Chris Boese's Weblog

MSNBC mention of Josh's blog

Weblog central

WEBLOGS: THE NEW TOOL

CNN recently raised some eyebrows on the blogside by asking correspondent Kevin Sites to stop posting to his personal blog while reporting the news for CNN. Freelancer Joshua Kucera%u2019s blog appears to have suffered a simliar fate. (Though it was short-lived, it%u2019s still worth reading his post about the American TV media stepping on toes in Northern Iraq.) But even though Sites%u2019 and Kucera%u2019s handlers shut down their correspondents%u2019 freelance blogs, that doesn%u2019t mean mainstream media aren%u2019t capitalizing on Weblogs as a reporting tool

Lately it seems as if there is a new article every day in the mainstream media about the role of Weblogs in the coverage of this war. This affinity goes beyond reporting on the existence of Weblogs. Many news organizations are incorporating the Weblog style, format, and even mentality as a way of presenting news and analysis.

Howard Sherman on the issue of Josh's blog

Nuggets by Howard Sherman

[...]

I understand that if someone is paying the bills, you owe them your best work first. That's what freelance contracts are for. But there's a larger point. Kucera should have been writing for a Time.com blog but there isn't one (at least not that I could find). Big media organizations should embrace Weblogs (a growing number are starting to) as the next generation of online publishing tools and just one more way of communicating with their readers.

Now that freelance writers have an outlet to reach large, international audiences without any help from media companies, some media managers are getting nervous and overreacting. That's silly. They have more to fear from trying to squelch blogs than from embracing them.

BuzzMachine: Blogs and big media

Jeff Jarvis looks at the flurry of media coverage around the sessation (for now) of Josh's Kurdistan blog. Worth quoting for a bit.

BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

As Howard Sherman puts it, another one bites the dust: Now Time Inc. has instructed freelancer Joshua Kucera to stop posting to his personal weblog:

My editors have demanded that I stop posting to this site until the war ends. And they pay the bills, so what can I do. Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope to be back here soon. Peace, Josh.

Just this morning in Matthew Rose's Wall Street Journal piece (below), a Time spokesperson said -- wisely, it seemed: "Time.com only asks that Kucera file to Time first, then he can blog away." Oh, well.

Add that to CNN's Kevin Sites being told to stop blogging by CNN.

We smell a sad trend.

Dear Raed

The clever, palendromic Raed, looking for a little peace in Baghdad, or wherever. This from MSNBC.com's Weblog Central:

Weblog central

 March 19, 2003 / 1:34 PM ET
       
       LIVE FROM BAGHDAD
       
       For the almost uninterrupted glut of war coverage flowing from the media, none of it has captured the humanity and the practical reality of the Iraqi citizenry like the Where is Raed? Weblog. (Technical note: reaching this blog has been hit and miss this afternoon as U.S. troops move toward war on Iraq.)
       
       Ostensibly based in Baghdad, Where is Raed? is written by a person blogging under the pseudonym of Salam Pax, a tech-savvy Iraqi whose mastery of English provides for vivid descriptions, cutting wit, and thoughtful commentary. In the past there has been some discussion of the veracity of the writer’s claims, but those appear to have been resolved, with several bloggers offering testimony to Salam’s authenticity —and frankly, the more you read, the less doubt there seems to be.

101 Ways to Stop the War

101 Ways to Stop the War

The Genius of Google

I had an interesting discussion with a guy at work today, another web geek like me who watched a lot that was great and good on the web die. We pondered the eternal question: "How is it that dumbass marketing people are allowed to kill or ruin so many good sites?"

