For today’s recap of media stories and analysis from across the internets, we have some good ideas, but some bad news. Today we witnessed an massive attack on blogs and article writers around the world, as 18 million WordPress.com sites have succumbed to digital assaults. But we also were given some interesting ideas about the future of journalism, and the tactics that journalists and media companies are taking today.
It’s all the news fit to blog at Ebyline’s Daily Dose.
18 Million WordPress.com Blogs Compromised In Attack
“Automattic, the company that owns the WordPress.com blogging platform that powers more than 18 million blogs, announced this morning that its servers had been broken into and source code, among other things, could have been exposed.”
Arianna Huffington: Slave Owner or Crowdsourcing Pioneer?
“When AOL bought The Huffington Post for $315 million, some saw it as a validation of the Web 2.0 model of new media: aggregation, curation and providing a platform for bloggers, many of whom donated their services in return for the attention of readers. Others, however, seem to feel that founder Arianna Huffington owes those unpaid writers something for her success, and now one blogger has put that idea to the test with a class-action lawsuit that claims The Huffington Post is guilty of “unjust enrichment” for profiting from the labor of others. Web 2.0 has grown up, it seems, and decided to call in the lawyers.”
Five myths about the future of journalism
“There are few things journalists like to discuss more than, well, themselves and the long-term prospects for their industry. How long will print newspapers survive? Are news aggregation sites the future? Or are online paywalls — such as the one the New York Times just launched — the way to go? As media organizations plot their future, it’s worth discarding some misconceptions about what it will take to keep the press from becoming yesterday’s news.“
Post Huffington Post Deal, AOL’s Patch Will Become More ‘Social’
“New details about what AOL has in store for its Patch network of hyperlocal sites in the wake of its purchase of the Huffington Post: The company tells Bloomberg that Patch sites will soon become ‘a lot more social.'”
Link economy and journalism
“A guest column by Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters: Last summer, I published a blog post that laid out my feelings about the link economy and its positive contribution to the evolution of the business of journalism. One year later, Reuters.com continues to encourage linking to the rich content we offer and even pulling interesting excerpts for discussion in a different forum. In exchange for that occasional use of our content, we ask others to respect the hard work our journalists put into their craft and in some cases risk their lives in doing so by offering prominent links and attribution.”
