Personal Media · 9 November 2011 ·
No News For Me
I’m what you would probably consider a news junkie. Everyday I spend around two-three hours reading the news, coming in through various channels: Blogs, Twitter, the websites of the Guardian, Spiegel, Die Zeit, Heise and so on. From political commentary, election results, campaigns, protests, climate change, copyright legislation, immigration, the NHS, etc.—I read it all. I would usually be up-to-date and well informed.
But after doing this for a few years now, there is little left to surprise me: A new news item on the Guardian? I can guess what it says. Apple releases new hardware? Sure they do. The new Linux kernel brings new hardware drivers? Interesting. NHS reform? Tell me something new. Homoeopathy doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to? Well, neither does Reiki. Climate change is a fact? I’ve seen the evidence. HTML5 might lose the <time> element? Nope, luckily <time> is back. Financial Markets in turmoil? Oh sure, even Berlusconi resigns. The current economic system is inherently unfair? Yep, and that’s not even going into gender aspects. This is how you become a street photographer. This is the law. Apple sues Samsung and Samsung sues Apple? Who cares. But did you know that soon you can talk to dolphins? Disregarding the quality of most science reporting, which is sometimes utterly appalling. But I even read about about pretty pylons and ugly graphs
I devour the content, side with issues, applaud authors who write good analyses and get annoyed with those who—in my view—miss the point. Some stories just make me sad, some make me laugh—good satires usually do both at the same time.
Most of the things I have read, I have already forgotten. Some I keep in my del.icio.us, and from the ones I remember and those I keep there, most of them are irrelevant. But occasionally they covered my back in exams and discussions, and I was able to provide arguments I otherwise couldn’t. Thus, this habit was incredibly useful at times.
But it’s getting too much, too dull and too repetitive, in particular with anything political. Don’t get me wrong, I love politics. But when you scroll through your Twitter feed or the news stream, you can pretty much predict what you’re going to read when you click on an article, and I am getting tired of it. Instead of the Guardian, I would be better off reading Pettit, Popper or Plato. I feel that there’s more to be discovered in there than the daily iterations of the papers. It’s a little bit like zooming out, from the nitty gritty daily politics to a wider picture. But there is another aspect to it: There’s not much I can do about most of the news. Whether I read them or not, not much will change (other than my emotional state after reading a particularly aggravating text). Also, I could also spend the time reading literature and actually taking my mind off things, too.
Enough is enough: For one month I won’t be reading any news. No Guardian, BBC, Spiegel, Die Zeit, Heise, Macrumors, no blogs, I will still be on Twitter but I will disregard any news-like content there. I will make an exception for articles on statistics, evolution and psychology. After all, this is what I study. Oh, and XKCD. One must read XKCD.
Let’s see how it goes.
If the world suddenly comes to an end, please do let me know.
Media Tech-stuff · 4 November 2010 ·
Digital Veganism
Constanze Kurz of the Chaos Computer Club, crop of a photo by re:publica10, cc-attr
In an interview with the German Weekly Freitag, Constanze Kurz, spokesperson of the Chaos Computer Club, develops the notion of “data veganism” in the Internet. People who stay out of all sorts of social networks and similar online services due to privacy concerns, are data vegans. People who stay away from the worst offenders are data vegetarians. Apart from the majority, who indulge in all sorts of social networking activity, there is also a fourth group, the conscious meat eaters, who use social networks like Facebook, but are very cautious about the sort of information they provide.
Furthermore, Ms Kurz argues that the agenda of digital vegans and vegetarians is ultimately to the benefit of all, since it will lead to more choice and higher awareness amongst the consumers of online services.
So what are you? Vegan? Vegetarian? Or are you going for the beef? And if so, are you at least making sure it’s organic?
Media · 7 July 2010 ·
The Times and the Paywall
A quick note on Murdoch’s experiment of erecting a paywall for the Sunday Times. There is currently an introductory rebate on the online subscription for the Times to get the whole thing started. Thus, you can currently get access to the Times and Sunday Times website for £1 for 30 days, instead of paying £1 per day and £2 for one week’s access.
A drop in readership
Yet the statistics show a considerable drop in visitors. According to Alexa webstats, timesonline.co.uk experienced a considerable drop of -16% of their total page views during the last 7 days, -50.3% over the last month and -18.8% over the last three months. (These Alexa statistics prove to be rather confusing here, but from the graph a big drop at around the introduction of the paywall seems evident.) The Inquirer already proclaims that the Times’ “readership plummets”. But although this is evident from the numbers mentioned, I do not share the view that already means it’s a failed experiment (yet). Whether or not Murdoch played the right card and will make money, depends on how many people will actually sign up, and whether the revenue from the paying readership will be higher than from placing advertisements on the website. It does not matter whether the actual readership declined drastically. It’s about balancing the numbers. If I have 1 million readers who each only earn me 5p per user through advertisements, I have made £50,000. But if I have only a tenth of the readership, but these 100,000 people each pay £1.50 on average, then I have made £150,000, alas thrice as much money. Mind you, these numbers are entirely made up and I believe the actual advertisement-based revenue is much higher than 5p. Yet, no one apart from the Times and Murdoch’s Newscorp have the statistics on this, and even if, it’s too early to tell whether the Times will be duly missed by its online readership. If so, I doubt it was because of its high quality science section.
In the meantime, the Guardian gives all the former Times readers a warm welcome and even begins to publish the data behind their facts and statistics.
Times taking a loose stance on copyright
However, there’s an interesting spin to the Time’s paywall for their “award-winning journalism” (Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International) Yet, the “real value” that she’s talking about seems to come from elsewhere and I’m inclined to say that the paywall the Times erected is permeable, but from the wrong way: The Times have ripped an article about a wee holiday trip of former home secretary Kenneth Clarke and Panorama’s Tom Mangold from a website called Gentlemen Ranters. Ironically, this is the very same behaviour that Murdoch continuously speaks out against: About those horrible blogs and evil Google stealing their precious content from their websites and not paying for it. No, the Times did not pay the Gentlemen Ranters, they did not even ask for permission. And although they credit the author, they don’t not mention the original source, thus depriving the Gentlemen Ranters of traffic. Ironically, even Google and most bloggers would have linked and accredited the source properly. But it seems that the media industry has double standards here: It’s not ok if you want to access content for free, but they may use whatever they want, put it behind a paywall and don’t pay a penny for it.
References
For an in-depth discussion of paywalls, I can recommend Shirky’s outlook on the future of newspapers and Cecil Adams case study of online boards.
Politics Media · 27 March 2010 ·
One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words
Don’t get me wrong, I wish him all the best. Maybe he can raise the quality of the Sunday Times a wee bit.