Social news website Mashable put together a list of celebrities with blogs, and then broke down the list into sections like Actors (Jackie Chan, Zack Braff), Athletes (Anna Kournikova), Musicians (Moby, Kanye West), Comedians (Margaret Cho, Rosie O’Donnell), and the people you care about: News (Brian Williams, Daryn Kagan) and Writers (Neil Gaiman, Kevin Smith). [Mashable]
The left-leaning blogger Brian Beutler, the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, was shot in D.C. yesterday. “Some of the details of the incident are still sketchy. According to [MC project director Tracy] Van Slyke, Beutler was walking with a friend after leaving a bar in Washington’s Adams Morgan section when the two were confronted by a man demanding their cell phones near 17th Street and Euclid Street. It’s unclear as yet what happened, but the man fired several shots at Beutler. One bullet hit him in the spleen and he was hit twice in the shoulder. A D.C. police official said he wasn’t aware of any arrests made in connection with the shooting.” Though Beutler is expected to bounce from stable condition to full recovery, this whole thing is sad, because it’s quite likely he was not even shot for his political leanings. [TPM]
Actress Jessica Biel, who is often photographed by the paparazzi looking very unhappy next to professional jerk Justin Timberlake, blogged her first bloggy blog item on The MySpace yesterday! She’s down in South Carolina filming the movie Nailed with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tracy Morgan, and she’s only got a few minutes of rest while sitting in her trailer, probably drinking SmartWater, because that’s what celebrities like her do, so she’s punching out her very first item where she reports she is “thrilled to join the tech revolution!” And we are thrilled to welcome her! But for being such a novice blogger, Ms. Biel has already learned rule No. 1 of blogging: self-promotion. This medium is barely worth the effort if you aren’t going to rush from the gate and start plug-plug-plugging away at your own projects. CONTINUED »
O! YO! YO!!!! ON THE REAL, CALL ME ANY NAME YOU WANT…ARROGANT, CONCEITED, GAY, SQUID BRAINS, BABY KNEES, MACACA, DONKEY LIPS, NIGGARDLY…ANYTHING…BUT DON’T EVER SAY I’M NOT A FUCKING MISOGYNIST!!!! SHIT!!!! FUCK! I’M TYPING SO HARD I’M ABOUT 2 BREAK MY JAPANESE COMPUTER WATCH DESIGNED BY FUCKING GRASS-FED MONKS! WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT JAPANESE HERBIVORE MONK WATCHES YOU STUPID SWATCH-HAVING BASTARDS!??? ANYWAY ASK ANYBODY THAT’S BACKSTAGE AT THE GLOW IN THE DARK TOUR…THEY KNOW I HUMILIATE WOMEN ON THE REGULAR, BABY. WHY YOU THINK I GOT THIS PICTURE OF THAT TRANSFORMERS CHICK ON HER HANDS AND KNEES ON MY BLOG?!!!!!!!!!!!
Media fingerprint technology isn’t exactly new. Movie studios use it when they send out screeners to track down who’s leaking copies of Hancock on BitTorrent. Record companies do the same with advanced albums. And now … the Associated Press? Using a technology from Attributor, the AP plugs its copyrighted content into the software, which then crawls the web to match strings of that content against material published elsewhere. If a match is made, the AP (or other clients) are alerted, and “the software can be programmed to automatically send out ‘takedown notices’ that require sites to remove contested content, and the data it generates could end up being used to build a case against alleged copyright infringers.”
That’s how the AP originally found all that material on The Drudge Retort, and started a flame war with bloggers.
One big problem: The software will likely have a hard time, or no ability at all, to determine actual fair use (like a video clip snippet for a movie review) and genuine infringement, which means there’s room for plenty of false positives. And if the software automatically fires off a DMCA takedown notice, folks like the AP could find themselves in trouble of their own: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act bars copyright owners from issuing this types of requests for instances when there is no actual infringement (i.e. sending the notices as a bullying tactic), and can hold those owners liable for the defense’s damages, including legal fees.
