media - Yule Heibel on Diigo

23 May 09

Office of the President Lee C. Bollinger: 2009 Commencement Address

Lee C. Bollinger's commencement address to the 2009 Columbia U. graduating class, with a special focus on globalization and freedom of the press/ media: "...the very same technology - the Internet - that is making global communication so pervasive - is simultaneously undermining the financial model of the traditional press, as we've known it."

Many great insights. Some excerpts:
QUOTE
...you have been here at a pivotal moment in history. You came in texting and you're going out with a twitter. And regardless of whether you're a fan of digital downloads or old fashioned ink on paper, while you've been here you've seen the value of dialogue, and of access to timely, credible, independently generated information and ideas. In August, 2005, just as many of you were settling into your first semester here, Hurricane Katrina was ravaging the city of New Orleans, amid accusations of gross government mismanagement and misinformation. Your Columbia years have coincided with two brutal and still unfinished wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - shaped by our own government's far too extensive control over information. You will tell your children about the unprecedented economic crisis that erupted during your time here - a global event fueled by inadequate disclosures and regulation. From the standpoint of our ability to acquire a full understanding of things that matter, we clearly have a long way to go before we can rest.

Meanwhile, you have been witness to and strengthened by participating in the process of vigorous open debate - on issues such as gay marriage, the conflict in the Middle East, and climate change. And you have played a role in one of the most exciting political campaigns in American history - a campaign waged like never before through online media and social networking.

Through it all, you have lived in the most privileged intellectual environment on the planet, perhaps of all time. Nothing compares to this - to the freedom you have felt - and possibly taken for granted - to consider every idea and t

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columbia_university lee_bollinger commencement_speech media journalism press

09 Mar 09

Bring on the techies: How Silicon Valley can help save newspapers | Media | guardian.co.uk

A Silicon Valley CEO addresses the newspaper business model. While not written in response to David Carr's NYT piece, it's a great riposte and refutation of same. Favorite bit:
QUOTE
Companies in Silicon Valley depend on having a fast-paced culture of innovation where no ideas are bad ideas, all voices are heard, technology is embraced not feared, and you are irrelevant if you aren't open to change. To achieve aggressive goals in competitive environments, teams have to work together without hidden agendas or obsessive attention to where in the chain of command a new idea originates.
UNQUOTE
I especially like the last clause in the last sentence. That "obsessive attention to where in the chain of command a new idea originate(d)" has dragged many a good idea into the Kingdom of the Cynical.

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the_guardian nathan_richardson newspapers business_model media

One day I was invited to a meeting to brainstorm about, of all things, the width of the Wall Street Journal. After I made a suggestion that was somewhere between novel and off the wall, the then-publisher leaned on the table, looked at me and said: "How old are you, young man?" The suggestion was clear: If you're under 40, you can't possibly understand the newspaper business. I still wish my response, though impolitic, had been: "How old is your thinking?"
While I don't have a quick fix for the newspaper industry's problems, I know one thing: The very companies that are ensuring newspapers' online traffic/existence should be leading the dialogue on their survival. Yahoo, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and AOL (NYSE: TWX) - not the editors, journalists and cadre of analysts who have led the newspapers to the brink - should be put in charge of identifying ways to keep a select number of news outlets viable.
3 more annotations...
- There are three reasons why the tech leaders should be driving this bus: their culture of innovation; their dependence on newspapers; and their track record of creating and growing sources of online revenue.
- Companies in Silicon Valley depend on having a fast-paced culture of innovation where no ideas are bad ideas, all voices are heard, technology is embraced not feared, and you are irrelevant if you aren't open to change. To achieve aggressive goals in competitive environments, teams have to work together without hidden agendas or obsessive attention to where in the chain of command a new idea originates.
- Top news sites such as WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com and Marketwatch.com derive an average of 50% to 65% of their traffic from the big portals. Consumers have spoken, and they prefer going to the portals to be directed to their news sources.

