Tweetgeist: Bloom Box, news as software, Al Jazeera vs. Twitter

60 Minutes insufficiently skeptical of Bloom Box?

BoingBoing's Rob Beschizza takes CBS 60 Minutes to task for a piece on the Bloom Box "power plant in a box" that was, he argues, insufficiently critical of the seemingly miraculous product:

The Box hasn't been thoroughly tested and its hype adopts the same template as countless failed entries in the 'free energy' stakes. And this story offers only a single quote from a token scientific skeptic as it cheerleads onward through four pages' worth of promotional copy.

News as software?

Andrew Spittle makes the case for news organizations to think of what they're producing as something more like software than like static information:

Software provides a sense of utility to users. It does something for them. More importantly it does that function over and over. Granted, this would be difficult to do but the first step is to break down the idea that news arrives in an organized package.

Journalism does not equal publishing

Responding to the widespread gnashing of teeth inspired by BusinessWeek's account of AOL's "Newsroom of the Future" plans, Chris Brogan argues that "Journalism is not publishing":

Journalists seek to create compelling information that is helpful and news-worthy.

Publishing seeks to push more product, deliver higher circulation value, and create more value for sponsors/advertisers/money-holders.

Publishers need content creators of some stripe to do what they do. Journalists don’t need publishers, but publishers pay, so that’s a decent place to connect with an audience and be paid.

But never confuse the two.

Al Jazeera knocks Tehran twitterers down a few pegs

In "Al Jazeera offers reality check for the Twitterverse," an Al Jazeera official tells a journalism conference in Australia that his network concluded there were only about 60 active Twitter accounts in Tehran during last summer's protests:

The blunt assessment of Twitter's role in fostering what had been touted as the first grass-roots uprising powered directly by social media presents a big challenge to the accuracy of many reports of events in Iran.

Gopnik: Science journalism is more than storytelling

In "To Drug or Not To Drug," Alison Gopnik reviews Judith Warner's book "We've Got Issues" and identifies a failing in contemporary science journalism:

It's a truth verging on a truism that journalism is about telling stories. But what exactly is it that narratives -- good stories -- do for us? Stories work because they explain important or unusual or compelling events in terms of our everyday psychology -- the causal principles that we all understand by the time we are 4. A good journalist explains why the health care bill failed, for example, by telling us about the beliefs, desires, and emotions of the wavering senators.

But science isn't about applying the causal principles we know about. It's about discovering causal principles we don't know about.

...Human beings do love stories, but, fortunately, they can also appreciate the interest and fascination of scientific problem-solving. Good science journalists think like scientists. They don't just tell stories. Instead, they understand and explain how new evidence can lead to surprising and counterintuitive conclusions. And they study and evaluate the scientific journals and peer-reviewed articles—the currency of science.