madpenguin.org— One of the most interesting news stories of the year is right here. It's Digg itself. Here is my in-depth interview with lead Diggers Kevin Rose & Jay Adelson. I love digging Digg. It's just fun.
Dec 16, 2005View in Crawl 4
Finally! the power of the Internet and the People is demonstrated by Digg! And I have a feeling this is the tip of the iceberg (hopefully!) I like the fact that this is a success story about a guy who just wanted to change things, and not do it just for the profit! Just goes to show you what you can do with passionate ideas. I hope one day this will create a new kind of "TechTv", and ComCrap will be cryin the blues!
The whole article was written with a "Digg vs. Big Media" tone to it, but that battle does not exist - nor can it. Where the hell would Digg be if there were no news sources to Digg?
Interesting read indeed. Among the many smart things Kevin did was figure out how to stay ahead (for the most part, a little trouble with Paris) of the growth curve. So what I want to know is where this alex albrecht guy comes from?
Hi bogtha,Thanks for your reply. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you and I are disagreeing on two basic points: First, it seems as if you are asserting that journalism does require either personal interviews between a journalist and an individual who either witnessed an event or who is authorized to speak on behalf of an institution (gov or biz or NG0). Second, it seems as if you are implying that journalist needs to be either trained or professionally employed full time in the art of news gathering. Third, it seems as if you are implying that journalist needs to be associated in some professional capacity with an established media outlet. Please correct me if I have misstated your position.Assuming that I have not misstated your position, here's my reply. First, IMHO, journalism today can get news from a blog. Eye witnesses can supply their information on a blog, as can experts in a given field or persons authorized to speak on behalf of an institution. Also, the fact that Digg gets news from secondary and tertiary sources is much the same function as the AP wire. Second, IMHO a thoughtful person such as many of the Diggers can provide good editorial insight into choosing to report that info to Digg, and they can also place the story in context, which are the functions that a reporting and editing team provide. Formal training or experience working in the field is not necessary. Third, the relationship between the "reporter" or the "editor" and the media outlet need not be anything more than a fleeting, ad hoc association, as long as the media outlet is well-networked, like Digg is. In other words, if you can take the individual functions of a team of reporters, a team of editors, and the equipment and staff needed for a newspaper and break all those functions down into small bits, it is possible for a loosely-coupled network of Digger to perform exactly the same function as the traditional news team. You have a point in that for the time being, most of the stories on Digg seem to have been originated by a traditional news source. In the case of those stories, Digg is acting sort of like the Slashdot moderators who mod up or mod down comments made about a Slashdotted story. For example, I happen to like geeky girl's editorial judgment. So I go to her page and I look at what she has dugg, because I think that I will probably be interested in the same things that she is interested in. I am relying on geeky girl to filter news stories for me, in much the same way that I rely on the San Francisco Chronicle editors to edit the AP stories for me, and to publish only those original news stories by Chronicle writers which are good. Probably most important, I give more attention to stories that the Chron editors put above the fold than those below the fold. Same for my reliance on geeky girl. Now here's where it really starts getting interesting. Groklaw has become a credible source of news, as you said, but Groklaw started out as Pamela Jones just blogging her observations on the SCO trial. OhMyNews in South Korea relies on citizen writers to provide them with original stories, and if those stories get modded up high enough, the citizen writers who created those stories get paid commensurately. Now let's take it one step further. Let's suppose for example that geeky girl is deeply dialed into tech events in the town where she is living. Geeky girl does have her own blog, and she does report on stuff on that blog and posts some of it to Digg. (I think you actually do this, don't you geeky girl? If she doesn't let's pretend she does.) You can see the parallel between geeky girl's work in posting original research on her blog and then Digging that blog posting and the work of citizen journalists in South Korea. My point ultimately is simple. Digg is yet young. In five years, Digg will be a household word, much as Google is now. And Digg will have achieved its success through the voluntary contributions of people like geeky girl and Pamela Jones, with a fraction of the capital that was spent over the same period by market leaders such as NBC. If the media market leaders are not careful, their roles will be usurped by distributed journalism media outlets like Dan Gillmor's blog, like OhMyNews, like Diggnation, and Digg.com.
