top || fun | art | media | issues | net | tech | science | history | search | shop
This page was initially drafted on 31 July 1998 as a selection of the best links from the Robot Wisdom Weblog archives. A few layers of refinement have been added since then, with the aim of gradually constructing a concise introduction to net.literacy on each of these topics. So stay tuned!
Objective reporting is supposed to mean you tell both sides of every story. But the mass media don't even try anymore.
The Web, though, is truly leveling the media playingfield, allowing thousands of voices to be compared fairly, side by side, site by site. (Consequently, there's heavy competition that results in frequent redesigns and service upgrades.)
The most unexpected thing about the Web is that it instantaneously, irreversibly transfers the seat of power from well-financed publishers to essentially unfinanced editors.
Any website's own index of its content is the last place you want to have to look for good reading: it will necessarily promote its worst pieces indistinguishably from its best.
But a growing network of freelance editors have begun maintaining 'news pages' or weblogs, linking to the best articles from every possible source, accompanied by honest summaries.
A granddaddy of these sites is Dave Winer's Scripting News, and his Frontier scripting environment is the favored utility (Win95 and Mac) that makes maintaining a weblog no harder than maintaining a bookmark file. A list of first-generation descendents (generally called news pages) is maintained by Chris Gulker, while second-generation weblogs are inventoried here
Several maverick sites are also outstanding: YMMV (tech-oriented Your Mileage May Vary, currently in hiatus), Obscure Store and Reading Room (media oriented), Slashdot (Linux-tech, with an individual feedback-board for each link), NASA Watch (space gossip)
A right-wing equivalent, with original content as well, is WorldNet Daily
Other specialised sources: Ain't It Cool (unreleased movies), OS News (operating systems), MacOS Rumors (Mac OS)
And PC Webopedia collates the best tech articles on the Web, by topic. Wired News has started including ten external-story links on its front page.
We're at a point where there's vast quantities of free content that's totally unnoticed.
Some design suggestions:
(I need a better term that includes both NewsHub and NewsBot-- sites that neither publish nor archive, but that track many publishers.)
Far more mechanical than weblogs are sites like NewsHub, which offers eight unedited scrolling newspages of headlines from some dozen sources each. They rely heavily on the following sources: ABC, BBC, CNN, Fox, LA Times, MSNBC, Nando, USA Today, and Yahoo, and then they add the following specialised sources:
As far as I can tell, they don't have to pay these sources. After all, the sources should be paying for the favor of being linked! (TotalNews tried to put their own ads in a frame around others' articles, but was successfully sued.)
It takes an hour just to read thru a day's worth of headlines in all categories, not even counting the time to read the stories.
When linking to news sources, it's important to be aware which sites maintain persistent archives, and which let URLs quickly expire. Some preliminary results:
Persistent: Village Voice, ABC, BBC, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Nando, USA Today, Yahoo, Philly News, Guardian, Wash Post, Wired, NYTSYN, Seattle Weekly, Variety, LA Weekly, Sacramento Bee, SJ Mercury non-breaking, Denver Post, St Pete Times, Cincy Post, NY Post?, Detroit News, Boston Globe, Phoenix New Times, TechServer, BookWire, Houston Chronicle, news.com, Calgary Herald, Detroit Free Press, Sunday Times (London), Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Non-persistent? LA Times(?), Calendar Live, Deseret News, SJ Mercury breaking, AZ Central, SF Gate(?), My Excite (local copies), Miami Herald, Access Atlanta, Mostly NY
So among NewsHub's sources, the LA Times links may change in a few days, but the rest seem stable.
A net-tech-only collation that uses much wider sources, and seems lightly human-edited, is NewsLinx.
Backgrounder on NewsHub and NewsLinx: http://www.brandweek.com/interactive/iqnews06.asp
Lexis-Nexis is an expensive searchable fulltext database of periodicals. Excite NewsTracker is the poor person's substitute, claiming to index over 300 periodicals:
Missing from NewsTracker? The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Boardwatch, Fast Company, WorldNetDaily
I'm extremely grateful for My.Excite's custom NewsTracker search facilities. I've defined 20 detailed searches that I run every morning, and usually catch a dozen new, obscure stories each time. (Wading thru 90% garbage is required. NewsTracker tips) See search.literate for search tips.
