Author Kevin Kelly is blogging as he writes his new book on technology, The Technium. A post highlighted by BoingBoing discusses the meaning of value in a digital world where the Internet “copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it”. Kelly goes on to argue that when “copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free,

The news industry is still scratching around trying to find new ways of making money. Paul Bradshaw offers some ideas in a detailed post on new business models. The problems are well-known, and while web advertising is rising, online readers are simply not worth as much as print readers. The issue is rethinking business for a Internet age. This means shifting from seeing news as a physical product to seeing

More nonsense about blogs, this time from the former editor of The Times, Simon Jenkins. According to Jenkins, a newspaper column is like writing “a collected essay”, while blogging is like “laying down your pen, going to the pub and telling the guy next to you what you really think”. And if that weren’t bad enough, Jenkins continues digging: It’s the difference between writing and a bar room chat, which

Big news in the world of participatory journalism, with MSNBC buying Newsvine for an undisclosed sum. Newsvine continues to operate as a separate site, while MSNBC looks at ways of incorporating its social and community features. Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson explains the deal on his personal blog: So why would an independent, cost-efficient, growing startup like Newsvine which has taken very little venture capital want to join a huge organization

An interesting read on the Online Journalism Review entitled Web journalist, know thyself. It is by Jonathan Morgan, a web producer for the New York Times who is taking his first steps into web publishing. He writes: “About nine months ago, I decided to free myself from the shackles of submission editors and paper-based journalism and join the legions of writers who publish online. “I am convinced that systems to

Another newspaper is moving towards an integrated newsroom, this time in The Netherlands. The process the de Volkskrant, one of Holland’s leading daily quality newspapers started about a year ago and in an interview with journalism.co.uk publisher Pieter Kok explains how it is going. I particularly like the way he describes the paper, turning the traditional definition on its head: “I like to think of us as an online newspaper