Bayosphere

Boston Globe: Working to tame the giants. Still, a group of activists — operating with relatively small budgets, very loud voices, and an inexhaustible supply of energy — wage a lonely battle against consolidation in the name of what they say is diversity, fairness, and public interest. Meet four committed Washington outsiders playing an insider’s game against long odds.

You aren’t hearing or reading much about this issue in the major U.S. media. Here are some of the lonely voices shouting out about a trend that should worry everyone who cares about an informed citizenry in a democracy.

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Brad Templeton has posted this essay about an anniversary we all wish we hadn’t reached. Key quote:

However the spam problem is solved, or partially solved, it will remain fascinating as the internet community grapples with its first serious abuse issue from within. Most other abuse issues have involved outsiders, ranging from the religious conservatives trying to ban smut to the RIAA trying to stop file-sharing, trying to regulate the net. Spam has caused the network insiders themselves to seek to regulate it.

This is important because it will, of course, not be the last such issue. How we manage ourselves here will be an indicator of things to come.

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Reuters: Grassley: Tax Cuts May Reach $450 Billion. Congress could end up passing a tax cut package of as much as $450 billion — less than demanded by President Bush but more than so far agreed to by the Senate, a key Republican said yesterday.

In a sane nation, even the $350 billion “compromise” that Senate Republicans say they want would be a sick joke. In today’s America, it’s an insufficient giveaway to the richest few among us.

But Bush is brazen, and he is steamrollering a weak — no, spinelesss — Congress that has almost no alternatives of its own.

Surprisingly, one Democrat has offered a serious alternative to the Bush tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy orgy — Rep. Richard Gephardt’s health-care proposal that would cost about the same as Bush’s favors for his friends.

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Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press and NBC is trying to become the technologically “most converged” journalist around, and he’s making serious progress. He’s added streaming video to his newspaper column, and today’s posting is an example of where he’s heading.

Smart work here, using various media to amplify each other.

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The news that the makers of MovableType are launching a better posting/publishing tool is good news indeed. (Here’s their press release.)

The investment they’ve received from Neoteny is also good news, as is their hiring of Anil Dash, who really gets this stuff.

More and more I sense that the tools of self-publishing are reaching the kind of critical mass, and quality, that will soon enable regular folks do turn the web into the read-write place it always should have been.

Later today I’m giving a talk as the phenomenon relates to journalism. I keep having to change the slides; that’s how fast things are moving.

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