~Philip Bump at the Atlantic Wire
Investigative reporting has impact. It exposes wrongdoing, sparks reform, changes minds, and changes lives... "Before the year ended, Jay wanted to capture a few points that stand out for him about what is unquestionably the biggest news story of 2013" Jay Rosen on the Lessons Learned from the Snowden Effect
The journalist behind, perhaps, the biggest story of a generation had strong words for Western media outlets and journalists who bow to those in positions of power. Rolling Stone turning its eyes on leakers Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald - An extended analysis of Greenwald's background and motivations The Men who rewrote James Bond movies
The New York Times editorial said Mr Snowden "was clearly justified" in his leaks given that current whistleblower laws do not cover private contractors.
The editorial listed several ways the NSA had violated the public trust, saying it broke federal privacy laws "thousands of times a year", undermined the internet's basic encryption system and breached the communications links of data centres around the world.
Mr Obama, who has called on Mr Snowden to return to the US, should instead give him "an incentive to return home", it said. Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower: Editorial of real note; The NSA, which has as many as 40,000 employees, has 1,000 system administrators, most of them contractors. [Note: Reuters reported NSA is eliminating 90% of its system administrators.] How Snowden Did It
Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” inevitably stirs a robust debate –as that honor has gone to people infamous for evil as well as famous for good. Last year's pick of Pope Francis has stirred a mischievous strain of debate, suggesting that an agent of good has seized the spotlight from a villain/hero (freedomfighter/terrorist) who had a remarkable impact on the world in 2013: vice person Edward Snowden
“If journalism is to matter, we can’t just raise big topics. We have to spread them, and then sustain them.”In 2014 and beyond, journalists should be inspired by the Snowden effect. They should focus more on critical mass — how to achieve it and how to sustain it. If journalism is to matter, we can’t just raise big topics. We have to spread them, and then sustain them Dan Gillmore digs deep into trends and what really works and why
Interview with Jay Rosen. The Atlantic 3 December 2013
"The third upside is news with a human voice restored to it. This is the great lesson that blogging gives to journalism. NewCo (First Look Media) is trying to learn it" A News Organization That Rejects the View From Nowhere;
It’s true! The FT – and social media – really do move markets
By John Authers
Wikipedia visits and Google search linked to swings, research says
Newspapers report the news. They should never aim to be part of the story themselves. But in the stock market, that division is hard to sustain.
A rigorous statistical study by a group of academics at Warwick Businss School has now shown that we at the Financial Times regularly move the markets we write about. (A similar exercise for our best-known competitors would surely yield the same result; it happens that this study covered the FT.)
The research is part of a growing effort to understand how to interpret people’s use of data, and the trails they leave on the internet through search engines and social media, to predict how they, and markets, will behave.
The study looked at 1,821 FT issues published in the six years from 2007 to 2012 – years that included a historic stock collapse and a subsequent dramatic rebound.
The researchers counted all mentions of the 31 stocks that were part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average during this period and linked their mentions in the paper to their share price performance the next day. It showed a strong correlation – a mention in the morning’s FT meant a greater volume of trading.
Interestingly, their study involves the printed edition when much of the news on which the FT reported would already have appeared online the previous day. So the news continued to have an impact on the next day. As there are now many sources that should move markets more swiftly than a printed newspaper, this also implies that it was the news itself, rather than any editorial choice about publishing stories, that moved prices.
Financial stocks, led by Bank of America, were most likely to be news-driven during a period when markets were driven by the financial crisis.
So working out how to use social media is hard but the conclusion of Tobias Preis, who led the research, is robust: “Increasing information-gathering in financially relevant information on Google and Wikipedia is linked with subsequent stock market losses.”
...In 2014, we should watch how sentiment is moving – and also read the news ...Power of News