Spare Slots for Regular Freelance Work Soon Available

I may soon have spare slots in my freelance writing schedule for regular work, or for larger, longer-term projects. Here are the main areas that I've been covering, some for more than two decades. Any commissioning editors interested in talking about them or related subjects, please contact me at glyn.moody@gmail.com (PGP available).

Digital Rights, Surveillance, Encryption, Privacy, Freedom of Speech

During the last two years, I have written hundreds of articles about these crucial areas, for Ars Technica UK and Techdirt. Given the challenges facing society this year, they are likely to be an important area for 2017.

China

Another major focus for me this year will be China. I follow the world of Chinese IT closely, and have written numerous articles on the topic for Techdirt and Ars Technica. Since I can read sources in the original, I am able to spot trends early and to report faithfully on what are arguably some of the most important developments happening in the digital world today.

Free Software/Open Source

I started covering this topic in 1995, wrote the first mainstream article on Linux, for Wired in 1997 and the first (and still only) detailed history of the subject, Rebel Code, in 2001, where I interviewed the top 50 hackers at length. I have also written about the open source coders and companies that have risen to prominence in the last decade and a half, principally in my Open Enterprise column for Computerworld UK, which ran from 2008 to 2015.

Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Government, Open Everything

As the ideas underlying openness, sharing and online collaboration have spread, so has my coverage of them. I recently wrote one of  the most detailed histories of Open Access, for Ars Technica.

Copyright, Patents, Trademarks, Trade Secrets

The greatest threat to openness is its converse: intellectual monopolies. This fact has led me to write many articles about copyright, patents and trade secrets. These have been mainly for Techdirt, where I have published over 1,400 posts, and also include an in-depth feature on the future of copyright for Ars Technica.

Trade Agreements - TTIP, CETA, TISA, TPP

Another major focus of my writing has been so-called "trade agreements" like TTIP, CETA, TPP and TISA. "So-called", because they go far beyond traditional discussions of tariffs, and have major implications for many areas normally subject to democratic decision making. In addition to 51 TTIP Updates that I originally wrote for Computerworld UK, I have covered this area extensively for Techdirt and Ars Technica UK, including a major feature on TTIP for the latter.

Europe

As a glance at some of my 244,000 (sic) posts to Twitter, identi.ca, Diaspora, and Google+ will indicate, I read news sources in a number of languages (Italian, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Swedish in descending order of capability.) This means I can offer a fully European perspective on any of the topics above - something that may be of interest to publications wishing to provide global coverage that goes beyond purely anglophone reporting. The 30,000 or so followers that I have across these social networks also means that I can push out links to my articles, something that I do as a matter of course to boost their impact and readership.

"The H Open" is Closed and Offline; Here's What I Aim to Do...

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that for some years I wrote for the UK Heise title "The H Open".  Sadly, that closed last year; even more sadly, Heise seems to have taken its archive off line.  That raises all sorts of interesting questions about the preservation of digital knowledge, and the responsibility of publishers to keep titles that they have closed publicly accessible - not least to minimise link-rot.

However, here I want to concentrate on the question of what I, personally, can do about this.  After all, however minor my columns for The H Open were, they none the less form a part of the free software world's history, however footling.  Of course, I have back-up copies of all of my work, so the obvious thing to do is to post them here.  I can do that, because I never surrendered the copyright, and they therefore remain mine to do with as I please.

There are quite a few of them - nearly one hundred - so I have decided to begin with two of the most popular pieces that I published in The H Open: an interview with Linus from the end of my output, and an interview with Eben Moglen from the beginning.  I will then try to work my way through the other columns as and when I have time.  Don't hold your breath....

Mayor Of London Says Internet To Blame For British Press Sins

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is something of an institution in the UK, famous for his blond mop of hair and outrageous opinions. He's also been a journalist on and off for two decades, and is close to Rupert Murdoch, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that he's penned a characteristically witty defense of British newspapers. They're currently under threat of having governmental regulation imposed upon them in the wake of the UK's Leveson Inquiry, written in response to years of journalists breaking the law in search of hot stories, as Johnson acknowledges: 

On Techdirt.

Could Co-operatives Save Newspapers -- And Investigative Journalism?

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Rupert Murdoch's paywall at the London Times isn't looking like a huge success. That won't come as a surprise to Techdirt readers, but does raise the question: if newspapers can't use paywalls alongside ads to fund journalists, what can they turn to? Here's a revolutionary idea: why not let the people who know and care most about the title -- the readers -- get more closely involved? That's precisely what the Berlin-based newspaper Die Tageszeitung, affectionately known as "Taz", has done. Here's the Guardian's description of how it came about: 

On Techdirt.

