Writing for the Web

Iran plans "national" internet

Via the Wall Street Journal: In Censorship Move, Iran Plans Its Own, Private Internet. Excerpt:

Iran is taking steps toward an aggressive new form of censorship: a so-called national Internet that could, in effect, disconnect Iranian cyberspace from the rest of the world. 

The leadership in Iran sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet, according to observers of Iranian policy inside and outside the country. 

Iran, already among the most sophisticated nations in online censoring, also promotes its national Internet as a cost-saving measure for consumers and as a way to uphold Islamic moral codes.

The Iranians seem to be blocking TypePad sites already. This would be a dramatically stupid step beyond that.

The article as luxury or byproduct

Via BuzzMachine, a very interesting post by Jeff Jarvis: The article as luxury or byproduct. Here's the intro:

A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a byproduct of the process. 

* See the amazing Brian Stelter covering the Joplin tornado and begging his desk at The Times to turn his tweets into a story because he had neither the connectivity nor the time to do it in the field and, besides, he was too busy doing something more precious: reporting. (It’s a great post, a look at a journalist remaking his craft. Highly recommended for journalists and journalism students particularly.) 

(And aren’t you proud of me for not drawing the obvious and embarrassing comparison to Times editor Bill Keller’s Luddite trolling about Twitter even as his man in Twitter, Stelter, proves what a valuable tool it is?)

Jarvis goes on to talk about other examples such as the nonstop blogging and tweeting done by many reporters in the recent Canadian election. And it wasn't just the reporters—all kinds of ordinary folks were doing the same thing and joining the conversation at #elxn41 and #cdnpoli.

At The Tyee, we were covering the coverage, following the online campaigns with great interest.

Jarvis makes some very strong points in his post, though I wouldn't write off "the article" just yet. Until we can organize tweets and blog posts into meaningful mosaics, we're going to need writers who can concentrate on an issue long enough to make sense of it in 1500 to 3000 coherent words.

Wise advice for webwriters

Via YouTube: El portátil en casa. Vodafone. It's a little animation, with no narration in any language, and it made me sit up straighter at my keyboard. 

I've been using computers for 25 years without (so far) any serious injury—and that after over 30 years of banging away on typewriters. 

But I've also got two Aussie shepherds as my personal trainers, and they relentlessly haul me away from my desk for four or five walks a day. Without them, I'd have been a goner long ago.

Derek Miller's last post

Via his blog Penmachine, Vancouver blogger Derek K. Miller's Last Post. I am sorry to read it, but I admire his courage and his writing ability. He began it:

Here it is. I'm dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote—the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive. 

If you knew me at all in real life, you probably heard the news already from another source, but however you found out, consider this a confirmation: I was born on June 30, 1969 in Vancouver, Canada, and I died in Burnaby on May 3, 2011, age 41, of complications from stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. We all knew this was coming.