Twelve years after the first self-proclaimed weblog by Jorn Barger, Salon cofounder Scott Rosenberg has come out with a history of blogging -- Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters -- which will be released tomorrow. Rosenberg, who has his own blog, talks of Barger and other early bloggers in this video. The most influential of them was Dave Winer of Scripting News, he says. But the roots of blogging go back to essayists like Montaigne, he adds.
Here's an excerpt from his book, taken from Salon:
Why was terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari's arrest first reported in the Straits Times?
One would have expected the government to announce the news, especially after the scandal he caused by escaping from a Singapore prison more than a year ago.
Granted he was rearrested in Malaysia by Malaysian police. But they were tipped off by Singapore intelligence, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng was quick to say after the Straits Times reported the arrest today.
So Singapore can take credit too for his arrest. All the more reason why the government could have broken the news.
But instead the news surfaced in a newspaper that is not known for investigative stories, particularly regarding the government.
The terrorist was arrested on April 1, the Straits Times reported quoting "regional intelligence sources".
The report was quick to give credit to Singapore intelligence. It said:
Poor Agence France-Presse (AFP). This is a news agency that requires client sign-in to access its news stories online. But anyone can read AFP stories online for free on the Straits Times website – even though the Singapore newspaper does not give free access to its own stories!
One has to pay to read the Straits Times' own stories. The free stuff on the Straits Times website is just a melange of wire stories, letters to the editor and blog postings by Straits Times journalists.
One can understand the Straits Times' desire to monetize its own stories.
Why should it let internet users read its stories for free when they will visit its website anyway to get what it calls "breaking news"? Stories it picks up from news agencies such as AFP and Reuters. These are published by other websites too. So the Straits Times has no reason to firewall them. Instead by letting website visitors read them for free, the Straits Times picks up internet traffic.
Now the Straits Times has also started tweeting the wire stories to attract Twitter users.
This is not what news organizations like the BBC, CNN and the New York Times do. They tweet their own stories. Even Singapore's Channel NewsAsia tweets its own stories. But the Straits Times is different.
It's good for us, of course. Now we can read all the AFP stores we want without having to pay a cent. Just subscribe to the Straits Times RSS feeds and follow the Straits Times on Twitter.
Slowly but surely Singapore is moving up the global press freedom chart, advancing two places this year.
Singapore is ranked 151st out of 195 countries in the 2009 Freedom of the Press rankings by Freedom House.
Also ranked 151st are Gabon and Armenia.
This is the third year in a row Singapore has tied with Gabon. Both were ranked 153rd in 2008 and 154th in 2007.
Iraq, which was ranked 153rd last year with Singapore and Gabon, has now moved up to 148th.
Three Southeast Asian nations are ranked lower than Singapore -- Brunei (163rd, up from 165th), Vietnam (178th, no change) and Burma (194th, unchanged).
Malaysia has dropped from 141st last year to 143rd this year.
Hong Kong is down from 67th from 75th.
India has moved up from 77th to 76th.
North Korea ranks last.
China is 181st with Iran and Rwanda.
Topping the list is Iceland, busted by the financial crisis. (Give me Singapore, which has good leadership and substantial reserves to weather the recession.)
Also in the top 10 are Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Andorra, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
New Zealand ranks 11th with Liechtenstein and Palau.
America is 24th with the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
Britain is 27th with Canada, Costa Rica, Barbados and St Kitts and Nevis.
Japan is 33rd with Austria, Hungary, Belize and Micronesia.
Australia is 38th with France, Cyprus, Malta and Dominica.
Taiwan is 43rd with Latvia, Slovakia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Vanuatu.
South Korea is 66th with South Africa, Namibia, Guyana and Solomon Islands.
Singapore is described as a conservative society. But it was the sexual libertarians who won the battle for the Singapore women's rights group Aware yesterday. The anti-gay group that took over Aware recently was voted out resoundingly at the extraordinary general meeting yesterday, which re-elected the liberal old guard.
