\"Robin \\\"Roblimo\\\" Miller\" wrote:
>
> Well... you also have to have a handle on the ins and outs of software
> licensing, particularly open source and free software licensing, to know
> what questions to ask once you get the relevant parties on the phone.
>
> There are plenty of competent reporters at the St. Pete Times and Tampa
> Trib (and other papers) who know how to make calls and write down
> answers to questions, and they know their "beats" pretty well (okay,
> some do and some don't) but wouldn't have a prayer of a chance at
> writing a decent story about open source & gpl licensing conflicts --
> and their audience wouldn't be interested in or understand that story if
> they did.
>
> In the last 1.5 years I have watched Tina grow into one of the world's
> most knowledgable reporters on the "open source beat," and she deserves
> far more credit than she gets for the excellent work she does.
Absolutely. I don't in any way want to slam on Tina because I think she
does an excellent job, along with most of the other people writing the
"headline" stories I read on Newsforge. (I've long since replaced
Slashdot as my primary source of geek news with Newsforge.)
My comments were really directed to the great majority of "reporters" in
IT who think it's a good job of "reporting" to merely repost something
seen on another website. (Which is why I like the fact that Newsforge
has separate "headline" and "MLP" sections, although even the MLP
articles get editorialized sometimes in a way that clearly indicates the
person linking them actually READ AND UNDERSTOOD THE DAMN STORY, as
opposed to some other big "News for Nerds" sites. But I digress...)
There was an article not too long ago linked on Slashdot:
http://www.netslaves.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=005&action=display&num=998801687
(*sigh* now I'M guilty. :) slamming IT "journalists" (present company
excluded of course ;) as parasites who call themselves "IT Journalists"
but mostly just sit on their asses and whine when Company X won't send
them a free copy of some new product to review and wouldn't understand
what journalism is actually about if it snuck up behind them and shoved
a boot up their posterior. I found it echoed a lot of my own opinions
on most of what passes for "mainstream press" in IT nowadays on sites
like those run by ZDNet and CNet and so forth.
Which is why I felt compelled to publically compliment Tina for knowing
what's involved in - and *doing* - real journalism - i.e. personally
investigating an issue and trying to reach some sort of conclusion as to
what's going on, and not just that but then being able to distill it
down to really just a few clear paragraphs!
I suppose I'm making more of a big deal than it needs to be, or maybe
I'm just growing cynical in my old age....
--
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#!/usr/bin/perl -w
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usage: qrpff 153 2 8 105 225 < /mnt/dvd/VOB_FILENAME \
| extract_mpeg2 | mpeg2dec -
http://www.eff.org/ http://www.opendvd.org/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/
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