Twittering, free speech and sports

I apologize for defying blogging etiquette by not posting for a while, and then jumping in with a self plug, but I thought many of you might be interested in this issue because it touches on aspects of free speech, social media, and regulation as they relate to sports.

I am sure you are aware of last month's NFL incident with Chargers' cornerback Antonio Cromartie, where the team charged him a fine of $2,500 simply for castigating training-camp food on his Twitter page. In fact, coach Norv Turner specifically told Cromartie that he wasn't to say anything critical about the organization on Twitter.

Several other incidents with players saying so-called sensitive or offensive things on the microblog have happened recently. Notable ones were Vikings' Bernard Berrian's tweet, overblowing the consequences of quarterback Tarvaris Jackson's knew injury, and Houston Dynamo star Brian Ching's tweet about a cheating referee. Ching was charged $500 for this.

After several teams tried to disallow Twitter use by players altogether, the NFL finally decided to simply ban tweeting by players within 90 minutes of the start of an NFL game, and until after media interviews following the game. This seems like a more reasonable form of regulation since it involves merely restricting it on the field and during media interactions.

Other than the fact that this sort of content regulation infringes on free speech, however, there is also an opportunistic nature to these rules, considering NFL teams use Twitter to announce updates on events and policies (draft picks were revealed through Twitter, for instance, and ironically, the Chargers scooped their first-round draft pick on the microblogging service). This gives the impression that teams and the organization simply want to cover up anything that might be harmful to the reputation of the organization.

The US Open jumped on the Twitter-regulation bandwagon last week, when it sent an email to all players with a list of dos and don'ts about the kinds of messages that cannot be tweeted. Apparently, the Tennis Integrity Unit is concerned that players might reveal sensitive information that could be potentially used for match fixing and sports betting - information like player injuries, weather conditions, etc.

Again, the US Open itself uses Twitter to promote matches, polls, contests, and even US Open gear. But it has no qualms about regulating what players tweet about. Like NFL players, many tennis stars--most notably, Andy Roddick, the Williams sisters, and Britain's Andy Murray--have taken to tweeting extensively. Both Roddick and Murray were outraged and outspoken about it.

Now, here's my shameless self plug: I wrote about this topic in some detail at the Huffington Post yesterday: do check it out if you can.

Excellent interactive map at the NYT

Boy, the New York Times Web site sure has come a long way from looking like a carbon copy of its print edition.

This excellent interactive map/infographic of Hillary Clinton's Africa visit not only tracks her route through the different countries, but also offers blurbs summarizing her message at each stop, links out to related NYT articles, and features embedded audio and video clips of significant events in the various destinations.

What they could add to this are links to noteworthy pieces on other Web sites, especially citizen blogs and independent news sites, hence allowing traffic back and forth.

And if they're going through all that trouble, they might as well allow me to embed it as well!

DNA – no longer the fail-safe blueprint of crime scene investigations?

This is truly troubling. The fact that DNA evidence can be fabricated for crime scenes takes away the one guaranteed test we had in order to establish criminality (or non-criminality), however infrequently it may be used and followed through even in cases where DNA is available.

Researchers at Nucleix, a lifescience company based in Tel-Aviv, manufactured fake DNA that could potentially be planted at a crime scene. They extracted the DNA to be planted from a small sample tissue, such as a strand of hair or a drop of saliva. They then separated out DNA-free blood cells from donor blood by centrifugation to remove all traces of the donor’s original DNA, and added the "fake" DNA to it. By using DNA profiles from databases, they managed to replicate the double helix, which resembled the structure of DNA from the original hair/saliva sample.

Considering the number of people who are wrongly convicted and spend time behind bars for no reason---apparently there is no consensus on that number---but we can all agree that that number, no matter how small, is unjust and cruel when you are talking about an individual's wasted life. And this is not just in the case of life sentences or death row inmates, since even innocent people who find themselves exonerated after years in prison have a very hard time making a life for themselves in the real world once the stigma of a conviction is attached to them.

This has mostly to do with the lack of standardized compensation policies across the country, including no compensation statutes in 28 states.

To date, 241 innocent people have been exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence thanks to the efforts of the Innocence Project. The judicial system by itself is so unreliable that it does not naturally allow a convicted person rights to DNA testing even if he were to seek it.

However, this is not to say that DNA evidence is absolute, and as some would argue, it cannot---like any other type of evidence---stand alone in a criminal case. Questions have been raised about how unique genetic profiles really are. Moreover, DNA from years-old cases can be damaged, or contaminated.

But DNA evidence is still the most scientifically valid method we have to date to establish proof beyond doubt.

As if to reinforce this, and somewhat comfortingly, the Tel-Aviv lab was able to discern differences between natural and man-made DNA evidence based on the methyl groups that are added to DNA during the natural process of replication.

Thankfully, we haven’t beaten Nature yet. So, let's hope we can use it.

Perhaps, a raucous town hall for Obama?

In the aftermath of the scream matches and slugfests that have peppered town hall meetings by Democratic senators around the country, what the president encountered at his health care town hall in Portsmouth on Tuesday seemed like a peaceful PTA meeting.

For one, he is the president (and even though it seems unlikely considering the brouhaha we’ve witnessed all around, the weight of the office might quell even the most angry, irrational protester just a tiny bit); two, there was a tightly controlled ticketing process; and three, it was New Hampshire.

The Montana town hall planned this afternoon will likely be quite different – it's less controlled since tickets are being handed out on a first come, first serve basis, and well, it’s Montana.

Hundreds have been waiting in lines since Wednesday afternoon for tickets. There are reports of organized protests around the Gallatin Field hangar in the town of Belgrade, where Obama will hold the town hall. The group planning the protests is connected to Americans for Prosperity, now infamous for its involvement in the “tea party” protests on Tax Day.

Obama plans to hold another town hall in Grand Junction, Colorado on Saturday, and tickets are being issued through an online lottery.

It might actually work in favor of the administration if Obama were to be confronted with tough absurd questions. He certainly seemed to be itching for some form of contention at the almost-subdued town hall on Tuesday. Outrageous questions from protesters might give him a chance to better quell these ridiculous assertions on national TV, if the protesters give him a chance to actually answer them, that is. Obama also seems to do really well with the dry wit he often uses to tackle obviously preposterous claims. But then again, those who see the obvious preposterousness, don't necessarily need a refutation.

Rove's role in the firing of Iglesias - certainly more than a "conduit"

After having dodged legal and political processes all along, Karl Rove has finally been implicated (sort of) directly in the firing of David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney of New Mexico.

The House Judiciary Committee released over 5000 pages of White House and RNC correspondence, along with transcripts of testimonies by both Rove and Harriet Miers that happened behind closed doors.

Documents show that an email from Rove’s Aide Scott Jennings specifically broached the subject of firing Iglesias. “I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY,” it said. If that isn’t explicit, I don’t know what is.

While Miers mentioned in her testimony that Rove had complaints against the former U.S. Attorney, including indicating that he thought he was a "serious problem" and would have liked to have something done about it, she refused to specifically state what role Rove had played in his dismissal.

