Over at the Interchange Project Jeremy and I discuss the whole Jim Romenesko/Poynter affair and much more this week.

We think both Romesnko and Poynter were in the right and wrong here. It’s complicated. We wish things would have ended better.

Our discussion of Romenesko leads Jeremy to discuss how he handles miss attribution and plagiarism with his students.

We then discuss the top 40 most shared stories on Facebook in 2011. Some very interesting finds. And then we have a few more topics to go over.

It’s a good show. I promise.

Listen to this week’s show.

I highly encourage you to check it out and provide us with feedback. The project aims to provide meaningful news and discussion around technology, media, information, usability, design and the social sciences. We’re in a very soft launch right now, but we already have good content for you.

The website has two main components: a weekly podcast and written posts. We’ve launched our first podcast, and would greatly appreciate your help in helping to mold it.

Because this new project overlaps so much with what my current blog’s theme is, I’ll be changing my personal blog to have a more personal tone. It will be for anything not appropriate for the Interchange Project.

For those of you wishing that I would blog more or provide more analysis and commentary, this new project should provide that and more.

What’s the biggest problem facing journalism today?

Lack of journo-hackers? Not enough staff resources? Too little focus on mobile? Not enough data? Print curmudgeons? Lack of free coffee for employees?

No. The biggest problem facing journalism today, particularly at legacy news operations, has nothing to do with journalism. The biggest problem facing journalism — a traditionally ad-supported industry — is the inability to support itself with ads via the Internet.

This is the last year of the Knight News Challenge in its current form. It’s had a few notable successes — Spot.Us and Everyblock. It’s had far more failures than successes and a bit of redundancy. But that’s to be expected and encouraged.

After all this competition is all about taking risks and trying new things. The problem has been Knight’s insistence on not caring about whether or not projects could make money. I had a high ranking Knight News Challenge person tell me that Knight doesn’t care if every project fails to be able to support itself financially or if every project just plain fails.

I think it’s time for that to change. In fact, it’s time for Knight to start funding projects whose only objective is to help news organizations make money. And I think it’s time for Knight to care that some of its project succeed.

Last year Windy Citizen’s real time ad project was funded. Will it succeed? Not sure yet, but more ideas like it would really help journalism.

I guarantee you we would have a lot more innovative ways to do journalism and inform the public if we had more ways to financially support journalism. We’re seeing a rise of non-profit journalism, which is good, but we’ll need more than that.

How about an open source Groupon competitor that news orgs could install? How about a new classifieds platform that crushes Craigslist on usability and experience? How about an open source self-administered ad platform ala Facebook ads?

These are all things news organizations could use. These are all ways news organizations could better support themselves online. But what about business ideas that no one has even thought about yet?

One of things I love most about Spot.Us is that it’s a project that has the audacity to ask, “How will we fund meaningful journalism?” To me that’s what Knight needs to get into the business of doing.

Good journalism requires money. While funding mobile application projects may be en vogue, these projects won’t be self sustaining, nor will they get to the heart of what is ailing journalism today. Not to mention that its expensive to develop a good multi-platform mobile application, and it will require years of continued development (which it doesn’t appear many of these applications and best winners are factoring in).

I do believe that journalism itself is changing and that we do need new ways to tell stories. There is no doubt about that. But until we find a way to properly support these new ways of telling stories, will it really matter?

• 17 anytime minutes used.
• 653.5 MBs of data used.
• 75 text messages sent.

When you look at this data, it’s clear that I use my iPhone more as a mobile computing device than as a phone. It’s no more of a phone than my laptop with Skype is. I have a phone app that I use every now and then, but other applications — Safari, Facebook, Twitterific, Mail, Reeder, Instapaper, The Weather Channel, ESPN, etc — are much more used and important to my life.

I’m not some crazy outlier either. This usage is increasingly becoming normal among my age cohort and increasingly other age cohorts as well. Smartphones and text are exploding, but phone calls are fading:

According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.

Smartphones are changing the face of computing and of communication. I communicate with people all day long — Twitter, Facebook (almost all my family and friends are on this), text messages and email.

But when you put this all together, it seems to be that calling an iPhone or Android, Windows Phone 7, Palm OS, etc a phone — smart or not — is selling the devices short. The idea of a phone is fading away. These touchscreen tablet devices are able to make calls, yes, but they are able to do so much more.

