The Encyclopedia Britannica opens its wall just a bit.

The Supreme Court decision earlier this week that gave for-profit fantasy baseball league sites the right to use the names of real players without paying a licensing fee is much bigger than it appears on the surface. It’s a pro-consumer vote by the court, and one that puts a big monkey wrench in the efforts of professional leagues — regardless of the sport — to frame EVERYTHING associated with their business as under their control.

You could almost sense a collective smile from media companies, who’ve seen their access to professional sports diminish to the point where the leagues are basically saying, “We don’t want or need you anymore.” This decision opens the door to create applications that serve the same purpose as cozying up to the leagues in the first place — the ability to serve advertising targeting a young and male audience.

Oops!

“Billions of dollars in licensing fees” are at stake, if you believe Major League Baseball’s argument, which was supported by the National Football League, the National Basketball Assn. and the National Hockey League. I don’t think it’s as much about licensing fees as it is about advertising. These leagues not only want to control everything about their sports (it’s their business), but they also want to control any ancillary access to potential profits. Sports isn’t about sports anymore; it’s all about the money.

My heart bleeds for professional sports. Really.

I want to take a moment to mark the passing of Lorenzo Odone, the namesake of the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil.” He passed away this week, one day following his 30th birthday, which is at least 20 more years than he was given by doctors at the time of his diagnosis at age 6 with adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD.

The story of Lorenzo’s oil (which is now the essential treatment for ALD) is a remarkable example of what can happen if lay people get involved in science, and it’s one of the illustrations I use to express hope in a world where knowledge is free. Odone’s parents proved that the needs of parents are different than the needs of scientists, and this paved the way for their remarkable discovery. They “became” scientists, experts in the human processing of enzymes. They were driven by the need to save their son’s life instead of accepting the death sentence that science gave them. That Lorenzo lived to be 30 years old is a testament to their efforts, to say nothing about what their work gave to other children with this awful disease.

Within the lofty towers of medicine and medical research, Lorenzo Odone’s suffering was sad but nothing more. With the right amount of money — and a compelling reason to study the disease — medicine would’ve eventually discovered the same thing. The Odones proved that the reason to study is more important that the money required for the research, and it is in this area that science continues to fail humankind. Popular ailments get the attention and the money, and that’s the flaw in the system.

However, if enough humans with a pressing need can probe deeply enough — regardless of what the institution of medicine says can or “should” be done — I think we’d be amazed at what could happen.

R.I.P., Lorenzo. Gone but not forgotten.

Don’t miss Jack Shafer’s follow-up to previous pieces about Michael Crichton’s 1993 predictions of the demise of mass media. It’s a worthwhile read:

As we pass his prediction’s 15-year anniversary, I’ve got to declare advantage Crichton. Rot afflicts the newspaper industry, which is shedding staff, circulation, and revenues. It’s gotten so bad in newspaperville that some people want Google to buy the Times and run it as a charity! Evening news viewership continues to evaporate, and while the mass media aren’t going extinct tomorrow, Crichton’s original observations about the media future now ring more true than false. Ask any journalist.

Crichton’s 1993 prophecies shocked the media world at the time, and he was certainly off by several years. Nevertheless, I agree with Shafter that it’s “advantage Crichton” at this point.

The “mass” is the problem, because the ability to communicate on a large scale has been separated from the “special” application formerly required, as former FCC Chairman Michael Powell so brilliantly observed in a 2004 Silicon Valley discussion.

Now to be a phone company, you don’t have to weave tightly the voice service into the infrastructure. You can ride it on top of the infrastructure. So if you’re a Vonage, you own no infrastructure. You own no trucks. You roll to no one’s house. They turn voice into a application and shoot it across one of these platforms. And, suddenly, you’re in your business.

And that’s why if you’re the music industry, you’re scared. And if you’re the television studio, movie industry, you’re scared. And if you’re an incumbent infrastructure carrier, you’d better be scared. Because this application separation is the most important paradigm shift in the history of communications, and will change things forever. . . . I have no problem if a big and venerable company no longer exists tomorrow, as long as that value is transferred somewhere else in the economy.

Powell was referring to the telephone business, but the paradigm shift about which he spoke applies to every form of communications today. Couple that with the rise of personal media and you have Crichton’s disappearing mass.

