The Gotterdammerung-of-mainstream-media argument has a weak and a strong formulation. …

The strong version is most associated with Dave Winer, a grumpy California software programmer best known for helping to develop the Web-feed format RSS and for his blog, Scripting News. Winer has written, and not without glee, “Fifteen years ago I was unhappy with the way journalism was practiced in the tech industry, so I took matters into my own hands. And then dozens of people did, and then hundreds followed, and now we get much better information about tech. It will happen everywhere, in politics, education, the military, health, science, you name it. The sources will fill in where we used to need journalists. … Everyone is now a journalist.”

If media companies can’t earn money, and everyone is a journalist, it follows that “amateurs” (Shirky) and “sources” (Winer) will be part of a “decentralized” media (Winer), whose stories will be distributed by “excitable 14-year-olds” (Shirky).

This is all folly and ignorance. Shirky, Winer, and other evangelists know nothing about the business of media. True, the journalists who write about these matters for mainstream media often know as little; I didn’t understand much until I became the publisher of Technology Review as well as its editor in chief. But Shirky and Winer are disgruntled consumers and, as bloggers, advocates for an insurrection. Thus, they are to be read skeptically. Their prescriptions would be more convincing if they were less polemical and better informed by some knowledge of what publishers sell.

Winer’s been treated like an informed media expert for years, but his entire professional experience in journalism consists of writing commentary for Wired for one year back in the ’90s.

Pontin goes on to say on Twitter, when criticized over the piece, that “These people are, I think, insane. Filled with hostility, completely impractical, and, in the final analysis, dishonest.” Winer doesn’t know journalism, but at least one journalist knows him pretty well.

I said the sources would take over the news. Not enough reporters covering the courtroom? The judge will report, as will the jurors, the attorneys, the plaintiff, the defendent. It will be messier, I would have said had I had the time to complete the thought, but more truth will come out.

New York Times, same day:

Last week, a building products company asked an Arkansas court to overturn a $12.6 million judgment, claiming that a juror used Twitter to send updates during the civil trial. And on Monday, defense lawyers in the federal corruption trial of a former Pennsylvania state senator, Vincent J. Fumo, demanded before the verdict that the judge declare a mistrial because a juror posted updates on the case on Twitter and Facebook. The juror had even told his readers that a “big announcement” was coming on Monday.

Winer waited all that time to get a chance to speak, and yet he couldn’t come up with a worse example if he tried. Judges and attorneys are legally prohibited from writing accounts of an ongoing trial on their blogs or Twitter. They would risk mistrials and professional sanction. Jurors risk mistrials as well by covering themselves. Even after the fact, participants in a trial have to be careful about what they say because it could become grounds for appeal. There are many other examples where professional rules, confidentiality requirements or non-disclosure agreements would prevent citizens from reporting their own news. There’s no way in hell the public will get court news from the participants. And that’s Winer’s example of why we don’t need newspapers? The journalists in the crowd must have loved his naivete.

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?

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.

The site’s a dud. The latest Compete stats show that NewsJunk fell to 2,300 users in the entire month of October, even though it was the height of the presidential campaign when most political news sites were shattering traffic records.

The site’s traffic peak was 32,000 users after it got some press from Mashable and other easy marks in the Web 2.0 world who think everything Winer shits out is worth sifting through for corn. But if you compare NewsJunk’s traffic to Memeorandum, which Winer claimed as his competition, his site got killed. (And Memeorandum spiked towards Election Day, while NewsJunk entered into a death spiral.)

Winer bitched last week on Mashable about how they didn’t get the appeal of his site (them and just about everybody else on the planet):

This is a work of fiction. You should put a big disclaimer on it up front — you’re wrong on so many fronts, and you missed what was interesting technically about the product and you’re supposed to be a tech pub.

It’s amazing that Winer thinks there’s anything technically novel about the site, which is just a human-selected list of RSS items from media feeds that counts clicks. The programming and concept are both trivial. You could code it in an afternoon and still have time left over to walk the dog.

