From the category archives:

Internet

toothbrush or underpants

by Philip Weiss on February 21, 2010 · 2 comments

When the internet came into our lives, strongly, about 15 years ago, my wife said something I often think about, maybe because it says something about marriage, too. Everyone was getting email accounts, and she said, "Is email like toothbrushes or underpants? Can a couple share them or not?" I don’t think that issue had been worked out yet, socially. Though she soon recognized the convention; it was like underpants.

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it’s happened: all the energy in journalism has now moved to the internet

by Philip Weiss on February 2, 2010 · 20 comments

This week I realized that the internet has won; the famous tipping point has occurred, and people (sorry; that is journalese for "everyone I know") are getting their information off the web, not from print publications. My completely-subjective evidence:

–I bought the Times the other day for two important stories, the State of the Union speech and Steve Jobs’s announcement of his new Ipad. It lies unopened. I already absorbed what I had to absorb about both stories, didn’t get to it.

–Yesterday Avi, a commenter on this site, got into it with a big Israel supporter, Smndoerksen for more than 20 comments, under another sharp post from citizen-journalist Bruce Wolman. You can see their crackling dialogue here. At one point, the two arguers switched into Hebrew. This is a new form of communication, and as James North says, a journalistic art form.

–The journalism I do read in print, like this smart piece about dogs as children, has an increasingly webby feel to it, strong point-of-view, informal style. Citizen journalism is affecting everything.

At the risk of stating the obvious, people are moving to the web because it’s more exciting, it’s completely immediate, the writers are well-informed, and you see someone’s mind in action rather than through 100 corporate filters, which characterized a lot of my labors in the MSM. People are more sophisticated about information than ever. It’s a new world.

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What Sergey Brin told Ken Auletta

by Philip Weiss9 December 2009

I keep thinking of something that Ken Auletta, author of the new google book, said on NPR a few weeks back. (It’s been so long, I forget which show). When Auletta was preparing his book, Sergey Brin of Google came Razor-ing into an office and challenged Auletta just to publish his book on-line, free for [...]

1 comment

Haitians, like Palestinians, are misrepresented in the mainstream press

by James North29 November 2009

 

 
(Captions to photos follow the post)
If you have looked at a newspaper article about Haiti over the past 25 years, the chances are excellent that you have seen the work of the photographer Daniel Morel. He is himself Haitian; he has been a witness to much of the turbulence in his country; and other journalists [...]

9 comments

Luddite

by Philip Weiss20 November 2009

Dan Schorr blames Hasan’s massacre– alleged massacre– on the internet, for providing him a twisted community. "Internet contact with the like-minded seemed to replace human contact." Isn’t that like blaming the McKinley assassination on newspapers? The internet represents a form of human contact. 

6 comments

Packer liketh not the internet

by Philip Weiss16 November 2009

I caught a little of authors Chris Hedges and George Packer at the Miami Book Fair on C-Span yesterday.
Hedges is inspiring, an American transcendentalist for our age. His father was a minister and he has the bearing of a blue-eyed religious political savant. I disagree with most of what he says on analytic grounds–the America [...]

4 comments

appeal to readers

by Philip Weiss11 November 2009

About a year ago this site was approved as a Google News site, based on the news reporting we do and the number of contributors. This helped our traffic enormously, and restored some of my self-esteem, as a guy who had made a living as a journalist for 33 years but was suddenly an amateur [...]

24 comments

Anti-Semites, go away

by Philip Weiss26 September 2009

My post likening Israeli racists to the anti-mongrelization of the white race crew back in the Old South got a lot of comment yesterday, including anti-semitic comments. Chris Moore showed up, who runs Judeofascism.com, also someone quoting Kevin MacDonald. I know, I’ve quoted MacDonald myself, still, he chills me, I think he dislikes Jews. I [...]

143 comments

Tina Brown is clever

by Philip Weiss8 September 2009
Thumbnail image for Tina Brown is clever

I’m reading Scoop, the folly by Evelyn Waugh about Abyssinian war reporting. Mildly entertaining. I’d forgotten that the hero works for The Daily Beast, a London newspaper. Oh right; Tina Brown didn’t just make up that name for her website. The big competition in the novel comes from The Daily Brute.
Says I [...]

3 comments

dog days (and feverish nights)

by Philip Weiss17 August 2009

It’s the dog days. Middle August. This site is going to be hit and miss over the next few days. Adam Horowitz is moving house, and I am actually doing some paying work for a magazine for once, and reading Theodor Herzl diaries at night and underlining his references to the "river of gold" that [...]

25 comments

Self-censorship on this website

by Philip Weiss7 August 2009

A few weeks back I took down a post about an evening I’d had in New York (including hearing Israelis talking Hebrew on West End Avenue and feeling anger that they could move easily between societies) because it offended a friend. I still plan to put it back up, with some slight changes.
Yesterday I took [...]

5 comments

The internet and journalism (without piety and lamentation)

by Philip Weiss26 July 2009

What would Virginia Woolf say about the internet?

woolf
11 comments

The Internet is breaking down the tribalism, and ignorance, of the past

by David Jacobus23 July 2009

As a contributor to the film Cruel but Necessary: Israeli Opinions about the Settlements and Obama, I wanted to add some perspective on the debates that have developed on Mondoweiss. Those who find the interviews unfair seem to fit into two categories: the first disagree that the views shared in the video are representative of Israelis, and the second agree that they are, but think these perspectives should be kept private. I want to respond to both of these.

46 comments

‘Mondoweiss’ will be down over the next day

by Philip Weiss21 July 2009

We’re getting a facelift, so we might be down for portions of the next day. Apologies to our readers. We’ll try to get back on the case within a day. Go fishing!

30 comments

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