This is why it’s so important for all local media companies to understand what business we’re in. We’re not newspapers, television stations and radio stations; we’re all in the information and entertainment business. If we approach tomorrow “only” as a TV station, for example, we’re living in the problem of disappearing mass and, therefore, completely missing the possibilities.

I don’t write much about web growth anymore. I even gave up on web advertising growth stories a couple of years ago, because it seemed kind of foolish to keep saying the same thing. Anybody even remotely interested in the Web could tell that everything about it was moving northward (still is).

But the Borrell report below and a new study from market research firm IDC are too much to resist. According to the IDC report, overall Internet advertising revenue in the U.S. will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012. That’s right: double! Borrell reveals that local online revenues are growing “at a phenomenal rate of 50 percent this year” and that double digit growth will continue for at least another 18 months. His prediction that 2008 will be a $13.1 billion year for local online spending is in line with the IDC numbers.

A little context is in order. Television advertising in the U.S. is a $70 billion industry. While there have been a lot of doomsday predictions about broadcast revenues, I think that number is going to be around for awhile. But at $51.1 billion in 2012, web advertising revenue will be pushing TV. IDG actually predicts that by 2012, internet advertising will displace TV and be second behind only direct marketing.

Think about that for a minute.

Meanwhile, the report offers promise for those who already live in the world of video (can you say TV?):

Video advertising will be the principal disruptor of Internet advertising over the next five years by attracting the most new marketing dollars. Its revenue will grow sevenfold from $0.5 billion in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49.4%. This growth will take place because brand advertisers will shift significant amounts of money into these video commercials, primarily from broadcast television and to a lesser extent from cable television.

And these kinds of predictions are always based on current models. What happens if the Web finally figures out how to advertise for real? It is a very long time (in web years) between now and 2012.

The point is the Web is where it’s at, and the size of those numbers mean disruptions will continue to relentlessly pound the status quo, even if that status quo was only created yesterday. We’re in an incredible season of change, and nobody really knows how its all going to play out, if it ever really does.

But you already knew that, right?

The Justice Department has announced a major settlement in its anti-trust case involving the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the use of its Multiple Listing Services (MLS) by internet-based residential real estate brokers. In a nutshell, it means Realtors won’t have exclusive access to MLS listings; they will be shared with those who are competing with Realtors by offering much lower commissions.

A New York Times article on the matter notes that MLS listings are the “lifeblood” of the real estate industry:

The settlement “is a win for consumers, certainly, who will now have the benefit of unrestricted competition,” Deborah A. Garza, deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, said in an interview. “There inevitably will be more efficiency and more competition in the market.”

…The National Association of Realtors, with more than 1.2 million members, said that the settlement was “a win-win” for both the real estate industry and consumers. It noted that the association admitted no wrongdoing and paid no fines or damages as part of the deal.

The NAR notes that consumers won’t notice much difference, but I disagree. This opens the door for a high level of innovation in a $93 billion industry, and it will certainly benefit home buyers and sellers. Realtors? Not so much.

In a Buzzmachine.com post on the settlement, Jeff Jarvis says, “Kiss your 6 percent commission goodbye, Ms. Agent!”

This new economy can now come to real estate sales as information becomes freer. Oh, it’s not fully freed yet. But I do believe that the combination of this settlement and what it does to empower discount players and the depressed real estate market will combine to finally shove dynamite up Realtors’ rears.

I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that this is further evidence of the cultural shift from modernism to postmodernism, one that threatens every modernist institution of the West.

Protected knowledge (or access) is what empowers such institutions, and as we’re already witnessing with media, when you remove the protection, the institution collapses. Craig Newmark did it to classifieds with Craigslist, so what’s next?

How about medicine and the law, to name a couple. Back in the early days of the Web, the American Medical Association formed a special lobbying group to make sure they maintained control of medical information (to protect the people), because those within the group with vision could see what would come down-the-pike. Will we have a “doc-in-a-box” someday? The insurance industry might be interested in that. How about a “lawyer-in-a-box” to represent your needs in court?

I know those ideas are way out there, but the horse of postmodernism — that participatory, interactive culture — has already left the barn, and its destination is unknown.

Dear Les Moonves,

It was a very smart move for you to acquire CNET. I’ll save all the business analysis for others, because I’m not sure you really understand a certain intangible — namely that the talented group of observers and writers who make up your acquisition can really, really help you with your, um, other business.

The first thing you should do is invite Dan Farber (and if they’ll come, the rest of the Gillmor Gang) into your office and have a nice little sit down. I know you’re the guy who normally does all the talking, but this time, I’d suggest you might want to just listen. Bring your underlings along and tell them to listen, too.

