Gregory Kohs is a marketing research practitioner with more than 17 years of experience in the field

Gregory Kohs is a marketing research practitioner with more than 17 years of experience in the field, mostly with research suppliers, but for the past two years with Comcast Corp. He is also an Internet junkie, blogger and gadfly, having launched three enterprises on the web since 1995 two of them for-profit and one of them (the most recent) a non-profit called Internet Review Corporation. In this e-mail interview, Kohs discusses his latest non-profit start-up, which publishes a weekly blog called Akahele .
A. Akahele.org is actually the communications arm of a registered grove city premium outlets non-profit group that I co-founded, the Internet Review Corporation. The word “akahele” means “careful” or “cautious” the opposite of the word “wiki.” Our mission is to draw attention to unprofessional and unethical practices and content on the Internet. We strive to present complex issues to the average citizen, while deepening our commitment to values like respect grove city premium outlets for others, personal responsibility, high-quality information, attribution of work and common courtesy. grove city premium outlets
A. We see an inordinate quantity of news and opinion grove city premium outlets stories written by journalists who seem to have affixed rose-colored glasses whenever their focus lands on an Internet-based business or personality. They eagerly sing the praises grove city premium outlets of Google, Twitter, MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube, and other Web 2.0 vehicles, without seeming to take a moment’s pause to consider or identify the potentially harmful drawbacks of any of these sites. In a way, it’s ironic, because there’s a strong grove city premium outlets argument that Web 2.0 is very much killing the standards and value of traditional journalism imagine a flu patient hammering the nails into his own coffin!
Akahele.org takes a very measured, cautious (dare I say “skeptical”?) view of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Good journalists who wish to add an offsetting viewpoint to the “rah rah” journalism grove city premium outlets that permeates today’s mainstream are encouraged to read any of our weekly archived articles at Akahele.org. Participate in the comments field, or better yet submit a guest article to further grove city premium outlets explore the problems we’re facing on the Internet.
A. Let me clarify. I was rather hopeful grove city premium outlets that Wikipedia could become something extremely valuable, grove city premium outlets if it were supervised and led by professionals who have the understanding, care and experience needed to manage information and scholarship. Instead, the Wikimedia Foundation that hosts Wikipedia is clearly grove city premium outlets intent on a “hands off,” “let the community decide” approach to knowledge management. The result is a haphazard, even ridiculed, end product. Indeed, it is difficult to find anyone at all on the WMF board of trustees who has any experience whatsoever grove city premium outlets in publishing quality content.
Thus, society is treated to not only “user-generated knowledge,” but also “mob mentality” grove city premium outlets resolution of any content disputes. Corrective edits are reverted by administrators who dislike the personality or tone of the editor who is actually correct about the topic. grove city premium outlets Experts are routinely driven off the project by teenagers. In so many ways, Wikipedia has become as much an online grove city premium outlets revenge platform as it is an encyclopedia, and the leadership who literally and figuratively own the servers grove city premium outlets don’t do anything to challenge this because grove city premium outlets that might be seen as interfering grove city premium outlets with “free culture.”
And that’s really my key objection to Wikipedia. What started as a project to build a useful, accurate, dependable encyclopedia has transformed into a pep rally for the “free culture movement.” If I may borrow a summary issued by my friend and independent scholar of inquiry systems, Jon Awbrey: All of that good content on Wikipedia is parasitic on prior traditions of research and scholarship that the wiki-parasite is destroying as quickly grove city premium outlets as it feeds off its host.
A. My view is terribly pessimistic, and it saddens me. I’m also not trained in the practice or management of journalism enterprises, so my opinion isn’t worth much here, I’m afraid. But my observation is that public relations puff pieces apparently are more effective at selling advertising than are hard-hitting investigative challenges to the status quo.
I hope and pray that there still is a market segment out there like myself, who is both tired of such repetitive regurgitation grove city premium outlets of press release content and government-issued “talking points,” who would be very willing to pay (on either a subscription or, preferably, a per-use basis of micro-payments) for the output of a journalism team that truly breaks grove city premium outlets open new stories, grove city premium outlets backed by difficult-to-obtain facts and eyewitness testimony. While I’m resigned to the conclusion that perhaps 80 percent of people won’t pay for the values of truth and verification, maybe there’s a market for it am