Two more competitors with overlapping coverage are TotalNews and NewsBot:
Agents
The next evolution will require these sites to sort items according to ongoing 'stories' (MonicaGate, Bosnia), with facilities to allow people to select which stories they want to follow, and in how much detail. Subscribing to favorite stars, etc, would also be easy. A degree of human editing will improve these a lot, eliminating false hits, flagging the best-researched new items, and maintaining a list of backgrounders/FAQs.
People should be able to subscribe to general topics like Science, requesting only the top few stories each day. A full interest-profile will require a Yahoo-like hierarchy.
Absurd numbers of newspaper sites repost the identical Associated Press wire stories, along with Reuters if you're lucky. The news agent should filter out these duplicates. (UPI and AFP are much less common.)
ClariNet originated the Internet wire-feed biz many years ago, via a series of pay-only newsgroups.
An XML advocate looks at the newswires
You get lots of extra details on big stories by tracing them in the local papers. The best site I know for finding local papers is Editor and Publisher:
Many papers have their own search facilities. Ecola keeps a list of the searchable dailies with direct links to their searchpages.
A city of 5000 permanent residents (?!?) supports two vital daily papers
NYC's public-access tv system is threatened
An excellent piece on microbroadcasting, aka pirate radio
News articles are written by writers with varying degrees of background knowledge, after varying levels of research. But more and more, doing any research is seen as exceptional, and even summarising background knowledge is seen as trying too hard, overestimating the interest of the reader.
The owner-class defines a spectrum of debate from far right to not-quite-so-far right, and reporters who look beyond those bounds are ostracised and intimidated. (Here's a cool article by Michael Parenti, about mass-media class-propaganda.)
Journalism is facing an army of the most sophisticated spin doctors in history, backed by unimaginable wealth, dedicated to protecting and increasing that wealth. This sophistication is the product of a conscious strategy, in particular, Richard Scaife's, explained in detail by CJR way back in 1981. The NY Times and Washington Post/Newsweek are arbiters of which spins get taken at face value, and which are resisted.
At the same time, a handful of individuals are building ever-larger media empires by buying up local outlets and reducing their budgets for actual reporting. Generally, these individuals are political conservatives, and their control of editorial policy gives them enormous power in election campaigns. Two good, long CJR case studies: Rupert Murdoch (Fox, News Corp). and Conrad Black (Canadian newspapers).
All corporate media are finding pressure for profits threatening their journalistic integrity. Here, for example, are Coke's rules about what editorial content can't be placed opposite their print ads. And five witty models of news-devaluation.
seeing thru spin
reading the fine print
US govt's compulsive lying
CJR's "Factoid Watch" traces made-up statistics
A great, no-nonsense explanation of how to write a press release
How a fiendish genius implemented copy-protection
The Post Facto Audio Recorder spools the last five minutes in RAM until you hit 'save' (Win95 only)
Vidcaps
are video captures-- images (or 'frames') grabbed directly onto the computer via a special tv-in-a-window card. The card is cheap and fun, and will surely become a lot more common. Do your own editorialising by picking unflattering frames! ATI for Win95
legwork, travel, local bureau the Pulitzer challenge public records on Net IRE-L search FOIA
On the Net, being 24 hours behind the pack on a story makes you look slow-witted. Monthly periodicals can't hope to break stories.
You can break into journalism via internships, theoretically:
http://www.salonmagazine.com/it/intern/
Two of the liveliest archives of media criticism are Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), and Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), whose archives are easier to search than browse:
(Remember, too, that CJR is funded by Time-Warner and the NY Times Foundation. Their post-mortem on Time-CNN's Tailwind fiasco seemed an especially craven whitewash.)
