Monday, August 31, 2009 at 01:18PM After two years on this Typepad platform, I have moved my blog to my own website which can be found here.
I have no complaints about Typepad: It is simply a matter of wanting a platform over which I have more control and flexibility.
Please join me at www.boydneil.com.
Friday, August 21, 2009 at 01:43AM 
I am seeking your vote for a panel I am proposing for the SXSW conference and festival in Austin, Texas in March 2010. The panel theme is "A Different Documentary: Online Storytelling &Social Change."
If you think the panel should be part of the festival program, give it a thumbs up here.
Friday, August 14, 2009 at 12:05PM Debate about the future of newspapers won't die for some time yet I think . . . at least among journalists, news media watchers, some bloggers and Clay Shirky.
Roy Greenslade on Greenslade Blog wrote this week on newspapers and magazines charging for their online content. Greenslade's title alone raises the key question: "Paid content is all the rage with US publishers - but where's the proof that anyone will pay?"
I chuckled over the comment from Steven Brill, founder of Journalism Online, in the piece that JO "has helped shift the debate over charging for online news from 'if' to 'when and how'" because beleaguered publishers have moved past the "abstract debate" to agree that paid content is the way ahead." (JO's goal is to help them get there.)
Now there's a shock right? Publishers think the solution to declining print revenues is to charge people for accessing onlne content.
Megan McArdlein The Atlantic online framed the debate marvellously this way "The problem besetting newspapers is not that there are hordes of bloggers giving it away for free . . . Even if every newspaper and magazine in the country entered into a binding cartel agreement not to put more than a smidgen of free content on their websites, newspapers would still be losing money, and closing by the dozens. It's the economics, stupid . . . We're witnessing the death of a business model."
So how exactly is pushing people to pay for online content recognizing, as people like Shirky and McArdle (and dozens of others) have been rightly trying to point out, that the paid online content model which has been tried many times before will not revive the fortunes of "old" media.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 01:03PM One of the more tangible of intangible assets is a company's corporate responsibility (CR) program. Since I consult with a number of companies and organizations on these programs, I try to stay current on new ideas and points of view.
I was in the middle of writing about the sites and blogs I use to try to stay current when a colleague pointed out I had been scooped by Chris Jarvis at Fast Company in a post on the top ten sites which encourage conversation about social media and CSR
There are some overlaps between my list and his (Just Means and Taking It Global) but here are a couple more smart websites and blogs tagged in my RSS reader. I also follow a few Twitter 'friends' who direct me to useful CR and sustainability studies and reports.
Here are some of the most valuable . . . to me at least:
Please post a comment if you have others to recommend.
Friday, July 17, 2009 at 12:33PM Some bickering broke out this week between Michael Arrington at TechCrunch and the folks at Twitter about some documents leaked to Mr. Arrington and then published in a column/post. I haven't been following the chatter about it, but there is a good summary at Social Media Today.
What caught my eye from Amy Mengel's report was this comment:
"But, let’s all remember that bloggers, like Arrington, aren’t journalists.
They don’t operate under a professional code of ethics. they don’t report to an
editor or publisher who tells them what to write about or what they can or can’t
reveal. Many of them are ethical, many of them are former journalists, many of
them would have chosen not to publish the documents."
Separate from the facts or otherwise of the particular events (now heading to the courts apparently), the question in my mind is this: When does a blogger who writes for a group-edited blog become de facto a journalist and perhaps subject to the same standards of ethical conduct to which journalists are expected to adhere (to the extent that they do in reality anyway)?
Wikipedia describes Mr. Arrington -- a lawyer -- as a "founder/co-editor" of TechCrunch. Many think of TechCrunch as an online news source. So, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck . . . ?
