TweetGeist: Meet the new media messiah

I, for one, welcome our new tablet overlord!

The week's two big journosphere stories -- the New York Times pay plan and the Apple tablet -- collided last night with the posting of Brad Stone and Stephanie Clifford's Times piece, "With Apple Tablet, Print Media Hope for a Payday." Apple's forthcoming device might, they wrote, give "the media industry a kind of time machine -- a chance to undo mistakes of the past":

By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era. This opportunity, however, comes with a sizable catch: Steven P. Jobs...With the new tablet, media companies could be submitting themselves to similar pricing restrictions [to those music companies hate] and sacrificing their direct relationship with customers to Apple.

Tweets were widely skeptical:

@chanders That NYT Apple Tablet Link floating around Twitter tonight appears to have been written by an Apple PR exec. http://nyti.ms/6kawvQ. Yawn.

@patrickruffini Why is all the coverage of the Apple Tablet about providing new contexts for old media? Disconcerting.

@poniewozik I hope the iTablet will be cool and save my job too, but WAY too much wishful thinking in the media coverage. Aren't we the skeptics?

@gaberivera NYT has learned that NYT is developing an Apple tablet version of NYT, but NYT won't tell the NYT under what terms: http://bit.ly/7dNV5d

@aschweig really glad apple has saved the newspaper industry with a device that doesn't even exist yet, guess we don't have to worry about it anymore

@codybrown "a 10-inch *color* display allows newspapers to deliver with an eye to the design that had grabbed readers in print" yes! Finally. Color!

@greglinch The Applet Tablet will not only replace paper products like newspapers & mags, but also paper planes and mache #appletabletrumorijuststarted

@seanblanda @greglinch I heard it will be able to do xrays #appletabletrumorijuststarted

Rex Hammock posted that "Steve Jobs is not the savior of the free press and old media. Get over it."

But Jeff Sonderman argued, only partly tongue-in-cheek, that Jobs' tablet show was a bigger event than Wednesday's other newsquake -- President Obama's State of the Union address.

And at the Guardian, Charles Arthur built a little wisdom-of-the-crowd survey to guess the final specs of Apple's device.

The reluctant pundit

Aphoristic insight from a Jay Rosen Q&A:

@jayrosen_nyu Q4 #journchat One reason I am not a pundit is that when it's difficult to form an opinion I vocalize the difficulty rather than my opinion.

@jayrosen_nyu Q6 #journchat Advice I give journalists and J-students: The best reason to blog is that it teaches you the Web http://bit.ly/7AuXV7 2/4

@jayrosen_nyu Q6 #journchat Advice I give journalists and J-students: You have no choice but to grapple with the entire puzzle: tech, biz, users, news 3/4

@jayrosen_nyu Q6 #journchat Advice to journalists and J-students: The age of mass media was just that: an age. Can't last forever http://bit.ly/83IXtL 4/4

@jayrosen_nyu Q8 Pro journalism used to be about getting the separations right. Now it's about getting the connections right #journchat

Laugh of the day: SimPaywall

Paywall, the game!: Jonathan Stray at Nieman Lab put together a Flash-game simulation of paywall economics.

Long read of the day: Rusbridger's optimism

In "Does journalism exist?", Alan Rusbridger's Hugh Cudlipp lecture, the Guardian editor makes the case against paywalls and for the open Web:

Journalists have never before been able to tell stories so effectively, bouncing off each other, linking to each other (as the most generous and open-minded do), linking out, citing sources, allowing response – harnessing the best qualities of text, print, data, sound and visual media. If ever there was a route to building audience, trust and relevance, it is by embracing all the capabilities of this new world, not walling yourself away from them.

Idea of the day: Digg for Obama

@fmanjoo The White House (or someone) should launch a site where you can vote up stories for Obama to read. The 5 Pieces O should Read This Week.