Take a hard look at CNET-TV and invite the writers in to talk to them about communicating with an audience. Yeah, I know; tech isn’t Iraq (and so forth), but neither is a lot of the other crap that passes for news these days.

There’s a point to this whole strategy, Les, and it’s why I think you’d be wise to implement the “CBS listens to CNET” campaign: These folks grew a media business without being a part of the media business! That means they BEGAN outside your box, and while I’ll bet you want to suck them into it, you’d be smart not to. Why? Because they can teach you things that those inside the box don’t even see, and isn’t that exactly what traditional media companies need in this day and age.

Now go out and make it a great day.

Your pal,

Terry

According to Parade Magazine (via David Weinberger), here are the top ten baby names for boys and girls this year.

As David points out in his piece, we rarely find common names like these anymore (He calls it the “long tail” of names, LOL). The preference seems to be to so badly misspell the name that the identity of the person becomes “unique,” to which I can only ask, “WTF?”

I noticed a couple of years ago that receptionists began asking me to spell my first name. This shocked me, until I realized that there are now dozens of ways to spell a simple name like mine. Why do parents do this? Don’t we realize that we’re creating a friggin’ monster here?

Oh, I forgot. Everybody’s “special” these days. My bad.

One of the great things about the Web is the immediate access to knowledge and information, something about which I’ve written here often. All of the institutions of colonial modernism are under attack, in part, because their place in the culture — their authority, if you will — is granted by access to protected knowledge. This culture clash is uncomfortable for those whose position is being picked apart, and so they’re fighting back with arguments that are often specious, at best.

One such argument has been thoroughly dissected here, that of terrified elitist Andrew Keen and his assertion that amateurs will surely destroy the world. This meme — this attack on everyday people with access to knowledge — has been picked up by others with something to lose in the culture clash and is now rather widespread among all elites.

And it’s absolutely wonderful to find the occasional person who kicks back against this crap, and I was introduced to a spectacular example today in the form of Mike Caulfield, his blog and an entry titled If a Columnist Calls a Tail a Leg…

In this outstanding piece of work, Caulfield elegantly deconstructs a Keenish form of argument by Monica Hesse in, of all places, The Washington Post. Her column is provocatively called “Truth: Can You Handle It?” She attacks what she pejoratively calls the “wiki-world” and uses what she feels is a false quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln to make her point.

Unfortunately for Ms. Hesse, HER Lincoln reference is the one that’s wrong (Oops!), and Caulfield’s legwork on the matter is worthy of any journalism award.

Go read the whole thing. You’ll thank me later on.

In a Vanity Fair article, Buzz Bissinger explains his tirade (tirade here) last week on HBO’s Costas Now against Deadspin blogger Will Leitch. Bissinger later apologized, not for his feelings but for the manner in which he expressed them. It was a classy move.

But the Costas segment was a stunning illustration of the real angst between mainstream sports writers and the sports blogosphere, which is increasingly setting the agenda for all sports reporting these days. As a guy who’s been following this for a long time, I found it painful to watch Bissinger make a fool of himself, and I felt equally uncomfortable watching Costas try and defend the status quo. Both are incredibly smart guys, but they’re blinded by their own perspective.

Costas referred to sports writers with “real credentials and real access.” The comment was obviously meant to separate “real” sports writers from (unreal) bloggers, and this doesn’t get anybody anywhere.

He also referred to the “legitimate complaint” about the sports blogosphere, namely the tone of gratuitous potshots and criticisms. Both Bissinger and Costas used quotes from commenters to make their case, which caused Leitch to note that, “surely we can differentiate between the blogger and the commenters.”

As I’ve written in the past, sports journalism has changed dramatically since Watergate brought to the surface the form of journalism known as “gotcha.” It has gone from entirely cheerleading to some excellent and insightful work by serious writers, be they mainstream or other. There’s still the sense, though, that access to athletes is a gift granted by their owners (yes, they are “owned”), and that this can be a significant conflict of interest, especially when such access crosses from professional to personal. Professional sports leagues are going out of their way to restrict access, because they want to control their message, and the extent to which the mainstream press is forced to go along with this is sad.

