Daily Archives: February 13, 2009

02.13.09
by

US law and comments on websites

David Ardia, on legal liability for comments online from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard, talks about CDA 230, the section of the Communications Decency Act that provides some protection to people who run web sites.

Joshua Benton from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University says:

I wish every managing editor in the country could see this 20-minute video. I’ve heard so many misconceptions over the years about news organizations’ legal ability to police, manage, or otherwise edit the comments left on their web sites. They say “the lawyers” tell them they can’t edit out an obscenity or remove a rude or abusive post without bringing massive legal liability upon themselves — and that the only solutions are to either have a Wild West, anything-goes comments policy or to not have comments in the first place.

That’s not true, and hasn’t been true since 1996.

02.13.09
by

Android, e-ink and live news displays

Android Meets E Ink from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

Motorola Development Group is showing off a proof of concept with Google’s Android running an e-ink display. With Amazon’s Kindle showing some signs of success, it looks like e-readers might finally be reaching a tipping point in terms of adoption. What I find interesting in terms of not only the Kindle but also this proof of concept is the delivery of content wirelessly.We’re starting to see experimentation in terms of form factor for these devices. We’re not just talking about laptops, netbooks and mobile phones.

With the cost of printing the New York Times roughly twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle, there might be a point where wireless delivery to an electronic reading device makes economic sense. This is very speculative and very much out in front of the market and most consumers, but as Nicholas Carlson points out:

What we’re trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn’t just expensive and inefficient; it’s laughably so.

Print is always cast in terms of habit. The argument is that people prefer the tactile experience of the printed page and the easily browsable format, but with the economics of print news delivery becoming financially untenable, it’s worth seeing what options are available and what options are developing.

02.13.09
by

links for 2009-02-13

  • Forget Micropayments — Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content
    Kevin: Steve Outing pierces some of the recent (and largely recycled) talk about micropayments and news content. As Online Journalism Blogger Paul Bradshaw says, newspaper content isn't like iTunes. You listen to songs several times, you don't read newspaper content several times. But Steve looks at a new model, Kachingle. Briefly, Kachingle takes the US National Public Radio voluntary supporter model with a model that allows users to reward content providers they like and not just traditional media but also bloggers. Steve goes through the details. It's a new idea. Will it work? Dunno. But it might be worth trying.
    (tags: journalism newspapers internet strategy businessmodel micropayments kachingle)
  • MediaShift Idea Lab . Journalism Will Survive the Death of Its Institutions | PBS
    Kevin: Lisa Williams of Placeblogger writes about how journalists, just as technology workers before them, can survive and thrive as big companies fail. She writes: "You'll discover what thousands upon thousands of tech workers discovered: you can do great work outside of an institutional, big-company context, and you can make a living doing so. High tech companies didn't own innovation; the innovators did. News organizations don't own journalism: journalists do."
    (tags: blogging economics future jobs journalism technology)
  • Dead man blogging |Notes from the Field | Robert X. Cringely® | InfoWorld
    Kevin: Dan Lyons behind the Fake Steve Jobs talks about his time of obsessive blogging, and Robert X. Cringely writes: "We're at the end of one era on the blogosphere and the beginning of another. What the new one will be like nobody can say. Will the amateurs fade away and leave the game to people who actually know how to write and report? Or will the marketers complete their coup, leaving the rest of us old journos to scramble for jobs at Wal-Mart?"
    (tags: journalism blogging businessmodel ecnomics)