And so when people say, “who needs a tablet,” I’ll tell them they probably already have and love one.

1. 4 billion mobile phones in use.
2. 1.08 billion of those phones are smartphones.
3. 3.05 billion of those phones are SMS enabled.
4. Mobile Internet usage should overtake desktop usage by 2014.

Mobile is here. The big opportunity is for companies and organizations to make mobile experiences that are unique, user friendly and that make people’s lives better. People aren’t adopting mobile for the sake of adopting mobile, so don’t make mobile experiences just for the sake of making them.

Learn More about Mobile Tagging at Microsoft Tag.

We deserve to be heard.

Social media is amplifying that voice, letting us reach people and institutions like never before. Smart companies and individuals have leveraged social media to connect with more people than ever before.

But this week I had a local politician tell me my voice didn’t matter. I didn’t show up for a public hearing, and thus what I have to say — while publicly — isn’t the same. But he wasn’t just talking to me. No, he was saying that anyone who engages him on his official Twitter and Facebook accounts isn’t really engaging in the political process.

I have to ask, why would you even be on social media then? The idea being social media is to engage people.

So, what was this hearing about and why wasn’t I there? For several years now, a small but vocal minority has been trying to get a pedestrian bridge built from a parking garage to a new library under construction in downtown Silver Spring. All pedetrian bridges were expressly forbidden by CBD Urban Renewal Plan and the proposal has been voted down before. But this vocal minority won’t rest, and thus we have more hearings.

The reason I — and almost everyone else who lives in Silver Spring — wasn’t at the meeting was that the meeting was in Rockville, Maryland, at least a 30 minute drive from the proposed spot of this bridge. Why would that be? Well, to officially engage in the official process one must travel to the official place of politics, which is Rockville, the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland.

I don’t own a car, and many people who live in the area don’t either. Silver Spring has great public transportation and is increasingly becoming more walkable (that public transportation is much better to get between Silver Spring and DC, Arlington and Alexandria. Getting to Rockville isn’t quite as easy). This is one reason why so many people in the area are against a bridge that’s designed to serve car drivers from outside of the area at the expense of local residents.

You might understand then why I was a little bit upset when one of my local politicians wrote this:

“I agree that social media has its benefits but I don’t think it substitutes for actually engaging in the process.”

How is reaching out to an elected representative to personally — and publicly — engage in a dialogue about issues not engaging in the process? Why does showing up for “official hearings” the only way to engage in the process?

This is archaic and a great way to keep people disinterested in politics. Local politicians count on low turnout at “official” events to justify decisions. “If you were so against this bridge being built in your town, how come you didn’t show up to this other town while you were working to voice your opposition to it?” As polarscribe said on Twitter, “brilliant, nobody under 50 matters.”

It is true that the way politics are conducted — especially at the local level — the process is largely aimed at older constituents. There are formal hearings held at times that younger people are often working or trying to raise their families. The idea that social media isn’t a way to engage in the political process will only further keep younger voters disinterested in politics.

But social media is popular with older cohorts too. The Internet is popular with everyone. The only thing I see old about this is how many politicians act like it’s the 1980s still.

The Internet is a transformative technology. It’s one of the biggest inventions in human history. It has the power to make the political process more transparent, open and inviting.

Let it. Embrace the Internet. Embrace social media.

Social media can help liberate the Arab world, but it can’t help me reach my local politicians? Social media can’t help me explain to my politicians why I would be against a $1.5 million bridge to serve car drivers over those of us who live in the area, while the county has had to make huge cuts to close a $779 million budget gap? That’s ridiculous.

Before Silver Spring was redeveloped and given a walkable core, it was economically depressed. The urban renewal plan forbade pedestrian bridges (also know as skywalks) because they are precisely the kind of thing that leads to an urban area becoming blighted. These bridges are built to get people off the streets, which allows cars to move faster. These areas become opening hostile to people on foot and to ground-level business activity.

My hometown of Cleveland, Ohio has them and many depressed rust belt cities do too. These cities are hemoraging residents left and right because they are little more than places for suburban commuters to work in and watch sporting events in. To the immediate residents of downtown Silver Spring, building pedestrian bridges to serve commuters from elsewhere in the county is a great way to throw Silver Spring back into the economic depression it emerged from.