In addition, there was abundant proof in the documents that the subject was being elaborately discussed by Rove’s office. Another of Jennings’ emails stated that Iglesias was hesitant about the “job on Madrid,” an obvious indication that the former U.S. Attorney had refused to press voter fraud claims against Democrat Patricia Madrid to help propel Congresswoman Heather Wilson in her re-election race.

Finally, there was also a Miers’ email stating that the White House had made a decision to fire the attorney.

This is as clear a sequence of events of how things transpired as we can get.

We all recall how Rove repeatedly maintained his innocence (after defying a subpoena, being found in contempt of Congress, and finally agreeing to closed-door hearings). Last month, he insisted that he was merely a “conduit” of complaints and grievances from lawmakers in a controversial joint interview to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

This is no simple conduit, that's for sure.

Could the crowd design a better car than Detroit?

Would it be possible for all the wannabe car designers in the world – many of whom, perhaps, don’t have a job because of the flailing auto industry – help resurrect, well, the flailing auto industry?

That’s part of what Jay Rogers, co-founder of Boston start-up Local Motors is hoping. Using a form of distributed innovation approach – crowdsourcing as happens at businesses like Innocentive – Rogers has set up a Web site to attract a vast online community, which now comprises of 2000 ambitious, creative designers from 121 countries. The first car design happened in less than 3 months, a task that typically takes Detroit 2 years.

This is not surprising considering the crowd at Innocentive solves complex R&D problems at a rate 30% better than that accomplished by in-house approaches at scientific companies.

Local Motors' plan is also to tap into consumers’ own interests – it would be sort of like customers giving ideas for a personalized car. Online design competitions help fuel this project. In the true crowdsourcing model of Threadless, the t-shirt designing company, users vote on the best designs submitted by hobbyists, amateurs and experts alike. The winners are motivated by huge cash prizes in the range of a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars.

“I realized that the car industry needed to create totally new designs and do it a more honest way, where we learn from the community out there: what do you want to buy?”

James Surowiecki’s wisdom of the crowds, of course, thrives on the idea that a divergent crowd is required for a collective brain to be smart and innovative. Harvard researcher Karim Lakhani (who serves as an adviser for Local Motors) has shown that Innocentive’s success rests on ideas and solutions coming from people outside the immediate field of expertise.

As crowdosurcing guru Jeff Howe once told me, the problem is that people in a given field often operate within their own psilos; those who are not restrained by that can think outside the box. So it's not surprising that Rogers believes the crowd will help solve problems inherent in the auto industry – from the restraint to explore modern technology to the insistence on using expensive material to build cars.

His company, which is now in the idea stage, will take the most promising propositions from the Web site to various factories that Rogers plans to set up all around the US. To add to the personalized car concept, the first set of vehicles produced by Local Motors – whose design and engineering is now being crowdsourced – will actually allow customers to be part of production as well – buyers will be invited to come and help put their cars together themselves.

It works for t-shirts, it works for complex scientific problems. Perhaps, it will work for cars as well.

Get out your sulfur pumps: Geo-engineering is going mainstream

If the Obama administration’s steadfastness in putting geo-engineering on the table as a valid solution to combat global warming and DARPA’s diving into it are not disconcerting enough, the once far-fetched theory has now received a nod from the American Meteorological Society, which is endorsing research in the area. In addition to working toward reducing emissions, and adapting to climate change, the organization is promoting studies that would look into ways of “manipulating physical, chemical, or biological aspects of the Earth system.”

Geo-engineering has, of course, remained a marginal theory among some environmental experts for decades. But the concept has increasingly crept into the conversation in recent months as a real solution warranting debate and discussion. I certainly do like the idea of scientifically credible entities exploring all possible options as opposed to radical individuals spouting their viewpoints, but the evidence available for this concept as a valid answer is less than encouraging.

This article in the Atlantic is one of the most comprehensive ones I’ve read to date on the subject. Graeme Wood examines close to every geo-engineering strategy so far proffered – from pumping sulfate aerosols which would absorb and reflect sunlight back to space, to growing more CO2-consuming plankton in the sea.

Volcanoes are known to cause noticeable cooling of the earth by spewing sulfur dioxide, why can’t we? Valid point. Except that excessive sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere has the potential to cause acid rain upon reaction with other substances in the sky. The terrifying effects of acid rain formed by too much sulfur in the air are easy enough to comprehend. But what could possibly happen by growing too much plankton? A lot. The dead algae could generate methane, a gas much more harmful than carbon dioxide.

There are more moderate ideas like infusing clouds with seawater to induce them to reflect more sunlight (this, according to Stephen Salter, a Scottish engineer, would entail 1,500 ships spraying seawater into clouds with the help of wind currents), and even constructing a gigantic visor (electromagnetic guns would shoot ceramic disks into the air using a hitherto unknown technology), which would block out the sun. Less drastic methods, like Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s recent suggestion to paint roofs white – or spraying seawater into clouds are both insufficient and economically unfeasible, according to Ken Caldeira, a scientist at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, who recently co-published a study finding that geo-engineering options would merely cause acidification of the ocean without any real reduction in CO2 levels.

Besides the problems of sulfur potentially coming down as acid rain and huge plankton blooms emitting too much methane, geo-engineering would also cause uneven distribution of its effects on different parts of the world; perhaps, Africa might get much warmer and more arid than before, and India would suffer from severely reduced rainfall.

I’m no environmental expert, but that seems like common sense. Reversing the effects of mankind’s engineering of the earth by further engineering not only seems counterproductive but also has the potential to go horribly wrong. But maybe that is all the more reason why any discussion is good, especially if it is based on scientific experimentation and analysis. As Chris Mooney points out, the fact that geo-engineering can have grave consequences if the technology were to reach the wrong hands is important enough to warrant a discussion.

Many of the geo-engineering solutions – especially the sulfur-pumping strategy - are incredibly cheap compared to the money and resource investment needed for regulations that curb global warming at its source. The advantage is that these methods would not involve hundreds of nations getting together to decide on a common law. The disadvantage is that these methods would not involve hundreds of nations getting together to decide on a common law.

Sure, they might go perfectly well, but the effects of such changes are not predictable to any reasonable degree because nothing of the sort has ever been implemented before. And we wouldn’t know until we are actually suffering the consequences of it. Ezra Klein offers a good analogy. A decade ago we thought using hydrofluorocarbons instead of chloroflurocarbons would save the ozone layer. And we were right, but we later found out that HFCs in the atmosphere can act as a super-greenhouse gas, with heat-warming effects over 4000 times that of CO2.

Reliance on an emergency geo-engineering solution, of course, has other consequences. Governments, not to mention big businesses, will have further excuses to do nothing about global warming. As Greame writes, "If you promise that in a future emergency you can chill the Earth in a matter of months, cutting emissions today will seem far less urgent."

