Homage to Drudge

I just can’t let the day get away without acknowledging internet news entrepreneur Matt Drudge’s speech 15 years ago describing his story and notoriety to the National Press Club. I watched the speech again and am struck by this quote:

And time was only newsrooms had access to the full pictures of the day’s events, but now any citizen does. We get to see the kinds of cuts that are made for all kinds of reasons; endless layers of editors with endless agendas changing bits and pieces, so by the time the newspaper hits your welcome mat, it had no meaning.

This is the key to why I work on this blog. Continue reading

Disclosure doesn’t cut it

Being a tech nerd, I came across this story that piqued my interest because it seems to address the nature of how much you can trust what you read in a reputable media publication. You can read the backstory for yourself, but for those that don’t have time, the short story is that Cnet, a reputable tech publication online published a list of the ten best products of the recent Consumer Electronics Show that included DishHopper. The product, while probably neat, isn’t important, but what’s important is that this product’s creator is being sued by CBS who insisted that Cnet remove that mention of DishHopper. CBS can do that because as owners of Cnet, they have the right to do so. It became a story because a few staff members left Cnet in a public huff.

The words from the opinion piece are a restatement of the core of this site:  Continue reading

Jail for thee, not for me

I try to be nonpartisan here and my interest in this story is to shed some possible insight into the thinking of NBC attempt at showmanship and the follow-on consequences. I bring noted media critic @HowardKurtz’s opinion into what the District of Columbia police should do in response to David Gregory’s showing a magazine clip for a semi-automatic gun that is illegal to possess in that district where the show was taped.

I bring it up is for two reasons: First, the very fact that it has gotten any sort of play is due to the many voices of the Internet bringing up what would have been ignored by the media in the past. Continue reading