On the Holiday Reading List

Our good friend and citizen media savant Dan Gillmor brings to our attention a new report from the Berkman Center on the new media called Media Re:public.

There's is much to read and digest in this report, and that will wait for days off [HA!] during the holiday break. There is one highlight for now, and it is a new breakdown that the authors propose regarding the different flavors of media:

Legacy Media -- They began in the pre-Internet era, and while may be very active players, remain non-native. A great term rather than "traditional" or "main stream."

Web-Native Media -- Better than "new media" -- or as one colleague said, if you're in charge of new media, does that mean I'm in charge of the old media -- or "advanced media" -- another comment being, so if MLB had an advanced media division, does that mean the rest of public relations in backward -- and it speaks to the nature of the beast: these are media born on-line that exist for first distribution on-line. When the creators of Fark.com and RegretTheError.com write books, they don't become legacy -- their content was created for original distribution on-line.

Participatory Media -- To me, this is the best term; better than my own catchy B&B (boards and blogs). These are, using the Jay Rosen phrase "people formerly known as the audience," the interactives, and an intersting point is made -- we had these before and we called them letters to the editor, CATV access and radio call-in shows.

I like the way they related to the past -- another constant theme that there are indeed constant themes. Scale and speed are the real change factors, not the internet itself.

Dan also weighs in on the GateHouse v. NYT dispute on copyright.