The AP’s diagram of their Protect, Point, Pay “news DRM” scheme looked like a joke, then I saw the parody.

Despite all the smoke and hype, Ed Felton explains that it’s underwhelming, at most. Still, hNews might be an interesting format for some blogs to adopt. Most of what the AP is rattling their saber about is in the rights (containing ccREL declarations). Felton thinks the dependence on ccREL may extend derivative usage rights, rather than limit them. ccREL, after all, “states unequivocally that it does not limit users’ rights already granted by copyright and can only convey further rights to the user.”

Okay, so hNews mightn’t be so bad, but what’s good about it? It brings together a number of pieces that we all expect in a news story (and many other stories). It makes it easy to identify the dateline and geocoding of a particular story, as well as the publisher and its principles.

Oddly, the format doesn’t appear to address media within the content, but perhaps they expect us to leverage Media RSS and rel=image_src links.

Howard Weaver wants newspapers to play offense against Google and others, but Chris Tolles, CEO of news aggregator Topix.com says he’s been trying Weaver’s plan for a while, and there’s no bucket of gold to be found in it.

The problem, it would appear, is that newspapers don’t sell news. They sell advertising space and pair it with news as a loss leader to keep the eyeballs. And while that worked in print, it doesn’t work on the web. Web users don’t click on ads on news sites (perhaps for the same reasons they don’t click ads on social network sites).

Yes. The news in a newspaper was a loss leader, though it’ll probably make you feel better to think of the sports and entertainment that way. Television overtook newspapers as the primary news source in the 1970s. And in 2008, newspapers fell behind internet sources. The economics of it now are that news printed on bad paper are less of a loss leader and more simply just a loss. (It’s hard to know if the poor performance of newspaper websites is a result of this or if it reflects other failings.)

Those worried about what will happen to the public sphere after the death of newspapers should take a look at this 2004 study comparing television vs. newspaper front pages: newspapers had twice as many lifestyle and crime stories as the evening TV news. The public sphere has long needed better nourishment.

Mashable’s Josh Catone thinks NPR is the future of mainstream media. Their audience is way up, and it’s a well proven example of the crowdfunding model. My local affiliate provides some of the best local news around.

New releases from Google Labs: Similar Images and News Timeline. I count it as a failure for Google that the news timeline doesn’t show future events.

We all knew the sordid details of Palin’s candidacy would emerge, but who figured they pour out so soon or on Fox News? Via Borkweb.com

WPopac, a project I started on my nights and weekends, is now officially one of my day-job projects too.

We’ve been using our WPopac-based catalog as a prototype since February 2006, but the change not only allocates a portion of my work time specifically to the development of the project, but also reflects the library’s decision to transition to WPopac as a our primary web OPAC.

Work to make a general release of the WPopac software available for download and use by any library (or anybody who wants to present structured data with faceted searching on the web) is in progress. And, as noted here, I’m also working with other libraries to bring WPopac-based catalogs online elsewhere.

In the meantime, I’m headed to WordCamp in San Francisco on August 5th, and the new WPopac blog has become the official source of news and information regarding the project.

lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, news, official, online catalog, opac, plymouth state university, wpopac

Not all errors in news reporting are as trivial as this one:

THE COST of beer kegs has risen by about 30% since the end of 2003. In addition, Neil Witte is the draught beer quality-control specialist of Boulevard Brewing Co., and Steven Pauwels is the brewer’s brewmaster. A March 14 page-one article on beer-keg theft incorrectly said that the cost of kegs has tripled in recent years and incorrectly said that Mr. Witte is Boulevard Brewing’s brewmaster.

Well, actually, there’s nothing trivial about a 300% jump in beer costs, but still.

Back to the point: Regret The Error is an ever growing collection of all the little (and not so little) things our news media has gotten wrong. Or, at least is a collection of the things they’ve admitted to getting wrong.

Doesn’t sound like much fun? Go try it, but you can’t read just one.

update: and here are some corrections, or perhaps ‘clarifications,’ from NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. I point them out because they’re the most confrontational (rightly so) corrections I’ve ever seen or heard. Go listen.

correction, corrections, error, errors, getting it wrong, making it right, news, news media, newspaper, regret the error

I’m not sure what to think of Richard Sambrook appearing to struggle to find a place for traditional journalism in the age of the internet, but the story’s worth a read.

