What’s Real about Fake News

lincboomI’m here nominally to address the problem of what’s being called Fake News. At its core this is as labeled — news that is fake; news that isn’t news; deceptive content intended not to inform or convince but to manipulate and make trouble. It’s a huge problem, we’re told, that will require new algorithms and tons of cloud to fix. But I’m not so sure. You see the key to keeping fake news out is to put real news in.

The recent Fake News tempest has got me thinking about what I do and don’t do right here in this simplest of all corners of the Internet. I’m just one man […]

By |December 8th, 2016|2016, Media, Newspapers, Social Media|94 Comments
Read More

Famous American blogger strikes back against China

seinfeldA few weeks ago I published a column here about online journalism. You may remember it from the picture of Jerry Seinfeld which I am using again here. While I have many readers in China, my work isn’t normally distributed there so I was surprised when a reader told me that column had been translated almost in its entirety and republished on a Chinese web site. How should I feel about this?

I might be flattered or I might be angry. Certainly the translation was not authorized by me and I received no payment for it. It goes far beyond the 250 word excerpt that is the day-to-day definition of Fair Use […]

By |July 27th, 2016|2016, Media, Newspapers|28 Comments
Read More

What’s the deal with online journalism?

seinfeldNot very long ago I started answering questions on Quora, the question-and-answer site. My answers are mainly about aviation because that’s my great hobby and one of the few things besides high tech that I really know a lot about. But there was a question last week about Internet news coverage that I felt deserved better answers than it was getting. So I contributed an answer that has been read, so far, only 388 times. I don’t like making a real effort that is so sparsely read. So here, with a little mild editing, is my answer to “What are the flaws in online journalism and media today?” And “How can they be addressed?”

I […]

By |June 28th, 2016|2016, Advertising, analytics, Media, Newspapers, Social Media|71 Comments
Read More

So Pat McGovern walks into a bar…

PatinredPat McGovern died this week at 76 in Palo Alto totally surprising me because I didn’t even know he had been ill. Uncle Pat, as we called him, was the founder of Computerworld back in 1967 and the year before that research firm International Data Corp., started in his suburban Boston kitchen. Pat helped turn the computer business into an industry and employed a lot of people along the way including me. He was an exceptional person and I’d like to tell you why.

Pat ran a company that published about 200 computer magazines all over the world. Each December he traveled the globe to give holiday bonuses to every employee he could find. The bonuses […]

By |March 20th, 2014|2014, Breaking News, Companies, Entrepreneurship, Newspapers|42 Comments
Read More

Edward Snowden is trying to be Daniel Ellsberg on Twitter

snowdenscreensWhat are the differences between Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, and Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers back in 1971? Not much, really, but the distinctions that do exist are key:

  1. 1.  Ellsberg, a true product of the establishment he was undermining, had the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously releasing in its entirety all that he had to share, while Snowden is dribbling his news through The Guardian and the Post, with neither paper taking much of a legal or ethical stand behind him, much less printing verbatim thousands of pages of classified material as happened with the Ellsberg case in the early 70s. If Snowden is the Ellsberg of this century, […]
By |July 9th, 2013|2013, Government, Internet, Newspapers, Politics, Privacy and Security, Social Media|73 Comments
Read More