And the mainstream media is pleased. That's the impression I got reading the Sunday Times coverage of the meeting.
Unusually the whole front page was devoted to the meeting, attended by nearly 3,000 people, and the triumph of the old guard. The front page photo showed the unsmiling newcomers conceding victory to the smiling old guard sharing the stage with them.
The only distinction the front-page report drew between the two groups was that the newcomers -- who seized the leadership in Aware elections five weeks ago but were voted out yesterday -- included members of a particular church who were "strongly against homosexuality".
The newcomers were led by a woman lawyer who encouraged them to "join and change Aware because she felt it was promoting lesbianism and homosexuality", said the report.
"In particular, she attacked an Aware sexuality programme for schools, saying it too promoted homosexuality," it added.
It did not say whether the woman lawyer's allegations were true or what the Aware old guard had to say on the issue.
The only indication that Aware promoted other causes besides sex education came from a quote. One of the old guard asked the newcomers at the meeting: "Where were you when women were abused and battered in the home, and girls raped? Where were you when children and husbands of Singapore women were denied citizenship? Where were you? You were not there."
That quote was the only reminder of other issues taken up by Aware in the past. Except for that, this was pretty much a battle between the anti-gay newcomers and the liberal old guard, at least as reported on the Sunday Times front page.
I don't think people should be judged by whether they are gay or straight. But the Sunday Times and its sister paper, the Straits Times, should cover other issues with equal prominence. The economy, for example.
The fact that unemployment among Singaporeans has reached a five-year high of 4.8 percent wasn't reported on the front page last week. That was relegated to the third page.
And now there's the BBC India Election Train running across India, covering
the general election. It's starting a bit late. As this Wall Street Journal
graphic shows, almost half the 543 parliamentary constituencies had already gone
to the polls by the time the train pulled out of New Delhi at the weekend.
But the BBC's Soutik Biswas (see picture) is doing a nice job giving a chatty, picturesque
account on his India Election Train Blog. The accompanying interactive map is a gem too. I am reminded of the BBC's Talking
America blog which covered the presidential election last year. But while
the BBC used a bus to cover the US election, in India it can afford a luxury
train.
Biswas in his airconditioned coach is definitely enjoying greater luxury than
Theroux or Gandhi, who travelled third class. Gandhi's railway journey across
India was memorably depicted in Sir Richard Attenborough's film, Gandhi, which won
as many Oscars in its time as Slumdog Millionaire. Unfortunately I couldn't find
any videoclip on YouTube to show the exhilarating railway journey. It was one of
the highlights of the movie.
So was the BBC's India Election Train inspired by Gandhi or Theroux's The
Great Railway Bazaar? (Theroux has retraced the journey in Ghost Train To The Eastern Star.)
The "election train" shows how India has opened up, allowing the foreign
media to cover the elections in a special train.
Indira Gandhi used to see the foreign hand behind every problem. Now the
foreign hand is everywhere from telecoms – Bharti is partly owned by Singapore's
SingTel – to banks: ICICI Bank's stakeholders include the Singapore sovereign
wealth funds Temasek Holdings and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation
(GIC).
Few could possibly better describe the change than the BBC's former India
correspondent, Mark Tully, who can still be heard on the World Service. More
than 60 years have passed since India became independent in 1947. But few cover
India better yet than the BBC.
A Straits Times journalist writes the China Daily, where he previously worked, is the voice of the Chinese government. As if the Straits Times didn't faithfully trumpet whatever the Singapore government said.
Not that it matters.
The Singapore government allows free internet access, so we can look for information elsewhere too.
I don't read the China Daily but anyone interested in current affairs should check the Chinese news agency, Xinhua.
Xinhua is expanding with the rise of China. The website is clean and the news reports read pretty much like what appears in the Straits Times.
As China's state news agency, Xinhua reflects official views, which makes
it useful reading for China watchers, just as the Straits Times is to anyone
interested in Singapore.
