DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I attended a panel discussion on “Blogging and Social Networking” tonight.

One of the panelists (I didn’t note who) declared that “journalism is dead.” I read the paper every day, so I can’t say I agree, but it made a nice soundbite, a nice affirmation for anyone whose living depends on whatever thing has been crowned the “new journalism.” The evidence cited: media consolidation results in a loss of perspective, a loss of fair coverage, and a homogeneity of interpretation; scandals like Jayson Blair undermine the credibility of even the most revered news sources.

The proposed solution — of course! — is blogging. Therefore you should immediately cease reading Google News, the Tribune, the Chronicles and Timeses and Heralds of the world, and rely solely on debris.com for all your news. Thank you.

Blogs are unfiltered. There’s no newsroom bias, no editor squashing stories that would offend an advertiser or board member or President. The implication: blogs are more honest.

Also, most blogs (erm, not this one) have a feedback loop — an opportunity for readers to comment on stories. One of the panelists suggested that had the NY Times provided a commenting feature, Jayson Blair would have been accused and outed long before he’d managed to fabricate 30+ stories.

Jason Calcalis challenged Dan Gilmor with this question: assuming compensation and benefits were equal, wouldn’t you rather be a full-time blogger than a newspaper columnist with a blog on the side? Gilmor’s answer surprised me, and probably most everybody in the room: he said no. He said he already has total journalistic freedom. And he admitted that being on staff at the Merc has brought lots of traffic to his blog. I appreciated that turnaround — not only is he not eager to abandon his newspaper column… he relies on it to drive readers to his blog.

Gilmor made another interesting point. He described blogs as the first realization of Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of an interactive web. Until blogs, the web was a read-only medium. With blogs, it has become read-write. (Except at debris.com. But, hey, you can send me email if you like.)

Mark Pincus was asked about his ownership of the sixdegrees social-networking patent. He claimed he’d purchased the patent, in partnership with Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, to prevent other companies from using it to restrict competition. He didn’t name names, but there seemed to be some tension among the panelists.

I have to believe there will be some lawsuits around this before very long. Consolidation is inevitable. Nobody wants to have to maintain profiles and networks at, let’s see, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, Orkut, Ryze, Spoke, ZeroDegrees, Ecademy, RealContacts, Ringo, MySpace, Yafro, EveryonesConnected, Friendzy, FriendSurfer, Tickle, Evite, Plaxo, Squiby, and WhizSpark. And for all the talk (during this panel) of open vs. closed networks, does anybody really believe all the industry leaders will embrace open standards so that users can export profile and network information to ease migration into a competing network? I don’t see it.