A road to Damascus moment for me with Twitter this morning. Obsessed with watching the protests and post-stolen-election ripples in Iran, I found my way to #IranElection, and realized how much more information, direct from people on the ground, was there.

It’s ongoing now, if slowing down. It’s modern, unfiltered news, which means rumors and speculation. But it is a way to be in the stream of events that CNN or a newspaper can never be (though the YouTube BBC video, filmed like a hidden camera because the authorities apparently arrested the reporters and took their earlier tapes, gives some sense for this.)

Despite what some Twitterers are proclaiming, this is not a substitute for mainstream media, even if some outlets are doing a terrible job. Apparently CNN in the US dropped the ball on this story badly, though overseas seems good, and I’m still reading the NYT, BBC and the Guardian. However, this real-time info scratches any itch that cable news ever did. Fast information, and the sense for what it’s like on the ground, to *live* an event instead of read about it, is coming from Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube today.

Here’s a list of twitterers worth following, when the #IranELection flow gets to be too much: http://tr.im/or5k.

This Flickr set is unmissable, though the photos on blogs and other sets are outstanding too.

Here’s the latest buzzy idea for saving journalsm: Be Obama.

Crowdfunding, as described here is essentially allowing (hopefully) large numbers of people to contribute small amounts of money to fund journalistic endeavors. Spot.us, for example, posts lists of potential stories, lets freelancers sign up (or contribute their own ideas), and then lets people donate money toward funding of the story. Once the story tops up with cash, it gets reported and written.

So, yeah, worked great for Obama, right? Crowdfunded his way right to the White House. Except it seems to me that journalism maybe has tried more or less this before. I think maybe it was called subscriptions, back in the day when people got newspapers thrown at their windows by bleary-eyed sixth-graders. Or, if you prefer the broadcast metaphor, maybe we can think about pledge drives.

In fact this model does work reasonably well if the crowd is forced to fund, as is the case with BBC or German TV here. Of course that’s not a market-friendly strategy, but that whole market-knows-best thing is looking pretty threadbare these days anyway.

Not that I’m arguing that all journalism should be supported by a mandated fee of some kind. But it sure seems that if old journalistic values are going to be maintained at any level, it might be a good way of doing things.

From an NYT blog, a Steve Jobs quote bashing Amazon’s (no longer new) e-book reader:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

So, fellow writers, fellow readers, throw up your hands in defeat, the iPod generation has triumphed. Burning books is so twentieth century, we will simply declare reading to be a waste of time, a marketplace irrelevance, and move on.

What a prick.

(via Appalachian Geek, who has much smarter things than I to say about it)

The Guardian wrote this weekend about Picador’s plan to stop publishing most literary fiction initially in hardback form. That means even stellar writers like Delillo, Naipaul, Banville and Cormack McCarthy will be going straight to paperback.

I read this with an initial twinge of irritation and sadness. I love hardback books, what reader or writer doesn’t? They’re beautiful, solid, lasting, and look good on a shelf. Sometimes they even have resale value.

And yet. About ten seconds later, I realized this could be some of the best news to hit the publishing industry in some time.  Here’s why, nicely wrapped up in one rival publisher’s comment:

Rival publishers described it as “a seismic change”. “Hardback then paperback has been the model for 60 years,” said Dan Franklin, the veteran publisher at Jonathan Cape.

What kind of business model doesn’t change for 60 years? I’m as book-y as they come; and yet I scour used bookstores for paperbacks, the same way everyone I know does. Hardback books aren’t serving the mass market, and they aren’t serving the writers who produce them.

When my co-author and I did our first (and as yet only, but wait…) book, it was hardback only. We were shocked at the discounts, shocked at the haphazard marketing dollars spent, shocked that our publishers had no interest in moving it to paperback, despite the fact that our core audience was mostly unlikely to shell out for hardback. We’re still trying to get the rights back so we can publish an updated version ourselves.

Publishers simply haven’t adapted to a market that has changed very, very radically in 60 years, and probably most in the last five. This is a step in the right direction, even if it’s a little sad. So be it. If my next book (fingers crossed) comes out only in paperback and digital form, I won’t shed any tears.

The iPhone is here. I already feel myself to be a better, more fulfilled person. I’ve heard that the problems in the Mideast are under control now, as a result, and the bombs they found in London today were really what you’d call celebratory, not aggressive per se.

Simply by repeating the mantra, or should I perhaps call it sutra, The iPhone is here, I find I have become more beautiful, more intelligent, taller, perhaps younger in a biochemical sense; I can tell that any genetic flaws I might have had — left-handedness, male-pattern baldness, a weak heart, predisposition to diabetes or blasphemy — all these have been wiped away as by a cool, cleansing cloth. My spelling is better, and brother, you should see my handwriting now.

I don’t personally have one yet, but of course I will, because it makes no difference whether I sell a kidney or not; my iPhone will help me grow a new one if I require it. Just knowing it exists has soothed my career anxieties, enabled me to switch to low-fat milk in my coffee, convinced me to start jogging in the morning and cut back on my consumption of beer and other intoxicating beverages in the evening. My penis has grown several inches, which I assume will have a correspondingly radical effect on the amount of spam mail I receive.

Already, I can only credit the iPhone for the startling improvement in my fashion sense, which led Kate Moss herself to call me on Skype just a few minutes ago and ask whether I would advise her on a few modeling dos and don’ts next season. Being above such frivolous activities since the release of this Olympian devise, I of course declined, but — on the sly — did give her a few diet and media-handling tips.

The iPhone has revealed to me, and I think to the world at large, the glories of veganism, of communal living, the futility of war, and of conflict, one man or woman against the other. I think that by tomorrow we will see corrupt politicians and corporate leaders across the world throw themselves on the mercy of mankind, confess their sins, and hand the reins of power to a cadre of benevolent turtleneck-wearing sages. It will be a better world, I can feel it.

I thank you, iPhone. I cannot thank you enough.