WOLves

Optimizing scholarly communication

Doc Searls was talking the other day about scholarly works being available online, and the ways this could be helpful.

From the standpoint of writers, this could be a real blessing in terms of being able to access the correct information – or at least information that is more correct than is generally available. Those of us who write articles intending to inform on non-fiction topics are often confronted with advocacy research in the guise of serious study, and that is a big problem if you’re interested in accuracy.

If you’re not familiar with advocacy research, what it is usually consists of a paid study for marketing or other purposes, with an outcome favorable to whatever idea those footing the bill expect to get across to the public. We’re all familiar with those kinds of statements in advertising like, “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Toothpaste A” or “studies show Handsoap XYZ kills ten times more bacteria!” Most people recognize those “studies” for what they are, and may even have come to expect them in marketing situations.

Unfortunately people like numbers and statistics, even if they don’t make any sense, or are scientifically unsupportable. Emphasis on this kind of information is so often used these days by activists for all kinds of causes, that I’ve noticed a good bit of advocacy research creeping into publications from government agencies and non-profits, where its use is nothing short of misleading and dishonest.

With the genuine article available online for anybody to see, this could go a long way in helping the public get a better, more reliable understanding of issues they need to deal with. This could mean the end of advocacy research, and that would be a great benefit for everybody – everybody, that is, except those phony institutes and fake thinktanks.

CIA World Factbook 2005 Now Available

CIA Press Release

The World Factbook 2005 is now available on the Central Intelligence Agency Web site (http://www.cia.gov). The World Factbook remains the CIA's most widely disseminated and most popular product, now averaging more than 6 million visits each month. In addition, tens of thousands of government, commercial, academic, and other Web sites link to or replicate the online version of the Factbook.

Although this reference site provides information as of 1 January 2005, it will be updated biweekly throughout the year to provide wide-ranging and hard-to-locate information about the background, geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The nine primary information categories and the 139 subcategories for most entities include geographic coordinates, gross domestic product, number of mobile cellular telephones, natural resources, legal systems, political parties, illicit drugs, mortality rates, and much more. Included among the 271 geographic listings is one for the "World," which incorporates data and other information summarized where possible from the other 270 listings.

The World Factbook 2005 contains six appendices with reference information ranging from abbreviations and descriptions of international organizations and groups to cross-referenced lists of country data codes. The 2005 edition includes 15 reference maps, which are available in both JPEG and PDF formats. Many country maps and flags have been updated to reflect changes and refinements over the past year.

Six new entries have been added to The World Factbook 2005. In the people category, a major infectious diseases field has been added for countries deemed to pose a higher degree of risk for travelers. In the economy category, entries have been included for current account balance, investment (gross fixed), public debt, and reserves of foreign exchange and gold. The transnational issues category has a new refugees and internally displaced persons entry. Revision of some individual country maps, first introduced in the 2001 edition, is continued in this edition.

"Rank Order" pages are available for natural gas production, consumption, exports, imports, and Internet hosts. The "Rank Order" pages enable Web site visitors to select and view data from among 37 data fields in the geography, people, economy, communications, transportation, and military categories. Most of the information is rank-ordered from highest to lowest for all countries where data is available. Individual pages can be readily viewed, and instructions are provided for downloading and saving the data into a database or spreadsheet.

Printed copies of The World Factbook 2005 will be available for purchase in July from the Government Printing Office (http://bookstore.gpo.gov) and the National Technical Information Service (http://www.ntis.gov). Ordering and pricing information for both domestic and international customers will be available on the GPO and NTIS Web sites.

The World Factbook 2005 is available for download in Zip file format for both high-bandwidth users and low-bandwidth users via the "Download This Publication" link on the Factbook home page or directly from http://www.cia.gov/cia/download.html.

Storyblogging Carnival XVII

The latest Storyblogging Carnival is up at Back of the Envelope at
http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com/posts/1114444860.shtml.  Enjoy!

Thanks,

Donald
--
Donald S. Crankshaw
Back of the Envelope -- http://www.donaldscrankshaw.com

Calista's Wednesday Links

The Author's Guild
Society of Published authors. Site offers contract advice, info on Electronic rights and publisher information. Interesting current news and article archives on the publishing industry.

Electric Crime Scene Investigation
Printable PDF Pamphlet from the U.S. Department of Justice, a primer for first responders. Specifically cyber crimes, and identity theft.

Media Bistro
Membership community of industry freelance professionals; journalists,
publishers, editors, agents, publicist, and artist. Offers listings, resources, forums, and benefits. A portion of the site's content is open to non members

House Members Announce Formation of the Future of American Media Caucus

Aim To Inform Colleagues on Wide Array of Media Policy Issues Currently Being Debated In Congress

Calista's Wednesday Links

Chicago Manual of Style
Frequently asked and not so frequently asked questions, in this online forum of information maintained by the University of Chicago.

