Archive for January, 2005

Bloggercon coming to Nashville

Posted Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

Chalk one up for a blue city in a red state! The first weekend in May is the date for “BlogNashville,” a three-day multi-part conference on journalism, blogging and the emergence of the new citizen-participatory journalism, which will include the fourth Bloggercon on Saturday. For the uneducated, Bloggercon was started by blogging pioneer Dave Winer and held previously at Harvard University and Stanford University. The gathering is sponsored by Belmont College in Nashville and will be held on campus with various events running from May 5-7. It’s a very BIG deal indeed.

Lots of people are already lined up, including Instapundit himself, Glenn Reynolds, Ed Cone, Bill Hobbs and, of course, myself. A Website has been built, BlogNashville.org.

Read the whole press release from Belmont.

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Safire: bloggers will turn from meanstream to mainstream.

Posted Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

New York Times columnist Bill Safire has some soothing words for the mainstream media (MSM), but makes an assumption I can’t support. Bill’s trying to lift the press out of a depression he perceives, one brought on by a host of messages.

Hear the wailing: The bloggers are coming! The Bible-thumpers are cursing our secular inhumanism! The plumber judges are plugging our leaks! The Yahoo president ducks our questions and giggles at our gaffes! News is slyly slanted as bias rears its head!
The piece goes on to explain why MSMers shouldn’t fear any of these threats, and he encourages journalists to “be of good cheer.” This is an interesting piece, and I agree with much of what’s said. However, he makes the following statement about the blogosphere:
Blogs will compete with op-ed columns for “views you can use,” and the best will morph out of the pajama game to deliver serious analysis and fresh information, someday prospering with ads and subscriptions. The prospect of profit will bring bloggers in from the meanstream to the mainstream center of comment and local news coverage.

On national or global events, however, the news consumer needs trained reporters on the scene to transmit facts and trustworthy editors to judge significance. In crises, large media gathering-places are needed to respond to a need for national community.

Wait a minute, Bill. I think you’re missing something here. The prospect of profit will bring bloggers in from the meanstream to the mainstream center of comment and local news coverage? God forbid! May it never be! Only one who completely misses the reality of citizens media would make such a statement, because this statement assumes the blogosphere will come around to the status quo. That’s not likely, because it functions with different motives. That doesn’t mean some won’t buy into this, but that will not cool the heat the bloggers are putting on the press.

We need an aggressive and viable press in the country, and I’ve stated many times that there’s no way the blogs could ever replace it. God forbid! May it never be! But citizens media is here to stay, and the sooner the pedestal dwellers realize it, the more we’ll all be able to work together downstream.

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Don’t piss off Jeff Jarvis

Posted Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

The man’s words are razor sharp and he strikes with the aggression of a pro wrestler overdosing on testosterone. This is a very good read about, shall we say, another illustration of the unprofessionalism practiced by The New York Times.

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CBS: One dollar per show for on demand TV

Posted Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

It’s time to punch a hole in the belief that over-the-air television is free.

The Los Angeles Times reports on how broadcasters are searching for ways to have the public pay for their so-called free television. In the wake of ad-skipping made possible through DVRs, the networks want to know whether viewers can be persuaded to help pay for programming that they’re now getting free.

Many executives believe the networks’ very survival depends on viewers accepting what some might see as a radical idea: that the audience, not just advertisers, must subsidize the high cost of producing the shows that so many Americans love to watch. If they don’t, executives say, the networks won’t have the money to produce expensive shows.
A study being released today by CBS reveals that people are willing to pay a dollar to view a favorite show “on demand.” This is interesting stuff, but it all flows from that mistaken belief that that what we now have is “free.” It isn’t. Cable penetration is such that most people feel they’re already paying for network TV, but that’s only a surface observation.

There are many types of currency, and one of them is time. Time is the real currency of “free” television. We give them our time to watch a little programming between all the commercial messages. One-third of prime time is now taken up with promotional announcements of one form or another. One-third! The networks blew their deal with viewers when it presumed the right to take viewers’ time without compensating them for it with quality programming. I honestly don’t think people would ad skip if commercial breaks were a minute long. I’ve actually timed some breaks at 6 minutes. Who wants to sit through that?