One of the very definitions of “news” goes like this: dog bites man, not news; man bites dog, news. So the norm is not news, and therefore when athletes perform according to their gifts and expectations, it doesn’t fit the definition of news. The exceptional athlete — Tiger Woods, for example — is certainly newsworthy, but the PGA’s slogan is “These Guys Are Good.” In that light, a “good” performance isn’t news, but a bad performance is. Yet we rarely see stories when “these guys are bad.”

Hell, show me, shot-by-shot, the 15 that John Daly scored on number 9, because that’s news.

So there is a symbiotic relationship between sports and sports writers, and that’s okay. But that isn’t the only form of sports journalism, for the output of this symbiotic relationship is fair game for observers (and fans), because both (the sport and the pro writer) are on the same pedestal. News about the news is one of the hallmarks of the blogosphere, and it may make the mainstream press uncomfortable, but it is every bit as much “journalism” as that which is published by the pros.

Moreover, I most disagree with the assertion by blogosphere critics (such as Bissinger and Costas) that bloggers are a part of any real or perceived “dumbing down” of the information stream. Any time I hear that, I’m immediately drawn to the Lippmannesque reasonings of colonial thinking, that culture must have an elite class to lead the ignorant and emotionally-driven masses. That is insulting and just plain wrong. The voices from the mass may seem crude to the pedestal dwellers of the culture, but those voices count as much as anyone’s.

When I first began writing and publishing my essays, it followed a period of cultural study that led me to the conclusion that we were at the dawning of the Age of Participation. It’s one of the key concepts of my view of postmodernism/postcolonialism, and I always develop a warm smile when thoughts that I believed were original at the time begin to show up elsewhere. As I’ve posted before, this is a part of touching the unbroken web, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world.

In watching a documentary on the Doors the other night, John Densmore made a statement about playing some nights at the Whiskey A-Go Go in Los Angeles during the late 60s, where the band really got their break. Densmore said there were some nights when it was magical, “and nobody owns that.” He was describing touching the unbroken web, something all artists have felt at one time or the other.

So when I read or hear about others speaking of an “age” or “period” of participation, I can’t run out and scream, “Hey, you’ve stolen that from me!” All I can do is rejoice that I was privileged enough to “see” the concept as others have and do.

Below is a must-view video from Blip.tv of a speech by Clay Shirky at this year’s Web 2.0 conference. I’m not suggesting that I’m in his league in terms of intelligence or extemporaneous speech, but listen to the absolute brilliance of his experiences with the unbroken web, especially the epiphany with his four-year old daughter.

The Industrial Age is another way of describing the era of cultural modernism, and I agree with Shirky that what we’re witnessing today — participating in today — is something brand new and that the future is very bright as a result of it.

Click To Play

As if it really needed defining, right?

In an ongoing case that continues to baffle common sense, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has refiled its suit against Universal Music Group for bullying YouTube into pulling a 29-second clip of little Holden Lenz “dancing” to background music of the Prince tune “Let’s Go Crazy.” The original suit was tossed out by Federal district court judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, who said the EFF hadn’t proven their claim that the clip’s fair use of the song was “self-evident.” Any sane human being could recognize that it was, so the EFF’s new case spells it out, and it’s precious:

“The video bears all the hallmarks of a family home movie–it is somewhat blurry, the sound quality is poor, it was filmed with an ordinary digital video camera, and it focuses on documenting Holden’s ‘dance moves’ against a background of normal household activity, commotion and laughter,” the new complaint charges. “The snippet of ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ that plays in the background (not dubbed as a soundtrack) of the Holden Video could not substitute for the original Prince song in any conceivable market.”

Kudos to the EFF! There’s no reply from Universal yet, and they’d be well-advised to just settle the thing, because if this makes it through the courts, it’ll become a fatal setback in their efforts to win the personal media battle through the legal system.

It was, as we say here in Texas, dumber than a bucket of hair to push this case in the first place (the video had only 29 views when Universal lawyers found it - now over 463,000), and anything from here on out just adds to the foolishness of Universal’s actions.

Sometimes a simple choice of a word can make all the difference in how we think. John Morton, the dean of American newspaper analysts, writes for the American Journalism Review (Enough is Enough) that by relentless cost-cutting, newspapers are committing a form of suicide. He calls cutbacks “wrongheaded” and “shortsighted” and believes they threaten the future of the industry altogether.

He writes that the days of “exceptional profits” for media companies are over, and he worries that the brand name and reputation of papers needs protecting as we move forward.

