We create the stories of the connected society

It’s rare that a blog post is so personal, or powerful, or relevant, or honest, or dignified… whatever that special quality is… that it re-defines the whole medium for me. But it happens.

Bono is a rock star musician. Jeffrey Sachs is a rock star economist. This week, they were also bloggers for FT.com. Read their posts and you can see clearly how people with passion and purpose can produce journalism that stands out from the routine, gutless reporting we’ve been indoctrinated to view as normal and right.

Earlier this month a New York University student went “undercover” into her own journalism classroom to report on the class for Mediashift, a blog published by the US public television network PBS. She didn’t tell the professor or fellow students what she was up to, or ask their permission. In her report, student Alana Taylor [...]

As Barack Obama took to the floor at the Democratic National Convention, it became utterly apparent to me that this is the year that will change everything.  You see, I was perched on my couch in Boston in a familiar position; cross-legged, with my MacBook on my lap, ears perked up, attentive to every word.  [...]

The magazine Editor & Publisher has long been the must-read trade rag for anyone in the U.S. newspaper business. Which is another way of saying: Like the industry it covers, Editor & Publisher in print has been fading for years. E&P in print switched from a weekly to monthly in 2004, while its web site [...]

Like many of you, I’ll be glued to the tube for the Olympics and fresh glimpses of the world’s oldest civilization. Fortunately, there are other ways to look at a four-leaf clover. China has more than 30 million bloggers, by some estimates. A few are political. A few have been imprisoned. Some are unusual, such [...]

At this week’s Personal Democracy Forum, a sponsor distributed a low-tech, but highly effective stress toy to attendees willing to listen to their pitch: a rubber ball on an elastic string that connects to a velcro band. Strap the band to your finger and you can play catch with yourself. Which is what I came [...]

Here’s a chance for members of the We Media Community to get involved in something new, practical and ambitious. Bread for the City, a food bank, health clinic and social services provider for the poor in Washington, DC, wants to use the tools of media creation and distribution to help its clients and community members [...]

From Singapore: Conference Bay, an eBay-style auction marketplace for buying seats at conferences worldwide. Nothing new here, right? We all know about online auctions. The only innovation is applying a well-tested online transaction model to a different niche -  in this case a potentially high-value niche that may provide real utility – and new buying [...]

For the second year in a row we’ve documented a devastating lack of satisfaction with journalism in American – and an opportunity to do something about it. Here’s the formal press release of the new research, which we discussed in the opening session of this year’s We Media Miami Forum and Festival. The good news: [...]