Eye on Winer

Dave Winer’s solution for the dying newspaper industry is to open up the newsroom to unpaid experts with time on their hands:

Here’s how you take the first step toward the open newsroom. Pick a story that you’re covering on an ongoing basis, something important enough that you’ve assigned one or more reporters to it full-time. Have them continue to do what they’re doing, we’re going to add to that coverage, in an experiment to learn how the newspaper of the future might work. Now pick two or three experts on the same subject, and invite them into the newsroom. They will not be paid. No benefits. They agree to the same rules governing the integrity of your reporters. For a period of four weeks, they report to the newsroom, the physical one, not a virtual one, every day, and are part of your news team. … Now, to be clear — I’m not talking about recruiting idiots or people whose opinions are (in your opinion) worthless. I’m talking about respected experts, the kinds of people your reporters call to get a perspective on the news the people they quote. Instead of having them talk to the readers through the reporter, I want them to go directly. Their writing should be as readable as the reporters’ so I would choose experts who express themselves well.

So in other words, they need to let people like him come in and write for them for free. And offer snacks and excellent networking.

Newspapers are saved! Saved! Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Jim Romenesko and the rest of the journalists, unclench your buttholes! Long live the newspaper!

In all the years he has been blogging, has Dave Winer ever identified a problem for which Dave Winer was not the solution?

Dave Winer’s having a cow on Twitter about some reporter who he thinks betrayed him:

Here’s the problem — reporters apply the same rules they apply to politicians to bloggers. about three hours ago

A “gotcha” is a strike, and one “gotcha” and you’re out. It’s why we’re glad they’re no longer gatekeepers, we can go direct. about three hours ago

I’ve found new reason to absolutely hate professional reporters in the last week, after reviewing a manuscript, that reduces me to about three hours ago

what I think of as a “miscreant idiot savant.” As if you can do all I have done and have no sense of relating to people. Hah. Good one. about three hours ago

I know it’s not fair to assume all professional reporters play the gotcha game, but how can you tell one from the other? about three hours ago

I’ve had a policy of no interviews for many many months. Made one exception, and it blew up on me. No more interviews, no exceptions. about three hours ago

Professional reporters: You are dead to me. You don’t exist. See you in the next life. about three hours ago

Any reporter who acknowledges Winer’s inability to play well with others is destined for his shit list. Scott Rosenberg’s working on a book about blogging, Say Everything: How Blogging Began, that’s out in July and is probably a completed manuscript by now. Maybe he made the mistake of (a) being honest about Winer, and (b) showing him the book prior to publication.

On Aug. 31, 1986, Knight-Ridder Newspapers ran a feature story on the 3.6 million never-married American bachelors. You might recognize one of them.

THE UNMARRIED MAN 3.6 MILLION LIVE ALONE, DELAYING MARRIAGE FOR CAREER

DAVE O’BRIAN, Knight-Ridder Newspapers

When Dave Winer comes home late after a hard day at the office, no one is there to greet him. But he doesn’t really mind, he says, because he is hardly ever home.

And though he may be by himself, he is not exactly alone. He is one of 3.6 million American males who live by themselves and have never married.

More than a blip on a demographic chart, Winer’s group has grown 124 percent during the past 15 years, according to a 1985 Marital Status Report by the U.S. Census Bureau. Much has been written about the alleged plight of “older single women” — including the recent press furor over “Marriage Patterns in the United States,” a controversial Harvard-Yale study which concluded that single women over 30 have little chance to make it to the altar and that after 40 they have virtually no chance at all. Never mind that the study’s results were questionable. The single, never-married American male remains a species that seems to have been all but ignored.

(more…)

About a week ago, Dave spilled some bits talking about why he hates video cameras. In sum, it looked like this:

I’m at a cocktail party, but I’ve been drinking water because I’m being taped in every conversation I have. One guy is even live-broadcasting to god knows who. I feel like a presidential candidate. What if I say something which, taken out of context, sounds like I have a belief that’s politically incorrect.

When a journalist wants an interview, he refuses to do it and opts, instead, to answer the questions publicly so that there’s context. He argues that someone broadcasting his every word would make it easy for them to be taken out of context. This, of course, is silly. A video of the conversation gives more context than a poorly remembered text-quote ever could. It gives body language, tone, and exact words and phrasings.

Dave’s real problem is that he knows that, if someone video tapes him saying something untoward, he has no plausible arguments to avoid responsibility for his words. He can’t claim to be misquoted. He can’t claim a serious comment was a joke. He can’t exaggerate or downplay. All he can do is defend his words or apologize, and that scares the hell out of him.

(I’ve heard some arguments that this is just self-consciousness at work, but he seems pretty amenable to having his picture taken, so I don’t think that’s the real issue.)