Blogosphere

PDF2008 : The Week After

I have to admit that I don't go to a lot of technology conferences. It's not that I am not interested, on the contrary, I'd love to be able to attend each and every one of them. The problem is that I am in the situation that many other bloggers (especially women and people of color) are trapped in : We don't make enough money out of blogging to be able to afford a conference budget.

It's not just the airfare and hotel and the conference fee. As a working mother who is self-employed and has 2 children, traveling to conferences is not only absolutely prohibitive if I do so out of pocket. It's the emotionally draining logistics of who's going to take care of my children while am away. Unfortunately, in a city like New York not having family available or a nanny on payroll is a HUGE child-care liability.

So the few conferences I get to go am either paid to go because I am on a panel or I get to go to them because they're local enough (meaning a train ride away).

Outside of RootsCamp NYC (which happened 2 years ago) and this year's PodCamp NYC, there's not much for free or affordable the techie and geeky at heart here in NYC. Well, at least not much new to me because if I were to include some of the stuff happening at Eyebeam, well, yeah, that's geeky enough.

Which is why going to PDF is such a joy.

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EXCLUSIVE : Robert Cox answers some questions about his coming meeting with AP

Yesterday was intense day that I think was made worse by an article written by Scott Hansell over at The New York Times. Not only did he describe bloggers as "free wheeling", but Hansell made it look like the boycott started by netroots bloggers that spread through the blogosphere was going to be over once the Associated Press had discussions "with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association" that would produce "guidelines" to impose on bloggers.

We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

Even if The A.P. sets standards, bloggers could choose to use more content than its standards permit, and then The A.P. would have to decide whether to take legal action against them.

The last paragraph is not only the other (after the free wheeling adjective) offending point of this article. It gets picked up by none other than The Associate Press, which goes on to "report" (and here I am breaking to boycott in order to fisk them)

NEW YORK - The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers' group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.

Jim Kennedy, the AP's director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.

The meeting comes after AP sent a legal notice last week to Rogers Cadenhead, the author of a blog called the Drudge Retort, a news community site whose name is a parody of the prominent blog the Drudge Report.

The notice called for the blog to remove several postings that AP believed was an improper use of its stories. Other bloggers subsequently lambasted AP for going after a small blogger whom they thought appeared to be engaging in a legally permissible and widely practiced activity protected under "fair use" provisions of copyright law.

In response, the AP indicated it would seek to create guidelines, though even that idea triggered further protests. Michael Arrington wrote on his TechCrunch blog Monday that AP "doesn't get to make its own rules about how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows."
FULL ARTICLE AND SOURCE

It is outrageous that the AP, with the help of one of it's members (The New York Times), is spinning this Thursday as some sort of workshop that they will use, with the help of the Media Bloggers Association, to tell bloggers what is Fair Use.

And it is what I was twittering about with Jay Rosen last night. Jay and I reckoned there was what it seemed a "diffusing" element to the way the news were being report from Hansell down. He picked up on it as "the journalists' attempt to calm things down". I described as "there's an interesting diffusing dynamic going on, starting @ NYT" that had been preceded by the following twitts :

blogdiva: @jayrosen_nyu what a lot of your media peeps fail to mention is that no matter what AP says about use of their content there'll be a boycott
about 10 hours later · Reply · View Tweet

blogdiva: @jayrosen_nyu the boycott is not going to end after Ap meets the MBA because the issue here is that they don't get to say what is fair use
less than a minute later · Reply · View Tweet

It wasn't until after I spoke with Robert Cox that it hit me : Yes, indeed, people are reading these as "appeasement" quotes from AP. It does look like the article are meant to diffuse the issue and they're doing so by using Robert Cox's meeting as part of their damage control.

We will deal here with the first part of the discussion which is about Rogers' C&D, the agreement he brokered with the AP and the Thursday meeting. The second part, which is about the reorganization of the Media Bloggers Association and how to become a member will be posted separately.

