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Dressing Up

Good night Pajamas Media.

Good morning Open Source Media.

Starting today there's a new confederacy of bloggers.

Originally to be called Pajamas Media, appropriated from a swipe a CNN exec leveled at the riff raff who snipe from home in states of relative undress, it's now Open Source Media, as in an invitation for citizen contributors. A press conference is taking place now. Headline-grabbing Judith Miller is to speak.

Protein Wisdom is liveblogging the event. A taste:

My cab pulled up outside the W a little before 9 PM New York time, and after checking in and dropping my suitcase on the bed, I immediately made my way to the hotel bar, where I found Tim Blair, Roger Simon, and Ed Driscoll bunched around a small table near the restrooms. Ed and Roger were nursing Gibsons, while Tim (who at 5'1" is much shorter than I thought he'd be) was drinking what looked to be IPA out of a pilsner glass inscribed with the legend, "Bloggers Do It In Their Pajamas."

UPDATE: He is virtually liveblogging it. Meaning, he is doing it imaginatively.

(Here's my own mini liveblog - I'm listening to a stream of the conference now:

Simon is talking now. Reads a somewhat boilerplate speech about the bloggery. Says his crew is doing polling too, and has found that 43 percent of Americans bristle at being labeled liberal, conservative or even moderate. OSM will be for those.

Keeps talking about old media, etc. But then why does he make a ref to the Lakers-Celtics rivalry? Sounds pretty geezerly.

Larry Kudlow on blogging: "It's cheaper than therapy and easier than jogging around Cental Park."

Back to this post, which was already in progress.)

The name change already has its critics: "I can't imagine a less distinctive name. It's almost as if Al Gore himself dreamed it up," wrote Scott Ferguson at The Classless Society.

Seventy cyberscribes, from Glenn Reynolds of the right-of-center Instapundit to David Corn and Marc Cooper, of the left-of-center Nation, will write at one place. And bloggers will get paid, based on the traffic they generate.

It will carry articles from the new Newstex project, which is fed by Knight Ridder (us - interested? How interested? Want to buy us?) The Tribune Company, the Associated Press, and others. Its bigger guns include co-founders Roger L. Simon, the screenwriter/blogger, and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs.

An AP article says the following about OSM's plans:

Many details of OSM remain unsettled. For example, OSM wants to create a mechanism for citizen journalists, including bloggers, to submit original news during natural disasters, civil unrest and other newsworthy events. Simon said organizers still have to come up with ways to check submissions for accuracy.

Initially, OSM will create blog-like discussion panels surrounding major news events, with three or four bloggers and non-blogging experts chosen to contribute.

This summer I interviewed Simon, before his group had raised $3.5 million from venture capitalists. He made similar noises:

Pajama Media's Roger L. Simon, who wrote Woody Allen's Scenes from a Mall and the Moses Wine detective series, named his new organization after a remark by CNN's U.S. president Jonathan Klein, who derided the typical blogger as a guy "sitting in his living room in his pajamas."

With 290 affiliates signed up in two dozen countries so far, Pajamas Media will deliver more than a million monthly readers to advertisers, Simon says. If organized, bloggers are in position to beat understaffed news organizations that suffer from lack of language skills and local context, he says.


From headquarters in Los Angeles, he's trying to create an Associated Press of the blogosphere.

"When something of consequence happens on the ground, like [political change in] Beirut or Ukraine, the bloggers will already be on the ground. We'll send a video camera from Los Angeles, then upload the interviews, repackage them and sell that material. There will be blog correspondents everywhere in the globe."

"NBC would never promote something that CBS did, but in the realm of the blogosphere, we're al friends."

Tacony Lou
Posted 11/16/2005 07:36:21 AM
Yeah, that "pajamas" allusion always stuck in my craw. Dammit, it's boxer shorts and slippers for me, CNN! Just like Lou Dobbs!

So with Judith Miller associating with this new juggernaut, maybe "Open Sore Media" might be more appropriate.

Let me slip into something more comfortable...can I wear your county jail rags, Judy?


albert
Posted 11/16/2005 09:06:20 AM
oh yes.  nothing says "we're _serious_" like changing your name from PJs to Open Source and adding Judith Miller to the roster.
Salamantis
Posted 11/16/2005 10:38:46 AM
Why not just call it Blog Media?
Credulity
Posted 11/16/2005 10:42:35 AM
Any bets on Dan's response when he figures out that Jeff @ Protein Wisdom was writing a 'fake, but accurate' version of events from his compound in Denver, Colorado.