Many environmental experts do agree that all the strategies so far suggested to merely reduce global warming may be too little too late. So, possibly a multidimensional plan that would tap into a variety of these methods to offset climate change in addition to a reasonable level of curbing emissions would probably be the best approach.

Or we could all follow James Lovelock's advice and move to the poles because according to him, humankind simply cannot combat global warming at the pace it is happening at. Lovelock writes in the The Vanishing Face of Gaia:

"Simply cutting back fossil-fuel burning, energy use, and the destruction of natural forests will not be a sufficient answer to global heating, not least because it seems that climate change can happen faster than we can respond to it. . . . Because of the rapidity of the Earth's change, we will need to respond more like the inhabitants of a city threatened by a flood. When they see the unstoppable rise of water, their only option is to escape to higher ground."

Apparently, this isn’t outlandish anymore either.

Global health funding goes awry, but the media doesn't care

I wanted to point this out because this combines my two pet peeves about American media: lack of proper coverage of science, health and medical stories, and little, if any attention to significant international issues.

This story is big as far as global health issues go. It is about two studies – one by the WHO, which examined the impact of UN health programs in underdeveloped nations, and another by University of Washington and Harvard researchers, which looked at ways in which money from such programs is being spent.

The studies point to evidence that suggests that accelerated UN initiatives can actually be harmful to certain countries (like some African nations), which slash their own medical services on account of availability of international aid.

They also show that the amount of donations a country receives is not proportional to the gravity of the health crisis there; in other words, certain countries (like Ethiopia and Uganda) that receive significant amount of aid actually have fewer health issues than many (like Nigeria or Pakistan) that don't get sufficient financial help.

The most disheartening find was that the money wasn’t really helping in many poor nations because the UN was merely trying to resurrect ineffective health systems that were already in place, but were not really working.

Sanhita Reddy points out in the Columbia Journalism Review that these studies were hardly reported in mainstream newspapers and Web sites in the U.S.

A Wall Street Journal blog reported just half the story, giving a rosy-eyed picture of the quadrupling of global health funding, without detailing the observation that the money isn’t helping as much as it should.

Surprisingly, an article in the Seattle Times was perhaps one of the the most comprehensive reports of the findings in a newspaper. After going over the numbers and results, the piece actually elucidates on what the waning significance of organizations like the WHO and UNICEF might mean for global health since more money now comes from NGOs and private donors.

Not so surprisingly, a business magazine (Forbes) and a science magazine (Scientific American) had the most expansive coverage of the studies.

Thank goodness for niche journalism!

Talking of which, the CJR piece is obviously more expansive than mine.

Biden to resolve the intelligence reorganization dispute

We all remember that the intelligence reorganization that happened in 2005 in order to prevent another 9-11 style attack was criticized by many as merely adding more tiers of bureaucracy without really allowing a proper coordination between the various intelligence agencies.

Ever since the office of the Director of National Intelligence was first created with John Negroponte at his helm, the battle of the sharing of power between the CIA and the DNI has gone on. Among other things, the DNI recently insisted that it should be given exclusive authority to decide on personnel and resources with regard to the U.S.’s intelligence representatives in other countries.

David Ignatius pointed out in The Washington Post that this battle between the two agencies might be a good thing since it would finally settle the question of who does what in the intelligence community, which has been murky since the reorganization. As per him, the power of picking appointees for intelligence in other countries should remain with the CIA, but the DNI must be given the role of briefing the President’s office on daily intelligence (this already happens), and also that this would require that CIA officials report to the DNI.

“Over time, that means the role traditionally played by CIA analysts should flow to the DNI -- so that we have an elite cadre of all-source analysts similar to Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee. Panetta should accept that diminution of CIA turf,” he wrote.

In Foreign Policy magazine, Philip Zelikow, however, made a case for the power of overseas appointments to be granted to the DNI. He stated that the kinds of tasks involved overseas are not always human-intelligence-related, and hence are not the CIA’s specialty:

“First, overseas operations are much more than the human intelligence (HUMINT) collection that CIA manages. In some countries, the main overseas work -- and staffing to support it -- may concern signals intelligence or other technical operations that are managed by the National Security Agency or the National Reconnaissance Office, among others.”

Whatever happens, Joe Biden is to make that call. Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic reports that since the National Security Council did not seem to have reached a resolution, resolving the prolonged dispute between the two offices now falls to Joe Biden, who is a member of the Council.

Ambinder points out that the consequences of this political squabble will have repercussions since, so far, the DNI has had restricted powers because CIA station chiefs are predominantly responsible for operations abroad, and the agency’s budget is controlled by the Department of Defense. This decision might change that, and hopefully, will result in a more coordinated Intelligence community after years of confusion.

The Guardian of Crowdsourcing

The Guardian continues to amaze with its dedication to participatory journalism and crowdsourcing.

Its latest is a tool to track the expenses of its members of parliament, following the MP expenses scandal. A few days after its main competitor) breaks the string of stories resulting in skyrocketing circulations, the Guardian decides to compete with what it does best.

Certainly not the most mind-boggling experiment in crowdsourcing ever undertaken, but the idea is phenomenal in its simplicity. All the Guardian has really done with this project is rent server space and put up a whole list of public records on its Web site. It has created an easy interface for people to provide the information it needs and left the rest to its audience.

Nieman Lab picks out the best aspects of the project – everything from the simple interface, the progress bar that assesses progress, the contributor ratings, and the mugshots of the smiling MPs (I’m not kidding!) has contributed toward increasing participation. It's all about making it more user-friendly and engaging.

The response has been huge with 20,000 people participating in the effort and 160,000 pages analyzed. While the early stages of the project are more about making deductions and pointing out anything that may be suspicious or erroneous, as my co-blogger at the Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw points out, the fun part will be the overlays and mashups that emerge from the data, which will be the actual stories.

Of course, it helps to have the sort of involved readership that the Guardian has. Newspapers have tried similar databases before. A couple years ago, the Washington Examiner started WECAN, a huge database of public records with a similar idea, and the Gannett’s Democrat and Chronicle posted a similar list of government documents on its site, both with little or no participation from the audience. It didn’t help that the sites’ editors didn’t follow up or pursue the project to any great magnitude.

However, what really, really helps such projects catch fire is an inflammatory story of epic proportions - that's the sort of thing that stimulates a great deal of interest. Simon Willison, the project’s programmer, reinforces this by stating how important it was to kick this off on Thursday when the story was all over the airwaves, as opposed to Friday as it was initially planned.

In the past, Talking Point Memo has perhaps had the most success in crowdsourcing this sort of story when it released Department of Justice documents following the Bush Administration’s US attorney firings scandal. Skilled blogger though Josh Marshall is, what really piqued reader interest was the huge controversy behind it.

The Guardian has already proved the high level of enthusiasm of its audience with its Katine project where its Web site managed to attract readers who offered to donate not just ideas and information, but also resources such as books and bicycles to Ugandan children, services in the form of medical help from doctors, and infrastructure for the implementation of solar power – all this quite literally originated in the comments threads of the Katine blog.