Bridge proponents are pushing for the bridge under the guise of accessibility for the disabled. The argument goes that disabled people that drive to the library can’t be expected to use crosswalks on the ground level, and thus we should build a pedestrian bridge to make it easier to cross. One person even suggested that this bridge needs to be built because this library houses materials for the visually impaired.

Obviously, this is a ruse, because no one wants to admit that they support this bridge because they don’t want to step foot on the sidewalks of Silver Spring. Yes, some disabled people do drive. I would submit that the visually impaired do not.

I have several disabled people in my condo building, and downtown Silver Spring has a lot of disabled people because it’s not car-dependent. There are ample sidewalks, ramps and curb cuts. Many of these people do not drive, but they are able to live full lives because they live in an area that makes it easy to get around without a car.

To recap: A local politician said that the only way to engage in the official political process about a bridge for the disabled in the city I live in was to somehow travel to another city to discuss it. And not being unable to make the meeting and instead sending him messages via social media does not count as engaging in the political process.

How accessible.

To every Montgomery County politician reading this blog, I am against the pedestrian bridge to the new Silver Spring library. The people who live in the immediate area largely agree. I’m going to send you tweets, Facebook messages, e-mails, phone calls.

This blog post is written in ink far more permanent than any faxed or mailed letter ever could be. It’s public and people have the power to share it and comment on it. If I wasn’t serious about this issue, I wouldn’t have written something so public, so permanent.

I may never make it to a hearing in Rockville, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a voice. Or a vote.

We have a voice

We will be heard.

No warning. Just arrived. I’m not complaining.

I’ve been using the Cr-48 with Chrome OS a lot this past week. It’s been a pretty enjoyable experience. This is very much a beta, and this is why I’m posting thoughts and not a review. There is no way to review prototype hardware or beta software. Some things just don’t work. That’s why it’s a beta.

I’m not going to talk about the things that don’t work because this is a beta. The fact that the USB ports aren’t fully functional yet has nothing to do with what the final OS will be like. The performance of Flash does, however, because Flash has been on Linux for years (and Adobe never cared about Linux performance until a huge, mainstream company like Google started developing Linux-based products such as Chrome OS and Android).

Here are some thoughts and questions I’ve had so far:

It’s really not that jarring — Most of what I do involves websites: Gmail, Google Docs, WordPress, a few Drupal CMSes, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google, ESPN.com, Google Reader, Hulu, Netflix, nytimes.com, etc, etc, etc. It’s really not that jarring to use a Chrome OS computer. Most of the time, you won’t even notice that you aren’t on Windows, OS X or a version of Linux such as Ubuntu (Chrome OS is Linux based). If you spend most of your time in the browser, Chrome OS feels very familiar.

Forget about boot times – Chrome OS boots in about 12 seconds, and unlike most OSes, it doesn’t take awhile from signing in until you can do something (I swear it takes about five minutes for my XP machine at work to boot up and be ready to use). When you can boot and have a website open in about 20 seconds, it changes your relationship with a computer. My main computer is a Mac Mini hooked up to two monitors. It loads Dropbox, Mozy, Alfred, etc, etc, etc on startup. All things that I need when I’m doing heavy-duty work, but it also means that I can’t really use my computer for a few minutes. If my computer is turned off, and I just want to play around on the Internet, I usually keep it off. With a device like Chrome OS, those considerations don’t come into play. This is a lot like the iPad where you can just leave it laying around your house and pick it up and use it whenever you want to surf around the Web (the Cr-48 also sleeps very well and can go about a month in standy-by mode).

But can you work on it? — The jury is still up in the air. Anything you can do on the Chrome browser — my main browser — you can do on Chrome OS, except for anything requiring Java. It’s unknown if Java will be coming to Chrome OS or not. I can use WordPress on it, as I’m doing right now. I can do light image editing and graphic design work with Aviary. I can use social networking sites, read ebooks and even do light programming on Chrome OS. Video editing, screencasting and some of the other activities that I do are out of the question.