FAIR has a great half-hour weekly radio show called CounterSpin (RealAudio or local)
A newish website devoted to tons of juicy, anonymous, insider gossip about local papers, sorted by state. (Gripes about egos and budgets more than biases.) AJR backgrounder
Ditto for TV news: http://www.newsblues.com/ OJR backgrounder, followup
Vanderbilt's searchable summaries of network news for the last 30 years
A great article on the fate of old-media notions of content when transferred to the Web
Feed has an interesting look at panic among the print media
The last few years have seen a concerted effort by the mass media to spin the Internet as an inferior source of news! This is absurd to anyone on the Net, and seems doomed to crumble in a few years, as we achieve a 'wired majority'. The demonization of Matt Drudge is the current (Aug98) prime example. He's easily as reliable as any network news, and he regularly leaks others' major scoops the night before, so everybody reads him religiously. He reported in Feb98 that his logs were showing the White House accessing his pages 1000 times a day, every day for the last month. And the $30 million lawsuit for his very tame story (here's the original 'libel') is a disgrace.
But less well known is the smear campaign against Ian Goddard, singled out for his TWA800-conspiracy pages by both CNN and Sixty Minutes. I'd dismiss the missile theory as bizarre if it weren't for the shamelessness of the attacks. CNN baldly falsified a report that Goddard had recanted his site as a hoax, and refused to acknowledge his howls of protest. And witness this excerpt from "60 Minutes" (Feb97), Leslie Stahl contemplating Goddard's webpages:
STAHL: Shouldn't this be expunged?
GUEST: On what grounds?
STAHL: That it's wrong, that it's inaccurate, it's irresponsible, that it is spreading fear and suspicion of the government; ten thousand reasons.
The same Sixty Minutes piece marginalised a very smart Net conspiracy theorist, with impeccable credentials on crypto and high finance, named J Orlin Grabbe. His 60Mins reply.
Danny Schechter's been trying to improve tv news
Gallup explains their polling, while CJR offers a slight critique of private pollsters
The rape of the Web: Salon's two reports on Michael Wolff's "Burn Rate" were so offensive to me I wasn't going to blurb them... but I'm realizing criminals like him are probaby getting most of the resources that should be going to the Web: One
"'Just think,' I said, warming to the moment, 'how many stupid people there are in this world who we can take advantage of.'"
And: Two
Something else "Burn Rate" doesn't tell you
Salon dances gently on the graves of various failed webzines
The Nation on the Net as antidote to corporate media
A great rant defending the Tailwind and Chiquita reporters: OJR
Norman Solomon has announced the winners of his 1998 P.U.-litzer Prizes http://www.sfbg.com/MediaBeat/44.html
More stories the major media ignored
Pressures on reporters to sensationalise: http://www.shepherd-express.com/shepherd/20/08/headlines/cover_story.html
The Nation's strategies for fighting corporate media
And a longer piece on the broader issues
How Warren Buffett made the Buffalo daily profitable:
http://www.cjr.org/year/98/6/buffett.asp
Phil Greenspun's long, hilarious, behind-the-scenes account of trying to publish a computer book. He explains perfectly why computer books are so garish and vacuous: [long]
This is good to read in concert with a similar expose on history textbooks
A terrifying primer on book-marketing wrt Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
The movie industry gambles big bucks on art-school animators
A closer look at the book-on-demand printer technology
A radio format devoted to positive thinking:
And the latest trends in market research
The Dead Media Project is a fanclub for the forgotten experiments of media past
Website design for periodicals is still in the stone age. It takes an enormous amount of effort to track a paper, discover its publication schedule, find its current-news page and its archive, search or browse its archive, discover how far back its archive goes, and whether article URLs change when they're archived.
Some emerging standards:
Some lovely abstract thinking about hypertext design
See also the internet.literate#design page.
Monitoring new issues:
I have a list of 20 URLs that I check many times a day, very efficiently, using a special Mac shareware called WebWatcher. It loads only the headers, which normally include the latest-update date and time, and WebWatcher flags which of the 20 have changed, taking less than a minute to do all twenty. Recent versions of MSIE and Netscape also apparently have this option via the bookmarks file.
There are some free-service sites on the Web that allow you to register others' pages you'd like to monitor, and will email you within a day or two when they change: Mind-It has been working very well for me.
Some sites that publish infrequently will let you register for an email notice of new material. I wish they'd include the new text as well, and not just the URL.
There's a crying need for a simple new-issues news page, that links to the front page of new issues of weeklies, monthlies, etc. Including the table of contents might be nice.