Regarding the article: I don't understand in what sense digg.com is"distributed journalism". In journalism, you go outand find stories to report on them. You create content.Here, someone sees a webpage where someone has actuallywritten a story (or a blog pointing to another webpagewhere someone has actually written a story), and we givea thumbs up to the link to that story if we "like" it.Is that valuable? Sure. Is it journalism? No. Another thing is, they say that people vote onwhich stories get to the front page, and that makesus like news editors. I have never done that and havebeen registered for a while. How many of you actuallyvote before a story gets to the front page? I alwaysonly read the stories on the front page (possiblygiving a digg to maybe one out of every 20 or 30 ofthe stories, though). I don't think of digg.com asan editing site at all. I don't even have the abilityto reject a story, for example. "The idea arose out of my own frustration with not being able to see the stories that I wanted to see".That is the reason for the success of digg.com. Lotsof slashdotters who noticed that they'd already reada story on another site that they then later saw linkedon slashdot.com. Rather than having bookmarks to eachindividual news site, you want to have links from onepage to all the most interesting stories. I don't evenfind most of the stories on digg.com particularlyinteresting and only skim the list of headlines,however. I haven't noticed a tendency for the storiesto better reflect my tastes; if anything, it has donethe opposite. I read a greater percentage of thestories posted on slashdot. In fact, nowadays I sometimes stories posted here that have already beenon slashdot. The comments on slashdot are also, at threshold 3at least, much more interesting than the normaladolescent spew here. The AJAX FX are cool. More places are going to bedoing that, too, though. For these reasons, I see digg.com as somethinguseful for now that is just waiting to be replaced bythe next fad.
einfeldt,I mostly agree with what you and lockeownzj00 are saying. I do like the term "distributed journalism", and it does describe the phenomenon we are discussing. *However*, it's not Digg that is doing this. It's larger than any one website, it's a product of multiple websites and people acting together, with newer "Web 2.0" (ugh) technologies as the enabler.Things like trackbacks, weblogs, comments, Atom/RSS feeds, etc, all mix together with cheap hosting so that whatever your interest is, you can easily get hold of news and filter it as you see fit. This will really take off once identity and reputation stabilise.I don't place the same importance upon Digg as you do; perhaps the VC funding etc will be important, but I feel that the real advances will be made in a decentralised way rather than with any one website or organisation. Chuck new articles on weblogs onto Usenet, come up with a system for filtering what you see based upon topic and "web of reputation" (like "web of trust", but with your contacts deciding what's high-quality), and it's like a decentralised Digg with no need for Digg itself, with a varying threshold instead of "front page or not front page", and mostly immune to spam/crap.This doesn't require anything special in terms of technology; a typical Uni student could whip up the required software in weeks. The problem is social in nature; how do you get people to sign up for -yet another- identity scheme; how do you get people using the software, etc.
hi bogtha,thanks again for your reply. >>>I do like the term "distributed journalism", and it does describe the phenomenon we are discussing. *However*, it's not Digg that is doing this. It's larger than any one website, it's a product of multiple websites and people acting together, with newer "Web 2.0" (ugh) technologies as the enabler.>>>I could not have expressed it better than you have above. Thanks for summarizing it so well.
perkDec 16, 2005
Bah, from the title I figured it was an interview with Jay and Silent Bob...
hugh_janisDec 16, 2005
Finally! the power of the Internet and the People is demonstrated by Digg! And I have a feeling this is the tip of the iceberg (hopefully!) I like the fact that this is a success story about a guy who just wanted to change things, and not do it just for the profit! Just goes to show you what you can do with passionate ideas. I hope one day this will create a new kind of "TechTv", and ComCrap will be cryin the blues!
ryebryeDec 17, 2005
The whole article was written with a "Digg vs. Big Media" tone to it, but that battle does not exist - nor can it. Where the hell would Digg be if there were no news sources to Digg?
diggnorantDec 17, 2005
Interesting read indeed. Among the many smart things Kevin did was figure out how to stay ahead (for the most part, a little trouble with Paris) of the growth curve. So what I want to know is where this alex albrecht guy comes from?
einfeldtDec 17, 2005Submitter
Hi bogtha,Thanks for your reply. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if you and I are disagreeing on two basic points: First, it seems as if you are asserting that journalism does require either personal interviews between a journalist and an individual who either witnessed an event or who is authorized to speak on behalf of an institution (gov or biz or NG0). Second, it seems as if you are implying that journalist needs to be either trained or professionally employed full time in the art of news gathering. Third, it seems as if you are implying that journalist needs to be associated in some professional capacity with an established media outlet. Please correct me if I have misstated your position.Assuming that I have not misstated your position, here's my reply. First, IMHO, journalism today can get news from a blog. Eye witnesses can supply their information on a blog, as can experts in a given field or persons authorized to speak on behalf of an institution. Also, the fact that Digg gets news from secondary and tertiary sources is much the same function as the AP wire. Second, IMHO a thoughtful person such as many of the Diggers can provide good editorial insight into choosing to report that info to Digg, and they can also place the story in context, which are the functions that a reporting and editing team provide. Formal training or experience working in the field is not necessary. Third, the relationship between the "reporter" or the "editor" and the media outlet need not be anything more than a fleeting, ad hoc association, as long as the media outlet is well-networked, like Digg is. In other words, if you can take the individual functions of a