Who's on First?

Extra innings were inevitable, perhaps, after a piece about bush league baseball was heavily blogged before it was published in the international print journals that paid for a "non-exclusive" sports story on the fledgling Israel Baseball League. Veteran Israeli journalist, Alan D Abbey, examines the cries of foul on Poynter.org.

Meanwhile, Salon.com was getting plenty of hits with its own Jewish ballplayer feature scripted by Jonah Keri: "With bashin' boychiks knocking the seam off the ball this year, Salon highlights the greatest Hebrew hammers and fireballers to step onto the diamond." The legend Sandy Koufax, pictured above, leads off the roll call of 18 Jewish athletes. The website cautions that

In the name of inclusiveness, we're counting players with one or more Jewish parents (even those not raised Jewish), converts to Judaism, and non-Jews who practiced the Jewish faith.

online citizen journos get $20m

Adario Strange on Wired ponders what a very strange media week this was.
Rupert Murdoch, a mega-media mogul, overpaid for an old school media brand already in decline. Meanwhile, he says,

citizen journalism is red hot with Associated Content landing $10 million in financing today from Canaan Partners, and NowPublic pulling in $10.6 million in financing from Rho Ventures on Monday (this time last year, OhMyNews landed $11 million from SoftBank). This ain't small change.

It should be noted that high profile Silicon Valley angel investor Ron Conway (an official advisor to Facebook,) sits on Associated Content's board of directors. Longtime observers of Conway know that if "he's" is sniffing around, there's probably something interesting happening in that particular space. Nevertheless, if you are looking for clues to where media is going by tracking this week's investment patterns, you’re probably in a state of confusion right now.

Here’s a tip: Rupert Murdoch already has a huge global media portfolio and a master plan to match (he’s playing chess), piece meal deals like these citizen journalism investments are built for short term, 4-8 year impact and ROI (they are playing checkers). If your interest is in Internet media, and you don't boast the portfolio of assets of Murdoch, it’s best to keep your media investment forecast window limited to “Internet time” until you’re ready to play in Murdoch’s league.