Mr. Morton has been around a long time, and there’s certainly room for his position in the broader discussion of media disruption. It’s true that when push comes to shove with public companies, the bottom line is all that matters, and adjustments by cutting staff, while not easy, are a necessary part of survival.

But John Morton’s thinking about the suicidal nature of such cuts is colored by questions over the validity of the disruption:

All these reductions are a response to two years of declining revenue and profit and a perceived shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

Perceived shift? Perceived? That’s not a slip of the pen keyboard, I suspect, and it underscores the difficulty of accepting change in the culture of skepticism that envelopes most newsrooms. After all, if all of this is just a “perceived shift,” then it’s not really real, right? Advertisers aren’t really moving money to the Web, and consumers aren’t really getting their news and information online, right? It’s all just a matter of perception.

Or not.

Charlton Heston is gone and all of Life mourns his passing. But here’s an interesting tidbit from my friend Holly.

I was reading a discussion board at 11:10 (last night, central time) when someone posted that Charlton Heston had died. A few minutes later, I went to Wikipedia to look at his Wiki entry. Yep, already there. It beat the front pages of all the major news sites. It’s not on CNN’s front page as of my clicking Compose Mail to send you this.

Like it or not, mainstream media, this is the way it is.

A week ago, I wrote about the concept of “finding” news consumers based on a comment from a student during a focus group. “If the news is that important,” the young man said, “it will find me.” How does that happen? Word-of-mouth and examples like this.

The change to Heston’s Wikipedia page could have come from his own people, or it could have come from a fan. But the fact that it occurred ahead of major news outlets is a stunning example of how people are able to sidestep the gatekeepers in the quest to be informed.

The group of hackers known as Anonymous may have been behind a series of whirling and blinking applications inserted into a popular discussion board run by the non-profit Epilepsy Foundation last weekend, which caused multiple seizures and other uncomfortable symptoms for users. Wired spoke with victims:

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.

Fultz says she “locked up.”

“I don’t fall over and convulse, but it hurts,” says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d’Alene, Ohio. “I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak.”

The Wired article points a circumstantial finger at Anonymous, whose most recent claim to fame has been an attack against the Church of Scientology. As much as I detest what’s happened here, this just doesn’t seem to carry the mark of Anonymous, and if it turns out that the group truly is responsible, we may see the Feds step in. I mean, why deliberately hurt epileptics?

There may be a fine line between pranks and terrorism, but this one isn’t even close. What’s wrong with us anyway?

As we drift farther downstream into the postmodern era, the battle between the elite institutions of modernism and the culture will intensify. The culture is on the offensive, forcing the establishment to defend itself, and that is already underway. On the modernist side, the war will be fought by the keepers of the status quo — the lawyers of the land. On the culture’s side will be technology and the participatory nature that it brings with it.

The defenders know this and will do everything they can to prevent it, trying to use the courts and the legal system in attempts to rope the wild stallion and return it to their barn.

In the last few days, a plan that can only be described as sinister from our friends in the recording industry is being exposed. The idea is right out of the Sopranos — use the threat of lawsuits to force ISPs into “taxing” every user $5 to download music via the Internet. TechCrunch is on top of the story.

The tax will not, in fact, be mandatory. But that is misleading - it won’t be mandatory for ISPs who provide Internet access to actual users. But if ISPs join the scheme, it will apply to all of their customers and be added to their bill as a surcharge.

Why will ISP’s agree to this? Mainly to avoid liability. The core of the plan is a covenant not to sue anyone who pays the fee. (industry insider Jim) Griffin touched on this in the article, saying ISPs will want to “discharge their risk” around file sharing that occurs over their networks.

The rollout plan will hit colleges and universities first, who will simply add the fee to tuition bills so they won’t have to worry about getting dragged into lawsuits. Then Griffin will approach consumer ISPs. If an ISP joins, their users will not have the option of not paying, even if they don’t download music from the Internet. So, basically, the tax is only voluntary if you define avoiding it as not going to college, or using the Internet.

TechCrunch calls it “government endorsed extortion, nothing more and nothing less,” and I couldn’t agree more. While the record companies would find relief from such a plan, imagine what it would do to stifle innovation and creativity.

Meanwhile, the RIAA is lobbying Congress hard to explore the idea of universities “filtering” their networks to stop allegedly illegal downloading. What would you do, if you ran a big school, install filtering applications or simply pass along the $5 “tax” to students. No brainer.

