Some media stories of note for Wednesday, May 15, 2013:

The Guardian is reporting that China is attempting to curtail the blogging activities of writers and intellectuals by closing their social media accounts. In recent weeks notable social justice critics have been silenced in social media. There were other recent efforts to curtail mainstream media's use of western-based content.

The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, has defended the seizure of telephone records of The Associated Press. The New York Times reports he says the article that prompted the seizure arose from a serious leak of information with serious national security implications that put Americans at risk. The Times' public editor, Margaret Sullivan, weighs in with a critique of the Obama Administration as one of the most secretive and threatening to the press, with implications for readers and democracy. The Times' media writer, David Carr, looks at how it's not only government snooping on us, but all of us snooping on all of us. 

The New Yorker is releasing the technical specs on Strongbox, software that permits reporters to cover their tracks as they reach out to the magazine. It uses a particular network and masks your IP address, information about your computer and browser, and won't plant cookies or third-party content. AllThingsDigital surmises that the release of the program, created by the late Aaron Swartz, is aimed at letting other organizations create their own versions. 
 
 

Technorati's terrific report this week on the State of the Blogosphere concluded with a look at the commingling of brands and blogs --- specifically, too, how blogs are becoming their own brands and how willing they are to shepherd marketing messages and content from non-traditional sources.
Yes, bloggers are getting full of themselves (one in five don't think newspapers will exist in a decade, while half believe blogs will be a prime source of information in the decade ahead).  But Technorati notes that bloggers are worth watching for another important reason: They adopt new technology earliest and are the sentries for the wider societal adoption of techniques and gear.
The report points to an increased credibility of blogs as sources of content and of legitimate media players. Technorati's package indicates blogs are now part of our lives in 2008 (they need no introduction that they needed, say, two years ago), that bloggers are increasingly making money, that they are adding to the public sphere, and that they are evolving swiftly into a vibrant form of media.


 
 

Much belatedly I'm posting our story from Friday on our partnership at The Vancouver Sun with NowPublic of the release of Vancouver's Most Public bloggers. The index calculates a variety of factors on posting, interactivity and community. UBC colleagues Alfred Hermida and David Beers are in the top 20, and the top local blogger is Darren Barefoot.
We'll be staging an event for everyone soon to talk about the future of news.

 
 

The Democrats and Republicans have been overrun by the bloggers and Twitterers.
The shape of journalism changes at each such major event (think Beijing Games).
A panel discussion in St. Paul organized by USC's Annenberg School of Communications this week didn't always laud the advancement.
Technology means the water-cooler discussion is all about what happened in the last second, one panelist asserted.
Which means, it's time to end this post and get on to the next talking point.

 

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