Here's an overview of the major non-specialised content publishers, in order of how often their websites have been mentioned on AltaVista's Usenet spool (12 Aug 1998). This number was normalised against the word "elvis" with 29160 mentions, as in the Elvis Index.
The traditional media power-bases make very little impact on the Net: movie studios, tv networks, cable networks, books. What does make an impact is magazines and newspapers... but not local ones unless you're Silicon Valley, Washington DC, or (barely) NYC.
Having a world network of print reporters is very valuable. Having writers and editors and designers who understand Net culture is most important of all.
The questions I'll eventually try to cover include: their ownership, its associated sites, its size and other enterprises? what critiques are available online? frequency of publication? how much original content? how big an archive? how much multimedia? how much outside (inside) linking? useful graphics? readability? tone, politics? breaking news page? new-media team? offline enterprises?
Some of these are major offline media players. Here's a really clear delineation of the major media giants (eg, TCI pre-AT&T)
And an index to FAIR's exposes on them
An excellent overview of tv network ownership
Capsule overviews of UK news sites
20 million words a day; 3,421 employees around the world; operates as a not-for-profit cooperative owned by its 1,550 U.S. daily newspaper members. They elect a board of directors that directs the cooperative.
It's everywhere, like water. (Estimated elvis: 50?) When something gets reposted on netnews, it's usually AP. So why can't I find any critical studies of their flaws???
AP's web strategy compared to reuters: http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/99/mar/0319/feat.htm
Here's something from AJR
Three conglomerates account for a huge percentage of the tech zines on the Web, with a combined elvis toppping 100%. See tech.literate for more details. OJR on tech-news empires
Comparison of big three: http://www.mediamap.com/free_info/alert/alert/jun99/whitmore.htm
CNET (umbrella page) is purely technical: CNET.com, News.com (30% elvis!??), Computers.com, Builder.com, Gamecenter.com, Download.com, Shareware.com, Shopper.com, Search.com, CNET television
Ziff-Davis: history, umbrella page (w/unfortunate imagemap). A very solid stable of computer zines: (25% elvis total) PC Week, Computer Gaming World, Windows (?), PC Computing, Family PC, Internet, PC Magazine, Yahoo Internet Life
CMPNet
umbrella,
online umbrella. Includes TechWeb (6% elvis), BYTE (?), Windows Magazine, NetGuide, GamePower
CNN home page(uses AP, Reuters; 12% elvis), CNNfn home page
Warner - HBO - Cinemax - WB - Atlantic - Elektra - Little, Brown - Sports Illustrated - Six Flags - Time-Life Books - Book-of-the-Month Club - Court TV - CNN - TBS - TNT - TCM - New Line - Castle Rock/Seinfeld - Cartoon Network - Braves - Hawks
CNN transcripts online: Reliable Sources, Wolf Blitzer, Larry King, Moneyline
Turner is conservative w/ environmental/one-world/pro-choice sympathies. Bio: "Citizen Turner" by Goldberg and Goldberg summary
Time-Warner's Pathfinder site (umbrella page) offers Time (5%, including time.com), People (1%), Money, Fortune (1%), Entertainment Weekly, Life, Netly News, alt.culture, etc, but somehow they fall flat on the Net. (11% elvis total)
Sports Illustrated?
Knight Ridder began electronic publishing in 1993, when the San Jose Mercury News' Mercury Center was introduced on America Online. It's the local paper in Silicon Valley, with great tech coverage, and a mature site design. (3% elvis) Eg, the breaking news page offers top stories in a convenient form (though the URLs expire quickly).
Knight Ridder New Media, located in San Jose, maintains 38 Web sites in the Real Cities network; timeline; umbrella page. Includes San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa (CA) Newspapers, Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer and Daily News (2%), Detroit (MI) Free Press, Akron (OH) Beacon Journal, The Miami (FL) Herald, The Charlotte (NC) Observer, Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram, Kansas City (MO) Star
How K-R co-opts Web fan sites
It was Jerry Ceppos of the Mercury News who recanted the Dark Alliance series in such a craven manner.
Newsweek.com launched Fall '98.
NewsBytes is a tech wire service
Norman Solomon's welcome debunking of the Katherine-Graham Pulitzer hype
The NY Times requires registration, which means I can't freely share the stories I'd find there... so I just ignore it. There's lots of other fish in this sea.
