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…

In Britain, Rupert Murdoch’s empire has paid $1.5 million to silence three public figures whose telephones were illegally tapped. In addition, private investigators hired by Murdoch’s newspapers “[unlawfully accessed] confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills.”

In California, Michael Arrington published confidential documents stolen from Twitter. The worst-case scenario under state law appears to be be one year in jail with a $10,000 fine. For the thief, not TechCrunch.

If ever there was an example of law not keeping up with the times, this may be it.

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There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Somehow, someway, you’re paying for that sandwich. Just maybe not in the way you’d think.

That’s according to Chris Anderson’s latest book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99). The book, along with its road map to “free” economics in the digital age, is generating a lot of buzz (and a little controversy) in media circles.

Anderson is enamored with free. That’s why he’s distributing his book at no charge via Google Books, Scribd, iTunes and Kindle. That’s why he wrote it using Google Docs and a Firefox Web browser. “Everything else I do on this computer is free, from my email to my Twitter feeds,” he writes in the book’s prologue. “Even the wireless access is free, thanks to the coffee shop I’m sitting in.”

Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of “The Long Tail,” takes a valiant stab at explaining some of the 21st century’s more puzzling contradictions. For instance: How do Google and Linux make money giving stuff away?
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Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video. We’re big fans of New Influencers/Secrets of Social Media Marketing author Paul Gillin here in the MCDM.  So we’re pleased to present his Skype Chat in my COM 581 Social Production and Digital Distribution class.

I’ve also received a bit of attention recently (“Plugged In: UW is Tweeting Its Way Into a New Social Media Ecosystem”) on my encouraging students to distract themselves with open laptops and Twitter while in class.  Here’s how we use hashtag conversations such as #mcdm581 to enhance the in-class conversation while Gillin was chatting with us:

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Say What?

They say YouTube isn’t making any money.  Its bread and butter is user-generated content, although it has managed to draw partnerships with some major Hollywood content providers, such as Fox and Warner Bros.  Nevertheless, the money is supposed to be sparse.  Then you have Hulu, which got started with content from some of the major players, like NBC Universal and Fox, right off the bat.  Hulu is, according to the word on the street, doing very well.  And so what we’re looking at is two models, UGC and content from mass media.  In other words, a site catering to social media vs. a site catering to mass media (or, instead of simply saying “mass media”, we mean the lumbering, late arrival of mass media content providers to the social media space).

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve been trying to save some cash during this economic crisis, downturn, whatever you call it.  In fact, my friend and I were recently talking about how we need to take on window shopping as a new hobby.  Well, here’s a cheap (free) way to cure our shopping blues since being broke is the new black.

Meet Kashless.  If Craigslist and Twitter had a love child, this site would be it.  It is the first online marketplace to solely offer postings of free items in the Seattle area.  You can either post directly with Kashless or via third party listings from sites such as Craigslist or Freecycle.  Using their microblogging design, you can search by categories, by neighborhood, or by distance.  They make the process seamless from bookmarking options to e-mail notifications, but the unique aspect of Kashless is their ability to narrow down your product and save your search preferences.  That’s target advertising (without really being advertising) at its best!

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MCDM student Nicole Collins shot the film above as part of my Multimedia Storytelling class this winter.  The course stressed storytelling structure (Aristotle, Joseph Campbell), as well as the benefits of using amateur technology (Nicole used a Flip Mino HD and iMovie) to tell stories to a larger audience.

Then, we teamed up with community “clients,” in this case, Seattle’s Pacific Science Center to prove how storytelling could help reach an audience.  The PSC’s Stan Orchard was so thrilled with our students’ work, he featured Nicole’s film on the upcoming Geocaching Exhibit’s homepage, and included all of the films on the PSC site.

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After reading my “No More Free Content” post, a colleague observed (in an email) that information consumers “pay” for content with both attention (”monetized and sold to advertisers”) and “direct payment to content producers.” [Note: there is no direct payment for broadcast TV, radio and alternative papers like The Seattle Weekly or The Stranger.]

This colleague believes that the challenge facing newspapers is not a “paid vs. free” issue. Instead, the challenge is the ratio of “monetized” attention to direct reader payment.

Attention (monetized or otherwise) is finite, limited. For example,  if I only have 40 minutes or so for “TV,” if I choose to watch DoctorWho, then I can’t watch Lost. (I know it’s an hour-long show; we have a DVR and skip commercials. Also, see opportunity cost.)

Read the remainder of this post on WiredPen.