I agree the networks need something to make the transition to an on-demand world attractive, because that’s where we’re heading. However, broadcasters need to stop blaming their audiences for their woes. The disruptive — and audience-serving — innovations that threaten TV didn’t just happen by chance. There’s a real demand for this stuff, because people are tired of giving away their time.

A dollar a show? We’ll see.

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Rolling Stone rejects Bible ad

Posted Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

What a shock! The magazine that lives off and therefore promotes the hedonistic lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll has rejected an advertisement for a new young people’s Bible published by Zondervan. It’s a humorous story, because both sides stumble all over each other trying to justify their position. An example is that the magazine has only an “unwritten” policy against advertisements with a religious message.

The problem is the tag line: “Timeless truth; Today’s language.”

Zondervan said they’d redo the slogan, but the magazine said, “No thanks.” Is anybody really surprised?

The best line in the USA Today report comes from a Zondervan spokesman: “Rolling Stone was a perfect fit for the group we want to reach.”

Who knew?

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Ad demand survey tells the story

Posted Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

In its unique, annual survey of media ad buyers, MediaPost and InsightExpress paint a rather clear picture of what’s happening on the advertising landscape, and it should surprise no one. 74% of ad buyers say their demand for online advertising had increased from a year earlier, while 25% said the demand of network TV advertising had decreased.

This is one of the most important surveys to come along every year, because it speaks to the people who actually do the buying.

How has your demand for the following media changed relative to the same point a year ago: 
          —-Increased- -Stayed Same- -Decreased—-            12/03 12/04  12/03 12/04  12/03 12/04 Online      65%   74%    26%   20%     9%    6% Cable       50%   51%    36%   40%    14%    9% Radio       46%   28%    43%   53%    11%   19% Outdoor     38%   24%    43%   56%    19%   20% Magazines   27%   27%    43%   51%    30%   22% Network TV  19%   20%    57%   55%    24%   25% Newspapers  24%   31%    49%   50%    27%   19%


Source: MediaPost advisory panel. Conducted online via InsightExpress.
Base: December ‘03 = 195; December ‘04 = 100.

Note the demand increase for newspapers and that the lowest demand increase is for network TV.

This is just more evidence of what’s happening in the marketplace and why broadcasters need to get far outside the box in order to continue profitability downstream.

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Of baseball and CBS News

Posted Friday, January 14th, 2005

It was interesting watching Bud Selig proclaim the new Major League Baseball policy against performance-enhancing drugs. I couldn’t shake thoughts of CBS News and their current conundrum over RatherGate.

CBS talks of restoring credibility.

Baseball talks of restoring integrity.

Those are two very different words, and I think CBS ought to take a close look at baseball’s term. Integrity assumes responsibility, while credibility involves the perception of others. Integrity is something you can do something about. Credibility is in the hands of others and over which you have no power. To speak of credibility when integrity is the real issue is to pass the buck.

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You mean I have to PAY for that?

Posted Friday, January 14th, 2005

Here’s a great story from the New York Times about the shock that occurs when teenagers discover the cost of swapping all those cute messages with their friends via cellphones. It’s an important read, because it points to the big weakness in all of the wonderful predictions about mobile phone business models, including video.

When phone companies in the U.S. are involved, anything cool is considered an added service with a cost attached.

In other countries, cellphone users not only have 3G phones but also a little goodie known as CPP, Calling Party Pays. This is what opens the door for business models that actually work for consumers, and until we have CPP in this country, I’m afraid all these wonderful ideas will be just that — ideas.

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As the papers go, so go we

Posted Friday, January 14th, 2005

It’s important for television people to keep track of what’s happening in the newspaper business. When they’re hurting, we have tendency to cough and scoff, because after all, they’re competitors for advertising dollars in the community. But their current troubles are OUR troubles too, and we’d better be paying attention.

MediaPost’s Joe Mandese writes in MediaDailyNews today of a Merrill Lynch forecast that newspaper revenues face serious issues.

The report cites consolidation among major newspaper advertisers, including the pending mergers of Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Kmart, as well as the merger of Sprint and Nextel, as major developments that “could take their toll” on newspaper display advertising during 2005.

While the major newspaper circulation scandals appear to have abated, Merrill Lynch projected that circulation revenues would continue to drag due to “secular” reasons. The analysts project that circulation revenue declined about 1.5 percent during the fourth quarter of 2004 and that “circulation pressures” would continue in 2005.