Most of this initially happened with the weight of the Guardian organization, no doubt, but the paper has to be lauded for its continued interest and effort in the area. It has a surprisingly long history of such exercises, dating back to the early 2000s.

Well before the existence of social media tools, it started an investigative report on bribery charges against a Saudi Arabian arms company with the help of amateurs to help professional journalists through its Web site.

News organizations should really be doing a lot more to seize on such opportunities. The audience won't contribute its valuable time and effort for just about anything, but occasionally a story comes along, which begs to be crowdsourced.

What makes Wimbledon “Wimbledon”

For most people, June is a time of laying in the sun, eating hotdogs at barbecues and hiking outdoors, but for avid tennis fans the latter part of the month involves not much more than waking up to the green lawns of the All England Club at Wimbledon, England, and sitting glued to the television for the remainder of the day.

The Championships, Wimbledon, is often hailed as the sport’s biggest stage, and the All England Club where it unfolds, the cathedral of tennis itself. There is so much exclusive to the tournament that makes it stand out in the sporting world. Here’s my attempt to capture it in words.

In the rough-and-tumble struggle of physical will and power, sport is often about finding beauty in little things: the finely orchestrated touchdown pass from a quarterback to his receiver, the wonderful execution of a three-pointer that drops through the rim of the basket, or that magnificent diving save by an artful goaltender.

No exalted powers of observation are needed to find beauty at the All England Club, however, from the very backdrop provided by the lush green lawns with their generous share of fountains and lakes to the magicians on the courts themselves, attired in pristine white as per unwavering Wimbledon traditions. The grass surface ensures that there is little slipping and sliding that would get your shoes dirty (as happens in the clay of Paris two weeks prior), or the thumping of hard courts that sends visible shock waves through the knees.

The slick and fast surface offered by the grass demands a higher level of shot-making skill and mental prowess, as opposed to the more physically demanding and brute nature of tennis on its slower counterparts. Not that power ever hurt anyone on a grass court (except that occasional, unfortunate ball boy!)

But what makes Wimbledon special is the unpredictability of the grass that pervades its grounds. As if to defy the British insistence on proper decorum – all-white ensembles, pin drop silences and genteel salutations - the uneven surface of the blades throws up the ball in fickle bounces, low and fast, demanding nothing short of the absolute best from players in terms of footwork and anticipation. A dense carpet of velvety green in the initial week, play is dominated by shorter points and faster exchanges.

On slower surfaces, game plans are often dictated by the ball, disintegrating as they do to long, painstaking rallies till the lesser player causes an error. On grass, however, the ball isn’t waiting around to be missed, so the better players tend to dictate points, take risks and play aggressive, offensive tennis in order to keep the play short. In other words, they construct the points in their heads and write the stories themselves. In the second week of the tournament, patches of dirt begin to peek through the well-worn grass, slightly slowing down play, and adding spatial unpredictability to the already capricious turf.

Little wonder then, that it has always taken the best players to reign supreme at Wimbledon; the Championships rarely reward one-time wonders that sail through two weeks on account of dream runs and good fortunes. Down under in Melbourne, this can happen as summer fatigue, and injuries and retirements after long hiatuses often see top players bid farewell in unforeseen losses. The French Open, for its part, throws up some unlikely winners on account of a drastically different playing style.

If the carefully-manicured lawns of Wimbledon are untameable, so is Mother Nature. A familiar sight during the Championships is the ominous premonition of impending rain looming over the English skies. As behooves the country-club nature of the sport, players don’t toil through rain and snow. Hell, they can barely focus over a catcall! Heavy tarpaulin sheets are hence summoned at the very hint of a drizzle and the fastidious courts are covered for the duration of bad weather. This year, however, the big story at tennis’s cathedral is the retractable roof over Center Court, which would render this age-old tradition obsolete. Painstaking as it often proves to be, the spectacle will be missed!

As if to add to the capriciousness, there’s Court No. 2, “the graveyard of champions,” which is known to ruthlessly dismiss top dogs in a hurry; it famously eliminated three-time champion Venus Williams to a relative unknown a few years ago, and yesterday, it saw the exit of American James Blake in the first round. Past casualties of the graveyard court include such greats as Pete Sampras, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Martina Hingis, and Serena Williams. Many reasons have been given for this seeming mystery, like distractions from the restaurant on the upper deck and the lower bounce of the ball, but the most compelling one yet is that it simply favors the underdog.

Few sporting events display the kind of panache and flair that Wimbledon does. This is the only tournament that would prompt Roger Federer – classy though he is – to show up in a custom-made blazer with initials emblazoned, or a well-tailored waistcoat to suit his sartorial style.

And why wouldn’t he? From the sharply attired club officials – in Ralph Lauren, no less – to members of the royal family in the royal box, Wimbledon is all about class. Then there are the celebrities dotting the stands, who often have no clue what they’re watching except the people watching them, hall of famers with their scrutinizing expressions and ‘pearls’ of wisdom (I’m sorry, if you’re not sitting in the ESPN box, you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about, as opposed to Dick Enberg who does), press conferences with crisp British accents intoning not-so-crisp questions and of course, nothing screams sultry, sweltering, sweaty sport like the Duke and Duchess of Kent. The strawberries and cream and champagne add flair to the fare.

The Championships are steeped in irony. About a decade ago, Tim Henman carried the hopes and dreams of an entire nation on his shoulders to Center Court. However, Henman, the former great British hope to win the tournament, famously lost to Pete Sampras in all three of their meetings at Wimbledon. And you can hardly blame him. The supremacy of the American legend on grass was such that he won 55 out of 56 matches at the All England Club in eight straight years.

Henman is now over the hill in tennis years, but his hill still exists just outside the grandest stage of the tournament. “Henman hill” is what the Brits fondly call the little showcourt area they occupied for years to root for their compatriot and watch him on a big screen outside Center Court.

Now, that pressure has shifted to young Scot Andy Murray, currently the third best player in the world. The last British man to win Wimbledon was Fred Perry in 1936, so it's hard to admonish the English for their urgency in anointing their next big hope. Murray, though a stellar player in his own right, faces his own Pete Sampras.

Roger Federer has won 41 of his last 42 matches at Wimbledon in six consecutive years. However, last year also saw Federer’s worst and Murray’s best, and the Scot has gotten the better of the Swiss in four of their past five meetings; none of those meetings, however, carried the weight and pressure of the world’s most prestigious tournament.

Even so, the dream of seeing him lift the trophy gathers steam this season and “Murray mound” has quickly been elevated to the status of a mountain, reflecting not only the 22 year old’s ascendancy in the tennis world, but also the injury-ridden absence of Rafael Nadal, Federer’s closest challenger, and incidentally the man who took that one match from him last year.

Yet, if all goes well for Murray, he may well lay hands on the coveted trophy, but still deny the Brits their one big wish. Murray is widely reported to have insisted that he is Scottish, not English, and his dislike of the British soccer team is well known.

