Barney Pell's Weblog

While I'm pretty good at capturing sessions in real-time, so this almost looks like a transcript, I don't claim that I was accurate in the notes -- I did not capture everything, and abbreviated or interpreted as I absorbed the content.

All Things Digital Conference
Blogging and Mainstream Media Session
May 24, 2005

Part 1: The Bloggers

• Mena Trott, Cofounder & President, Six Apart
  
• Dan Gillmor, Founder, Grassroots Media
  
• Ana Marie Cox, Editor, Wonkette.com
  

(I missed the first 10 minutes of the session, as it started really early in the morning.)

Blogging is an ongoing dialog…

Dan: we have a battalion of critics. journalists are fairly insecure people
by definition. it's important that we develop thicker skins and
listen. people who think I'm wrong tend to be people I learn from more than
people I think are right.

Kara: attack on bloggers is that they're inaccurate, like a raving mob of
lunatics.

Ana: Tina Brown called it: the new "stazi". One of the things interesting about
Bloggers are attack mob on journalists: they hit them where it hurt, caught
CBS news getting it incredibly wrong. The more that political bloggers
(formerly "warbloggers" as came out during Iraq) are becoming more like the
mainstream media. Cliquish, arrogant, get things wrong.
Hive mind effect. The blog "powerline" was where people sent their
information about typewriters used in 1972 to disprove bush's claims about
national guard service. with Terry Shiavo there was a memo claimed to be
from the administration, but Powerline folks thought it had to be false.

Mena: everything I write about is viewed through the lens of how does this
affect the product. I can't write on my personal blog about going to a trip
without it affecting six apart. If I go to DC our company is going to get
bought by Microsoft. But I believe truth bubbles up to the top.

Kara: do people have to rise to the top?

Dan: there does seem to be some shaking out into an A list, and Chris
Anderson's Long Tail which tends to be further down. the best new things
are not what people with 100,000 readers are writing. sorting out truth and
falsehood will be tough. people need to use and calibrate their internal bullshit
detectors. There are quite a few bloggers I trust at least as much as I trust the Wall
Street Journal (except the editorial pages, which I do trust to do its thing).
We've gotten pretty good at credibility judgments in the analog worlds. we
know that supermarket tabloids to be false...

Kara: ... although they're often right...

Dan: ... but I'm not talking about news that is often right.

Mena: more people are getting their 15 minutes. we'll see bloggers saying
various points that are inaccurate. the journalist should be able to reply
with their own corrections.

Kara: if we (Wall Street Journal) had used those same documents, Steve Jobs would have been
hesitant to sue us.

Dan: (Apple) is suing employees...

Ana: it will impact the future of freedom of press. Jobs seems to realize
this. what struck me is if it's true he wouldn't sue WSJ
but would subpoena the bloggers. it's what you actually do with the info
you have to tell if they're a journalist. not where you print it.

Dan: in the actual case, the judge ducked the question of what is a
journalist. he said if Apple has a stamp that says "Apple confidential" on
a press release, than a journalist can't put it out until Apple is
ready. that's a real threat to journalists.

Kara: what will be the future tools for doing this: right now it's printed
word. where is it going to be delivered in the future, e.g. podcasts?

Mena: feedback loop. need tools to make it possible. you see messaging with
blogging (alert when an article is written). people like to skim, parse
things quickly. audio ... being able to listen to people you count on is a
powerful thing. but people want to skim. I don't want to listen to a 4
minute audio clip of a blogger, period. most people who are using it
successfully are professionals. if my mom is doing it, it's phone, if she's
online podcasting it's great. Adam Curry is now podcasting on Sirius: but
he's a radio personality broadcasting on radio...

Dan: podcasting on radio seems like broadcasting.

Mena: you can't call everything blogging.

Kara: wsj is a blog every day...

Ana: when my friend figured out podcasting was a downloadable mp3, she said
"that's all it is?"
written word has proven effective medium for many years. it's the way most
of our info gets transmitted. with blogging we'll need to find different
words.
I don't say "I'm a blogger", but "online columnist".
blogging is like albums: people at the top will get bought out, but there
will still be people in garages.

Mena: photos... I have two blogs; one is personal for small groups of my friends. I
take a picture every day, including one of myself every day. I need to
slow down my life every day. I can look at a day and know exactly how I
felt.

Kara: you're talking about a diary...

Mena: mobile blogging is the future, everything will be done through a
mobile device. all of us our doing it that way.

Dan: in context of journalism, we don't have a good way for people to follow
a conversation. we need tools to let us track conversations across sites
and across common threads and make better sense, and help us with
reputation systems.

