IAB FORUM – MERCOLEDì 4  NOVEMBRE 2009

Presentazione realizzata da   Stefania Capano, Monica Cipriani, Alessandra De Cuia, Pradnya Rondanini

Oggi ci sono alcune cose interessanti che in qualche modo hanno a che fare con la politica.
Faccio un unico post generalista.
Pippo Civati sullo sfida a Formigoni: mancano 5 mesi e non si conoscono né le alleanze, né tanto meno il candidato, né (figurarsi) il programma, né un’idea, né chi e come deciderà! Primarie…io la penso così…non abbiamo nulla da perdere: sai che bello far scegliere dai cittadini un bel candidato con un profilo (e un programma) alto e ben distinto dal nostro attuale governatore…ma temo non sarà così. (Ora anche su Wittgenstein.)
In occasione del ventennale della caduta del muro di Berlino, Marco Simoni (blog Odisseo) racconta una bella storia di alcuni cervi, tra la Germania Ovest e la Cecoslovacchia, che non hanno il “coraggio” di superare i vecchi confini e “rimangono negli angusti spazi della guerra fredda, piuttosto che andare e scoprire gli spazi disponibili in quella che una volta era l’altra parte”. I cervi, secondo Marco Simoni, sono la metafora della sinistra europea…
Il Giornale (sì Il Giornale…la mia migrazione a destra è ormai inesorabile…scherzo, che già ieri alcuni amici mi hanno chiesto se sto con Rutelli!) parla di Current TV, la tv di Al Gore che è sbarcata in Italia un anno e mezzo fa (canale 130 su Sky). Il giornalista Paolo Bracalini forse vorrebbe parlarne male, ma in realtà ne fa un bel ritratto. A me Current TV piace, è molto ambientalista e si vedono cose che tutti gli altri rifiutano.
Buona lettura!

When I was a kid, I used to watch music video channels for hours at a time and record my favorite ones onto VHS so that I could have my very own video mixtape. Music videos are primarily viral now, so I turn online for all the newest and most interesting ways bands and other musicians pair their records with visuals.

Here are some fresh finds:

The Golden Filter, “Thunderbird”

Warren Wright directed the music video for The Golden Filter’s newest single. The electronic duo used to be known as Lismore, but then have since dumped that name and those poppier songs for harder beats and cultish imagery.

Jonathan Boulet, “A Community Service Announcement”

There are two things about this video that really get me: the way the digital deconstruction is noticeable but also isn’t completely overpowering and the fact that the song is sort of deceptively upbeat. I thought that the entire video was going to be about faceless guys running through the woods in some kind of youthful romp reminiscent of a scene out of “Where The Wild Things Are,” but then… it wasn’t.

Jonathan Boulet is a new artist, hailing from Sydney, whose album drops December 4th, and if this is him putting his best foot forward, then I can’t to see what he does next with both his music and his visual aesthetic.

[READ MORE ON CURRENT.COM]

In support of Current TV’s Embedded this week, I made a short post at the Current Music blog about Passion Pit and the hype that sometimes surrounds one lucky(?) indie band.

Passion Pit are one of the most talked about bands of 2009, particularly on the internet. They’ve gotten a lot of buzz since they formed in 2007, a result of lead singer and songwriter Michael Angelakos first writing songs for his then-girlfriend and starting a band “because [he] had nothing else to do” that took over the Boston music scene. After being upstreamed to Columbia via Frenchkiss Records, however, the band began to garner national attention as well, and their major label debut, Manners, was released with the kind of overenthusiastic fanfare that Vampire Weekend received during 2008 and MGMT got the year before that.

 

They’re a band in the middle of what seems to be a well-oiled machine at this point: indie hype. Last year Current aired “Hyping Indie Hype,” a segment about creating buzz for underground artists in both rock and rap, suggesting that even with the marketability of “indie” as a genre since television shows like “The OC” made indie cool to the masses, it’s still hard for independent artists to really break the mainstream. For those that do, however, the praise is overwhelming, pushing emerging bands at consumers so much so early that a backlash can happen before the band even fully establishes their sound. These days, some consider Clap Your Hands Say Yeah a cautionary tale.

[CHECK OUT THE REST ON CURRENT]

I’ve actually had the opportunity to contribute a lot to the extras for Embedded. I’ve slacked on re-blogging, but you can certainly take a look at the various things I’ve written for the blog right here, and then watch all of the related episodes! If you enjoy musicians and exclusive access to behind-the-scenes material, then Embedded is the show for you.

