Bill Moyers Journal did an incredible profile on Veracifer’s Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo blog’s unveiling of the Alberto Gonzalez affair and the firing of federal prosecutors. I think you’ll agree the segment captures the essence of what makes Josh’s vision powerful, and just right for this moment in time. The TPM reporters and the reader/reporters who make up their community are committed to routing out the news behind the news. They grab the thread and pull until the whole suit comes unraveled, or until it turns out to just be a random thread. The natural contrarian in me loves the idea that wherever the mainstream news media goes chasing, TPM goes elsewhere.

For those of you interested in the anatomy of the reporting on the scandal, scroll down the page and see what a great job BMJ does of tracing the email trail from the Administration, the TPM posts on the story, and more of their posts on the Jack Abramoff Lobbyists scandal of 2004 and 2005.

All of here at Next New Networks are very proud Veracifer is the network home of TPM TV. Josh and his whole team deserve all the attention Bill Moyers has given them. Bravo!

I think it’s safe to say paidContent’s Rafat Ali has a discerning taste in all things modern. And as with all tastemakers, The Freddie is a must have for any modern office.

Fred Wilson’s another of the venture capitalists I admire for walking the walk in new media with a thoughtful, dependable blog reflecting his work, his life, and his interests. He reminded me of a post Herb made a while back with his sketch on the modern Google:

“Big companies are not the best places to innovate and guess what, Google is a big company now.”

Mike Hirshland is from Polaris Ventures in Boston. He’s incredibly important to Next New Networks in ways he probably doesn’t really know. But that’s why I’m always happy when he comes by to visit.

NNN didn’t even start as an idea, more like a notion Emil and I joked about after VOD Cars and Channel Frederator had their first blush of “success.” Polaris and Mike were investors with our friends at Heavy and we were talking about them one day when I started improvising about our notion of a large range of community based media networks. Mike was enthusiastic and supportive for the next year and helped crystalize the move to reality. Polaris is involved with a number of cool folk redefining the media future (WordPress and Jibjab, among many others), so his energy was more than exciting.

And by the way, Mike’s blog is required reading for anyone wondering where the new business energy is going in that media future. He really puts himself into it, unlike a lot of investors in our space.

Thanks for coming by Mike.

For most of my working life the people who annoy me the most are the ones who have disrespect for their jobs. Music biz folks who hate the artists, ad agency types who hate advertising, TV producers who think their audiences are idiots. And then there are the folks who are talking the talk, like the executives in the web bubble who had their assistants print out their emails so they could write the answers in the margin and have the assistants type them out and return the mail.

All of which leads me to people who actually walk the walk. Like the smart venture capitalists who’ve taken to and continued blogging. Folks like Mike Hirschland, Fred Wilson, and one of our lead investors from Spark Capital in Boston, Bijan Sabet. (more…)

“I wonder what the the role of branding really is in the YouTube world. It’s part of a larger question about what will happen as people increasingly look to the internet for their video content.”

So muses Andy Eggers in a comment on the VentureVoice podcast interview I did a few weeks ago. I read that and figured I’d have a lot to say, but on reflection it seems to me I wanted to reflect a little bit more.

By the way, I’ve had more comments on this interview than anything I’ve done in several years (thanks Greg), since my small on camera participation in the original MTV Uncensored show. I’m not sure why that surprises me but it does. An audio podcast garnering more attention than a major cable network? Our world’s changing fast and it’s great.

Valleywag and HuffPost contributor Nick Douglas throws his inestimable talent into the video ring with this “secret preview” of LookShiny. As partner Tim says, “It’s great. And sponsored from day one. Go Nick!”

It’s been great reading everything sent in to the introduce yourself page on the website. Our thanks to everyone who’s written in so far, and we definitely want to stay in touch with you — hopefully this blog’s a start. As we launch projects and meet people in our work and on the web, we’ll introduce them here.

Hope you’ll stay tuned, and leave a comment from time to time to let us know what you think.