A long, sad look at Gina Kolata's pro-corporation science reporting
Susan Faludi on Abe Rosenthal on Gloria Steinem on Bill Clinton
How NBC news avoids offending GE
MSNBC (uses AP; 6% elvis) OJR backgrounder
MSNBC transcripts online:
Meet the Press
Microsoft Network includes: Hotmail, Microsoft Internet Start, Microsoft Investor, Expedia.com Travel, Internet Gaming Zone, CarPoint, Expedia Maps, Sidewalk City Guides, Encarta, Microsoft Plaza, Slate
Slate has only 20k subscribers at $20. They're surely losing more than this in ad revenue, so expect them to revert to free content by next year. Their elvis is a dismal 0.3%. But their editor claims MS hasn't interfered at all with their content: [See 2nd item on this gossip page]
Microsoft juggles writers between Slate, MSNBC, and Microsoft Investor. CJR sees Microsoft as a serious threat
to all newspapers
They're having to justify their online expenditures
I detest Wired. I was hoping it was mostly the paper magazine, which has now been sold off, so I went back to see what was left on the website... and it makes my flesh crawl.
Shallow, vain, selfish, hypocritical, obsessed with their buzzwords and their 'digerati', and obviously viewing the average surfer as livestock to be herded and bilked, they're the last people to give site-design advice, when their own site is so unfriendly.
Hotwired seems to be the content homepage, as distinct from the news homepage (Wired News), and the search pages, HotBot and NewsBot. The umbrella is called Wired Ventures, which also includes Hardwired and Wired Books. (The search stuff has been sold to Lycos.)
Hotwired includes the self-important and shallow Suck.com and Synapse. Wired News offers competent coverage of business, culture, tech, politics, and general news.
CJR backgrounder; Dvorak slam; VVoice on the acquisition by Newhouse; their own press release, and an old, pretentious inquiry into the philosophical origins of Wired
Update on Wired Digital being bought by Lycos.
Disney Archipelago critique
Starwave handles the websites: ESPN Sports-Zone, Mr Showbiz, StarWave home page
Disney.com strategy
ABCNews home page (4% elvis), CJR's website review
Transcripts online: Politically Incorrect, Nightline, ABC This Week, 20-20
The dark side of the Disney ambition, and a funny profile of Disney's new animal park
Disney linked to General Pinochet.
Disney newsgroups:
alt.disney.collecting,
alt.disney.criticism,
alt.disney.disneyland,
alt.disney.the-evil-empire,
rec.arts.disney.animation,
rec.arts.disney.announce,
rec.arts.disney.merchandise,
rec.arts.disney.misc,
rec.arts.disney.parks,
OJR on the LA Times website
I don't think he's ever spent a penny on advertising, and he only publishes a few dozen lines a week, but Drudge has achieved a visibility supassing many multi-billion-dollar media giants.
LA Times profile
Wall St Journal (3%) - Barron's - SmartMoney - Dow-Jones - Ottaway newspaper chain: home page (smalltime, uses HotBot for archive search?)
A devastating analysis of WSJ's editorial slant
Offers elaborate background on many shows. The Frontline archive is especially admirable.
Transcripts: Newshour with Lehrer
CJR indicts PBS for mishandling Surviving the Bottom Line
Fox News Channel; homepage, offers AP, Reuters. (My sense is that FoxNews covers some controversial topics better than the conventional outlets.) (1% elvis)
London Times (requires subscription? under 1%), New York Post (awkward site, under 1%), TV Guide (1% elvis), Sky News
A long, level look at Rupert Murdoch's dangerously interlocking media empire. Does he use blackmail files like J Edgar Hoover did? Murdoch interview
Fox's Simpsons shows the world the real USA. The economics behind Fox's sensationalist specials
The Rupert Murdoch of Canada is
Conrad Black. An anti-CB page
Fast Company, the bastard spawn of Wired and Forbes (.04)
How Tom Tomorrow got busted from US News (I hadn't realized they'd even dared to try him!)