We literally laughed out loud at this Target Women segment on the absolutely ridiculous television ads from Broadview Security (formerly known as Brink’s Security) that are apparently trying to reach out to women. Epic fail Broadview.

Broadview Ad Guy 1: It’s a recession time, people. We NEED these sales. And we need to get the women if we want those sales.

Broadview Ad Guy 2: How do we get the women?

Broadview Ad Guy 1: Well, I don’t know about you, but when I think women, I think rape. Let’s go for it!

Talk about totally exploiting a very real fear of women in an absolutely inane and douchebag-y way. Remind us never to choose Broadview as our security method of choice. Personally, money is tight. I’m just going to keep one of those airhorns by my bed because clearly bold, door- busting rapists are thrown by loud noises. Between that and my rape whistle, I’m all set on the security front.

Thank you to Sarah Haskins of Target Women and Current TV for calling out this idiotic media play!

For the last year or so I have discovered Current via iTunes and it’s great! I love Infomania, Vanguard, Supernews, and VC2. The best thing about Current is it’s innovative usage of citizen journalism. Probably the best thing Al Gore ever did(Yes, that includes An Inconvenient Truth). So, hopefully you can understand that Current moving towards more traditional programming is making me nervous. Let’s just hope that Current doesn’t become the New MTV.

InfoMania is a half-hour satirical news show on Current TV (you know, Al Gore’s TV channel? Yeah, he has a TV channel. No, it has nothing to do with global warming. Really.). Lucky for me, and you of course, this segment show has an awesome music segment that counts down “the top 5″ of any category Sergio Cilli can think of. Who is Sergio, you ask? Probably the most awkward TV personality you will ever have the privilege of watching. So put on the flannel and the thick framed glasses and get ready to count down the Top 5 Music videos of the 60s according to TheRisingStorm.net

Oh, and 20 Watts staff: Who wants to prove we are just as good as INXS?

– Isabel Alcantara, Photo Editor

We’ve learned several new unflattering terms this morning and it’s all because of Current TV and their apparent dislike of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

>> Read more at SnarkFood.com now…

I was clearing out a stack of old writing magazines when I came across a mini interview with Gordon Van Gelder, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which, if you don’t know it, is one of the oldest and most highly esteemed of the print genre magazines.  He was asked, what kind of stories was he most interested in seeing? Here’s what he was looking for in 2004 (and probably still is):

“A science fiction story that does something different with the SF elements (most of what I’m seeing lately reads like its written for a TV program).”

“A fantasy story that reaches the level of myth.”

These requirements seem to me to be as relevant for worldbuilders as they are for fiction writers, especially if you’re interested in creating an unusual world or an enduring one.

These standards probably mean something different to everyone who reads them. I’m going to talk a little here about what they mean to me, and what worlds they make me think of.

“Doing something different with the SF elements” is in a way, almost impossible to define.We don’t know what’s different until someone comes up with something new and we recognize it as such.  I haven’t been reading much SF lately, so I’ll have to give examples in terms of film and TV.

Take the alien arrival scenario. Nearly always in recent movies or TV, it’s done as hostile invaders coming to take over by military conquest (War of the Worlds, Stargate SG-1, ) or by subversion (V, Threshold). Then there’s District 9, where the humans herd the aliens into a refugee camp and keep them there for 20 years while the government experiments on them and their weapons. Now that’s a different take on the alien invasion!

A couple of other really original SF scenarios:

Lost, with its time bending stories and its secret organizations-and who’d ever think of being marooned on a tropical island as a science fiction scenario?

Children of Men, a post-pandemic story which is not about the heroic scientists finding a cure, but about an ordinary man in a world that has lost hope for the future, as he tries to protect the only pregnant woman in the world.

And one more, a short story I read in one of the online magazines (if I can find the story again, I’ll post the link here) that used advanced holographic technology, not for games or military applications, but to commemorate a suicide bombing by recreating the image and movements of every individual present just before the bomb went off.

If you have seen other remarkable story or worldbuilding uses of the usual SF material, post them here so we can all enjoy and be inspired.

In Part 2 I’ll discuss what I think it means for a fantasy story to reach the level of myth.

