dan gillmor of the san jose mercury news gave the closing keynote at the fifteenth acm conference on hypertext and hypermedia in santa cruz, california. these are my annotated notes of his talk and his responses to the audiences’ questions.

journalism is changing

• professional journalists need to learn new stuff
• citizen journalism blowing up (i.e. blogging)
• hard to keep secrets with camera phones (e.g. Abu Ghraib)
• post 9/11, Tamim Ansary sends email that becomes news
• bloggers freak about trent lott’s statements

dan’s experience of journalism

• seeing more interesting news from web (esp. email) than on tv (me: i wonder if that is due to more time on web vs. watching tv?)
• journalism has been in lecture mode (bad)
• can’t write about tech in silicon valley because your readers know more than you do and they tell you about it
• journalism is a conversation (cluetrain…)

the possible effect?

• possibly “less bullshit in public” (rheingold)
• possibly harder to con people (global fact-checking)
• nasa asked for photos of shuttle accident – thousands respond

examples of self-assembling journalism

• the command post (virtual newsroom)
• dnc bloggers got press passes
• wikipedia is awesome!
• center for cooperative research (9/11 timeline, starts in 1979)
• people writing their own tools to these accomplish tasks
• decentralized journalism is more than textual blogs (e.g. bushin30seconds)
• dan wants better tools with human connection – to track conversations (me: call to arms seems geared toward a more UI/HCI audience?)

questions:

how does the web avoid becoming cb radio (where everyone is drowned out)?

• “in the blogosphere everyone will be famous for 15 people” (weinberger)
• micro noise is important
• news aggregators
• links as proxy for reputation/trust (pagerank in blogs)

how do we stay in the moment?

• IRC on screen behind presenter (me: wow neat idea)
• continuous partial attention
• hopes we don’t lose the ability to focus (dan feels he would have been labeled ADD as child)

does fact-checking just make better liars? (analogy: antibiotics create antibiotic-resistent germs)

• uhh, maybe, not really
• real time, distributed fact-checking tools should help
• respects matt drudge for signing name, but… people are skeptical now

cathy marshall: what is the future of traditional journalism?

• holds big media in high regard (especially his paper’s company: knight-ridder)
• but the product is often too dumbed-down
• no guarantee of future – unlike entertainment industry (which is fortified legally)

how do feedback loops (of grassroots journalism) affect traditional news? (i.e. fake beheading video)

• terrorists need journalism (is that a significant moral issue?) yes.
• journalism is a cog in many wheels
• dan won’t point people to acts designed for that purpose (to be pointed at)

what is the effect of blogging on dan?

• trolls (vandals, disruptors, extreme right-wing), bum him out, had to shut down comments for a day
• need to protect anonymity online

as a newly minted permanent employee of the university of the great state of north carolina, i was reminded that i should keep an eye out for professional development opportunities, things that would help me in my future career, and things that might would help the project.

so for the next week and a half i’m going to be in california, attending the mozilla developer day at google and the acm hypertext conference in santa cruz.

i’ve been thinking about about going to best buy or circuit city and getting a 20″ tv/dvd combo for about $230.

but inevitably i start thinking a widescreen aspect ratio would be much better for movies since i don’t have cable. suddenly i’m looking at $600+ hdtv models that look awfully big and don’t come with dvd combos.

on the way to go check out the dvd players, i see the lcd tvs. their resolution is so superior to a tv tube that i just can’t fathom throwing away $200 or $600 when i could burn $2000 on a lcd tv. throw in a top of the line dvd player for $200-300 and before you know it, i’ve spent $2500 in my head and we haven’t even mentioned anything about a receiver, amp, or speakers.

then i remember i don’t really want to spend my time watching tv. there is so much i’m starting to get excited about learning and doing again that i don’t want to have the option to watch tv at home. (if anything i should start outfitting a comfortable home office in my second bedroom)

much to matthew and katie’s chagrin, i came to this conclusion again a few days ago. we went shopping for tvs because it was something to do, and if i had bought a tv, i thought at least it would give them something to do this week while i was at work. but i worried that with a tv we’d never talk to each other.

yesterday melanie got married, she has her PJ who she missed terribly while she finished graduate school and he moved to tennessee and finished ranger school. they should be honeymooning now shortly, then starting a new life and career and family in tennessee.

it’s a lot of change all at once, but as i was talking to jane recently i think i came to realize i might prefer great life change (like moving to a foreign country, working for an ngo) rather than smaller change (like moving from chapel hill to carrboro) even though i realize on previous occasions i’ve said things quite differently.

this morning was the first unspokenfor weekend day that i’ve had in a while. no traveling to ohio, no graduation, no traveling to new orleans. no final papers or projects. so we went to weaver street for their sunday jazz brunch. ate a little. read a little. watched people a little.

my eyes get dry and the sound of the fridge gets louder and i find that there is no comfortable position to sit on my couch with my laptop for more that 10 minutes. i could have watched tv and i would have been taken somewhere. i could have read and i would have gone some where. but i sat in various poses in front of the screen moving forward slowly (toward moleskines) but not much at all.

i have not reimported my bookmarks after rebuilding my computer (weeks ago). i’m not sure why not. maybe i like starting over. maybe i’m lazy. suddenly i forget to do old daily things. i hadn’t read achewood in weeks.

i’ve been thinking about what i read to go for… inspiration? visceral enlightenment? boingboing remains still somehow the pulse. but boingboing is human, so i find myself turning more and more to algorithms. blogdex. there is an algorithm i can get behind. i’m sure there are others, but hey, we do what we know. and goddamn google news. if they would take that stinking “News” link off of the google search box i could stay blissfully unaware of retardo current events. i should switch my homepage to google/ie.