Hello, My Name Is Steve And I Have Hyperlocalbloggeritus

Blog post by Steve Sherron on why and how to do hyperlocal blogging.
QUOTE
"...I am convinced that my best chance for success is going to be in my local market. I have discovered since I began this journey that local folks are starving for attention and publicity for their business or organization. Most do not understand SEO. Few have web sites. There is a gap and a need just waiting to be filled."
UNQUOTE
Interesting tips on SEO etc.

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hyper_local blogging media newspapers steve_sherron hyperlocalblogger how_to

My main concern from day one has been to research and select a few keywords and keyword phrases and start building content. Google found my site immediately and now I’m slowly ranking for my selected keywords. I’ve managed to rank #1 for a few longtail keywords.
My hometown paper does not do such a hot job covering local news and events. This lack of coverage creates an opportunity for a hyperlocal blogger: Who is covering your local Crime Stoppers BBQ? Who is covering your local weather events?
3 more annotations...
- I published my first local article on December 4, 2008. By January 11, 2009, I had published my 30th article. On January 12th, I find my web site on three locations on page two of Google for my targeted keywords. I’m not an SEO Doctor by any stretch of the imagination. If I can do this, so can you.
- In this short amount of time, I have received great support from my community. I’ve had three separate inquiries about advertising on my site. I recently received an e-mail from our mayor thanking me for my National Guard article and video. One of our city councilmen contacted me and is interested in involving me in some work for the city. I’m happy with my progress in such a short time. I must confess though, I still do not have an actual plan mapped out yet. However, my direction is becoming a little more focused. Having Hyperlocalbloggeritus is starting to be cool.
- My advice to you is to go local. Believe me, your community is starving for coverage. Doors will open for you. Just start posting, using your local community keywords and phrases. Tell your friends, family and neighbors that you have been struck with the disease. The word will get out. Print up some business cards and hand them out everywhere you go. Come out of the closet.

02 Mar 09

Man Bites Blog: Hey, You Media Wimps! If You Want to Save Newspapers, Learn to Love Your iPhones, Then Go Join Facebook | The New York Observer

QUOTE
Contributing to this catastrophe has been newspapers’ stubborn refusal to consider any news-gathering and -analysis model other than the one that they were used to, one that, most crucially, relegated consumers to the role of passive readers instead of engaged users. It’s a mistake that happens all over the Big Media Debate: misinterpreting the limitations of our print past as prescriptions for our media future.
UNQUOTE

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media business_model newspapers

(1) Media platforms should be bundled into technology platforms;

(2) Premium access—one better than the failed TimesSelect project—will bring in revenue;

(3) Publishers should work more on matching advertisers with users, which is a suggestion that might finally help break the growing, pernicious primacy of Google in raking in Internet ad dollars.
It’s also a holistic point of view that does not raise the phony dichotomies publishers have been beating their heads against for more than a decade: paid content versus advertising; print versus digital; professional journalism versus “user-generated content”; blogging versus reporting.
19 more annotations...
- “I think a lot of the conversation these days is myopic,” said Marcus Brauchli, the executive editor of The Washington Post. “The problem is how to monetize all content, which is not simply how to solve newspapers problems. Our problems are ultimately the same as the movie industry’s, the book industry’s, the magazine industry’s, the music industry’s. We all meet on a vast, flat digital plane, which is a sort of Hobbesian, anarchic, unordered place.”
- Advertisers and Web sites signed up for AdSense because it made advertising easy and cheap. Google’s program matches text, picture and video ads to the particular site’s content and users. Publishers earned money from clicks or “impressions,” or loads of an ad on the site. But Google essentially cut the revenue of newspapers by adding themselves in as middle men.
- “Everybody loves to hate Google and I think that’s quite frankly an excuse,” Ms. Warren said. “You have to figure out how to generate revenue from your readers and/or from your advertisers. And you have to be focused to get that done. To blame Google? Or anyone else? To me, it’s kind of a waste of energy. We don’t do that.”
  
  So perhaps instead of fighting Google for that 60 percent of the pie, news media ought to make themselves first on the next wave of advertising revenue possibilities. That means that The News must make itself a player in the larger online business.
  
