Craigslist guy moving towards citizen journalism

[Gouda]

"Entrepreneur taps mistrust of media for new venture" <br>By David Usborne in New York <br>Published: 23 November 2005 <br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>The internet entrepreneur Craig Newmark, whose Craigslist site provided a hugely successful free alternative to classified advertising, has trained his sights on the old-fashioned newspaper industry.<br><br>...<br>At a seminar at the Said Business School at Oxford University this week, Mr Newmark rehearsed his new media paradigm: the combination of improving Web technology and a popular groundswell of distrust for reporters - especially, he says, because of ill- informed reporting of the Iraq war and its build-up - means that ordinary people are ready to take over the newsroom.<br><br>...<br>Some observers expect Mr Newmark to make a bid for wikipedia.com, an encyclopedia site that explicitly invites users to contribute with their own definitions and descriptions. Mr Newmark may have it in mind to transform the site into a huge cyber-based community news forum. "I do think professional and citizen journalism will blur together," he predicts, "because we will find that some amateurs are as talented as a professional journalist."<br><br>The White House press corps seems to enrage him especially. "No one is taking their job seriously there," he recently remarked. "Now it could be that they could be under a directive to not do so. We don't know. I've spoken to a lot of journalists who are very frustrated."<br><br>Part of the problem lies with the newspapers themselves. The race for dollars, he insists, has obscured the race for truth. "They're being run as profit centres, and they're trying to get pretty high profit margins. As a result, investigative reporting has been seen as a problem."</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <br><br>Full article here: <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article328715.ece">news.independent.co.uk/wo...328715.ece</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <p></p><i></i>

[thurnandtaxis]

MURDOCH SEES GLOOM FOR NEWSPAPERS AGAINST INTERNET<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051125/tc_afp/britainpressindustrysectorinternetmurdoch_051125151009">news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2005...1125151009</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Fri Nov 25,10:10 AM ET<br><br>LONDON (AFP) - The media magnate Rupert Murdoch predicted a gloomy future for newspapers, which he said are failing to adapt to the realities of the Internet.<br><br>Murdoch, whose global business interests include leading titles in London, New York and Sydney, said the traditional press and the Internet would exist side by side "for many, many years to come."<br><br>"There will always be room for good journalism and good reporting," he told Britain's media trade journal Press Gazette, but costs had been stripped to a bare minimum.<br><br>"They have already all stripped all the costs out, now they have to depend on advertising. And that is certainly under threat," he said.<br><br>"It's not just in the US that this reliance on advertising -- particularly classified -- is proving a problem (...)<br><br>"This is a generational thing: I don't know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper."<br><br>Murdoch's News Corp. is an umbrella company for an empire that includes the Fox studios and television operations, the London-based satellite TV company BSkyB, daily papers including The Times and The Sun in Britain, The Australian and the New York Post, and other publishing and media operations.<br><br>The magnate -- who launched a price war in Britain -- said he thought daily newspapers remained overpriced.<br><br>He was also scathing about costly promotions such as giving away DVDs -- "I personally hate this DVD craze" -- which he said inflated sales one day, but had no longer-term impact.<br><br>He appeared particularly pessimistic over the future of newspapers in the United States.<br><br>"Outside New York, it's all monopoly newspapers," Murdoch added. "Some have good work in them, but it tends to be over-written, boring and elitist, not a reflection of the general mood of the public.<br><br>"And I think you're going to find their circulations falling more than they have already have."<br><br>Murdoch said Internet development was his top priority, investing some 1.5 million dollars on websites.<br><br>It was not a panic reaction, he insisted. "It was a very careful strategy (...) if you take the number of page views in the US, we are the third biggest presence already<br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[dbeach]

4 THUMBS UP FOR CRAIG<br>0 for Murdoch <br>[ Mr. Murdoch was given a special privlege to own US media by none other than W.J.Clinton]<br><br>No Big Surprise! <p></p><i></i>

[slimmouse]

<br> I think one of the blogs I frequent rather sums it up nicely.<br><br> If Murdoch and Co. think that getting their version of the bullshit they serve up as 'news' online is gonna make any difference to their declining readership, then I strongly suspect theyre in for a shock.<br><br> If the MSM want to win back their readership, theirs a simple way to achieve that.<br><br> START TELLING THE FUCKING TRUTH FOR A CHANGE <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START >: --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/mad.gif ALT=">:"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>

[thurnandtaxis]

As someone who's involved in the so-called "media arts", there is<br>an axiom that informs and motivates much of what I'm involved with creatively, and that is that all mass media is in effect a form of surveillance. Media essentially creates its audience in order to learn about and then influence that audience.<br><br>Case in point, Murdoch's recent purchase of myspace.com. MYSPACE, for those of you who aren't GenXers or younger was created as a slightly more market savvy version of "FRIENDSTER".<br>Friendster was/is basically an online community for the 20-30 y/o<br>"hip" demographic, basically it allowed people to post photos and profiles then lets them link up with "friends" and through that "friend" link up to others in that person's community. Sort of like an active model of the 'six degrees of separation' theorem. Anyway it worked great for young arts and music types and their hangers-on, as a way to find parties in and out of their towns and meet potential "hook-ups". It was all the rage a few years ago in<br>the young NY nightlife scene and I remember getting into a lot of debate about the creepy undercurrents of what was functioning as basically a information dump detailing the nexus points of interaction between various pop and sub-cultural demographics.<br>However my rep as a "conspiracy theorist" indicated to most that my concerns were overly paranoid, and besides the machinations of a brave new world type controll mechanism tend to be a moot point to those having fun.<br> <br>Well, basically MYSPACE came along and created a much more marketing and promotional savvy version of the FRIENDSTER<br>architecture. And what turns out as the the end-product of years of work inspired by the post-punk DIY ethic? A lucrative datamine for<br>one of the world's most despicable media barons. <br><br>As he says:<br><br>"This is a generational thing: I don't know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper."<br><br>"Murdoch said Internet development was his top priority, investing some 1.5 million dollars on websites."<br><br>-actually myspace sold for a neat $580 million.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://chewshop.typepad.com/weblog/2005/07/murdoch_buys_my.html">chewshop.typepad.com/webl...ys_my.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <p></p><i></i>