Cass Sunstein

Notes from Republic.com, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001)
Sunstein writes: “For countless people, the Internet is producing a substantial decrease in unanticipated, unchosen interactions with others.” (p. 23) He does not source this or prove this observation. I would tend not to believe this assertion.
“…the most general constitutional ideal of all: that of deliberative democracy. … a decline in common experiences and a system of individualized filtering might compromise that ideal. As a a corrective, we might build on the understandings that lie behind the notion that a free society creates a set of public forums, providing speakers' access to a diverse people, and ensuring in the process that each of us hears a wide range of speakers, spanning many topics and opinions.” (p. 26) Hence the the value of a mass media.
Sunstein may not have realized it but he provides a reason governments ought to subsidize or assist in the development of Internet infrastructure to insure that all citizens have it. He says speakers must have the right of access if they are to exercise free speech.
“There is no question that taxpayers are required to support the expressive activity that … must be permitted on the streets and the parks. Indeed, the costs that taxpayers devote to maintaining open streets and parks, from cleaning to maintenance, can be quite high. Thus the public forum represents one area of law in which the right to free speech demands a public subsidy to speakers.” (p. 28)
“If we care only about consumer sovereignty, the only question is whether consumers are getting what they want. The distinction matters for policy… If the government takes steps to increase the level of substantive debate on television or in public culture, it might well be undermining consumer sovereignty at the same time that it is promoting democratic self-government.” (p. 46)
Sunstein quotes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis:
“… the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty …” (p. 47)
“Freedom consists not simply in preference satisfaction but also in the chance to have preferences and beleives formed under decent conditions — in the ability to have preferences formed after exposure to a sufficient amount of information, and also to an appropriately wide and diverse range of options. There can be no assurance of freedom in a system committed to the “Daily Me”. ” (p 50)
“These shared experiences provide a kind of social glue, facilitating efforts to solve shared problems, encouraging people to view one another as fellow citizens, and sometimes helping to ensure responsiveness to genuine problems and needs, even helping to identify them as such.” (p 103)
“Unrestricted consumer choices are important, sometimes very important. But they do not exhaust the idea of freedom, and they should not be equated with it.” ( p 106)
“…freedom imposes certain preconditions, ensuring not just respect for choices and the satisfaction of preferences, whatever they happen to be, but also the free formation of desires and beliefs . … We are entitled to say that the deprivation of opportunities is a deprivation of freedom — even if people have adapted to it and do not want anything more.” (p. 108)

Black now accused of racketeering

Conrad Black, whose company Hollinger Inc., has spent more than $18-million on legal fees last year, is in more hot water. This time, Hollinger International Inc. is suing Conrad Black and others for $1.25-billion (U.S.) alleging that Black engaged in “a pattern of racketeering”, Reuters reports.
Earlier Hollinger Int'l had sued Black and others for $250-million. Hollinger Int'l has amended that lawsuit (which has yet to be filed apparently) and has some new accusations.
To which Ravelston Inc., which is the holding company that Black controls which indirectly controls Hollinger International and Hollinger Inc replied:

“Hollinger International's amending its lawsuit to include allegations of racketeering is tabloid journalism masquerading as law. Overreaching use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act has been frowned upon in virtually every
circuit court in the United States. When this complaint is heard in a court of law, the poverty of this case will be plainly demonstrated.

[CAJ] Panel: The Blog Revolution

A decent size group for this panel discussion on blogging.
Emira starts with a definition of Web logs:
Emira's been blogging for years but says “When I went to describe it I found myself totally stumped.”
First it was “essentially snippets of people's thoughts” is a good starting point. Now it's morphed over time, she says. Now the official definition is “a Web site that gets updated regularly” with entries listed in chronological order.
For journos, blogs have lots of links. The original blogs were really about linking.
“One of the strongest tools on the Web is linking.”
First question is: What is a blog?
Everyone pitches in and tries to answer.
Question: What does blog mean? Alan chips in with “Its short for Web log.”
Rob talks about blogs and journalism. Rob teaches at Loyalist in Belleville, Ontario.
Rob started a blogging experiment this January. He writes a column for some newspapers in Northumberland County. He has an online component for this column.
E-journalism adds interactivity, furthering democratic principles.
Blogging is about two things: identifying resources to share and providing opinion to share.
Alan: Quotes Bob Dylan; You know something's happening but you don't what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?
Important not to get tunnel vision.
Pew says: Just 2 per cent maintain Web logs. Just 10 per cent of surfers read Web logs. But 44 per cent of survey respondents created some of their own online content. Blogging still behind creating Web sites. The important thing to consider is: What does it mean when everyone can publish.
Example: OhmyNews in South Korea and citizen journalists.
Old model for journalism — linear media information flow.
New model: Networked media information flow.
The big implication is that reporters lose some power they once held over information flow. So, the things we do as journalists, have changed. Alan calls for newsroom managers to increase budgets on more resources for collecting and verifying information; more foreign bureaus; a great commitment to the traditional role of a journalist.
Journalists may one day be held accountable for the size of their audience. Audiences/readers will be portable with new kinds of online journalism. Audiences will follow the journalist and employers will fire journalists for the audience they can bring.
Caterina — As Caterina started speaking, I was trying to fiddle getting my laptop to show up on the project. Couldn't do it. Sorry, Caterina. Maybe Caterina will post her thoughts to her site? Who knows what button I have to hit on my Mac (Powerbook G4 17″) to send the video signal out to the projector?
David: What I said is already blogged.
Questions: Note to self: Impossible to blog about a panel discussion when you are one of the panelists! Lots of great questions, though!

