Monthly Archives: April 2008

Britannica Free For Bloggers

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Britannica Online is waiving (for one year) its $70 premium access fee through a program called Britannica Webshare (via TechCrunch).

This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify.”

Britannica is hoping that by “giving away” the content to opinion leaders … they will drive traffic to their paid content (and then, what? entice people to subscribe?). It’s one pretty-big toe placed into the “open information” ecosystem. From the “welcome” email: Continue reading →

Journalistic Ethics: The Pentagon Story

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

I’ve just re-read the NYT scathing expose of the massive PR machine that is the Bush/Rumsfeld Pentagon, and I’m struck (yet again) at how far removed today’s TV news organizations seem to be from what I believe to be core journalistic ethics: transparency and the absolute avoidance of the appearance of conflict of interest.

I don’t know what’s more amazing: how little oversight the network handlers employed or what appears to be rampant greed (access to power for self or employer) on the part of former military colonels and generals (the only ranks identified). For example, the network news organizations “raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq — a clear ethical violation for most news organizations.”

The story will (properly) be used to counter those who insist that citizen journalists or people who use blogging software as their publishing platform are somehow innately inferior to credentialed journalists/news organizations. Read the damning responses from the networks to the 10,000 word expose:
Continue reading →

Can a Coupon Live Inside a Cellphone?

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Well, yeah, it can. That’s a “doh.”

The NYT’s headline writer asks this question to promo a short article in Sunday’s business section … as though this were something novel. Or hard to do. It’s neither and is common in Japan. In 2006 about 6-in-10 mobile customers in Japan used mobile coupons more than once a month.
Continue reading →

Exodus To Starbucks…

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

… cause “my internet is not working.” Hysterical SouthPark episode (via Go2Web2.0).

What did we used to do to get the news before the Internet? A television!

(mad stampede)

TV announcer: “Once again we apologize but we cannot bring you the news. It appears that we have no Internet here at News 4. We’ll be happy to bring you up on current events, just as soon as our Internet is back.”

So off to Californy-way! Silicon Valley. “They’ve got a whole mess of Internet out there!”

South Park Over-Logging – Part 1

Watch the complete episode at the SouthParkZone. (Well, no, you can’t. They’re apparently slashdotted — making the episode’s premise come true! LOL!)