But other battles waging — in the form of lawsuits — in the fight by institutional modernism to reclaim territory it feels belongs to them. To see these suits for what they are, we must examine one of the core philosophies of the modern culture — that everything is cause and effect and, therefore, there’s always somebody to blame (usually the one with the deepest pockets) when something goes wrong. We will never have tort reform in this country as long as the people creating the laws (read: Congress) is made up of trial lawyers, who exploit this blame game to serve themselves, but I digress. As long as “the law” is god in the culture (as it is with the modernist belief), there will always be lawyers ready to take on any cause in the name of blame.

The reason this is on my mind is the strange case in Jacksonville, Oregon, involving Robert Salisbury and Craigslist. Somebody — either maliciously or on a lark — posted ads on Craigslist saying that Salisbury had to leave town suddenly and that everything at his home was free for the taking, even his horse.

As Salisbury was driving home, he noticed truck after truck going the other direction carrying his stuff. All his possessions were gone, and while authorities were able to get some things back, the question remains as to who did this to him.

The case is identical to one earlier from Tacoma, and it’s got people asking questions about, you guessed it, liability. After all, these people were wronged, and victims in our culture are entitled to compensation for their losses, right? So speculation is aimed at Craigslist. They ran the ad. This wouldn’t have happened without them. Hence, it’s their fault.

Along comes Michael Arrington from TechCrunch to make a remarkable statement: Craigslist Is Our Mirror, Nothing Better (Or Worse).

Could a litigiously minded individual find a winning argument to get Craigslist to pay for the damages? Perhaps…And there are certainly plenty to lawyers who’d consider taking the case on contingency, hoping for a quick settlement/shake down to keep PR exposure over this to a minimum.

But what I really think is that Craigslist is just a mirror, and we have to take the good with the bad. Countless connections and transactions are made on the site, and the vast majority are of benefit to everyone involved.

Sure, mainstream press feasts on the occasional accident scene, making it seem like the site is a den of predators waiting to strike at anyone who drops by. Craigslist has it all - Sex, drugs, humiliation and more.

But for the most part Craigslist is just a really good place to find a job, or a boyfriend, or buy cheap furniture for your dorm room. The situation today is simply an exception that proves what an important place Craigslist has taken in our culture. I feel bad for Mr. Salisbury and I hope he gets all his stuff back (especially his horse). But pointing the finger of accusation at Craigslist for what happened is not what should happen next.

Arrington is making a postmodern argument that is foreign to the concept of blame assessment, and I fully support it. Others have come to Craigslist’s defense in this matter, saying that if the company was a profit-hungry corporation, they might deserve a lawsuit, but that Craigslist is more public service than profit-motivated, and thus, shouldn’t be touched.

I don’t like this argument, because I think we’ve gone way overboard in the culture and that any company functioning as a conduit for the actions of people — profit-driven or not — ought to be protected from the shenanigans of the few. We’re a society that supposedly believes in personal responsibility, but every day, I see evidence that this is not so. This is why we have section 230 of the CDA, which classifies such web applications as “common carriers,” similar to telephone companies. You can’t sue the phone company if somebody plans a terrorist attack over the phone, and you shouldn’t be able to sue Craigslist — or anybody else — if bad people do bad things online either.

But somebody will sue Craigslist; I’m convinced of that, and then we’ll see how strongly we feel about such protection.

And there’s one other matter here that must not be overlooked. Media companies who cover this issue must tread very, very carefully, especially the newspaper business, for Craigslist gets the blame (there’s that word again) for the financial woes of the industry.

I’m just sayin’…

Minds much better than mine have examined this whole business with the New York Times and their allegations of hanky-panky involving Senator McCain and a female lobbyist. Jay Rosen brilliantly dissected the whole thing, and Jeff Jarvis expressed astonishment over Times Executive Editor Bill Keller being surprised at the negative reaction to the story.

I only wish to add a comment about the public reaction to the story that Keller finds so surprising.

The Modern Era is giving way to the Postmodern Era in Western culture. A foundational element of postmodernism is a practice called deconstruction, the systematic (or not) taking apart of an argument to examine its roots, many of which are assumptions based on the life and times of the author of the argument. This practice is facilitated — in fact, actually forced — by the structure of the World Wide Web, with its associated links to source documentation. If John Smith writes that the water in Lake Whatever is polluted, we ought to be able to determine why he thinks that by examining not only the lake but also John Smith and his background. We don’t have to take John’s word for it.

