Matter (Yes It Does), June 27, 2006
A quote in today's Tennessean from Tennessean President and Publisher Ellen Leifeld got me thinking about something I wrote here at BillHobbs.com a few weeks ago:The reality of the news business in the modern era is that, via blogs and...

The Freedom of the Arrogant Press, June 26, 2006
After reading New York Times editor Bill Keller's lame defense of the NYT's decision to undercut the war on terror by exposing yet another program designed to fight the terrorists, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds gives him a...

Flying Blind, June 24, 2006
The Saturday Tennessean reports that there is some sort of deal in the works that could eventually repeal something called the "Wright Amendment," which, reporter Bush Bernard says, has prevented Southwest Airlines from flying directly from Nashville to Dallas' Love...

Blogalism Update, June 21, 2006
The Kentucky state government is censoring which blogs state employees can read on their office computers. ... Meanwhile, the blogs continue to hammer Jason "The Liar" Leopold and TruthNot.org contortionist editor Marc Ash over their continued insistence that Karl Rove...

Rather Late, June 21, 2006
Dan Rather is leaving CBS. He says he's going to continue working so perhaps now he can go to work finding out the source of those forged and false documents he used to slander President Bush with just before the...

Brilliant, June 19, 2006
WKRN Channel 2 General Manager Mike Sechrist has posted video on his blog of a TV commercial the station chose not to air, an in-house promo for its weather news team. Click the link at the end of his blog...

The Story of the Story About the Indictment of Karl Rove, June 18, 2006
The Sunday Washington Post has a fascinating look at the "scoop" that the leftwing TruthOut.org published saying Karl Rove had been indicted, which was, well, 180 degrees out of sync with the actual truth......

Public Notice, June 8, 2006
Thursday's Nashville City Paper has a rather silly - and wrong - editorial about government compliance with "public notice" requirements. The editorial stems from the ACLU's attempt to prevent Tennessee voters from voting on a proposed amendment to the state...

AB Shuts Down, June 8, 2006
The Tennessean reports that Amusement Business, a 112-year-old publication that covered the business of outdoor entertainment for theme parks, festivals and carnivals (and for which I freelanced many articles back in the 1990s) has published its last issue, the company...

Too many questions., June 5, 2006
Are political blogs the new Iowa caucus? David D. Perlmutter, a senior fellow at Louisiana State University's Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs and an associate professor of mass communication on the Baton Rouge campus, explores that question in...

Embrace The Blogs, June 2, 2006
Bill Colrus has a very nice piece on "citizen journalism" in the current edition of the Chattanooga Pulse, which you can read online here. And I don't just say that because I'm quoted. It's a long article - here's a...

Getting It, May 31, 2006
WKRN's Brittney Gilbert sez... "The Tennessean doesn't know a blog from a hole in the ground." That's partly true. Some of their reporters know blogs very well, and read them, and even get story ideas from them. But "The Tennessean"...

Class Act, May 31, 2006
Not long after WKRN General Manager Mike Sechrist announced on his blog a reshuffling of anchors at Nashville's third-place news channel, commenters on his blog started blasting the changes, often with juvenile or rude language, and often anonymously. One common...

$52 Million Pickup, May 27, 2006
Wow. Just wow.An assembly of news organizations banded together yesterday to give $52 million to the Newseum, the museum dedicated to the news business. Charles L. Overby, chairman and CEO of the Freedom Forum and the Newseum, said the gift...

Newspapers Seek Remedies for Dying Business Model, May 27, 2006
American Journalism Review looks at all the different ways that newspaper companies are trying to stem the precipitous decline in circulation.As the Internet gains popularity, analysts suggest it's unlikely that many of those students will eventually take up the newspaper...

Politician Launches Fresh Attack on Blogs, May 26, 2006
U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, is an enemy of free speech. Allen is launching a new attack on political bloggers with the renewed threat of regulation under the Stifle Free Speech Act Campaign Finance Reform act even after the Federal...

AP Gets Blog-Friendly, May 25, 2006
The Associated Press has done a deal with Technorati, the blog-search service. AP stories that appear on the websites of the 440 AP members that subscribe to the AP's Hosted Custom News Web product will show a module featuring the...

Storm of Lies, May 24, 2006
Most everything the media told you about Hurricane Katrina was wrong. But of course, the media's intention wasn't to get the story right. It was to slam President Bush. More here, here, and here. At least bloggers got the bus...

Rather Dubious, May 19, 2006
Leslie Cauley, the reporter who wrote the now much-disputed story alleging - using "anonymous sources" - that three major U.S. telecom firms were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential...