Update: The short story I mentioned is “Until Forgiveness Comes” by K. Tempest Bradford, published on Strange Horizons a year ago. On rereading, I find the recreation is a religious ritual, not holography as I remembered, but it doesn’t matter. It’s an extraordinary story. Go read it!

Nov. 11 is not a good date for Current TV employees. For the second year in a row, the network/web site hybrid Al Gore built has announced layoffs on that day in the double digits. But while last year, the eliminated jobs were attributed to “a new cross-platform programming strategy,” the bulk of today’s 80 lost jobs are directly tied to the cancellation of Current Tonight, Current Takeover and Current Exposed.

The canceled shows were part of a change in strategy for Current following the hiring of new CEO Mark Rosenthal, according to COO Joanna Drake Earl. “We had a chance to step back to see what’s working and what’s not,” she said via phone, “which led to the decision to move away from an over-reliance on short-form content.”

The layoffs will allow the company to reinvest in programming, marketing and affiliate sales hiring, areas where Earl admitted Current is looking for “more experienced leadership,” as well as invest more in longer-form shows like Infomania and The Rotten Tomatoes Show, both of which she described as successes.

When it comes to finding ways to make the web and TV play nice together, Current has always been an innovator, whether being one of the first to incorporate Twitter updates on news broadcasts or what Earl described as Rotten Tomatoes‘ “low-bar audience participation format.” We’ll just have to see if the next reorganization comes on Nov. 11, 2010.

Plants contend with snow and cold winter temperatures with a variety of different strategies. Unlike some animals of the west, they cannot migrate to warmer environs.

Many herbaceous plants do the next best thing to migrating: they shed all of their above ground parts and seek a safe place to spend winter beneath the soil. Aspens, maples, birches, alders and other deciduous trees protect themselves from winter temperatures by dropping their leaves. Native conifers, except for larches, are evergreen and so they have internal functions or physiological adaptations that help them get through the winter months ahead.

The two most common stresses among trees and shrubs of the north country are the ability to withstand low temperatures and drying-up or desiccation.

In order to prepare for winter, leaves of Northern Hemisphere plants begin to recognize the diminishing length of daylight in August. Certain plant hormones are released to slow and then eventually stop all growth. The first frost of the autumn prepares woody plants for the impending onslaught of winter. In addition, plants experience a water stress which further prepares them for the chilly months ahead.

Trees are now able to deal with freezing temperatures and the controlled formation of ice. The exact location of ice within the tree is very important. Most of the cells within trees are non-living, because their role is to conduct water during the growing season and provide mechanical support or stability. There are, however, living cells within the roots, branches, trunk and evergreen needles which are very important for storing food and kick-starting spring growth. It’s these cells where the exact formation of ice is a life or death matter.

The initial formation of ice occurs outside the living plant cell in a small space within the cell wall. All the water that isn’t bonded to other molecules inside the cell is exported to the space in the cell wall. When ice forms in the cell wall it attracts water to its crystals. The living part of the cell is protected by an elastic cell membrane and the remaining cell sap can withstand temperatures as low as minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 55 degrees Celsius). If, for any reason, the cell membrane becomes ruptured or if too much water is exported into the cell wall the cell sap will become toxic and the cell will die.

Exposed evergreen needles face the greatest water loss problems under bright sunshine and calm winter days. The needles are warmed to above-freezing temperatures and the air is dry, creating atmospheric suction or a call for water from its needles. The tree is faced with a problem: It’s loosing water in its winterized needles and must replace it.

The trunk being darker and warming above freezing like the needles is able to supply minimal amounts of stored water from the cell walls. This becomes a tricky balancing act. On a day such as this, trees prefer even the slightest of breeze, because that cools the leaf surface and prevents any moisture loss and subsequent demand for replacement water.

Heavy snow loads, particularly on the Coastal Pacific Northwest Mountains, can cause entire trees to bend. A 40-foot Pacific silver fir can accumulate a mass of snow and ice nearly 20 inches thick, weighing 6,600 pounds or more than 3 tons.

Exposed areas are subjected to blowing ice which can remove foliage or cause freezing injury and create deep pits eventually wearing away tree bark. Mountain winds, especially during the winter, shape trees and the treeline forests. Some high elevation trees actually resemble a broomstick with windswept branches and trunks with only a mop-head or cluster of foliage at their top.

Browsing activities of mammals create further winter-stress problems for plants.