This concept of relentless deconstruction is a disaster for modern institutions built on “facts” of history and maintained by hierarchical systems of rule, order and especially tradition, for each — deconstructionists teach — is subject to examinations that reveal the subjective nature of humankind and its decisions, big and small.

It is in this light that I wish to state the argument that Bill Keller — and many, if not most people in such positions within the institution of modernist journalism — continue to function as if their access to knowledge is unique and justifies conclusions that can be used to manipulate culture, whether deliberately or otherwise. So deep is this belief, that Keller expresses shock when the Times’ conclusions are challenged.

The problem is that the public now has access to enough information — in most cases — to make up its own mind about issues and events, their causes and results. Moreover, the public now has enough knowledge to rightly question the assumptions and history that shape even the day-to-day decisions of the press, and with that knowledge, they also increasingly have the ability to make up their own minds. This will never return to the way it was, and in fact, will increasingly impact the culture as a whole.

So to me, Keller’s “surprise” is legitimate, but it’s based in the confusion of the era, especially for modernist, institutional thinkers. The public is a lot smarter and better informed than anybody in media gives them credit for being, and they are armed with simple tools to do their own investigating. And every time the curtain is pulled back on the editorial decision-making process within the institutional press, it gets easier and easier to find the natural biases and influences that drive the information gatekeepers of the culture.

So deconstructionism isn’t limited to a handful of far-out academic intellectuals in ivory towers; it’s being practiced every day at the ground level, and that has profound ramifications for the culture as a whole.

As I travel around the country meeting various people in the local media world, I continue to be amazed at the denial that exists towards the disruption of mass media’s business model. I think upper management certainly understands by now and middle-level managers are beginning to get the message. But at the street level, denial is the norm, which leads to ignoring reality, avoiding doing anything about it, and the ignorant assessing of blame.

A new blog popped up last week that bears watching, even if only for a short season. Young Broadcasting Laid Me Off is a place where former Young employees can post about themselves and hopefully find a job somewhere. It’s an interesting concept, but there aren’t a lot of posts so far.

It’s presented anonymously, but clearly the creator(s) had some connection with Young in the past.

We want to help. We’ll post your resume, a YouTube clip of your resume, whatever you like. We’ll break it into categories, and then publicize it so employers will have a one-stop shop. Why are we doing this? We started our careers at a station now owned by Young, and without those people, our careers wouldn’t be as rich as they are today. We want to help.

The company has cut its workforce by 11%, with much of the blame for sagging stock prices placed on its decision to play chicken with NBC over KRON-TV in San Francisco a few years back. There is a sense, I’m sure, among those employees laid off that Young was a particularly poorly run company, and so the tendency is to the blame management and complain all the way to the next job.

The company’s history and how it was and is run are irrelevant, however, for the forces that led to this reduction-in-staff will impact everybody in local media sooner or later. Young’s problems may have put them to the front of the line, but they are not the exception, as many would have us believe. My colleague Jerry Gumbert notes that we’ll probably be seeing a lot more of these kinds of sites in the months and years ahead, and I certainly agree with him.

If you are currently employed in local media — regardless of the format — now is not the time to point fingers or make the assumption that your job or responsibilities are safe, because your company is well-run. Local media is in a full-blown business disruption, and the handwriting is on the wall — diversify your skill set for a digital world or find another line of work. Do it now while you’re still employed. There is no “us versus them,” worker versus management conspiracy. That archaic notion is foolishness, because the disruption doesn’t care whether your company is well managed or not.

The two-person local TV team as the industry standard is dead. Actually, it’s been dead for a long time. Sooner or later (and later is actually sooner than you think), the preponderance of news gatherers — whether print or broadcast — will be fully-equipped, versatile multi-media journalists. That is not a guess; it’s an absolute certainty.

One of the most refreshing discussions I’ve had in recent years was with a publisher who had finally reached a point where he could say, “I don’t believe the money is coming back (using traditional media means and methods).” The numbers are headed in the wrong direction, friends, and they’re not coming back.

Deal with it.

Once you can turn the page on that, then you’ll see the insanity of insisting that the way it’s always been done is the way it will be done.

It’s not about “one-man bands” or insults to your professionalism or doing more with less or those idiot managers or anything else your mind can create as an excuse. You are either a part of the problem or a part of the solution, and when you’re in a lifeboat, it’s just not the right time to be moaning about how the ship would never have hit the iceberg if YOU had been in charge.