... That's Why Citizen Journalism is Flourishing, May 11, 2006
Rocky Mountain News editor and blogger John Temple writes on the rise of citizen journalism:Normal people today have tools that journalists would have died for only a few years ago. They're widely available. And they're cheap. So people play with...

Post-Mortem, May 6, 2006
AdAge.com has a good post-mortem on the Lance Dutson case now that the New York ad agency Warren Kremer Paino Advertising has dropped its lawsuit that was intended to intimidate a Maine blogger into silence who had been critical of...

Unconditional Surrender by NY Ad Agency in Maine Blogger Case, May 5, 2006
The Media Bloggers Association is reporting that, in the last hour, lawyers for the advertising agency suing MBA member Lance Dutson filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal in U.S. District Court in Maine....

Lance Dutson Update, May 5, 2006
Editor's Note: This post has been superceded by a major development today, a complete retreat by Warren Kremer Paino, the New York City ad agency that was trying to intimidate a Maine blogger into silence by hitting him with a...

Journalists and $pinmeisters, May 3, 2006
Compare and contrast these two help-wanted ads. It seems that being a government reporter in Washington D.C. pays less than being a spinmeister for the city government of Washington D.C....

Volunteer to Read, May 1, 2006
VolunteerVoters.com, the new political blog owned by WKRN Channel 2 in Nashville and written by A.C. Kleinheider, deserves a lot more readers than it is currently getting. Just thought I'd mention that. Now, go read it. Also, Adam Groves' Tennessee...

Free Stuff!, May 1, 2006
NashvillePost.com is making its archives accessible without a subscription, part of its very fine blog-like redesign that has RSS feeds and even allows for reader comments. [Hat tip: Terry Frank] NashvillePost.com is owned by the publisher of Business Tennessee magazine,...

Blog Britannia, April 28, 2006
Here's an interesting report from London from Reuters:Citizen journalism climbing up the media ladder Videos shot in smoke-filled, bombed-out London underground trains, photos of body-strewn roads -- the July 7 bombings on London's transport system brought the arrival of a...

Lance Dutson Update, April 28, 2006
Ed Cone has more on Lance Dutson, the Maine blogger who is being sued by an ad agency, with several good links. A few days ago, almost no one had ever heard of "Warren Kremer Paino Advertising." Now, they're known...

Life Goes On, April 28, 2006
I'll be speaking as part of a panel discussion at the Tennessee College Public Relations Association Spring Conference in mid-May on the topic of Blogs, Podcasting, RSS and Web Video in Higher Education PR. Also on the panel: Melanie Moran,...

Citizen Journalist Hit With Lawsuit, April 27, 2006
An advertising firm that works for Maine's Office of Tourism is suing a blogger, Lance Dutson, over journalism published at the Dutson's website, Maine Web Report. The Media Bloggers Association, of which I am a board member, is fighting back....

Getting It, April 26, 2006
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is launching the Knight New Media Center, a project intended to help American journalists adapt to rapid change, and to advance news values in the digital age. The Knight New Media Center...

Know the Score, April 23, 2006
I never have blogged much about sports, but I am a big fan of both good journalism and open records, so here's a link to an impressive database compiled by the Indianapolis Star of financial data from the athletic programs...

Q&A, April 22, 2006
Q: What is "citizen journalism"? A: Here's a fine example of citizen journalism from Blake Wylie....

Apple v. Bloggers Update, April 22, 2006
In a case with big implications for the rights of citizen journalists, the State of California Court of Appeal "gave Apple Computer's attorney a particularly hard day in court yesterday" over its attempt to force the Internet service provider of...

The Future, April 21, 2006
This is interesting - a blogger's readers pay in advance so he can go research and write a feature story about the Trinity atomic bomb test site. [Hat tip to the Nashville City Paper's blog.] I have said before that...

It's a Conversation, January 10, 2006
I've been so busy lately, that I didn't notice until today that the Nashville City Paper has added a blog to its online offerings. The blog is set up to feature postings by various City Paper writers, and does accept...

"Let's get it nailed down, people!", January 5, 2006
Big Media's latest credibility-killing debacle, it's erroneous reporting that 12 trapped miners had been found alive when, in fact, they were dead, reminds me of the moment that, more than any other, crystallized my desire to be a journalist. The...

Just Do It, January 5, 2006
Here's more on the refusal of Kentucky legislative officials to grant media credentials to bloggers from Caleb O. Brown of KentuckyVotes.org, who http://www.bipps.org/blog/archives/2006/01/cheap_seats.html">writes:Kentucky's Legislative Research Commission has denied bloggers press credentials for the upcoming legislative session. I also applied for...