[CAJ] Kirk Lapointe

Kirk Lapointe, ex-Southam, ex-CP, ex-National Post, ex-CTV, ex-Hamilton Spectator, and currently Managing Editor at the Vancouver Sun, (and my old boss at several of those spots) is speaking at a breakfast sponsored by Canada Newswire. Some journalists are here but this talk seems to be primarily for public relations and commmunications professionals (judging from the cards on the registration table, anyhow).
Kirk talks about one of his favourite topics: Giving readers a reason to read the newspaper. For Kirk, that reason involves a commitment to long-form journalism. He rejects the thesis that readers want a newspaper with short items.
“Papers that invested in longer-form are now starting to succeed again.”
“Contextual content is absolutely fundamental.”
Newspapers cannot outdo the Internet, all-news radio, all-news TV for the quick, news-of-the-day, the bare facts. Newspapers arrive on a reader's doorstep the day after and so, to compete for the time of readers, newspapers have to add value, context, and analysis. They must go beyond the press release.
Kirk throws up a slide titled Media Paradox. The paradox for media is:

  • More information, less context
  • More competition, less variety
  • More training, less capability
  • More standards, less respected
  • More openness, less trusted

Here's another slide: Challenges for the media

  • High consumer expectation: news cycle, oversight, first and fair
  • Resource pressure
  • Cover too much, uncover too little
  • Inundation of staged news
  • Information commodity, no meaning

Kirk says the public, readers, are “on to” the media. They spot mistakes, bias, inaccuracies faster and more frequently. The Internet is a big factor in this.
“There's a myth we publish the truth. We don't. We pursue it.” He says what we publish each day is what we believe in our hearts to be true.
Newsroom managers have to careful about matching up scarce resources for the staged news events of the day, he says. Newsrooms should not be in the business of information, but into the business of meaning. And he says newsrooms should try and get into the business of wisdom. That would be something.
Here's his tips for the PR industry;

  • Think like a reader, viewer
  • Think like an editor
  • Get up early, don't wait. “The people who get to us before noon have about 10 times more chance than the people who get to us after 4 o'clock”
  • Understand the “why”
  • Evaluate trends in coverage
  • Tell the truth
  • Accept rejection
  • Identify connectors, mavens
  • Visit newsrooms
  • Greet the north wind. “When bad stuff happens, don't hide.” Most controversies result, not because of what initially happened, but because of the way it was handled.” The public is tremendously forgiving if you cough it up. “Get it over with.”
  • Use technology for access
  • Really use the human touch for access.

Speech over. He's taking questions but I have to dash to get for my panel in a few minutes.

[CAJ] Blogging and Journalism – Workshop/Panel material online

The annual conference of the Canadian Association of Journalists kicks off later this morning — I'm up at 4:30 am in Vancouver as my body still thinks it's in Toronto and so what I do? I blog, of course — and I'm doing a couple of things. I'm on a panel at 9 am (Pacific time) on blogging and journalism and then, this afternoon at 3:30 pm, I'll lead a workshop on blogging for journalists.
I've put some material for these two sessions online here at my blog. Look over there to the left, under Topics, and you'll find “2004 CAJ National Conference”. Click on that and you'll see heading in the left-hand panel that says “CAJ National Conference”. That contains the links to the material for my sessions. [If you can't see the link or you're getting this via e-mail or RSS feed, click right here to go that topic.
And, in the meantime, I'm going to try to blog the conference and my trip here in Vancouver. Conference posts will have a blog subject header that will be preceded by [CAJ].

Google by the numbers

No doubt you've heard that Google plans to offer shares in the company to the public and hopes to raise a couple of billion dollars in the process.
The folks at Comscore Media Metrix, who hope to be to the Web what the Nielsen people are to TV ratings, put together a quick by-the-numbers look at Google. Here's what they've come up with (Most of this is lifted straight from Comscore's press release which doesn't seem to be up yet at Comscore's Press Center):
SEARCH VOLUME: In total, Americans conduct between 3.0 and 3.5 billion searches per month. More than one billion of these searches are typically conducted at Google. The average search engine user conducted 32 searches in February. The average Google user conducted 25 searches at the engine, more than twice the average number of searches (12) conducted by users of the top ten engines.
SHARE OF SEARCH: In February, Google controlled approximately 35 percent of searches conducted at major search engines by U.S. Internet users. Yahoo!, its closest competitor, conducted 30 percent of searches by U.S. Internet users in February. Among worldwide Internet users (Anglophone population), Google's lead is even more dramatic, with the company accounting for more than 43 percent of all searches.
PENETRATION: Approximately 50 percent of all U.S. search engine users conducted at least one search at Yahoo! in February, the highest penetration of any search engine. Google ranked second, conducting at least one search for 45 percent of all U.S. search engine users
UNIQUE VISITORS: Combined, search sites reach more than 130 million Americans or approximately 85 percent of all Internet users each month, ranking Search/Navigation among the most popular categories on the Web. Just over 65 million people visited Google sites in March 2004, an increase
of 23.5 percent versus March 2003.

Unique Visitors and Audience Reach
March 2004
Source: comScore Media Metrix
U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Unique Visitors Reach %
(000)
Total Internet Users 154,051 100
Search/Navigation Category 131,030 85.1
Google Sites 65,029 42.2
Yahoo! Search 59,755 38.8
MSN Search 48,912 31.8
AOL Proprietary Search 34,629 22.5
Ask Jeeves 17,524 11.4
Lycos Network Search 9,024 5.9

PROPERTY BREAKDOWN: Below is a breakdown of traffic to Google's network of sites.

Google Sites
March 2004
Source: comScore Media Metrix
U.S. Home, Work and University Internet Users
Unique Visitors
(000)
Google Sites 65,029
GOOGLE.COM 63,057
Google Web Search 58,494
Google Images 15,924
Google Directory 5,074
Google News 3,277
Google Groups 1,954
Froogle 749
BLOGSPOT.COM 3,382