We Inc. is now

The next question I hear coming from moderator Jason Calcanis is how do you make citizen media a viable business.

But first, a segue into  what would Andrew Heyward do if he had more choices? He says he’d love new media, but the trade off for working in Big Media is larger audience and impact. New Media, he says, has a lower barrier to entry, but lower impact. Heyward says that he finds content creation on the web to be "primitive."

Back to Craig Forman: he sees this as the next phase of media being "respect my intelligence." That’s what people under age 40 want, he says. Forman also tells a terrific story about the beginnings of the Wall Street Journal, when Dow and Jones (and another guy) ran around and took notes about Wall Street doings on their sleeves and then printed a paper. (Which sounds frighteningly like something a blogger might do.)

Jason brings up something that I’ve actually mentioned on Jay Rosen’s site: Why do large media companies tend to separate their digital business from the rest of the business? Heyward says the news department is sort of a "vendor" to the digital part of the business. Heyward emphasizes that his journalists are not encouraged (in fact discouraged) from commenting on issues on the Public Eye. Jason asks about objectivity: Does it exist, or are all newspeople affected by bias?

The folks in the blogosphere with the most hits are those who are upfront about their point of view, and then talk about the facts in that context, says Scott Rafer. Bias is going to exist, and if we choose not to recognize it we’re foolish.

Craig says it’s not transparency by authenticity.