Media 2.0 Reader

A Short Primer on McCainomics Versus Obamanomics: Top-Down or Bottom-Up

Robert Reich — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:59:10 -0500

McCain and Obama represent two fundamentally different economic philosophies. McCain's is top-down economics; Obama's is bottom-up. Top-down economics holds that: 1. If you give generous tax breaks to the rich, they will have greater incentive to work hard and invest. Their harder work and added investments will generate more jobs and faster economic growth, to the benefit of average working people. 2. If you give generous tax breaks to corporations, reduce their payroll costs, and impose...

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Spokesman-Review report and multimedia

Angela Grant — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:07:12 -0500

The Spokesman-Review’s “reorganization taskforce,” made up of young journalists at the newspaper, recently released its report about how the newspaper should change. Nick Eaton, one of the journalists in the group, outlined the main ideas for reorganization. Much of the reorganization has online journalism and multimedia in mind, and I’m liking it. On a few points, I would like to see things go even further. Reporters will continue to voluntarily assume additional methods of telling stories,...

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It Hits The Fan

rosenblumtv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:54:55 -0500

The New York Times today reported that their second-quarter profits fell 82 per cent to $21m, or 15 cents per share, compared with the same period a year ago. 82 percent. The paper also suffered a 16.4% decline in ad revenues for just one month. It’s pretty astonishing. The paper responded by raising the price of the paper from $1.25 to $1.50. Probably will not help. And of course, the Times is not alone. Gannett reported a 36% decline for the same period. The only bright spot for The...

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The News From China

rosenblumtv — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:53:30 -0500

Time to start the coverage….. The summer deluge of coverage of the Beijing Olympics is scheduled to start soon, and the networks are poised to spend tens of millions, if not more, on getting the China story into our homes. NBC, of course, has spent $3.5 billion just for the rights, but that, of course, is only the beginning. For more than year, the major networks have been preparing for a China-fest. I was in Beijing last Christmas, and Tienanmen Square was dominated by a giant ‘countdown’...

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The Curse of the Curmudgeons

Robert Paterson — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:28:22 -0500

The earnings at the New York Times fall by 82%. Ford posts a $8.7 billion dollar loss - the message is clear - that the old way of doing business is broken. Many senior folks at Ford keep telling Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, to keep the focus on SUV's and Trucks. He keeps telling them that only 15% of the world market is there. They retort that there is no money in small vehicles. He reminds them that the rest of the industry and the clients are there and that they have to find a way. They...

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The Morning After

rosenblumtv — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:10:10 -0500

Until you learned to read and write, this thing was utterly worthless…. In the past two weeks, we have trained 80 people as new videojournalists, plus the folks at McGraw Hill and the folks at the Star Ledger we worked with during these 14 days, and we’re at a grand total around 150, give or take a few. That’s not a lot. Not when you consider the magnitude of what we are trying to accomplish. This is not about teaching people to make video. This is a revolution in literacy. Video...

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Third Circuit Overturns FCC's Janet Jackson Indecency Decision

David Oxenford — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:43:09 -0500

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals today released a decision overturning the FCC's fine of CBS Television for its Super Bowl broadcast of the notorious Janet Jackson halftime show and her "clothing malfunction." The decision is available here. Our partner Bob Corn-Revere argued the case. Full details on the decision are contained in our firm's Advisory Bulletin which was just issued. But essentially, the court found that the FCC had not sufficiently justified its departure...

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Gaming - A model for Pub Media - Shift the power

Robert Paterson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:47:47 -0500

As the Curmudgeons push back, as NPR cancels BPP as MPR lays people off, as station leaders look at the numbers with fear, the need to nail the new business model becomes extreme. So let's remind ourselves - we know that the model is. The model has been proved. The model is not up for debate anymore. So the real barrier is organizational. The real barrier is cultural. We don't know how to get there and the power of the old, our inertia holds us back. In this post - I will spell...

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Saving Strategy From the Strategists

Umair Haque — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:39:55 -0500

Apologies - today, I'm going to make you grind through a boring intro to get to the good stuff. The macro crisis is entering it’s next to last – and perhaps climactic – phase: the true costs of business as usual must slowly be grappled with. As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac melt down, it is taxpayers who are bailing out shareholders - the Treasury is now reduced to intervening directly in the financial markets: so much for hundred of years of laissez faire economics. Why are Fannie and Freddie...

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SnagFilms: Hundreds of Documentaries Online

Todd Mundt — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:33:55 -0500

The latest addition to what I call Personal Public Television - the universe of public media content that you can create and curate yourself: If you’re afflicted with the disease which has no name - the periodic, intense craving for documentary films - then you’ll love SnagFilms. I just discovered this site and after spending some time checking it out, I’m impressed. SnagFilms currently features about 250 films, from the relatively unknown (to me) to major releases like SuperSize Me. The docs...

