I shot an elephant in my pajamas. (You finish this.)
I should read Tony Pierce more often. By concentrating on NTN games or whatever it is I read (at some point I'll post about my renewed fascination with English and German football), I'm missing out on Important Stuff.
From osm.org's "About the Founders" page:
At PJMTM (Pajamas Media), we believe that to be true—that freedom, openness and transparency in media is an inevitable result of the technological advances that have given every citizen the chance to breathe deeply of the news, thought and opinion that hovers in the ether between us....
Where journalists once gave us "experts say," blogs give us the experts themselves. And where faceless, "objective" editorial boards once handed down opinions and endorsements, bloggers sound off, the numbers on their public sitemeters lending them unassailable credibility as voices for the rest of us.
PJM’s mission is to expand the influence of weblogs by finding and promoting the best of them, providing bloggers with a forum to meet and share resources, and the chance to join a for-profit network that will give them additional leverage to pursue knowledge wherever they may find it. From academics, professionals and decorated experts, to ordinary citizens sitting around the house opining in their pajamas, our community of bloggers are among the most widely read and influential citizen journalists out there, and our roster will be expanding daily. We also plan to provide a bridge between old media and new, bringing bloggers and mainstream journalists—more and more of whom have started to blog—together in a debate-friendly forum.
In the 1960’s, the medium may have been the message, but in the new century, it’s time for the medium to get out of the way. Call it the blogosphere, call it citizen journalism, or call it (we hope) Pajamas Media—but the next phase in the democratization of ideas has begun. Stick around, read some blogs, and come back often. Our door will be open.
And Tony links to Althouse, which links to Tim Blair:
As of yesterday, Pajama Media’s editorial board is missing one member.
Me.
Simple decision, really. PM needs people who can devote themselves full-time to rescuing the project after a launch that was, to say the least, problematic. It would be wrong for me to continue any involvement without being able to help to that extent. Hopefully PM will turn things around; I’d love to see it succeed.
And there are discussions about propaganda, which make me wonder what would have happened if Hearst had an official staff of bloggers. Can't you see the "Orson Welles is a Big Fat Idiot" blog? (Yes, I'm talking about the William Randolph Hearst decade.)
Propaganda is a part of war, and it's not run according to Poynter Institute seminar standards. One might argue that what the U.S. military was doing is a bad idea -- I don't know one way or another on that -- but the howls of outrage seem rather forced. As is so often the case these days.
But here's the true irony - osm talks about how the presence of bloggerdom removes the shackles from information, formerly dominated by the limited elites in the mainstream media. So what's their top story right now? Slamming Wikipedia, an encyclopedia which removes the shackles from information, formerly dominated by the limited elites in the mainstream media.
Wikipedia is at the center of an online storm as the web-based "encyclopedia," written in secret by anyone with a keyboard, whose identities cannot be learned even by Wikipedia's owners, takes a drubbing for a bio of a USA Today editor jammed with innuendo. Associated Press reports that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales now says he will require a 15-second registration process to reduce the unverified writeups by thousands of strangers whose often-controversial claims cannot be checked by his 600 volunteers. The blogging community has at it, with The Shape of Days using a few choice words, The PC Doctor saying the secrecy format is doomed to fail, j's scratchpad's exhaustive series of posts on the phenomenon, Ratcliffe Blog calling for eliminating anonymous articles and Pajamas Media's Roger L. Simon arguing that untraceable writing means a free-for-all.
So much for liberation. If I wanna be liberated I'll go to Perplexmi.
Comments
David Rufkahr was my father.
I don't like to talk about David much, I have said in the past how my father died in a horrible horrible plane accident. It sounds better than the truth. My father really was an actor, he mostly did porn.. a underground legend in the 60's. My father got out of porn after I was born, and became a legit actor, mostly doing television ads. He was known as Frank Bartles to most, a commercial spokesmen for Wine Coolers in the 80's. My father died of a heart attack, but my mother thinks it was a drug overdose. He liked his cocaine, and when your over 60, its not a great idea to still party. He left my mother a few years before his death, and remarried privately with a younger woman. She was young, 19. It killed my mother to see him with such a young girl..my mother turned to religion to help her cope....
David C. Rufkahr
06/09/2005
David Clyde Rufkahr, 49, St. Peters, passed away Friday, May 27, 2005, at his home.
Mr. Rufkahr was born Nov. 27, 1955, in St. Charles, the son of Clyde A. Rufkahr and wife Rose, nee Sammelmann.
He was the owner and operator of Kitchen Counter Tops, O'Fallon.
Mr. Rufkahr was a member of the Lions Club, Moscow Mills.
He was preceded in death by his father.
Mr. Rufkahr is survived by his mother, Rose Engert, St. Peters; one son, David Rufkahr, Troy; two sisters, Kathleen Ball and Debra Haenchen, both of St. Charles; other relatives and many friends.
Funeral services were held Thursday, June 2, at St. Theodore Catholic Church, Flint Hill. Father Raymond Hager officiated.
Burial was in the church cemetery.
Memorials to Odyssey Hospice in care of Pitman Funeral Home, P.O. Box 248, Wentzville, MO 63385 are preferred.
The family was served by Pitman Funeral Home, Wentzville.