Jan 30 2012
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Jan 21 2012
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Impressive Improvisation of the Day: When a Nokia phone goes off during his performance at a Jewish Orthodox synagogue in Presov, Slovakia, Lukáš Kmit keeps his cool, uses the ringtone as inspiration.
I think I know a certain someone who wishes they could have been at this concert instead.
[vvv.]
Jan 12 2012
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John Fahey, Chairman & CEO of the National Geographic Society
More than 420 people want
John Fahey, Chairman & CEO of NGS,
to break his virtual silence
and explain why the National Geographic Society is:
• self-censoring stories about China
• befriending autocratic thugs
• recruiting for India’s army
• supporting a demagogue
• showcasing a profane provocateur
• fixating on Adolf Hitler
• marginalizing religion
• selling our Brand to a private equity fund
• letting News Corp ruin our good name
• and (unfortunately) much more.
For more information, please see Society Matters.
Nov 29 2011
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“ In our souls. This is what we tend to forget when we talk about journalism’s evolution: The news brand, in the past — for all its exclusivity, for all its anonymity — was much more than a brand, with all the corporateness and cravenness that that term can imply. It was also an identity. It was a purchased proxy for a personal worldview. A subscription to the Times — even a newsstand purchase of the Times — meant something both public and, even more importantly, intimate. The news brand was, in its way, an externalized self, a reflection — often aspirational — of the way its consumers took part in the tumult of human events.
Jul 04 2009
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“
[I]n some respects, the now-canceled salon on health care seems like an attempt to replicate a golden era for the newspaper in which a seat at a dinner hosted by Katharine Graham, the legendary publisher of The Washington Post and Ms. Weymouth’s grandmother, was the hottest commodity in the Beltway.
The difference? Mrs. Graham bestowed legitimacy (Richard M. Nixon never made the cut, even as president). Ms. Weymouth decided to sell it, with her paper’s editorial integrity apparently thrown in as a parting gift.
Jun 20 2009
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“
If you doubt that the Iranian election media bombardment was deliberate, ask yourself - Do you know who won last months Panamanian election ? Did you even know there was an election? It’s not your fault if you don’t. Actually, I don’t see how you could know without a functioning media.
Have you heard much about the democratic elections in Saudi Arabia lately? Of course not. They don’t have elections. Any media outrage for the people of Saudi Arabia? A country ruled by one of the most repressive regimes on the planet. But hey, they’re our allies. We don’t talk about them (and certainly won’t tweet it).
What about the 2006 (monitored) democratic election in Gaza in which the people resisted western threats and bribes and elected Hamas as their leader? We responded by punishing the people of Gaza and cutting aid to the region. Well, they committed a supreme crime. They voted the wrong way and must be punished for it. I’m waiting for a sympathetic #GazaElection hashtag on Twitter, though I won’t hold my breathe.
Have you heard ANYTHING from the mainstream media of the democratically elected governments that we REMOVED? The fact is that we don’t care about democratic elections.
Jun 12 2009
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“
Here’s the problem in a nutshell:
As with print-based media, Internet-based distribution generates only a tiny fraction of the revenue and profit that today’s incumbent cable, broadcast, and satellite distribution models do. As Internet-based distribution gains steam, therefore, most TV industry incumbents will no longer be able to support their existing cost structures.
—
Sorry, There’s No Way To Save The TV Business, by Henry Blodget, CEO & Editor-in-Chief of The Business Insider,
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“ There are long-term forces at play that militate against mass media and toward unbundled, micro-chunked, fragmented personal media, the vast majority of which never becomes viral or widely popular. Craig Newmark did not set out to decimate newspapers’ classified revenues when he started running online ads for free; yet, if he hadn’t done so, someone else would have, and there’s little the news industry could have done to head that off. The founders of Google could not have envisioned that search, and not content, would take the overwhelming amount of online advertising revenues.
— JD Lasica, in Terry Heaton’s Local Media in a Postmodern World, Part XCVI, Underestimating the Audience
Jun 03 2009
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“ The internet works best when you build a network, not when you buy a brand. In fact, I can’t think of one successful online brand that was built with cash.