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Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition

Dennis Haarsager — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:43:02 -0500

My favorite toy is Nokia's N810, a diminutive WiFi- and Bluetooth-enabled Linux-based touchscreen tablet computer. It connects super-easily to hotspots, has a decent if unremarkable pair of speakers, and runs a wide variety of open source Maemo applications. Of late, I've used it a few times with my Verizon EVDO USB card, a Cradlepoint Technology battery-operated wireless router, and my Jeep's sound system to create a mobile Internet radio (together, they're smaller than most...

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Bzzzzt! Wrong! Community should be job #1

yelvington — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:27:48 -0500

Paul "Newspaper Death Watch" Gillin claims newspapers "can’t do much and they shouldn’t even try" to build community. This is just thoroughly, thoroughly wrong, utterly self-defeating. Failure to build community is one of the many reasons so many newspapers are in so much trouble right now. Yeah, the Internet this and the economy that and television blah blah blah, but don't overlook "failure to lead." Far too many newspapers have either intentionally abandoned or simply lost interest and...

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Some notes for Rip Van Winkle, journalist

yelvington — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:12:07 -0500

So you're Rip Van Winkle, journalist, and you've just awakened from your nap to find that the newspaper business is all upside down and the Internet thing is right at the center of the mess. Before you start bellowing, here are some things you're going to want to say, and why they're wrong. Read on and save yourself some embarrassment: "It's all the fault of the idiot managers who decided they should give away our content for free." Nope. Those of us who weren't napping actually tried charging...

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Food for thought

Don Himsel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:16:11 -0500

This is old but I thought it might start a good discussion that could eventually include online video/slideshows/etc. Specifically, doing something different. Finding interesting stories. Interesting people. Value-added new media to inform and teach. Here’s a nugget I pulled out- “People haven’t stopped reading… maybe we’ve just stopped giving them something they gotta read.”Yes. Now we get close to what I think is the most uncomfortable truth for many daily newspapers. Treatment,...

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Meanwhile, back in the real world….

rosenblumtv — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:40:20 -0500

Technological revolutions have a tendency to wreck existing industries. Suddenly, none of the ‘old rules’ apply, and it can be extremely disorienting to those who are effected. The reaction to this kind of massive technological shift can be a bit analogous to the Kubler-Ross stages of acceptance to death. After all, we are all watching the death of an industry - or in fact, many industries (just look at newspapers). And the first stage is denial. And that is where we are now in many parts of...

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Monsters From the Id

rosenblumtv — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:10:11 -0500

OK, Robbie. Just point the camera and hit the record button… It’s easy… FORBIDDEN PLANET is probably my favorite movie. (Dr. Strangelove is a close second). But you can’t beat Forbidden Planet for plot. Made in 1956 in an era of cheese Sci Fi, the movie stands out not just for major production values (for its time) but also for a great story line. Starring Walter Pigeon as Dr. Morbius and Leslie Nielsen (surprisingly) as Commander John Adams (before his Airplane days, when he was still...

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Challenge

Andrew — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:35:15 -0500

So far the Columbus Social Media Cafe has helped to spawn some pretty interesting projects, either directly or through the inspiration of its members. Not being one to rest on its laurels how about a little challenge? Can you make it to the next Columbus Social Media Cafe meetup on July 29, 2008 @ 6:30pm, Columbus Metro Library downtown? Show up with a small or large idea to make a positive change on Columbus and we’ll work together on making it happen! In the short time that the CMSC has been...

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This NPR API is a BIG deal.

Todd Mundt — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:12:49 -0500

Why? Here’s my (incomplete) list. * Unprecedented flexibility for anyone, from a blogger in Pittsburgh to KQED in San Francisco, to generate highly specific content searches of the NPR archive (going back to 1995) and port the results to a webpage or an application. * A number of stations also have their archives inside the system, too. So queries can also include (or not) results from those stations. * If more stations are allowed to contribute their content metadata to the API, the search...

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You Don't Build Communities, You Enable Them

Michael Masnick — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 23:09:59 -0500

There's an interesting debate going on among some newspaper industry watchers, concerning how newspapers should approach the question of "community." Paul Gillin has written that the concept of newspapers building communities is a fallacy and that newspapers shouldn't even try. He notes that the idea of a community around newspaper content usually just doesn't make much sense, and newspapers are simply hopping on the buzzword bandwagon in yelling "community" without any real sense of how to...

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Peak Oil… Meet Public Media: Engaging the Community

Todd Mundt — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:03:06 -0500

Oil prices have skyrocketed, and the cost of everything related to energy is rising in response. What will be the impact of this new reality on public media. I’ve been offering some thoughts, hoping they’ll serve as conversation starters. Now, more than ever, it’s time to engage the community. I don’t recommend holding off on that cool community engagement concept until your organization is down to its last dollar. But economic difficulties shouldn’t be a signal to lay low until times get...

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