What's more, Xinhua reports from unlikely places. It has even been reporting from Kashmir in the ongoing Indian elections.
Xinhua is now looking for foreign editors -- "native English speakers" – to fill up positions both in Beijing and New York. It also wants subeditors -- "native speakers" only – in five languages: English, French, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese.
Xinhua has more than 100 bureaus around the world and it looks like it wants to expand further.
Even Google can't keep up with Twitter, where the news sometimes comes straight from the newsmaker's mouth.
Pirate Bay cofounder Peter S Kolmisoppi tweeted at 5.15 pm yesterday: I'm expecting big news tomorrow.
When I saw his tweet this afternoon, I checked the news sites but found nothing and forgot all about it.
And now the news is all over the net. The BBC reports:
Lawyers for four men jailed for running The Pirate Bay file-sharing website are calling for a retrial, saying the judge could have had a conflict of interest.
Judge Tomas Norstrom is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.
But the judge has told Swedish Radio: "These activities do not constitute a conflict of interest."
The Pirate Bay cofounder – who uses the name brokep on Tweeter – tweeted three hours ago he would be speaking to the BBC from a Swedish Radio studio.
The Local, an English news site in Sweden, is running its own story.
The BBC reports:
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law on 17 April 2009 and sentenced to a year in jail.
The four were also ordered to pay $4.5million (£3million) in damages to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment.
Pirate Bay cofounder Peter Sunde Kolmisioppi, who can be seen in the video below, quipped about his one-year jail sentence on Twitter today: "Really, it's a bit LOL. It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release."
He tweeted earlier: "According to leaked information from the court we lost (got the news last night). Trustworthy source as well."
Only one of the four judges involved in the Pirate Bay trial had legal training, according to the Wall Street Journal. That report was filed before the Pirate Bay foursome were jailed for a year.
CNET explains: After a 13-day trial, judge Tomas Norström, plus his assistant and three namndeman (essentially a jury with extended powers), found ample evidence for a guilty verdict, though no actual files are stored on the Web site
The four defendants -- Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstrom, three founders and one patron of The Pirate Bay -- were also ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to several major media companies including Warner Brothers, Columbia, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony BMG and EMI, reports CNN.
Speaking at an online press conference, Sunde refused to pay the fine and said they would appeal. Here's the video, downloaded from Pirate Bay. The site is very much alive. Cheekily it says: "But as in all good movies, the heroes lose in the beginning but have an epic victory in the end anyhow. That's the only thing Hollywood ever taught us."
The Stockholm district court, which gave its verdict, is just the
lowest court, says a commenter from Sweden. The case is likely to go up to
higher courts with more trained judges. Thank you, Rickard, for your
comment. (See below.) The Local,
an English news site in Sweden, also says the case may eventually be
heard by Sweden's Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice, it
says. Mattias says in case of a tied verdict the judge always has the deciding vote. So unless all threenamndeman agree against him, the judge will decide the verdict.
Interestingly, at this moment, newspapers in America and Britain are headlining President Barack Obama’s meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, launching negotiations for a new nuclear arms treaty – but not Obama’s equally important meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Incidentally, the hottest G20 coverage so far has been on Twitter! The Financial Times has been following the demonstrations on Twitter. The tweets give a blow by blow account of the action. See FT’s G20 protests Twitter alerts. One can also search #g20 on Twitter for more tweets on G20.
Also not to be missed is Xinhua’s G20 coverage. Bland, but it’s the official voice of China.
The Washington Post mentions Obama’s meeting with Hu inside a report that begins with his meeting with the Russian president.
There could be two reasons for this: A new nuclear arms treaty is big news, and Obama met Medvedev first. He met Hu later. The media takes time to develop each story.
And, besides as this CNN video of the press conference shows, it was rather ho-hum.
President Barack Obama will visit China this year after being invited by Chinese President Hu Jintao today, and both leaders agreed to set up a regular talks.
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