Accept no substitutes

Podcasting in NYTimes

Life is not fair — and it wouldn’t take much to make it fairer. Dave Winer invents the code and the idea of adding a payload to RSS. (in 2001)He and Adam Curry shake down the details and promote the idea as podcasting. Today, it’s a front page story on the NYTimes (Saturday below the fold, but who wouldn’t be delighted with that). And the story only mentions Dave and Adam once in two www pages.

Since August, when Adam Curry, a former MTV video jockey, and David Winer, an early Web log writer, developed the podcasting technology, 3,075 podcasts have sprung up around the world, according to a Web site, Ipodder.org, that offers downloads of podcasting software.

The story is about odd content and about “control” neither Adam nor Dave get a quote. The story may want to be an everyman can do radio, but it’s more of the these silly people who can’t work from a script or edit want to do radio about God and cooking. The Times knows podcasting is important, but they give it the pajama treatment (I am writing this in my pajamas).

3 Comments

  1. Dave Winer

    Paul, your point of view is interesting, I actually thought this was a pretty respectful article, but that’s probably because I’m accustomed to the Times *really* dissing us. It’s fear, I guess, they don’t want to look in our direction because we’re creating a new ladder that they’ll have to climb, and Times reporters probably feel their climbing days are behind them (like Harvard profs with tenure, perhaps) or that the ladder they need to worry about is entirely within the Times organization.

    This is actually good for the bloggers, btw, because we get to build our practices without much interference from the ink-stainers. When they finally adopt blogging, and I have no doubt they will, it will be with a lot fewer barriers to entry, and a new ethic about whose needs are important (the users, always).

    And thanks for hosting the conference at Chapel Hill. It was a great experience and part of a continuum, a trip that’s still going on for me.

  2. Bob Stepno

    You’d almost think the Times didn’t want to use the same sources that USA Today used last week (Adam, Dave, Dawn & Drew, etc… The same, “damn, we’ve been scooped by the other paper,” attitude of competing small-town newspapers — back when they existed.

    Stocking feet, chenille bedspreads and all, it’s still a newspaper-of-record Page One recognition for “podfathers” Dave & Adam anyhow.

    Speaking of fatherhood, Paul, have you seen “Geek of the Week” Carl Malamud lately? The archive you pointed us to 10 years ago is still there: http://town.hall.org/radio/Geek/

    Jayzus… was our first “Cybercasting” class really 10 years ago?!

  3. Paul Jones

    Thanks,Bob. I’ve been reading the USA Today article and it’s a much better piece on every level.

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