Google Web Directory: Technology Weblogs

Take a look at Google Web Directory's list of Technology Weblogs. One hundred and eighty listed, and the top one, as you'd expect, is Slashdot.
Tenth on the list is Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog, which will earn a look from me based on its title.

By the way, four more of the Top 10 weblogs on technology have similarly descriptive titles. In my opinion, bloggers are shooting themselves in the feet with the mysterious and meaningless (except to them) titles they seem to favor. Seven of the Top 10 News and Media Weblogs also have what I'd call descriptive titles.

Google Web Directory: News and Media Weblogs

Take a look at Google Web Directory's list of News and Media Weblogs.
There are 49 listed. Could a normal person wanting to stay up on the latest thinking about weblogs and journalism hope to review even just the Top 10 (by Google PageRank) daily?
What I'd like to see is an RSS feed of the Top 10 PageRanked weblogs in each of Google Directory's categories.

Sources Publish Full Text of Media Interviews on Own Weblogs

In Every Last Word, American Journalism Review reports on interview sources who use their own weblogs to publish the full text of interviews they do with reporters.
Says one interviewee:

"It seemed natural for me to publish 'the rest of the story' online for readers who might be interested."

The article goes on:

More and more, the exchanges that precede news stories are making it onto the Web. This is different from a news organization publishing an article in Q&A style, or offering a broadcast transcript online. It's a decision, usually by the reporter or the source, to share parts of conversations that didn't make the cut.

Sheila Lennon, the interviewee mentioned above, offers another thought:

"Not every traditional reporter will feel this way, but I don't think supplying a transcript undercuts the writer at all," Lennon says. "The reporter creates the backbone of the report, mulching all the facts into a story people will want to read. Then you throw up links to the rest of the photos, the interviews, the principals' Web sites--primary sources, for those interested in a fuller report.
. . . "Traditional reporters who think of the Web as just another way to publish the same story they'd write for print are the ones most likely to be rattled by the source putting up the conversation," says Lennon. "Online journalists are more likely to understand the freewheeling nature of the Web--the synergy that comes when their story stands on its own and the source's transcript sends more people to the reporter's story. . . ."

I agree. I tend to look at reporters and editors as filters. They take the information available and turn it into a coherent entry point for the topic at hand. Not even a magazine-length article can cover the waters, as it were. The full texts of interviews, whether posted by the reporter or the source, are an important part of "the whole story."
The American Journalism Review writer keeps her article intellectually honest by posting her interview with Lennon. It contains some great thoughts that didn't make it into the story, space limitations being what they are:

I'm so used to working this way on the Web that when I read a roundup story in the paper these days -- 3 new CDs, 3 people running for state rep, 4 bloggers -- it often seems to me to need links. This was the promise of hypertext: The net offers an unlimited news hole, with audio and video and everybody else's offerings to boot.
The Web is a terrific editor's medium. Web-savvy copy editors -- curious, widely informed on a lot of topics, interested in "the whole package" -- are natural bloggers and could, when we're all finally wired, shift quickly from making news pages to hunting down the best related links.

Random thought: Does this concept extend to in-person interviews, instead of just e-mail interviews where the transcript already exists? With the source wanting to record the interview (presumably on microcassette recorders) do reporters start carrying extra AA batteries to ensure the interview happens? Kind of a role-reversal from the one embarrassing time when, in my reporting days, my pen died and I had to borrow a writing utensil from the city clerk. I've carried two pens ever since.

American Journalism Review Articles on Weblogs

My Mass Communications Theory final is to write a literature review on my topic of interest, which in this case is weblogs. My professor wants a mix of academic and professional publications, leaning more toward the academic. Confession: In all my undergraduate years, I didn't touch an academic journal on mass communications. We learned by doing, which is about the only way to learn the practice of journalism. Now that I'm in my graduate years, I'll have to head in a more "scholarly" direction. I certainly hope ThesisBlog readers don't turn up their noses at American Journalism Review like this page on Washington & Lee University's web site did:

Obviously . . . American Journalism Review and the like are not scholarly titles.
Even such sources as the Gallup Poll and Public Opinion do not qualify for inclusion in the two-article requirement because they merely report findings without developing a literature review or purposefully testing an hypothesis.

Scholarly or not, here are the eight articles their internal search engine says American Journalism Review has written on weblogs. I may write separate posts on some or all of them.

Every Last Word: Sources who publish transcripts of their interviews? It's becoming more common.
-- Extensive mentions of weblogs. Will have to write a separate piece on this one.

Tough Calls: Deciding when a suicide is newsworthy and what details to include are among journalism's more sensitive decisions.
-- Just mentions Jim Romenesko's weblog.

The Metamorphosis: The past 25 years have brought vast changes in the technology and corporate structure of journalism.
-- Lots of interesting thoughts, but with just one glancing mention of weblogs.

Et Tu, St. Pete?: Media ethicists are appalled by a venerable newspaper's deal to get its name on a Tampa arena.
-- Just mentions Jim Romenesko's weblog.

Scribe's Secret: The Houston Chronicle fires reporter Steve Olafson after learning he was the author of a local Weblog.
-- Will have to write a separate piece.

Journalistic Blogging: Mainstream news organizations could steal an idea or two from blogs.
-- Separate piece on the way.

Online Uprising: Many in the mainstream media dismiss the screeds of bloggers--people who post their views on their own Web logs--as so much blather. But to this Los Angeles writer, these maverick sites are well worth exploring.
-- Can you guess?

Not So Bad: The performance of online news sites on September 11 was better than the early reviews suggest.
-- That's right.

By the way, does American Journalism Review have the world's longest subheads? In two of the above links, that's not even the entire subhead.

Why Did Google Want Blogger?

Wired News: Why Did Google Want Blogger?
Wired News offers an understated reference to the explosion of Google-buys-Blogger commentary on the Web recently:

SAN FRANCISCO -- Forget war and strife, the only news that mattered on the Web this week was Google's acquisition of Pyra Labs, the scrappy San Francisco startup behind the Blogger weblogging tool.

Trying to answer the question in its headline, Wired talks to Chris Cleveland, CEO of a search-engine company.

"We worked on this project for a couple of months and everything seemed to be going pretty well until about January when communication stopped," said Cleveland. "Now I know why."
Cleveland said Google's acquisition of Pyra would, quite simply, help Google create a more accurate search engine by adding rich new sources of data gleaned from weblogs.

Wired reminds us of one reason why <Flame War Provocation>Google is the best search engine</Flame War Provocation> with this history lesson:

Google became the preeminent search engine by exploiting the structure of hyperlinks that make up the Web. Instead of using a simple keyword search, which is how most early search engines found their results, the company developed a proprietary system, called PageRank, which looks at hyperlinks as well as keywords to determine which pages are most popular on the Web.

Now the meat of the argument:

The PageRank system combines keyword searches with a method of ranking the popularity of a target Web page based on the number of inbound links from other highly ranked pages.
That's where Blogger comes in. Weblogs are a rich source of links, which are posted in a fast, timely manner. Not only that, many weblogs are readable in RSS, or rich site summary, a standard syndication format that is easily parsed and indexed by search engine spiders, the bots that search engines use to crawl and index the Web.
"Web pages are hard to index without a standard structure," said Cleveland. "But Google can easily index RSS feeds."

CyberJournalist.net

CyberJournalist.net: The Weblog Blog
At least it's not eJournalist or iJournalist. This weblog from the American Press Institute aims to offer "reports on weblogging as journalism."

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