Andrew Shell opens a thread on Twitter for Overcast, an iOS podcast client, asking why he was unable to subscribe to Scripting News. Turns out Overcast doesn't like titleless posts. I don't use Overcast myself, so I can't offer specific advice, but it is not acceptable to use the file name as a title. That's not what the file name is for. I described the use-case in a tweet (of course without a title, tweets don't have titles). Vendors tend to ignore advice on these issues, and that's kept us from growing. I used to budge for them on this issue, but decided in 2017 to stop. All the compromises meant that my blog disappears. Bottom-line: I put podcasts on title-less posts. That's never going to change. #
I was hooked on Klobuchar when she stared down Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing. She doesn't rattle. I think Trump should be followed by a woman, one the Repubs have yet had a chance to work on. I don't think Americans will stand for him abusing her.#
- On this day four years ago the question of bloggers wanting to replace reporters came up again. This was yet another colossal misunderstanding, much like the disconnect re Facebook today.#
- We, bloggers, seem to always be trying to assuage journalists' fear of us. That really shoudn't be necessary, btw. #
- Sidebar: How refreshing that Ben Smith, editor in chief at Buzzfeed News, refers to the "the enduring positive qualities of social media." I wonder if his colleagues at Buzzfeed and other pubs tuned into that. How about a series of columns, updated to 2020 reality, that explore those positive qualities, to balance all the horror stories running in the NYT and elsewhere.#
- I observe that journalists tend be blind when it comes to voters, users, writers, developers, anyone but politicians, rich people, and other journalists. We hardly exist as individuals, we're only considered in the aggregate (polls and the like). They shrink their world, furiously, so they can deal with it. Huge disconnects result. #
- In my talk at ISOJ in April last year, I described the above cartoon. I was one of the bloggers. Of course it hurt my feelings, it was intended to, although some people think it was done with irony. I personally don't buy that. YMMV.#
- Bloggers don't usually wave their credentials in your face, so you might not be aware that many of us at the DNC in 2004 actually had decent credentials. For example, I had a good education from good schools. At the time I was a research fellow at Harvard. I had spent decades proving myself in my field and had risen to the top. I invented a bunch of technology that were in very wide use, and would form the foundation for all computer networking to come. I had been writing my blog for nine years at that point, and if I do say so myself, was a good writer. We were in the process of starting podcasting at the time. And I was just one of the DNC bloggers. The others were just as accomplished. You had to be someone special to be at the DNC in 2004. #
- A request for ambitious truth-seeking journalists -- stop writing from your fear, learn more about the world. Your blind spots are huge, and are killing us. #
Speaking of Harvard, when I was a fellow there, one of the members of our Berkman Thursday group was Rebecca MacKinnon, who was a fellow at Shorenstein Center, which was the rough equivalent of Berkman but for journalists. Previously she had been a CNN reporter from Beijing and Tokyo. Her fellowship was a turning point in her career. She went on to start Global Voices, a blogging network, among other pursuits.#- She got me together with Alex Jones, a former NYT reporter, who was then the director of Shorenstein. To say he was blog-skeptical would be an understatement. He typified all the arrogance and fear of blogging in journalism, with what I saw as false confidence, bravado, I guessed, to try to keep me, and what I represented to him, at arm's length. We probably met just twice, maybe even once. I remember a contentious somewhat friendly conversation at Henrietta's Table. #
- I personally asked Jones to come to the second BloggerCon. He came. I watched him and joined in conversations with him at times. He appeared to be having the time of his life. And why shouldn't he? Here was a room full of sources, people who knew about something he was actually very interested in, and they didn't have to be coerced into talking about it. There was a ton of enthusiasm in the room. They were exploding with ideas, because of the huge potential of this space in 2004.#
- But after the BloggerCon we went back to our corners, staring at each other, unsure of how to communicate. By now Jones has retired, his replacement is a former famous blogger, the guy who did the blogging at the Dean campaign in 2004, really breakthrough stuff, and yet nothing has changed. Shorenstein is still a bastion of professional journalism, and ideas from blogging don't penetrate. #
- We should all be working together. I said it then, keep pounding the table, beating the drum. No reason to stop. #