Iceland: Haven of Openness?

One of the recurrent themes on this blog is the painfully slow progress in terms of getting open source deployed by the UK government. That's despite the fact that there have been multiple statements that it really wants to use more of the stuff, and definitely will - probably, at some point in the future, if the wind is the right direction....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Registry of Interests

This is a list of my main sources of income, and of any other work-related benefits, as of 1 October 2011. I will update this as and when any major changes occur.

My main sources of income are from writing for Computerworld UK, The H Open and Techdirt. In the past I have occasionally written for other titles, but not recently, and given my many commitments I think that is unlikely to change.

I also get paid to give talks, mostly on free software, intellectual monopolies and digital rights.

I occasionally accept paid-for trips to attend conferences related to my work; I aim to declare that fact in any writing that comes out of such visits. In the past (ten to twenty years ago) I accepted these routinely, as did all journalists. For the record, the company that invited me most frequently back then was probably Microsoft....

I am not, and never have been, a consultant for any company.

As for unpaid positions, I'm on the Open Knowledge Foundation Advisory Board, and also on the Advisory Committee of the Climate Code Foundation.

I do not own (and have never owned) any shares except those that might be hidden away in financial instruments I may have or have had: I have never tried to find out if there are any, or what they might be. Similarly, I do not have, and have never had, investments in any company.

I no longer accept freebies in the form of review software/hardware (though I did a couple of decades ago when this was standard practice.) I buy all my own computers and smartphones at full price (luckily, the software comes free...)

I very occasionally receive free review copies of books on areas I'm interested in, but I'm trying to discourage this since I never have time to write the reviews (er, sorry about that.)

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Moving beyond the Microsoft Monoculture

For the last 15 years we have been living in a Microsoft monoculture, which has had very real knock-on consequences for everyone online – not just for users of its products. Today, though, that monoculture is fading away, to be replaced by something much more complex.

On The H Open.

Should Retractions be Behind a Paywall?

"UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim", so proclaimed an article in The Times earlier this year. It began [.pdf]:

A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.

Well, not so unsubstantiated, it turns out: The Times has just issued a pretty complete retraction - you can read the whole thing here. But what interests me in this particular case is not the science, but the journalistic aspect.

Because if you went to The Times site to read that retraction, you would, of course, be met by the stony stare of the latter's paywall (assuming you haven't subscribed). Which means that I - and I imagine many people who read the first, inaccurate Times story - can't read the retraction there. Had it not been for the fact that among the many climate change sites (on both sides) that I read, there was this one with a copy, I might never have known.

So here's the thing: if a story has appeared on the open Web, and needs to be retracted, do newspapers like The Times have a duty to post that retraction in the open, or is acceptable to leave behind the paywall?

Answers on the back of yesterday's newspaper...

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Publisher, Know Thyself

If it weren't sad - and serious - this would be hilarious:

Springer, which publishes the biggest daily in Europe, the tabloid Bild, as well as other newspapers in Germany and Eastern Europe, says it wants publishers to get paid for their work on the Internet, at a time when many people assume that online news should be free.

“The meta-philosophy of free — we should get rid of this philosophy,” said Christoph Keese, Springer’s head of public affairs and an architect of its online strategy. “A highly industrialized world cannot survive on rumors. It needs quality journalism, and that costs money.”

OK, that sounds fair. So what exactly had Herr Keese in mind?

What kind of content would come at a cost? Any “noncommodity journalism,” Mr. Keese said, citing pictures of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy cavorting poolside with models at his villa in Sardinia — published this year by the Spanish daily El País — as an example.

“How much would people pay for that? Surely €5,” he said.

Er, no comment.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

playthegameforopenjournalism.org

One of the daftest URLs I've seen in a long time, but interesting to see the "open" meme here.

Morphic Resonance of Our Times

There’s no question in my mind that the woes of the journalism profession today have been at least partially self-inflicted. At the very historical moment that the news pros faced relentless new scrutiny from a vast army of dedicated amateur watchdogs and expert critics, they offered up a relentless sequence of missteps and disasters. Some were failures of professionalism, from the Jayson Blair meltdown to the Dan Rather screwup. But the biggest — the absence of a stiff media challenge to the Bush administration’s Iraq war misinformation campaign — was a failure of civic responsibility. With that failure, the professionals forfeited their claim to special privilege or unique public role as challengers of official wrongdoing and ferreters of truth. The democracy still needs these roles filled, of course. But after the Iraq bungle, the professional journalists’ claim to own them exclusively became much harder to accept.

