The Power of Us: The $50K Media & Tech Challenge

The internet is a wondrous anomaly, a technical and creative achievement grander than the Tower of...

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:20:04 -0400

The internet is a wondrous anomaly, a technical and creative achievement grander than the Tower of Babel, an infinite tangle of knowledge, ideals, data, entertainment, beauty, trivia, terror, news, noise, hubris, despair. It’s a cultural blender, a mixmaster archive crammed with visions, twits and everyday things.

I’ve been thinking about the net, and its vastness, in anticipation of OneWebDay on Sept. 22. That’s an informal, loosely organized global celebration of the World Wide Web….

OneWebDay: A toast to the net

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:15:09 -0400

OneWebDay: A toast to the net

On 9/11: Bits, bells and bagpipes

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:01:45 -0400

On 9/11: Bits, bells and bagpipes

This week a New York museum dedicated to commemorating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,...

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:58:48 -0400

This week a New York museum dedicated to commemorating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, launched a web site and asked for submissions of amateur photos and videos shot that day. The museum, scheduled to open in three years, has already collected thousands.

The day is said by some to be the most heavily documented ever by amateurs - and whether it was or not is beside the point. It was in any case symbolic of the transition from a world of The Media to a world of ubiquitous,…

Hey big media, it’s time to invest

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:23:22 -0400

Hey big media, it’s time to invest

Guest author Chris Seper is co-founder of MedCityNews, a health industry news startup. If you’d like...

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:28:47 -0400

Guest author Chris Seper is co-founder of MedCityNews, a health industry news startup. If you’d like to submit a guest post or become a regular contributor to We Media, contact: andrew AT wemedia DOT com.

Acquisition is part of the solution for “big media” companies to catch up in the era of new media. But they need to go further, including more investments in early-stage ventures.

Some recent deals illustrate how innovation through acquisition works:

Examiner.com purchased the…

Our friend Craig Newmark and his left-brain friends designed craigslist with the aesthetic panache...

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:35:16 -0400

Our friend Craig Newmark and his left-brain friends designed craigslist with the aesthetic panache of a spread sheet. From that perspective it is a success that would make an accountant blush: 47 million page views monthly in the U.S. alone, and revenues of $100 million annually from a small percentage of the site’s content that is not free.

But even the most dedicated admirer can see that craigslist is a fine mess of informational spaghetti that can cause design indigestion. Wired magazine…

A fine mess, reconsidered

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:38:43 -0400

A fine mess, reconsidered

Getting things done

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:48:49 -0400

Getting things done

Some people love to talk. All the better with wine and cheese. Others are busy getting things...

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:37:37 -0400

Some people love to talk. All the better with wine and cheese.

Others are busy getting things done.

Between those two extremes you can ask yourself whether you’re stuck in an endless conversation, or if you and your business are focused on creation, innovation and achievement.

Here’s some of the latter. The winners of this year’s We Media investment challenge, SeeClickFix and The Extraordinaries, have been on the move and attracting lots of attention with their new businesses….

Honor among thieves: An invitation to Arianna

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:48:19 -0400

Honor among thieves: An invitation to Arianna

Dear Arianna, About 2000 years ago the philosopher Seneca said that “the best ideas are common...

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:34:55 -0400

Dear Arianna,

About 2000 years ago the philosopher Seneca said that “the best ideas are common property,” which is an old thought rediscovered as the fresh ethos of the Internet.

To be fair, the current state of being on the Web allows me to bring to the same sentence a Roman stoic with the Greek word addressing moral character. Fun, but too easy. Much like The Huffington Post’s recent offense of idea hacking.

Earlier this year my organization launched a new idea at the We Media…

SeeClickFix releases first iPhone App.

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:39:45 -0400

SeeClickFix releases first iPhone App.

SeeClickFix, a company that helps people report and track community needs like roads in need of...

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:28:45 -0400

SeeClickFix, a company that helps people report and track community needs like roads in need of repair, was one of the two winners in the 2009 PitchIt challenge. That’s our early-stage venture investment competition. We invested $25,000 to help the company get off the ground - and they have been working hard ever since building out the service, attracting a variety of media and government partners, and now launching an iPhone App. Here’s an update from founder Ben Berkowitz. The other…

A good day to do big things

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:51:35 -0400

A good day to do big things

Why we need editors and late night TV

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:51:35 -0400

Why we need editors and late night TV

Vanity Fair put theirs on Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. If you value accuracy, clarity, spelling...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:38:59 -0400

Vanity Fair put theirs on Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. If you value accuracy, clarity, spelling and good sentences, check out the work of people who wield smart pencils here.

If you prefer to watch and listen, William Shatner makes Palin a poet.

“Today is a good day to do big things,” Amanda said when was eight. It was so profound that I wrote...

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 15:38:58 -0400

“Today is a good day to do big things,” Amanda said when was eight. It was so profound that I wrote it down and saved it. That was more than 20 years ago. She’s lived up to her words, but I seem to have let them slip over the years.

Today I was given two messages to once again heed the wisdom of my daughter: Can Do from Maira Kalman in her New York Times blog and Get Excited and Make Things from Matt Jones.

We’ve set the dates for next year’s We Media Miami Game Changers Conference. It’s March 9-11, 2010....

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:25:44 -0400

We’ve set the dates for next year’s We Media Miami Game Changers Conference. It’s March 9-11, 2010. We hope you’ll be there, contribute to the planning and dive into our annual innovation festival. For now: Mark your calendar, plan your budget and contact us if you’re interested in becoming a sponsor, hosting an exhibit, speaking, bringing a group, or organizing a workshop. The conference web site, hotel and registration details will be online later this summer, along with details about next…

One of the lingering myths repeated like a mantra by some professional journalists is that they are...

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:25:44 -0400

One of the lingering myths repeated like a mantra by some professional journalists is that they are not only the best judges of what we should call journalism, but also the essential providers of the service. This “world revolves around us” drone earned a boost last week with publication of a study by Cornell University researchers that concluded virtually all news originates with mainstream media, typically followed by a burst of attention and links from blogs - and just 3.5…