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Rebooting The News #11

Monday, June 01, 2009 by Dave Winer.

Last night's podcast is up this morning, bright and early!  

A theme from last week continues this week: Bug catching as a key practice in a re-booted system of news. Jay unfolds an example from this week: the AP's coverage of the Twitter TV show. 

The TechGuardian asks How much is it worth to be one of Twitter's suggested users? 

Dave discusses BitTorrent and why he put RTN 1-10 on it. 

CheckBox News, Dave's mock-up of a re-booted user interface for television news where you can uncheck the streams you don't want and check the ones you do, and program your TV set that way. 

For sources of inspiration (it's his turn) Dave returned to three: James Burke's public television series Connections, about the history of science and technology (inventions are usually the result of a synthesis of things created by earlier inventors); the Cluetrain Manifesto (ten years old and great); and VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers-- the demo for which was almost a spiritual experience. With a response from Jay about the common thread: distributing power outward from the insiders to the users. 

Two views of the announcement this week that the New York Times had hired a social media editor, Jennifer Preston. 

Dave argues that the great news organizations should be the operators and originators of systems like Twitter. It's not too late, but soon it will be, he warns. 

We close with a short reading from Barbara Ehrenreich's commencement speech to the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. "A recession won't stop us. A dying industry won't stop us. Even poverty won't stop us because we are all on a mission here."