Hello from a taxi in Chicago (Mary Jo leaves Ziff)

talk about timing... ;)

http://c9park.wordpress.com/2006/09/20/taxi-niner/

Blogger dinner in Chicago... sounds nice. Have fun with all and enjoy the really good pizza.

Foley thinks publishing internal documents is "doing her job"? No wonder she was frozen job. Is she off to the National Inquierer now?

Nope. She's joined the blogrool at ZDNet - not exactly leaving, just changing mediums. Should be fun to watch what she does with a blog. She wrote in her first post:

"Yep, this is my new gig. No more Microsoft-Watch for this Microsoft watcher. I decided it was time to move to a place that reflects my opinion that blogging is the future of journalism."

Well the story seems a bit muddled so far. Does she still draw a paycheck from Ziff or not? Why would even she refer to it as an "exit interview" if she is going to continue to "watch Microsoft"?

I hope that this isn't the start of another secretive CNet/Ziff cutback, although last time I looked into it they had some bad timing issues on new office space and furnitture right at the start of the dot-com thingy in 2000. Maybe Yahoo isn't the only one affected by lower ad revenue eh?

Nice meeting you at dinner Robert. Good luck at the conference.

LayZ: it's a journalist's job to report. If someone gives her some internal documents, yes, it's her job to figure out what they mean and report that to all of us. You really need to study a little more about what it means to be a journalist.

What, you think it's her job to say "oh, sorry, those are internal docs so I'm not going to use them?" Not in my world of journalism, sorry.

Dude, blogger dinner or not, you HAVE to go to Moto while you're there. The food is fantastic, and it's a geek HEAVEN. HEAVEN I TELL YOU!!

LayZ: it’s a journalist’s job to report. If someone gives her some internal documents, yes, it’s her job to figure out what they mean and report that to all of us. You really need to study a little more about what it means to be a journalist.

Et tu Robert, et tu. What you described is a parrot, or perhaps more accurately a fax machine. A reporter doesn't just blindly report all news they get. One that's worth the name actually verifies things of that nature, because they know that just because they say "internal documents" doesn't mean they really are.

You need to stop confusing "first" with "correct" and "parrot" with "reporter". A good reporter knows that difference, and will sacrifice first for correct, or even sit on a story until they are sure about their facts.

John: good point. But I've known Mary Jo to not report things before she has verification from a second source. In journalism school we were taught not to report things until we had two sources. Of course, blogging isn't journalism. It can be, though, but it's pretty rare.

@11. There you go again, Scoble. Flip flopping on whether a blogger is a journalist. Can you stick to a positon once? For that Josh dude blogging is journalism, but for you not doing any sort of critical thinking you get a pass? God,man! Make up your flippin' mind!

Blogging is the dissemination of information via the web, normally in a specific environment known as "blog" software. Blogging has absolutely nothing to do with the content of a given blog. It's merely an aggregate term that describes a certain segment of the Web. It has nothing to do with content and everything to do with medium. If it's not on the web, it's not a blog.

Journalism has nothing to do with medium and everything to do with content. You can be a journalist in a blog, a newspaper, a magazine, radio, TV, carrier pidgeon, drum relay, telegraph or smoke signal. It is the quality of the content that makes the producer of said content a journalist. Mary Jo, based on Robert's description, is a journalist. Dave Winer is not, yet both have blogs.

A blogger is no more automatically a journalist or not than some dude cranking out underground newspaper. Just because you get your stuff in (medium), that doesn't make you a journalist.

LayZ: see John Welch. A blogger can be a journalist.

A journalist doesn't have to be a blogger.

Journalism is just the act of recording facts, stories, opinions, and passing them on. Sometimes I play a journalist here, sometimes I don't. But the laws that apply to journalists should apply to all bloggers.

Mac Beach: Ziff Davis and ZDNet are not the same company. We split appart at the turn of the century, and ZDNet is owned by CNET Networks in San Francisco. Ziff is owned by a private-equity fund in New York.

Also, Mary Jo is now an independent editorial talent. We just are lucky enough to have partnered with her so she's blogging exclusively on ZDNet.

I've never seen you record facts, Scoble.

So a five year old that writes about her birthday party is a journalist? It likely contaiins both facts, opinions, and is a story.

John, so if Winer happens to write about seeing a crime committed and has information on such, is he a journalist?

LayZ, I'm not playing the point-counterpoint ad infinitum game. You're trying to ping back and forth between sides without actually arguing anything, just to crank the tension up.

It's a standard comment-troll game. Go find someone else to play with, I already stated my point here, and I'm comfortable to let it stand.

Large and in charge. Superlative indicating status verb (cotch up), to support something else, as with a dirty (17)