Some Things Worth Checking Out

I'm beginning to see, I think, the light at the end of a tunnel of work that has kept me from doing much here recently; but with the end of this semester of classes that I'm teaching, I can feel a wave of new time and opportunity to work on this blog, contributing to the commons of discourse, arising on the horizon.

In preparation, I've been looking around the net the last few days and have found some voices and faces that are new to me, with some very good things to say, some interesting new developments in online blogging and journalism, and I thought I'd link to them.

Dan Gillmor, founder of Grassroots Media Inc., has been at the forefront of rethinking and reconfiguring media in the current age of technology and corporatocracy. Anybody interested in taking a more active role in the shape of public dialogue and awareness--by "being the media" etc.--are sure to find something of interest at Dan's sites:

His blog (or one of them): http://dangillmor.typepad.com/

His other blog, based around his 2004 book "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism, By the People, For the People" is here: http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/

And you can read the book online as well; access it here:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wemedia/book/index.csp

I happened upon Dan's stuff, by backtracking from another interesting site where conversation about the new ideals of journalism was being held, at cyberjournalist.com

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001899.php

Which I had found because I was reading about the "blogger's code of ethics" at their website:

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php

Which I had arrived at when I was looking into WIKINEWS, the emergent free contribution news, a la Wikipedia, that was started in late November 2004--after the recent theft-o-lection--and which is becoming quite interesting:

www.wikinews.org

(I was reading about journalistic ethics here: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews%3ACode_of_Ethics, in advance of perhaps writing a news story to submit to them).

I have a sense that 2005 will go down as the year that Big Media fell (even if, to many, it won't be totally apparent come January 2006). But stories like this are coming fast and furious these days:

(by Alan Mutter)

Peer-pressuring the Associated Press

Saying the Associated Press “is planting the seeds of its own demise,” two Scripps executives want other news organizations to help them replace the legendary press co-op with a Napster-like system where members can share digital content freely among themselves.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2005/04/peer-pressuring-associated-press.html

The MSM is trying to transform their basic business infrastructures to keep up with the internet, bloggers, etc. We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, long live grassroots media!

More soon....