 RSS | Journal | Index | Home
| |||
|
david lamb minton |
|
| |||
|
05.05.08 Cadillac Laps the Ring! 7:59.32 John Heinricy a lap of the legendary Nordschleife Pick of the Week A wonderful Salisbury Bungalow 4.30.08 Albert Hofmann Remember April 19 - Bicycle Day 04.47.08 DLMWeb live cam A test of the Ustream.tv Kart Race at OVRP - 8hrs - June 21 2008 01.14.08 Random Motorsport and Car Related Videos YouTube Ad Test 01.07.08 Juan Manuel Fangio Video From the director of Chariots of Fire More.. |
7/4/05 Self-expression online By Jack Dew, Berkshire Eagle Staff A day after Bob Dylan played at Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Seth Rogovoy posted his review on his blog, rogovoy.com. The next day, the responses began to appear on the Web site -- some quibbled with his assessment of a Dylan album, one offered more information on an opening act that Rogovoy had mentioned in passing, and another questioned a piece of Dylan trivia. To Rogovoy, the editor of Berkshire Living magazine and a cultural critic who contributes to WAMC's morning talk show, ''Roundtable,'' the responses are what his blog is all about. "I've had a Web site for years where I posted all my articles and reviews and features. ... I realized that what I was doing was sort of like a blog, but what it lacked was the interactivity, which it now has. That's what is really exciting about it -- that people can read it and reply instantly," he said. Though three-quarters of Internet users say they don't read blogs -- or Web logs, as they are formally known -- the forums have experienced a 47 percent increase in readership. In surveys of adult Americans conducted between Jan. 13 and March 21, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 32 million -- or about 25 percent of adult Internet users -- were blog readers by the end of 2004, up from 17 percent a year earlier. Of the 120 million American adults who use the Internet, Pew found that 9 percent said they have created a blog or Web-based diary. But while blogs are gaining in popularity, whether they are here to stay and whether they will revolutionize the way we get and share information remain open questions. A blog can be anything from a simple diary of one person's daily experience posted on the Web to a sophisticated site that blends written postings with links to other sites and responses from readers. Usually, blogs are a series of written statements -- like a music review or an observation on current events -- listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent material first. From the simplicity of that formula, a million versions have been born. Blogs -- whose creators have often fashioned themselves as watchdogs policing the mainstream media -- have in many cases joined the mainstream. Dozens of bloggers were given credentials for last year's Republi-can and Dem-ocratic conventions. Newspapers, radio stations and television news outlets have begun experimenting with their own blogs, seeking to take their mainstream media content into this new medium. "Blogs are really a structure in which you can put virtually anything," said Amanda Lenhart, a research specialist and Webmaster with the Pew Internet and Amer-ican Life Project. "It can be photos, a podcast, audio files, a painting that you did. You can also put text, which could be anything from political opinions to something that is an experience, an observation you had while walking your dog. Most blogs for most people who keep them are about expressing themselves -- a personal journal about sharing ideas and forming community, and not about influencing others or the media." But it is by influencing others and replacing or policing the mainstream media that blogs have received the most attention. The so-called "blogosphere" was widely credited with forcing Dan Ra-ther to step down by exposing problems last year with a story on President Bush's military service. Locally, Rogovoy, a former free-lance music critic for The Eagle, has been critiquing the newspaper, in addition to hosting his reviews and discussions of his own magazine, Berkshire Living. Aims to change journalism Some blog authors hope to change journalism. In Williamstown, Bill Densmore -- who once owned The Advocate, a weekly newspaper based in North County, and worked for the North Adams Transcript as its advertising manager -- has started GreylockNews .com, which he calls an "experiment in citizen journalism." On his site are postings by him and others about local events -- Williamstown's town meeting, an interview with a former school superintendent, and an update on the progress of the new home of the town's co-op grocery store. He said he hopes people will become correspondents to his site, writing stories about the community and posting them. "What I have found is enormous gratitude from the community, people just coming up to me and saying it's a great thing," Dens-more said. "What I haven't found yet is any concerted willingness by people to contribute." Densmore said he doesn't doubt that people are interested in local events, but he suspects they don't have the time to practice journalism on the side. "The citizens who may want to contribute to GreylockNews, they all have lives, and they can't drop the rest of their life and spend hours covering some story," he said. But there is little doubt that established news organizations are feeling pressure from blogs. Newspapers, already concerned about declining circulation -- particularly among young readers who are more Internet savvy than their parents and thus more likely to read blogs -- are wrestling with whether and how to enter the blogosphere. Eagle parent a host The Denver Post, the flagship paper of The Eagle's parent company, MediaNews Group, has hosted blogs written by some of its staff writers and freelancers. The site, denverpostbloghouse.com, had 30,490 visitors in June, and the pages were viewed 108,666 times, said Gil Asakawa, executive producer of denverpost.com. Those numbers compare with 1.5 million visitors to the Denver Post Web site and 7 million page views. Visitors can read what bloggers have posted and can write their own responses. Asakawa makes sure the content is appropriate and then posts to the site for all to read. So far, he said, he hasn't had to block a post. "It has added voices that The Denver Post print edition doesn't have," Asakawa said of bloghouse. "I went out of my way to find interesting personalities to write for us, and I went out of my way to groom them to write in a casual, conversational way ... and they have succeeded to various extents. Not all of them are as bloggy as I would like, but they have their readership." The Los Angeles Times recently tried a "wikitorial" page that let readers write and rewrite an editorial, shaping it on the Web one person at a time. That experiment ended abruptly, however, when some visitors posted pornographic images on the site. At WAMC Northeast Public Radio, several blogs have popped up on the Web site, wamc.org, including one by its president and CEO, Alan Chartock. He said he believes the definition of a "journalist" is expanding to include non-traditional jobs such as talk-show host, stand-up comedian and blogger. While millions of blogs will never be read by a broad audience, a few will get noticed. "Some blogs will elevate themselves to high status," Chartock said. "For example, you get the Drudge Report (by Matt Drudge), and people will go to it if they are responsible, if they give out news that people can't get anywhere else, or if they are amusing." At The Eagle, Executive Editor Tim Farkas said the paper is exploring the possibility of creating blogs, but has not decided which form they would take. "I don't think (blogs) are competition," Farkas said. "I think they are another source people can look to for information. But most blogs I've seen are basically just gossip in written form, and in that vein, they are intriguing." Credibility questions There inevitably are questions about credibility. The Internet has made it easy for people to be anonymous, and in their cloak of secrecy, they can say almost anything with little fear of retribution. Densmore said he believes the Internet needs a resource that helps determine which sites are credible. "One of the biggest problems with the Internet is that anonymity is so easy and so pervasive," he said. "It allows people to behave in ways and say things that they wouldn't say if people knew who they were." For people posting to his own site, GreylockNews.com, Densmore asks that they submit their name and phone number so readers can contact them. And he has posted his own information and his picture, which he said conveys that he stands behind what he writes and takes responsibility for its accuracy. Densmore said he edits some material submitted by others before it appears on the site. He lets a few correspondents, those he feels comfortable with, post directly to the main page. Chartock said there are "some really malevolent, mean-spirited people who are just spewing out lies and fabrications and anything they want to make up, and they aren't really held responsible for what they do." Farkas said that if The Eagle creates a space for people to post messages, liability is a concern, both in terms of legality and credibility. He said he thinks people would consider a blog to be an extension of the paper. "If there was something defamatory said, people are going to associate it with The Berkshire Eagle, whether it says it's the blog site or whether it says it is the newspaper," Farkas said. how about the photo which illustrated this article jc 7/8/2005  | ||