Planet Abell

The pariah du jour to the United States and the countries who do business with it is one Julian Assange, a soft-spoken Australian whose motives may be obscure but whose life work is pretty clear. The founder of WikiLeaks, Assange is the whistleblower’s whistleblower, enabling the disclosure of anything in digital form — which, in the age of the Internet, is everything. The drama to marginalize/silence/demonize Assange is playing out like a (bad) Hollywood script, but the stakes — to commerce, to free speech, to the freedom of the Internet — are quite real. It’s a good time to take a deep breath. While critics portray Assange as the sort of caricature you’d expect to see as Batman’s arch nemesis he actually hews more to the suave Bond villain ( sex scandal and all ) — an international man of mystery whose calm demeanor is incongruous with a determination to blow things up. Continue Reading...

Ordinarily I would Tweet this question — but my question is about a potential Tweet I haven't been able to make, despite several attempts on two occasions a week apart. So I am going old school, a blog post, to whisper in Times Square to be heard in Budapest. Here is the text of the Tweet that will not be posted: "M" is for the merriment you give me. "A" is for the ass that I become. "R" is are you having a martini ? Yes. Okay, I know it's trite. Looking at it, it's like the joke you have to explain. Cute by 1/2. Let's all look past that please. Why has this Tweet been, apparently systematically, suppressed? I know what you're thinking. I replaced "ass" with symbols, dots and a cute by 1/2 "[REDACTED]. No soap. So I have been reduced to subterfuge. This post will automatically post to Twitter, with a URL and a headline designed to create interest. If anyone knows what might be the reason this particular string of 110 char...

Alan Mutter, a media critic who is both wise and smart, has pointed to the elephant in the room: journalists aren’t objective. Can’t be, really (though many try). But their biases are so mundane, he argues, that these collections of predilections and conflict-appearing life facts certainly don’t disqualify the conscientious ones from being respected reporters — if the rest of us know about them instead of treating them like the insane aunt you won’t admit is locked in the cellar. Mutter notes that the history of journalism is about partisanship, driven by newspaper owners with agendas. “Objectivity was not their objective,” he says. But it’s no accident that the internet — blogs, Facebook, Twitter — has accelerated the discussion not only of who is a journalist but how “objective” a journalist has to be. Full post at Epicenter .

I wasn't able to make a case for myself, but the Online News Association will not be the worse for it -- from an extraordinary field a stellar new board has been elected. The full story is here , but congratulations to Josh Hatch of USA Today, Robert Hernandez of the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and Will Sullivan of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who begin two-year terms on the eight-member board on Jan. 1. My one regret? While participation was up 14% this year, only 371 of the 1,816 eligible members cast ballots. That is a paltry 20.43% turnout. I'd love it if the board undertook some kind of initiative to increase participation. Here's one humble idea. It's from a loser, so take it for what it's worth: The annual ONA conference sells out these days, with 800 attendees — more than twice as many as voted this year. The vast majority are eligible members. Candidates for the board candidates are invited to at...

I've been a member of the Online News Association for a number of years, spanning my time at Reuters and now at Wired.com. I've also done a lot of head-shaking about the state of our industry, enough so that I think I should at least try be part of the solution. So, I'm trying a little of that by running for a seat on the ONA board. Competition is very stiff this year -- apparently there are many others who reached this epiphany at the same time as I. This is a good thing, because no matter who gets elected the ONA will be a stronger organization. My candidate's statement is below, but I also encourage you to read those of the other (record-setting!) 21 people -- a total of six incumbents, and 16 new faces -- vying for seven seats. ____ Bio I am Wired.com's New York City bureau chief, and direct our business and disruptive media coverage. Prior to joining Wired.com I was at Reuters, where my tenure was evenly split between pre-and post-internet eras. I began a ...

Does a politician on the campaign trail have any expectation of privacy? It's almost a silly question. But some pretty smart politicos have behaved as if there is more than one answer: Michael Steele is learning this, but unsuccessful Virginia Senatorial candidate George Allen and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown learned it the hard way. Now California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown seems to be shocked shocked that there's video recording going on here. Continue reading on wired.com's Epicenter blog

My very first appearance on Reuters television. VICTORY IS MINE!!!

