Staring in a Swedish film, takes less than 5 minutes and makes you look like a global hero in a professionally made short film. Tackfilm – tack means thank you in Swedish – is thanking Swedish citizens for paying their broadcasting fees. Subtitled and smart (upload your own pic, turn off sound and run the faster version if on slow connection) it’s a toy that can potentially teach more than clever marketing.

It conveys a sense of how easy it is making someone look pretty good – in this case it’s me who’s the hero: Tackfilm features Britta – in no less than 8 (!) appearances…stunning, almost convinced myself of being Sweden’s hero

The blogosphere is abuzz with news of the latest global warming scandal.  A latter day “Daniel Ellsberg” has released the climate equivalent of the Pentagon Papers onto the web.

In 1971 former Defense Department employee Daniel Ellsberg  turned over  a large collection of Pentagon  Vietnam War related documents   to the New York Times.  Recently an unknown whistler blower released 61 megabytes of  documents along with       emails involving communications between Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and various other scientists who support the claim that humans can raise  air temperatures by  increasing the amount of the magical  atmospheric gas  carbon dioxide (CO2).

Some of the old media are reporting this scandal, but most seem to be ignoring it.

John Delingpole on the London Telegraph site suggests:  “The Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)”

Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun suggests “the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory – a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below – emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down skeptics.”

Marc Sheppard points out the hypocrisy of Jones, et.al. criticizing the funding of their opponents.    Of the two documents that  mention funding for global warming claims it’s “the second document (potential-funding.doc) that tells the more compelling tale.  In addition to four government sources of potential CRU funding, it lists an equal number of “energy agencies” they might put the bite on.  Three — the Carbon Trust, the Northern Energy Initiative and the Energy Saving Trust – are UK-based consultancy and funding specialists promoting “new energy” technologies with the goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The fourth – Renewables North West — is an American company promoting the expansion of solar, wind and geothermal energy in the Pacific Northwest.”

Bishop Hill has an index of many of the emails for those interested in further reading.   There is also a searchable database.

These revelations aren’t the first that question  claims about global warming.  Lawrence Solomon reported that the Enron Corporation pushed global warming claims  in the 1990’s because of a desire to profit from trading  carbon credits.   Enron also felt it would benefit from encouraging use of  its natural gas holdings  over coal and petroleum.  Former Enron official Jeff Shields  has been associated with Renewables North West.

Will the old media continue to  ignore  evidence  that global warming is a fraud, or will they decide to expose it like they did Watergate and other past scandals?    Have old media reporters been ignoring the scandal because they are being paid to, or are they just too lazy to investigate claims of fraud?

There’s been a lot of talk about the end of television lately. You’ve heard it all. But one simple fact I heard today reminded me today of why television is doomed.

The end of the ratings period.

Yep, that old chestnut. But let’s stop and think for moment what it means and the legacy issues associated with the concept of the rating and non-rating periods.

It was something television could do. It could ‘have a holiday’. It could do this for one simple reason, it had no real competitors. TV broadcasters justified their actions too. They told us that their TV stars needed a break. They told us they were getting ready for the new season with great new episodes and shows. They told us we could enjoy our favourite re-runs. Sure we could go down the the video rental store, but it was much harder than turning on a television and a poor substitute at best.

Today, the end of the ratings period is a continued legacy which proves that broadcasters still don’t get it. We don’t care what time of year it is, we don;’t have to. We still spend money. The economy keeps churning. We still want current, new, exciting information and entertainment. Good news for us is that now we can go elsewhere to get it. And it’s more convenient than TV. It’s on demand, and uninterrupted. The fact that the ratings period still exists today has me flummoxed.

And as long as the television broadcasting industry thinks it can get away with it’s ‘holiday’, it is yet to understand what is happening. It alone is proof TV as an industry, is doomed. This little thing, the non-ratings period, is proof they don’t believe that is the end of their cosy little attention monopoly.

Good bye television, hope you enjoyed your stay.

In case you haven’t noticed I have been really focused on video from DSLRs. I really feel like this is the bridge that will span the gap between the “old” and “new” media and open new doors for current working visual journalists. For me, the problem has always been about missing the moment while gathering audio or shooting video instead of stills. With the new breed of DSLRs, video, and audio to some extent, is easier than ever to gather and takes less time to switch between the 2 formats. You no longer have to worry about missing the moment because even while shooting video its possible to take a “frame grab” that is easily high enough quality to run 3 columns wide. Audio is still a little cumbersome but with some more specialized equipment it can be accomplished.

