The foundation of all U.S. law is now available for the iPod.
The Founding Fathers showed all kinds of foresight. Their ideas show in the messy-but-functional republic the United States has grown into.
Unfortunately, I can’t attribute to their vision the fact that the Constitution and Bill of Rights work well in pocket format. It’s just the way they’re organized, with short numbered articles and amendments.
Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger plays at theories of the Web. The landscape of the Web, it posits, has no grid and thus no distance. We know this intuitively from surfing; it’s no more a trip to visit a site in Congo or Japan or the United States.
What does this mean for journalism?
For one, it levels the playing field. If all things and ideas sit easily within the consumer’s reach, she chooses the one best suited for the task at hand (within the realm of awareness – new resources appear all the time). This leveled field means sites such as Talking Points Memo, with modest resources, can often set the agenda for TV and newspaper organizations, which arguably haven’t transitioned well to Web distribution.
But the Web also frees journalists to dedicate more resources to recording and storing facts, opinions and other information – provided publishers see the value and reinvest the savings. I don’t think they have a choice; it’s instrumental in creating vitality for this profession as it goes increasingly digital.
Think about it. A key difference between a television broadcast or newspaper, traditional channels for information, and the Web is the hyperlink. Hyperlinks move the value of information from brand to document. For example, I turn to this document on the Washington Post Web site most often. I go there because it has information I want, a list of DVD new releases, not because it has a Post flag across the top. I barely register it (or the banner ads, for that matter). When I look for news on the Web, a site has it in a manner in which I understand, or I go elsewhere.
This is tough for marketers, and also a reason why domains such as news.com, in which brand and document meet, are greedily coveted.
In addition to the added utility of hyperlinks, the Web has a low bar for entry. A modest professional site can cost hundreds. A quick-and-dirty way to move information is free if you have a computer and a 10-page HTML primer. In theory, such a rudimentary source of information could prove just as useful as a fat, wire-fed behemoth like topix.net.
It all depends on the perceived value of the document sought.
The Web is an amalgam of documents, whether text, video or audio. Documents deliver information. It’s more important than ever that journalists insist on proper accounting of that information, and the continued creation of it.
Well-branded news Web sites, gussied up with interactive bells and whistles, are great. But a site is worthless with if people don’t give it credence by reading and linking to it.
Investing in richly sourced, researched and written information is the best way to ensure that happens.