So hot. So Not!

This is just a chuckle piece.

The infamous Hollywood gossip-monger, Perez Hilton is now the subject of some interesting blogonews himself. Apparently he has been IMing with Jonathon Jaxson [sic] and there's sex tapes involved.

Yuksville, chucksville, but don't look away, car crash ahead! Jaxon seems obsessed with outing gay celebrities - what's that about in 2008. It's so yesterday.

I have no comment, check it out yourself:

Perez Hilton

Sex Scandal

Celebrity Buzz The blogger's in hot water for allegedly soliciting dirty videos from a naughty young man. You can breathe easy people: The sex tape in this scandal does not feature Mario "Perez Hilton" Lavandeira, he of the freakish hair. Instead, Lavandeira reportedly solicited sex tapes from another blogger in exchange for "help."

Does this stand as a case study in the differences between "real" and "accidental" journalists - the existence of a code of ethics and the fact that most journalists would take it seriously?

Hilton and his ilk are amusing (sometimes) and gross (most of the time), but they exist in our world now.

What I take some simple pleasure in is the way that other equally dubious blogspots have responded with clear contempt. The fruit does not fall far from the tree.

If this is the future of "journalism", I will drink myself to death!

Bloggers and Journalists: Friends or Foes? : CyberJournalist.net

Bloggers and Journalists: Friends or Foes? : CyberJournalist.net

Audio and video of the blogging panel from this year’s Society of Professional Journalists Convention:

Legal action against bloggers has skyrocketed during the past three years. While some cases have merit, most are lawsuits designed to suppress free speech. Meanwhile, journalists have sought to differentiate themselves from bloggers through self-regulation and legislation. But should they? As new organizations have begun to embrace blogs and user-generated content, the “blogging v. journalism” debate has begun to dissolve, replaced instead by a greater awareness that what threatens bloggers today may well threaten professional journalists tomorrow.

— Watch video (67.2 MB, 33:34)
— Listen to or download audio

Follow APEC from the Stuff website

Tracy Watkins, political editor of the Dominion Post is in Sydney for the APEC summit and she's blogging away at Stuff.co.nz
It might be interesting to get a close-up view from "behind" the "ring of steel". Her second entry is here.

A commercial news media blog about journalism - a rare bird?

Public Eye: CBS News Blogs and Editorial Forum - CBSNews.com

The CBSNews.com website hosts an interesting blog that I've just come across. (I know, you've all been there, done that.) It's a noble mission on behalf of CBS...

Public Eye’s fundamental mission is to bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News — transparency that is unprecedented for broadcast and online journalism.

That's totally refreshing. It's not just CBS journos posting here, the key dude is Brian Montopoli, who previously worked for the respected Columbia Journalism Review.
Public Eye's worth checking out and there's an RSS feed available too.

Celeblogging - so yesterday

"Celeblogging" - the tasteless art of tittle-tattle about two-bit half-wits that we're sick of hearing about.

Does Australia, or the world for that matter, really need or deserve another senseless and humourless website devoted to blogging about celebrities? Well, apparently one company thinks there's money to be made by mining this weak vein once again. Here's a story from Friday's edition of crikey, which outlines the deal.

Crikey 27 April 2007

Look out, wonkettes: Defamer hits Oz

By Jane Nethercote

Defamer now has an Australian lovechild.

Based in LA, the original Defamer blog -- part of the Gawker Media stable along with Gawker , Wonkette and Valleywag -- takes Hollywood gossip for a smart and riotous spin.

Australia is getting some of the action. Not that there's been much fanfare -- Crikey only discovered the active site yesterday thanks to a bit of procrastinatory internet gambolling. Gawker Media's gadget blog Gizmodo also has an Australian spin-off .

The two titles are published in Australia by Allure Media -- an outfit that was established by Netus, an investment company which sets up proven tech-based business models in the Australian market. Netus, which is financially backed by News Limited, is run by folk like eCorp alumni Daniel Petre and Alison Deans who helped bring eBay to Australia (as MediaConnect/ITJourno (via Squash) has noted).

Crikey understands that Netus initiated the arrangement, approaching Gawker Media to do a licensing deal. And although it's stopping at two blogs at this stage, Allure Media in fact has "rights to all the Gawker titles", managing director of Allure Media Chris Janz tells Crikey.

But we shouldn't expect an Australian Wonkette any time soon. They're stopping at one gossip publication for now.

Defamer was chosen for Australia, rather than its more famous sister blog Manhattan-based Gawker, because the Hollywood focus translates more easily for an Australian audience. And Defamer Oz will be sharing copy with the US version.

As for the Australian content, it's in good hands. At the helm is Jess McGuire who established herself as an Australian blogosfigure at pop culture mecca Ausculture which brought us all-important live blogging of Australian Idol and Big Brother, Neighbours wraps, Dolly Parton Appreciation Week and turkeyslapgate.