Hollywood Lit Sales
Site offers insights, resources, a great screenwriting bookstore, contest and more, for screenwriters.

Law - Forensics Website
Website of legal informational links and websites to help mystery and crime writers in their pursuit of technique and knowledge.

Ouch! Cronkite thinks so, too.

Here's what he had to say in an interview at the AZ 'Public:

"As old Thomas Jefferson said, the nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never will and never can be. The problem we've got with newspapers and television today, television news, is, I think, the fact that the public is too ignorant to understand the important news of the day. It wants to be entertained rather than informed."

Murdoch: Reporters and Editors think their readers are stupid

Much is being made right now of the speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Some bloggers I've seen have picked a chunk that related to them and commented on it.

Here's mine:

...when you ask journalists what they think about their readers, the picture grows darker. According to one recent study, the percentage of national journalists who have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the American public to make good decisions has declined by more than 20 points since 1999. Perhaps this reflects their personal politics and personal prejudices more than anything else, but it is disturbing.

This is a polite way of saying that reporters and editors think their readers are stupid. In any business, such an attitude toward one’s customers would not be healthy. But in the newspaper business, where we rely on people to come back to us each day, it will be disastrous if not addressed.

As one study said: “Even if the economics of journalism work themselves out, how can journalists work on behalf of a public they are coming to see as less wise and less able?”

I’d put it more dramatically: newspapers whose employees look down on their readers can have no hope of ever succeeding as a business.

Here's the entire transcript.

The reason I picked this particular passage is due to an experience I've had with various news media. Last October, I began a project where I monitored the news for stories on domestic violence, using Google, Yahoo, Topix, and Bloglines. When errors of fact appeared, or a media outlet demonstrated an outstanding grasp of this complex, and sensitive issue, I'd e-mail them, either asking that the error be corrected and supplying the right information, or congratulatiing them on their good reporting, whatever the situation called for.

It was a daunting task, with sometimes several hundred stories appearing in a day, as October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I did persist, however ;>) and by the end of the month I'd probably sent out 300+ e-mails to various papers, radio and TV stations.

Out of all of those, I got maybe 10 responses of any kind. No TV or radio station ever responded. Such responses as I got were all from newspaper reporters at small-town papers, mostly thanking me when I'd sent a "nice note."

Not once did any media outlet make any correction, even when I pointed out such things as faulty statistics or their reporting of nonexistent programs, even though I wasn't commenting on anything that was a matter of opinion, and supplied the correction along with the means of verifying what I was saying.

I didn't expect a response from them, not really. I've figured that they're mostly new at this kind of communications thing, and don't quite know what to do with a reader who approaches them with a specific detail to address. It isn't too suprising, though, to hear that they think their readers/viewers are stupid.

More discussion of the speech

Jeff Jarvis

Terry Teachout

Dan Gillmor

Blog Herald

Leonard Witt

Steve Outing

A web presence for writers and artists

Terry Teachout unwittingly describes the essence of the WOLves Promotional Group here. His focus is on artists, but there isn't any reason why those in other fields beyond writing couldn't be part of the writer's Group!

if you’re an artist, ask yourself this: how are you using the new media to interact with your audience and spread the word about your work?
I’ve said this before, but it can’t be said often enough: the mainstream media aren’t especially interested in serious art, and such interest as they do have is diminishing daily. If you’re looking to big-city newspapers to start reviewing more literary fiction, or to PBS to telecast more ballet and modern dance, or to your local radio station to continue carrying the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday broadcasts, you’re kidding yourself. They don’t care. Which leaves you with two options. You can sit around complaining about their indifference—or you can do an end run around them and use the new media to reach out directly to your audience, both existing and potential.

Heck, we could even start calling it the WOLves Writers & Artists. We're all doing the same thing, and appreciate each other's disciplines.

I, too, am a middle-aged digital immigrant—but I’m here, now, communicating directly with you via a medium that barely existed five years ago. No, it wasn’t easy, but I’ve rethought my expectations about what the mainstream media can do for me, and now I’m starting to do some of it myself. You can do the same thing, so long as you let go of your preconceptions about the dominant role of the old media in your professional life.

More info here on joining up!

THX to Jeff Jarvis for the heads-up.

More on the CotC Makeover

My original post on the sudden changes in the Carnival of the Capitalists is here at the Blog Herald.

In response to my question, "What happens to the un-selected posts?" JSLogan has posted them at his blog. THX, Dude!

UPDATE: Wayne Hurlbert at Blog Business World talks about changing the model in midstream.