Yet despite all the harsh winter environmental conditions, our coastal, subalpine, interior and northerly forests of Western North America are hardy and able to live for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, toughly facing months of winter.

Save the Honeybees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6w-Z7XlnHI

Dr Reese Halter is a public speaker, conservation biologist and founder of the international conservation institute Global Forest science. His most recent book is The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Incomparable+HoneyBee+reese+halter&x=0&y=0  Contact him through http://DrReese.com

Recently, I had a chance to spend a couple days exploring Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. It’s truly amazing to see how all the different animals use the desert to make a living.

The Sonoran Desert is spread across 106,000 square miles with about 40 percent of it in the U.S. and 60 percent in Mexico. It ranges in elevation from near sea level to over 3,300 feet along the eastern edge of Arizona. In Arizona it receives both winter and summer precipitation with an annual average of about 13 inches.

It is the most biologically diverse of the four big North American deserts. In fact, there are more than 1,000 species of solitary and social bees in the Sonoran Desert – more than anywhere else on the globe.

Being trained as a tree root physiologist I’m always curious about what’s making a living on the ground. Digger bee holes are very evident with a quarter of an inch hooked-top chimneys dotting the earth. The hooked chimneys are believed to thwart the attempts of parasitic hoverflies, who are known to flip eggs into bee holes – their eggs attach themselves to the bee eggs, once hatched they devour bee eggs.

Digger bees are solitary and the female will lay one egg with a packet of honey and pollen in up to 18 cells in one below ground nest consisting of 7 feet of tunnels.

Nearby the digger bee holes, I noticed a circular hole about an inch and a half wide covered with silk; just outside the hole were some loose barbed, dark hairs – indicating a tarantula burrow.

Tarantulas are one of the most recognized residents of the southwest desert. These nocturnal hunters often wait at their entrance holes for beetles and grasshoppers that pass by. Upon entering their hole after a night of hunting they weave silk at the den entrance. The silk has at least two purposes: It keeps the burrow dry by holding humidity and it carries vibrations down to the spider allowing it to know what’s occurring above the ground.

Tarantulas defend themselves from foxes, coyotes, raccoons and skunks by rubbing their legs against the abdomen to loosen their barbed hairs, which are designed to severely irritate the eyes or nasal cavities of predators.

White-nosed coatis, a much larger relative of the mink and closely related to raccoons, are known to grab tarantulas, roll them vigorously on the ground, dislodge their barbed hairs and then feast upon them.

In a sparse clump of grass about a miles away from the tarantula den I spotted a hole in the ground about an inch and a quarter wide, sitting nearby I waited for its occupant to surface. Soon a fierce little predator – a grasshopper mouse appeared. These diminutive yet tough critters hunt lizards, grasshoppers, beetles, scorpions and even other mice.

Grasshopper mice cooperate by raising their young and teaching them to hunt. Young mice learn how to bite the stingers off scorpions before eating them; and how to disable stink beetles – inch-long bugs that defend themselves by performing a headstand and spraying a fetid smell from their posterior.

One of the more eerie desert sounds at night is the high-pitched howl of grasshopper mice. If cornered by a predator this miniature beast will drop a runny, very smell bowel movement in a last ditch attempt to escape – an uncommon trait for a mouse.

One of the most fascinating and easily my favorite animals of the Sonoran Desert are the Couch’s Spadefoot toads. They are the largest native toads in the U.S. measuring a whopping 7 inches in length.

These incredible animals sleep for almost one year in the earth. The vibrations of the first summer thunderstorm awaken them and they burrow their way to the surface where then congregate in temporary rain pools and puddles in desert washes, irrigation canals or ponds.

Because water is so scarce in the desert they breed immediately and females lay eggs within 24 hours. Tadpoles must race to become toadlets before the ephemeral pools dry-up – from egg to toadlet in less than 14 days.

Adult Spadefoot’s are insectivores with termites being their preferred prey. An adult requires just two meals on termites, then with their hard keratinous spade-like pad on their hind legs they bury themselves in the ground. This exceptional desert dweller can live for over 10 years.

Burrowing owls are the only owl or raptor (bird of prey) to den and nest in underground digs. Excellent eyesight helps them spot predators. They prey on rodents, beetles, moths, scorpions, grasshoppers, prairie dog pups, toads, young snakes and other reptiles.

Snakes, badgers and coyotes preyed upon burrowing owls. Mature burrowing owls have developed an intriguing defense mechanism – they imitate the sound of a rattlesnake, which often frightens predators away.

