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Reporting in Iraq

The recent car bomb that took the lives of two CBS crew members and left correspondent Kim Dozier in critical condition has sparked, yet again, a conversation about reporting in Iraq.

Dozier and her crew were attacked on Memorial Day, while producing a piece about “fighting on in memory of those who have fallen,” according to an e-mail sent by Dozier to her colleagues that morning.

The LA Times’ Tim Rutten attempts to make sense of it all as best as anyone can.

I highly recommend reading this entry from Ms. Dozier on CBSNews.com, reprinted last week in the LA Times:

journalists face awful, dangerous risks in Iraq, more so than almost anyplace else on earth right now.

But it’s nothing compared to the people we cover.

Also, today the LA Times reports that a record 1,400 bodies were brought into the Baghdad Morgue in May.

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Pew: Nearly 50 Million Create Own Web Content

Another great study released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The Technology & Media Use report discloses that while “adoption of high-speed internet at home grew twice as fast in the year prior to March 2006 than in the same time frame from 2004 to 2005,” nearly 50 million Americans have posted their own content to the web.

At GigaOm, Robert Young believes that MySpace and other social-networking hubs are the primary reason for the uptick in user-generated content:

To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the ?products? are the people?

The Pew report also points out the disappearing digital divide. More web postings are generated from within household’s under the $50,000 income threshold, than above it.

VoIP set-ups like Skype and municipal broadband projects taken on by the likes of Earthlink are also breaking down big-money barriers to broadband.

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Independent: kids, porn & Guantanamo

Some of the best reporting in recent years has appeared in the Sunday pages on the mothership isle on the other side of the Atlantic.

The Independent (on Sunday) takes aim and fires away with “The children of Guantanamo.” A true story purporting to “reveal” that “60 of the detainees of the US camp were under 18 at the time of their capture, some as young as 14.”

Seems like a lead story to me, but really, in context — the cover of this “IoS” is clearly covered with porn! (Even the Nuge made the cover)!

otoh, front page images or not, Sarah Baxter has had a hand in several hq reports as the Sunday Times‘ D.C. – scribe, including today’s column “Revealed: how US marines massacred 24.”


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Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad GOOG?

Hard to disagree with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who publicly takes the Yahoo-Ebay partnership in stride. “Its good for everybody on the Internet,” he said, according to eWeek.

Google’s stock still sits pretty, with a 1999-style inflated valuation but with a solid and admirably successful business plan.

The eBay/Yahoo “strategic partnership” is indeed a glowing green light for the internet boom survivors, and it means alot more than say, Google recent investment in 5% of AOL (TWX). eBay needs help with advertising to keep their listing prices from rising (as they have been) and Yahoo! gets to co-brand Skype and Paypal. Add that to Yahoo!’s stable of sky’s-the-limit goodies such as del.icio.us, Flickr, and upcoming, to mention a few outright purchases.

Both companies will reap the benefits of added page views (Yahoo is already #1 and eBay #9, according to Alexa). As the big papers are saying — its a sign of fear or its look out Ma Goog. (see also, Barry’s post @ Content Matters).

Rafat @ Paid Content sums it up from the market analysts perspective. Search Engine Lowdown sums up the tech value. Battelle calls it “Yahoo’s first major syndication win in years.”