Carl Bernstein on Rupert Murdoch — [VIDEO]
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Tag Archives: journalists
Political Forecasting by Pundits – [VIDEO]
Excellent editorial from Lawrence O’-Donnell. Make sure to watch the whole segment till the end.
Joe Weisenthal is now in bed with InTrade.
Business Insider cites various InTrade probabilities.
- Joe should mention whether there is volume on each market.
- Joe should cite BetFair, not InTrade, for any UK-related event.
- Joe should be aware of InTrade’-s long history of fucking up contracts and settlements on non-sporting events. (Type “-North Korea missile InTrade”- in Google, and review the various InTrade forums for traces of past fights.)
How they shut up the free press at Copenhagen
Blogging Against The Hype
I have been blogging a lot about the damage done by some Ivory Tower economic professors and some commercial practitioners who exaggerate the benefits of the prediction markets. (Some people are not very happy with what I said. 
) The Gartner consultants have a word for that —-”-hype”-. Hyping is defined as the act of publicizing in an exaggerated and often misleading manner. The way Internet citizens can guard against hype is to read bloggers and journalists (whatever you call them) who publish high-quality reports and opinions about the brand-new products and the fresh startups. It is a difficult task. It requires a solid expertise and a way to deflect away commercial influence and pressure (e.g., from some professionals who think that bloggers shouldn’-t publish anything without their prior “-consent”-). If you want a role model for such an impartial journalist, I recommend to look at search engine expert Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. If you have 2 minutes, you could go there and scan his hype-bursting talking points.
Addendum:
Guess who has just joined the FOX News propaganda machine?
Judith Miller.
Yes, the infamous Judith Miller.
InTrade has surpassed BetFair and TradeSports (and the Iowa Electronic Markets, too).
InTrade’-s PageRank is now 7 / 10 —-while all the other major prediction market firms are at 6 / 10.
- It shows that the prediction market approach is paying off. Do provide journalist-friendly objective probabilistic predictions (expressed in percentages –-not those fucking decimal odds), and the media will link to you, thanks to all the free-market economists who love your model and act as unpaid publicists for you. Make sure your website can resist under heavy traffic loads on Election Day, and during the occasional days where important news break. Then, milk out all this free publicity. Run registration ads allover your exchange website to attract new traders. Make money. Invest in IT —-but don’-t let the IT maniacs complicate your prediction exchange too much (as BetFair did).
- Long-term, the InTrade model (based on the prediction market approach) should be more profitable, in theory. Because of legal impediment, InTrade is not as profitable as it should be, alas.
Why InTrade CEO John Delaney, TradeSports acting CEO John Delaney, BetFair CEO David Yu, HubDub CEO Nigel Eccles and NewsFutures CEO Emile Servan-Schreiber should supplicate me to develop my prediction market journalism project
– 200 web visitors (coming from Google) reached my John Edwards post, published yesterday afternoon (ET).
– 10% of them followed my links to the 2 HubDub prediction markets on John Edwards.
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Remember that those web stats count only the web visitors, not the feed subscribers —-who are more numerous, and whom I focus more on.
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TAKEAWAY: A popular PMJ website, which would associate fresh news and betting recommendations, would send many people to the prediction markets.
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The mainstream media and the classic bloggers will never deal with real-money prediction markets the way they should be dealt with —-for multiple reasons (moral, ethical, legal, etc.). And for other reasons, they will never link to the play-money prediction markets.
Look Justin Wolfers at the Wall Street Journal: He is the most excited about prediction markets. Yet, he does not link to InTrade directly. He does not link to the InTrade real-money prediction markets. Hence, his blah blah blah does not translate into more revenues for InTrade.
What it takes is a brand-new media organization, entirely devoted to prediction markets, and run by die-hard prediction market people.
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Please, guys, help me.
- cfm |-at-| midasoracle |.|-com-|
- chrisfmasse |-at-| gmail |.|-com-|
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VIDEO: Max Keisers attempt at predicting the future -subjectively
Overall, the TV show is based on a good concept (trying to predict future headlines), and I’-m sure it will be a success in the end.
However, one big mistake Max is doing is to have female journalists. Sorry to say that, but if you are in the business of selling subjective predictions, you need to have credible predictors, with loud voice, charisma, and definitive attitude. Most women in journalism don’-t display those qualities.
Max, fire the journalists and put real pundits on your TV show.
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Video
Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:
- The letter David Pennock will never send out —well, we hope.
- Monitor the web traffic of TradeSports.com, InTrade.com, BetFair.com, Betdaq.com, NewsFutures.com, HubDub.com, etc. —thanks to Google Trends.
- Here’s the way to promote innovation for entry-order and analysis software packages —separate the 2 functions.
- Ugly things happened before BetFair was invented
- Tiny API delay for non-UK customers of BetFair —since all international BetFair bettors, traders and gamblers are now served from Malta, not from London.
- CLOCK IS RUNNING FAST: 17 days to go, if we want to counter AEI’s push for not-for-profit prediction exchanges.
- In the for-profit vs not-for-profit debate, our prediction market luminaries, doctored by Bob, are on the wrong side of the issue.
Deep Throat on the journalists fatigue for reporting on prediction markets
When we recently talked to a MSM reporter for a major article, he/she specifically said he/she didn’-t want to write about public prediction exchanges because “-there is nothing new there,”- and was even hesitant to write about the activities of certain private, high-tech companies because they already have a reputation for “-trying anything.”- If that attitude is prevalent among other journalists, there may already be a fatigue setting in which is why you saw very little interest in the latest WSJ article on political prediction markets. Thinking about the readership of the major business press, through several feature articles there is already an awareness about the basics. There is limited return in writing yet another: “-people are trading on everything from housing futures to political candidates, isn’-t that amazing?”-
There also seems to be very little innovation coming from the major public exchanges. When’-s the last time any of the major prediction exchanges did anything truly noteworthy with their platform that was worth writing about? […]
The novelty of it all is wearing off, the “-wisdom of crowds”- stories have been done, and the public exchanges are going to need to come up with Act II, either through innovation, new content strategies, or partnerships.