AJR's fine long backgrounder and another okay one. An informative interview with the editor. Their managing editor
Chaotic org? http://www.aan.org/display_story.phtml?ARTICLE_ID=239
How Salon lost a star reporter
Salon linked to China scandal:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_smith/19990309_xcsof_william_pe.shtml
Does their College Press Exchange indoctrinate corporate journalists? home page
NASA?
American Heritage, umbrella
Boardwatch, Internet World, internet.com, Web Developer
Boardwatch is like Byte was in the 70s/80s, for people running ISPs. (.5 elvis)
UPI's Internet strategy
AOL
QVC, E! home page (0.8), backgrounder
Village Voice (0.3%), Voice Literary Supplement, Q Worldwide, Seattle Weekly, Cleveland Free Times, LA Weekly, Long Island Voice, City Pages
Voice's financial problems? [AAN]. Stern's ethical lapses [AAN]
A great piece on alternative news selling out
Utne on alternative media mergers. And another.
Expired? Alternative-newspaper economics
Huge Association of Alternative Newsweeklies umbrella page, and the week's best stories (no descriptions)
Nerve (.2)
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/05/12/bianca/print.html
Feed (.08)
C-SPAN C-SPAN Booknotes transcripts
Wash. Week in Review transcripts
And pink-slip scandals at Covert Action Quarterly
Business Week (subscription only), BYTE, LAN Times, tele.com, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Engineering News-Record, The Physician and Sportsmedicine, and four ABC network-affiliated TV stations: KGTV (San Diego), KMGH-TV (Denver), KERO-TV (Bakersfield), and WRTV (Indianapolis).
BYTE is defunct, but their archives are still useful for some tech topics
New Yorker - Vanity Fair - Details - Self - Parade - newspapers-radio
Inept web division: Swoon ('mating, dating, and relating' with bits of GQ, Glamour, Details, and Mademoiselle), Epicurious (food and travel), Phys (fitness and health, bits of Vogue, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Self, Allure, and Sports and Fitness), React (teens)
There's an opaque, hidden New Yorker archive
Inside the Newhouse media empire, especially Conde Nast and the New Yorker
New Yorker sells out:
http://www.villagevoice.com/columns/9907/cotts.shtml
Viacom - UPN - Paramount - Spelling - Showtime - MTV - VH1 - Comedy Central - Sci-Fi Channel - TMC - Nickelodeon - Prentice Hall - Simon & Schuster - Blockbuster - Chris-Craft - tv-radio
How Nickelodeon became a 'CNN for kids'
started by New Republic, aimed at selling subscriptions
Hearst $2 billion, umbrella page, includes Houston (TX) Chronicle (?), Midland (MI) Daily News (?), Plainview (TX) Daily Herald (?), San Francisco Examiner
Cox Enterprises $3.8 billion, umbrella page: Cox: Discovery (1%?) - TLC - Rysher - Time-Mirror - tv-radio - newspapers Cox Interactive Media home page, umbrella page: includes 'Access' sites, Cox @Home
International Data Group, CEO McGovern, Industry Standard, ABC profile, background
Westinghouse (CBS) $5 billion, CEO Jordan, CBS - Group W - WCBS, KCBS, WBBM - TNN - CMT - Westinghouse, merger facts? The solution to the Dan-Rather "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" mystery
Backgrounder on CBS Marketwatch
Sony $9 billion (media only), Sony - Columbia - TriStar - Triumph Films - Epic - Culver
TCI $7 billion, CEO John Malone, TCI - Liberty Media - cable; currently merging with AT&T
Universal (Seagram) $7 billion, the Bronfman family, Universal - MCA - Putnam - Cineplex Odeon - Seagram - Tropicana
Bertelsmann $15 billion, German television channels RTL, RTL2, SuperRTL and Vox - Random House - Knopf - Ballantine - Crown - Vintage
Salon thinks Random House was bought as an Amazon killer
Thomson $7.3 billion; home page ?
Media Central umbrella Catalog Age, Direct, Promo, Marketing Tools, American Demographics, Cable World, Cable Avails, Directory World, Folio, DPx (Pre), Circulation Management.
Left Business Observer profile
top || fun | art | media | issues | net | tech | science | history | search | shop
[Robot Wisdom home page] (Feedback)