Scripting News: Public Radio Manifesto, part 1

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Public Radio Manifesto, part 1

When Judith Miller went to jail, I was against her getting a special deal because she's a journalist. I want all of us to have equal protection, everyone is a journalist now, or no one is.

The case of Josh Wolf re-opens these issues. The prosecutor said Wolf is a journalist only in his imagination, and I agree, and that's the point. What other ratification should it require to be a journalist. In the country as the founding fathers imagined it, we would all be so involved in the governing, and in the evaluation of government, that there would seem nothing unusual in one self-proclaiming as a journalist. It's a sign of how far we've wandered from the ideal that the prosecutor seems to be ridiculing Wolf instead of celebrating his pride of citizenship.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:30 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Jan Mar