Paul Boutin

So, whatever happened to Microcontent News editor John Hiler? He stopped posting over a year ago, and doesn’t answer his old email address. Meanwhile, I just reread my old Boutinsphere parody of John’s Blogosphere chart (done after talking to John, honest!) and decided to relink it. One thing that’s changed since John’s chart of two years ago: I don’t know many journalists getting paid full-time to write about stuff they find on the Web. Mahir probably wouldn’t rate a story assignment now.

Thomas Hazlett’s ode to the V-Chip on Slate didn’t get enough play over the weekend. As Thomas pointed out, most new TVs have one.

“V” stood for “violence,” which makes sense given the chip’s Democratic roots. Policy wags like to joke that if prudish Republicans had drafted the original bill, the device would have been called the “S-chip.”

On Super Bowl Sunday, even a television with its V-chip set to filter all but the most innocuous content would have let the halftime show air.

Those of you who’ve tried Internet content filters already know the story.

Atlanta Business Chronicle: “Former CNN President Richard Kaplan has been named president of MSNBC, NBC News’ 24-hour cable channel. Kaplan replaces Erik Sorenson, who has been general manager of MSNBC since August 1998. Sorenson will lead the transition over the next couple weeks and will then join NBC News working with [NBC News President Neal] Shapiro on long-term strategic projects.”

CNN headline: “Polaroid warns buyers not to ‘Shake It’”

From the Columbia Journalism Review (screenshot from punxfordean.org)

At 8:42 this morning, the CBS affiliate in Jacksonville, Florida posted on its website a Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News wire story entitled, “Dean’s Campaign Hit with Another Blow after Wisconsin Loss.” (The story has since been taken down, but as Atrios noted, you can see a screen shot here.)

“I’m really upset about it,” said Susan Adams Loyd, Vice President and General Manager at CBS 47. She blamed an automatic feed from Knight-Ridder, and said the station removed the story as soon as it was discovered on its website.

It’s common practice for reporters, particularly those at wire services, to try to beat their deadlines by cranking out pieces in advance based on their expectations.

But the snafu exposed to the public, for a few brief moments, one of the fundamental flaws of campaign journalism: that storylines are written long before the stories themselves actually happen, and that political reporters are often more reliant on conventional wisdom than reality in putting together their coverage.

Cyrus and I were joking that the circle of nerddom won’t be complete until someone writes an RSS reader for the iPod. Whoops - Shrook has had an “export to iPod” feature for RSS feeds since August. It requires a newer iPod with a Dock.

Case study: the difference between (a) a blog post about how it felt to be on the inside of a popular site that most of the blog’s readers have seen, and (b) a news story written for a much larger audience of people who’ve possibly never heard of the site.