» read more | liza's blog | 1 comment | email this blog | 595 reads

Kevin Drum for Obama

Oh wow!

I can't remember for how long I've been reading Kevin's column, but it is going to be at least 5 years now, if not more.

Kevin is the kind of centrist liberal that always throws me off-base; kind of like pro-choice Republicans --maybe it's the reason why I find him and Andrew Sullivan to be soul brothers. They have a lot in common, but only argue the minutiae about how big government ought to be.

So after weeks of reading his pro-Clinton posts, Kevin (who lives in California, btw) has done an about face : He's voting for Obama.

I've got some good reasons and some bad reasons for changing my mind. The good reasons include (a) the ugliness coming out of the Clinton camp over the past couple of weeks, which has turned me off, (b) a growing sense that Obama's steadiness running his campaign under fire is a good sign of what he'd be like as president, and (c) some of the red state endorsements Obama has gotten recently, which speak well for his potential to produce strong coattails in November.

There are also some not-so-good reasons. I'm half embarrassed to admit that this stuff even affects me, but the fact is that the actions of both the candidates' supporters and detractors has had an impact. Watching Andrew Sullivan rant and rave on a daily basis about Hillary, for example, has had the perverse effect of keeping me on her side. I just hated the thought of fever swamp hatred like that influencing my party's nomination. Conversely, today's Paul Krugman column, which was yet another installment in his months-long anti-Obama jihad had the opposite effect.

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Access Washington : Tracking the anti-immigrat movement from grassroots to online

Start: 18 Dec 2007 - 1:30pm

End: 18 Dec 2007 - 2:30pm

Timezone:

ACCESS WASHINGTON: TRACKING THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT MOVEMENT
FROM GRASSROOTS TO ONLINE

WHAT: New America Media conference call with Washington experts to track immigration legislation. This weekâ€™s call will look at how anti-immigrant movement has been organizing online as well as the grassroots and how they have been accessing media. From national organizations like FAIR to blogsphere how effective has the anti-immigrant been using new media and getting their message across? What are they doing to put immigration in the hot seat ahead of the caucuses in Iowa? Which are the best-known blogs? Are immigrant rights organizations able to fight back? Who's who in the anti-immigrant movement?

WHO: Participants will include

Henry Fernandez, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center
Liza Sabater, Blogpreneur, CultureKitchen and The DailyGotham
Devin Burghart, Director of Building Democracy, Center for New Community

WHEN: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 10:30 AM PST (1:30PM EST)

RSVP: All ethnic media are invited to participate in the call though space on the call is limited. The call-in number is 1- (866) 244-4629 . The conference ID is 1180231 . For any questions or further information please contact Sandip Roy at sroy@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170.

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: NAM offers this service to ethnic media across the country. The fee to subscribe is your agreement to send us clippings or links to any articles you produce based on the call. Your stories help NAM sustain the program through foundation support. Please send clippings or links to Sandip Roy at sroy@newamericamedia.org or 415-503-4170.

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Two interesting news bits for political blogpreneurs

1.

If you are a blogger who is looking into making money out of your online publishing, there are a number of blogs you ought to read on a daily basis, one of them being TechCrunch. There's much to learn from Michael Arrington's blog, especially if you were brought up to believe that an Arts & Science education was better without having a couple of business courses under your belt. Boy ... do I have regrets.

Anyhow, yesterday Michael posted a bit about a new commercial project going beta, Political Base. Here's a bit of what Arrington had to say :

The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will be spent on advertising to promote candidates and issues.

PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but canâ€™t change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that canâ€™t be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the siteâ€™s community the ability to create and edit content.

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Ten question for my blog friends

I have now for some time been asking bloggers, privately and semi-privately, about how the different campaigns are reaching out to them.

I just decided, after the string of posts about campaign blog outreach, to put all my questions together into a post. I'd like to use your answers in a follow up post here and at TechPresident.