Spoiler alert: This article assumes you’ve seen what passed for a final episode. If you’re like me, Sunday night’s Lost series finale may not have exactly hit the spot. Sure, everyone’s dead — and some might say not a moment too soon. Well, nearly everyone: Inscrutable Ben Linus isn’t “ready” to “move on” and is left to his own devices right outside that multi-denominational church where the high school reunion from hell is going on. So, naturally, the dramatic plot device we are thinking of is: Blockbuster Feature Film. I made my disappointment about the trajectory of final season clear in a post on my personal blog three weeks ago, so I won’t dwell on the ultimate dramatic sin of the series: Since anything is possible, nothing is impossible. Continue reading on Wired.com's Underwire blog

The first sign that I had lost my edge came without warning: I Tivo'd Lost on Tuesday, when I was unable to watch the show in real-time for the first time ever, and then was in no real hurry to see it. I'm now the weary gambler who won't fold because he secretly wants to lose, and betting on an indifferent hand hastens that perverted joy. A lot of people died this week on Lost -- only white people survived, a friend observes , and the suicide bomber was an Arab, she also noted. Well, Sayid is Iranian and thus Persian, but at this point, on this show, which purports to be all about the details, this slight twist on an cheap cliché seems like an inconsequential inside joke. Even death provides no finality in this bloated final season. Jacob says he can't bring people back to life and the seemingly untrustworthy Man in Black promises he can. But of course, nobody is ever really dead on Lost , because people can time travel and reunite in the past and also alter t...

Reuters waded into the waters of opinion and analysis against a very strong tide: An iron-clad policy of doing nothing that could conceivably open the 150-year-old news agency to the charge it was not absolutely free from bias. In the not-yet three years since Reuters columnists began taking sides on stories Reuters reporters were covering, a breakthrough I called " Reuters Opinion 1.0 ," its global reporting power has only grown. But Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer seemed to complicate the question of institutional ambivalence with a post on his personal blog in which he inveighed against a "rush to judgment" concerning financial giant Goldman Sachs and a civil complaint by the SEC which accuses the Wall Street behemoth of fraud. Glocer states an obvious fact: Goldman is guilty of nothing until the company is found guilty of something, or agrees that it broke a rule or regulation. But now comes an object lesson into why this may not have been the best...

Conan O'Brien tells 60 Minutes that, had their rolls been reversed, he would not have returned to The Tonight Show if it meant pushing out Jay Leno. I thought as much three months ago . "He went and took that show back and I think in a similar situation, if roles had been reversed, I know -- I know me, I wouldn't have done that," O'Brien tells 60 Minutes interviewer Steve Kroft, as reported by TV Newser . "If I had surrendered The Tonight Show and handed it over to somebody publicly and wished them well -- and then...six months later. But that's me. Everyone's got their own, you know, way of doing things."

Twitter started selling ads -- sort of -- in a modest attempt to get the Twitterati used to the idea that the start-up, valued at $1 billion based on private placements, is entitled to make serious money. So far, the sky hasn't fallen. Twitter doesn't need to make a lot, operationally. The company has fewer than 200 employees and manages a sea of servers. Tech support, marketing and maybe one HR person. In an interview with BBC radio, I talked about what Twitter is doing, what they aren't doing, and what they might do. I might have used the "dip their beak" metaphor instead, if I had thought of it. But on second thought, I'm glad I didn't. Hate those forced metaphors.

Donny Deutch says it's "Brilliant" and since he's pretty brilliant himself that means more than a little something. The new Nike ad with Tiger Woods can be described in a number of other ways — "Jarring," "Attention-getting," "Bold," as well as "Crass," "Manipulative" and "Unfortunate." Five of those adjectives, even the pejoratives, are probably fine with the Mad Men crowd, who dispassionately craft immersive messages that target our passions. The more difficult the message (Cigarettes are cool, Cars you can't drive as fast as they go on TV are cool, The Jonas Brothers are cool) the bigger the challenge and, when successful, the sweeter the victory. Woods has re-entered the real world via the unreal world that is the Masters Tournament. This makes perfect sense to me, as do all of the things that deliver us to the place where we can drop the subject. I am not sure who the audience is for this, though, an...

