"By plundering your own life for material, you are not investing in yourself as a writer; you’re spending the principal. Soon, it will all be used up. There is nothing more painful to watch than a writer desperately grasping at ever less-important aspects of their own lives in order to make word counts, until they must simultaneously eat lunch and be writing about eating that lunch at the same time. It is the most small-minded interpretation of “journalism” there is. It is sad…The extent to which we train a generation of young writers to become robotic insta-memoirists is the extent to which a generation of stories from the wider world does not get told. The real tragedy of journalism-as-narcissism is not the general pettiness of the stories it produces; it is the other, better stories that never get produced as a result."
#META
#journalism
#media
#criticism
"Of course, the real reason that conferences succeed or fail isn’t in their programming but rather in their audience: the trick is to get enough boldface names on stage that a lot of important people want to come and mingle with each other…If conferences develop a reputation as a place full of people you want to meet, it pretty much doesn’t matter any more what happens in the panels."
#META
#media
#events
#Conferences
"It’s closest to Tumblr right now — another product that occupies the space between full-blown blogging like WordPress, and ultra lightweight blogging in Twitter. Clearly Twitter is moving more towards Tumblr. If Medium adds templates and CSS they will be aimed squarely at Tumblr."
Thread: Bullet points on Ev’s new startup
Winer on Medium.
Having been thinking this, too:
The more I understand about Medium, the more trouble I have seeing how it co-exists with another Williams startup, Branch. It seems like they’re both camped out in the same space betw blogging and Twitter. That as the two products evolve they will keep colliding with each other.
#writing
#publishing
#Medium
#Branch
#media
#meta
#Tumblr
"Circa may well succeed for certain types of news, but it’ll be because of the inherent attributes of providing easy to digest facts in a new format that I described above, not because people feel some tyranny of the article. The article has already adapted throughout time and will continue to do so. All it means is a newsy collection of words. I don’t get how paging through one-sentence flash cards makes that substantially different. It’s just a collection of words with different pagination. In fact, if I’m one handed, trying to read a story while I do something else, continually hitting a forward button would be more of an annoyance."
#META
#journalism
#media
#publishing
#circa
"
In some ways, I want the inverse of News.me or Tweeted Times. Because the hardest thing for me is figuring out: What is everyone else talking about that I have no fucking clue about? The web tends to narrow your consumption more and more. And as a news junkie, that tends to piss me the hell off.
It’s about perspective. Look at anything in the political domain. I loathe Santorum. But I find it so fascinating to see how he’s framed in conservative news. The problem with reading the New York Times is that the Times is all about tempered and metered interpretations of what’s going on. Meanwhile, TV news is all about total extremism. It’s about facial expressions, and performance over content. Watching Fox, I can understand the appeal of Santorum. It doesn’t make me like him anymore, but I can at least get it.
My network is not talking positively about Santorum in any way. It’s not even talking positively about Romney. They’re both lunatics. But I know better than to think that’s how they’re actually being discussed beyond my network. I want a tool that gives me what’s outside of my perspective on these issues — because otherwise I have to do a lot of really difficult and exhausting work to find it.
"
"Probably the biggest value shift that’s taken place in journalism over recent years has been the increasing centrality of argument to the minute-by-minute lives of writers and reporters. Of course, the give-and-take of debate has always had a cherished place in journalism, whether on op-ed pages or in opinion magazines. But with the rise of blogging and especially Twitter, journalists are spending more and more time immersed in the world of retorts and clever one-liners than ever before. Today it’s inarguable that the journalistic world places a much higher premium on debaters’ skills than it did even four years ago. Last week, we were reminded that Mitt Romney has those skills in abundance. And journalists—not surprisingly, given the current values of our profession—rewarded him handsomely for it. "
#META
#journalism
#media
"So before critics follow Mr. Jarvis’ lead and jump on political reporters for spending precious resources actually covering political events that include real nominations and real voting and that have a real impact on our democracy—and for having the gall to do it in person—we should reconsider how much time their colleagues spend covering trivial product announcements the same way. We should consider how much free advertising press outlets give to corporations in exchange for photogenic stunts. And ask ourselves: which is the more insidious and damaging to our culture?"
#META
#media
"
[According to Ryan Holiday in his new book “Trust me, I’m Lying”], you don’t read the [Huffington Post] to learn, but to be tracked and studied like lab rats whose data is mined like blood diamonds and is for sale to the highest bidding advertisers. They push your buttons, you click theirs. That’s the business model…
This tactic is not just relegated to Huffington Post, but to most of the major blogs such as Business Insider, Politico, and Gawker. “Blogs are there to manipulate you,” said Holiday. “In many ways, the truth, the facts, the research, and the attribution of quotes are irrelevant because of how bloggers are paid.”
Holiday contends that you don’t really care what is fact or fiction because of how your emotions are poked and prodded: readers are like a cattle that never quite get slaughtered, but are moved through a deliberate cattle-herding process of ongoing double-clicking. In the process, you the reader get to feel understood by sharing your anger or dissension with other like-minded individuals and that makes you feel good.
Holiday further contends that the issues are secondary to them to the extent that they can get you to a) click on the articles and read them; b) rate the article from 1 to 10; c) stay on the site and read related articles; and d) share the article on Twitter or Facebook. Why else do they give you the ability to login with your Twitter or Facebook credentials?
"
"If you don’t know the people, or don’t care, it’s probably not social media. It’s just media. It doesn’t matter if it’s created by an individual or a corporation."
#media
#social media
#ev
#evan williams
#meta
