Dave Winer has been improving the New York Times for as long as I’ve known him. First he convinced them to put stories out in RSS–then to let bloggers “permalink” down into their archives.
Now he’s propagating their work in a skinnied-down format he calls a newsriver, where (to quote Dave), “The stories age, and are removed after 24 hours. After all this is news, not olds. “
Playing on this, Doc Searls says news organizations should “jump in the river”:
News is a river, not a lake. It is active, not static. It’s what’s happening, not what happened. Or not only what happened.
Yes, of course readers also want well-written stories with careful analysis. But when we’re anxious to know what’s happening now, we don’t want that information slowed down and jumbled up with lots of stuff we don’t care about.
When I’m starving for a hot quick Egg McMuffin, I don’t want to wait for some Oeuf au Jambon de Ronald.
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1 Scripting News for 10/19/07 « Scripting News Annex // Oct 19, 2007 at 9:30 am
[…] Betsy Devine: “Dave Winer has been improving the New York Times for as long as I’ve known him.” […]