The Cr-48 is slow — This is a prototype, so you can’t get too down on it. I imagine that as Chrome OS approaches version 1.0 it will get faster even on older harder like the Cr-48. Chrome 9 — the browser — and Flash 10.2 both would give Chrome OS a major speed boost. As of this writing neither has made it to Chrome OS. The computer itself is a single core Atom chip, which is not enough to handle Flash video, because Flash is resource intensive (Flash 10.2 promises to solve some of these issues). So, my slower iPad can easily handle 720p HD video at 30fps without any issues, whereas Chrome OS can’t even do 480p video properly. That’s an issue. I would think that just about all Chrome OS netbooks will ship with dual-core Atom processors and hopefully have hardware acceleration for video. My cell phone handles video better than my Chrome OS laptop. Every Chrome OS computer needs to ship with the ability to handle 720p video at 30fps. Beyond that, Chrome OS feels much slower than using Chrome on my Mac Mini. Let’s hope that changes.

Flash is terrible on Chrome OS (and Linux in general) — One of the major arguments against Flash is that Adobe controls how well it runs on a platform. JavaScript is the exact opposite. Chrome. Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc are all trying to see who can process JavaScript the fastest, which has led to JavaScript-heavy websites (think most Web apps such as Gmail and Google Apps) to render much faster. And they keep rendering Web pages faster all the time as new browsers with better JavaScript engines come out. Flash doesn’t work like that. There is no competition and until Apple stopped using Flash in many of its products and HTML5 emerged, Adobe had no incentive to improve Flash speed. Flash is slow on your computer? Just buy a newer, faster machine! That was essentially Adobe’s message for years. Flash has always run best on Windows, which has left OS X and Linux users out to dry. But OS X users have it much better than Linux users. Adobe has never cared about making Flash usable on Linux until Google decided to develop a Linux-based OS with Chrome OS. Flash makes the whole browsing experience slow on Chrome OS, even if you aren’t directly using a Flash-based site. Any site with Flash-based ads on it will be slower than expcted. The good news is now that there will be a version of Linux from a major company, Flash should get much better on Linux. Web pages without Flash render very fast and are a pleasure to use.

So, who would want this? — Anyone who just wants to get on the Web and not worry about viruses, security, system updates, plugin updates, browser updates, etc. Chrome OS just works. It can’t do anything other than the Web, but for an increasing number of people, that’s pretty much all they do outside of perhaps iTunes or some other media-management software.

Enter business? — Chrome OS really screams out for business use. So many employees don’t use the full functionality of their computers (or use virtually none). They use websites, occasionally open Word or PowerPoint docs, do some research and use some custom software. Most of those people could switch to a completely Web-based OS. But why would they do it? Simple. Chrome OS is a very secure platform that requires no IT management. The system updates itself without needing any input from the user and Web apps do the same as well. Would IT managers go for something that writes out much of their job description? Maybe not. But the smart ones — the ones you want at your organization — would realize that Chrome OS would free them up to do bigger thinking. It would allow them to spend more time investigating how to us IT more efficiently and how to makes workers’ jobs easier. Instead, much of IT work right now is tech help. Imagine a system that is very secure, sandboxed (even infected apps couldn’t affect other apps or the system itself), auto updates, and makes employees take care of their data by forcing them to save everything to a redundant and secure platform. How many of your employees save important documents to their computers hard drive instead of to your server? Far, far too many. With Chrome OS, that’s simply not an option. Chrome OS would save money and time. For many of your employees, they’ll need a heavy OS. But for the ones who don’t need one, why would you give them one?

The perfect parent computer — Chrome OS would seem like the perfect computer for my Dad. The only thing he does is surf the Web. He reads websites, checks e-mail and plays fantasy sports. I could definitely see him having a Chrome OS netbook on his desk. It doesn’t take up much space, can be easily powered on in seconds, lasts for a long time on each charge, is very secure, updates itself and requires no maintenance.

Can this work in a tablet world? — That’s the biggest question. Pretty much everything I have said about Chrome OS  could be said about an iPad or some of the tablets coming out. True most tablets don’t update their software in the background for you (I think this will be changing), but tablets are much less complicated to use than a traditional OS and should be much more secure. People who need a dedicated keyboard and trackpad will appreciate Chrome OS. I could certainly see Chrome OS receiving business adoption for employees who don’t need much computing power. Ultimately, I see a world where most households have one main computer that runs either Windows or OS X. After that they’ll have several other computing devices — smartphones, tablets and perhaps Chrome OS netbooks. It makes sense. Most people don’t really need more than one-heavy OS device per house. For students writing and researching papers, Chrome OS makes more sense than a tablet. On the other hand, a tablet makes more sense during class. I don’t know how this will shake out, but I do know the days of most households having multiple heavy-OS computers are over.