David Weinberger [...] talked about the crisis in US journalism with failing trust in the big news organisations. He pointed out that Google now provided a news service with just an algorithm where there used to be a newsroom of dozens of people — and suggested algorithms were probably more reliable than journalists anyway! So if information is commodotised, and the public can tell their own stories, what’s the role for the journalist? I came up with three things — verification (testing rumour and clearing fog), explanation (context and background) and analysis (a Google search won’t provide judgement). And journalists still have the resources to go places and uncover things that might otherwise remain hidden. Citizens can do all of those things, but not consistently, and with even less accountability than the media.

bloggers, blogging, citizen journalism, democracy, google news, news, news reporting, reporting, richard sambrook

Thanks again to a good tip from Ryan, I’ve get something new to laugh at: The Aural Times.

Aural Times, music, news, podcast, singing news, The Aural Times, The Times

I regularly check the English language online edition of Pravda for laughs and sometimes for their take on US domestic affairs. But today’s headline left me scratching my head. What calendar are these people using, anyway?

The headlined story is offered without any context or explanation. As it turns out, author Ian Magnussen really did mean February 5th 2006, not 2007 or later. Had it appeared two months ago it might have been called speculative fiction, though more likely seen as a crazy conspiracy theory. I just find it a bit scary. But still, why publish it now?

breaking news, conspiracy theory, contradiction, contradictory, foreign opinion, headline, news, newspaper, odd news, pravda, russia, russian, russian news, scary, speculative fiction, strange headline

Last week I got excited about the as-yet unreleased geolocation API for BBC Backstage. Now Larry D. Larsen of the Poynter Institute is excited too. In a post titled The Future of News (… Hint: GPS) he talks about putting news in geographic context with geolocation tags.

Eventually, clicking an article in a news/Google Map hybrid might zoom in to a 3D model of the area where an automatic pop-up starts playing a slideshow with pictures of the scene or streaming video along with the text news content. Imagine integrating Google Maps into your classifieds so readers could search for jobs based on what is close to their house. The possibilities are endless.

It’s aparently an old saw of his, but I hope his message starts to get through.

Credit goes to Ernie Miller for the blinking this at The Importance Of….

Technorati Tags: api, bbc, future of news, geolocation, gps, news, poynter institute, reported

The APIs aren’t yet out, but the BBC has already won me over with their Backstage BBC concept. Of course, I’m a fan of anything with an API, but the real deal here is that it appears they’re planning on releasing a “query by geo-location data” API — and I’m all a gaga about about geolocation. I’ll definitely be looking to see what takes shape across the pond.

Technorati Tags: api, backstage, backstage.bbc, backstage.bbc.co.uk, bbc, bbc backstage, geolocation, news

Welcome the flacks. I don’t get many comments on stories here at MaisonBisson, so I was interested when I found a comment to my story about the Outfoxed documentary just an hour after I’d posted it.

Here’s my theory, and it’s supported by stories in Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media and Al Franken’s Lies: conservative groups spend a huge amount of time identifying and attacking every liberal criticism. This mysterious Matt (perhaps from Ohio?) is a brownshirt on a mission. Are such personal attacks fair? No, but neither are Matt’s attempts to reframe my stories. It’s that reframing that so identifies the comments as conservative.

Answer the point, Matt. The question is about Fox news, an organization soundly criticized as biased and inaccurate by darn near every liberal, a bunch of centrists, and even a number of it’s own staff. You’re rhetorically and logically wrong to think you can disprove that by claiming other sources are more biased. But that’s how conservatives work: think Obi Wan as a republican saying “this is not the argument you’re looking for. You liberals should go chase your tail while we rewrite the constitution and shift your tax money to the rich.” Or something like that.

And that’s what’s happening in Matt’s comments to the Farenheit 9/11 story. Oh no! “Farenheit 9/11 contradicts itself.” But the Hitchins quote you offer as proof is less coherent than he claims the movie was. Here’s a fact, and let me suggest you watch Fog of War and read some psychology texts to understand it, people are not always logical, reasonable, or consistent. Furthermore, it seems people — heads of state included — will often tolerate extreme cognitive dissonance while in pursuit of money and power. The Hitchins quote plainly illustrates this fact, further darkening the sad conclusions Moore makes.