Here they are :

1. How early in the campaigns have people reached out to you?

2. Did they come directly to you or did they come recommended by another blogger?

3. Are you receiving direct communications from their online organizers and/or blog outreach people or are you getting standard press releases?

4. Have they hit you with ideas, fundraising requests or both?

5. Have they asked you to recommend other bloggers?

6. Have they invited you to events with the candidate?

7. Have they offered you to be in a conference call or an email exchange?

8. How about actual to an sit-down?

9. Do you appear in the candidates blogroll?

10. Have your site been ever mentioned on any of the candidates official blogs?

11. Who would you consider the best blog outreach director?

» liza's blog | 2 comments | email this blog | 477 reads

Hillary Clinton reaches out to 'hispanic' bloggers through ... a marketing site?

This has got to be one of the weirdest blog outreach maneuvers coming from the current crop of Presidential candidates. Juan Tornoe, of Hispanic Trending, a marketing site, has published an "interview" with the junior senator of New York and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.

Let's just start by clearing out the air here. Even though I loathe the word Hispanic I don't necessarily loathe the people that use it. I believe though that the use of the word contextualizes the politics of the person using it. So within the context of my previous post, make what you will of my view on the "hispanic" demographics.

That said, even though I read from time to time Tornoe's blog, I wouldn't consider it as Ms. Clinton has allegedly said in the interview, a very popular site --especially within the latino blogosphere.

I'd just as well think that honor would fall on blogs like Vivir Latino, Latina Lista, Xicano Power, Unapologetic Mexican, LatinoPundit or Latino Politico. Last place I would go for all things latino would be a marketing site, if you know what I mean.

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Barack Obama's online campaign strategist is gone. Should we be shocked?

The Barack Obama campaign has one of the worst track records in reaching out to the blogosphere for support. Not only have they snub the so-called netroots bloggers that strategize through the Townhouse mailing list, but they have actually gone out of their way to not reach out to prominent black, latino and women bloggers who are outside of said mailing.

The best example of this snub was the campaign's absence from BlogHer, the largest convention of women bloggers in the United States and, technically, the world. At BlogHer we had the pleasure to have Elizabeth Edwards as one of our keynote speakers. The Hillary Clinton campaign made a lukewarm appearance by sending in a representative. The biggest omission was Barack Obama himself. After all, the conference was in his hometown of Chicago.

Not sending Michelle Obama to speak to the 800+ networks of vote-ready of mostly mommybloggers who were in attendance has been, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes of the Obama campaign. Worse than the unforgivable muscling-out of the volunteer Joe Anthony from the largest volunteer Obama network on MySpace.

So it does not come as a surprise that Barack's blogger outreach guy has left the building :

» read more | liza's blog | 10 comments | email this blog | 2042 reads

Guess the PBI (political blind item)

Ben Smith back in the days of The Politicker

I hope Ben Smith is making a lot of money. We miss him terribly over at The Daily Gotham, because we really had a conversation going on our blogs about the mess that is New York politics. With his replacement? Not so much fun as good old Ben.

Which is why I wonder if he's really cozy and happy over at his new digs. Ben is supposed to be the lefty voice over at Politico.com; yet with his current acid keyboard he's earning the badge of the Democrat's worst frenemy, especially if that Democrat happens to be John Edwards.

He's the guy who first wrote about Edwards' $400 haircuts. He is now throwing Edwards under not only the bus, but the SUV and the private jet as well.

((( C'mon Ben, dude. As if anybody would be able to run a presidential campaign on Northwest fucking Airlines. Commercial airlines are snakes on a plane, dude. Snakes on a moddafruggin' plane! )))

So it is no wonder that a certain a-list blogger wants to kick his ass.

Literally.

Submitted by liza on 30 August 2007 - 9:00am.
Blogosphere | Gossip | Politics | Ben Smith

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