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About
Howard Owens is a digital media pioneer. He started publishing local news online in 1995 when very few local news outlets had web sites. The header image on the site depicts the film camera he used early in his career and the press pass from his year on the staff of the Carlsbad Journal. For more on Howard's professional background, read his LinkedIn profile.
HowardOwens.com is the personal web site of Howard Owens and covers his range of interests -- political localism and libertarianism, music and personal interests, as well as his professional interests.
Howard is currently publisher of The Batavian and lives in Batavia, N.Y.
Howard on the Web
Recent Comments
- Fred Donaldson on ‘Lede’ vs. ‘Lead’
- Wordpress Arena on Migrating from Drupal to WordPress
- Howard Owens on My evolution as a photographer and thoughts on the Chicago Sun-Times
- Patrick Thornton on My evolution as a photographer and thoughts on the Chicago Sun-Times
- Howard Owens on My evolution as a photographer and thoughts on the Chicago Sun-Times
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Tag Archives: internet
Information ethics
In an age when information flows like a million Mississippis, we need to have an ethics about information.
In an age when access to information is as open as a billion galaxies, each individual is responsible for handling information ethically.
In an age when we are all information creators, contributors and consumers, we share a responsibility to each other not to mishandle information.
The information ethic begins with each person who both understands the power of information and the scourge of misinformation.
This is a role not solely for journalists, but journalists as the paid purveyors of information must not slip in adherence to high ethical standard (the ethical burden on journalists has never been greater); this is not a role not solely for bloggers, but bloggers as the vanguard of a new information river, must take on the burden of protecting and cherishing information; mostly, this is a role for all participants in the conversation, both the creators and the followers.
Not all participants will rise to the occasion, increasing the burden on those of use who recognize the responsibility.
The information ethic requires that we strive always for honesty, transparency, accuracy and fairness.
We must teach ethics as well as we practice ethics.
This is the ideal. Not all participants will recognize nor care for even a shadow of the ideal, but those of us who do must hold ourselves to the highest standards of information ethics.
This is no code of conduct we sign, no pledge we take, no oath we swear, no authority we obey. It is just something we do within ourselves.
And if we do, society will be better for it. Continue reading
Suggested RSS feeds
We’ve discussed before that journalists need to get an RSS reader and read it.
Over on Back Channel, I offer a list of ten RSS feeds that should be in your feed reader. I didn’t post it here, because the list isn’t intended to be just for journalists, but for anybody who values being a well-rounded person, which we would hope would apply to all journalists. Continue reading
Contrary to Askimet’s belief, I am not a spammer
Askimet thinks I’m a spammer.
Thankfully, Scott Karp, among others, knows I’m not a spammer. But he has had to hassle four or five times recently to fish my comments out of Askimet’s spam bucket. That led to this post.
On any blog that is using Askimet’s spam filter, if I leave a comment, my comment goes into the spam bucket.
Why? Apparently, it’s related to the fact that my site was hacked twice. One of those hacks involved putting a redirect page in one of my directories, and then the spammers sent traffic from hundreds of other hacked blogs to that page.
That was great for my technorati ranking, not so great for my reputation with Askimet.
I’ve written to Askimet and asked to be taken off the back list. So far, the request has been ignored.
I pretty much hated spammers before these incidents. My inclination to think they should all be shot on sight is hard to resist, even as much as I strongly believe in full and fair trails for all accused criminals. Here’s to hoping people like Alan Ralsky, assuming he’s convicted, get punished to the full extent of the law. We need thousand more prosecutions like this, but then I suspect most spammers reside in countries where the government could careless. Hopefully, someday, those governments will join the civilized world and come to hate spam as much as the rest of us do.
UDPATE: Afternoon of Jan. 9, 2008. I just got an e-mail from Askimet saying I’ve been unblacklisted. Continue reading →