luminous flux: inspiration

“ Writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. ... The things I've written just for myself are no good. They tend to peter out. When I run into difficulties, I find I conclude with a few vague questions and then drift off to get a cup of tea.
Many published essays peter out in the same – particularly the sort written by the staff writers of newsmagazines [who] feel obliged to write something "balanced." Since they're writing for a popular magazine, they start with the most radioactively controversial questions, from which-- because they're writing for a popular magazine-- they then proceed to recoil in terror. Abortion, for or against? This group says one thing. That group says another. One thing is certain: the question is a complex one. (But don't get mad at us. We didn't draw any conclusions.) ”

“ When I see young journalists talk only about their passion to write and tell stories, I worry for them that they will find fewer jobs and less of a calling. But when I hear journalists say that their passion is to report, to dig up facts, to serve and inform the community by all means possible, I feel better. When I hear a journalist talk about collaboration with that community as the highest art, then I get happy. ”

Reposted by fin

“ [Articles] were a necessary form for newspapers and news shows but not the free flow, the never-starting, never-ending stream of digital. ...

The most precious resource in news is reporting and so maximizing the acquisition of facts and answers is what we need. ... [The] goal of the process [is] keeping the public constantly informed. ... An article can be a byproduct. ”

“ Wer „Snippets“ – zum Beispiel einzelne Sätze oder eine Überschrift – verwenden will, soll nach Vorstellung der Verleger künftig eine Zustimmung („Lizenz“) benötigen und Vergütungen bezahlen. Wer sich nicht daran hält, müsste mit Abmahnungen, Klagen oder anderen Sanktionen rechnen. Dieses „Snippet-Recht“ würde zunächst Informationsdienstleister wie Suchmaschinenanbieter und Nachrichten-Aggregatoren betreffen, die in ihren Suchergebnissen naturgemäß kurze Ausschnitte aus Online-Artikeln anzeigen. ”

“ What may be a sub-footnote in a someone's life could be a major news story for several weeks - just where are you going to find the gory details on that in 50+ years? Certainly not in the latest version of the Wikipedia article. ”

“ The notion of putting out news in discrete and unchanging chunks is very "paper" thinking. If you assume that most people don't follow every story closely, then what most people need is a complete history, not just the diffs.

Now here's a question: would it be useful to highlight the sentences that have changed since the reader last visited that topic? Rather than asking readers to construct the whole story from the updates, we would be asking them to construct the updates from the whole story. ”

“ There are some stories—and the mortgage crisis is a great example—where until I grasp the whole I am unable to make sense of any part.

Not only am I not a customer for news reports prior to that moment, but the very frequency of the updates alienates me from the providers of those updates because the news stream is adding daily to my feeling of being ill-informed, overwhelmed, out of the loop. ”

“ Open Source from the NYT: Paragraph-specific anchor links and the ability to highlight text in articles and blog posts. ”

“ Die Medien sind nicht mehr Konstanten, sondern Variablen. Informationsprofis sind deshalb heute auch Media Hacker. ... So wichtig sich die Murdochs und Dichands nehmen: Für den Informationssektor sind Hacker wie Dave Winer, Evan Williams oder Julian Assange um Dimensionen folgenreicher. ”