JOMC 191.3 Blogging, We the Media and Virtual Communities

Blogging and Online Journalism: New Media, New Challenges, New Ethics

April 7 & 8, 2006

The Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics at Ohio University and the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism announce “Blogging and Online Journalism.”

BOJ will bring together a small group of successful, highly motivated students with some of the leading figures in journalism and media ethics for an intimate, in-depth two-day exploration of one of the most interesting and dynamic areas in applied ethics today. After a daily keynote address on a topic of general interest, participants will break up into workgroups. These workshops will feature presentations by invited scholars and by student participants, with discussion and critique of the presentations.

Presentations and workshop summaries will be published on the Institute website.

Participation is limited to 25. Students interested in participating should send contact information and a brief paper on one of the workshop topics to ethics@ohio.edu by January 20, 2006. Participants will be selected on the basis of the paper they submit. Please visit the “STUDENT CONFERENCE” section of ohio.edu/ethics for submission requirements.

Travel grants (travel, room, and board) are available for a limited number of participants. Students interested in applying for travel support should indicate this in their application.

Keynote speakers:

Dan Gillmore (author of “We, the Media”)
Clifford Christians (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain)

Friday, April 7
Martin Kuhn (U North Carolina): Blogging Ethics
Fernanda Viegas (MIT MediaLab): Privacy and Accountability in Blogging
Jan Boyles (U West Virginia): Rhetoric of Political Bloggers
Sandeep Junnarker (Columbia University): Blogging investigative reporting: The Videoblog

Saturday, April 8th
Mark Deuze (Indiana University): Typology of Online Journalism
Bob Benz (Scripps Company): Reality Constraints of Online Journalism
Bernhard Debatin (Ohio University): Online Journalism Ethics

I just wanted to make a quick comment on the “ingenious” reputation management system of eBay (Preece, 72). It’s fairly easy to get around. Although they’ve probably made some changes in the last few years, I wrote about a case of eBay fraud as a reporter in 2002. I got to talk to the head of eBay’s fraud department, which was fun. It turns out a guy would make several small transactions, and build up a good rating. Then, he would place an expensive item on the auction block, sell it, and never deliver. He would then retire that identity, and start all over again. He ended up scamming people out of thousands of dollars. I thought he was pretty smart, but they caught him when a user reported that he sent the money to a PO box. The police went to the post office and the next time the guy came to check his mail, that was it. I wonder if they have a better way to safeguard against this kind of fraud. Here’s an interesting police blotter on how law enforcement and eBay are working together. Here’s a list of marketplace tips eBay provides. The site also has a whole section on “community.”

- Robin

I had an interesting conversation this weekend about blogging with N&O deputy managing editor Dan Barkin. I will share more details in class tomorrow, but basically, he answered my question “why did the N&O start blogging?” He said the N&O blogs were an experiment, and indicated that the paper did not know what would come of it. He seemed to bristle at the suggestion that they were economically motivated. I had told him I was working with survey data and I found that newspapers with editors who were more involved with financial decisions were more likely to blog. Of course, correlation does not prove causation, but I was interested to hear what he would say. He had more to say, so this is just a teaser. I bet you can hardly wait

- Robin

In class a few weeks ago we talked about how many people are online and watching TV at the same time. Now Yahoo and TiVo will make it a little easier for those multi-taskers. They are merging services so that one can be online via TV and record shows via internet. It’s not an entirely new concept, but a bit more convenient - and likely more popular - than the alternatives. Here’s the link to the CNN story if you’re interested in reading more: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/biztech/11/07/yahoo.tivo.ap/index.html