Acceptance is our quest, and once acceptance is gained, our eyes are opened to possibilities, we get excited, and coming to work becomes fun again. I have seen this with my own eyes, and it is happening in many places.

But as inspiring as that can be, the truth is that some — perhaps even many — in local media will not make the transition, whether it’s through an inability to adapt to new skill requirements or their own attitudes towards change. And I think we’ll begin to see managers confronting the reality that these people are a net liability in an environment of workflow change, so those who are shown the door are likely to be the most resistant and therefore angry and hostile.

So be it. If you can’t or won’t row, you’ll be a drag on those who are, and no smart business would keep such people around, regardless of how “important” they may be.

There may be some real “victims” in this — people who are actually incapable of making the switch, and to them I would say that Life has something else for you. The sooner you determine what that might be, the better off you and your family will be.

Broadcasting & Cable reports that “The FCC has given about 40 ABC affiliates two days–until Feb. 21–to pay their fine–$27,500 apiece–for airing a bare behind in an episode of NYPD Blue.” Really. A bare behind. Cover the children’s eyes, Mabel.

I find this to be so far out-of-touch with reality that it’s fair to ask how long the people of this country will stand for this kind of dictatorial nonsense. The episode was aired five friggin’ years ago, people! Five years ago (at a time when, perhaps, stations actually had money to pay for this kind of intellectual rape. “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”)! Was the episode repeated in cable syndication?

In my view, this action accomplishes three things:

1. It makes the whole process look terribly bad, as in it stinks!
2. It satisfies the extreme right wing of the Republican party.
3. It hurts broadcasters at a time when they need less restriction to be competitive with those who aren’t handcuffed by governmental showboats seeking only to swing their weenies.

The FCC has long outlived its usefulness, and it needs to go. The closer we get to a wired culture, the lesser the government can justify censorship in the name of ownership of the airwaves. Watch for efforts by the FCC to regulate the content of cable next.

Mike Allen wrote in The Politico this week that he doesn’t vote, because he’s a journalist.

I’m part of a minority school of thought among journalists that we owe it to the people we cover, and to our readers, to remain agnostic about elections, even in private. I figure that if the news media serve as an (imperfect) umpire, neither team wants us taking a few swings.

Where in the world do people get the idea that we’re “umpires,” imperfect or not? Umpires? Good grief! He quotes Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post:

“I decided to stop voting when I became the ultimate gatekeeper for what is published in the newspaper. I wanted to keep a completely open mind about everything we covered and not make a decision, even in my own mind or the privacy of the voting booth, about who should be president or mayor, for example.”

This caught my attention, because the firing of Chez Pazienza by CNN follows this line of thinking. Many, many people have commented on Chez’s blog, and here’s the reasoning of one:

I’m sure he knows deep down as a professional–if he attended journalism school–that he couldn’t be writing what he was writing and be in the news business.

So let’s take a step waaaaaaay back and examine this position of neutrality vis-à-vis the news business, something I have done many times here and in my essays. If there exists in the mind of collective America the idea that the press should be “neutral,” it is there because we put it there. This idea is not and was not a part of the First Amendment; it grew out of largely economic necessity — the creation of a sterile environment within which to sell advertising. Moreover, it is the social engineering centerpiece of Walter Lippmann (the “father” of professional journalism), Edward Bernays (the “father” of professional public relations) and other members of the Creel Committee formed under Woodrow Wilson as a way to convince the public that the U.S. needed to be in World War I.

I hate to be so bloody cynical, but the objectivity concept is crap, and we owe it to ourselves and our trade to let it go. Why? Because it’s impossible, it is used by special interests to mold culture, the public doesn’t believe the holiness of the calling, and it’s turned our political process into predictable mush. Read Chris Lasch, for crying out loud. Investigate the Creel Committee and the writings of Lippmann and Bernays.

I’ve no clue how we get from where we are now to a more ardent and involved press, but the blogosphere seems to have taken up the call. I will say that firing writers like Chez Pazienza isn’t the path.

In Mr. Allen’s column, it’s pretty clear that one of the reasons some journalists don’t vote is that it would make their jobs harder in the halls of power if people knew they batted for one team over the other. The poor political reporters need to protect their sources, right? (”They like me. They really, really like me.” Jim Carrey in “The Mask.”)

When will we find the courage to point the light of our own brilliance back onto ourselves?