What struck me about this insightful comment was that it seems to parallel something at a deeper level. Consider this slight re-write:

But the biggest — the absence of a stiff political challenge to the Bush administration’s use of torture — was a failure of moral responsibility. With that failure, America forfeited its claim to special privilege or unique international role as a challenger of global wrongdoing and champion of justice. The world still needs these roles filled, of course. But after the Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib bungle, America's claim to own them exclusively became much harder to accept.

GPM on LWN.net

In the spirit of passing on vaguely useful information, I notice that LWN.net has put together a handy master index of external contributors, including yours truly.

A Splittist War of Words

As I've noted before, the Chinese position on the events in Tibet is seriously undermined by the fact that it won't allow observers in to see for themselves. If it were confident of its position, it would welcome such reporting.

Instead, we have reporting in the West that is seriously hampered, and thus inevitably inaccurate at times, simply because of those difficulties. Meanwhile, the Chinese news agencies are putting out rather different versions. Take the following, for example:

"Many reports were not accurate," said Tony Gleason, field director of Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund, an American organization which helps poor Tibetans through skill training and small sum of financing.

OK, that sounds interesting: a Western eye-witness. So let's hear what he has to say:

"I never saw police open fire to the mobsters," he added.

Er, come again?

"Open fire to"? Sorry, me old china, that ain't English. And "mobsters"??? Nobody uses the word "mobsters" these days. In fact "mobsters" clearly belongs to that select vocabulary that includes "capitalist roaders" and "splittists" that no native English speaker would be caught putting their chops around.

Bit of a giveaway, that....

Update: Interesting development, here: I wonder what it means....

Mmm, Yes, But

Antony Mayfield points to an interesting piece in the Guardian that worries about what it calls the Mmm, Yes, But culture that blogs can spawn:

They will write: "Mmm, yes, but have you considered ..." To which we will reply: "Mmm, yes, you could be right about ..." And so a wonderfully civilised post-Blairite conversation will ensue. I wonder. There's nothing very civilised about a lot of the posting happening now; it's more like a shouting match-cum-punchup. And that's why it's often so entertaining. There is something about the Mmm-yes-but theory of the blog that is quite disquieting. Even if it became a reality, it could result only in hesitant journalism, bland criticism and writing that is predisposed to dull consensus.

As a journalist and blogger, I too have noticed this practice. Indeed, I adopt myself. But this is not out of timidity, but because I think it is the only way if blogging is to lead to anything of value in terms of online discussions.

If you want to see why the mmm-yes-but approach is necessary, take a look at the comments on Digg or Slashdot. There you will see human nature at its worst, with abusive, ad hominem, logicless attacks on the other posts leading to yet more of the same. If, on the contrary, you answer with the mmm-yes-but technique, I've noticed how it quickly chills the temperature of the debate. Not, let it be noted, the level of the debate, merely the language in which it is framed.

So to the Guardian writer and his points, I can only say: mmm, yes, but....

10 Things to Build a Blog Readership

1: A clear idea of what you are trying to do

If you want to get and keep an audience for a blog, you need to have a clear idea about a couple of things: what you are writing about, and who for. The word “blog” may derive from “web log”, but if all you do is write a kind of haphazard online diary, only your mother will read it. Don't be fooled by the top bloggers: even though they often seem to be jotting down random thoughts about their day, there is terrific method in their madness – which is why they are top bloggers. Even if they don't articulate it, there is usually a strong underlying theme to their posts. Until you become an A-list blogger, and can do it reflexively, you need to think about what you are trying to say, and to whom, all the time.

2: Strong, interesting and consistent opinions

Having a clear idea of what you are trying to do is not enough: unless you have something interesting to contribute on the subject, people who visit your blog once will not return. The good news is that it doesn't really matter what your opinions are, provided they are strong, well-expressed – and consistent. People like to have a mental image of what a blog is doing, and where it fits in the blogosphere: once you've established a certain tone or approach, don't keeping changing it. It will only confuse your readers, who will get annoyed and move on.

3: The ability to think fast

This is related to the previous point. You not only need strong opinions, you need to be able to form them quickly. Blogs are not the right medium if you want to ruminate deeply about something and then post a 10,000 word essay some months later: time is of the essence (the “log” bit in web log). You need to be able to form snap judgements - but sensible snap judgements, and consistent with your previous posts. Although not crucial, it also helps if you can type fast: the sooner you get your opinion out there, the more likely it is to be a fresh viewpoint for your potential audience.

4: A self-critical attitude

So you've had an idea and typed it up: don't press the Publish button just yet. First of all, read through what you've written: check whether it's clear, and whether you could improve it. In particular, cut out anything unnecessary. People tend to skim through blogs, so you've got to make it as quick to read as possible. Once you've checked the whole thing (good grammar and correct spelling are not obligatory – blogs are informal, after all – but they do make it easier for visitors) ask yourself one final question: is it worth posting this? One of the hardest things to learn when blogging is the discipline of deleting sub-standard posts. A weak post leaves a bad impression, and lowers someone's opinion of the whole blog. If in any doubt, scrub the post and write another one.

