The Cult of Me

How Social Technologies Will Save the Story

Thinking on What Newspapers Do, Redux

For the book to be successful, I want to make sure that I focus more on the “can” argument than the “can’t”. What that means is instead of talking about what newspapers and journalists don’t do, I want to try to parse out exactly what they do accomplish.
Not in general terms (e.g. set the tone [...]

Thinking on What Newspaper Do

I’m working out the first section of the book, which is on modern non-fiction storytelling. Of course, that means the newspapers first and foremost.
One thing from which I have to get away — and I have to keep reminding myself of this — is the desire to heap lots of doom on the newspaper industry [...]

Data Mapping on Memorial Day

It’s a somber time for our country, remembering those who have served and died in service to the country. Because there is such an outpouring of participation, there are some interesting stories and data maps being created today.
It’s also a good example of what can be culled from existing data. Some, I guess, would argue these [...]

Selling “Bits”

“(T)he problem with that is that Wired owner Conde Nast is taking the loss without leading its readers to anything that generates sales.” – James Ledbetter, “Free to be Ignored“
I was discussing the Business of Media this morning and as always the topic turned towards sustainable business models for the industry, emphasis on sustainable. The advertising model is [...]

Interactive Garage Sale Map

If you’re looking to understand what an interactive, data-driven story would look like…look no more. Pegasus News uses the Craigslist API to pull in information and then invites users to submit content.
What you get is…this: The Pegasus News Garage Sale Map of the Dallas-Fort Worth.

Building Media: The Model is Broken

I was talking with Katz Kiely, one of the minds behind the b.tween media convergence conference I’ll be attending in London next month, and she piqued my interest when she mentioned a speaker who will be discussing how current media companies need to re-assess how they build and judge interactive, digital projects.
The reason: it takes some [...]

Thoughts on the Distributed Story

I’m finishing up the introduction to The Cult of Me. When I’m finished, I’ll post it on the book wiki. It’s been a weirdly difficult road, trying to mash down my ideas into a digestible form. The hardest part for me is last section, summarizing what this new digital storytelling will look like.
I can see [...]

Wolfram Alpha: The Data is the Story

Jeff Jarvis and I exchanged a few Tweets about the new mathematical algorithm engine, Wolfram Alpha. The basics of our discussion (and I believe his discussion with other folks) was on the merits of the engine for journalists.
His response to be (in 140 characters) is correct: there are too many holes in the dataset right [...]

Maureen Dowd + the Perils of Distributed Storytelling

On Sunday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd penned a column, Cheney, Master of Pain, which failed to properly attribute a paragraph of the piece to Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo blog.
That fact is indisputable. Dowd admitted that the paragraph came from TPM and the Times corrected the column by day’s end. (I assume they [...]

Wired News Archives…Gone? (Nope, Just a Search Problem)

*That was quick*
Jason sent out a Tweet and Chris Anderson replied back with this:
 – TWEET — @jason_pontin Wired’s archives are all there and fine, but our search engine is messed up. Use Google instead (“site:wired.com”). — END TWEET –
I used Google’s Advanced Search and indeed it’s all there.
**
Wired News has scrubbed its archives.
Sounds like this happened [...]

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