Despite recent retractments, when it eventually happens, he may well go down in history as the Scot that won Wimbledon. And the British crowds will be left to look within themselves for their man.

Journalism won’t die, but the end of the news organization is here

My apologies for a long hiatus. I have been, as usual, sulking thinking intelligently about the news industry. Here's some of it...

Regardless of whether journalism is going to exist several years down the road or not, the case for “journalists” not existing is getting stronger. James Poniewozik brought up this point in Time last week, arguing that while journalism as a process would have to go on, there is no guarantee that it will continue to be practiced by “professionals who belong to a profession.” It’s easy to discard some of this argument as mere terminology, but the prospects he raises are grim, made grimmer by the impending realism of them.

As one of my go-to bloggers on new media technology says on his blog, “journalism is a process, not a product.” His argument is that journalism, very soon, will cease to exist as an institution, but news will continue to happen because it will find its way on Twitter or a blog or a Facebook news feed and become news.

While this may seem more plausible for a story about a protest outside City Hall or a local state fair, it seems highly unlikely for an investigative piece on the crisis in Darfur. But even that does not necessarily need a profession called journalism. Carroll Bogert makes a pretty compelling case in a recent issue of the Columbia Journalism Review that Human Rights Watch has done more research on issues around the world than perhaps the international bureaus of all US newspapers put together. In CJR’s fascinating series, which imagines the journalism world in 2014, Bogert writes that the HRW Web site would take over from newspapers in bringing to light significant issues like the Guanatnamo Bay hearings and the Israel-Gaza conflict. HRW would be reporting on its own work in these regions, but in the process, it would also be disseminating much-needed information.

A more terrifying vision of publicists-turned-reporters is that of PR professionals from companies and public offices being exclusive sources of news on their respective organizations. Not all PR professionals lie, Tim Cavanaugh assures us. And that is certainly the sort of integrity I’d like journalism to follow! Cavanaugh does make the indubitable point that newspapers are not exactly exemplars of objectivity either, and that at least in the case of PR professionals, you would know who they’re working for. Isn’t that what we said about bloggers a few years ago?

Gratifyingly, at the other end of the spectrum, are the tirelessly striving nonprofit foundations, and strengthening their case is the recent announcement by the AP that it will start distributing content from organizations such as Propublica, the Investigative Reporting Workshop, and the Centers for Investigative Reporting and Public Integrity. These organizations have been so far distributing content to several news outlets already, as has the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

This is not to say that journalism will be confined to PR departments or NGOs in future, but that different genres of content will be provided predominantly by parties or organizations that traditionally have authority in specific areas. This is not very different from Jeff Jarvis’ idea of “the ecosystem of news,” where he insists that news of the future will not come from one entity, but from a collaboration and consolidation of information gathered from a variety of individuals and resources.

Not surprisingly, there is already a push toward individual entrepreneurial news reporting (Shamless self promotion alert!) in areas that are most feeling the effects of a declining industry; this is particularly true for foreign news reporting with most news organizations having shut down their international bureaus.

Citizen journalism sites like Ground Report and AllVoices are paying contributors based on individual traffic to their articles, and Global Post allows its reporters grants of shares in the company. In other words, the trend is shifting toward large groups of independent journalists providing content to a news site, rather than a group of journalists under an umbrella organization, and this is perhaps where the future of journalism lies.

As Poniewozik and Jarvis and others have pointed out, while news has to and will continue to exist, journalism may soon cease to exist as a standalone, profit-making profession.

Unless, of course, all the bigwigs from major news organizations sit in a dark, smoke-filled room and decide to force people to pay for news content.

Oh wait, that’s already happened.

To that end, API has presented a report on how news sites can start charging for content. And Steven Brill has founded “Journalism Online,” which aims to help news organizations explore options for paid content. The Nieman Lab reported last week that several newspapers have already signed up.

It’s still hard to imagine this idea working out.

As Paul Bradshaw points out, even if we get our heads around the idea of paid content, these organizations will have to demonstrate an exceptional ability to provide unique information, as the "other" free sites will not only attract more readers, but on account of increased eyeballs, will also draw away advertising revenue from the paid sites.

It looks increasingly likely that the era of journalism by an organization is coming to an end.

Indian Elections: A victory for secularism in a land of many gods

This first sentence from The Telegraph, a renowned publication from the eastern Indian city of Calcutta pretty much summed up my own reaction to the Indian election results:

“The idea of India — a vibrant, secular, plural, resurgent nation that can transcend its myriad differences and complexities to reaffirm an essential unity of purpose — received a resounding victory today as the world’s largest electorate shed the politics of extremes and delivered a decisive mandate to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.”

This road to victory wasn’t always clear, however.

As Ananya Vajpeyi explains, over the past few years the world’s largest democracy has become increasingly undemocratic, one where minorities and marginal groups are struggling to survive, and where election campaigns are based on divisiveness along religious lines.

Many candidates from the conservative nationalist party, the BJP, which represents the Hindu and Sikh communities of India, have invoked hate speeches against Muslims in order to further their campaigns. One such contender, who went far enough to say that he would “cut the heads of Muslims;” was jailed for a month before charges against him were dropped.

Of course, this is not entirely new to Indian electoral campaigns. Politics of identity, regionalism and religiosity is but natural in a land where so many different creeds populate what would be the American equivalent of a block in a cosmopolitan city. However, despite the depth of diversity that exists in the subcontinent, India’s national campaigns have been relatively secular in the past, even if not at the communal or individual level, certainly at the political party level.

One of the laudable things about Indian elections – and this was true up until the late nineties – is that campaigns were rarely exclusionist in terms of certain groups of the population, castes or religions, perhaps owing to the myriad number of small – but by no means insignificant – political parties that exist in the country’s political landscape. But in the aftermath of the religious animosity engendered by the Gujarat riots of 2002, the Mumbai blasts, and more recently against Christian groups in the southeastern state of Orissa, this has changed.

People from minority religions have been marginalized, in some states being forced to flee to other regions, and Hinduism, which has historically been celebrated for being exceedingly tolerant of other religions, has been used for political reasons by the BJP, whose acronym literally translates to “party of the people,” but which really is the Hindu nationalist party. In some regions of the country the recent terror attacks and increasing resentment toward Muslims have led to the popularity of pro-Hindu political leaders.

Robert Kaplan raises this very point in last month’s issue of The Atlantic, characterizing Narendra Modi, head of the western Indian state of Gujarat as the possible “new face” of India. Celebrated for his ruthless efficiency and his incorruptible personality (a rarity in a country where every other government official has at the very least a bribery charge against him), Modi’s lesser-touted characteristic is his intense hatred of Muslims. Modi is said to have perpetrated the infamous riots of 2002, where more than a thousand people were killed.

In the midst of religious and political unrest in neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, political stability and religious tolerance in India becomes that much more important.

