Update: The New York Times announced on January 20 that they will indeed begin to meter content, starting in 2011. Read the Times’ statement here.

Bloggers’ reactions? Mashable predicts that the number of sites linking to the Times will decrease, negatively impacting traffic, while most readers will move on to another news source after they reach their limit. TechCrunch breaks down the numbers and comes to a skeptical, yet optimistic, conclusion. PaidContent.org, an information company owned by Guardian Media Group, justifies the decision.

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The New York Times may be close to charging for online content.

According to New York Magazine, the venerable ”Gray Lady” is seriously considering a metered system that will allow consumers to read all of the paper’s content — up to a point. Once that limit is reached, the reader must pay for articles. This allows new visitors to explore the site while charging the heaviest users. Seems fair enough, right? The question is whether the Times’ audience will agree to pay or go elsewhere for their news. Read more…

A legal brouhaha — or in this case, brew-haha, — is over, thanks to the power of social media.

On Sept. 14, Matt Nadeau, owner of Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville, Vt., received a cease and desist letter from a lawyer for Hansen’s Beverage Company, owner of the popular Monster energy drinks, demanding that he pull one of his beers — the Vermonster — off the market. A potent barleywine clocking in at 10 percent ABV and 100 IBU (beer talk for really, really powerful stuff), the Vermonster was an aptly named behemoth. However, Hansen’s interpreted this as a threat. The company’s letter alleged that use of the Vermonster name infringed Hansen’s trademark rights and constituted unfair competition.

It’s dubious that Hansen’s had a real case, since “the crux of infringement [was] a likelihood of consumer confusion and it seems doubtful that many consumers would confuse a regionally-brewed alcoholic beverage as being produced by a national energy drink company,” said Ryan Fant, a Stanford law student specializing in intellectual property. However, Hansen’s had the upper hand: The legal fees from fighting the accusation would likely bankrupt Nadeau and force Rock Art out of business.

But Nadeau decided to fight back. Using social media and digital communication, he quickly gathered supporters. Read more…

Heavensfield Retreat Center, home of the reSTART program, outside Redmond. (Image courtesy of reSTART)

A new addiction treatment program unlike any other in the country opened recently outside Redmond. This new program, reSTART, aims to heal a malady created by the digital age: Internet addiction. Though similar centers exist in Asia and online, reSTART is the first of its kind in the United States. Patients pay $14,500 to live at Heavensfield Retreat Center for 45 days. They participate in individual and group counseling, outdoor activities, life coaching and a variety of other programs.

So how do you distinguish between healthy Internet use and an addiction? According to an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Jerald Block, a Portland psychiatrist who specializes in this field, symptoms of Internet addiction include excessive use; feelings of anger or discomfort when away from a computer or portable device; the urge to increasingly buy better software or technology or to expand usage; and negative impact on quality of life; including sleep deprivation, poor performance at work or in school and lying about how much time one spends online. Internet addiction generally falls into three categories: gaming, sexual content and email or text messaging.

Read more…

Flip the Media is the best blog ever! Flip the Media will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about social media… and more! In fact, experts say that reading Flip the Media will make you more popular with the opposite sex, reverse male pattern baldness, and even cure some types of cancer!*
*results not typical.

Sponsored posts — endorsements by bloggers in exchange for compensation from marketers, dubbed “blog-ola” for “blogger payola” – have become a reality. Flip the Media is great, but can it really do everything described above? Probably not. To combat deceptive sponsored posts, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced last year that it plans to revise its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (“the Guides”) to regulate how bloggers and other social media users endorse products. This could strike a blow to both the companies who crowdsource using social media and the bloggers who supplement their income with freebies. Read more…

Yesterday, The Seattle Times announced a partnership with local neighborhood blogs as part of a year-long nationwide Networked Journalism pilot project sponsored by American University.

The Times will collaborate with Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog and White Center Now, Kate Bergman of Next Door Media (My Ballard and Queen Anne View), Justin Carder of Neighborlogs (Capitol Hill Seattle Blog), and Amber Campbell of the Rainier Valley Post.

The Times’ participation in the Networked Journalism project is in direct contrast to the Seattle P-I’s recent foray into hyperlocal blogging. Instead of working with preexisting, independent neighborhood blogs, the P-I created their own, a move that drew much criticism from both the neighborhood bloggers and the community. Read more…

Blogging has become a popular medium for food writing, as people are passionate about both cooking and eating; there are over 10,000 food blogs, and this number is growing. While most languish in obscurity, some, such as Simply Recipes, receive hundreds of thousands of views. Food blogs attract enough attention to have restaurateurs, chefs and traditional media critics up in arms over what they view as inferior reporting.

Food bloggers get a bad rap, though their negative reputation is ultimately rooted in some truth. Certain blogs steal information and make claims without citation; others bash restaurants without tact or evidence under the guise of being serious critics. Famed Chef Mario Batali wrote (on the food blog Eater), “Many of the anonymous authors who vent on blogs rant their snarky vituperatives from behind the smoky curtain of the web. Read more…