New book by Margaret Atwood I want to read

[Everyone should have a collection of Margaret Atwood books, and this link goes to Amazon.com, to get you started. Besides this book, I recommend A Handmaid's Tale. Cat's Eye is OK, but darker than her dystopian stuff, I think. I like the collection of short stories, Wilderness Tips. Very fine stories in there. They've lived in my heart more than any of her others. Might be because I was living in upstate NY when I read them. cb]

This is from the BBC, I think:

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood $36.99. Margaret Atwood's provocative new novel has been described as the biggest secret in Canadian publishing this spring! This is Atwood's first novel since The Handmaid's Tale that takes us into a futuristic world, one that has been devastated by ecological and scientific disasters. The two title characters, in fact, take their names from endangered species. Little else has been revealed about Atwood's new novel except that it will likely change your view of the world forever and it is populated by characters who will stay with you long after the last page is turned. One thing we can be certain of is that Oryx and Crake will be an exhilarating read, one that will compel us to think carefully about the world we live in. (April)

Reporter Takes His Weblog to War

Reading this makes me worry about the Kurdistan blog I host on my other site, The Other Side: Josh Kucera's Weblog, worried for Josh in Kurdistan. I read his blog every day now, and as the tension goes up, I'm just scared for the danger he is in. I envy him, and am so happy to be able to read his first hand observations, esp because he is an excellent writer with a great eye for detail. Although just recently started, his blog is a great resource, at least as good as Christopher Allbritton's below mentioned in Wired, if not better. I just wish Josh well and hope he stays safe, because what he's giving us along with the risk is so valuable.

I'm gushing, I know, but blogs do this, I think. War correspondents have always been with us, but the need for independent correspondents has never been greater. And with the personal voice blogs bring to reporting, as readers we feel more personally invested than we might if just reading his articles in Time or wherever. And with blog commenting features, offer moral support, dialogue, something war correspondents probably are not used to getting.

I think it is a brave new world, and a frightening one.

Chris

Wired News: Reporter Takes His Weblog to War

Sporting a cameraman's vest and lugging a satellite phone, Christopher Allbritton may be no match for heavy artillery. But he's apparently got enough guts to be the Web's first independent war correspondent.

Allbritton, a former New York Daily News reporter living in the East Village, plans to file stories directly to his weblog, Back to Iraq 2.0, next month as part of an independent news-gathering expedition to Iraq.

Allbritton says he wants to cover the humanitarian effects the likely U.S.-Iraq war will have on civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is protected by a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone over northern Iraq.

While "embedded" reporters with backing from major news outlets bump along on prearranged Hummer rides and report what they see in the mainstream media, Allbritton will hitchhike and bribe his way through an area that could become the most dangerous place in Iraq outside Baghdad.

Seeking a US Exit Strategy?

Is it unpatriotic to want to live in a free country?

Chris

America 2.0 (kottke.org)

Adam Greenfield, in a SXSW wrap-up, talks about a possible U.S. brain drain because of the government's efforts to control that which brings the most vitality and robustness to human society:

America hasn't had its Kristallnacht - yet - but even so the buzz around New Zealand in a few circles of my acquaintance is enough to put one in mind of the brain drain Germany bought itself in the mid- to late 1930's. And as Florida might have it, if I were a smart politician just about anywhere on the planet - one interested in economic vitality and quality of life - I might be egging the Ashcrofts on. All those smart Americans will be looking to settle somewhere that supports and encourages them in who they are, and they'll bring their truest assets, their creative minds, right along with 'em.

If I were a smart politician, I wouldn't merely be egging Ashcroft on, I would be thinking of ways to lure the American (and European and Asian and Middle Eastern and Indian, etc.) creative class to my country, creating a home of the more free, a land of more opportunity, a country for the 21st century just as America was for the 20th.

NY Observer: Bush Eats the Press

Pretty embarrassing all around, and I was at work late, mainlining it live. Made me pretty ill.

Here are some high/low points:

Bush Eats the Press by Michael Crowley

But reporters on-site were alternately flabbergasted, flailing and embarrassed by the experience. None seemed to have the legs to get into the game. Mr. Bush ran out the clock on his hour of prime time, using it with the focus of Jimmy Dean selling sausage, snubbing tough reporters while calling on buddies, issuing one-size-fits-all talking points to all comers, giving the answers he wanted to the questions he didn’t. He even openly taunted one correspondent, CNN’s John King, for daring to ask a multi-part question.