The one bright spot for newspapers, according to the report, is online, but the stock analysts tempered their optimism with a dose of reality.
Most newspaper companies are experiencing strong double-digit gains in online revenues, mostly incorporated in the separate ad categories. While the success is worth noting, the dollar amounts are still small and still present a challenge long term against increased competition, in our view.
As newspapers go, so go we in the broadcasting world. Rather than snickering over their difficulties, we need to be learning from them, for they are ahead of us in the online game.

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Online spending skyrocketing, but TV stations unlikely to see it

Posted Thursday, January 13th, 2005

There are tons of reports and stories out there about the dramatic growth in online ad spending, but this one deserves special mention. A MediaDailyNews report on a survey of ad buyers by Deutsche Bank and MediaPost shows overall online spending will jump 30 percent in 2005. That’s three-zero percent, folks. Here’s the fun part for local television:

Respondents also disclosed that 14 percent of online ad dollars were allocated to Web sites of local TV, newspaper, and media…”
Let’s see. Total online ad spending in 2004 is expected to come in around $10 billion. So $1.4 billion went to local TV, newspaper, and media.

Television station general manager, did you get your share?

Frankly, I doubt it, since most local stations are tied up with companies that host and maintain their Websites, in addition to taking most or all of the ad revenue. This is the great shame of local broadcasting, and one that I predict will be “corrected” in the near future as more and more stations wake up to the fact that their online revenue is going elsewhere.

But there’s more.

When it comes to the future, half of all respondents said they expected behavioral targeting to be the single largest area of focus for themselves and their clients in the next six to 12 months. An additional 21 percent said online video ads would be the primary focal point, while 16 percent expect to focus on local search or pay-per-call.
Once again, local television is not properly positioned to take advantage of where the market is headed. TV stations are well equipped to take advantage of online video ad growth, but most don’t. And behavioral (contextual) advertising? Again, a business that ought to be at the forefront of all of this is way behind even their newspaper counterparts.

How sad!

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A welcomed war for respect

Posted Wednesday, January 12th, 2005

Essence, the leading magazine for black women, has launched an aggressive and welcomed attack on the way the hip-hop industry depicts black women. I think this is something every media writer should be examining, for it’s a story of niche media people using their muscle to speak on behalf of their audience. The program is called “Take Back The Music,” and the editors wrote:

In videos we see bikini-clad sisters gyrating around fully clothed grinning brothers like Vegas strippers on meth. When we search for ourselves in music lyrics, mix tapes, and DVDs and on the pages of hip-hop magazines, we only seem to find our bare breasts and butts.

The damage of this imbalanced portrayal of Black women is impossible to measure. An entire generation of Black girls are being raised on these narrow images. And as the messages and images are broadcast globally, they have become the lens through which the world now sees us. This cannot continue.

The magazine’s project includes interviews with people at all levels of the music business, many of whom agree with the mission. Of the 25-hundred responses to an ongoing poll of readers on the Essence Website, 72 percent said that “What I hear about women in most songs played on urban radio makes me cringe.”

I’m going to be rooting for Editor in Chief Diane Weathers and her whole team on this worthwhile project. She wrote of the project in her January letter to readers:

“We want to provoke honest discussion and raise consciousness without finger-pointing, preaching, censoring or excessive moralizing. We’re not demanding that edgy young artists deny their creative voice. But we do want to let them know when it hurts.”
This isn’t about being a prude. It’s about the line we all know is there, the one that hip-hop crossed a long time ago.

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Hackers discover yet another doorway to your computer

Posted Wednesday, January 12th, 2005

Holy downloaded video, Batman! According to eWeek reporter Ryan Naraine, hackers have found a way to plant spyware onto computers by exploiting the digital rights management (DRM) technology of Windows Media files.

Security researchers have detected the appearance of two new Trojans, Trj/WmvDownloader.A and Trj/WmvDownloader.B, in video files circulating on P2P (peer-to-peer) networks.

According to Panda Software, both Trojans take advantage of the new Windows anti-piracy technology to trick users into downloading spyware and adware applications.

“When a user tries to play a protected Windows media file, this technology demands a valid license. If the license is not stored on the computer, the application will look for it on the Internet, so that the user can acquire it directly or buy it,” Panda Software explained.