As Kaplan eloquently articulates,

“...as the influence of an economically burgeoning India now seeps both westward and eastward, to the Iranian plateau and to the Gulf of Thailand (the borders of viceregal India and its shadow zones a hundred years ago), it can grow only as a force of communal coexistence, a force that rests on India’s strengths as the world’s largest democracy. India, in other words, despite its flashy economic growth, will be nothing but another gravely troubled developing nation if it can’t maintain a minimum of domestic harmony.”

The route to that domestic harmony – at least for now, is the re-election of the pan-Indian, less marginal, more moderate, exceedingly progressive Congress party with Manmohan Singh at its helm. This mandate did not just signal a victory for religious tolerance in India, but was also a referendum on an increasing desire for social equality in a country where slums continue to grow along the feet of towering skyscrapers.

Singh, who is credited with the liberalization of the Indian economy in his role as Finance Minister in the early nineties, and the country’s resultant economic boom, was criticized by aspiring, free-market advocates just a couple years ago for appealing to business leaders to exercise restraint, regulate executive pay, and allow more demographic representation among employees.

A graduate of Cambridge and Oxford, Singh has no doubt been a free-market advocate for much of his life. But as Prime Minister, owing to an alliance with the socialist-leaning Leftist party, but more importantly - pragmatism in a land that houses 456 million people below the global poverty line - he has displayed a strong commitment toward the social and public sectors and insisted on providing economic security, health benefits, and greater representation to the underprivileged.

The task is certainly cut out for Singh and his party if they plan to deliver on their promise of balancing economic growth with social equality, but getting elected is a step in the right direction.

The media pandemic

In the last couple of days my daily news diet has consisted of letting the morning broadcast blare in the half hour it takes me to get ready and out the door. It’s safe to say that about 20 minutes of the half hour has been about the swine flu.

The media are always looking for that next big issue to rally around; they need to cover airtime, we get it, and they’re not always blessed with a Specter defection or a Biden gaffe or the 100-day itch. Unfortunately or fortunately, it’s easier to see through this thick fog of media hype when it’s a political incident blown out of proportion, but a lot harder when the story deals with a less familiar topic – the two subjects that always come to my mind as big media nemeses are the economy (granted, the media wasn’t alone in this), and the haze that surrounds scientific or medical news stories.

In their urge to get the story out there, fast and loud, journalists don’t ensure if the hype is indeed proportional to the facts. Going by the swine flu coverage it would be hard to believe that the death rate from this flu is the same as that is to be expected from most flus, and that people who have been treated are responding to medication.

Social networking sites, for all their advantages, help feed the frenzy. Swine flu has been among the top three trending tweet topics this week. Of course, blaming Twitter for what people choose to tweet about is sort of like blaming Google for the content it spits out from all across the Web. But even so, a tweet a second about the flu doesn’t help calm down the already disproportionate furor. Including glaringly false Twitter posts like this one: “Swine Flu Confirmed Cases in Mexico is about nearly 3,000.”

Simon Jenkins makes a good point in the Guardian that the death tolls from ongoing wars or a real epidemic like AIDS – which take way more lives than the swine flu ever will – are hardly given the emphasis that a “sudden” outbreak like this one is. This goes back to the age-old media problem: information only attains the status of news when there is an “event” – usually something that is abrupt and unexpected - and when that does happen, the press focuses on the event without covering the context or big picture. Instead of going on and on about the numbers and possible escalation and inevitable doomsday, journalists could have taken this opportunity to talk about larger issues – as Erik’s post did on problems with the meat industry, livestock farming and disease.

What makes this press frenzy nearly pointless is that despite the widespread coverage of swine flu, as Jenkins notes, there are very few steps one can take to consciously reduce the chances of getting it (unless you follow Biden’s advice and lock yourself up in your house, avoiding subways and planes, and well, air).

On the other hand, there is a lot one can do to keep from getting more serious illnesses like AIDS with more difficult modes of transmission where large scale paranoia could actually drill sense into people and save lives.

I don’t intend to belittle this outbreak – of course, the swine flu is significant – it has taken over a hundred lives in Mexico, is spreading rapidly in several countries around the world, and the WHO has raised its pandemic alert level to 5. People should be made aware.

However, the simple truth is that there can’t be much of a preparedness plan against bugs that spread through aerosols and constantly change their surface structure to avoid immune responses.

Richard Besser of the CDC put it best: “microbes don’t read the plan, and you need to move away from the plan pretty soon after day one.”

Putting this in the context of incalculable risk, Ben Goldacre explains – amazingly – why it is almost impossible to assess how much of a risk this could – or could not – be. Hence, according to him people should neither be casting the swine flu as an unstoppable epidemic nor dismissing it as too much hype.

But that’s what the media does – it predicts, and innovates and foretells, be it the result of a presidential election, the length of an ongoing war, or the number of people who are going to die from swine flu.

Where predictions should have been happening is in the scientific community. As this New Scientist article explains, North American pigs have been incubators for these flu viruses for years, and scientists should have seen it coming. Since the late ’90s, the viruses have been evolving by mixing with different strains of human and bird flu viruses, which have made them more virulent. Since its genetic makeup is so novel, it is harder for the human system to target an immune response to.

There is a very real fear that this flu could become a pandemic considering its ease of transmission. But there is also a possibility that this virus - like many viruses before it - may peter out because it may not be able to survive and spread in humans.

No one knows. The media should not be pretending that it does.

Outsourcing “fluff” journalism to civilians?

A lot of citizen journalism Web sites are not exactly known for high quality content.

Which is why, having spent some time on the Bleacher Report, I’ve been amazed by not only the quality of writing, but also the research that goes into each individual story, and the analysis and discussion that follows. There’s a valid reason for this - it exclusively covers sports, and if there is one subject area that almost any civilian would be interested in – and passionately at that – it’s got to be sports. Think about the cheering that went on way into the night when your home team last won the World Series, or the many mornings you woke up having lost your voice, tirelessly rooting for your college football team.

A topic such as sports is thus ideally suited to citizen journalism – people already have a vested interest in the subject, they enjoy talking about it, and since they have followed their team or player trough the years, their knowledge of the topic is usually better than that of a reporter who may have just moved into town, or be disinclined to the sport in question.

A host of different newspapers and Web sites have tried their hand at citizen journalism, but very few report on serious content. As Linda Parker, online communities editor for Gannet’s Cincinnati Enquirer found, when readers were encouraged to contribute to the paper's Web site with the “Get Published” tool, they were more interested in sharing stories about their appearances on television shows and the local opera (what would normally be considered “fluff” journalism), but among these stories was also information about a fundraiser for a child’s bone marrow transplant.

While most of this may not be news that moves and shakes the world, it’s still information that many people are interested in, and that local newspapers spend a lot of time, personnel, and resources in reporting. Might they be better off allowing citizens to offer the bulk of reporting in these areas, and confining trained journalists to the more important stories so they could perhaps offer high-quality journalism where it matters?

Of course, it is amazing to see a community rise and report on a pressing public issue, and keep the authorities in check, as citizens in Fort Myers did to quell the rising prices of public utilities a couple years ago. But such stories are few and far between.