team of reporters, a team of editors, and the equipment and staff needed for a newspaper and break all those functions down into small bits, it is possible for a loosely-coupled network of Digger to perform exactly the same function as the traditional news team. You have a point in that for the time being, most of the stories on Digg seem to have been originated by a traditional news source. In the case of those stories, Digg is acting sort of like the Slashdot moderators who mod up or mod down comments made about a Slashdotted story. For example, I happen to like geeky girl's editorial judgment. So I go to her page and I look at what she has dugg, because I think that I will probably be interested in the same things that she is interested in. I am relying on geeky girl to filter news stories for me, in much the same way that I rely on the San Francisco Chronicle editors to edit the AP stories for me, and to publish only those original news stories by Chronicle writers which are good. Probably most important, I give more attention to stories that the Chron editors put above the fold than those below the fold. Same for my reliance on geeky girl. Now here's where it really starts getting interesting. Groklaw has become a credible source of news, as you said, but Groklaw started out as Pamela Jones just blogging her observations on the SCO trial. OhMyNews in South Korea relies on citizen writers to provide them with original stories, and if those stories get modded up high enough, the citizen writers who created those stories get paid commensurately. Now let's take it one step further. Let's suppose for example that geeky girl is deeply dialed into tech events in the town where she is living. Geeky girl does have her own blog, and she does report on stuff on that blog and posts some of it to Digg. (I think you actually do this, don't you geeky girl? If she doesn't let's pretend she does.) You can see the parallel between geeky girl's work in posting original research on her blog and then Digging that blog posting and the work of citizen journalists in South Korea. My point ultimately is simple. Digg is yet young. In five years, Digg will be a household word, much as Google is now. And Digg will have achieved its success through the voluntary contributions of people like geeky girl and Pamela Jones, with a fraction of the capital that was spent over the same period by market leaders such as NBC. If the media market leaders are not careful, their roles will be usurped by distributed journalism media outlets like Dan Gillmor's blog, like OhMyNews, like Diggnation, and Digg.com.
Closed AccountDec 17, 2005
Good interview
kwoffDec 18, 2005
Regarding the article: I don't understand in what sense digg.com is"distributed journalism". In journalism, you go outand find stories to report on them. You create content.Here, someone sees a webpage where someone has actuallywritten a story (or a blog pointing to another webpagewhere someone has actually written a story), and we givea thumbs up to the link to that story if we "like" it.Is that valuable? Sure. Is it journalism? No. Another thing is, they say that people vote onwhich stories get to the front page, and that makesus like news editors. I have never done that and havebeen registered for a while. How many of you actuallyvote before a story gets to the front page? I alwaysonly read the stories on the front page (possiblygiving a digg to maybe one out of every 20 or 30 ofthe stories, though). I don't think of digg.com asan editing site at all. I don't even have the abilityto reject a story, for example. "The idea arose out of my own frustration with not being able to see the stories that I wanted to see".That is the reason for the success of digg.com. Lotsof slashdotters who noticed that they'd already reada story on another site that they then later saw linkedon slashdot.com. Rather than having bookmarks to eachindividual news site, you want to have links from onepage to all the most interesting stories. I don't evenfind most of the stories on digg.com particularlyinteresting and only skim the list of headlines,however. I haven't noticed a tendency for the storiesto better reflect my tastes; if anything, it has donethe opposite. I read a greater percentage of thestories posted on slashdot. In fact, nowadays I sometimes stories posted here that have already beenon slashdot. The comments on slashdot are also, at threshold 3at least, much more interesting than the normaladolescent spew here. The AJAX FX are cool. More places are going to bedoing that, too, though. For these reasons, I see digg.com as somethinguseful for now that is just waiting to be replaced bythe next fad.
bogthaDec 18, 2005
einfeldt,I mostly agree with what you and lockeownzj00 are saying. I do like the term "distributed journalism", and it does describe the phenomenon we are discussing. *However*, it's not Digg that is doing this. It's larger than any one website, it's a product of multiple websites and people acting together, with newer "Web 2.0" (ugh) technologies as the enabler.Things like trackbacks, weblogs, comments, Atom/RSS feeds, etc, all mix together with cheap hosting so that whatever your interest is, you can easily get hold of news and filter it as you see fit. This will really take off once identity and reputation stabilise.I don't place the same importance upon Digg as you do; perhaps the VC funding etc will be important, but I feel that the real advances will be made in a decentralised way rather than with any one website or organisation. Chuck new articles on weblogs onto Usenet, come up with a system for filtering what you see based upon topic and "web of reputation" (like "web of trust", but with your contacts deciding what's high-quality), and it's like a decentralised Digg with no need for Digg itself, with a varying threshold instead of "front page or not front page", and mostly immune to spam/crap.This doesn't require anything special in terms of technology; a typical Uni student could whip up the required software in weeks. The problem is social in nature; how do you get people to sign up for -yet another- identity scheme; how do you get people using the software, etc.
einfeldtDec 18, 2005Submitter
hi bogtha,thanks again for your reply. >>>I do like the term "distributed journalism", and it does describe the phenomenon we are discussing. *However*, it's not Digg that is doing this. It's larger than any one website, it's a product of multiple websites and people acting together, with newer "Web 2.0" (ugh) technologies as the enabler.>>>I could not have expressed it better than you have above. Thanks for summarizing it so well.