Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Giffels on Blogs

BJ columnist David Giffels reprises our blog panel of a couple weeks ago in today's paper to springboard a broader discussion of the form. Generally I don't link to a column just to say "What he said," but I don't have much to add. I especially like his use of a hypothetical DEVO blog to illustrate what it is. It's as good a Blogging 101 summary as I've seen, coupled with a clear-eyed assessment of the trend line from the MSM point of view. And he gives me a shout-out, though no link. Welcome to everyone who has Googled your way here after seeing the column.

And by the way, since David didn't include Devo links in the online version of the column, here's the official website, and here's Devo 2.o. As a special bonus, I give you Devo's entries in Wikipedia and Trouser Press and a Rolling Stone capsule review of the 2.o disc. We're all about customer service here at the pages.


Some Programming Notes

Unsurprisingly, my intro essay on Iraq has generated a fair amount of discussion. I'm working on the posts on the summit which will hopefully give some of the specifics people are challenging me on. Everything should be up tonight. Meanwhile, I'm also working on a Weekly Reader posts since I backslid over the weekend and was too sick to finish it. Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a Mac person, I don't put a lot of stock in Microsoft products; perhaps Giffels should see what pops up in MS Word's Thesaurus when you look up synonyms for "Bill Gates." But I digress.

Giffels' piece was really two articles. On commenting on the rise of the blog and one commenting on the decline of news coverage here in Akron.

Growing up in Chicago, I mourned the loss of the Daily News, a fixture in Chicago journalism that left us with only two (!) newpapers! Shame! But news outlets still thrive there in a variety of forms, even to this day.

As a newcomer, I can hardly speak accurately of the situation here in Akron, but the BJ has always had a great reputation and I"ve been surprised that we've been able to support two competing weeklies as well. Cleveland, by comparison, has only one printed news outlet: the Plain Dealer and its subsidiary, the various Sun Newspapers.

From the start, the ABJ has adopted to the internet better than its larger northern rival and its use of blogs to disseminate various columnists' work (ranging from George Thomas's commentaries on movies to Chip Bok's cartoons) shows how a modern news outlet can be restructured in this modern era of instant news casting.

Perhaps soon we can expect someone locally to begin podcasting as well. Good riddance to WKYC, et al. I think our future is brighter than it appears at first glance.

Ok...end of rant...

:-P

Anonymous said...

Clearly I'm exhausted from my move. Next time, I'll try to catch all of my typos and grammatical gaffes.

Sorry!