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David Weinberger on News and Nets

[via News is a network by David Weinberger]

The notion that newspapers give you your daily requirement of global news — which works out to wondering, along with Howard, if there is such a thing as “news” — seems to me to be as vulnerable as the old idea of objectivity. Like objectivity: (1) It’s presented as one of the basic reasons to read a newspaper; (2) it hides the fact that it’s based on cultural values; and (3) it doesn’t scale well in the age of the Net.

Ultimately, this myth is enabled – as so many of the myths of news and knowledge are — by paper. Take away the paper and the newspaper doesn’t become a paperless newspaper. It becomes a network. That’s what’s happening now, IMO. From object to network … and networks are far far harder to “monetize” (giving myself a yech here) than objects.

Yes, exactly. Because networks are hard to objectify, unlike objects. So look to social objects embedded in the networks to be objectified, and monetized.

Steve Rubel Makes A Break

Looks like I was one of those that influenced Steve Rubel to rethink his blogging: he decided to move to 'lifestreaming' on Posterous and drop his traditional longer format blogging:

The Steve Rubel Lifestream - It's Official: I am Moving from Blogging to Lifestreaming.

Posterous continuous to get insanely useful. They just added auto-posting today to YouTube and Friendfeed. This continuous pipeline of innovation, plus some great advice I got from my friends Stowe Boyd (we talked about Flow when I was in Germany), Jeremiah Owyang (we discussed daily publishing in San Francisco) and Dwight Silverman (one hub, not two says Mr. S), convinced me it's time to make the jump.

This site will become my primary publishing hub - my new home on the web. Meanwhile the spokes will become the social networks and platforms where we all spend time. Today that's Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Tomorrow, who knows. My old site will stay online for the archives but I will not be putting any more content up on the old site. Please update your RSS reader to my new feed. I am excited by the change. After five years of publishing, this seems like the right thing to do.

What? No Links?

Today's Paper - New York Times, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Do other readers of the NY Times have this happen, too? I seem to not get the links to various sections of the Times. Here, business, week in review, and editorials are all lacking links to the various stories. WTF?

Posner Wants To Ban Links To Save Newspapers

After a few paragraphs that recapitulate the downfall of newspapers (without ever mentioning that their downfall has come from their own inept policies), Judge Richard Posner suggests that linking to copyrighted material without express permission might be the only way to protect those that own the copyrights:

[via The Becker-Posner Blog: The Future of Newspapers--Posner]

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

As Erick Schoenfeld points out, Posner never mentions freedom of speech, fair use, or the benefits of linking in the context of open social discourse. He -- as might be expected -- is taking a propertarian approach to this antilinking nonsense: in his mind he is saying, "The newspapers spend a lot of time and money building this content, and then a bunch of freeloaders come along and reference it, and then others don't have to visit the original news stories! How dare them! How can the newspapers survive if people start writing about what they have written? After all, the professional news business owns the news, not the people that it matters to! The public are just consumers, and their job is to consume! And to pay to consume! And to shut up, and leave the talking to the professionals! Who don't own their words either, since they are employees of big media companies, who own the words, and the discourse! Learn your place! Get back into line! Shut up!"

Of course, the higher issue is that the newspapers can't effectively 'own' the discussion about newsworthy issues and events, even if they should, which I don't think is the case, anyway. This is another case -- like the failed attempt of the music industry to stop the spread of digital music -- where those who 'own' the elements of our culture want to make us pay for the privilege of living in our culture. And of course, the bug media companies would strike deals with each other to cross link, creating an oligarchy, and pushing all the non-professionals out.

People like Posner would figure out how to make us pay for air, if they could.

Fewer Movie Critics

[via Ideas and Trends - Hollywood’s Blurb Search Reaches the Blogosphere - NYTimes.com]

'But there are fewer and fewer print and television movie critics around. At least 55 movie reviewers have been laid off or re-assigned from newspapers around the country since January 2006, according to a running tally on the Web site of The Salt Lake Tribune.'

Have you missed them? Not me.