Busy week­end, topped off today by Bobby’s 5th birth­day party. He actu­ally turned 5 last month but issued an exec­u­tive decree that he wanted to hold off on his offi­cial birth­day party until the weather warmed up. So, on Memo­r­ial Day, a dozen young friends and class­mates joined him at the San Ramon water park.

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New York Times pub­lic edi­tor Daniel Okrent offers his find­ings on the Times’ errant early cov­er­age of the case to go to war in Iraq.

Why did the Times fail? Okrent lists these rea­sons: the hunger for scoops; front-page syn­drome; hit-and-run jour­nal­ism; cod­dling sources; and end-run editing.

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Today’s Boston Globe looks at Cre­ative Com­mons, some rights reserved licenses, and the power of Inter­net music distribution.

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Paul Boutin, Leslie Walker and David Pogue, among oth­ers, tell Medi­aDai­lyNews why pri­vacy con­cerns regard­ing Google Gmail ser­vice are overblown.

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Swopa reports on a cer­tain New York Times polit­i­cal reporter’s pen­chant for writ­ing the same story over and over and over. Check out what a search of the New York Times web­site for Adam Nagourney’s byline from early 2003 to today produced.

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Ear­lier this week I wrote about the pro­posed audio broad­cast flag for dig­i­tal radio.

I’ve been exchang­ing emails on the sub­ject with some­one who lives and breathes this stuff, Jim Grif­fin, head of Cherry Lane Dig­i­tal. Jim is mov­ing from L.A. to D.C. to get closer to the policy-making action.

He posted his thoughts on the sub­ject this morn­ing on the pho mail­ing list. They’re worth shar­ing with a larger audi­ence, so I’ll reprint them here:

JD and I started this dis­cus­sion pri­vately, so I’m going to take it public:

Dig­i­tal Audio Broad­cast (DAB) is NOT dig­i­tal radio.

It’s not radio.

And in effect, it’s not broad­cast. It’s narrowcast.

Con­tinue reading »

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Film­maker Michael Kirk appeared in a Wash­ing­ton Post chat this morn­ing to dis­cuss last night’s PBS Front­line pro­gram, “The Way the Music Died.” Inter­est­ing reading.

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NewScientist.com news ser­vice: The threat of legal action and hefty fines has done lit­tle to stop inter­net users around the world trad­ing music and video files, accord­ing to a new study of net­work traffic.

“There’s been no decline in the num­ber of peo­ple file-sharing,” says Chris Col­man, Euro­pean man­ag­ing direc­tor for Sandvine.

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I’ve been asked to keynote this year’s Dig­i­tal Sto­ry­telling Fes­ti­val in beau­ti­ful Sedona, Ari­zona. I owe a debt of grat­i­tude to Salon’s Scott Rosen­berg, who keynoted last year and rec­om­mended me this time around.

Some quick back­ground: Founded in 1995 by Dana and Denise Atch­ley, the Dig­i­tal Sto­ry­telling Con­fer­ence & Fes­ti­val immerses par­tic­i­pants in the prin­ci­ples and prac­tice of dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling, from fun­da­men­tals of dra­matic struc­ture, voice, and pac­ing to the lat­est dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and soft­ware tools. In this richly col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment, par­tic­i­pants learn from the top instruc­tors and vision­ar­ies in the field, and net­work with peers who have made dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling an essen­tial tool for success.

The Dig­i­tal Sto­ry­telling Asso­ci­a­tion (isn’t that Derek Powazek front and cen­ter in the photo?) and the Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Sto­ry­telling are key dri­vers of the conference/festival. (If you’re inter­ested in the topic, I wrote about dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling here, and Hilary McLel­lan keeps a list of resources and arti­cles here.)

Atten­dees are fly­ing in from all over the coun­try, as well as Europe. There are still plenty of open­ings to this first-rate event. Here’s the speaker page. I’ll be talk­ing about per­sonal film­mak­ing, par­tic­i­pa­tory media, and copy­right law in the dig­i­tal age.

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Just launched: MyCaliforniaProject.org, the online home of My Cal­i­for­nia: Jour­neys by Great Writ­ers, a col­lec­tion of nar­ra­tive travel and adven­ture sto­ries by 27 Cal­i­for­nia authors and jour­nal­ists. All of the con­trib­u­tors donated their work so that pro­ceeds from this spe­cial book can ben­e­fit the Cal­i­for­nia Arts Coun­cil and school writ­ing pro­grams statewide. Visit the site here or pre-order your copy here.

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