Scripting News: A Berkeley prof with his hand out

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

A Berkeley prof with his hand out

An over-covered story -- the professional reporters will go away, which is bad news for you and me. Not saying it isn't true, but how many times, and different ways have you read this story. But if Google were to fund the reporters, as the author suggests, what happens when Google's fortunes decline? Tech is a cyclic industry. What goes up must come down. Count on it. And who will watch Google? That's been the problem with the employees of big media companies, they never look at their funders. How do we know they're really losing money? Maybe they're controlled by politicians or business people who want to do nasty stuff without being observed?

I could make the same argument, persuasively, for basic computer research. Who's doing it? Who's funding it? But the money dried up there without many articles in the SF Chron decrying it. Big surprise? Nope, of course not. The reporters are selfish and narcisistic. Hey, if you want our attention, stop complaining, stop the open offers to sell out, and let's get working on solving the problem. I want professional reporting to continue, but I also want to live forever, and that ain't happening.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:49 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.

Apr Jun