Publishers and database vendors consider their next steps This article appeared July 15, 2001, in the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge publication. The original article is below. Here’s the edited version on the NAA site. Database vendors have begun pursuing different paths in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Tasini v. New York Times ruling June 25, with some purging their databases of unlicensed freelance material at the behest of their newspaper partners and others taking a stance of watchful waiting. Jonathan Tasini, meanwhile, said newspaper publishers are making a mistake if they rush ahead with plans to delete freelance articles. “I’m sincerely hopeful that reasonable publishers will sit down and negotiate with us,” he said. “From day one

AlterNet leads a resurgence of progressive news sites This column appeared July 12, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Will a handful of big corporations control virtually all the news published on the Internet? On some days it certainly appears that way, especially in light of the report last month that four companies control half of all the traffic on the Web. The prospects for independent content sites seem grim today, what with Salon running low on cash and the zines Feed and Suck closing up shop. But one voice of grassroots independent journalism has recently begun to thrive. More surprising still, its point of view offers a decidedly left-of-center tilt.

A look at the current state of online news’ credibility When the Web first blasted onto the public’s radar screen back in 1994, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism wondered what it meant for the profession: Would journalists become obsolete in the new Net order? Would the Internet’s anything-goes dynamic dilute journalism’s core values and standards? What were the rules, and who would write them? Things have settled down a bit since the Web’s Kitty Hawk days. Now that the high-tech bubble has burst and we’re moving into a period of retrenchment and reassessment, it seems appropriate to pause and consider how the Internet is shaping journalism ethics, and how the Internet ethic is steering journalism in new directions.

Former LA Times newsman takes on role as reader representative at MSNBC This column appeared July 1, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Online news has its first ombudsman. But to hear him tell it, the view from cyberspace doesn’t differ from terra firma as much as he’d expected. “The thing that has surprised me most is that the kinds of concerns readers have on the Web track pretty closely with their concerns in traditional media,” says Dan Fisher, who began his job as ombudsman for MSNBC in mid-April.

But are they undermining free speech on the Net in the process? This column appeared June 14, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. If you’re like me, you probably feel a twinge of moral ambiguity every time you download a free MP3 file — say, the Vapors’ “Turning Japanese.” (OK, so maybe no harm there.) But what’s an ethically upright citizen of the Web to do when she comes across the curious little copyright icons and permissions notices that have begun to sprout at the bottom of various online publications? In recent weeks, an increasing number of online news publications have begun featuring links on staff-written stories that grant instant reprint and permission

Blogs will supplement, not supplant, traditional forms of media This column appeared May 31, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. See Part 1: Blogging as a new form of journalism. Parts 1 and 2 of this series were included in the anthology We’ve Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture (Perseus Publishing, 2002). Will Weblogs displace established media organizations as a source of news, information and opinion? Not in this lifetime. But they will continue to make inroads as a supplement to traditional news sources. As Doc Searls, one of the deep thinkers in the blog movement, says: “It’s a matter of ‘and’ logic, not ‘or’ logic. Weblogs will inform old media.

ABC news site straddles line with its Pearl Harbor package This column appeared May 31, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Bisitors to ABCNEWS.com’s “Pearl Harbor” package may be forgiven if they roll their eyes a bit at an increasingly familiar sight in the media universe: synergy. Like a raid of Japanese torpedo bombers, synergy was splattered all over the place this past week as the news site devoted a slick, handsome package to Pearl Harbor, the historical event, and “Pearl Harbor,” the movie from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures. But when does synergy morph into a conflict of interest? What happens when a news operation begins to internalize some of the traits of an

Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices This column appeared May 24, 2001, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site. Also see Part 2: Weblogs: A new source of news. Parts 1 and 2 of this series were included in the anthology We’ve Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture (Perseus Publishing, 2002). Back around 1993, in the Web’s neolithic days, starry-eyed Net denizens waxed poetic about a million Web sites blooming and supplanting the mainstream media as a source of news, information and insight. Then reality set in and those individual voices became lost in the ether as a million businesses lumbered onto the cyberspace stage, newspapers clumsily grasped at viable

New technologies target theft of online intellectual property This column appeared May 1, 2001, in the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge. Here’s the version on the NAA site. Spooked by the Napster-led peer-to-peer file-sharing movement, where computer users swap music files and other content in a free-wheeling data bazaar, an increasing number of Web publishers and businesses are taking steps to protect their intellectual property. During the past several months, newspapers ranging in size from the Albuquerque Journal, to The New York Times have launched online permissions services. An entertainment Web site posted the script of a hot new movie — and installed anti-theft technology to prevent it from being copied to fan sites. A small weekly news site