So will the bitchy and witty Ausculture vibe penetrate Defamer Oz? "I would hope so", McGuire tells Crikey. There are "no plans of impersonating Mark [Lisanti], editor of Defamer. The good folks that are getting me to do it, knew what they were getting into. I won't change my writing style too much ... Though perhaps I "won't be as rudely angry about political issues".

The Defamer approach is to "not ever really be cruel" and "that's my philosophy" for the Australian edition, she says. The aim is to produce something that's shamelessly pop culture-based but more clever than one-trick ponies like puerile gossip blog Perez Hilton. "I can't fathom why the Australian media is bending over backwards for Perez Hilton", says McGuire. "He's not a good writer ... I have a problem with the media fel-ating him". There are "far better bloggers in the States writing about pop culture".

Still, she concedes, "there's a market for everything".

Yep, including a "bitch slap" festival between the Defamer crew and a two-bit, "blogger to the stars", Perez Hilton.

The sooner we get over our obsession with celebrity, the better. This stuff is so purile it makes reality television look positively Shakespearean, not!

Just a thought: Isn't Perez Hilton that little dog that Paris carries in her Gucci tote along with the cocaine, marijuana, s*x toys and video-camera?

Newspapers and blogs: Closer than we think?

Newspapers and blogs: Closer than we think?

Just how close are the mainstream and the social media? This study by David Vaina at USC Annenberg School of Journalism seems to indicate they're closer than you might think. This study reports on how blogs and the mainstream media have been covering Iraq. I'm not sure how exactly you can measure this if you consider how many blogs there are out there. There's a further link to the fuller report from this site.

Blacksburg Massacre - the techno-legal time gap and new media

In an interesting article by Joe Garofoli at SFGate we are beginning to see a discussion about the many ethical and lego-technical dilemmas thrown up by the way that NBC chose to use the Cho Seung-Hui suicide video.
The basic question is should the news media use everything it can get - such as the "eyewitness" cameraphone footage and the Cho tape, just because it can? There are also issues of verification, authority and authenticity around this. Not to mention the traditional ethical issues, such as grief intrusion, the coverage of violent crimes and suicide and the rights of victims.
I have written (see link to my books below) about what I call the ethico-legal paradox (that there is a contradiction sometimes between the law and ethics in media decision-making) and the techno-legal time gap (that there is a disconnect between what the technology can be used for and any form of legitimate regulatory regime to govern its use).
We see both of these issues being played out in the raging debate about the use of the Cho video in NBC (and other) newscasts and on the web.
Garofoli wrote that in the Blacksburg situation we see the visible interdependence between old and new media for the first time. Well not quite. I have written and lectured on this over the past year to my colleagues and students. I call this phenomenon "Journalism in the Age of YouTube".
It first came to my notice in July 2005 during the London bombings. The BBC and other media were running loads of amateur footage shot on cameraphones and many stills of the underground explosions. But the real tragedy of this was the shooting of Brazilian tourist, Jean Charles de Menezes by the police a couple of days later. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that they had seen "wires" poking out of his jacket when police tackled him to the ground and shot him between five and seven times in the head. The news that Mr de Menezes was a "terrorist" led the frontpage news the next day. It took the British police more than 24 hours to correct the wrong information from eyewitnesses. This is the real danger in this unmediated and uncorroborated fast-media world.
The second time I noticed this, and what sparked my interest even more was inNovember 2006 when a student at UC-Berkeley was tazered by over-zealous security guards. With in hours footage shot by eyewitness cameraphone was posted on YouTube and within 48 hours it was a big international story. I saw it for the first time on a commercial network bulletin in Perth, Australia.
What was interesting about this event was that it set up a referential feedback loop between YouTube and the mass media. YouTube hosted the phone footage, then it was picked up by the campus student press, then by local (San Francisco) news organisations, then it made it onto CNN and Fox and went global. But almost immediately, YouTubers were cross-posting the Fox and CNN clips back into their networks. When I last checked on 21 April 2007 there had been over one million hits on one version of the phone video, but there are several others that have similar hit rates.
I agree that there is a growing interconnection between traditional media and the digital natives, such as YouTubers. My interest in pursuing this is to know how far it's going and where it might lead.
I am currently writing a book about this and would love to hear from EM readers about their own experiences, thoughts and incidents. If you come across more writing on this, pls let me know about it.
Here's another thoughtful news report that really nails some of the ethical issues. The AP television writer, David Bauder, had this to say, and it's a comment I agree with:

The pictures alone _ 11 showed a gun pointed at a camera lens _ were repulsive. Many who saw them viewed it as a second attack, an invitation to copycats and a fulfillment of Cho's demented wish for attention.

There's also some good coverage over at the UK Press Gazette blog.
Meanwhile, this is what the good burgher's of Blacksburg have had to put up with. Would you like to have dinner with this sh!t blaring away from the widescreen TV over the bar?