My article in Strategies, The Legal Marketing Journal has been published, so I’m providing a link as promised. This links to an expanded version of that article on my web site with this outtake:
“Today’s tech savvy legal services marketers would be wise to consider the possibilities of the web log as another arrow in their e-marketing quiver, next to the likes of e-newsletters, online PR, relevant web content and strategic search engine positioning.”
Wow. It’s working…
In today’s Washington Post, an article titled FCC Plan to Alter Media Rules Spurs Growing Debate states…
“In recent days, the FCC has been inundated with hundreds of thousands of e-mails and e-petitions. MoveOn.org, a public-interest organization… has collected 170,000 signatures…”
Read full article and see this graphic, The Big Get Bigger?
June 2 cometh: There’s still time for your teenie little voice to be heard. Let your fingers do the talking… follow this link to online petitions…
Just wanted to elevate this nugget from Jill Walker’s Links and Power article referenced in my previous post.
“Links have a direct value on the Web and can be seen as a pseudo-monetary unit. A Google search on currency of the web shows that this is not a novel idea, though it is little theorised. Conventional thinking has assumed that linking from A to B takes value from B and adds value to A. Lawyers have complained that linking to another site’s news items, for instance, may be a copyright violation, and companies have sued against those who link to their site [1]. Though more sophisticated, Ted Nelson’s concepts of transclusion and transcopyright belong to a similar paradigm where content is value and links are mere mechanics, an outside vehicle for the transmittal of content rather than the item of value itself. In its fully implemented state, transcopyright sees a link from A to B as A using something owned by B, which readers should pay for in the form of a micropayment. This makes perfect sense in a traditional, product oriented economy where content is king. B manufactured a product which A’s readers consumed and should therefore pay for. After Google, it makes no sense at all. The economy of links is not product oriented. It is service oriented, and the service is the link. The link is an action rather than an item; an event, rather than a metaphor.”
bold added for emphasis
A One-Month Status Report
After one month since starting this web log, I’ve had more than 1,650 visits, placing me around the 43th spot on the Top 100 list. Pretty amazing for an unknown artist.
The Community
What’s been interesting about the Harvard Web Log project (I’ve also blogged on blogger.com) is that it’s a community of bloggers unto itself as well as part of the larger blogosphere. The small communal nature of Harvard web logging and most importantly the directory, ranking and updates features that allow us to “see” each other and rub virtual elbows is a large contributor to the traffic my web log has received thus far.
Links are Power
It’s not just visitors (readers) that make blogging what it is though. It’s the linking of one blog to the next that creates a viral webbing of related ideas and like-minded persons. As I mentioned in my last entry, when we link to one another, we create a certain “link strength” based on the popularity of the links. (See Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web) The value of others linking to you provides your ideas with more outlets (inlets?) on the web. Links are usually man-made by some “one” who agrees with your thinking, but they are also “machine made” with the rise of automatic RSS feeds and blog tracking sites.
Itchy trigger fingers?
In my brief one month tenure at Amy Campbell’s Web Log, thanks to the nifty (and highly addicting) referral feature, I’ve found that my modest weblog has been picked up by other bloggers in the blogosphere. I have been amazed at how quickly someone is willing to “blogroll” me or categorize me as an expert. Which brings up what I believe to be one of the bloggerdom’s big drawbacks — the rush to post. Because of the instant nature of blogging, people feel the need to act fast… a case of premature posting? As Dave Winer says, “people don’t read before they write.” Another case of irrational exuberance, perhaps? For example, I’m listed on one blog as a “legal commentator”, which is a bit embarrassing as it’s not very accurate.
The company we keep
On the upside, however, getting linked to for writing something that a real expert agrees with is a real boost, both to my ego and my “personal brand” (not to mention my “link strength”). My 15K of fame came this month when I responded to a Donna Wentworth blog, and she linked to me. Then Lawrence Lessig linked to me. And then due to that others linked to me… and so on and so forth. And thanks to tools like technocrati and organica and weblogs.com others have found my web log and some have added links on their blogs. For instance, check out this great plug on Bag and Baggage. And this is just the start!