An unsuspecting user attempting to download the DRM (digital rights management) license will instead be redirected to a Web site that loads a large quantity of adware, spyware, modem dialers and other viruses, the company said in an advisory.

The CTO for Panda called it “ingenious,” and added, “To take an anti-piracy feature and use it to feed spyware is extremely ironic.” Indeed.

And we owe it all to our friends at the RIAA and the MPAA.

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The consumer dictate

Posted Wednesday, January 12th, 2005

That’s Cory Treffiletti’s latest term for describing the media shift from the supply side to the demand side.

The proof is all around…that successful media, and thus successful advertising, is all about what the consumer wants, when they want it, and how they want it.

The mass-market model is dwindling away because the ability to shift the time of your interaction with media means that the collective US is no longer on the same schedule. We follow our own individual paths and we own the relationship with media. Few and far between are the mass-market opportunities. The only ones left are the extremely high-profile events where media coverage necessitates exposure at the same time or risk the result of being spoiled. Events such as the SuperBowl and the Academy Awards are the only vestiges of mass media that will survive in the coming years. Can even these continue to succeed? Will appointment use of media go away completely?

This is an excellent piece from a guy who really understands what’s happening in the marketplace.

Remember that Postmodernism is all about personal experience. Modernists view it as self-centeredness, but I don’t think Pomos are anymore self-centered than the next guy. The consumer dictate, as Cory calls it, is a natural extension of that. That’s a tough pill to swallow when your whole view is top-to-bottom, mass market oriented.

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Forbes prediction sounds familiar

Posted Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

From a Forbes article entitled Media Companies Focus On Deals:

News Corp.’s $6 billion bid to snap up outstanding Fox Entertainment Group shares is just the opening salvo in a year that should be full of media mergers, acquisitions and partnerships. Some will be ego-driven control deals. But, the Internet and interactive TV are rapidly altering the media landscape, and the old-line companies will need some new traveling companions.
This sounds remarkably like one of my predictions. Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis suggests that one good deal would be Viacom selling CBS News.
This makes great business sense for Viacom: I’m sure they don’t really want to be in the ever-shrinking network news business, where audience and then, inevitably, revenue will continue to fall. CBS is overly expensive. Viacom has proven to be incapable of managing CBS News effectively; it’s hard to manage sacred cows, as the Rathergate commission demonstrates…CBS News is the odd man out at Viacom, the cow in the chicken farm. Selling it off lets them concentrate on entertaining us and doesn’t affect the brand and audience on the rest of CBS at all. So Viacom should sell CBS News — and its news timeslots — and make a good buck on the deal.
Not likely, but I suspect Jeff knows that — fun idea, nonetheless.

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Of lawsuits and bloggers

Posted Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

Steve Safran over at Lost Remote is calling for a blog boycott of Macworld, which begins today in San Francisco. Steve’s upset (like a great many folks) that Apple is suing two bloggers for publishing what it believes to be company secrets. The bloggers — both of whom blog about Mac products and thereby promote those products — obtained these “secrets” via apparently very good sources. Steve Jobs wants to control such things, so his lawyers filed suit against these shallow-pocketed individuals.

This is a call to all bloggers today: don’t post a thing about Apple’s Macworld San Francisco. Don’t write about the new products that are going to be announced. Don’t write reviews. Don’t blog Steve Jobs’s speech. Let them see the power of bloggers.

Screw ‘em.

I have three Macs at home. I have an iPod. I use iTunes weekly. And I am singularly appalled at the Microsoft-style tactics Apple is using on bloggers. And if Apple is alienating me, they’re alienating plenty more Macheads.

Steve’s right, and I hope people follow his lead. Macworld is a big event, and Jobs counts on the publicity from it to sell his products.

Meanwhile, the Media Bloggers Association (of which I’m a member) has announced the appointment of Ronald D. Coleman, of the Coleman Law Firm, PC as general counsel. Coleman will be build a team of attorneys around the country to provide MBA members with first-line counsel on matters relating to the use of intellectual property, defamation and other issues arising from their weblogging. This is a very good move in an effort to help the blogosphere with nonsense like the Apple suit.

And…

Remember the Delta flight attendant (Queen of the Sky) who lost her job because she posted pictures of herself inside a jet on her blog? She’s organizing a Bloggers Bill of Rights petition. The site also includes a list of companies that its users view as “blogophobic.” I’m not sure how effective this will be, but it’s always fun to watch citizens exercise their freedoms.

