Elephant Diaries: How Important is Andy Revkin’s Blog?

Last Sunday night, I read an excellent New York Times story via the Web about Steven Chu’s introduction to the ways of Washington. I cover the Department of Energy at my day job, and the DOE is a major employer in New Mexico, so I made a note of the story to include a link …

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Elephant Diaries: Connecting the Dots on the George Will Affair

There is a line to be drawn, it seems to me, connecting the events of the George Will affair and my elephant diaries (the series of posts in which I try to sort out the past and future of my industry). In short summary, the affair illustrates both the way new information ecosystems have developed …

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Elephant Diaries: Cleaning Out the In Box

Between the university economics class I’m taking and the various stuff people are actually trying to pay me to do, I’ve been too busy to pay proper writerly attention here to a number of important events and discussions. Let me just dump a few things quickly, and let you click through to read what smarter …

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Elephant Diaries: Clay Shirky on Why Newspapers are Just Fucked

It’s not that we haven’t done The Right Thing. It’s that there is no Right Thing. The problems are fundamental: The competition-deflecting effects of printing cost got destroyed by the internet, where everyone pays for the infrastructure, and then everyone gets to use it. And when Wal-Mart, and the local Maytag dealer, and the law …

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Elephant Diaries: On Feeling Outnumbered

We’ve always been outnumbered. It’s getting worse: Packs of lobbyists fill two rooms outside the House and Senate chambers in Richmond every afternoon, watching the proceedings on big video screens, zapping legislators with e-mails the instant the lobbyists sense that one of their bills might be in trouble. The interest groups that hire lobbyists can …

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