Yglesias: food for thought on the utility and possible limitations of blogs.
The idea that retirees will continue to keep a hand in their field after leaving work, and will apply all that experience to ruminating on possible developments is pretty exciting. Elder wisdom for the information age. I like it.
[quote=“jashsu”]
I disagree. We should start to expect more from blogs. They can be a valuable tool for information and expression when used responsibly.[/quote]
That’s wishful thinking; blogs (from personal up through commercial) are by their very nature relatively unedited compared to mainstream established media. That’s not to say that blogs do not often contain useful information (in many cases information which has increased value by its timely reporting). However, to say that you should expect blogs to achieve the same standard of separation between reporting and opinion, as well as informational accuracy (through time-consuming verification processes) is to want to call something by that which it is not.
Further compounding the problem is that simply, many blog readers (particularly of commercial blogs) prefer this fast-and-furious “publish first think later” sort of journalism. That demand drives continued production. If you want to demand accountability from blogs, then you need to start with the readership.[/quote]
My original point had to do with Jobs saying “we should not descend into a nation of bloggers” when old media is basically subsidized blogging. The idea that a news outlet giving some opinion is any more valid that you writing a blog post is absurd. I would rather see a world where the websites of news-wires(with solid fact checked reporting) become prominent and opinion is left to blogs and forum debate. Sure we cannot expect the same professionalism from blogs, but I do not think it is unreasonable to expect honest, well researched, and properly expressed opinion on news from a blog. Likewise I would rather see a story broken in an “unprofessional” way, like the iPhone incident, then wait around for the “real” media to regurgitate what apple wants them to say.
Again, I’m not surprised that they are banning Gizmondo from any future releases. They did that with the publishing house John Wiley and Sons after they published an unfriendly biography (iCon).
It’s not like Apple never took stuff from other companies. Anyone who has worked in the tech sector, been educated in the Bay area, or knows anything about Silicon Valley and innovation, knows most of Apple’s technologies in the early days were not invented by Apple engineers themselves, but rather they were taken from R&D that had originally been invented at Xerox. An example of this is mouse technology. Xerox’s innovation lab in the 70s and 80s invented some pretty spectacular shit, but their business model was more interested in making money on ink-related technologies.
Funny Apple would get so angry over one mock up when they’ve played the game of taking other people’s technology, albeit in an above-ground sort of way. 
Still it has to be said that most of the early successes of Apple were because of disgarded Xerox technologies and Don Valentine’s venture capital money, not Apple innovation. Just another example of hypocrisy where they say one thing, but have done another in the past? 
I’m in the business and can usually tell within a few sentences whether or not a writer has had journalism training or not, or whether a journalist is new at the game. I find such writing supremely irritating more often than not, and that’s what I tend to equate to bloggers. Sure there are a few who are very often right on the money and who I read most days. The vast majority, though, I wouldn’t give as much credence to as my dear old senile grandmother. Its not that blogging gives them “a voice.” The problem is that blogging is the ONLY way they can have a voice, because they’re full of shit, have no idea how to present or analyze news and even if they COULD, there’s still the problem that they can’t write their way out of a wet paper bag.
As sources of raw information, blogs can have an incredible edge over mainstream media both in timeliness and freedom of censorship, due to their relatively minimal editing. Blogs and other even more “micro” forms of personal publishing such as Twitter are becoming important first-hand sources of news (but not necessarily investigative journalism).
My main gripe really is when blogs mix in opinion pieces into their reporting, or just plain outright get facts wrong. An influential blog that accidentally or deliberately misreports a story can have serious consequences for involved parties, all without providing any useful information to the public. In fact, it is widely suspected that some blogs or bloggers report or hold back their reporting on a story for personal gain. The nature of blogs (that they are widely accepted to report with little verification) means that it is also difficult to call a blog story out for being self-serving. Think TechCrunch.
It’s not everyday that I agree with Sandman.
agreed with jashu and sandman. it’s also a difficult thing to solve without manual curation, because while sandman and other trained journalists can tell, machines can’t tell and any reputation system by definition is gameable. but then there’s not many people who could actually do the job of manual curation well, if they even would want to do it at all.
Doesn’t take more than a few seconds to scroll to the comments section and type: “Hey, dweeb boy! come out of yer mammy’s basement and smell the fucking coffee for a change!”
That’s actually harder than it looks, btw.
That’s actually harder than it looks, btw.[/quote]
Sharpen your nibs, then it becomes a piece of piss.
I don’t know what it’s like in the US, but in Australia corporate news services are required to uphold certain industry standards of professionalism and are accountable to a code of ethical and legal conduct. Perhaps in the US the media don’t have to bother with this inconvenience, I don’t know. What it would mean is that a journalist in the NYT is accountable to the NYT’s code of conduct, and the industry code of conduct, and is also accountable to the law. One attraction of blogging, obviously, is that you are accountable to no one for anything.
Also typical in Australia is that journalists for national papers tend to be professionally qualified, as opposed to box-cutter wielding emo teen bloggers who type while overdosing on Red Bull and listening to Slipknot. This typically results in a better standard of writing, and a higher standard of investigative journalism, than blogging. Again, the situation may be different in the US. Perhaps the NYT doesn’t require any professional qualifications from its staff, and just hires anyone off the street, I have no idea. Personally I tend to take professionals in an industry far more seriously than completely unqualified randoms, but I’m fairly traditional in that regard.
When I think ‘blog’, I think ‘trash’, throwaway information which is analogous to tissue paper in many ways. The only blogs I take seriously are those with formal oversight or which are used by professionals to publicize their research and which are connected to related industry sites in the blogosphere, maintaining the academic peer review process.
I had heard more on that from people who have experience over there. Apparantly the employees families get a huge insurance payout if thier working member dies under employment of Foxconn. As the payout is many, many times more than even a long working career would earn and employees on assembly lines have next to know career ladder to look forward to climbing, it can become an attractive thought for those especially with heavy financial burdens.
I’m not even sure that the “trend” for suicides over there is any stronger than that of students in Taiwan.
I had heard more on that from people who have experience over there. Apparantly the employees families get a huge insurance payout if their working member dies under employment of Foxconn. As the payout is many, many times more than even a long working career would earn and employees on assembly lines have next to know career ladder to look forward to climbing, it can become an attractive thought for those especially with heavy financial burdens.
[/quote]Got. This was identified as a possible push-factor, and the company has scaled back the death benefit to that required by law.