Web 2.0, Media Panel

Good coverage of IP, DRM, and all kinds of juicy issues, listen to the whole thing.

Martin Nisenholtz: "Journalism is largely about storytelling, and if it's going to touch you, it's going to do it based on emotion." But no matter how compelling a story, "We [the NY Times] have a massive UI problem. ... We want to expose this stuff by having the Web [i.e. bloggers] expose it. I don't think we can solve this UI problem on our own, the UI is the Web." Shelby Bonnie agrees, and wants to do more internally at CNET to break down the barriers between big journalism and the blogosphere. Martin and John debated whether bloggers report "news:" can you attend and participate in a school board meeting and "cover" it in a traditional journalistic sense? John's point: traditionally, editors had the role of ensuring the validity of the reporting, now (as Dan Gillmor has written) it's the readers.

Steve Gillmor asked about the implications of podcasting for their business models. Shelby: RSS is one of the great blessings of the last couple of years. Interestingly, in all the ensuing discussion no one on this panel mentioned seeing diverse/distributed/independent content creation as a threat.

Cory asked about TiVo and Replay. TiVo cooperated with Hollywood, while Replay got sued out of existence. Recently the studios tried (unsuccessfully) to block TiVo-to-Go. "You spent years playing ball with the studios and they still are dicking you over." Mike Ramsay sees the company as more on the consumer advocacy side, but sees working with Hollywood as just part of reality. Cory: "No one ever successfully gave the studios a say in their future." Mike had to disagree.