But this type of software, it turns out, can be used for good! And surprise of all surprises, none other than Conde Nast sees the light. CONTINUED »
So much for that whole “Associated Press v. The Bloggers” scandal. After launching an attack on liberal site The Drudge Retort for its supposed, ahem, liberal use of headline and article excerpts, and then getting hosed by anyone with a Blogger account and a basic understanding of Fair Use, the AP says the issue has been resolved. “The resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers.” Not that anything was actually resolved, like whether the wire service actually think people are going to pay to quote five or more words. [PC]
Though billionaire investor and Yahoo pain in the ass Carl Icahn was supposed to start blogging today, about corporate governance, at IcahnReport.com, the website’s only piece of content thus far is this: “This page is parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com.” Perhaps the domain Carl should’ve registered is Icanh’tReport.com.
Credit card company Advanta is offering a business credit card aimed specifically at blogger types. [Blueprint]
When Reed Elsevier “quietly asked” a blogger to stop chronicling its hopeful sale of Reed Business Information, the blogger complied.
With its revamped website and Graydon Carter’s video introductions to each new issue, Vanity Fair clearly considers itself a major player in the Internet leagues. That VF grasps so desperately at each new meme, however, isn’t a publishing industry triumph; it’s a sad little whimper from inside Conde Nast, where they’ve been unable to trade up their celebrity currency for online relevance.
And then came “How the Web Was Won,” the lengthy “oral history” of the Internet, which debuted online as the biggest piece of link bait yet. (You know how us Internet types like to link to things that talk about our own kind.) And with it, a Web 2.0 sidebar: “Blogoptican,” which throws a few dozen Internet titles – many of them not even blogs – on a matrix, measuring them vertically between news and opinion, and horizontally between scurrilous and honest.
That Jossip appears toward the scurrilous pole is not so much an honor, but an expectation; of course we’d end up there.
And then there are the celebrity gossip titles, which generously populate the list, and go a little something like this: CONTINUED »
Blogging grandpa Jeff Jarvis wants reporters to identify themselves when leaving comments. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter wants bloggers to identify themselves when conducting interviews, especially ex-president Bill Clinton.
In this era where “citizen” and “journalist” are paired as often as “drunk” and “uploaded the video to YouTube,” who’s responsible for disclosing what here?
Should we just assume everyone is, at some level, a reporter? And if they aren’t doing the reporting, isn’t everyone at least a source? CONTINUED »
Sadly, it appears those interning at 20th Century Fox have not learned the lesson of Chrissy Torres, the University of Southern California student who thought airing her complaints about her gig – like her boss giving her a “Meryl-Streep-in-Devil-Wears-Prada long list of things to do one day, 3 hours before I had to leave” – would be a good idea.
Some of her fellow interns aren’t so pleased with her actions. Which is why they’re doing some blogging of their own … aimed at Torres. CONTINUED »
Can we fault the world’s worst entertainment blogger, Liz Snead, for merely living up to what her Los Angeles Times paycheck asks her to do, which is to publish on the Internet whatever thoughtless rants run through her head? Or is she culpable for trying to take the struggling Tribune paper into generation Web 2.No by leading them down a path of bumptious observation?
It didn’t take long for Snead’s Angelina Jolie items to paint her as a bottom-feeding gossip hound. Now, she’s taking great joy in calling Liv Tyler, who is in the middle of trying to save her marriage fat — directing this bit of advice her way: “Even if you’re wearing a very loose dress, suck that tummy in, girls!” CONTINUED »
… and she’s Chrissy Torres, who’s likely out of an internship, like, right this second. Not only did she give away the damning details about her identity while blogging about her internship, she also listed the fact that she was interning at Fox and contributing to CollegeOTR.com, where the blog was published, on her Facebook profile. Idiot.
Bad news, kiddos: The USC student who was said to be interning at FNC is actually just interning at one of the bajillion divisions of Fox (okay, it’s 20th Century Fox in LA). Not that writing about her experience there is any less stupid.
[Update: Turns out this isn’t an intern at FNC, but 20th Century Fox.]