5: Marketing skills

Once you've posted something you're happy with, you need to let the world know. One common misconception among fledgling bloggers is that quality will out – that the world will somehow guess you've written some deeply witty/profound/amazing post and rush to read it. It doesn't work like that. Instead, you need to get out there and sell your story. The first thing to do is to make sure that all the blog search engines know about your posting (an easy way to do this is to sign up with Ping-o-matic). Then you need to start posting on other people's blogs to drive some traffic back to yours.

There are two ways to do this. One is to post on anything about which you have an opinion: most blogs let you include your main blog address as a matter of course. The other is to include in your comment a direct link to one of your posts – only do this if your post is strictly relevant to what you are commenting on. One technique is to use a blog search engine like Technorati to find other blogs that are writing about the subject matter of your post: then visit them to see if you can make a sensible comment with a link back to your own blog. However, use this approach sparingly or your comments may simply not be posted.

6: Self-confidence

Even if you've left plenty of hints around the blogosphere that you've just put up an interesting post, you may well find that there's little activity on your blog. Relatively few people leave comments on blogs (and many of those are just publicising their own postings), so the absence of comments doesn't mean that nobody's visited (see below for a good way of tracking all visitors). But you musn't give up: around 50% of all new bloggers throw in the towel within three months of starting, so if you can last longer than this you're already ahead of the field. Moreover, the longer you keep going, the more posts there will be on your site, and the more interesting material for anyone when they do visit. Rather than viewing all the unvisited posts as waste of effort, consider them as an investment for the future.

7: Thick skin/Self-restraint

After you've waited what can seem an age to get a few comments on your posts, you may be disappointed to find that some of them are, shall we say, less than complimentary. It is a sad fact that among those most likely to take the time and trouble to write a comment on your posts are people who feel strongly that you are a complete idiot. Assuming their post is not libellous or obscene (in which case, just delete it) the best thing to do is to reply as sensibly as possible. Do not return in kind, do not retaliate, do not mock: if you descend to their level, you just look as stupid as them. If, on the other hand, you are seen to be responding in a mature and intelligent fashion, visitors will value your blog all the more highly because they will attribute those same characteristics to the rest of your site.

8: Stamina

If you are serious about blogging, you are making a major, long-term commitment. At the beginning, you will need stamina (as well as the self-confidence mentioned above) to keep churning out posts even though few seem to be reading them. But it's even worse, later on, as you gradually gain a readership. Because now there is an implicit contract between you and your visitors: they will keep reading you, and give some of their valuable time and attention if – and it's a big “if” – you continue to post. This doesn't mean every day without fail – though that would be ideal – but it does mean several posts a week, every week. Above all, you need to establish a rhythm that visitors can depend on.

9: Humility

One of the most daunting aspects of blogging is that whatever rank you achieve on Technorati or elsewhere, you are only as good as your future posts: if you begin to post less, or start skimping in your posts, you will inevitably lose the readership you have built up so laboriously. This is obviously related to the last point: you will need stamina to keep any position you have earned. But another danger is that as you rise through the blogging ranks you might start to believe in your own importance: after all, the A-list bloggers do indeed wield great power. But that power comes from the readers, and as soon as arrogance starts to creep into posts, that audience will diminish, and with it the power. It is noticeable how humble many of the top bloggers are towards their audience, constantly thanking them for their attention and loyalty.

10: A day job

Don't delude yourself: you will never make enough money from your blog to give up the day job. Just look at the A-list: almost all of them do something else as well as blog (though quite how they find the time is one of the blogosphere's great mysteries). By all means use Google's AdSense on your site – its online Reports are invaluable, because they give an up-to-the-minute figure for the number of visitors your site has had each day. But as these will show, the sad fact is you are only likely to get one click-through per thousand visitors: even with valuable keywords paying up to a dollar a time, you will need absolutely vast traffic to make a living from this.

Blogging won't ever be your main job, but it might well help you get a better one. The thing to remember about blogs is that they are a great way of marketing yourself to the world – especially the parts you never knew might be interested. This is something else that you need to keep in mind when you write your blog: the fact that at any moment a future employer may be reading it.

(These comments are based on twenty-five years of journalism, including fifteen covering the Net, colliding with a few months of active blogging. Obviously, they are very early thoughts on the matter, based on limited experience. I'd be interested in the views of other people - especially those with more blogging under their belt - on what are the things you need to build up an audience for your blog.)