Disqus - Latest Comments for RobertCox

Re: Death of Journalism, part 3 (Scripting News)

iHouse — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:42:38 -0000

Good point!

Find out whether people trust you!

Re: Media Bloggers Association launches blogging insurance program

jacob2020 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:06:40 -0000

Blog Insurance sounds like a much needed protection for we bloggers. Where can I buy a Blog Insurance policy? -- how much does it cost?

Re: Death of Journalism, part 3 (Scripting News)

dave — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:32:12 -0000

Bravo!!

Re: Death of Journalism, part 3 (Scripting News)

RobertCox — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:16:37 -0000

Shel - I love the movie "All the President's Men" but...it's a movie.

Now, consider that we today know that Mark Felt, the number two guy at the FBI, was leaking information to Woodward. There were many people who knew that the Nixon campaign was using illegal contributions to fund dirty tricks and were not comfortable with it. In today's world there would be no need to Woodward to meet Deep Throat in a garage. They could send each other DMs on Twitter or SMS or otherwise communicate without actually meeting up. More to the point, Mark Felt could have set up an anonymous blog (deepthroat.blogspot.com) and posted information to the web. Staffers at the Committee to Reelect the President who wished to could have done the same sorts of things. There would be no need to Ben Bradlee to take the heat when a Woodstein story turned out wrong. There are many bloggers that would publish these sorts of stories.

If you think this is not happening then you are too focused on the big blogs and not paying attention to what is happening at the hyper-local level. I do some work on such a site called New Rochelle's Talk of the Sound. we ran a story recently in New Rochelle, NY about the Mayor telling The New York Times that he was a "full-time" Mayor. A reader sent us the files from the local Congresswoman showing that during the time the Mayor said he was "full-time" he was actually getting 40% of his income working as a consultant for our district's Congresswoman. After we ran that story, another reader -- someone in City Hall -- sent a copy of the Mayor's employment form in which the Mayor had checked the "Part-Time" box on the form. We will be running that story on Monday. On Tuesday, there will be a City Council meeting where consideration will be given to either raise the Mayor's salary to make him an actual full-time employee or change the City Charter to make it clear that the Mayor is a part-time employee so that the Mayor will not misrepresent his role to the media and/or the public.

Similarly, we obtained a copy of the City's stimulus package request list sent to Albany. We made it available to readers who were able to help us show that about 20% of the projects on the $97.775 mm wish list were actually ineligible for funding. In response to our story, the City told us they would file a revised list with the State of New York. Think this doesn't matter? By replacing those ineligible projects with eligible projects we helped increase the likelihood that some of the stimulus money will flow to our City.

Almost every bit of these two stories came about through readers inside the government or with connections to the government getting information to our site. As Dave correctly points out, today's technology permits the disintermediation of sources and the public. Today, Deep Throat would not need Woodward to get his story out; any whistleblower inside government can now drop information onto Wikileaks, sent to a blogger or publish their own blog.

I would also note that all for the claims about "investigative journalism", I can tell you that in New Rochelle our local newspaper is the Gannett Journal News which covers all of Westchester County. I can count on one <strike>hand</strike> finger the amount of investigative reporting they have done in New Rochelle in the past decade. The so-called reporting that we get here from traditional newspaper is almost exclusively high school sports, police blotter stories and stories spoon-fed to reports by local officials (otherwise known as propaganda). Our little web site has broken more stories in New Rochelle in 3 months then the traditional media has broken in the past 5 years. Why? Because we actually have people in New Rochelle contributing to our site whereas the "local" media has not assigned a single reporter to the New Rochelle beat.

Let me help put this in context. New Rochelle is the 7th largest city in New York State and we do not have -- and have not had for many years -- a single reporter who covers just our City. We did not "leave" journalism behind -- they left us.

Re: Rick Santelli House Fire

RobertCox — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:18:21 -0000

Good grief! I saw this on Twitter and thought it was a real news story. :-)

Re: Media Bloggers Association launches blogging insurance program

RobertCox — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:38:43 -0000

Adam,

EFF, Citizen Media Law Project and others have some great resources for bloggers. We work with these groups and others and link them from our site. And of course bloggers have rights. As newspapers and other traditional media organizations learned long ago, it is not simply a matter of having rights but being able to DEFEND those rights. If a blogger cannot afford to put on a defense the plaintiff wins by default. The sad fact is that most bloggers cave right from the outset and most litigants know this. Bloggers need a credible threat in order to deter potential litigants and few have the financial or legal resources to do so. That is why we went out two years ago looking for an insurance company willing to create this new type of insurance.

We recognize that many bloggers will not see the need for insurance or believe it to be an unnecessary cost. That's fine. We're not selling insurance (the MBA does not make a dime, directly or indirectly, from the insurance program). We just want to make sure that for those who DO want it, its' there. We are convinced from hard won experience helping more bloggers than any other organization respond to legal threats that the long-term sustainability of citizen media depends on bloggers having access to the same sorts of legal resources as the often deep-pocketed, highly-motivated plaintiffs going after them.

The Media Bloggers Association has helped bloggers in hundreds of cases since 2004. Not only are we offering a program to obtain insurance from Media/Professional, the largest media liability insurance company in the world, but we have greatly expanded our network of law firms willing in our MBA Legal Referral Program where MBA members can get a free consult including some simple do's and don'ts of responding to a legal threat, risk assessment, and a review of potential costs of mounting a defense and the potential size of a judgement in the event the case is lost.

Re: AP mess, day 3 (Scripting News)

bytehead — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:01:09 -0000

Thank you! And I see I was remembering correctly (if not the dates, heh).

I didn't realize that tinyurl was up to six characters now. Twitter has done some damage there I'm sure. I can remember when it was 3...

And since I really didn't add anything (especially after reading your backstory), Ill shut up now. :)

Re: AP mess, day 3 (Scripting News)

RobertCox — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:40:12 -0000

Looks like the "a" dropped off when I copied it. Sorry. Here you go: http://tinyurl.com/636c7a

Re: AP mess, day 3 (Scripting News)

bytehead — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:16:10 -0000

Your url is borked. In fact it points to another tinyurl url that is borked.

Re: AP mess, day 3 (Scripting News)

RobertCox — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:34:04 -0000

Dave,

This is a very good podcast. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

As we discussed earlier, most of the reporting on this story was off base and the left the ground altogether and finally moved into cloud-cuckoo land. The last story I saw claimed that I was meeting with Jim to establish fees that bloggers would pay to quote the AP. Sheesh!

I was involved in this case, helping Rogers, from before this was even a story. In fact, I was involved in this case before Jim Kennedy at AP had heard of it. Your bursting a few bubbles here and with a call for calm and rational discourse must be, of course, quite mad.

I wrote up my account of the backstory in this case here for folks who might be interested in an inside account: http://tinyurl.com/636c7