Welcome to the third episode of “The Mediatwits,” the new revamped longer form weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift’s Mark Glaser along with PaidContent founder Rafat Ali. This week’s show looks at the recent $105 million lawsuit brought against Huffington Post for not paying its bloggers, as well as our grades for AOL’s various business moves, including the hyper-local Patch sites and buying TechCrunch.
Our guest this week is Ken Lowery, one of the co-editors and co-authors of the @FakeAPStylebook on Twitter and the new book “Write More Good.” Plus, we give first impressions on the new “Street Fight” online magazine about the hyper-local news business.
Check it out!
Subscribe to the podcast here
Follow @TheMediatwits on Twitter here
Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.
Here are some highlighted topics from the show:
Mark switches from AT&T to Verizon
1:20: Mark loves the Verizon iPhone
2:37: Rafat sticking with AT&T
Huffington Post lawsuit
5:00: Rafat thinks the web is built on user-generated content
6:15: Mike Elk even says he won’t support lawsuit
6:45: Rafat doesn’t believe in unions for writers
Grading AOL
9:15: Mark discusses long history of AOL re-inventions
11:45: Rafat gives an “A” for effort to Patch, but “D” for execution
12:50: Rafat gives a “B” for AOL buying TechCrunch
14:05: Mark gives an “A-” for AOL buying Huffington Post
Q&A with Ken Lowery, co-author of “Write More Good”
15:52: Ken Lowery joins Rafat and Mark
17:55: How the Bureau Chiefs started with a Gmail group
19:20: Rafat says literary agents are trolling Twitter now
21:10: Ken meets woman who runs @APStylebook feed
23:00: Ken talks about “The Content Farm” spoof site
Street Fight website launch
26:33: Mark and Rafat discuss new hyper-local site
27:40: Rafat thinks it’s a longshot to bring in revenues
More Reading
Huffington Post Writer Sues the Huffington Post/AOL at the LA Times
The Unpaid Writers’ Lawsuit Against Huffington Post is Bunk at Slate
Is Blogging for Free Better Than Nothing? at WSJ Speakeasy
About that Lawsuit… by Arianna Huffington
@FakeAPStylebook on Twitter
The Content Farm parody site
How to Watch TV at the Content Farm
Be sure to vote in the MediaShift poll about the future of AOL:
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.