A new site still in beta is getting a lot of attention as the next place you will want to protect your reputation — and put someone else's in "perspective." But does free-flowing anonymous snark, the internet's second most vibrant activity (after porn) really need another enabler?

Verizon, anyone? The Wall Street Journal reports what may be the most convincing rumor yet that Apple is going to stray from long-time companion AT&T. Who are the winners and losers? I talk about it on CNBC's Street Signs. No fair guessing Steve Jobs (who always seems to have a winning hand) and Palm ( which cannot catch a break )

A disgruntled former employee is charged with hacking into the company's web-based remote immobilization to disable about 100 cars bought by customers who agreed to the leash because their credit rating would have made it impossible otherwise to get financing. The technology is an opt-in technique the company requires to insure the trust they have that credit-challenged buyers will make payments on time is not misplaced — as well the car the Repo Man will come looking for when they don't. But these Austin, Texas customers had done no wrong. It was a foolish payback prank that made a bad situation even worse for 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, now under arrest for "computer intrusion." But is this a Big Brother threat? Not so much. I talk it through with Celeste Headlee and John Hockenberry on 'The Takeway' (which, for this segment, should probably be called ' The Getaway .') Original reporting by Kevin Poulsen on Wired.com's Threat Level . At 3:30 a...

Facebook is getting in the geo-location business -- and make no mistake, a business it is. For FB, it's catch up to Foursquare and Twitter and Google, all of whom already have apps which convey from where you are texting your mind. But just wait until you not only know what's around you, but who. Digital Live with Shelly Palmer. My hit is at about the 4:36 mark.

Watching Jay Leno interviewed by Oprah , he cut a more sympathetic figure — people often do, even or especially when interrogated, which the Queen of talk did not. But Winfrey asked nearly all the right questions and got Leno to the precipice a couple of times, making the contours of the recent late night skirmish clearer and perhaps also, despite himself, his own motives. Leno has enjoyed unique success but laudably remains a blue-collar guy, a lot like the younger one who left Massachusetts in a beat-up car, listening to James Taylor and wondering if anyone would hear from him again . And he probably really is the hardest working man in show business, spending something like 200 days on the road doing stand-up and revealing to Oprah that he lives on what he makes without his NBC salary — an astonishing fact given his expensive car hobby, to say the least. In my psychobabble view I liken Leno to Regis Philbin, a genuine child of the Great Depression who has to work, always work, alway...

It's rare for someone in the moral cesspool that is often public life to be as utterly shameless as John Edwards, so I feel compelled to write a few things down to keep track of it all. Let's see: You have an adulterous affair with a woman, from the office, who is younger than your dying wife, whose incurable cancer is a matter of public record. You apparently have unprotected sex with this woman. A child is born, and you deny paternity so she will read all about that in a few years. You not only pointedly lie about all this but you convince or force other people step up to publicly support your lie. You say you will take a paternity test you cannot be compelled to take and have no intention of taking because you know it will expose your lie, a litigator's trick that is slimy even by litigator standards. All this is going on as you try to get elected president of the United States. Disclosure of your sins during the campaign or after your election would stigmatize your ...

Deborah Howell, a pioneering journalist who served in the sadly shrinking ranks of newspaper ombuds during a three-year tenure at the Washington Post, died in a road accident while vacationing in New Zealand . Howell, 68, worked for both Minneapolis newspapers, ran one of them as it won two Pulitzer Prizes, and then became the Washington bureau chief for the Newhouse Newspaper Group and editor of Newhouse News Service — where her staff also won a Pulitzer. (Newshouse News is owned by Advance Publications, which is also the parent company of Condé Nast Digital, my employer). "I don't think I've ever met anyone with as much passion for news and as much creativity and as much of a feeling for what it takes to be a great editor," Steve Newhouse said in an interview with Minneapolis Public Radio . We never met, but I knew of Deborah Howell professionally; when she wrote an amusingly scathing piece about a WaPo opinion column which argued that women may actually be weaker a...