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Today’s Guests:

  • Sebastian Rupley, Co-Crank, PCMagCast.com
  • John Markoff, Senior Writer, The New York Times
  • Gregg Zachary, Journalist, New York Times Columnist

The Topics:

  • Will News Robots Replace Journalists?
  • Do Newspapers Have a Future in the Digital Age?
  • Fake Olympics Broadcasts and Proper Journalism
  • Bloggers Have Major Influence on the Election
  • What is the Future of News?



  1. Lou Minatti says:

    “Do Newspapers Have a Future in the Digital Age?”

    Yes. Free but audited circulation.

  2. Uncle Patso says:

    “Do Newspapers Have a Future in the Digital Age?”

    I hope so. If not, I will surely miss them when they are gone. (sigh)

  3. Dallas says:

    John D, I enjoy your show and agree with most of your points!

    From a one cranky geek to another, WHY is Dvorak blog server so unreliable? Often, the response is horribly slow or not ‘not found’ !

    Is it hosted in the Bahamas? Chad? Beirut?

  4. smartalix says:

    New ‘bots will definitely replace journalists, at the very least by increasing editor “productivity” and allowing for smaller staffs.

  5. Geoffrey says:

    This may be a spurious nonsequitor but so be it.

    I would happily feed two quarter-dollars up front to listen to Dvorak’s audio shows and Laporte’s and Norton’s.

    But the micropayment needs to be as quick and easy and foolproof as a pinball or video arcade machine. No “registration”, no series of confusing things to read and buttons to click, and no nonsense. Not that they were perfect, but old school arcades sure made a lot of money in their day.

    Lack of small-payment velocity technology on the web is hurting everyone.

    History of “penny arcades” proves that people are not hesitant to pay up front a nominal amount like 50 cents or one dollar for the possibility of a couple of minutes of good entertainment.

    I don’t have a new idea here admittedly, but I do believe the podcast industry in particular could the most important beneficiary of the wished for but still missing payment technology.

    High quality podcasts will not flourish until customers can pay 50 cents up front for some good entertainment, with five nines reliability and no more time than it takes to pull a quarter from your pocket and push it in the slot. That’s the key.

    It is a technology problem. We can do this.

  6. smartalix says:

    5,

    frankly, it’s part tech, part market, part industry willingness, and part consumer desire.


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