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The future of the Internet, according to Pew

Posted Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

While I can’t wholeheartedly endorse all of the predictions in the latest from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, I can say the whole report is provocative and insightful. Pew surveyed “experts” (technology experts and social analysts) to form a rich view of the future of the Internet (.pdf file). It’s worthwhile reading, but here’s the best stuff:

  • Connections across media, entertainment, advertising, and commerce will become stronger with future margins going to a new breed of ‘digital media titans.’
  • Well-branded innovators such as Google and Starbucks have a chance to build all-new new distribution models tied to ad revenue and retail sales.
  • Health care is approximately 10 years behind other endeavors in being transformed, and will experience its boom in the next 10 years.
  • Government will be forced to become increasingly transparent, accessible over the Net, and almost impenetrable if you’re not on the Net.
  • Digitization and the Internet make for a potent brew … TiVo kills the commercial television format. Napster, Kazaa, and iPod kill the ‘album’ format. In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes in their own reality show.
  • Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy. The Net will wear away institutions that have forgotten how to sound human and how to engage in conversation.
  • The ‘always-on’ internet, combined with computers talking to computers, will be a more profound transformation of society than what we’ve seen so far.
  • The next decade should see the development of a more thoughtful internet. We’ve had the blood rush to the head, we’ve had the hangover from that blood rush; this next decade is the rethink.
  • The dissemination of information will increasingly become the dissemination of drivel. As more and more ‘data’ is posted on the internet, there will be increasingly less ‘information.’
The folks at Pew are very smart and have a lot of knowledge about the Internet, and they’re providing a great service to those of us who are smack dab in the middle of it.

Two of the above predictions resonate profoundly with me. One, the institutions of America — especially those who derive power and position from protected or licensed knowledge — will undergo an inevitable shaking simply because there’s no way to adequately protect knowledge anymore. In fact, we’re at the beginning of an age that DEMANDS knowledge, and the wellspring for that demand knows no limits.

Secondly, I agree that this will be a decade of healthcare boom online, and it will transform the industry in a way that government and business have heretofore been unable to accomplish. People are vastly more capable of taking care of themselves — given a little information — than the medical community would ever have us believe.

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Tim Rutten is right AND wrong.

Posted Monday, January 10th, 2005

Rutten is his usual snarky self in dissing the blogosphere in the Los Angeles Times. He slobbers all over himself in praising the mainstream press for their tsunami coverage while burping at the blogosphere. Here’s a snippet:

As the culture war has staggered from one bloodily inclusive engagement to another over the last two years, a cadre of dispirited academics and the handful of partisan commentators and diarists who infest cyberspace have managed to transform “mainstream media” from a description into an epithet.
So bloggers “infest” cyberspace, eh? Well, he’s entitled to that opinion (and, yes, MSM is a pejorative term), but he then justifies it by saying the blogosphere has been trailing badly in coverage of the tsunami.
Real news is covered in the same way that real wars are won: by putting enough boots on the ground.

And only the much-maligned mainstream media have the ability to put those boots where they belong. In the face of such evidence, it’s time to consider what an America — or, for that matter, a world — without mainstream media really would look like.

Do Americans really hunger for news media that provide more and more opinions based on fewer and fewer facts? Do they want media in which belief trumps knowledge? Do they really desire media suffused with attitude and bereft of understanding?

The experience of the last two weeks clearly suggests not.

Rutten — himself a member of the MSM — is feeling threatened, and is one of the guys who still sees the blogosphere as a group of people in their pajamas spouting nonsense. In this case, he’s as wrong as a rose in a spittoon. The blogosphere was THE initial source of gathering and presenting those precious facts when the tsunami hit. Where were photos first presented? Online or in the MSM? Where were videos first presented? Online or in the MSM? And who first jolted the public into opening their pocketbooks? Who fueled the wonderful Amazon.com contribution? Let’s see, was it the MSM or the infestation?

While the MSM was reporting accusations of our stinginess, the blogosphere was raising money to help.

Rutten is right in pronouncing that the MSM’s strength is footwork and that the world without them wouldn’t be a very good place. But here’s the thing. Nobody that I know in the blogosphere has ever suggested that one could replace the other. Checks and balances, Tim. That’s the deal, and you just don’t like it.

