We the Media

“The Internet is the most important medium since the printing press. It subsumes all that has come before and is, in the most fundamental way, transformative. When anyone can be a writer, in the largest sense and for a global audience, many of us will be. The Net is overturning so many of the things we’ve assumed about media and business models that we can scarcely keep up with the changes; it’s difficult to maintain perspective amid the shift from a top-down hierarchy to something vastly more democratic and, yes, messy. But we have to try, and nowhere is that more essential than in that oldest form of information: the news. We will be blessed with new kinds of perspective in this emergent system, and we will learn how to make it work for everyone.

Blogs and other modern media are feedback systems. They work in something close to real time and capture — in the best sense of the word– the multitude of ideas and realities each of us can offer. On the Internet, we are defined by what we know and share. Now, for the first time in history, the feedback system can be global and nearly instantaneous.”  – Dan Gillmor’s We the Media (pg 236)

Who should read this book? Newsmakers, the reporters that cover them and anyone that reads, watches or listens to those reports.

National Association of Broadcasters

The cover story (by Scott Woolley) in the September issue of Forbes is really more about the National Association of Broadcasters than XM Radio.

“For decades the radio industry has crushed incipient competitors by wielding raw political muscle and arguments that are at once apocalyptic and apocryphal. Radio station owners, who formed the National Association of Broadcasters in 1923, have won laws and regulations that have banned, crippled or massively delayed every major new competitive technology since the first threat emerged in 1934: FM radio.”

What would radio be like if broadcasters put this much energy into doing better radio?

We the Media

We the Media. Grassroots Journalism. By the People, for the People. I’ve been reading Dan Gillmor’s blog for a couple of years and his new book is one of those rare examples of non-fiction-I-can’t-put-down. Nuggets so far:

“If someone knows something in one place, everyone who cares about that something will know it soon enough.” — pg. 47

“Nanopublishing — small sites, run by one or very few people, focusing on a relatively narrow niche topic.” — pg. 83

Cell phones on the plane

They’re talking about letting people use their cell phones in-flight. Can you even imagine the annoying assholes that will start yacking the minute their fat asses hit the seat and not let up for 3 hours. Times 200. I’d rather sit next to a smoker.

Middle Age

“…that point in life when you stopped hoping the next year would be better than the last, and started hoping that it wouldn’t be as bad. That’s what happened when you you hit middle age. Old people you loved got sick and died, young people you hated got promoted over you, the market crashed and took your retirement funds with it, and your body started to look like your father’s did when you used to think you would never, ever let yourself go like that. If anyone every told five-year-olds the truth about life, there’d be a rash of kindergarten suicides.”

Live Bait by P.J.Tracy.

Business (and life) is like an extended road trip

“…we believe that the core of our business is to transfer knowledge from people who have it to people who need it. Yes, we are in business to make money, but this is a kind of housekeeping, not the purpose of the business.

I like to compare business (or life for that matter) to an extended road trip. Say you want to travel America by the back roads. You need gas for your car, food and water for your body. Especially before heading across Death Valley or the Utah salt flats, you’d better be darn sure that you have enough gas in your tank. But you certainly don’t think of your trip as a tour of gas stations! What’s the real purpose behind what you do?”

— Tim O’Reilly on making money