Two important but too-unsung women in media -- performer Amanda Palmer and Google ad exec Susan Wojcicki -- met at an idea this week: that media and advertising are becoming voluntary.

They also touch on ideas I've been trying to write about: that media should be in the relationship...

Reporters and editors used to decide what was to be made public. No longer. More and more, the public decides what will be public... and that's as it should be.

In today's Times, David Carr...

The next time you see someone on Twitter point to an argument and gleefully announce, "Fight! Fight!" and you retweet that, think about the net you are encouraging and creating. You're breeding only more of the same.

Oh, we've all done it. At least I'll confess that I've done...

Le crétin qui a réalisé cette vidéo, ayant soi-disant déclenché les émeutes et les tueries en Egypte et en Libye, est l'exacte définition du troll : il l'a faite pour provoquer la réaction qu'il était certain d'obtenir. C'est ce que font les trolls.

Ceux qui ont...

The jerk who made that video, the one that supposedly incited rioting and murder in Egypt and Libya, is the very definition of a troll: He made it to elicit the reaction he was sure he'd cause. That is what trolls do.

Those who reacted are trolls, too,...

I challenge every journalist in Tampa for the Republican convention -- every one of the 15-16,000 of you -- to answer this:

• Why are you there?
• What will we learn from you?
• What actual reporting can you possibly do that delivers anything of value more than...

The shooting near the Empire State Building demonstrated in yet more ways how news will arrive without mediation.

On Twitter, some objected to my linking to photos from the scene taken by witnesses immediately after the crime, without warning of their graphic nature. The alleged murder victim...

Reading the #nbcfail hashtag has been at least as entertaining as much of NBC's coverage of the Olympics. It's also enlightening -- economically enlightening.

There's the obvious:

• The people formerly known as the audience have a voice and boy are they using it to complain...

"Mobile phone" is a misnomer that is leading industries -- especially media -- astray as they try to develop services and business for the next wave of connectivity. So what would a better name be? I'll have a nominee in a second. In this week, the fifth anniversary of the...

Verizon makes its arguments against the FCC's net neutrality rules -- and they are fraught with danger.

Verizon sees the net as its newspaper and believes it has First Amendment rights to control what goes on the net. This is why Doc Searls has taught me that it...

With his bizarro news network, Aaron Sorkin thinks he is reimagining TV news, but he is only reminiscing, wishing for the return of the mythical Uncle Walter who'll tell us all what's what. Truth is, the process we saw at work in the premier of The Newsroom -- operating...

I should have listened to Dr. Google. I woke up Sunday morning with the dregs of a cold, so I went back to sleep. An hour later, I woke up with a new pain on my right side about an inch down and three inches over from the navel. Given...

The JOBS bill being signed by President Obama today is critical to the emergence and growth of the next generation of industries as ecosystems.

Those ecosystems are made up of three layers: Platforms (Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook, Kickstarter, Federal Express, Foxconn), which make it possible for...

The Internet's not broken.

So then why are there so many attempts to regulate it? Under the guises of piracy, privacy, pornography, predators, indecency, and security, not to mention censorship, tyranny, and civilization, governments from the U.S. to France to Germany...

Consider the similarities between piracy and do not track. They're greater than you think, for both reduce value for content creators. And both are excuses for internet regulation.

In piracy, a content company sets business rules: You must pay for my product; if you take it without paying for it,...

The Internet has helped untold publics to form. Yesterday, the Internet became a public.

Or rather, millions of people who care about Internet freedom used the net to organize and defend it against efforts to control and harm it.

The SOPA-PIPA blackout got attention in media...

Email and communication are badly broken and the solution isn't so much new technology as new norms. We need to redefine "rude."

The problem is clear: If you're like me, you get so much email that you can't possibly answer it promptly if it all, and messages that do...

Wednesday, I redeemed the greatest Christmas present from my son, Jake: tickets to see The Daily Show taping with him. It was fun and funny. But even better, it inspired me as a journalist.

I left the studio determined to teach a course in journalism via jokes. (I'd...

Got to see The Daily Show Wednesday night and in the pre-show conversation with Jon Stewart, an audience member said he was sent by The Internet to ask about SOPA. Stewart professed (not feigned, I think) ignorance, asking whether that was net neutrality, and excusing himself, what with their "heads...

The New York Times raised its daily price to $2.50 today. I thought back to the penny press at the turn of the last century and wondered what such a paper would cost today, inflation adjusted. Answer: a quarter.