Unjournalism

A recent article in the New York Times brings to the mainstream something that’s been talked about for a while now: a brilliant Web tool, WikiScanner, that automates the process of linking the IP addresses of Wikipedia change-makers to companies and organizations that might have a bit of a conflict of interest.

Anheuser-Busch, the Central Intelligence Agency, Pepsi, Diebold and more companies and organizations have been busted editing Wikipedia entries that hit a little close to the company home. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (although many say it is, actually, a bad thing), many of these WikiScanner examples are indeed questionable or biased edits.

I love stuff like this because it’s great to see this stuff exposed. I say that not out of joy for seeing other people get busted but out of joy for the future of PR and doing business on the Web. Eventually, people will realize that shady or questionable actions will get outed, and we’ll all have no choice but to rise to the challenge of doing this well, and on the up-and-up.

Wide-eyed idealism at midnight. Sweet…

Tags: Wikipedia, conflict of interest by Mike Keliher
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A recent editorial in the LA Times takes a look at the Google’s recent move to let “actual participants” in stories to add comments that will then appear alongside the original story as it’s displayed on Google News.

It’s a decent, level-headed look at the issue, but it suffers from a huge case of sarcastic “no shit?” The main thrust of the column — and its conclusion that’s full of implied profundity — it that “…Google may strive to be the world’s index, but it’s not journalism.”

Did anyone ever say “Google is journalism”? This column’s conclusion strikes me as little more than another stupid little battle in the pointless war between traditional media and Wild Wild Web.

The LA Times piece also suggests that “[Google accepting comments] implies that the stories aggregated by Google News are incomplete — possibly because of limited space, but also possibly because of bias, neglect or ignorance.”

That’s one way to look at it, and it’s not unreasonable, but I certainly don’t see it as the most likely case. Maybe Google’s new feature implies that journalism and the stories it produces are the beginning of a conversation. Isn’t that part of what journalists strive for — to draw attention to events, issues and people that deserve to be noticed, discussed, analyzed, debated?

Tags: Google News, commenting, journalism by Mike Keliher
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So I haven’t posted in a damn long time. I’m moving and I’m getting married in a couple of weeks. As the kids say on the MTV, this shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Anyway, here’s my two cents for the day: Twitter — or more accurately, the people I follow on Twitter — has done a great job of quickly getting the word out about news lately. Most recent example: PodTech hiring a new CEO, James McCormick. I learned about this via a Twitter message (”tweet” if you’re nasty) from Jeremiah Owyang, who works for PodTech.

It’s been at least 20 minutes since I saw that message, and it has been about three hours since the news release went out over BusinessWire. And still there’s no mention on Valleywag or TechCrunch — not that this is a bad thing, really, but I’d expect either of those blogs to be all over this news. In fact, the post on PodTech’s own blog is the only other trace of this news I can find in the blog world.

Hooray for Twitter people.

Tags: Twitter, blogging, breaking news, journalism by Mike Keliher
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