Month: March 2009

  • A counter-intuitive list of opportunities for newspapers

    Decentralized processes are counter-intuitive. Having a single institution promise to cover “all the news that’s fit to print” seems more reliable than having a bunch of random bloggers cover the news in an uncoordinated fashion. The problem is that, in reality, newspapers are neither as comprehensive nor as reliable as they like to pretend. Just…

  • Could Ida Tarbell bust Standard Oil on Twitter?

    Dave Winer on Twitter:  I wonder why press people have trouble seeing that news is what’s happening there. Sure there’s a lot of other stuff on Twitter — they focus on that instead. I leave it to the investigative journalists to figure out why. Wonder what muckraking investigative reporter Ida Tarbell would make of Twitter?…

  • Pilfer and prosper

    Maybe the best lesson I learned during the long newspaper war in Anchorage was this: if you come across a good idea elsewhere, consider stealing it. If the good idea shows up in the competition, steal it immediately. — Howard Weaver