I believe that with the large number of accessories for HDSLRs that have come onto the market since their introduction that I am not alone in my excitement. Companies such as Think Tank Photo, Zacuto, Red Rock Micro, CAVision and Hoodman are producing some great add-ons that will only make shooting video with HDSLRs even easier.

Long story short, you will definitely see projects that I will be working on posted here shot with Canon’s newest HDSLRs.

This is a great article in Miller-McCune, a great magazine which should be more widely read.  This line jumped out:

It’s obvious traditional media doesn’t quite have the authority it used to. Not when — after Rolling Stone pans my favorite artist’s new album — I can ignore the review, Google the title and, guaranteed, find some semi-influential blogger who (like me) is drooling over the “brilliant” music. Word-of-mouth, or perhaps just the sheer amount of dissenting or commending niche voices, will be king of this brave semi-new music world — what’s left of it anyway.

The consumers love it, but the Internet and its impact on advertising is scaring the crap out of many people: media, clients, agency folk too.

Newspapers are dying; television viewership is down. Advertising budgets have been slashed, social media is on the rise and the static life many enjoyed for decades is on its head.

Companies positioned ahead of this curve are in pretty good shape right now. They are selling their expertise and helping their clients manage the internal transitions and get some runs on the board.

But the companies that have delayed – or avoided – the shift are scrambling and being driven by imperatives beyond their control.

Everyday I seem to come across a new article on how agencies and clients are falling further behind the consumer.  It winds people up.

What our industry does – and does so well – is create compelling brands, and then foster relationships between consumers and those brands. So while the rules may be changing about where and how those engagements take place, the core of what we do isn’t changing.

What’s amazing is how many smart, generous people are out there helping to navigate the new terrain.  Subscribe to blogs by Seth Godin, Jay Baer or Michael Gass for great advice and insight.

Follow these guys on Twitter and hook up with some of their followers for even more informed voices.

Ironic how we turn to blogs, Twitter etc. for the lastest info. That’s when we start thinking like consumers, and not businesses, and the changes don’t seem so scary.

Check out the 11/16/09 PhD Comic:

They say nothing in life is certain except death and taxes. In my small nook of the world, the other certainty is the little house I pass going to and from work that plants hundreds of impatiens along the roadside every year. They start as small seedlings in early spring, and by the summer they are in full bloom and expertly filled in, forming a seamless blanket of colors along the sidewalk. This happens every year without fail. And now it’s November, we’ve had our first frost, and the impatiens are no more. But that’s okay; they’ll be back in 6 months, which is more than I can say in the fluctuating industry of advertising in which I am employed. The shakeups and changeups in this industry in just the past two or three years alone have been mind-blowing. On a regular basis the things you could count on are no more. Two years ago Internet advertising started taking over print, one year ago social media was introduced to us, and only six months ago it became the next up and coming thing, perhaps eventually replacing every type of advertising we know and love. I can’t help but wonder what’s coming this time NEXT year. At least I know for certain I can count on my impatiens being there, looking the same, and… even though they only last for six months… they always come back!

Are you excited about the new media, mourning the old media, or both? Let us know.

By,

Alyce Mayors-Sminkey

Alyce on: Facebook & LinkedIn

Anthony Moor, head editor of the Dallas Morning News is leaving the newspaper and traditional media journalism in order to join Internet giants Yahoo! The reasons he has given for leaving the newspaper sum-up the concerns and problems traditional media is up against if it is to survive as a viable alternative to the Internet and other new media in the upcoming years…

“I have wanted to work for a forward-leaning digital company for a long time. Part of this is recognition that newspapers have limited resources; they are saddled with legitimate legacy businesses that they have to focus on first.

“I am a digital guy and the digital world is evolving rapidly. I don’t want to have to wait for the traditional news industry to catch up”.

“Newspapers have limited resources” – new digital media is an entire ocean of resources compared to the slowly dripping tap that is traditional media.  Newspapers that are making the transition to the Internet need to realised and understand the parameters that are holding them back – they need to pay journalists, advertise and become economically viable, and are weighed against the millions of Blogs, non-profit websites and eager web-users desperate to get their point across.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/13/us-press-publishing-digital-media

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004042338&imw=Y

CBS (NYSE:CBS) and Sirius XM (NYSE:SIRI) pose the greatest investment risks among media companies based on a forensic measure of their transparency and the statistical reliability of their financial reporting and governance practices, according to new data from Audit Integrity. The probability for bankruptcy for Sirius is 8.5% and 4.6% for CBS. Both numbers are remarkably low, but still high for major US companies. Audit Integrity’s bankruptcy model achieved 90.9% accuracy in 2008 and 93.8% in 2009.