Arizona’s Gila monster is one of the most unusual reptiles in the world and one of only two venomous lizards (the other is the Mexican beaded lizard) known on the globe.

Gila monsters spend 90 percent of their lives in natural crevices under boulders or rocks. 

This beauty of a beast can eat 35 percent of its body weight in one meal and store excess as fat in its tail. You can’t miss its bright black and pink coloring and beaded skin.

These shy animals release their venom by biting down on the victim with needle-sharp teeth hidden by the gums when not in use.

Gila monster venom may very well become the next blockbuster drug; currently it’s being studied by pharmaceuticals for treatment of high blood pressure that afflicts over 73 million Americans.

 Save the Honeybees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6w-Z7XlnHI

Dr Reese Halter is a public speaker, conservation biologist and founder of the international conservation institute Global Forest Science. His most recent book is The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Incomparable+HoneyBee+reese+halter&x=0&y=0  Contact him through http://DrReese.com

The indigenous Douglas and pine tree squirrels are incredible and an integral part of the web of life within coastal and interior forests of British Columbia.

Douglas squirrels are only found on the south-coast whereas pine squirrels live throughout the rest of the province. They are easily recognizable compared to the introduced eastern gray squirrels or black fox squirrels. Native British Columbia squirrels have deep reddish or chestnut coloration with white-eye rings. They are considerably smaller in size than the introduced squirrels and so the indigenous squirrels have lost some of their habitat.

Tree squirrels, as their name implies, spend a good deal of time in forest treetops. They have powerful limbs, elongated digits and sharp recurved claws. They also have flexible ankles with hind-feet that are able to rotate 180 degrees enabling them to scamper down trees head first. Ever growing front teeth, molars and powerful jaws are critical assets since their main food source is the seeds inside conifer cones.

The most distinguishing feature of a tree squirrel is its tail, which accounts for about 40 per cent of body length. Not only does the tail aid in balance when performing spectacular acrobatics, but it also assists in regulating heat loss or gain (thermoregulation). Bundles of blood vessels at the base of the tail help retain heat in the body core or dissipate it more readily.  In addition, the tail is used for communicating; its orientation and movement convey information to other squirrels and predators. It also acts as the perfect parasol protecting against sun or rain.

Male and female tree squirrels are indistinguishable from a distance. They are the same size and their thick fur is light colored on the underside and relatively dark on the upper side. The dark color provides excellent camouflage from predators above while their pale underside enables them to blend against the light colored sky.

Tree squirrels are daytime (or diurnal) creatures with magnificent eyes that are able to differentiate certain colors like reds and greens. Their black whiskers are important tactile sensory organs and their superior intelligence is ascribed to their relatively large brain.

They rely heavily, but not exclusively, on tree seed as food.  In certain years, conifers produce an abundance of cones, tree scientists call this a mast crop. Unfortunately for tree squirrels, mast crops do not occur every year, hence it’s either feast or famine and population numbers fluctuate wildly according to availability of food. This presents an energy problem for an active critter whose heart beats between 150 and 450 beats per minute and does not hibernate during the winter.

So how do tree squirrels survive winter? They are prodigious workers and hoarders of food. They harvest whole conifer cones and store them in caches (called middens) that are underground, in hollow stumps or hollowed fallen logs. They must keep the cones moist to prevent them from drying out and shedding seeds. The squirrels have even been known to store cones in streams or springs where seed remains fresh for a year or more.

After awakening from hibernation both black and grizzly bears can often be seen raiding middens in search of any remaining protein-rich tree seeds.

Not all the seeds in caches are eaten. Some germinate and eventually become mature trees.

During the spring and summer, tree squirrels will eat a variety of foods from truffles to tree bark, tree buds, sap, insects, eggs and even mice.  Goshawks, owls, martens, fishers and bobcats prey on tree squirrels.

Perhaps most significant, the presence of native tree squirrels is a barometer of a forested ecosystem’s health, especially after a disturbance such as fire, insects or logging.

Save the Honeybees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6w-Z7XlnHI

Dr Reese Halter is a public speaker, conservation biologist and founder of the international conservation institute Global Forest Science. His most recent book is The Incomparable Honeybee and the Economics of Pollination http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Incomparable+HoneyBee+reese+halter&x=0&y=0 Contact him through http://DrReese.com

i’d like to thank the good people at current TV for putting three of my favorite artists in one episode. go behind the scenes with common, shopping with lykke li, and get an acoustic performance from bloc party. so. much. win.

