The NY Times published an interesting article yesterday highlighting (or rather comparing) the blogosphere and main stream media outlets when it came to breaking news to the world last year.

Although the overall emphasis was that the mainstream media (sometimes referred to as “old media”) was hours ahead of their “pajama buddies,” they did acknowledge that bloggers did once in a while establish the news trend (instead of vice versa).

read more

The New York Times has a piece on orphaned blogs, as in blogs started and then abandoned. It is an inane article bordering to sensational journalism, masking itself in NYT’s legacy. I’m sorry, but this is just stupid. Some quotes for your enjoyment.

Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?

That’s referring to disappointed (self-proclaimed) soccer mom Mrs. Nichols, who had lofty dreams about $4,000 monthly revenue. And there’s more! read more

Regardless of your political leaning, you would be hard pressed to dispute the fact that the New York Times was at one point the most significant print news source on the planet.

Ravaged by accusations (and some proven cases) of plagiarism and an era of shaky old-school media, the New York Times, like many tabloids, is looking to the Web for salvation. Taking one step closer to the virtual silver bullet that isn’t, the Times announced the addition of a new position today: social media editor. read more

if you’ve been listening in on the last week’s episode of TWiT, John C. Dvorak gave a compelling commentary on exclusivity of news with today’s media.

Dvorak’s column for PC Magazine last Friday was based on the notion that the New York Times is considering a pay to read subscription model for the news. He adds that most of the news we read is syndicated anyway — there really isn’t a lot of relevant news items happening within your thirty mile zone that’s actually published. Almost everything is syndicated!

The Internet added comparison shopping to the mix. Want a story about the baby stuck down in the well? How about 3,000 stories about the baby in the well?

Pretty soon the public began to notice that 2,975 of those 3,000 stories about the baby in the well were the exact same story, with the other 25 being rewrites of the exact same story. Then came the revelation. “Hey, these newspapers are all doing the exact same thing! Why do we need so many of them?” [Dvorak]

The future of print isn’t with newspapers. It’s probably with books. Oh and yeah, maybe with the small community papers that prints exclusive news relevant to your little town.

In November 2008, three bloggers filed a lawsuit against New York City after being denied press credentials from the New York Police Department in 2007, due to the fact that they weren’t traditional media. Now they have gotten their credentials as NYPD have relented. This according to the blogger’s lawyer, Norman Siegel.

“This step recognizes that bloggers are 21st-century journalists,” Mr. Siegel, a noted civil liberties lawyer who has announced plans to run for public advocate next year, said in a phone interview. “It’s an important first step, but only a first step, because we still need to address the constitutional problem of who gets press credentials in New York City. The Police Department should not be in the business of determining who’s a journalist.”

In other words, they are going ahead with the lawsuit to force “further reforms”. Good news for NYC bloggers I’m sure. Read more about this at the City Room Blog over at NY Times.

The New York Times is launching Gadgetwise, a gadget blog that goes head to head with the likes of Gizmodo and Engadget (first and foremost), but so far in a less quirky and introvert style. Like you’d expect from the publisher, of course. The welcome post describes it like this:

A new personal-tech blog, Gadgetwise is currently organized around four product categories (digital photography, home entertainment, mobile technology and personal computing), each with a dedicated contributor.

If you want to know who’s writing, there’s an introduction to the five man team as well. read more

The New York Times, in an article penned by Brad Stone, takes an in-depth look at the rivalry between the DEMO Conference and the new upstart TechCrunch50 conference:

Demo, a 17-year-old conference franchise owned by the technology publisher IDG, has served as the springboard for hit products like the Palm Pilot and the TiVo digital video recorder. In San Diego during the second week of September, 70 start-ups will pay $18,500 each to make a six-minute presentation to a crowd of investors, journalists and others.

To Michael Arrington, the elbow-throwing, supercilious founder of the popular Silicon Valley blog TechCrunch, Demo’s business model amounts to “payola.”

read more