Salon_logoThe Cronkite school prof, who does the blog Mediactive and specializes in new media, will be writing for the online magazine.

His first column, about Steve Jobs “control-freakery,” is here:

The control-freakery extends to the content, as we’ve seen again and again. Apple’s idea of acceptable content is roughly what you’ll find at Disneyland. The company reserves the right to bar or later remove apps that contain information for any reason it chooses. This is how the brilliant Mark Fiore found his iPhone cartoon app disallowed due to its political content — until he won a Pulitzer Prize in April, at which point Apple decided to allow it. dan_gillmor(Jobs says the rules changed after Fiore’s original rejection, by which time Apple realized it was making a mistake with political content, but the cartoonist didn’t realize this.)

I’m disappointed beyond words, meanwhile, that journalism organizations are racing to create apps for the iPad, even though they’re putting the final say over whether their journalism is acceptable into Apple’s hands. What does it say about their journalistic principles that they’d do this? Most won’t even respond to the question, and I’ve asked many. National Public Radio’s Kinsey Wilson, who heads up NPR’s online development, is one of the few to admit discomfort with the situation, saying that Apple holds the leverage at this point; he, and other news executives, are basically hoping Apple won’t jerk them around the way it’s done with others.

On his blog Gillmor says he gives Salon a one-week exclusivity for the columns, after which they will appear on his Mediactive site.