WashingtonPost.com: Ink-Stained to Link-Strained: A Kvetch - washingtonpost.com

From Howard Kurtz:

"Isn't something lost if you can wall yourself off from views and information that challenge what you already believe? If everything is ordered a la carte? If -- and this really dates me as an ink-stained wretch -- you like turning the pages of a newspaper because you might bump into an unexpected story you would never have found online? If you and your family and your co-workers are plugged into parallel media universes?"

topix.net: The Media Mob: 'Written by partisans to be read by the naive'

From John Bambenek:

"What blogs do accomplish, at least the few that actually try to be media instead of diary, is fact-check the 'objective journalists.' This is where the real contempt for bloggers comes from. Blogs have outted journalistic frauds that would have gone undiscovered despite all the checks and balances in the traditional media."

Online Journalism Review: Top mistakes made by new online publishers

From Robert Niles:

"Don't fall into the traps that have left too many other journalists muttering that 'no one can make money online.'"

mediabistro.com: How Magazines Can Survive

From Bo Sacks:

"What we need is a new sustainable business model for the publishing industry. The barbarians are at the gate."

Comment: The problem is that publishers don't have faith in their "addictive editorial packages."

BBC News: Blogging 'set to peak next year'

From BBC News:

"The blogging phenomenon is set to peak in 2007, according to technology predictions by analysts Gartner. The analysts said that during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million."

Comment: Having worked as an industry analyst, I can tell you that this advice is about as accurate as today's weather forecast.

Center for Citizen Media: The Demise of the Professional Photojournalist

From Dan Gillmor:

"The pros who deal in breaking news have a problem. They can’t possibly compete in the media-sphere of the future. We’re entering a world of ubiquitous media creation and access. When the tools of creation and access are so profoundly democratized, and when updated business models connect the best creators with potential customers, many if not most of the pros will fight a losing battle to save their careers."

Media Daily News: Reuters Partners With Yahoo For Citizen Media Site

From Media Daily News:

"Citizen journalism got a major bump yesterday with the launch of "You Witness News," a joint venture of Reuters and Yahoo that allows amateur photojournalists an opportunity to submit their pictures and videos of newsworthy events."

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wikipedia Passes Another Test

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

"'The experts' -- that is, the professors who read articles about their chief subjects of study -- 'found Wikipedia’s articles to be more credible than the nonexperts,' writes Mr. Chesney in First Monday. 'This suggests that the accuracy of Wikipedia is high.'"

San Francisco Chronicle: What if online portals had nothing but 'digital fish wrap'?

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Newspapers cannot succeed as Internet ventures -- not on the scale they need to survive -- if they persist in using a business model predicated on giving away their news content and selling ads based on the audience that is drawn to free content."

The Editors' Weblog: Election day confirms blog credibility

From The Editors' Weblog

"Newspapers will have to get used to successful bloggers' newly-acquired credibility and to their own new role, not only providing news for blogs, but also complementing and using them for their own reports."

BBC News: Blogosphere sees healthy growth

From BBC News:

"The web's love affair with blogging shows no signs of abating according to the latest report from blog tracking firm Technorati."

Mass Inc.: Citizen journalism’s pied piper

"From Berkeley to Harvard, Dan Gillmor tries to bring the new media into being, without bringing down the old."

BBC News: Online world to get news bureau

From BBC News:

"Reuters has opened a virtual news agency in the Second Life online world."

Hiatus (Updated)

Insert Tech Here is on hiatus while I retool the blog's focus. Stay tuned...

UPDATE (1/10/07): Okay, the blog's description has been updated to reflect the best solution I could come up with to maintain the blog:

This blog consists of links to and quotes from the most interesting stories I read about online media, citizen journalism, and the blogosphere. Each link should be accompanied by thoughtful commentary, but until I give up my day job, this is the best I can do. Besides, if Glenn Reynolds can get away with it, why can't I?

I found myself saving post after post as drafts because I didn't have time to comment on the interesting stories I found. I know lots of bloggers manage to make the time, but I just can't do it right now. But I still spend more time reading about online media, citizen journalism, and the blogosphere than most people I know, so I think I'm still providing some modicum of value. Hopefully I can get back to writing more substantial posts at some point.

For now, I'm publishing some of the draft posts I had been saving. Many of the stories are still interesting; if nothing else, I'm filling in the record.

New York Times: New Republic Suspends an Editor for Attacks on Blog

From The New York Times:

"A senior editor at The New Republic was suspended and his blog was shut down on Friday after revelations that he was involved in anonymously attacking readers who criticized his posts. Lee Siegel, creator of the Lee Siegel on Culture blog for tnr.com, was suspended indefinitely from the magazine..."

Comment: People, people -- stop taking random comments from strangers so seriously!

The Independent Institute: Nobody Killed The Newspaper

From The Independent Institute:

"The technology has helped accelerate this change, just as technology helped accelerate the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society or from an industrial to a service-dominated society. But technology is just a means. The crux of the matter is the people's perception that power is now in their hands. The barriers to entry into the information market have fallen and now citizens don't depend on editors to publicize their views or their stories."

Washington Post: On YouTube, Charges of Security Flaws

From the Washington Post, via Truthout.org:

"Michael De Kort was frustrated. The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen. But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com."

Comment: And this is why citizen media, citizen journalism, whatever you want to call it, is winning.

Washington Post: Blogging Under The Radar

From the Washington Post:

"The fragile cease-fire still holds, but for wary Lebanese and Israelis the barrage of noise continues -- in cyberspace. By provoking a trade in words, the 33-day war in Lebanon didn't just wreak death and destruction. It also helped knock down a wall of silence."

The Economist: More media, less news

From Economist.com:

"Newspapers are making progress with the internet, but most are still too timid, defensive or high-minded."

Financial Times: Computers write news at Thomson

From the Financial Times:

"First it was the typewriter, then the teleprinter. Now a US news service has found a way to replace human beings in the newsroom and is instead using computers to write some of its stories. Thomson Financial, the business information group, has been using computers to generate some stories since March and is so pleased with the results that it plans to expand the practice."

Comment: Having done this job myself, I can tell you that I'm surprised all market stories aren't being generated by computers at this point. A colleague and I came up with the idea to do Mad Libs style market stories while waiting in line to see the first Austin Powers movie.