Google got the netbook right — Prior to Chrome OS and the Cr-48, netbooks were about taking a full-featured OS and mating it with simple hardware. The Cr-48 is about taking full-featured hardware and mating it with a simple OS. The typical netbook isn’t good at anything, regardless of how good the software could be. Anything less than a full-sized keyboard is worthless for serious writing or programming. Most traditional netbooks have cramped keyboards that are hard to type on (often harder than a touchscreen tablet). The Cr-48 comes with a fantastic keyboard. You don’t need a full-featured OS to do research or type papers, blog posts or news stories, but you do need a good keyboard. Netbooks currently excel at nothing. They are just small, cheap laptops. They are worse than tablets. The Cr-48 has some things that it genuinely does better than a tablet. It comes with a fast HD (SSD) that allows for quick startup, a Web cam for video conferencing and audio calls, a nice sized screen and more. Yes, the processor isn’t that fast, but Chrome OS doesn’t need a fast processor, and why spend money on something you don’t need? Finally, Google has found a way to give netbooks a niche beyond being cheap devices that people later regret.

So how does this fit into my workflow? — Too early too tell. For programming, video editing, screencasting and some other activities my Mac Mini will get the nod. It’s fast, has two monitors, can run a variety of development environments and more. For surfing the Web and lounging around, the iPad is king. The iPad is just fun. Using your fingers to navigate the Web and flick pages up and down is really a special experience. I also use my iPad at work as a note-taking device, as well as for e-mail, calendars and project management. It’s the perfect work companion. It’s also a fantastic device for my train rides on the metro and for going to coffee shops. The Cr-48 may eventually become my go-to writing device. I can take it anywhere I want, unlike my Mac Mini, and it’s great to type on (I love the keyboard), unlike my iPad (the typing is fine for notes, but not for longer content). I like to sit on my balcony with my iPad, but I missed having a laptop to do work on when it’s a nice day. Now I can do writing work on it with the Cr-48. I also think this will be a great device for when I have guests. When my family members visit, they eventually want to check their e-mail, adjust their fantasy lineups and surf the Web. Chrome OS is perfect that. You can leave the laptop in your guests room, and they can quickly sign in as a guest, do whatever and then their session will be destroyed upon log out.

So who would you recommend this for when it launches this summer? — My Dad (my Mom has a Macbook Pro that she uses for work) and anyone looking for a cheap writing and researching device. If a Chrome OS netbook comes out in the $300-400 range, it would probably be a better product than a comparably priced Windows laptop. I’ve seen far too many people buy cheap Windows laptops, only to have to replace them fairly quickly because they become so slow and unusable. Chrome OS doesn’t have those issues, and even a $300 Chrome OS laptop should be usable for years to come.

“Fisheries management around the world has failed. We now have the capacity to be able to catch the last fish, the last whale, the last dolphin, the last shell.”

A must watch video on what we need to do to protect our oceans.

Two years after offering a buyout that decimated its newsroom by cutting about one-third of its staff, The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., the state’s largest daily paper, is offering another such buyout.

In a memo to staff today, Publisher Richard Vezza stated that the paper had lost $9 million in 2009 and was on pace to lose another $10 million this year.

Sounds like a fun place to work. I’d feel worse for the paper, if they weren’t owned by Advance Publications (parent company of Advance Internet), which has the worst newspaper websites around.

This is all you need to know about Justin Bieber and Twitter: Racks of servers are dedicated to him. Whole servers!

Someone, sometime will need to explain to me just exactly why Justin Bieber is so popular. Must be that Tom Brady hair.

Research has shown that a healthy office space with plants and open windows is more conducive to productivity.

I love my home office. It’s filled with plants, books, a fish tank, antiques and interesting objects My office at work is pretty bland and boring, but I’m going to try my best to make it good. If only I worked at Pixar.

Should ScienceBlogs.com have agreed to host a controversial blog on nutrition, written by PepsiCo? No, say the site’s readers, as some of its star bloggers stop their blogs in protest.

It’s an idea so bad that you swear that The Washington Post and Publisher Katharine Weymouth were behind it.