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Who knew there was a pundit “industry?”

Posted Monday, January 10th, 2005

Not me, but after reading this article in the Los Angeles Times, I’m wondering how I could’ve been so naive. The article examines the sin of Armstrong Williams but goes further.

“There is a declining public trust in the media as a system, and I think this is a really troublesome ethical issue,” said Nancy Snow, a professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton. “It could become a larger issue if the public across the board says that all these media celebrities need to be more forthcoming about what they are getting paid to say.”

Marty Kaplan, associate dean of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, said such problems had been spawned, in particular, by the desire of 24-hour television news programs to fill their broadcasts with experts and commentators.

“The pundit industry has exploded with people setting themselves up as authorities and cloaking themselves in the values of journalism, where in fact all they are doing is promoting a brand, which is themselves,” Kaplan said.

So THAT’s what I really didn’t like about Tucker Carlson and his bow-tie brand. THAT’s what I never liked about those Gawd-awful roundtable shows.

I view this through the same positive eyes with which I view the whole RatherGate business. The sins are different but the same, and the result is a public that’s taking matters in its own hands. If you believe that truth is what we’re really all after, then let us all stand and cheer that its light is shining just a bit brighter today.

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Here come the venture capitalists (look out!)

Posted Monday, January 10th, 2005

MediaDailyNews reports today that venture capitalists (VCs) are once again smiling on advertising as a revenue model for Internet businesses. These are the guys who fueled the original Internet bubble by foolishly tossing millions of dollars at entrepreneurs who pitched advertising as THE way to make money on the Web. In the end, though, the only people who believed the model were other Internet companies, who were busy spending their investor money on, well, Internet advertising. The difference today is that Madison Avenue is doing the buying these days, something the VCs had hoped would happen five years ago.

Mark Stevens, a partner at the law firm Fenwick & West, said he couldn’t agree more with Larry Marcus, general partner of venture capital firm WaldenVC, “about the power of the advertising model.”

“It feels a little like it’s 1998 again,” Stevens said. Both Stevens and Marcus agreed that ad-supported media content providers once again have a compelling business model now that the ad market has matured and stabilized.

Stevens noted this success comes at the expense of older ad-driven media like newspapers–an industry that “doesn’t even know its business model is dead,” he said.

Frankly, I hope it never “feels” like 1998 again. That unbridled zeal swallowed up a lot of people, myself included. Who needs VCs anyway?

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CBS axes four in Rathergate aftermath

Posted Monday, January 10th, 2005

In an incident that will forever change modern journalism practices, a vice president and three producers are out at CBS News over the infamous Bush National Guard story broadcast by 60 Minutes Wednesday. CBSNews.com reported the story first thing this morning.

“We deeply regret the disservice this flawed 60 Minutes Wednesday report did to the American public, which has a right to count on CBS News for fairness and accuracy,” said CBS President Les Moonves.

The panel said a “myopic zeal” to be the first news organization to broadcast a groundbreaking story about Mr. Bush’s National Guard service was a key factor in explaining why CBS News had produced a story that was neither fair nor accurate and did not meet the organization’s internal standards.

“The combination of a new 60 Minutes Wednesday management team, great deference given to a highly respected producer and the network’s news anchor, competitive pressures, and a zealous belief in the truth of the segment seem to have led many to disregard some fundamental journalistic principles,” the report said.

The thing I find remarkable so far is how closely the findings parallel comments by members of the blogosphere who’ve been covering this from the beginning. This will become one of the most importent journalism stories of modern times, for the fallout will rewrite the rules of engagement for newsgathering — primarily by forcing the MSM to do a better job of listening to the public.

It was an angry public that brought all this about. The public has been angry with the MSM before, but this time they were able to publish their objections for others to see and further complain. This is new in the world of journalism, and it’s why this event will shape the trade for years to come. The blogosphere didn’t just happen. The energy for it has been building for decades, and the genie is now out of the bottle.

What I don’t see in this report is any real evidence of descending from the news pedestal that is CBS News. Jeff Jarvis told Fox News this morning that network news doesn’t need more commissions or committees, as the report recommends. All they really need to do is listen.

This is bigger than Dan Rather. This is bigger than CBS News. This is about the news and the new relationship — the conversation — journalism must learn to have with the public, or the public will go have it without them.

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