As NewsJunk suffers the same fate as Flickrfan and Share Your OPML, even with all of Winer’s pimping on Scripting News, is he completely washed up? It’s been a long time since he was involved in anything that could even charitably be described as a success.

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.

Of these bachelors, a surprising number, 2 million, are under 35.

“This can only be the result of decisions to postpone marriage and the decision not to marry,” says Tom Exter, research editor for American Demographics Inc. in Ithaca, N.Y.

Why are they doing that?

“It’s a fascinating sociological study that has yet to be done,” Exter says. “There are many men who have decided to reject marriage outright.”

None of the single men interviewed for this story say they’ve ruled out marital bliss altogether. Rather, these “eligible” and successful younger men say they’ve merely postponed the inevitable, that they’re too busy with work and school or they enjoy the independence of their solitary lifestyles, or, they say — with a sigh — they simply haven’t met “the right woman.”

“Among men aged 25 to 34, the tendency is to think marriage is still an option,” says Exter. “After 34, people find other options.”

Dave Winer hasn’t given up on the marriage option. At 31, the software designer routinely works a seven-day week — and most of his workdays are long ones.

He says he’ll take an occasional Tuesday or Wednesday off and head for the beach, but he enjoys working weekends because it’s so quiet in the office that he gets much more accomplished.

“I’m working very hard now,” he says, “but I’ve always worked very hard. I’m that kind of person. I’ve been that way since high school. I generally put more time into things than other people do.”

When Winer says “things,” he means one thing: work. He’s president of Living Videotext, a small but growing and successful personal-computer software company in nearby Mountain View that he founded five years ago. And yes, he’s a bachelor — by choice.

He says he’d like very much to get married and raise a family someday, but not yet. He simply doesn’t have the time. “I’d also like another eight hours every day, for just kidding around and goofing off,” he laughs. “Unfortunately, the hours aren’t there.”

And, for the moment, he has other priorities.

“I have a specific agenda,” Winer explains. “The single most important goal in my life is to be responsible for at least some part of how people use computer technology in the future.” But there’s this one other nagging concern: Once this workaholic entrepreneur does get around to marriage and a family, “I’d like to be able to play basketball with my kids — before I get too old.”

How old is too old? In 1970, the average bridegroom was 22.2 years old; today he’s 25.5. It doesn’t sound like much of a change, but Exter says these figures reflect a significant change in attitude. Less societal pressure to marry young has allowed both men and women to go to school longer and spend more time starting their careers.

“I want to get married, but I never put pressure on myself to get married at a certain age,” says John Takahashi, an emergency-room physician in Santa Clara.

At 33, he is eight years younger than the median age of single men who live alone. He’s also handsome and successful, and might have been considered the perfect “catch” in another time, another era, and he would have married young.

No more. “Most of the people I know have postponed marriage until after 30,” he says. “It’s a changing society. Because of the new technology in medicine, a lot of women are realizing that there’s less pressure on them to get married (and give birth) at an earlier age.”

And there’s another factor. “We’ve all heard how high the divorce rate is,” Takahashi says. “Most people only want to get married once. No one wants to go through a divorce.” He says he doesn’t mind taking a little time before tying the knot — to be sure he’s really found that certain someone.

Nor does he mind living alone. “I prefer having my independence,” he says, pointing out that his 40-hour-a-week job also requires him to work a variety of different shifts — an overnight shift followed by three day shifts, and then five days off.

But what about those long, lonely nights? “We all have those times,” Takahashi agrees. “Those weekends and weekday evenings when you’d like a little companionship.” But he likes his job, he’s actively involved in Stanford Bachelors — an organization made up of about 200 single, male Stanford grads that invites single women to its parties — and he’s a self-styled “audio-video freak” who spends time collecting and playing with the latest technology.

Under these circumstances, who minds an occasional lonely night?

Dr. Duane Alwin, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan, maintains most don’t mind it at all — yet another blow to conventional wisdom. “Most people who live alone, regardless of their marital status, seem to have slightly less contentment than those who live together,” he says. Alwin points out, however, that single people who live alone are more outgoing and socially active than single people with roommates. “They tend to compensate for their aloneness by seeking companionship outside the home,” he says.