But the important thing to note about such stories is that citizens were inspired to contribute to it of their own accord because it was an issue that was deeply affecting pocketbooks.

Jeff Howe, crowdsourcing pioneer, has often said that the most successful way for news organizations to crowdsource, is to give the audience free rein over content. “Don’t try to control the discussion, just become the room in which it takes place,” he writes in his book.

It’s noteworthy to ask if writing about your pet or the local fair helps you become a better citizen and contribute to the electoral process in meaningful ways.

Perhaps not. But there are more ways to get citizens interested in important news stories than making them write it – perhaps allocating more resources to those stories, and hence doing better journalism might achieve that.

Global adoption at a tragic price

Here's a very compelling, and heart-wrenching piece in Mother Jones about a kidnapping racket that is delivering Indian children to unsuspecting couples in western countries. Many of these children are from poor families in Indian slums, and while their lives are not perfect, their loving parents are very much alive – and desperately searching for them, in many cases giving up securities and assets just to be able to afford it.

The particular couple that Scott Carney details in his piece has tried for several years, in vain, to find their missing son. Little did they know that Subash was ten thousand miles and two oceans away in the American Midwest. For almost a decade, an Indian orphanage had been paying a couple hundred dollars per child to willing kidnappers, and shipping off children to unwitting couples located anywhere from the US to Australia.

The bureaucracy surrounding global adoption laws, and the incompetence of the Indian legal system ensured an ideal cover for this deplorable kidnapping conspiracy. This sort of child trafficking is not limited to India, of course.

Put together the amount of money involved, too many middlemen and little oversight, and you end up with child trafficking in developing countries. It’s little surprise, then, that of the three hundred suspected adoption cases handled by the same orphanage, only three are being examined by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation; all of the cases are about a decade old.

Due to the number of years that have gone by, and the belief that life would probably be better for their children in western countries, the few Indian couples who have been fortunate enough to learn the whereabouts of their kids choose to not re-claim them but merely ask permission to communicate.

When Carney approached Subash’s adoptive parents with the details of the investigation, adequately aided by police reports and photographs, they remained skeptical and unwilling to correspond with the Indian family. So, this case literally hangs on a standoff between the American and Indian parents, orchestrated by a journalist. There is something terribly wrong with this picture.

An Interpol request has finally reached the attorney general, and there’s hope that the FBI will make a request for DNA samples to confirm the boy’s identity. However, assuming that the adoptive family would probably go to court, Carney reasons that the case could be stalled for years till the boy turns 18.

The western agencies that arrange these adoptions aren’t totally guileless in this process. Many don’t bother to gather sufficient information about the source of the children or the authenticity of the organizations delivering them. And from the recent case involving the American agency, Focus on Children, we know some have their very own child-snatching schemes.

Inexplicably, the Hague Convention on international adoption does not set any standards on how to deal with kidnapped children.

Carney zeroes in on a point made by the lead Indian investigator in this case, “If you didn't have to pay for a child, then this would all disappear.” Many have suggested that capping adoption fees paid by western countries could alleviate issues of child trafficking for this purpose.

The money is the huge incentive, no doubt. Orphanages in India, and in other popular adoption destinations are charging huge sums of money for these stolen kids. And understandably, unwitting - or witting - western agencies and parents would comply, as long as they deliver them a child with little complication.

Stem cell research: I'm sorry, is that debate still going?

This is downright ridiculous.

After eight years of an administration that believed an embryo was a fully-grown human being, and that god told us to go to war and kill innocent civilians, sanity finally returned to the White House. But apparently insanity has a way of coming back in the form of irrational people fighting the same battles over and over again.

The LA Times reported last week that conservatives who oppose embryonic stem cell research are going to battle against Obama's executive order by spreading the word about their views, and educating more people about the less controversial research methods that are available.

And it’s already happening. Georgia’s senate passed a bill last Thursday that would prohibit the creation of embryonic stem cell lines.

The legislation “defines an embryo as a person, thus prohibiting its use in scientific research and making it illegal for researchers to create new ones. Violators could lose their medical license and be fined up to $1,000 for each offense. The legislation seeks to control the use of embryonic stem cells and moves the debate into the antiabortion arena.”

Other conservatives want to push the idea for alternative methods that are less controversial – and that means, the creation of pluripotent stem cells from adult tissue without the use of embryos. Previous studies have shown this to be possible, but the technique is too dangerous to use in human beings since it involves modifying cells with the help of viruses, which may endanger a person’s life. Recent studies have reported that there may be a way to modify adult stem cells without the use of viruses, but clearly, this research is in its infancy, and will need decades to find its way into therapeutics, if at all.

What makes this outcry against stem cell research even more ridiculous is that all or most of these same people who oppose stem cell research to save actual human lives are OK with legislation for reproductive purposes. So, they would sooner destroy an embryo to create a new life than to save an existing one.

As bioethics expert, Paul Wolpe, rightfully points out, when you define an embryo as a human being neither should be allowed. "It is a problematic strategy because when you define an embryo as a person, what they say is: Therefore you cannot destroy them. My response is: Therefore you cannot freeze them. How can you freeze a person and keep them suspended in animation?"

It’s pretty obvious that these people are holding on to this argument simply for political purposes – or close-minded idiocy, which is worse.

I found particularly interesting this article by an elderly Ohio woman who came around to stem cell research owing, in part, to what science could do in terms of her cancer therapies, and what it could not – and as yet, cannot – do for her mother’s struggles with Parkinson’s. Perhaps, if we hadn't wasted the last eight years playing political games with people's lives....

Like this woman in Canton, a majority of Americans certainly believe in the potential benefits of stem cell research.

What will it take these right wing nut jobs to let go of that cryopreserved embryo, which will never see the light of day anyway, and save an actual human life?

Monetizing new media: is it time?

The new media world went into outrage last week when Newsday announced that it would no longer be offering its online content for free. We’ve received online information for free for so long that it is almost unthinkable to have to pay for it. In 2007, the New York Times quickly realized that it made more money from advertising revenue than it ever would from online subscriptions. And the sooner news organizations accept that, the better.

However, in the aftermath of possibly one of the worst weeks for the news industry, it’s perhaps important to consider other options. Left with little choice, journalists and media scholars have been debating business models the past couple of months – about the same amount of time that I have been in the non-existent journalism job market, so I figured I might as well look for light at the end of the tunnel!

Andrew Currah of Oxford University, proposed recently in a Reuters report that “kitemarks” - similar to watermarks - could be a reasonable solution to this monetization problem. Kitemarks, which are certifications that would distinguish supposedly reliable online content from noise on the Web, have stirred a controversy in the democratic world of cyberspace. But as Currah explained to Poynter, the idea is not, as some people perceive it, intended to be an"apartheid between bloggers and journalists,” but rather a digital label that would enhance transparency.

Media Standards Trust, the organization that proposed it, insists this would not be a top-down stamp of approval, but more like a cyber postcode that would enable users to determine who the information came from, primary sources, updates, modifications, and journalistic standards adhered to. Merely integrating and consolidating information might urge users to stay on a page longer, thus stimulating ad revenue. In addition, metatags can aid search engine optimization and social media marketing.

