News Blinks & Pointers: July 11, AM ’05
- Superfuture (thanks to Mr. Whipps)
- Holmes report reports: This year, according to the 2005 KPMG International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting, the majority (52 percent) of the world’s largest companies issued separate reports detailing their corporate social responsibility performance, up from 42 percent the year before." Other highlights:
- At the national level, the two top countries in terms of separate CSR reporting are Japan (80 percent) and the United Kingdom (71 percent). The highest increases in the 16 countries in the survey are seen in Italy, Spain, Canada, France and South Africa.
- Pew reports newspapers and traditonal media still valued: "Most Americans continue to give favorable ratings to their daily newspaper (80 percent, compared to 20 percent unfavorable), local TV news (79 percent to 21 percent), and cable TV news networks (79 percent to 21 percent). The margin is only slightly smaller for network TV news (75 percent to 25 percent). In fact, the favorable ratings for most categories of news organizations surpass the positive ratings for President Bush and major institutions such as- the Supreme Court, Congress, and the two major political parties. The exception to this pattern are large, nationally influential newspapers, such as the Washington Post and New York Times, whose favorable ratings have declined markedly. According to Pew, ”The public has long been ambivalent about the news media—faulting the press in a variety of ways, while still valuing news and appreciating the product of news outlets.” And…
- Overall, a third of Americans below age 40 cite the internet as their main source of news and many of these people are reading newspapers online. Consequently, while people under age 50 remain far less likely to read a print newspaper than are older people, they are turning to local and national newspapers online in fairly significant numbers. Overall, one-in-four (24 percent) Americans list the internet as a main source of news. Roughly the same number (23 percent) say they go online for news every day, up from 15 percent in 2000; the percentage checking the web for news at least once a week has grown from 33 percent to 44 percent over the same time period.
- News audiences more likely to watch news that discloses VNR sources: News audiences say they are more likely to watch a news broadcast that always discloses the source of any thirdparty video it uses, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 television viewers by Ipsos for video news production company D S Simon Productions. Overall, 42 percent of respondents said they were more likely to watch a program that always disclosed video sources, and 39 percent were just as likely to watch—a total of 81 percent who said they would be affected negatively by disclosure. Only 16 percent said they would be less likely to watch a news program if it disclosed the sources of outside video. <<Aside: this is the value of subscribing to the Holmes Report… nothing on the DS Simon website… sigh!>>
- ODEO for podcasts
On Moderating Comments…
The "to comment or not to allow comment" dialog is happening again… (I’d hardly call it a raging debate). The word moderating strikes me as clouding the issue of managing dialog. For any dialog to be effective it has to be moderated in some form. But when dialog is made exclusive by limiting who gets to participate it strikes me that this then changes the blog into a traditional media site, moderated message board or web page by making the reader a spectator rather than a participant.
There seems to be to kinds of behavior when it comes to comments:
Fully Enlightened: Blogs are all about dialog and participation – spam is a small price to pay. Blogging requires a time commitment. Get over it. I get about 30+ spam messages a day which take me all of about 30 seconds to clean out. That’s less than I spend on junk mail. So, let the comments flow. Good, bad, ugly… I’ll take them. This is a talking post.
I also don’t have any problem with a company or individual pulling down
comments that are off topic, that are abusive, or that represent the views of trolls and
agitators. It’s your blog. But if you want dialog – and especially if
you want to stimulate dialog – you are going to need to put up with
some heat. There is a line that gets crossed at some point though. As soon as that heat goes way off topic or is clearly just
soap-boxing, you have the right to clean it out. After all, dialog is
dialog.But restricting up front who gets to post comments and who doesn’t is a worse sin than not allowing them at all. It introduces a layer of complexity that results in exclusivity and superficiality.
It also ignores a very simple notion – the Blogosphere is wonderfully self correcting.
The Lock-Down: This person doesn’t allow comments. They are either too scared or lazy to moderate the conversation. Their view is that this is my web site from which I transmit my views using blog technology as a convenient publishing mechanism. Screw dialog or participation, this is about transmission.
IMHO you can now add to this category those that want to restrict the conversation in the name of convenience. (I refuse to allow the frame "moderate" to be applied to this issue). Sorry if this is a little tough but it just isn’t in the spirit of what blogging is all about. Web sites get to be exclusive. Blogs need to be inclusive.
I don’t mind logging on to post comments – even though it’s a pain. But if that then requires some kind of authorization by the site owner then I’ll never do it again – and it’s unlikely I’ll visit that site ever again.
I recognize that there is a flaw with the the current generation of Blog technology. It allows spam in far too easily. I don’t have a solution to the spam problem other than packet filtering
at a host level by the major blog engines. This isn’t hard to do, but
it does require an investment. Also, controlling comments is still too hard – I’d love it if I could manage comments from my phone. Saying that, I’m very happy with how TypePad works.
Let the comments flow….
Technorati The Snail & Transparency…
Steve at BusinessWeek points to why Technorati is so slow… He’s right, "This spells opportunities for others, from Google to PubSub, if they muster the machinery and algorithms to master the blogosphere." Frankly, the sooner that Google does what Technorati does the happier I’ll be.
What’s also interesting is Steve’s transparency… he posted his reporters notes. This is brilliant and deserves applause.
Just love mindmaps…
Stumbled onto these mindmaps today in a momentary lapse of focus – actually, it was a pretty sustained period of zippo focus…
On Corporate Blogs
Interesting story from InfoWorld. Points to the Cannondale blog, which I hadn’t come across before. Includes comments from iUpload CEO – they’ve recently integrated their blogging solution with Google maps..And, Robin over at iUpload has an entry on Canadian Idol’s use of blogs to engage with thier community…