- panda

So, for those of you who watch Current TV, you know who I’m talking about. For those of you who don’t watch Current TV, you should. And for those of you who don’t know what Current is, click here and check it out. It will rock your proverbial world.

Anyways, I digress. As much as I would love to go into a long, drawn out explanation of why and just how much I love Current TV (which I promise will come at a later date) the point of this post is a different story altogether.

Max and Jason are the two original hosts of Current TV (which by the way, is Emmy award winning, and owned by Al Gore! later date, shit. Continuing…) and they currently (ha) host a late night, hour long show called Max and Jason: Still Up,  which showcases short form documentaries about a wide range of subjects from ghostriding the whip, Burning Man, environmentally friendly upstarts, poverty in third world countries, and any and everything in between.

The point of this post is basically for me to say: I think I love them. On screen they basically look like they have just thrown on whatever was lying on their floor (this is a plus, not a minus, for me), they always wear TOMS shoes (hawt), they are liberal minded, artistic, and not to mention: totally cute.

I felt like I had moved past my days of teeny bopper Nsync’ obsessions (Yes I was obsessed with Nsync. Hey, give me a break, I was 13!) , but these two give my heart a lil flutter and I feel it coming back on. A real, life celebrity crush! I am such a dork. Especially because now I am choosing to air out this embarrassing little crush as the first post on my blog, which, oh, BY THE WAY LINDSEY, is available to whoever chooses to surf the world wide web.

On that note, I’m not sure which one I actually have a crush on. Sometimes I think Max, other times, I think Jason. Regardless, everyone should watch their show. The docs are always interesting, original and every night has a different theme. Oh, and, the hosts are really cute. I mean, just look at them! How adorable

Watch Max and Jason: Still Up on Current TV every night at 12 am Eastern/10 pm Central. You can also follow them on Twitter @maxandjason.

Peace out trouts

xx Linds

http://current.com/groups/vanguard/

My pick for video podcast of the week.

Just saw Laura Ling’s special on Vegas titled, “Lost Vegas” and it – was – haunting.

We all know by now that Rupert Murdoch is going to be launching pay-per-piece for News Corp, but will it really make a difference to the way news is spread? Yes, and no.

Although I’m sure some people will be turned off by the fact that they have to pay money to read that stupid puff piece, most people pay for daily papers and subscriptions to other article driven websites (such as Economist.com). I don’t really think it’s going to change the way that these people in particular will be viewing their news.

For those more digitally inclined, with the launch of the Kindle, I think newspaper subscriptions will be just as easy as having them on paper – Amazon already sells subscriptions in the US, so when the Kindle gets launched in Australia, many people who utilise the paper based articles or websites will be able to get their daily fix from subscribing; which in my opinion isn’t massively traumatising – as it is pretty much the same as subscribing to a paper copy.

For those who don’t want to pay for their news, they will always be able to find it. Think of news as a virus – one person launches the article, and it is spread everywhere – talking about it near the water cooler, tweeting, facebooking and just posting up a news article on a blog all are ways of spreading an article, for free! With all the stuff going around about RIAA and music royalties, you kind of hope it doesn’t end up happening with the news. But if Rupert Murdoch or any other big media player decides that if you don’t pay for the news then you can’t read it – thats when things will fall flat on it’s face, because most people are probably going to see that as censorship of the news instead of protecting intellectual property.

I can understand that journalists want to protect what they write – and they do get paid for it – but where are we getting most of our news from nowadays? Mashable has become such a big influence for social media news, and Twitter gives first hand experiences of events – remember the Hudson River crash, Michael Jackson’s death or the Iran Election; you even had the mainstream news articles referencing Twitter. Even writing this article I’m creating some form of opinion piece and could theoretically be called a journalist.

By the way I’m not saying I hate journalists. I think journalists are great for the major pieces where it’s more investigative (Laura Ling & Euna Lee from Current), rather than creating articles about protesting Facebook groups. Maybe selling news articles will encourage them to stop posting stupid puff pieces, and get to the hard hitting stuff?

Realistically though, there is absolutely no way you can stop people from hearing about the news. Sure, they may be getting the news from the second degree instead of being able to go to the news sites themselves, but in the end they are still hearing about it.