A student at the USC appears to be blogging on the website CollegeOTR.com about what it’s like to intern at Fox News. As anybody working in the media, or having interned in the industry, understands, this is an incredibly stupid, stupid idea. Especially since, while you might be blogging “anonymously,” it won’t take staffers very long to finger which of their interns is female and attends USC. And writes things like this:
This has been the back and forth of working at Fox. Somedays are incredibly busy — my head boss, a fairly well-known producer, gave me a Meryl-Streep-in-Devil-Wears-Prada long list of things to do one day, 3 hours before I had to leave. The list included finding out the name of some upcoming directors at an agency, searching for ad rates on popular websites, and finding the HOME address of a popular celebrity CEO [NOT an actor, and NOT Ben Affleck], so he could “play a trick” on them.
“Oh, well, do you have any contacts for them?” I asked, hopefully. “I mean, can I drop your name to get it? I just don’t know how I could get access…”
“No, no, no,” he said, annoyed. “That would RUIN the prank. Just you know, google it or something”
…oic.
Los Angeles Times blogger Elizabeth Snead has a simple solution to ending all this madness about whether Angelina Jolie actually gave birth: Show yourself!
“So where is Angelina? It’s her 33rd birthday today,” Snead wrote yesterday. “If she would only show her face — and her bump — all these birth rumors would be instantly put to rest, without having to waste money paying expensive lawyers to write threatening letters to news organizations.”
Yes, Angelina, feed the beast. That’s some brilliant advice, Snead. This, from the same supposed Hollywood expert who thinks it’s coincidental that Jolie and Gina Gershon, along with every other Hollywood talent, hired the big-mouthed law firm Lavely & Singer.
JOSSIP REPORTS
So how did the “ANGELINA GAVE BIRTH!!!” rumor – that got Entertainment Tonight in a giant cauldron of boiling shit for its fake world exclusive – even get started?
As all terrible things in life do: On a blog.
It all started May 26, four days before ET’s since de-bunked report, when someone, identified only as “Jenah” and supposed from New York City, posted to famousbabesblog.blogspot.com (since disappeared from the web) claiming to be “the best friend to one of Brad & Angelina’s nannies, I believe I can report this before any other news outlet: THEY HAD THEIR TWINS!”
And as these things are wont to do, the item got circulated all over celebrity message boards, before winding up on the French website PurePeople, which noted the report came from a blog, and thus shouldn’t be treated as fact. (BLOGS LIE!!, after all.) That item got picked up by JustJared, which cited “media outlets in France” but noted, “This rumor has not been confirmed by any reps of the Jolie-Pitt clan.”
From there, Entertainment Tonight got wind, claimed the exclusive as their own (and even copying the babies’ names given in the original report). Then the tabloid magazines posted the news on their blog, until word arrived that the report was false, everyone backtracked and debunked the rumor, while ET remained its source was reliable. Cue Jolie’s attorneys at Lavely & Singer to begin circulating letters explaining how somebody was impersonating Jolie’s assistant Holly Goline, all the while ET has sat idly by pretending the whole thing never happened, even though they knew their source was bad.
All of which brings up two big questions: CONTINUED »
Washington D.C. political bloggers live together. In a “flop house.” And then they watch the cable news networks together. And then blog their reactions. And then link to each other’s blog posts. And then finish off the Jim Beam and make sweet, sweet link love to each other.
Thanks to the lovely Google Cache, a blog’s since-pulled offline report about Chris Matthews’ revelation and Tucker Carlson’s confirmation, during a Portfolio photo shoot at MSNBC’s D.C. studio, that Arianna Huffington had hired a private investigator to tail a NBC colleague (since identified as Tim Russert) can still be read. [Google Cache]
As it the censored item now reads: “The original author of this post and the editor of this blog would like to sincerely apologize to Conde Nast, Portfolio, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson and the photographer on set for any problems or inconvenience we might have caused. We had no intention to bring harm to anybody involved.”
Except, well, too late? The blogger, Douglas Thompson, has officially screwed over his friend, the photographer, who he tagged along with. No more Conde Nast work for you, buddy.
Editorial Director