Another thing Currah notes in his Reuters report is that since the Web allows a faster feedback to publishers and writers – in the form of traffic, clickthroughs, clickheats, navigation routes, unique visitors, and so on, it may enable them to review performances of individual reporters, and redirect resources to the right stories.

What is deeply concerning about this sort of quest for eyeballs is the kind of populist news that results from it. As Currah notes, such clickstream data is beginning to define the agenda of news organizations as opposed to editorial values. Add to this the fact that some newspapers are now using such Web metrics in order to determine pay for their journalists, and monetization comes a full – and terrifying - circle.

Web sites that keep tabs of such data are beginning to focus on soft news features, such as celebrity gossip and sports. One of the biggest advantages of Internet news is that the vastness and tolerance of the Web allows very specific information to be conveyed to niche audiences. This is fast eroding.

Currah insists that instead of diluting the quality of news in this quest for high volume traffic, publishers should pursue a more targeted approach to acquire readers; editorial judgment should be invested in “anchoring” particular types of audiences by offering content that is specific to both the brand of the news outlet and its reader interests. Here, Web sites would follow “editorial isolines” as opposed to the windsocks that merely blow in the direction of clickstream data. In addition to restoring the quality of news, this would prove to be a more sustainable business model. For one, it would help advertisers who seek engaged readers as opposed to mere glancers.

OJR’s Eric Ulken makes an interesting deduction, where he questions if revenue is being diluted on individual sites due to the re-packaging of stories. Coming from a marketing standpoint, he sort of echoes Currah’s conclusions, by stating that if news organizations focused more on unique stories that cannot be found anywhere else on the Web, they would significantly increase their chances of attracting and retaining visitors, and prevent the divvying up of eyeballs, if you will.

There is no saying that kitemarks and editorial isolines will solve new media's revenue-generating problems, however. Chris Anderson of Wired has long proposed freeconomics as a possible way to charge readers for content, an idea that has been tried, tested, and dropped, time and again, but is probably more acceptable at a time when the media industry is clearly imploding. Giving away part of the item for free (think Adobe) and then charging for the complete or enhanced product has worked for companies like Amazon and Netflix. But this is going to be hard to work into a business that has not only always provided content for free, but also one where the product is considered a universal right.

The option of micropayments is creeping back into the conversation, a concept that may be aided by the launch of Amazon’s e-book on the iPhone. Walter Isaacson makes a fairly convincing case for micropayments for worthy news content. Sites could charge users very small amounts for purchase of individual articles, features, and even blog posts through a one-click system, he writes. David Carr similarly pined for an iTunes-style paid-content system for newspapers a couple months ago.

I would have no problem with the idea of micropayments, if it didn’t so conflict with the distributive and democratic nature of the Internet.

Perhaps more in line with the philosophy of cyberspace is a word that seems to be on every media pundit’s mouth today: Kachingle. A Web content payment service that proposes to acquire donations from Web surfers on a voluntary basis, Kachingle medallions would give readers a choice to donate money to the sites they frequent; this would allow them to support anything from a media stalwart to an obscure blog. Kachingle would then divvy up the amount a reader donates among the various sites he or she wishes to contribute to, based on the frequency of visits and time spent on each site. Virtually any publisher could showcase his or her Web site on Kachingle.

Steve Outing has the details, and his willing endorsement.

It’s hard to imagine that the media industry could survive on such a free-willed concept but for the fact that many non-profit news organizations are already doing so. Think of it as tech-savvy public funding.

That fine line between talking and not talking about race

This article in the Washington Post aptly sums up the dilemma with finding that elusive middle between discussing relevant issues of race that still divide this country, and running into the danger of belaboring it – a point we discussed in our earlier posts about race relations in America here and specifically, Erik's post on the importance of Black History Month here.

Writing about Michelle Obama’s education of middle-schoolers about African American heritage at the White House, and Eric Holder’s controversial speech to the Justice Department, among other things, Krissah Thompson says that this sort of focus on race is getting mixed reviews from people on the left and right alike.

Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution had an interesting point: "They definitely have to be careful. Better to have the president and his top African American aides serve as role models and achieve the broader objective by indirection."

He is not alone in thinking that top back officials in the Obama administration may be treading on dangerous territory by expanding the conversation on race, as many have voiced these concerns, including Maureen Dowd. I’ve often believed that talking too much about race may have a very real danger of diluting the issue, and have the effect of cloaking the real problems –such as economic classes as we discussed in previous posts - but I’m not sure if putting things in context, so that generation Y could get a better perspective about the history – and hence, the very real racial scars that have been left as a result - is such a bad idea.

Also, these incidents were part of the celebration of Black History Month, and not some out-of-the-blue forays into the subject. I would think it would be an important part of the commemoration to not only celebrate the milestones, but also to take the opportunity to allow those who have come this far to share their experiences and thoughts.

As Shawnta Walcott, a pollster quoted in the article put it:

“Holder, [Lisa] Jackson and Obama are the first African Americans in their positions, and it should come as no surprise that their celebration of black history is different from their predecessors.”

That is an important point. Even the Bush administration had several minorities in its cabinet, but mere appointment to high office is not going to solve the race problem if you don’t use their presence to actually address the issues, and worse still, simply use it as a talking point to prove that you’re not divisive. In that case, you not only don't deal with the subject, but also sidestep it by proclaiming that it is a non-issue.

The newer and scarier (?!) face of GOP

We all know that’s always possible.

Rachel Maddow made an important point last night about the familiar theme among the “new faces” that the GOP has chosen to project the last few months, one of them of course being Bobby Jindal.

Jindal, son of Indian immigrants, raised a Hindu, and a teenage convert to Catholicism, infamously – or famously, depending on your perspective – wrote about his experiences participating in an exorcism in 1994. In 2003, he declared in the Time Picayune,“I am 100 percent anti-abortion with no exceptions. I believe all life is precious.” This would mean that Jindal does not make an exception even if the woman were raped or if her life were at risk.

This would also mean that he actually makes Sarah Palin look reasonable, with her exceptional ability to consider exceptions for life-threatening situations.

Then there’s Michael Steele who has declared in no uncertain terms that he believes that embryonic stem cells are “life” and is absolutely opposed to embryonic stem cell research. He is staunchly pro-life including in cases of rape and incest.

Of course, we are all used to Republicans that espouse these views, but what makes this scarier is that like Maddow and Ana Marie Cox said last night, this new face is changing in terms of color of skin and gender, but the viewpoints are still the same.

For instance, Jindal opposes hate-crime legislation - a brown-skinned son of immigrants who grew up in Louisiana - wants to repeal laws that would mandate penalties on crimes inspired by hatred toward certain groups or races. These younger, fresher, "more diverse" faces are probably going to inspire younger Republicans from all backgrounds to follow suit, and think it's OK to have ideologies that make no pragmatic sense. That's why it's scarier.