  They are already falling behind.
- It’s all about giving users attention, because that’s mostly what people are looking for when they’re online these days.
- Newspapers can also learn something from Facebook’s preference toolbar by making their user experiences more personalized. How about customizable home pages for users? So when they go to NYTimes.com, it will display, say, only international news and science headlines, and eliminate maybe sports- and style-related articles. Users could set preferences to display more new podcasts or video posts and drag and drop any reporters' column into a specific space on their home page. And if they want their Twitter feed or del.icio.us links integrated into their home page, so they can see what their friends are reading, let them set that preference as well.
- Unless newspaper sites can become facilitators of the new status culture, they will be left outside of it. And they will no longer be the places where advertisers want to meet customers.
- “It’s really quite remarkable how much our future is going to be driven by information exhaust from the devices we carry around with us,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “We have to think about that future.”
- The idea is this: The news must go mobile.
  
  And if the news is to attract rather than follow advertisers, it must do so right now.
- News won’t be a once a day update or even once an hour, like on blogs. It will be continuous and ambient—all around us through our handheld devices, according to Bill Spencer, an evangelist for mobile technology and co-founder of viaPlace, a location-based data service for mobile users.
- “As events occur they’ll stream right to the individual,” he said. “You’re going to become entwined with information. Information is no longer a thing that you go to. It’s threaded into the technology.”
- So how will all of this get monetized? Well, if Apple’s iPhone 3G has shown us anything, it’s that people will pay for convenience.
- But publishers can also partner with advertisers to create innovative, interactive applications. For example, on Feb. 2, Lucky magazine released their Lucky At Your Service iPhone application. Designed to supplement their March issue, Lucky app users can browse through more than 70 shoes listed in their shoe guide, including ones chosen by editors and advertisers.
- The irony of news that follows you wherever you go is that it is intensely local—just the kind of stuff news sites are jettisoning these days.
- Consider Patch, the New York–based start-up co-founded by Tim Armstrong, Google’s vice president of advertising sales. Funded by Polar Capital Group, Mr. Armstrong’s private investment company, Patch launched three hyperlocal news sites in three New Jersey towns on Feb. 5: Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange. Each individual site combines hard-nosed journalism from professional reporters, information from local government on everything from health department services to volunteer opportunities and various platforms for user participation with pictures, stories and blogs. Patch’s sites don’t just dispatch news articles—they are information portals.
- “It’s the year 2009 and the way people are getting community-news specific information is largely through corkboards and bagel stores and kiosks in town squares,” Jon Brod, Patch’s chief executive officer and co-founder, told The Observer over coffee earlier this month. “There’s a huge opportunity there to really include people’s local lives and strengthen communities through information and that’s really what we’re trying to do.”
  
  “It was a problem everytown, everycommunity U.S.A. was experiencing,” he continued. “Community level news and information was really sparse, fragmented, disorganized and in a bunch of level, archaic.”
- After work, local happy hours and drink specials will be pinged to your phone as soon as you step back outside. This kind of feature is already being developed by small New York-based startup Coovents. In fact, most of these features are already available in various iPhone applications, but perhaps newspapers should start partnering with the start-ups making these new applications so they can add the data sets to their Web and mobile libraries.
- And if Patch came to this town—if it were the new business model for The New York Times, aggressively social, hyperlocal and therefore geo-targeted for advertisers and a better overall service for readers—but on a larger scale, with top-flight reporting and seriously breaking news at every zoom level, would people pay to read the “paper?”
  
  One of the most boring disputes over the future of the media is whether a pay model or an advertising model will ultimately work. Even very hidebound print people forget that they “serve” ads in print only to readers who have already paid. The argument is that readers won’t pay to read content; therefore no eyeballs; therefore no advertisers.
  
  But if news sites entered these other areas—became social, hyperlocal, mobile—perhaps they could retake the center stage and bring paid readers and advertisers to the same place?
- He pointed out that subscriptions and newsstand sales have never been able to support print journalism without serious advertising revenue. So how can any pay model be expected to cover the costs of journalism online?
- So, this promised land, on the other side of the print/advertising divide, with news organizations acting as social networking sites and offering interactive advertising opportunities that work for advertisers, hyperlocal service content delivered to mobile devices and the devices that are yet to come: how do media organizations interested in preserving the future of a free press operating at the highest level of quality?

18 Aug 08

New breed of 'net newsers' shape US media habits, says Pew report | Media | guardian.co.uk

Jemima Kiss writes about the recent Pew report that describes how "well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research."

Interesting findings on education levels and TV-watching *and* interest (lack thereof) in science and technology, too.

www.guardian.co.uk/...digitalmedia.usa - Preview

newspapers television media news the_guardian jemima_kiss reference aggregators pew trends

A new generation of well-educated, technically-savvy young web users are shaping the media habits of the US, with one in 20 Americans saying they do not watch TV on a typical day and a sharp decline in newspaper readership, according to new research.
"net newsers" - web users under 35 who read more political blogs than watch national news coverage, rely heavily on web-based news during the day and have a strong interest in technology and technology news.
6 more annotations...
- Net newsers are typically affluent and 80% are graduates, making them a highly desirable demographic for advertisers.
- They do favour some traditional media brands, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the BBC, the Pew survey of 3,600 adults found. But only 47% watch TV news on an average day.
- The research paints a picture of steady decline in the US newspaper industry, with the percentage of Americans who regularly read print titles falling from 58% in 1993 to 34% in 2008.
  According to the long-running survey, respondents saying they listened to radio news fell from 47% to 35% over the same period. As for network TV, the national news dropped from 60% to 29% and local news from 77% to 52%.
- However, TV is still the most popular medium for the US, with 46% of the public classified as "traditionalists" who watch throughout the day, but are likely to be older and less well educated than net newsers.
- More than 40% of this traditionalist group are unemployed, and were found to prefer visual news stories to audio and have little interest in science or technology news.
  A further 14% are described as "disengaged", a poorly-educated group with little interest in current affairs.
- The research also found that the proportion of young people in the US getting no daily news has increased from 25% in 1998 to 34%, with only 10% of people using social networking sites for their news.

06 Aug 08

What's really killing newspapers: They're no longer the best providers of social currency. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine

Shafer's subtitle says it all, "[Newspapers are] no longer the best providers of social currency." What's "social currency"? It's "the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans."

In other words, it's no longer relevant to your interaction with friends and co-workers and other citizens whether or not you've all read the same newspaper that morning. There is other social currency that's more valuable, more interesting, more useful -- as currency.

In that sense, the "news" is secondary to "currency" / "value." It seems that newspapers need to figure out -- if they can, if it's possible -- how to leverage currency, not news.

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jack_shafer slate_magazine newspapers media

Not that long ago, the daily newspaper was an indispensable coiner of social currency, and it gave its readers piles of the stuff in each edition. The phrase, which comes from sociology, is often used to describe the information we acquire and then trade—or give away—to start, maintain, and nurture relationships with our fellow humans.
Even folks who don't care for sports skimmed the sports pages for a little something about the games and athletes so they could engage in essential small-talk.
- - "currency" - on 2008-08-06
Add Sticky Note
11 more annotations...
- nothing could beat the newspaper as a source for socially lubricating conversation. How many times have you heard a conversation start, "Didja see that article ..."?
- By sniffing the bits of social currency an acquaintance had withdrawn from the pages of his daily and was trying to cash
- the sniffer could learn reams about his social contact.
- news can "be used in a variety of interpersonal situations—to look smart, connect with friends and family and even move up the socio-economic ladder" and "maintain relationships."
- the social currency found in a newspaper has a relatively short shelf life.
- Newspapers thrived, in part, because reading just one edition provided only a few cents' worth of social currency. Compounding your earnings requires that you read the damn thing nearly every day. Ignore a couple of issues, and you get left behind.
- to read a newspaper and then keep your trap shut is to miss the point: Newspapers are designed to be read and argued over. You've got to spend social currency to make social currency.
  - Well, and perhaps there's the rub: the places where you can "spend" your currency (and also create more currency yourself) have become distributed. That is, it used to be that newspapers were the one-stop shop you went to for acquisition of currency, which you then spent, and in the spending, compounded. But now you can acquire currency in several places, and furthermore, your "spending habits" have changed: they're distributed now. - on 2008-08-06
  Add Sticky Note
- Other institutions do far better jobs at issuing social currency these days.
- A well-executed Facebook presence, like a superb pontification at the bar or a great phone-in to sports talk radio, demonstrates one's status within one's existing social network.
  - - see last note (above): you (consumer) aren't just getting social currency by spending what you bought at the newspaper; you get it by creating your own, which also means that the creation of currency is distributed. Widely. - on 2008-08-06
  Add Sticky Note
- And the newspaper isn't the only media hub suffering in the new era. Radio, which once served a similar social role with its menu of music, news, and talk, is plummeting.
- the decline of newspapers has nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with the changing world.
  - Right! don't blame the bloggers (citizen journalists) or whomever; it's the structures/ contexts - on 2008-08-06
  Add Sticky Note

10 Apr 08

Study finds gap between editors and readers in ground rules for online conversations - MIT TechReview

Fascinating study regarding the discrepancies between what MSM professionals believe and what its reading public believes. The latter think that anonymous comments are ok; that journalists/ authors participating in online conversations with readers is ok; and that expressions of personal views by journalists are ok. The 'professionals' believe the exact opposite. Hmmm.

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mit_techreview socialmedia socialtheory conversations media newspapers blogging

Newspaper readers agree with editors on the basics of what makes good
journalism, but they are more apt to want looser rules for online
conversations, a new study on news credibility has found.
Online Journalism Credibility Study released Tuesday
by the Associated Press Managing Editors group and the Donald W. Reynolds
Journalism Institute at the University
of Missouri
3 more annotations...
- Some 70 percent of editors surveyed said requiring commenters to disclose
  their identities would support good journalism, while only 45 percent of the
  public did. Similarly, 58 percent of editors said letting journalists join
  online conversations and give personal views would harm journalism, but only 36
  percent of the public agreed.
- ''There's some indication that readers are looking for something more online.
  Whether it's information about our expertise, our knowledge, our background,
  I'm not really sure.''
- Editors and readers also agreed on the desirability of depth, such as links
  to content published elsewhere and databases or other information visitors can
  explore on their own.

08 Jan 08

Internet Research Conference - CFP

The Internet Research Conference in Copenhagen (October 2008) lays out its call for papers. The theme is " Rethinking Community, Rethinking Place."
Synopsis:
In the past few years, new forms of net-based communities are emerging, distributed on various websites and services, and making use of several media platforms and genres to stay connected. Now, as mobile and location-based technologies are reintroducing "place" as an important aspect in the formation of communal and social activities, it is time to consider and rethink the concept of online or virtual communities. Not forgetting the lessons we have learned from studying the early virtual communities, how do we describe, analyse, theorise and design the communities and social formations of the early 21st century? How do we address the blurring of boundaries between places and communities on- and offline.

We call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline, methodology, and community, and from conjunctions of multiple disciplines, methodologies and academic communities that address the conference themes.

Sessions at the conference will be established that specifically address the conference themes, and we welcome innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on those themes. We also welcome submissions on topics that address social, cultural, political, economic, and/or aesthetic aspects of the Internet beyond the conference themes. In all cases, we welcome disciplinary and interdisciplinary submissions as well as international collaborations from both AoIR and non-AoIR members.

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call_for_papers conference copenhagen internet media reference research socialtheory

28 Dec 07

The Mobile City » Blog Archive » Towards a Starbucks-urbanism?

- discussion of Starbucks coffee house culture as locative networked culture where people "camp" with their media (laptop etc) to work, network, inform themselves -- but they're not by a long shot isolating themselves from other people. In fact, they choose these locations b/c of what they offer in terms of ambience, connection with others, feel, and culture. Calls into question Habermas's bleak assessment of the death of coffee house culture...

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culture locative_media media mobility sociability socialtheory society starbucks urbanism

Over Christmas I reviewed some literature on locative media, and came across a handful of texts that addressed the changing role of the coffee house in our urban culture. Perhaps we are seeing a paradigm shift here: away from a BLVD-urbanism of public culture and towards a Starbucks Urbanism of a networked culture?
This is not your great-grandfather’s coffeehouse, found on a tree-lined European Boulevard with an outside terrace. It is no longer the coffeehouses that functioned as the proverbial meeting place or ‘public sphere’ where citizens irrespective of their background (as long as they wern’t women or other excluded groups that Habermas in his theory on the emerging public sphere overlooked) could engage in discussion with one another.
5 more annotations...
- the public sphere was not primarily a physical place, rather it was a discursive site where a literate public could conduct rational and critical debate. The assembly and dialogue that constituted this emerging public sphere occurred as much within the pages of newly circulated printed materials as it did within the walls of the coffeehouse.
  - - "then" - on 2007-12-28
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- In Starbucks people congregate not so much to communicate with one another. Rather they use it as a comfortable semi-public base from which they keep in touch with their personal friends or collegues through the 3 and 4-letter acronyms that make up our network society: GSM, SMS, UMTS, WIFI. As Marc Tuters writes in another key essay on locative media, this emerging Starbucks culture has often been described as antithetical to the public culture of the coffeehouses.
  - - "now" - on 2007-12-28
  Add Sticky Note
- Particularly in the post-911 world, the function of these places to provide random encounter is practically eliminated in these insulted pay-access locations under the operative logic of ‘risk aversion’. Based on these observations, sociologists and urban theorists have developed a narrative of loss and decline in the contemporary literature on public space
- Yet other more empirical research studies, such as Portable objects in three global cities: the personalization of urban places by Ito, Anderson and Okabe show that this binary opposition is too simplistic. In the article they describe a number of tactics through which people appropriate urban space. One of them is camping:
  
  One brings a personal media device and works with it in a public space. Yet the goal is not to completely shut off public space, the public space is especially chosen because one finds it an agreeable location to work from. Like reading a paper in a café rather than at home. … They put down roots that have temporal limits, but are more extended than commuters who are simply passing through.
  
  Camping is not so much about shutting out the environment: ‘people saw value in residing for a period of time in a desirable location. Just as people seek out beautiful campsites to set out there gear and reside for short periods of time, urbanites find attractive public places to temporarily set up camp with the help of their information technologies.’ For campers Starbucks is not a proverbial non-place, but a local place they engage with, where they perform their identity, yet at the same time keep in touch with absent others, still being part of their ‘full-time intimate communities’
  - - think about the difference btw "camping" and old coffee house culture... - on 2007-12-28
  Add Sticky Note
- We argue that culture is no longer localized in time and space, but neither is it non-place. Instead, individuals inhabit a physical world of simultaneous environments, of localized time and space as well as of multiple telematic worlds in which they can be co-present with others at a distance.
  
  Yet, this still leaves some questions. To what extent are the sites of Starbucks-urbanism parochial rather than public spaces? And if they are mainly parochial, to what extend is that a threat to urban culture? Are critics clinging on to old, nostalgic ideas about a public culture? Or could new locative media ‘discovery’ services introduce new forms of contingency into Starbucks-urbanism?

24 Dec 07

The Queen claims own YouTube channel (toronto star)

I wonder if Charles would have come up with this?
"The Queen, considered an icon of traditionalism, launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube on Sunday. (...) 'The Queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people,' Buckingham Palace said in a statement. 'The Christmas message was podcast last year.' The palace said, 'She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries.'"
- the original 1957 TV broadcast is up, and worth watching.

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buckingham_palace media public_relations qe2 socialcomputing youtube

Buckingham Palace also began posting archive and recent footage of the Queen and other royals on the channel Sunday, with plans to add new clips regularly.
- - I bet this will become very popular very quickly - on 2007-12-24
Add Sticky Note
The footage of the Queen's 1957 Christmas TV broadcast will remind viewers that TV once was as groundbreaking a creation as Internet is today.
1 more annotations...
- "I very much hope that this new medium will make my Christmas message more personal and direct. That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us," the queen said of television at the time.

22 Dec 07

Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents by Adam Greenfield, Mark Shepard (Book) in Arts & Photography

page from which to find pdf on urban computing & its discontents

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architecture computing media technology ubiquitous urbanism

13 Nov 07

TheStar.com | Business | Digitization strategy stuck in a time warp

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access business canada digitization internet media michael_geist ottawa

In today's technological world, most content is "born digital," yet there remains a rich history of books, music, film, photos and other works in analog form. Since people increasingly have access solely to digital content, policy makers must confront the challenge of how to bring all of our culture and historical knowledge into the digital realm.
Digitization of books and historical records is important, but groups like the CBC and the National Film Board, who should be working to digitize thousands of hours of Canadian film, television shows and radio programs, are largely absent. By comparison, the Dutch government launched the Images for the Future digitization project in July, which plans to preserve, digitize and provide access to 137,200 hours of video, 22,510 hours of film, 123,900 hours of audio and 2.9 million photos.
Digitization is not rooted solely in history. The Man Booker Prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards, recently announced that it is working with publishers to offer free, digital versions of all six nominated books next year. Organizers hope that the initiative will capture new audiences – particularly in Asia and Africa – who may be unable to access the actual books.
The major Canadian literary prizes, including the Governor-General Award and the Giller Prize, could do the same thing. Rather than racing to print a few thousand additional copies, the publishers could work with the award organizers to increase the size of the prize in return for free, global access to digital versions of Canada's best writing.
1 more annotations...
- The LAC strategy opens by arguing that "digital information and networked technologies are key drivers of economic growth and social well-being in the 21st century. It is clear that the nations that nurture their digital information assets and infrastructure will prosper; those that do not will fall behind."
  Without vision and leadership on this issue, it is increasingly clear that Canada will slot into the latter group of countries that have fallen behind.

23 Jun 07

Information Architects Japan » iA Notebook » The Future of News: How to Survive the New Media Shift

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information_architecture media new_media_shift newspapers reference

22 Jun 07

Invisible Inkling » 10 obvious things about the future of newspapers you need to get through your head

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invisible_inkling media newspapers reference

28 Feb 07

Reviewing "Reality" (March-April 2007)

www.harvardmagazine.com/...reviewing-reality.html - Preview

america frank_rich media politics socialtheory theater

If such grassroots media are restoring balance to the marketplace of information, it may be not a moment too soon, because images and the meanings they evoke have become so dominant as to seed the culture with vast distortions, Rich charges. “It’s a cultural pattern now: empirical reality doesn’t penetrate as well as it should,” he says. “I have to hope that given the price we’ve paid in Iraq, as a society we’re going to learn something from this. With the world a more dangerous place than ever, and after the wreckage of the Bush years, America has got to get its act together and address these problems. If we can’t agree on what the facts are, then we have no hope. We need to distinguish between facts and showmanship, facts and propaganda. If you can’t agree on the fact that the house is burning down, you can’t put out the fire.”
In addition, the alternative world of “guerrilla media”—like blogs and the on-line video available at YouTube—“have the effect of loosening the establishment’s grip on the control and shaping of information,” Rich says, citing the example of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney: YouTube has been flooded with viewers seeking the video of his debate with Senator Edward M. Kennedy during a 1994 senatorial campaign in Massachusetts, in which Romney expressed views diametrically opposed to his current positions. “Spin can now be deflected very, very quickly,” says Rich, “not by counter-spin, but by documentary evidence that can be disseminated so quickly and vividly in the new digital world.”
5 more annotations...
- Today, any aspiring politician must successfully exploit the icon-generating machinery of mass culture, less to articulate specific positions on issues than to project image and character. “Right before George W. Bush runs for president, he buys a ranch—one that isn’t really a ranch—to establish the image that he is a red-state shit-kicker rather than the scion of one of the most aristocratic families in the United States, a graduate of Andover, Yale, and Harvard. In the 2004 campaign, you have another Yale aristocrat, John Kerry, driving a Harley Davidson onto the set of the Jay Leno show. That’s just like Bush clearing brush on his ranch. All of us need to question this level of cultural manipulation.”
- “Al Gore…may be the first public figure in history who has gone overnight from having the personality of a tree to that of a chainsaw mowing down anything in its path.”
- Though his own political leanings are generally liberal, Rich is equally eager to expose hypocrisy, dissimulation, and phony images emanating from the political left; he’s a muckraker at heart. “If there was a day that Kerry lost the election, it may have come in August [2004], when he took reporters’ questions while posing against the macho landscape of the Grand Canyon,” writes Rich in The Greatest Story Ever Sold. “Asked if he still would have voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein if he knew then that there were no weapons of mass destruction, Kerry answered yes. Would Kerry have also answered that a Senator should have voted to authorize the Vietnam War even if he knew that the Johnson administration had hyped North Vietnamese attacks on American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin? Hardly. His answer about Iraq was a moment of supreme intellectual dishonesty that sullied his own Vietnam past as surely as the sleazy Swift Boat character assassins had.”
- Image wins out over reality more and more in the battle for attention and belief. Virtually every public event now arrives filtered through a lens, laptop computer, or recording device, and hence nearly all our daily news has been “produced” and woven into some kind of narrative. Old-fashioned, relatively unmediated reality at times appears obsolete.
- The rush for the brush and the motorcycles grows from an increasing awareness of how powerful visual images have become in forming perceptions. Yet images can cut both ways. “Politicians are going nuts about it,” says Rich. “They are very chastened now by what happened to [former Virginia] Senator George Allen, who was caught on video insulting a young man by calling him ‘macaca’ or [former Montana] Senator Conrad Burns, caught dozing off during a hearing. Any video can be slapped up there and come back to haunt them. The Bush White House, which was so masterful at controlling imagery, using the Statue of Liberty and the aircraft carrier as a backdrop for Bush, has really lost its mojo. One example is the hanging of Saddam Hussein—that video has done the Iraqi government, and the Bush White House, enormous damage. Another is Bush’s speech announcing the troop surge in Iraq: he looked scared, very anxious, and was in the strange setting of the White House library instead of the Oval Office. Bush did not look in command.

03 Aug 06

Advertisers circle realm of blogging / Web journals could become the next marketing frontier

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi - Preview

advertising blogging media

25 Jul 06

CNW Group: CAJ welcomes reinstatement of CanWest columnist

www.newswire.ca/...c9191.html - Preview

corporatism media victoria vivian_smith

news release from CanWest Global Communications Corporation reporting on the Canadian Association of Journalists' relief over the rehiring of Vivian Smith (see Public Eye Online, http://www.publiceyeonline.com/archives/001652.html and other entries from earlier in the July archive). - lampertina on 2006-07-25

whose contract was terminated earlier this month after
advertisers expressed concerns to the paper's publisher about one of her
stories.
the CAJ had expressed its concerns about what it sees
as the increasingly pervasive blurring of the line between news coverage and
advertising in markets across the country, citing Smith's case as one example.
4 more annotations...
- the occasional slip-ups
- with the good
  people
- rapid response of the Times Colonist and CanWest
- The CAJ remains concerned that some media outlets view tying news
  coverage to advertising as an acceptable practice. One such example is the
  Alberta Fairview Post, part of the Bowes Publishers Ltd. chain. Its publisher
  last week verified a reader's suspicions that a large local event was not
  covered because its organizers hadn't purchased advertising, but maintains
  editorial space is not for sale.

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