Yahoo is leading.

an: search is the killer app. not sure if it's a central site. the biggest
breakthrough for blogging besides moblogging is introducing keywords to
pre-index what you're writing so people can find it easily.
reputation also important.

I've tried feed consolidator services. they put al info on one page, but
it's still too much info.

Mena: there are bloggers who find stuff for you. I read 100 feeds. some
bloggers I can count on as having the info I want to read.

Ana: some kind of search engine with keywords, and reputation function.

Dan: a tool where I designate 3 people on any topics, plus 2 people they
designate on that topic... doesn't exist today.
tagging also interesting as it's a Dewey decimal system of what's important
to people.

Ana: del.icio.us: you can subscribe to someone else's bookmarks.

Kara: advice to big publishers?

Ana: there is a way to feel like you're part of the readers life. it's the
conversation, feedback. different pockets of readers want different tone
from you. some people want talk back, or sassy, or caring way.

Dan: competition is good for journalists; we react well and work hard. the
problem is that the business model is if not unraveling getting very
difficult. we should think of things as an ecosystem. it's not bloggers vs.
journalists but it's part of an ecosystem and we should adapt to that.

Mena: start small; you don't have to get blogging right overnight. they'll
get criticized by the best bloggers and that's ok.
if you start in less controversial, e.g. dining section where people write
rest reviews, and pair those with community people writing about the same
restaurants. start in sections where it's not about war or politics to get
your feet in the water.

Q&A

q: you've said so little about bush administration which has had problems
with the press and aversion to the truth. then blogs represent a Maginot
line. could government try to regulate, intimidate, or stop the impact of what you
do?

Ana: hot issue is regulation of blogging by campaign finance reform (if they're taking advertising money).
but blogging for all the great things that it is it's very hard to do
real solid reporting as a single person out there. you don't have the
resources and the context. so you won't see a blogger take down the
administration unless they're having sex with someone.

q: ... but you can link to foreign press who may be authentic

Ana: you have started seeing Americans reading foreign press much more
recently. people will have to get used to knowing that no one source will have the truth.

Dan: if you want to see how governments are attacking people for doing this:
china is going after bloggers. that's a taste of what happens when governments get
worried. I still believe first amendment is intact in this country.

I'm worried about trend of some credentials of journalists by Washington

q: I'm involved with an audio/ video search engine. what's the timeline on video
blogs?

Mena: there's a product out where you have a green screen teleprompted with
your video. you can attach your script to the video. getting these things to
bloggers is a step to higher quality. this tool is that media elite will
use.
we can't get too bogged down with the great tools as there are all these
people who have things to say that don't have the tools.

q: mainstream media model falling apart, but what about evolution of
bloggers business model? Brad Felding said he has 3000 subscribers and
makes about $500/month off Amazon etc. what role will ads inserted by 3rd
parties in blogs?

Dan: the biz model for mass media is troubled, but would be a tragedy for
our society if big media were to die off.
the bottom up stuff is starting to get traction with advertisers, with
people pointing you to services (e.g. CNET points you to things and gets
some revenue for it).
advertisers are used to writing really big checks, not lots of little checks
to small people. intermediaries are forming to handle pieces of it.

on the long tail aspect, there will be models evolving to get some
advertising out. whether it will support a lot of people doing it
professionally I don't know, but I'm certainly assuming there's a business.

q: made my living working for dinosaur media, we agonize about being right
and ethical. for all the bad things about big journalism there are really
good things about the way we're supposed to lead our lives.
how do we know if those positive attributes carry over to bloggers?

Ana: the same way. you read the blogger and get to know them.
Steve Jobs is impugning a vast amount of people. you are a journalist if you
practice journalism. just because you're putting it up on a weblog doesn't
mean you're no longer a journalist. Gawker media: Nick Denton was an idiot
savant. All the unhireable people he recruited were extremely
conscientious.

Kara: I agree rap on bloggers is unfair

q: (Quentin Hardy, writer for Forbes): Ana should get together with Steve
Jobs and start something called "Star Orifice" bloggers are
self-righteous. blogging is an echo chamber that lives and dies by traditional
media. the internet has lowered the cost of entry for people with another
business model.

bloggers are creating echo chambers. personalization is hurting a sense of
community. people read the blogs they agree with for the most part.

Dan: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. this is often new stuff. people
are doing journalism out there often, it's just there is a lot of noise too.

q: ... "Swift Boat Veterans" had a good run with nothing to stand on.
(Ana: that was a book, and bloggers brought them down...)

Ana: the combative relationship helps people know who to trust. real
reporting is very expensive. Powerlines was example of real (micro)
journalism: they brought together evidence.
bloggers won't bring down main stream media (MSM), but what they're doing is worth figuring out
your own opinions about.