Worth Reading, Jan 30, 2012

It’s hard to believe, but January 2012 marks the fourth anniversary of this Logos blog, with our first blog post published by my colleague Fred Garcia on January 2nd, 2008.

In the last four years, we’ve all posted at various times, although the overall speed and frequency of the blog has slowed quite a bit in the last two years. All of the usual culprits are part of that reason, but the biggest culprit has been time (or lack thereof). While we’re thankful that the last four years have kept us busy, our blogging has seen a definite downward trend as a result.

Today marks the start of a new weekly series on this blog: “Worth Reading,” a collection of notable reads from the previous week (or so). We’ve had a more sporadic “Worth Reading” series for some time, but this weekly series aims to fill a request expressed to us to more closely follow what we’re keeping up with in quicker, more consumable bites.

• Newspapers & fact-checking: We followed with great interest the continued discussion prompted by Arthur S. Brisbane’s column at the New York Times earlier this month, “Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” In particular, analysis by Lucas Graves at Nieman Journalism Lab, “Digging deeper into The New York Times’ fact-checking faux pas;” Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic, “Why Newspaper’s Often Don’t Call Out Politicians for Lying;” and Gene Lyons at Salon, “Newspapers, truth vigilantes no more” are worth reading, as is a follow-up piece by Brisbane, “Keeping Them Honest.”
• Edelman Trust Barometer: The 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer continues Edelman’s research into the state of trust in countries, industries, information sources and spokespeople around the world, with 2012 seeing “the biggest decline in trust in government in Barometer history.” Lots of other relevant data in the full report.
• Facebook research: Two interesting pieces of research on Facebook: “How Journalists Are Using Facebook Subscribe,” a look at the changes since Facebook allowed users to “Subscribe” to public figures’ accounts, including journalists, in September 2011; and “Rethinking Information Diversity in Networks,” with additional analysis on Slate, “The End of the Echo Chamber.”
• Employees and social media: Thoughtful analysis by Shel Holtz on a recent report on employees and social media, “Rejoice! Employee use of social media has tripled!“
• Nonprofits and mobile giving: For nonprofits, Pew Internet’s report on “Real Time Charitable Giving” tracks the increase in giving from mobile phones.
• Twitter and international policy: And finally, lots of discussion at the end of last week about Twitter’s new international policy, including good summary and analysis from Alex Howard on Gov20.GovFresh, “On Twitter, censorship and Internet freedom” (with lots of updates and links to other analysis), and “What Would it Take to Get Twitter Unblocked in China?” on the WSJ.

These weekly updates will be a compendium of various topics that touch on a range of our work, and we look forward to more frequent updates in 2012.