I will, however, compliment Hitchins’ rhetorical style. The play of equally unlikely and exaggerated opposites (“they do, or they do not; he is, or he isn’t”) create a lulling rhythm that leads nowhere, but appears sound.

As for Moore’s facts, let me repeat what I wrote in my earlier story: “Collectively, Bushwacked, Lies, and The Iron Triangle all lead the reader to the same conclusion Moore comes to. These authors’ references show a diversity of well researched primary sources — including government documents and qualified informants — that paint a fairly clear picture. It’s this brush that Moore uses for Fahrenheit 9/11.” I’ll gladly listen to any equally detailed and documented rebuttal, but please, no more empty accusations and false claims.

Finally, however, I’m amused by the apparent criticism of Moore for suggesting that troops should never have been sent to Iraq. That’s the point. Isn’t it? Our troops are suffering death and disability and and our nation deficits and diminished civil liberties in a war with no end in sight. This like like Vietnam and McCarthyism all it once if you think you can silence Moore and others for saying so.

[UPDATE]: Matt’s still at it….

Fox News is undoubtedly the most conservative news channel, and any argument to the contrary is intentionally misleading or stupid. Anybody who can count can tell you that Hannity gets three times as much air time as Colmes, and a mildly perceptive time counter will tell you that Colmes’ boss, Hannity, doesn’t allow him any time or opportunity to cross, correct, or criticize him. And that’s what happens when centrists are allowed any voice at all. Yes, one example is sufficient to characterize the entire network.

The problem isn’t that Fox News is biased, anybody who understands the history of journalism can tell you that the idea of unbiased news coverage developed sometime during WWII, peaked around 1970, and has been fading since. Democracy actually thrives amidst the cacophony of biased news outlets, so long as there is diversity and sufficient numbers of them. The complaint against Fox News is that they falsely claim the banner of “fair and balanced” despite contradictory evidence.

This is one of the reasons that former Fox News news anchor Jon Du Pre is speaking out against the channel. This is why former contributor Jeff Cohen is doing the same.

What is reframing? I put up a story about Outfoxed, you try to dismiss the argument with a comment that claims the source is too liberal to be listened to. I put up a story about Fahrenheit 9/11, again you try to dismiss it by claiming Moore is self contradictory. Another reader comments that he too has a family member in Iraq and is glad to find bumper stickers with a message he appreciates, and you dismiss him too. You ask what it means to (attempt to) reframe these stories? Clearly you know better than I do. Not once have you addressed the facts of any of these stories; you’ve made no attempt to demonstrate contradictory evidence.

What makes a liberal or conservative? The authors I name use primary evidence to discuss facts. Facts, by definition, can be neither liberal nor conservative. The authors don’t agree with my perspective, they’ve presented logical arguments based on independent evidence. That these authors make conclusions based on these facts that are offensive to people like yourself does not make them or their work liberal. You paint yourself as a conservative by claiming they’re liberals. Once again, these are facts, and nothing you’ve written here contradicts them.

But you knew that, you knew all of this. Why would you write such misleading comments in this blog, so far from the rest of the world? What motivation could you have? In the big picture, this conservative sniping serves a purpose, and I have to commend your efforts. But aren’t they sort of wasted here? In a larger forum, there’d be at least one idiot who didn’t see through you and would instead join with in wearing me or another blogger down with endless arguments about points off from my message.

Today, my message is about how conservatives like yourself are doing everything they can to snuff the flames of opposition. I’m up for a debate, but this isn’t debate. It’s a delay and distraction tactic. So here are your options: reveal yourself and enter a real debate with evidence to back your arguments (include citations), or leave. Further comments that do not meet this criteria will be edited or deleted as the commercial speech they are. This is an odd decision to make, as I believe strongly in the first amendment protects to free speech, but I also agree with the courts that commercial speech is subject to lesser protections. Further, I won’t let my blog, a media I pay for, be used as a mouthpiece for lies and deception in support of a candidate and ideology I oppose. That is to say, you can’t have both Fox News and my blog, but I’d gladly trade.

Technorati Tags: al franken, blog, colmes, conservative, conservative groups, conservatives, deception, eric alterman, farenheit 9/11, fog of war, fox news, hannity, liberal, media, news, obi wan, outfoxed, personal attacks, political, politics, progressive, psychology, reframing, republican, tax money, taxes