But those long, lonely evenings apparently get a little longer as single men grow long in the tooth. Dr. Paul Verden, a sociology professor at Santa Clara University, cites the findings of a noted anthropologist. According to “Single Life: Unmarried Adults In Social Context” by Peter Stein (St. Martin’s Press, $13.95), older single women tend to be content with their lot in life, while older single men experience “frustration, discontent, depression and phobic tendencies.”

Says Verden, “Certainly the old stereotypes — the lonely spinster and the happy-go-lucky bachelor — are no longer appropriate.”

There are those who resent that stereotype and others.

“The only times I’ve been unhappy have been when society puts pressure on me,” says a San Jose schoolteacher who asked that his name not be used. He has remained single because he prefers his solitary lifestyle — although he has adopted two boys — and says he’s been involved in relationships but doesn’t think about marriage.

“People assume that a 40-year-old unmarried man must be gay. I had problems with the adoptions for that reason.”

“I just enjoy being alone a lot,” says the teacher. “I’ll be perfectly content until someone says, You live in that big house by yourself? What’s wrong with you?’ Then I’ll be down in the dumps for a while.”

In an October 1984 column in the New York Times Magazine, novelist Winston Groom wrote, “I wish people would stop asking when I’m going to get married.”

He was writing about his decision not to marry, but he also found himself describing the moment he’d finished his last novel, was sitting on a terrace in Jamaica with his feet up and a drink in hand “And I suddenly found myself thinking, Why am I doing this? I’ve worked hard, done well, but what good is it if there’s no one to share it with?”

NPR’s first audio story, seven minutes that are incredibly funny and include interviews with Justin Hall and Peter Merholz, comes with a blogging timeline prepared by Andy Carvin, an NPR online exec and online diarist since 1994. As you might expect from a person who was writing chronological updates on his life and work years before Winer began Scripting News in 1997, Carvin groups Winer with online journals and other personal sites that were bloglike before the term existed.

Here’s the part that put the coal in Winer’s stocking — the timeline of blogging begins counting up from the day Jorn Barger came up with the term weblog.

December 1997: Jorn Barger starts a daily log of interesting Web links published in reverse chronological order, calling it Robot Wisdom WebLog. The term “Weblog” is soon generalized by other online publishers to include any page with frequent short posts in reverse chronological order.

There’s nothing unfair about this logic. It’s completely reasonable to decide that blogging didn’t start until the term “weblog” was coined to describe the practice. Even more fair is to place the medium in context with the seminal stuff that came before. Back in 1997, Winer owed a debt to the publishers who came before him — one he rarely if ever acknowledges. Blogging did not spring whole from his skull like Athena from Zeus.

But as you might have guessed, Blogfather don’t play that way. Six a.m. Pacific on Christmas Eve, and Ebenezer Dave wakes up kvetching and bullying Carvin on Twitter:

davewiner: @acarvin, like so many before, confuses the naming of blogs with the invention of blogs. barger wasn’t the first, for the 180th time. about two hours ago

davewiner: btw if you’re going to publish yet another wrong timeline of blogging, why not allow for comments so people can correct your mistakes. about two hours ago

davewiner: @acarvin, jorn copied me, used my software, as did all the early bloggers. if you dispute that, where your evidence? 35 minutes ago

davewiner: @acarvin, and you’re not consistent. according to your logic, the moment podcasting started was when the word was chosen. 34 minutes ago

davewiner: @acarvin, in both cases, we needed a word for what we were doing. when jorn came up with weblog, we all went with it. he wasn’t the leader. 33 minutes ago

davewiner: and the really shameful thing about it is that the record is all there, in the archives. if you wanted to do it right you could have. 33 minutes ago

davewiner: @acarvin, i saw that i’m in the timeline for other things, but i want credit for the work i did. it was hard and not obvious stuff andy. 19 minutes ago

davewiner: there were quite a few bloggers before barger, notably kottke and camworld. look at blogtree for a record of who inspired who. 16 minutes ago

davewiner: blogtree is offline, but it’s all in archive.org’s database. 15 minutes ago

davewiner: @rexhammock, thanks! and with that, i’ll say no more about NPR, and I’ll avoid listening to it this week to keep from getting depressed. 2 minutes ago

On and on it goes, always to the central theme of Winer’s professional life: The work I did was important, influential and instrumental. The work others did was incremental and insignificant. In keeping with the season, every idea he’s ever had was a virgin birth.