Disclaimer: Please forgive me for my own rush to post… I try not to post a blog unless I have time to think it through and check my accuracy… I also try to write something in my email drafts folder first. Leave it there a while, and revisit it before posting. But if I was totally careful about every post and comma, I’d never get anything up. So it’s a balance. Luckily, we bloggers know that.
Donna Wentworth has been busy collecting required reading on media conglomeration. You’ll find these items referenced elsewhere, but I’m so fond of them I just gotta add to their “link strength” here.
Krugman on Media Concentration - and the paradox of how state-run media can be more impartial than “independent” media (full column in NYT - The China Syndrome). And don’t miss this nugget offered by Larry Lessig
on why we should worry about media conglomeration even though we have the internet…
I can’t say it better, so I won’t. But pass it on I will. Today my contribution is to be a spreader of others’ good thinking.
A News Hour with Jim Lehrer piece (Apri 28) on Weblogging poses this question, with this important outtake from Joan Connell (executive producer, MSNBC.com) who says that at least hers are:
“One of the values that we place on our own weblogs is that we edit our webloggers. Out there in the blogosphere, often it goes from the mind of the blogger to the mind of the reader, and there’s no backup.
And I would submit that that editing function really is the factor that makes it journalism. Are you making a mistake here? Do you really want to say that? Do you really want to use that word? Is that libelous?”
I’d agree with Connell on that point, that editing is an important variable in the equation… editing adds value to writing as a process that builds accuracy, objectivity and therefore trust. Trust is really the key.
The real question, however, isn’t is blogging journalism?, but rather when is blogging journalism and when is it personal expression or something else? Blogging is just the tool… it’s the medium… the technology… like a billboard or a printing press or a radio station… it can be used for a variety of purposes, one of which is journalism. Journalism moved to blogs is still journalism, although in the new medium, the effort can benefit (or be hurt) by the new advantages (and disadvantages) of the new medium — such as speed, RSS distribution, associations and links on other credible and noncredible sites, etc.
Blogging does not make one a journalist. Being a journalist does. So the question would be better asked, “What is journalism?” It’s a question that we should ask not just of bloggers, but also of those in the business of infotainment, disguised as journalists, who spout opinion and spin using traditional media. Maybe we all need a refresher course…
What is journalism?
Society of Professional Journalists’
Code of Ethics
Collection of essays on online journalistic ethics
See also: Consumer Webwatch for more on building trust and credibility on the web.
Actions speak louder than blogs
If you want to do something other than moan about the upcoming FCC vote on media ownership, then contact your congressperson, and get your friends to do the same. Go to www.mediareform.net to learn more, contact congress, and get the word out.
Here are the email addresses and telephone numbers of the FCC commissioners and other contact info.
Here’s another activist site - MoveOn.org — do it again.
Donna Wentworth nicely sums up the urgent issue at the FCC concerning media conglomeration in her Copyfight weblog entry titled Media Concentration: Out from Under the Wire.
In addition to the resources she offers, add the News Hour with Jim Lehr web site to bring yourself up to speed on the impact that loosening regulations that limit media ownership will have.
I ranted on this a while back in another blog recognizing that the democratizing technology of blogs provides some hope that the truth and free speech can live in a massive media age (see Rant #3:
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised)… (DW touches on the twisted logic that some are even using the democratic nature of internet communications as an argument to justify conglomeration)… but I do wonder and worry what happens when they become the only channel of free speech and what would keep the feds from shutting down blogs or websites under anti-terrorist Patriot-Act style powers.
Don’t hear much about this issue on the evening news or in FCC-hosted public hearings, do we Lawrence Lessig?
This article in the E-Commerce Times points to the fundamental infrastructure of blogs as limiting their portability and therefore acceptance as an enterprise tool. A composite outtake teaser below:
“…While the actual pages in a blog may be simple HTML, the sum total of elements in a blog is a giant heap of files and folders understood only by the tool a blogger is using at present. What would happen if you were to switch tools tomorrow? …There simply is no portability under the current structure…. While such a situation can be a frustration for individual users, it could be a huge barrier to entry for blogging in the enterprise. …the answer may be at hand. The RSS protocol…”
