CWD--Farewell Tour

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 13:11:21 -0800
From: "Meeks, Brock (MSNBCi)" <Brock.Meeks () MSNBC COM>
Subject: CWD--Farewell Tour
To: dave () farber net

Copyright © 2003 // CyberWire Dispatch // December 31

Jacking in from "Fond Farewell" Port:

WASHINGTON-New York's Times Square today looks and feels like the war 
ravaged capital of some third world country after a coup d'état; the FBI is 
telling local cops to be leery of any hinky acting, middle-eastern looking 
males that happen to be carry around dog-eared almanacs (no, I'm not making 
this stuff up); the U.S. Justice Department, with Congress acting as 
unindicted co-conspirators, have pencil whipped the Bill of Rights so as to 
make it unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers; Paris Hilton's sex tape is 
all over the Internet and CyberWire Dispatch is closing the doors on its 
publication.

Thank God for Paris, at least some sanity remains out there.

Today's world seems even darker and more in need of the kind of  biting, 
crystal commentary that CWD provided than when the publication first sprang 
life, back before the Web was born, when "browser" was a pejorative term 
used by Real Estate agents and anxious retail store owners.

But CWD has been on "life support" for far too many years now and it's time 
to make a decision to revive it or mercifully pull the plug and let it die 
an honorable death, slipping into the history and archive of the cyberworld 
with its legacy intact.

Gloves please... let's pull the plug on this beast.

I'll retain the rights to the CyberWire Dispatch name and hold on to the 
cyberwire.com, if for nothing else than to keep Marty Rimm from buying the 
domain and turning it into a how-to clearinghouse for would be pornographers...

From There and Back Again
=====================

We've had a good run, no, a great run.  CWD, unfunded and erratically 
published (and erratically edited for that matter), won top journalism 
awards with its unflinching commentary and investigative stories.  We 
uncovered hoaxes, stopped miscreants from foisting their schemes users of 
the web and from time to time made the administration sweat.

All of that was first and foremost made possible by you, the reader.  Many 
CWD readers became sources, friends, contributors and ad hoc editors.

CyberWire Dispatch even owes its name to its readers.  The publication was 
nameless until it broke a story way-back-when about an internal 
cost/benefit analysis the White House had done on the impact of what was 
then called the "digital telephony bill."

The FBI and administration kept insisting that no such analysis had been 
done but CWD obtained that analysis and wrote an exclusive story about 
it.  What a shock, then, to find the next day that the great grey Lady (the 
New York Times) had come out with an article that was nearly identical to 
CWD's, as if they had gotten the scoop on their own.

This episode didn't escape CWD's sharp eyed readers and it was suggested 
that if CWD, still nameless at the time, were given a name, it would be 
much harder to steal from.  I believe Kevin Kelly was the first one to 
actually make that suggestion and that day the name CyberWire Dispatch was 
born.

It wasn't long after that Mitch Kapor paid CWD one of the highest 
compliments it ever received by proclaiming that by its publication on the 
web it had created one of the "first brands" in cyberspace.

No one ever stole from CWD again and indeed, many mainstream publications 
began to officially reference our stories and credit our scoops.

The Home Team
============

There was no greater incubator for CWD than the WELL.  It was CWD's "home 
town" and the people that populated the WELL were its judge, jury, 
researchers, critics and editors.  I cherish each and everyone there that 
took the time to comment, either negative or positive.  Each helped shape 
CWD in ways they'll never fully know.

Eric Theise, a San Francisco visual artist, who maintains Liberty Hill 
Cyberwerks (www.cyberwerks.com), receives my undying gratitude for 
selflessly hosting CyberWire Dispatch (the web's ugliest homepage) all 
these many years.  Although www.cyberwire.com is alive, it's essentially a 
mirror of the space Eric provided.

Like the winner of an academy award, I feel the uncontrollable urge to 
thank everyone I've ever known.  But for once I'll show some restraint and 
not do that.  I would inevitably forget to mention someone that had a major 
impact on CWD's success and who needs that kind of negative karma floating 
around.

It's been a privilege to be a pioneer in online journalism and watch CWD 
carve out its place in history.  And it's also a great pleasure to have CWD 
retire undefeated in challenges before the Supreme Court, owing to our 1-0 
record as a plaintiff in the landmark Reno v. ACLU case that struck down 
(the majority of) the Communications Decency Act.

Thanks one and all, friend and foe alike, it's been a hell of a ride.

And so, finally, really, I'm not kidding...

Meeks out...

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