[I]n this case, the execs, the nemesis of the Internet, seem to be taking the side of the Internet. They can’t promise the writers a share of the money they make on the Internet because they don’t see how they’re going to make money on the Internet. How can you share something that doesn’t exist??

I have a sneaking suspicion that Dave was trying to see how many absurdly ignorant statements he could cram into two sentences. If, in fact, the entertainment industry didn’t know how to make money off of the internet, and wasn’t making money now, they would gladly give the writers a larger share of nothing to get them back in their cubes. The execs would be getting something for nothing. What’s more likely is that the execs are making money on the internet and have a plan for how to make more, and they want to keep it for themselves.

For another thing, it’s not just the “new media” (which is a catch-all provision that tends to cover everything less common than DVD sales) contract clauses which are up for debate. So, too, is the DVD residual rate and calculation clauses… surely Dave doesn’t think that people aren’t making money on DVDs right now.

When we talk with people from the entertainment industry they explain how they can’t just release stuff on the Internet, because they have agreements with the rights holders that assume the realities of the old more restrictive distribution system. Those are the writers.

One of two things are going on here, Dave. Either a) they’re lying to you or b) you don’t really understand what they’re saying. Possibly both. While it’s theoretically possible for a writer to retain the rights to their works, that’s just not the way the contracts are laid out. Typically WGA members engage in works for hire and (as a safeguard) assign all rights in their work to the production company, which means that the only “rights” they have are the rights granted to them in their contracts. Typically, the right to royalties or other forms of payment.

It may be that Dave’s post is using the writer’s strike as something of a parable, but having any experience with entertainment law makes the premises laughably inaccurate.

The rest of the post is just bizarre. His “I’m not going on strike, even though I am a writer” line makes me wonder if Dave even understands what the Writers Guild of America is. He’s probably offended that he’s never been invited to join. He then goes on to compare, oddly, writing software to writing screenplays.

Wha?

I don’t hold on to a principle that I must be paid for what I do. I look at money as separate from my living. I live through my work. Some of it pays, and it’s unfortunately unpredictable what that is. Welcome to the net, welcome to the 21st century.

I think Dave just forgot to take his meds today. I’m sure we’ll get a post tomorrow telling us how we just didn’t get it, and what he really meant was something else entirely. Keep an eye out for “Writer’s Strike Day 2″ or something similar.

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.)

These mob attacks are fun for you guys, but they’re not fun for the people who get ganged up on. Some people take advantage of that, and use it to build flow and page rank, and distract people from issues they don’t want to talk about. Publications like Wired should be counted on to slow things down and check the facts. If we have more of that, we’ll have less of the bad stuff.

So, since we know Dave reads us here at EOW… allow me to ask a direct question:

Dave, exactly which facts are you claiming that Wired got wrong?

From where I’m sitting, everything they wrote was right on the money. They quote Calacanis, who says he didn’t kick Dave out of TechCrunch20. Dave has already agreed with this. Wired then quotes Calacanis who quotes O’Reilly. Note that it was not Wired citing to O’Reilly as fact, they provided the same quote that Calacanis provided to them.

Even if we assume that simply providing the quote gives it some imprimatur, the quote itself is 100% accurate. O’Reilly never states or implies that Winer has been disinvited from all conferences, only from one specific conference.

Then Strange, the author of the Wired piece, does his own writing, in which he describes Winer’s reputation for being a loud-mouthed jerk (my words, not Strange’s) and then does a little finger wagging at Calacanis for seeming to pretend not to know that Winer is an opinionated hot-head.

So… again… where, exactly, did Wired go wrong? Aside from maybe reading a little too much into Calacanis’ statement.

PS: We’re now back to Dave disliking mobs after a spell of him really liking them.