Blogging a massacre

Blogging a massacre
This has been a very bad day in the United States. The massacre at Virginia Tech has shocked the world, but it has also taught us something important: In a major disaster, the victims themselves will tell us about it. The Virginia Tech website provided basic information within minutes. Even more to the point, news of the killings was carried by email and text messaging and blogs like Planet Blacksburg....

This has been a very bad day in the United States.

The massacre at Virginia Tech has shocked the world, but it has also taught us something important: In a major disaster, the victims themselves will tell us about it.

The Virginia Tech website provided basic information within minutes. Even more to the point, news of the killings was carried by email and text messaging and blogs like Planet Blacksburg.

The mass media like CNN were using cell-phone video from students on campus. Other students have bitterly complained about the slowness of authorities to alert them, whether by email, text messaging, voicemail, or the campus public-address system.

The countries with the most advanced communications systems will be the first to tell the world about catastrophes like this one. But even Third World countries have cell phones and some kind of internet access. Increasingly, we will see car bombings in Baghdad and riots in Mogadishu, disease outbreaks in Jakarta and AIDS deaths in Zimbabwe, reported by those who are there.

Blogging is Publishing
I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

The Webby Nominees and Winners
Time flies...and here are this year's Webby Nominees and Winners. Check the nominees and winners in the categories that matter most to you, and tell us all what you think....

Time flies...and here are this year's Webby Nominees and Winners.

Check the nominees and winners in the categories that matter most to you, and tell us all what you think.

A Small Commercial Spot
You may have noticed a new link at the top of the right-hand column. It's a modest effort to promote The Tyee, a very good online journal published here in Vancouver. Full disclosure: I've been writing for The Tyee since 2003, and I take some pride in being a contributor. You may not agree with its point of view on all topics (I certainly don't), but you'll find it offers...

You may have noticed a new link at the top of the right-hand column. It's a modest effort to promote The Tyee, a very good online journal published here in Vancouver.

Full disclosure: I've been writing for The Tyee since 2003, and I take some pride in being a contributor. You may not agree with its point of view on all topics (I certainly don't), but you'll find it offers some of the very best online writing anywhere.

If you can add to its readership by becoming a free weekly subscriber to its newsletter, I'd take it as your vote of support for what I'm doing here.

Rousing the OWLs
Since the 1990s I've belonged to the Online Writers' List, which at one time was an exuberant bedlam of folks figuring out how to write for this medium. In recent years, alas, it's become very quiet. Then some feckless spammer recently started using it, a couple of list members complained, and it occurred to me that a lot of webwriters aren't even aware of it. So I suggested to the...

Since the 1990s I've belonged to the Online Writers' List, which at one time was an exuberant bedlam of folks figuring out how to write for this medium.

In recent years, alas, it's become very quiet. Then some feckless spammer recently started using it, a couple of list members complained, and it occurred to me that a lot of webwriters aren't even aware of it.

So I suggested to the list that we post news about ourselves and see what issues we're dealing with these days, and some intriguing replies came in. Perhaps it's time we recruited some new participants and started sharing ideas again.

Along the same lines of getting people in touch with one another, if you're a webwriter or editor and you're not on the list here (right column, near the bottom), send me your URL. And if you know of any good resources for online writers, send them along too.

BEA Book Expo America: Good for Independent Publishers?


Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium
Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt: Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little...

Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt:

Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little brat of online encyclopedias.

Sanger is staging an electronic coup d'état with a new wiki called Citizendium, to be launched early in the new year. But there's a twist: the site will start out as a mirror image of the English version of Wikipedia through a process called "forking."

By making a replica of Wikipedia, Sanger hopes to attract a bevy of experts to the project, who will then refine the wobbly content pulled from Wikipedia's infinite pages to create a resource that is authoritative and reliable. ("We descend upon their content, red pens in hand and start our own new community," he recently wrote.)

"On the day of launch, we have over 1,000 people ready to get to work, and a large portion of them are professors, graduate students, research scientists, legal scholars, technical thinkers and assorted other intellectuals."

Question is, how far will his highfalutin model go in the unruly hurly-burly of cyberspace, where the wisdom of the crowds rules the day?

I've put a link to Citizendium in the Webwriting Resources list, and the article itself has a link as well.

The Corporate Blogging Book
Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

The Future of Text Online
At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?. The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover....

At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?.

The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover.