After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6, 2009. It currently lives next to my window.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Garlic September 21
After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6, 2009. It currently lives next to my window.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Garlic September 20
After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6, 2009. It currently lives next to my window.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Garlic, September 19
After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6, 2009. It currently lives next to my window.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Courant.com Posting
I posted two messages on the Courant's web site.
The first one was an innocent, naive post on a piece of wire copy about the death of a man and woman in a house fire in Stratford. The story was on the Courant's home page.
"This is very sad.
My heart goes out to the loved ones of the couple who died."
There is not really much to argue about on this story, so I suspect it will get relatively few posts, unless someone slams the writer for something.
For the second message, I picked out a different type of story: A Courant-produced piece on a local businessman. This seemingly-innocuous story was located somewhat out-of-the-way, in the business section, but it already had two indignant posts. To fit in with the natives, I tried to match their tone and content.
"Taxes are yet another example of the Obamapelosi genocide on the American people. If their "healthcare" plan doesn't kill us off, their taxes will make us starve to death."
I wonder if anyone will notice that our class is posting...? Hi guys!!!
The first one was an innocent, naive post on a piece of wire copy about the death of a man and woman in a house fire in Stratford. The story was on the Courant's home page.
"This is very sad.
My heart goes out to the loved ones of the couple who died."
There is not really much to argue about on this story, so I suspect it will get relatively few posts, unless someone slams the writer for something.
For the second message, I picked out a different type of story: A Courant-produced piece on a local businessman. This seemingly-innocuous story was located somewhat out-of-the-way, in the business section, but it already had two indignant posts. To fit in with the natives, I tried to match their tone and content.
"Taxes are yet another example of the Obamapelosi genocide on the American people. If their "healthcare" plan doesn't kill us off, their taxes will make us starve to death."
I wonder if anyone will notice that our class is posting...? Hi guys!!!
Courant Plagiarism Accusations
The Connecticut Law Tribune makes an important observation on this story: "For years, print publishers have complained about radio and television stations taking newspaper stories and reading them on the air."
It is standard operating procedure at many radio stations and TV stations in the morning for news anchors to open the newspaper and re-write interesting stories that the station's staff has not covered themselves. Some broadcast outlets will credit the newspaper, some will not. This practice goes back to the early days of radio, when announcers read newspaper articles verbatim.
It happens in part because at 4 am, there is no way you can interview anyone on most stories. But it also happens because radio stations and TV stations have fewer reporters than newspapers (or no reporters at all, in the case of radio stations), so they were unable to dig up all the stories the newspaper did the day before. The Hartford Courant is facing staff shortages itself now.
In his blog, a writer at the Bristol Press wonders why a Hartford Courant reporter didn't bother to call the person quoted in a Bristol Press article, but instead simply re-wrote the smaller newspaper's reporting. I suspect because the answer is that the Courant reporter had to turn out so many stories so quickly, that there was no time to make a phone call. This is often true in radio and television, where you may have five or six minutes to turn around a story, before writing the next story.
The TV background of some of the Courant's top managers may have made them blind to what a newspaper person would have seen as a big no-no.
Putting the articles on the Courant's web site or in the paper without attribution was plagiarism. Copying and pasting other newspapers' articles, essentially taking their words, may have been a copyright -- BUT there does NOT seem to be any accusation that The Courant did this. Using re-written stories with attribution to the other publication was lazy journalism, but not necessarily plagiarism. The Courant is wrong to claim this is aggregation. It is not.
The Courant does true aggregation on its Connecticut Breaking News site. The real aggregation there is the list of headlines from other news outlets in the state, under the heading of "More CT News Headlines" in the right hand column, about halfway down the page. It is just a collection of links to headlines from other newspapers, making Connecticut Breaking News into a portal, sending the readers to those websites. This is the polite way to aggregate, because it does not take away any of the linked news outlets' clicks or ad revenue. I think this is good aggregation.
Crazed Divorce Husband Standoff
In response to the article in the Columbia Journalism Review, I think The Courant's own story on the standoff provides some useful information, especially the newspaper's contention that it was informed about the hostage-taker's demand to take down the story by 2:30 so close to the deadline, that it would not have been technically possible to remove the story in time:
The ethical part of the Courant editors' argument seems to be similar to US policy not to give concessions to hostage takers, because it will only encourage more hostages to be taken. This part is most relevant to our class, because the instantaneous nature of online journalism allows coverage of hostage situations while they are happening.
As the federal policy states, "Based upon past experience, the US Government concluded that making concessions that benefit hostage takers in exchange for the release of hostages increased the danger that others will be taken hostage." Similarly, if an unbalanced person thinks they can influence media coverage by taking a hostage, more people may be taken hostage in the future.
Of course, this argument would have been of no comfort whatsoever if the woman who was taken hostage had actually been killed.
Perhaps the larger ethical resolution to this quandry is to create a broader policy: Barring extreme circumstances, withhold all stories on hostage situations until the situation is over. I did work in a newsroom where this was the practice (if not a written policy), before the internet was a major factor. By default, I think this is how most standoffs with police are handled... Most of them end peacefully, most of them do not involve a hostage, and there is little coverage in the media.
Social media and the internet might also change the nature of this ethical issue: If neighbors start blogging, tweeting, and creating messages on Facebook, and a hostage taker demands the information be removed, will Twitter, Facebook, or a blog host take down the information? It would probably be impossible to contact all the people relaying the messages and get them to delete them, so should one of these services censor all the users who post about the hostage situation? Is that even possible? And would the actions of Facebook, Twitter, or the blog host then cross over into censorship similar to the Iranian government's effort to disrupt Tweets about the anti-government demonstrations? I am NOT drawing an analogy to the South Windsor hostage situation here, but the Iranian government made a public safety argument, for its attempt to squash the protests. A public safety argument from officials might not always be real, at least in some parts of the world.
It is also important to point out that many reporters' and editors' first instinct is to leave a story in place. From time to time, people try to convince journalists that a story is not news or is old, and therefore should not be aired. Occasionally they will argue that a story should not have run, or should be taken down.
Most of the time, the people making the request work in public relations or politics, and usually they have something to gain by quashing the story. Typically the story in question paints their client or employer in a bad light, and they want the potential damage minimized.
People outside of journalism may not be aware of this because it usually happens behind the scenes, but it is what makes journalists reluctant to pull stories at request: Nine times out of ten the request serves someone's agenda. In this case, it was Mr. Shenkman's agenda.
In this case, neither Mr. Shenkman nor the police contacted the radio station where I work, so we did not have to deal with the ethical dilemma posed here.
Shenkman made numerous demands of police, including that media organizations, among them The Courant, not cover the standoff as it developed.
News executives at The Courant declined to remove coverage from its website. At a 3 p.m. press conference, Reed said the continued coverage by The Courant was complicating negotiations.
Courant interim Editor Naedine Hazell said police called the paper and said Shenkman was demanding the coverage be stopped or he would blow up the house at 2:30 p.m. She said the paper got the call a few minutes before 2:30 p.m., the story had already been widely reported for more than three hours and it was not technically possible to remove stories from courant.com that quickly.
Editors then discussed the demand and decided complying could set a precedent for future hostage situations.
"It was difficult to assess Shenkman's demand given his history. Also, there was no context to the demand, including when it had been made, whether it was part of a lengthy list of demands - which turned out to be the case - and whether it was considered credible," Hazell said in a statement. "Within 90 minutes of the threat, we learned from sources that removing the reports from websites had ceased to be a critical concern."
The ethical part of the Courant editors' argument seems to be similar to US policy not to give concessions to hostage takers, because it will only encourage more hostages to be taken. This part is most relevant to our class, because the instantaneous nature of online journalism allows coverage of hostage situations while they are happening.
As the federal policy states, "Based upon past experience, the US Government concluded that making concessions that benefit hostage takers in exchange for the release of hostages increased the danger that others will be taken hostage." Similarly, if an unbalanced person thinks they can influence media coverage by taking a hostage, more people may be taken hostage in the future.
Of course, this argument would have been of no comfort whatsoever if the woman who was taken hostage had actually been killed.
Perhaps the larger ethical resolution to this quandry is to create a broader policy: Barring extreme circumstances, withhold all stories on hostage situations until the situation is over. I did work in a newsroom where this was the practice (if not a written policy), before the internet was a major factor. By default, I think this is how most standoffs with police are handled... Most of them end peacefully, most of them do not involve a hostage, and there is little coverage in the media.
Social media and the internet might also change the nature of this ethical issue: If neighbors start blogging, tweeting, and creating messages on Facebook, and a hostage taker demands the information be removed, will Twitter, Facebook, or a blog host take down the information? It would probably be impossible to contact all the people relaying the messages and get them to delete them, so should one of these services censor all the users who post about the hostage situation? Is that even possible? And would the actions of Facebook, Twitter, or the blog host then cross over into censorship similar to the Iranian government's effort to disrupt Tweets about the anti-government demonstrations? I am NOT drawing an analogy to the South Windsor hostage situation here, but the Iranian government made a public safety argument, for its attempt to squash the protests. A public safety argument from officials might not always be real, at least in some parts of the world.
It is also important to point out that many reporters' and editors' first instinct is to leave a story in place. From time to time, people try to convince journalists that a story is not news or is old, and therefore should not be aired. Occasionally they will argue that a story should not have run, or should be taken down.
Most of the time, the people making the request work in public relations or politics, and usually they have something to gain by quashing the story. Typically the story in question paints their client or employer in a bad light, and they want the potential damage minimized.
People outside of journalism may not be aware of this because it usually happens behind the scenes, but it is what makes journalists reluctant to pull stories at request: Nine times out of ten the request serves someone's agenda. In this case, it was Mr. Shenkman's agenda.
In this case, neither Mr. Shenkman nor the police contacted the radio station where I work, so we did not have to deal with the ethical dilemma posed here.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
And Now, Your Moment of Zen...
Zippy the Pinhead doesn't always make sense, but this one does...
I like the crosshatching. And it's even somewhat relevant. Really.
I like the crosshatching. And it's even somewhat relevant. Really.
Courant.com in the first person
I have some history with Courant.com.
I interned there in the summer of 1998 (specifically for the newspaper's web site), and I sometimes write and post stories to an adjunct web site, Connecticut Breaking News, which is hosted on the Courant's blog system, and featured on Courant.com during the week. I have also scanned the breaking news sections of Courant.com during the day as a part of my job, looking for stories we may have missed, so we can take their ideas, and do our own reporting on them.
Over the last decade, the number of locally-produced stories posted during the day has gradually increased.
Back in 1998, Courant.com's online manager struggled to convince the writers to contribute perhaps a rough draft of a story they were working on, in time for the 3 pm e-mail update. (This update still goes out, and the Courant makes some money off it by occasionally sending advertising messages to people who are on the list.) The reporters resisted, because they wanted the stories to be fresh in the next morning's paper, and not get picked up by radio and TV once they were posted on the web.
For several years in the mid-2000's, many of the reporters got over this, and posted early versions of many of their stories online, with edited, or more full versions of their stories in the next day's newspaper.
In the last year or two, with the Courant's staff having shrunken, the quick-hit online stories often run with no edits or new information in the next day's printed paper. I suspect this is simply because each remaining reporter has more to cover, so they spend less time on each story.
This year, the kinds of breaking news stories the Courant puts on its web site have also changed. They seem to be trying to generate a greater number of breaking news stories. This means they tend to do a lot of the kind of car crash journalism you see on radio and TV: Stories rewritten from a police department or state agency press release, rather than some meaty issue or controversy. I have written zillions of these stories myself, but it is a noticeable change for the Courant.
I suspect the objective at many online publications is to grow readership (page views, unique visitors, however they want to describe it), and this need is probably a major influence on what is seen on the site. Courant.com itself brags to potential advertisers about the size of its online readership, and offers details about their demographics.
In addition to the usual articles, Courant.com uses several strategies to try to increase its readership, most of which I have seen at other news sites:
Breaking News:
Posting more stories during the day, to get hard-core news users to come back during the day. The focus seems to be on the 9 am to 4 pm office workers, who check the news while sitting at the computer at work. I suspect this approach gets news junkies to check in constantly. Unfortunately, because less time is invested in each story, the stories are less likely to generate hits by grabbing people's interest and going viral (like the photo of lawmakers playing solitare). I'm not sure if the Courant people have thought about this trade-off to focusing on breaking news, or if they realized it would make their content more like radio and TV, and less like a newspaper.
Recommend this story:
The Courant puts social media links on its stories, so you can e-mail them, recommend an article to a web site, or get it shown more prominently on news recommendation sites. As the Pew Report mentioned, a relatively small percentage of users go to the ranking sites, but I suspect they may be people who read a lot of online news.
Comments:
This is where newspapers try to get into the social media scene by 'building online communities,' as they say. The users generate their own hits for the site by commenting, responding to others' comments, and reading the comments. Based on the posts at Courant.com and several other newspaper sites in Connecticut, I suspect the papers spend relatively little time guiding the discussion, or looking at it. I understand the nature of the internet is free flowing discussion, but the posts often get nasty at crime victims, or non-public people who had something happen to them, and sometimes veer into borderline racism. Sometimes angry diatribes start because somebody didn't read the whole article before posting. I wonder why some newspaper sites seem to attract so many trolls?
ITowns:
An extension of the comments, but pushed out on their own. This largely seems to be press releases or announcements that didn't make it as news stories, or were simply too old. This sort of site could draw in the friends and relatives of people who post. The users provide the content, and I suspect it costs next to nothing to run, so even if the hits are low, maybe it could make a little money. Right now, when I look in my town of Plainville, I see regular Courant articles, but no ITowns reader-submitted material.
Sex:
Courant.com usually includes photo galleries that focus on, for lack of a better term, hot chicks. I suspect these come from some central office at Tribune (the company that owns the Courant) or some news service, as they seem to be all wire photos. At the moment there are photo galleries on the home page titled "A Century of Sex Symbols," and "NFL Cheerleaders." (Which also includes beach volleyball cheerleaders. Wearing short shorts.)
Management at the Courant recently shifted to an executive who also oversees Fox 61. I suspect the upper tiers of management now have more TV experience. Looks and breaking news are more a part of the TV universe, so I am not surprised they have become bigger parts of Courant.com.
I interned there in the summer of 1998 (specifically for the newspaper's web site), and I sometimes write and post stories to an adjunct web site, Connecticut Breaking News, which is hosted on the Courant's blog system, and featured on Courant.com during the week. I have also scanned the breaking news sections of Courant.com during the day as a part of my job, looking for stories we may have missed, so we can take their ideas, and do our own reporting on them.
Over the last decade, the number of locally-produced stories posted during the day has gradually increased.
Back in 1998, Courant.com's online manager struggled to convince the writers to contribute perhaps a rough draft of a story they were working on, in time for the 3 pm e-mail update. (This update still goes out, and the Courant makes some money off it by occasionally sending advertising messages to people who are on the list.) The reporters resisted, because they wanted the stories to be fresh in the next morning's paper, and not get picked up by radio and TV once they were posted on the web.
For several years in the mid-2000's, many of the reporters got over this, and posted early versions of many of their stories online, with edited, or more full versions of their stories in the next day's newspaper.
In the last year or two, with the Courant's staff having shrunken, the quick-hit online stories often run with no edits or new information in the next day's printed paper. I suspect this is simply because each remaining reporter has more to cover, so they spend less time on each story.
This year, the kinds of breaking news stories the Courant puts on its web site have also changed. They seem to be trying to generate a greater number of breaking news stories. This means they tend to do a lot of the kind of car crash journalism you see on radio and TV: Stories rewritten from a police department or state agency press release, rather than some meaty issue or controversy. I have written zillions of these stories myself, but it is a noticeable change for the Courant.
I suspect the objective at many online publications is to grow readership (page views, unique visitors, however they want to describe it), and this need is probably a major influence on what is seen on the site. Courant.com itself brags to potential advertisers about the size of its online readership, and offers details about their demographics.
In addition to the usual articles, Courant.com uses several strategies to try to increase its readership, most of which I have seen at other news sites:
Breaking News:
Posting more stories during the day, to get hard-core news users to come back during the day. The focus seems to be on the 9 am to 4 pm office workers, who check the news while sitting at the computer at work. I suspect this approach gets news junkies to check in constantly. Unfortunately, because less time is invested in each story, the stories are less likely to generate hits by grabbing people's interest and going viral (like the photo of lawmakers playing solitare). I'm not sure if the Courant people have thought about this trade-off to focusing on breaking news, or if they realized it would make their content more like radio and TV, and less like a newspaper.
Recommend this story:
The Courant puts social media links on its stories, so you can e-mail them, recommend an article to a web site, or get it shown more prominently on news recommendation sites. As the Pew Report mentioned, a relatively small percentage of users go to the ranking sites, but I suspect they may be people who read a lot of online news.
Comments:
This is where newspapers try to get into the social media scene by 'building online communities,' as they say. The users generate their own hits for the site by commenting, responding to others' comments, and reading the comments. Based on the posts at Courant.com and several other newspaper sites in Connecticut, I suspect the papers spend relatively little time guiding the discussion, or looking at it. I understand the nature of the internet is free flowing discussion, but the posts often get nasty at crime victims, or non-public people who had something happen to them, and sometimes veer into borderline racism. Sometimes angry diatribes start because somebody didn't read the whole article before posting. I wonder why some newspaper sites seem to attract so many trolls?
ITowns:
An extension of the comments, but pushed out on their own. This largely seems to be press releases or announcements that didn't make it as news stories, or were simply too old. This sort of site could draw in the friends and relatives of people who post. The users provide the content, and I suspect it costs next to nothing to run, so even if the hits are low, maybe it could make a little money. Right now, when I look in my town of Plainville, I see regular Courant articles, but no ITowns reader-submitted material.
Sex:
Courant.com usually includes photo galleries that focus on, for lack of a better term, hot chicks. I suspect these come from some central office at Tribune (the company that owns the Courant) or some news service, as they seem to be all wire photos. At the moment there are photo galleries on the home page titled "A Century of Sex Symbols," and "NFL Cheerleaders." (Which also includes beach volleyball cheerleaders. Wearing short shorts.)
Management at the Courant recently shifted to an executive who also oversees Fox 61. I suspect the upper tiers of management now have more TV experience. Looks and breaking news are more a part of the TV universe, so I am not surprised they have become bigger parts of Courant.com.
Bad Petition, Bad! Part 2
This is a response to Colin's post on the class' mother blog.
Wait, if my Facebook messages become public, does that mean Scarlett Johansson could find out that I'm cheating on her with Megan Fox!?!
Probably not.
This Facebook staff post for application developers does seem troubling to me: "Message: This table allows you to get information about each message in a thread. You can get information about who wrote the message, the content of the message and also information about the attachment to the message, if it exists, in the same format as attachments are returned in the stream." The "content of the message" part especially bothers me. The way I use Facebook, I treat the Messages feature like e-mail, and I assume it is (mostly, barring hacking) private. Judging by the people who are my friends, it seems like most Facebook users are taking quizzes, sending imaginary items to each other, and playing games involving farm animals and the Mafia, and allowing more applications access to their profiles each time. I don't think they realize taking that quiz gives an outside organization this access. As the Pew report pointed out, traditional advertising is not paying the bills online for content providers.
Sites like Facebook are the new laboratory for "revenue models." To make money, they must sell something to somebody, and if the users pay nothing, then selling the users' personal data to the highest bidder is one possibility.
Online users need to be aware of who the customer is for media companies. In the old media, the customers being served are both the advertiser buying access to the audience, and the audience buying the newspaper, or cable TV or whatever. In the old model, most of the audience has a pretty good idea of this advertiser relationship. In the online media, things are changing quickly, and I suspect most people are unaware of what the new money-making relationship is, or how they fit into it. Or that they, the users, are being farmed for demographic data.
So maybe the new media's economic model is based on the machines' use of humans as a power source in The Matrix.
Wait, if my Facebook messages become public, does that mean Scarlett Johansson could find out that I'm cheating on her with Megan Fox!?!
Probably not.
This Facebook staff post for application developers does seem troubling to me: "Message: This table allows you to get information about each message in a thread. You can get information about who wrote the message, the content of the message and also information about the attachment to the message, if it exists, in the same format as attachments are returned in the stream." The "content of the message" part especially bothers me. The way I use Facebook, I treat the Messages feature like e-mail, and I assume it is (mostly, barring hacking) private. Judging by the people who are my friends, it seems like most Facebook users are taking quizzes, sending imaginary items to each other, and playing games involving farm animals and the Mafia, and allowing more applications access to their profiles each time. I don't think they realize taking that quiz gives an outside organization this access. As the Pew report pointed out, traditional advertising is not paying the bills online for content providers.
Sites like Facebook are the new laboratory for "revenue models." To make money, they must sell something to somebody, and if the users pay nothing, then selling the users' personal data to the highest bidder is one possibility.
Online users need to be aware of who the customer is for media companies. In the old media, the customers being served are both the advertiser buying access to the audience, and the audience buying the newspaper, or cable TV or whatever. In the old model, most of the audience has a pretty good idea of this advertiser relationship. In the online media, things are changing quickly, and I suspect most people are unaware of what the new money-making relationship is, or how they fit into it. Or that they, the users, are being farmed for demographic data.
So maybe the new media's economic model is based on the machines' use of humans as a power source in The Matrix.
Bad Petition, Bad! Part 1
For the record, I did NOT mean to "sign" that online petition for Facebook privacy "Keep My Inbox Private". I was in a rush, and I clicked on the wrong button by accident.
Didn't something like this happen to someone else??? This was another Verum Serum tempest (the guys who worked early on, getting out the ubiquitous Sonia Sotomayor video we discussed in class earlier). In the linked CBS article above, CBS DOES helpfully note the source of the information. Maybe because without Verum Serum, relatively few people outside of the green jobs industry ever would have heard of Mr. Jones.
On the meme front, as was mentioned in class, catchy names help a story stay in people's minds. Van Jones is pretty cool name. It makes me think of a National Lampoon movie character.
So how to you unsign an online petition?
Sotomayor Video Story: How many media can YOU count?
Gosh, this sounds familiar.
Mark Bowden's Atlantic piece about the Sotomayor video strikes again!
So this story began in the medium of lecture (the original Sotomayor appearances at Duke and Berkeley Law School, really intended for the people in the hall), went to video when someone recorded the lecture, went to online video when it was posted, then went to blogs and online discussions when it was posted on conservative sites, then went to television (and just about any other media that has news at that point). Now it has new life in a magazine and web site for the Atlantic, and has jumped back to the audio/radio medium on NPR, which is itself both broadcast and online.
And finally, it is being blogged about by little old me, right here.
I wonder how much more time, and intellectual capital has been spent parsing the Wise Latina comment (and parsing the parsing of this comment) than was originally spent by the justice making this remark?
It is amazing that one little piece of videotape can be universally applied to so many different media. Even some that are kind of socially awkward and creepy. But maybe the fact that it is one brief snippet that allows it to be used so many different ways: Each new author who encounters it can create their own context for it, mashing or remixing it, allowing it to fit into almost any media.
And I do mean ANY media.
So I guess THIS is a meme.
Mark Bowden's Atlantic piece about the Sotomayor video strikes again!
So this story began in the medium of lecture (the original Sotomayor appearances at Duke and Berkeley Law School, really intended for the people in the hall), went to video when someone recorded the lecture, went to online video when it was posted, then went to blogs and online discussions when it was posted on conservative sites, then went to television (and just about any other media that has news at that point). Now it has new life in a magazine and web site for the Atlantic, and has jumped back to the audio/radio medium on NPR, which is itself both broadcast and online.
And finally, it is being blogged about by little old me, right here.
I wonder how much more time, and intellectual capital has been spent parsing the Wise Latina comment (and parsing the parsing of this comment) than was originally spent by the justice making this remark?
It is amazing that one little piece of videotape can be universally applied to so many different media. Even some that are kind of socially awkward and creepy. But maybe the fact that it is one brief snippet that allows it to be used so many different ways: Each new author who encounters it can create their own context for it, mashing or remixing it, allowing it to fit into almost any media.
And I do mean ANY media.
So I guess THIS is a meme.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Garlic September 17, 2009
At left (or top), is the garlic at 6 am. At right (or bottom) the garlic has grown significantly at 11 pm.
After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6. It currently lives next to my window.
The State of the News Media 2009 - Audio
Some of the major conclusions of this chapter are:
This section seemed like the most relevant to our class:
- Radio talkers (who are mostly conservative) devoted an overwhelming amount of their airtime to the 2008 election, but oddly, radio newscasts devoted less time than most media to the election.
- NPR spent more time on international news, probably because they actually have reporters in other countries.
- This chapter is called "Audio" instead of "Radio" because other forms of audio are picking up listeners, including satellite radio, listening to radio stations on cell phones, and (relevant to this class) podcasts and internet streams of radio stations' regular signals. The big idea here, which also applies to other media like newspapers, is that the traditional analog audience is shrinking, and thee digital, online audience is growing. BUT the ad revenue is much smaller on the internet, so this is a problem for the companies that own radio stations.
This section seemed like the most relevant to our class:
It should be noted that as the newer technologies grow, the financial importance of news could drop. The technologies that allow consumers more control over what they listen to, such as mobile, podcasting, specialized Internet stations such as Pandora and more, may not involve news at all. In terrestrial radio, almost every one offers some level of news, if only a few minutes at the top of the hour. But even that amount may shrink in new technologies more targeted to niche audiences wanting to tailor the content themselves.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Garlic September 16, 2009
Gentlemen, this is Mission Control. We have telemetry for stage two!
Roger.
God speed, little garlic.
After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6. It currently lives next to my window.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Garlic September 15, 2009
It's ALIVE!!!
After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6. It currently lives next to my window.
New Journalism Tech
This man tried to use a very small camera (at right) to broadcast a New Haven Police Department press conference on Annie Le live to his station/web site, apparently through a wireless internet Air Card thingy (the black thing sticking out of the side of the laptop). I have one of those cards at work too! And I successfully fed an audio story about five minutes after the press conference ended. The man in the red shirt seemed to have a tough time making his equipment work, but I suspect video journalism will look something like this in a few years, instead of the big bulky cameras and microwave/satellite trucks commonly in use now.
Death Part 2
Colin writes that he did not see the Annie Le story coming as a national topic. I did, as soon as I saw her picture on the New Haven Register web site the afternoon the story broke.
Typically, when a murder becomes a national story, it begins with a beautiful young woman or girl who goes missing. Annie Le was very beautiful. This is not entirely a bias of the people who work for news organizations, it is also a bias of the audience, who would rather see a pleasing face. The police or family distribute well-shot photos and often video, to assist in finding the missing person. In the last few years however, Facebook and Myspace have taken some of this role of photo supplier. Facebook seemed to supply some of the necessary high-quality photos of Annie Le. This is important, because it gives television something to show, and allows them to humanize the story and place it more prominently in a newscast.
The missing person usually disappears from near a major media market, in this case New York. This makes it easier logistically for reporters, camera operators, and technical people to assemble, and therefore more likely that they will assemble.
There also must be an X-factor, to make the story stick in people's minds. If a 14-year-old girl is kidnapped, the story is generic. If a 14-year-old girl is kidnapped from an idyllic suburb in Utah, shocking the Mormon community, it becomes much more memorable as the Elizabeth Smart case. The thing that made the Annie Le case instantly recognizable was the fact that she was a Yale grad student.
This tangentially relates to the class, because it is an example of the medium shaping the message, as Marshall McLuhan would suggest. The investigation into Annie Le's disappearance and death has been first and foremost a television story, because it suits the visual elements demanded by television, and because it is gripping and easily understood: A beautiful young woman is missing, and possibly in trouble. TV reporters and producers know what works in their medium, so they will do the story. En masse. When one news medium spends so much time on a story, people become aware of it, and start looking for it in other media (like newspapers) which then must at least follow along. Here are photos I took at the New Haven Police Department before a press conference September 16. I and another radio reporter both counted 21 TV cameras inside, with many more outside for reporter stand-ups. Usually an important local story in Connecticut will have fewer than a half a dozen cameras.
To bring this topic a little more onto the class's turf, I mentioned that I first saw a photo of Annie Le on the New Haven Register's web site. One of the students in the last class (the young woman who had moved around, and had a huge number of Facebook friends, sorry, I forgot your name) said that images of good-looking women get more clicks. I am curious to see if the demand for more clicks, and therefore more ad revenue, prompts newspapers to put more emphasis on stories involving beautiful females on their web sites. Courant.com has seemed to succumb to this pressure over the last year or so, by putting up lots of photo galleries that are excuses to post wire service images of beautiful people -- Not the Connecticut news the print edition of the Courant has been known for. Right now, Courant.com has Celebrity Sightings At New York's Fashion Week and Pictures: 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
This is a horrific human tragedy for Ms. Le's family. If you think it is inappropriate as a blog topic for this class, let me know in the comment section below.
Typically, when a murder becomes a national story, it begins with a beautiful young woman or girl who goes missing. Annie Le was very beautiful. This is not entirely a bias of the people who work for news organizations, it is also a bias of the audience, who would rather see a pleasing face. The police or family distribute well-shot photos and often video, to assist in finding the missing person. In the last few years however, Facebook and Myspace have taken some of this role of photo supplier. Facebook seemed to supply some of the necessary high-quality photos of Annie Le. This is important, because it gives television something to show, and allows them to humanize the story and place it more prominently in a newscast.
The missing person usually disappears from near a major media market, in this case New York. This makes it easier logistically for reporters, camera operators, and technical people to assemble, and therefore more likely that they will assemble.
There also must be an X-factor, to make the story stick in people's minds. If a 14-year-old girl is kidnapped, the story is generic. If a 14-year-old girl is kidnapped from an idyllic suburb in Utah, shocking the Mormon community, it becomes much more memorable as the Elizabeth Smart case. The thing that made the Annie Le case instantly recognizable was the fact that she was a Yale grad student.
This tangentially relates to the class, because it is an example of the medium shaping the message, as Marshall McLuhan would suggest. The investigation into Annie Le's disappearance and death has been first and foremost a television story, because it suits the visual elements demanded by television, and because it is gripping and easily understood: A beautiful young woman is missing, and possibly in trouble. TV reporters and producers know what works in their medium, so they will do the story. En masse. When one news medium spends so much time on a story, people become aware of it, and start looking for it in other media (like newspapers) which then must at least follow along. Here are photos I took at the New Haven Police Department before a press conference September 16. I and another radio reporter both counted 21 TV cameras inside, with many more outside for reporter stand-ups. Usually an important local story in Connecticut will have fewer than a half a dozen cameras.
To bring this topic a little more onto the class's turf, I mentioned that I first saw a photo of Annie Le on the New Haven Register's web site. One of the students in the last class (the young woman who had moved around, and had a huge number of Facebook friends, sorry, I forgot your name) said that images of good-looking women get more clicks. I am curious to see if the demand for more clicks, and therefore more ad revenue, prompts newspapers to put more emphasis on stories involving beautiful females on their web sites. Courant.com has seemed to succumb to this pressure over the last year or so, by putting up lots of photo galleries that are excuses to post wire service images of beautiful people -- Not the Connecticut news the print edition of the Courant has been known for. Right now, Courant.com has Celebrity Sightings At New York's Fashion Week and Pictures: 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
This is a horrific human tragedy for Ms. Le's family. If you think it is inappropriate as a blog topic for this class, let me know in the comment section below.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Death Part 1
Colin's Other Blog mentioned our last class, in which we learned about the death of Patrick Swayze from a message on Colin's Facebook page.
Although Colin's assertion that Facebook is an "information multivitamin" might be true for a user who carefully balances the components, with measured parts of real friends, "news" outlets or reporters who provide content online, and people who are interested in the same hobbies and pastimes as the user is, I have not selected my Facebook friends for this purpose. I suspect most users have not, and therefore the vitamin is unbalanced.
On my Facebook Home page, the most common posts are some (hopefully more clever) variation on "TGIF!" "I'm going to a party!" or "I'm tired and going to sleep." Until I started blocking them, the next most common messages were about how Vinnie got whacked in one online game, or a sheep wandered onto a farm in another game. The next most common posts are random facts about people's lives. ("Little Jimmy's foreskin infection is healing quickly!") And I have friended a large number of reporters or media people, because I see them regularly and know who they are through my job, so I suspect I would have more hard news people on my friend list than your average user. I suspect that for most users, right now Facebook is more of an information marshmallow, than a vitamin.
Here is the full breakdown of news feeds from the last seven hours on my Facebook home page:
Random personal facts: 16
"News": 3 (One by Christine Stuart was "hard news," although the same story was sent twice; one forwarded video of kids bumping and grinding might cross over into news because it sparks outrage; and one broken link to an ACORN political argument.)
Announcements from nonprofit groups: 2
I don't think this is a balanced information diet.
But I do agree with Colin that Facebook is an excellent device to quickly distribute information, and to allow users to control what information they receive. The whole idea of "news feeds" in Facebook seems very similar to specialized wire browsing software that has long been used in newsrooms. The biggest differences are that Facebook is more user-friendly, and hugely more customizable. It would not surprise me to see newsroom wire service programs become more like Facebook in look and feel, in the next few years.
Although Colin's assertion that Facebook is an "information multivitamin" might be true for a user who carefully balances the components, with measured parts of real friends, "news" outlets or reporters who provide content online, and people who are interested in the same hobbies and pastimes as the user is, I have not selected my Facebook friends for this purpose. I suspect most users have not, and therefore the vitamin is unbalanced.
On my Facebook Home page, the most common posts are some (hopefully more clever) variation on "TGIF!" "I'm going to a party!" or "I'm tired and going to sleep." Until I started blocking them, the next most common messages were about how Vinnie got whacked in one online game, or a sheep wandered onto a farm in another game. The next most common posts are random facts about people's lives. ("Little Jimmy's foreskin infection is healing quickly!") And I have friended a large number of reporters or media people, because I see them regularly and know who they are through my job, so I suspect I would have more hard news people on my friend list than your average user. I suspect that for most users, right now Facebook is more of an information marshmallow, than a vitamin.
Here is the full breakdown of news feeds from the last seven hours on my Facebook home page:
Random personal facts: 16
"News": 3 (One by Christine Stuart was "hard news," although the same story was sent twice; one forwarded video of kids bumping and grinding might cross over into news because it sparks outrage; and one broken link to an ACORN political argument.)
Announcements from nonprofit groups: 2
I don't think this is a balanced information diet.
But I do agree with Colin that Facebook is an excellent device to quickly distribute information, and to allow users to control what information they receive. The whole idea of "news feeds" in Facebook seems very similar to specialized wire browsing software that has long been used in newsrooms. The biggest differences are that Facebook is more user-friendly, and hugely more customizable. It would not surprise me to see newsroom wire service programs become more like Facebook in look and feel, in the next few years.
Garlic September 14, 2009
After buying some garlic at the supermarket, I noticed some of the cloves were sprouting. I planted one of them September 6.
What will happen next? Here is a dimly lit photo that doesn't give too much away...
Follow my blog to see what comes up...
What will happen next? Here is a dimly lit photo that doesn't give too much away...
Follow my blog to see what comes up...
Understanding Media - Chapter 8, The Spoken Word
There is a relevant quote in the last paragraph of Chapter 8:
I read an article from Tech Crunch that described how Facebook got its own translations done not by a computer, but by people connected through computers (Facebook itself, in this case). This is a little different from what McLuhan is describing above, but it still follows his idea of technology/media becoming extensions of mankind's central nervous system.
Instead of instant machine-generated translations, as McLuhan seems to envision, the technology allows for an instant, very low cost vote, in which the crowd gets to pick the translations. I wonder if Facebook used a human to generate the translation options, or if they used machine translation, and relied on the users to ferret out the software's mistakes?
Today computers held out the promise of a means of instant translation of any code or language into any other code or language. The computer, in short promises by technology a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity. The next logical step would seem to be, not to translate, but to by-pass languages in favor of a general cosmic consciousness which might be very like the collective unconscious dreamt of by Bergson, the condition of "weightlessness," that biologists say promises a physical immortality, may be paralleled by the condition of speechlessness that could confer a perpetuity of collective harmony and peace."A perpetuity of collective harmony and peace" is NOT how I would describe the blogosphere. Although computer-based translation exists today (http://babelfish.yahoo.com), accurate and complete machine translation is still what it was when McLuhan wrote the above quote in 1964: A promise of the future.
I read an article from Tech Crunch that described how Facebook got its own translations done not by a computer, but by people connected through computers (Facebook itself, in this case). This is a little different from what McLuhan is describing above, but it still follows his idea of technology/media becoming extensions of mankind's central nervous system.
Instead of instant machine-generated translations, as McLuhan seems to envision, the technology allows for an instant, very low cost vote, in which the crowd gets to pick the translations. I wonder if Facebook used a human to generate the translation options, or if they used machine translation, and relied on the users to ferret out the software's mistakes?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Understanding Media - Chapter 2, Media Hot and Cold
To break down the hot media vs. the cold media:
Hot Media
Extends one sense in high definition.
Leaves little for the audience's imagination, little for the audience to fill in.
Radio
Movie
Cold Media
The audience gets relatively little information.
The audience has to fill in the blanks, and therefore participate.
Telephone
human speech
TV
Page 24
"A tribal and feudal hierarchy of traditional kind collapses quickly when it meets any hot medium of the mechanical, uniform, and repetitive kind." But McLuhan also writes that radio RE-tribalized Europe after its introduction... (leading to WWII...?) Huh?
Page 27
"Backward countries are cool, and we are hot."
"The mechanical [industrial] age was hot, and we of the TV age are cool"
(Related from page 23 -- the written word was "hotted up" by the introduction of print, leading to nationalism and religious wars in 16th century in Europe.
Page 30/31
"The hot radio medium used in cool or non-literate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. A cool or low-literacy culture cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as the cool TV medium has proved to be for our high literacy world."
Rwanda genocide and radio connection?
Page 31
Paraphrase -- A cool media like TV demands the process (of rehearsing a symphony) be shown. A hot media like radio prefers the neat tight package of simply the finished work.
But is this just a reflection of the realities of the two media? A symphony rehearsal plays the the strength of radio: audio. You can't broadcast the audio of a rehearsal, because the drama in the rehearsal is in the interaction of the people, the body language and emotion people show on their faces. TV needs things to SHOW things happening. The actual performance might be visually boring -- it is just a bunch of people in tuxedoes sitting around. Showing musicians talking or moving, gesturing or showing emotion as they struggle to learn a new piece has visual drama, and is therefore better for TV. All of that would come out during rehearsal, and be concealed for the real performance, because of the (cool media?) demands of performing in a concert hall.
Hot Media
Extends one sense in high definition.
Leaves little for the audience's imagination, little for the audience to fill in.
Radio
Movie
Cold Media
The audience gets relatively little information.
The audience has to fill in the blanks, and therefore participate.
Telephone
human speech
TV
Page 24
"A tribal and feudal hierarchy of traditional kind collapses quickly when it meets any hot medium of the mechanical, uniform, and repetitive kind." But McLuhan also writes that radio RE-tribalized Europe after its introduction... (leading to WWII...?) Huh?
Page 27
"Backward countries are cool, and we are hot."
"The mechanical [industrial] age was hot, and we of the TV age are cool"
(Related from page 23 -- the written word was "hotted up" by the introduction of print, leading to nationalism and religious wars in 16th century in Europe.