Which is to say - Jeff isn't in NYC at the moment.

Will Dan issue a clarification?

A correction?

Respond with hearty blog-based good cheer and say 'Well, ya got me' or issue a claim that he knew it was fake (but meshably accurate) all along.

Time will tell.

.


Daniel Rubin
Posted 11/16/2005 10:47:38 AM
bite me.
BtB
Posted 11/16/2005 12:00:53 PM
Ah, the kind of classy, thoughtful, editor-controlled, reviewd, researched, double-blind fact-checked fully vetted response from the bastion of MSM -- Danny Rube --- as he quietly tries to re-do history when caught unable to discern reality from er, fantasy...
Kudos for your two word take down and edification as to your intellegence! 
Daniel Rubin
Posted 11/16/2005 12:08:23 PM
what do you mean 're-do history?' I corrected it immediately, and then took a swipe in the comments area at the poster's scolding tone. 
Matt Moore
Posted 11/16/2005 12:31:01 PM
The best part of Jeff's joke? He actually is there this time, and Roger Simon really does talk like that.
Laurence Simon
Posted 11/16/2005 01:14:20 PM
bitememedia.com is still available, Daniel.

Good luck convincing the VC's.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Scott Ferguson



Posted 11/16/2005 01:19:23 PM
Thanks for linking to my blog.

My main question is: How is OSM going to make money? I don't understand their business model. Then again, I don't understand how Google's market cap can be almost nine times that of General Motors; so if some smart person can explain it to me/us, it would be helpful. Thanks.
Karl
Posted 11/16/2005 01:40:47 PM
I'm having an interesting discussion over at Jay Rosen's about citizen journalism with h20town.com's Lisa Williams:

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2005/11/14/lw_h2tn.html

The three predecessors to this effort - 

Weblogs Inc, Gawker Media, Federated Media and now Open Source Media - which I have tow wonder if the Open Source Initiative is going to do something to protect the redefinition of the words "open source".

OSM trademarked the words "open source media"!  

My God!  How "open" is that?
Karl
Posted 11/16/2005 01:47:27 PM
Someone should warn JD Lasica and Marc Canter, their Open Source Media Project violates trademark:

http://www.newmediamusings.com/blog/2004/08/open_media_the_.html


Karl
Posted 11/16/2005 01:50:10 PM
The Open Media Network - better watch out too:

http://www.omn.org/

So should this blog:

http://www.ukuug.org/mediawatch/index.php?cat=27

How dare it call Wikipedia Open Source Media.  Don't they know better?  

Can ya tell I'm a weebit peeved?  
Karl
Posted 11/16/2005 01:58:55 PM
Oh, and look at who they consider 'top blogs' - folks that are part of their network only.  A casual glance reveals an far right slant as well.  I wonder if that holds true, further digging is called for.    

Philly Future's 'best of the blogs'?  Shoot - many of them don't even know WE exist.  And that doesn't matter to us.  We just want do a good job.


Hulk
Posted 11/16/2005 04:11:58 PM
We just want do a good job.

Me want do good job, too.

HULK SMASH!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Karl



Posted 11/16/2005 04:54:39 PM
HULK - blogger call you wimpy!  Says green must be red.  Green stinky dirty bad.  Green like grass. Concrete strong.  Green bad.  Say HULK old like MSM!  Must be replaced by new boss same as old boss!  New boss shiny good.  Old boss they say like you - stinky green.  
Daniel Rubin
Posted 11/16/2005 05:41:28 PM
Blinq go home now. Turn off computer and rake leaves.
Jeff G
Posted 11/16/2005 08:41:31 PM
Thanks for the link, Daniel. And just so you know,you'd made the correction before I even saw your post.

Good on you.
Rightwingsparkle
Posted 11/18/2005 09:10:07 PM
Daniel,

the first time I read Jeff G. he was "live blogging" the Republican National Convention. I totally believed it. I even asked him about some actress he had "smelled." Heh.

I didn't get it until he posted about waking up in Ann Couter's hotel room the next day with her panty hose on or something like that (ok, I made that part up, but it was  close to that) ANYWAY, I am a pretty smart chick and he got me, so don't feel bad. He just writes good.....;-)    
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TITLE: Blogging To Differ at Pajamas OSM Media -->



Posted 11/16/2005 02:54:43 PM
Open Source Media (OSM) or until yesterday known as Pajamas Media are launching their site today amidst a great rumble of excitement in the Blogosphere. Some incredible 70 blogger and journalist powerhouses have got together, led by Roger L. Simon and ...