I just learned that feminist Andrea Dworkin has died, at the age of 59.
I read--and knew-- Dworkin when I was fresh out of college, say 20, and what Susie Bright has written about her rings true for me from back then--
"Here's the irony... every single woman who pioneered the sexual revolution, every erotic-feminist-bad-girl-and-proud-of-it-stiletto-shitkicker, was once a fan of Andrea Dworkin. Until 1984, we all were. She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye, she made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire."
Dworkin went off in a direction where I did not follow, but, geeze, she rocked.

Wired obit from April 11, 2005 here.
A memorial of sorts.

Jarvis has some solid data and links about declining newspaper attention and revenue and a nice plug for The Media Center's latest Synapse on the future of news.
Also, a follow-up post titled Tipping Point or Melting Point?
Meanwhile Rob Runett reports "During last week's NAA Annual Convention, McKinsey Co. consultants hired by NAA told publishers they could lose billions of classified advertising
dollars to Internet competitors unless they fight back. "
And
"An AP profile of San Francisco-based craigslist and other competitors added
to the uneasy feeling. The San Francisco Chronicle covered the event with
comments from NAA, industry watchers, and yes, craigslist. CEO Jim
Buckmaster challenged newspapers strategies. ""Newspapers are cutting their
investment in reporting. They're running more Associated Press wire stories
and increasing the percentage of the product they devote to advertising," he
told the Chronicle."

Susan sez: When the Craigslist guys are quoted as citizen journalism experts, you know it's past the tipping point.

My old friend and creative writing colleague Meredith Sue Willis is also Dave Weinberger's sister in law and he says she's just published a bunch of new work--and she is a good fiction writer.
Check out her latest story "The Story of Scheherezade and Dunzyad" in The Pedestal Magazine here.

Dave adds "And the American Book Review gives Merry's Dwight's House and Other Stories a very positive review. That book and her new sf novel, The City Built of Starships, are both finalists for Foreward Magazine's Book-of-the-Year award."

Yea, Sue!

Mary's in Paris, but she has some issues: "I'm sitting here at a conference that I flew all the way to Paris for.. for two days, and damned if it isn't full of panels, broadcast mode all the way, telling the audience how it is. And well.. it's so freaking undynamic. Because it's not a discussion. These are bloggers. They know a lot. They know what it is. These 300 people make media every day on their blogs and yet, panels are here giving us time to email the office, our cats or the mailman about a critical lost postcard."
More here.

The big point is that the audience has a lot to offer and talking heads are just bobble-heads these days.

Update: Elisa Camhort chews on this one and comes out...mixed.

Digerati scoffed when Tony Perkins asked Always On members to help him write a book, but now MLB.com has not only launched an affiliate blogging service that costs $4.95 a month and up--they're telling prospective bloggers that if they sign up and do a good job, their comments will be included in blogcasts!
Hear that, Dave Weinberger? Why not show your love for the Red Sox?
The MLBlog marketing pitch is "Share your passion for baseball with people who are important to you. Post photos, comment on your favorite team, keep a season journal."

I'm lovin' this.

Richard Edelman, head of one of the largest PR agencies, is paying close attention to blogging and has an excellent post on some of April's NYC blog-related events, including the Reuters panel and the Page Society conference. The big takeaways for him are that blogs are interactive, personalized, and carry the weight of personal recommendation, a very powerful tool.
His advice to PR trying to figure out the form is useful to everyone looking at DIY content and grassroots journalism: " We have to be operating in parallel universes, continuing to do a great job with traditional media, while engaging with new media. We should help our clients create original content, and advise them to engender conversations on-line but be honest about our inability to control outcomes. We must be on top of the breaking news in companies, because news is being filled by the person who has the newest information. The coverage of tsunami initially came from survivors with cell phones or mini-cams, and delivered across the Web. Our tone in new media must reflect the different expectations of the audience, which is to demand authenticity, individuality and transparency."

I'm working on a piece on aggregators and news sources, which I will post later this week--meanwhile, these are interesting presos that turned up while digging around in the Infonortics April 2005 search engine meeting:

• Jan Pederson, Yahoo, Internet Search Engines: Past and Future
• Tom Wilde, FindWhat.com, Content Management on the web: the next killer app for search
• Stephen E. Arnold , Google News and Google Crawler/Search Optimization
• Tuc Loung, Ask Jeeves, a Holistic Approach to Search (2004)

Doc, Mary, Halley, Catrina and all sorts of other cool folk are in Paris blogging this.
Of course, I'm jealous, but hey, some of us have to work (And then for others, going to this stuff is work!)

Swapatorium's got a richly detailed interview with blogger, artist and rubber stamp collector Mike Leigh, aka A.1.Waste Paper Co.Ltd, who, as wastedpapiers, has also has posted nifty collages and art, as well as photos, on flickr.

enjoy!

So Topix's Rich Skrenta read my post and came up with some fascinating data of his own re topix and bloglines, including the fact that "Topix.net has 187k subs total on My Yahoo, compared with 7k on Bloglines."
Rich also says "Our knitting feed is our 12th most popular feed; quilting is #10."
List of all topix feeds is here.

Susan says: Larger implications of feed packaging and redistribution continue to be interesting...both from an ad perspective (think of the revenue these feeds could carry and who gets the $$) and from a licensing/permissions perspective...either way, Rich, this is so interesting.

Tribe founder Mark Pincus whips the covers off a new Tribe feature--socially networked, recommendation-showing, classifieds-listing, event listings revealing, blog-friendly home pages--aka profile pages!
See Marc's, Elliott's and Gary's--more info here.
Tribe says plans are to possibly:
- Have your own URL (something like: myname.tribe.net)
- Display information about yourself from around the web, like your amazon wishlist or your blog.
- Customize the colors and background for your page
- Show all your tribe.net activity on your page

Meanwhile, the new pages have enough ads that more $$ should start rolling in.

Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, whose boss just left for Skype, says: "We changed Microsoft. Today I visit http://blogs.msdn.com and http://blogs.technet.com and see thousands of employees talking with their customers in new ways. I see people taking over Channel 9 (one of our favorite posters there is a Linux advocate) and I know we changed how corporations work with their customers."
Scoble's right--he and his bosses made a huge difference--keep it going on, Robert---and don't forget to keep including women and new voices in yr mix.

Susan sez: Interestingly,while there is much talk of business blogging, no big CPG companies, for example, have stepped up to try to provide equivalent value to their brand--not yet.

Folks, what are you waiting for?

Paul Kedrosky on VC Randy Komisar's move to Kleiner-Perkins: " Kleiner seems less and less like a venture firm, and more and more like a fascinating exercise in financial feng shui."
Om Malik on Internet Anxiety Disorder, aka Turn it all off!
Julie Leung on being overwhelmed. "Already in the past month I've unsubscribed from both yahoogroups and feeds in an attempt to simplify."

Also:
Bob Stepno discusses Chris Nolan's Stand-alone journalism concept.
Former colleague John Federico and fellow blogger/consultant Mitch Ratcliffe give Audible RSS feeds --and get paid for doing it.

Plus
Ericka Menchen analyzes del.icio.us. (Via unmediated)