It's a universal law of capitalism: when an industry faces a new and significant threat to its profits and powers it turns to the government for protection. Well, bloggers who write on current events are challenging the mainstream media (MSM), the most politically well-connected industry in America James Miller believes he sees a gathering storm for blogs ... The coming war on blogs? The Business of Blogging
The Blog, The Press, The Media: From Meet the Press to Be the Press
The Economist just said it: the "the traditional notion that the media play a special role in informing people is breaking down." Rising up: government as a "purely neutral" news provider, credible where a sinking press corps is not.
As Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, has put it, the administration does not think that the press has "a check-and-balance function". This is a fundamental change of attitude compared with previous administrations and makes this one's use of fake news different.
I agree: a fundamental change is afoot, and we have to try to understand it. The Economist zeroes in on why the "special interest" charge matters. Listen carefully-- they're catching on:
If there is nothing special about the press, then there is nothing special about what it does. News can be anything--including dressed-up government video footage. And anyone can provide it, including the White House, which, through local networks, can become a news distributor in its own right. Given the proliferation of media outlets and the eroding of boundaries between news, comment and punditry, someone will use government-provided information as news.
The President represented the people, the press represented the public.
Why two reps, why these two words? Because the same Americans who believe in popular sovereignty (election to office) believe too in public opinion (government by discussion.)
• Boundaries, Crosslines, De-certification [Reconciling conflicting objectives - New Open Source Journal on Freedom of Information Freedom of information and data protection ; The launch of a pioneering project, OurMedia provides free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches Open Source Project Offers Free Storage For Digital Media ]
• · New University of Florida Study Ranks States' Records Access Laws - The project's panel of experts, known as the Sunshine Review Board, compared the state laws for 30 categories of legal provisions related to records requests and ranked them on a Sunshine Index for openness Sunshine Week: Study Details Public Access to State Records ; Get Assistance from a Federal Depository Librarian: Government Information Online Pilot Project Gov't Sponsored Project Offers Expert Virtual Reference Services
• · · Experiences of a Street Car Conductor Digital History ; Digital reel explodes on Amazon
• · · · View your words constructed out of images selected pseudo-randomly from an Amazon Web site; Newcopia is a commenting system where people can come and discuss the latest additions in Bills and Research from Australian Parliament House. NewCopia; Sheila Lennon writes a story about a musician. She writes it in an HTML editor so she can fill it with links. Not only that, she read it aloud in her first Podcast. Multi-Talented observers
• · · · · Steve Rubel has some great advice for bloggers: get on the Oprah Winfrey show. And writes an open letter to Oprah asking her to bring bloggers on board (and to start her own blog). How to become influential ; A9.com searches more than the web—we have a library of columns that you can add to your column list (the list of buttons you see on the right of search results). Amazon's search engine has lots of tricks
• · · · · · The State of the News Media 2005; Peek is AlterNet's blog of blogs, pointing out what's buzzing in the blogosphere. Peek: The Blog Of Blogs