Page 30/31
"The hot radio medium used in cool or non-literate cultures has a violent effect, quite unlike its effect, say in England or America, where radio is felt as entertainment. A cool or low-literacy culture cannot accept hot media like movies or radio as entertainment. They are, at least, as radically upsetting for them as the cool TV medium has proved to be for our high literacy world."
Rwanda genocide and radio connection?
Page 31
Paraphrase -- A cool media like TV demands the process (of rehearsing a symphony) be shown. A hot media like radio prefers the neat tight package of simply the finished work.
But is this just a reflection of the realities of the two media? A symphony rehearsal plays the the strength of radio: audio. You can't broadcast the audio of a rehearsal, because the drama in the rehearsal is in the interaction of the people, the body language and emotion people show on their faces. TV needs things to SHOW things happening. The actual performance might be visually boring -- it is just a bunch of people in tuxedoes sitting around. Showing musicians talking or moving, gesturing or showing emotion as they struggle to learn a new piece has visual drama, and is therefore better for TV. All of that would come out during rehearsal, and be concealed for the real performance, because of the (cool media?) demands of performing in a concert hall.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Understanding Media: Chapter 1 The Medium Is the Message
McLuhan starts with a bang, and includes probably his most well-known catchphrase in the first sentence: "The medium is the message." Somebody put a check mark next to it in the library book I'm reading. Thanks.
I think the media people use do influence their way of thinking, perhaps the structure of their thoughts or ideas, but I am not sure I literally believe the medium is the message. The medium influences the message, and filters it. For example there are "television" stories, (with nice things to look at) and there are "newspaper" stories (with ideas, argument, and conflict, usually between people). I think changes introduced by a new medium are usually accidental. The intended message is still the content.
Page 9
Was General Electric really in the business of “moving” information, just because it made electric lights? Would it be more accurate to say GE is “enabling” content? Maybe my sense of the phrase “moving information” is different than it would have been to someone in 1962. I think of a file being FTP'ed across the internet. Perhaps using AT&T internet service!
Oooo!!!! Mainstream Media Smackdown on Page 11!
I think this passage is interesting, because it shows how some attitudes have changed, and changed again.
I assume the old-guard “General” David Sarnoff was responding to a growing skepticism towards technology in the 1960's, at a time when more avant garde people were realized that technology had brought us the nuclear bomb and ICBM's (see the lyrics to Plastic Fantastic Lover by Jefferson Airplane). I suspect McLuhan would have sided with those suspicious of the high tech/military industrial complex.
Of course, the internet which this class is all about was at least partly created by that same military industrial complex. And some of the same avant garde people who forty years ago would have been criticizing dehumanization because of technology, are today taking part in social media. Today, the old guard tends to criticize social media (“Twitter? You can't say anything in so few words.” “Facebook? I'm worried about putting all my information up there where anyone can see.”)
There is an odd sort of a shift here: Because of the internet and social media, I think the young or avant garde people are more tech-friendly than they would have been in the 1960's. The old guard today is more suspicious, or at least less understanding of it.
Sarnoff does have a legitimate point. In the context of content, any medium can be helpful or horrible. After an earthquake in Italy, the radio can broadcast instructions on where shelters or medical clinics are operating. In an ethnic powder keg in Rawanda, the radio can broadcast persuasive instructions to Hutus on where to find Tutsis and hack their limbs off with machetes. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3257748.stm)
Page 12
Hmm. Here is another quote that might be relevant in a class on new media: “Just before an airplane breaks the sound barrier, sound waves become visible on the wings of the plane. The sudden visibility of sound just as sound ends is an apt instance of that great pattern of being that reveals new and opposite forms just as the earlier forms reach their peak performance.”
Were newspapers in their peak performance in the 1990's???
Page 14
“DeToqueville, in earlier work on the French Revolution, had explained how it was the printed word that, achieving cutural saturation in the eighteenth century, had homogenized the French nation. Frenchmen were the same kind of people from north to south. The typographic principles of uniformity, continuity, and lineality had overlaid the complexities of ancient feudal and oral society. The Revolution was carried out by the new literati and lawyers.”
Does the internet/social media make some sort of change possible in the United States (or the world) today?
Page 16
“...understanding stops action, and Nietzsche observed...” How does this observation apply to talk topics during listener call in segments on AM radio...? If the callers or host only have one side of an issue, it makes it easier for them to fill in the gaps, and generate outrage (which is the spice that keeps much talk radio interesting).
Page 16
“We are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world, and beaches him in individual isolation.”
This sounds similar to the modern concept of digital immigrants and digital natives. The immigrants being people who are coming to new media later in life, after having grown accustomed to the norms of old media. They learn to get by, but they are never truly at home, and they will probably always speak with an accent. The natives are the people (usually young) for who new media have simply always been around. They grew up in this media space, so it is their homeland.
Page 19
Okaaaaay... If electronic media circa 1964 was the equivalent of Hitler in the 1930's, have we really seen World War Three in the minds of Americans in the last 45 years? I don't think so. Perhaps McLuhan would argue his work alerted the nation to this threat? If so, what happened in the ensuing decade to defeat this “electric technology within the gates?”
Page 20/21
“For each of the media is also a powerful weapon with which to clobber other media and other groups. The result is that the present age has been one of multiple civil wars that are not limited to the world of art and entertainment.”
Media cause wars?
Monday, September 14, 2009
McLuhan 5.0-Chal Opp Dig Rev
I'm taking this class at Trinity College the fall about the decline and fall of the old media and the rise of the new media. At the moment, the hottest part of the "new media" seems to be online social networks.
I will be blogging through December, starting by typing out some notes from parts of "Understanding the Media: The Extensions of Man," by Marshall McLuhan.
But first, to get in the mood, I listened to Marshall's classic 2000 hip hop album, "The Marshall McLuhan LP:"
Personally, I think Marshall McLuhan owed all his success to Dr. Dre.
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