Tristan Louis nicely summarizes the morass that is proprietary video distribution online.
Category: Media
NewsHour Podcasts
The PBS Newshour is podcasting here.
A Year in Madison Blogs – 2005
Throughout the state, the emergence of this form of direct communication is mirroring national trends. Political blogs dominate the field, though increasingly more writers focus on contentious topics of other stripes, such as places of eating and merriment. In Madison, locally-oriented blogging is being led by a number of group efforts focused upon education, taverns, and the overall experience of living in town, complemented by a growing host of political writers. Here’s my thoughts about the growth of blogging in Madison over 2005.
Conyers & Sensenbrenner’s World: Sticking it to us
David Berlind nicely summarizes the DRM (Digital Restrictions Morass) that plagues mainstream electronic media supported by big money politics and the likes of our own Jim Sensenbrenner and Michigan’s John Conyers.
Internet, Weblogs and Local Politics
Two articles on the rising influence of the net and blogs on local politics:
- Ron Fournier:
Frustrated by government and empowered by technology, Americans are filling needs and fighting causes through grass-roots organizations they built themselves – some sophisticated, others quaintly ad hoc. This is the era of people-driven politics.
People are just beginning to realize how much power they have,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic consultant who specializes in grass-roots organizing via the Internet.
- Greg Borowski:
Now, with Wisconsin on the eve of a major campaign year, state candidates will be confronted for the first time with a growing network of political blogs, many on the feisty side.
Even avid bloggers acknowledge that when it comes to reaching voters, particularly undecided ones, their power pales in comparison to newspapers and the rest of the mainstream media (The MSM in bloghand).
I think Borowski overstate’s the MSM’s influence. One must keep in mind the general population’s views of mainstream media (typically, not great, largely, I think due to the often cozy relationship between big media and big politics) and the small number of people who actually vote.
Change will occur, but it will be local and net driven. Perhaps in future decades, the grassroots activism will make a difference on the state and national scene.
Advertising & News
Kristian Knutsen nicely rounds up commentary on the recent WIBA/Amcore newsroom sponsorship deal:
his is the third part of an extended look at the deal between Clear Channel Madison and AMCORE Bank to sponsor the WIBA-AM (1310) newsroom. The first part examined the deal and the possibility that similar sponsorships of other Clear Channel newsrooms are in the offing, while part two looked at how the deal could affect WIBA’s reputation.
John Lasseter at MoMa
MoMA just opened their show about Pixar last week and on Friday, we went to a presentation by John Lasseter, head creative guy at the company. Interesting talk, although I’d heard some of it in various places before, most notably in this interview with him on WNYC. Two quick highlights:
Top Ten 2005 National Geographic News Videos
Killer hurricanes, swarming sharks, and wildlife fighting for survival headlined this year’s most popular videos from National Geographic News. Replay the year in science, nature, and exploration with 2005’s top ten videos.
Selling the News: Advertising, WIBA and Local Newspapers
WIBA is receiving some grief from the Capital Times (part of the $120M advertising enterprise that is Capital Newspapers) over the sale of naming rights to its newsroom to Amcore Bank.
The agreements reflect the proliferation of corporate sponsorships in recent years — think FedEx Field and MCI Center — and the pressure many newsrooms feel to boost revenue. Close alliances between companies and news enterprises, however, raise a special set of issues related to journalistic integrity, ethicists say.
With journalism still under a cloud from some high-profile scandals, newsrooms must go to the greatest lengths to convince the public of their independence and credibility, said Kelly McBride, a journalism ethics expert at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a journalism training center.
“This undermines all the efforts we’re making to protect our credibility,” she said. “It creates the perception that the newsroom is for sale to the highest bidder.”
An informed society must understand that advertising, sponsorship or underwriting will always include influence. The real solution, from my perspective, is the ongoing disaggregation of media, with many, many more choices and a number of aggregators.
I wonder how sponsorship of a newsroom is any different than wrapping the daily newspaper in a sponsor’s first thing visible full page ad? See a local example here.
Newspapers as Mainframes
Jeff Jarvis and others have been discussing the analogy of newspapers as mainframe computers. In essence, they are analagous: mainframes represented centralized processing, distribution and control. PC’s came along and blew that up. Mainframes still exist, but are being replaced by clusters of smaller, generally clustered linux computers. The migration continues to ever smaller network devices.
There is another analogy: Newspapers as legacy media. I recall discussing this last fall with Jay Rosen at Bloggercon. The software business uses the term legacy to describe mothballed code, or something that is no longer updated. Generally, this term is used when a customer is moving from software product/platform a to product/platform b (DOS to Windows, Unix to Linux, terminals to client/server to web services).
There will always be journalism, some great, some not so great. It will simply be delivered many different ways.