Fairness Update, December 27, 2005
I have updated this post by publishing a series of emails exchanged between myself and Nashville is Talking blogger Brittney Gilbert regarding the issue of whether blogs published by the mainstream media have an obligation to be fair....

Should MSM Bloggers Be Fair?, December 22, 2005
Interesting debate underway over at Nashville Is Talking, here, on whether a salaried blogger working for a news organization has an obligation to at least try to appear fair - and what they're risking if they don't. UPDATE: The NIT...

Why Newspaper Websites Should Be Blogs, December 15, 2005
Mike Hollihan says, "Score one for modern, web-enabled, open source journalism." I'll let him explain....

Is Good News News?, December 15, 2005
A reporter realizes what too few reporters ever do: that news doesn't have to be bad to be "news." Reporting and blogging for the Fairbanks, Alaska, Daily News-Miner from Iraq, where she's embedded with the 172nd Stryker Brigade near Mosul,...

Wikipedia and the Army of Fact-Checkers, December 14, 2005
The Tennessean weighs in on the Wikipedia story, warning that websites "that don't monitor accuracy are begging for government regulation." The paper thinks online information sites should "hire an army of fact-checkers." The Wikipedia story interests me for how it...

Clueless in Tennessee, December 13, 2005
The Tennessee Press Association - the trade association for Tennessee newspapers - has scheduled a session on blogs as part of its annual meeting coming up in Nashville in mid-February. The Press Institute and Winter Convention, sponsored by the TPA...

"The gate keeper function is dead", December 10, 2005
Terry Heaton has ten very good suggestions for journalism school deans. I especially agree with 1-4 and number 8....

NashvillePost.com Returns Monday, December 9, 2005
NashvillePost.com, a good local business news website that went dark back in August while the owning company mulled its future, is coming back better than ever. The website, owned by the publisher of Business Tennessee magazine, has announced it will...

Something's Missing, December 8, 2005
Something is missing from this job posting: evidence that the station has gotten a clue about blogs....

War on Error Bias, December 1, 2005
This post has been linked by Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, the National Journal's Blogometer, Reason.com, Protein Wisdom, the Knoxville News Sentinel's Michael Silence, the New England Republican, and several other blogs since yesterday. So... if you haven't read it, well, why...

Words Fail, Nail, or Jail (Depending on the Editor), November 26, 2005
By Donna Locke Tennesseans for Immigration Control and Reform Well, I guess this Thanksgiving beats the time my family went to the all-the-frog-legs-you-can-eat place and was asked not to return. Meanwhile, back at the blogs . . . A couple...

The WebBLOG Blues, November 14, 2005
Much as I like a lot of what The Tennessean has been doing lately - namely, great and unbiased coverage of state government and the legislature - and much as I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the paper's new editor, E.J. Mitchell,...

The Future of Mass Media, October 25, 2005
Terry Heaton blogged what he told some 300 or so "mass communications" students at Middle Tennessee State University yesterday.I encouraged her to create a music review blog and begin publishing her work immediately. I told her how to find other...

Defending An Inconvenient Freedom, October 14, 2005
Bob Cauthorn over at Corante's Rebuilding Media blog, highlights a momentous decision by the Delaware Supreme Court recognizing that comments posted online have First Amendment protection.The Delaware Supreme Court yesterday delivered what one hopes is a watershed decision when it...

Yahoo! To Include Blogs in News Search Results, October 12, 2005
The news in this AP story might get me to switch from Google News to Yahoo! News...Yahoo Inc.'s online news search tool on Monday added Internet journal entries as a supplement to professional media offerings - an experiment that figures...

Is the First Amendment Only For a Special Elite?, October 11, 2005
Bloggers would "probably not" be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon, according to a report from Editor & Publisher. The question...

Rather Silly, September 28, 2005
Dan Rather is still in denial about the forged documents he and CBS used to lie about President Bush. So is his former producer, Mary Mapes. More from PowerLine...

Unholy, Indeed, July 7, 2003
Unholy, Indeed I rarely watch The Agency, a CBS drama set inside a fictionalized Central Intelligence Agency, but this week's episode, a rerun called "Unholy Alliances" caught my attention. In it, the head of the CIA is paid a visit...

"An Enduring Desire... to Be Informed", June 24, 2003
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...

Al Just Doesn't Get It, June 20, 2003
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...

A Story of Journalistic Bias, May 30, 2003
In November 1994 I worked, part time, for a mid-sized metropolitan daily newspaper in Nashville, Ten