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

Free Burma! - International Bloggers' Day for Burma on the 4th of October 2007

Free Burma! - International Bloggers' Day for Burma on the 4th of October 2007

This is a useful way to make blogging worth something.




You can also get up-to-date information from Burma at this blogspot spot

Old hand embraces new forms of journalism

This piece from Martin Stabe's blog at the UK Press Gazette.
Veteran reporter Seymour Hersh says that online journalism is the future. This is good news after all the hyped doom and gloom of Andrew Keen's The cult of the amateur. Keen's thesis is that the Internet is killing our culture and our economics because it's too democratic and the wisdom of the mob is not wisdom at all. He makes a heartfelt plea for us to put our faith in the experts, including professional journalists. Keen argues that journalism is losing out to the cacophony of voices in the blogosphere.

It's nice to see someone of Hersh's stature actually making a cogent counter-argument

Posted by Martin Stabe on 25 September 2007 at 10:15am

When Seymour Hersh was in London in July, his appearance at City University was, with the exception of the odd quote afterwards, entirely off the record.

But this week the investigative journalist has gone on the record in a rare interview with the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles.

The Q&A piece contains an interesting exchange revealing Hersh’s views on how the web is transforming journalism, and the effect of his stories on the The New Yorker’s traffic:

JJ: New York magazine has a profile this week of Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, and they call him “America’s Most Influential Journalist.” What have bloggers like Drudge done to journalism, and how do you think it compares to the muckrakers that you came of age with?

SH: There is an enormous change taking place in this country in journalism. And it is online. We are eventually — and I hate to tell this to The New York Times or the Washington Post — we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular. And they are really going to cut into daily journalism.

I’ve been working for The New Yorker recently since ’93. In the beginning, not that long ago, when I had a big story you made a good effort to get the Associated Press and UPI and The New York Times to write little stories about what you are writing about. Couldn’t care less now. It doesn’t matter, because I’ll write a story, and The New Yorker will get hundreds of thousands, if not many more, of hits in the next day. Once it’s online, we just get flooded.

So, we have a vibrant, new way of communicating in America. We haven’t come to terms with it. I don’t think much of a lot of the stuff that is out there. But there are a lot of people doing very, very good stuff.

Thanks to Mark Hamilton for pointing this out.

Read more about: onlinejournalism

Does news HAVE a future?

It's probably still a rare thing for a blogger to actually advertise a rival blog in a post, but here goes. This deserves a shout. I got this message from Steve Borris, the associate director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology at the Washington University in St Louis. I've had a quick tour of "the future of news" and it's probably going to become a regular stop on my rounds of the blogosphere. It's covering some of the same ground as me, but ventures into technology a bit more than I might do. The "future" of news and journalism is a subject close to my own intellectual interests and my own passions about the future of journalism (but not as we know it). I will add a permanent link in my own blogroll, but for now, check it out. Here's the gist of Steve's message:

Hello,

I would like to call your attention to "The Future of News" blog that was launched last month. It is a spin-off of a college course by the same name that I teach at Washington University in St. Louis. This site provides a vision of what news will look like 5-15 years from now. It also provides ongoing commentary on how closely day-to-day events fit this vision. While most web-based information on the future of news tends to focus on the perspectives of those involved with current news organizations or technology, this site will also incorporate perspectives from history, political science, consumer marketing, economics, and finance. This should be evident in the three permanent articles that I have posted on the site: News as it was meant to be, Four advances that set news back, and The future of news.

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?