[10402] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Journalism and the Net
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Glenn S. Tenney)
Mon Feb 21 13:40:24 1994
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 10:39:39 -0800
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
Gordon sent me this message privately. I thought it was unfortunate that
it was private since it was bang on to what I wanted to discuss -- the
differences between "mainstream" media and on-line journalists. Gordon
replied:
>I did mean for the second reply to go to com-priv. I don't have a
>copy. Therefore you have my permission to forward it to the entire
>list.
So, here is Gordon's message...
Glenn
>From: cook@path.net (Gordon Cook)
>Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 21:25:56 PST
>
>Well Glenn it just seemed a bit strange that everything you quoted was from me
>and all within about the last 24 hours to boot!
>
>But I'll take your reply at face value and say sure there is a
>difference between on-line and mainstream.... seems pretty obvious. And
>yeah I know a little about the ups and downs of EDITORs. Over a three
>day period last april I was able to invest over10 hours in face to face
>meetings with a full time staff reporter of the washington post. At the
>end the reporter was all fired up. Unfortunately the editor just
>yawned.
>
>>From what you wrote you left the impression that you prefer the
>mainstream techniques.... if so we obviously disagree.
>
>In my opinion the net opens the opportunity for narrowly focused
>niches like the one I have carved out. The mainstream obviously has
>some filtering to do because if it didn't the news would be the size of
>telephone books. Still I maintain that the mainstream folk should focus
>real hard on figuring out what some of us niche reporters are up to.
>After all we just might be on to something.
>
>but if they fail to do so, its no skin off my back. I'll continue to do
>what I am doing. I can do it just fine **without** them and I'll have
>my own marketplace that will judge my efforts. Right now I am quite
>happy with its verdict. Not having an outside boss and being completely
>responsible for my own fate in these crazy times is a pleasure.
>
>So to me the issue is simple.....
>
>some will read and some will hit delete keys.
>
>I think the readers of this list can decide quite well for themselves
>which is the appropriate course of action.
>
>Oh yeah.... a historical PS. that goes squarely to the point you raised.
> the science editor at the Newark star ledger told me after the von
>Neumann Supercomputer Center was closed that she had known several weeks
>in advance that the NSF was going to close us down. But she wasn't
>allowed to print the story because she had only one leak from the NSF and
>couldn't get a second source to confirm. Now I loved that job and hated
>to loose it. I also think that it would have been desirable to have had
>the newspaper publish. Not because it might have changed the NSF's
>mind. I think the NSF did the right thing to shut the place down. We
>were so mismanaged that we were delivering very little of any value to
>our customers the computational scientists. Still if the paper had
>published it might have helped those in charge avoid another six weeks
>of living in their dreamworld.
>
>
