Who's the parasite? 

I've finally watched the third installment of the Frontline News War report.

They just repeated the point of view of professional reporters, over and over, from every conceivable angle, a p.o.v. we've been hearing for a long time. They want reassurance that they're at the top of a pyramid that includes all the rest of us. Very much like the tech industry, probably like very other group of people. I bet doctors feel that way about the rest of us too (including reporters).

In an offline email conversation, Andrew Baron, who was interviewed in the report said something that I think bears repeating -- that there's a difference between reporting and journalism. I think he's right about that.

There aren't many bloggers who are reporters (leading to the common conclusion of reporters that we're parasites).

But they miss that they feed off their sources, in other words they are parasites of their sources (to use the same negative tone they use with bloggers), and their sources aren't waiting for them anymore. What are they doing? Key point -- they're becoming bloggers. Duh.

A bit of history -- at the same time I asked the NYT to support RSS, I also asked them to offer Times-hosted blogs to anyone who is quoted in a Times article. If only they had done that, how different things would be now.

USA Today sort of took a half-step towards that, but none of them, so far, have been willing to extend their authority to their communities. Hell, none of them have even made the leap to realize that their sources are part of their communities, a very very important part of their goodwill, and worth developing, at least conserving.

Jay Rosen is my rabbi when it comes to the authority of the Great Newspapers of the 20th Century. That would be a good title of a book, eh? (Not for me to write, I'm thinking about the great bloggers of the 21st Century).

Google and books 

Look at all the people saying stuff about Microsoft's opinion of Google's scanning of all those books. Lots of comments, but it's so simply obvious that Google is wrong. In so many ways.

First, it ought to be opt-in. The argument that Google indexes the web so why can't they index books the same way has one huge problem -- the web grew around search engines, and the book industry didn't. To come in, after the fact, and try to use the web as precedent is to confuse the order in which things happened.

Second, okay, if it can't be opt-in, let it be opt-out. In the web we have the Robots Exclusion Protocol that allows you to say that a search engine can't index your site. Where's the equivalent of that for Google's book indexer?

Third, there's a little thing called the Open Content Alliance, that Google could join, if they didn't think they were the last word in everything related to everything, which it seems pretty clear they do.

Fourth, there is a little thing called copyright, and I think it clearly prohibits the wholesale duplication of stuff that other people created. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but that seems kind of obvious.

Point of view 

My.Netscape, the first RSS-aware net application, makes a comeback. Tech bloggers miss the significance. They say it's just a rehash of Netvibes. If they had been aware of how RSS came to be, they would realize that it's the other way around, Netvibes is a reprise of My.Netscape.

Here's an example of the value of future-safe archives. In February 1999, over eight years ago, I saved a screen shot of My Netscape viewing the pre-RSS syndication of Scripting News. I ran a Davenet piece commemorating the event.

Today's links 

Megite has a river of news and it's great!

BBC: "A former key White House official, Lewis Libby, has been found guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury."

One year ago today: What is an unconference?