Barry's Life in Napa Blog

In lieu of anything generated from my own tired synapses and fingertips, today I direct you to some interesting reading elsewhere; namely, a recent column in Wired on the "are bloggers really journalists" topic. In the column by Tony Long there is a reference to a new book: The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture bemoans the rise of amateurism in all spheres of professional life, specifically as facilitated by the internet's long reach. Nice to see somebody standing up for the craft of journalism. I don't know too many people (who ought to know the difference, meaning they have worked as a journalist) who think the average blogger is a journalist. Long makes a nice contrast between between being a reporter and being an eyewitness. Just because you can get yourself on the floor of a convention, or act like paparazzi, doesn't mean you can also tell the story in any meaningful way. On the other hand, the Wired column generated this ...

From the Boston Herald story : P ASADENA, Calif. - The job posting was a head-scratcher: "We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA." Granted, the world is flat and outsourcing work to far-flung places is good for keeping prices down. (Perhaps not so good for actually getting help from the help desk in a dialect you can understand, but that's another story.) But one might think that there are some jobs that just cannot be done from a remote location, some things that simply require your presence in proximity to the job. Then again, maybe not. The story in question relates to a web publication called Pasadena Now . Management of this outlet made news last week when it was reported that they are outsourcing news reporting duties to India. Pasadena Now is a very low budget affair, and James Macpherson is trying to beef up his news content affordably. It's the same problem small local ne...

Without doubt the harshest comments yet on the KFTY-TV "citizen journalism" experiment can be found here . (Warning: disturbing photo included in the post. At least it gave me the willies.) These people at KFTY have taken a sound beating since they announced their ploy. But it has lots of people paying attention to the outcome. If they somehow make it work, which is not likely, there will be a lot of unprofitable TV stations giving it a go. I suppose it's a little better than infomercials. Maybe. There's something a little disturbing about being served a cocktail by someone you once coached in Little League. That happened last evening, as I was enjoying a libation with members of the local cult I belong to. Turns out the barkeep there at n.v. (which has an excellent happy hour) looked familiar for a reason. And he does a fine job with the beverages. But still, I wanted to say "Weren't you 10 years old just the other day?" A little later, we ankled on ...

I am new to blogging so I am still feeling my way for another week or so, at which point I will declare myself an expert. You've got to move fast in the digital universe. Despite my newness, it's apparent to me that there are two ways consider this kind of blog a success: 1. I wrote something, I was productive, I put it out there, I expressed myself, and that's all that matters. The cheese stands alone. 2. Somebody's reading it. Being innately a performer, I prefer an audience, so I'd have to say I need somebody reading this to close the loop for me. Just writing is not enough. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it-well, who cares? So all of that is preface to saying that I have my first link from someone else's blog. He was writing about the KFTY-TV "citizen journalism" concept that I pooh-poohed a couple weeks ago: Not surprisingly, many people think this is a dumb idea squared, including the TV critic from the Miami...

KFTY-TV in Santa Rosa has fired a bunch of their news people and now they want you to provide them free content. TV50 calling all citizen journalists Santa Rosa station looks to new kind of newsgatherers to cover local issues By DEREK J. MOORE THE PRESS DEMOCRAT Before they were abruptly laid off last week, the men and women who comprised the news team at Santa Rosa 's KFTY-TV were in the business of gathering and reporting local stories. Under the new model, that job will fall to someone else, namely, you. T he concept, known as citizen journalism or user-generated content, can be a powerful way of expressing a point of view, as anyone who's ever visited YouTube or MySpace knows. But how good will citizen journalists be at telling local news stories - the car crashes, school board meetings and the like - that traditionally have been the diet of professional newsgatherers? John Burgess, TV50's general manager and vice president, said Friday that citizen journal...