The safest companies for investors, based on the same measurement are Disney (NYSE:DIS) and  DirecTV (NYSE:DTV). The rest of the firms in the analysis are Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), Viacom (NYSE:VIA), Comcast (NYSE:CMCSA), Cablevision, (NYSE:CVC), GE (NYSE:GE), and Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC).

The Audit integrity analysis.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Many are interpreting the message of the new ABC show V as a thinly veiled attack on the Obama administration, intended to reach out to libertarian and conservative Tea Party activists. That’s probably the most obvious interpretation, as the Visitors bring “universal health care” (direct quote) to earth and encourage their human supporters to “spread hope,” all the while hiding a much more sinister agenda.

It would be a mistake to leave V’s criticism solely at the political level, though. While on the political level the plot certainly appears to be a shot across the bow of the Obama administration, on a cultural level this storyline is also a critique of our gullible culture.

More beneath the fold…

You’ll notice in the pilot episode that V is condemning at least three phenomena that have been impacting our culture in recent years. First, V takes on a mainstream media more consumed by its own ambition — ratings, ratings; sales, sales! — than concerned with asking tough questions and serving as a government watchdog. V also looks at a wishy-washy religious establishment that has forgotten how to be in the world but not of the world. Finally, V takes on a gullible culture that is willing to believe promises of hope and change from any pretty face.

Ambitious TV journalist Chad Decker provides a caricature of our mainstream media. Anna, leader of the Visitors, first notices Decker when he chastises his fellow journalists for being too hard on the newly arrived aliens. She seeks him out to become her go-to guy in the media and to conduct her first television interview. It quickly becomes apparent that Anna only wants Decker because she believes he will portray the Visitors in a positive light. At first, Decker balks at Anna’s insistence that he should essentially act as a vessel for Visitor propaganda; but his drive for journalistic stardom compels him to act as the Visitors’ chief propagandist in the end.

Compare this to an Obama administration that today is locked in a death match with Fox News, which the administration accuses of being nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. The White House is keeping its people away from Fox News and is reportedly even chastising Democratic strategists who appear on its shows. This could be an opportunity for the mainstream media to unite and insist that the Obama administration can’t demand favorable coverage for itself. Instead, the rest of the media sit idly by, content to provide Obama with soft coverage and let the White House marginalize Fox News to their benefit. Chad Decker is an accurate and disturbing portrayal of our mainstream media today.

V also offers criticism of a wishy-washy and credulous religious establishment. Father Jack Landry is a Catholic priest skeptical of the Visitors’ intentions and disturbed by the credulity of both the Catholic leadership at the Vatican and one of his colleagues in the priesthood. He sees his religious establishment as far too willing to believe that the Visitors have good intentions, and far too dismissive of the possibility that the secular devotion increasingly offered to the Visitors could lead people to seek their salvation in the newly arrived aliens rather than in God.

There are plenty of examples like this in our own culture, but the most recent was the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) decision to endorse PelosiCare following the passage of the Stupak amendment. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Stupak amendment prohibited the use of federal funds for abortion in PelosiCare. Aside from the fact that the Stupak amendment may be stripped from the bill before President Obama ever signs it, there were other issues that should have compelled a more skeptical USCCB to oppose PelosiCare. Health care rationing (AKA “death panels”) also conflicts with the culture of life that the Catholic Church has committed itself to building, while the tremendous deficit that PelosiCare will pass on to future generations should have given the bishops a few moral reservations as well.

Is it really so hard to believe that if sinister aliens came to earth tomorrow, our credulous and wishy-washy religious establishment wouldn’t take the bait — hook, line, and sinker?

Finally, V offers an indictment of a culture that has become not only willing but eager to accept promises of hope and change from any pretty face. It is noted that all of the Visitors are physically attractive. They’re young, they’re charismatic. They’ve got the so-called “wow factor.” Troubled teen Tyler Evans becomes enamored with the Visitors primarily because he’s enamored with the blond-haired, blue-eyed Lisa, a recruiter for the Visitors. The message that V is clearly sending is that our materialistic culture is ready to believe anybody with a nice figure or a pretty smile (or, for that matter, killer abs).

Who can really argue that point? In the 2008 Democratic primaries, Barack Obama was pitted against former First Lady and then-U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton. He promised change, but so did she; and she had the experience to make change happen. Yet the far less experienced but far more youthful, attractive, and charismatic Obama was able to convince Democratic voters — especially young adults, just like Tyler Evans — that despite any evidence that he could bring change, he would bring change. He repeated this act in the general election and voila, we’ve got a president who might be nice to look at but who is failing our country in every way.

Sure, on a political level V might be a thinly veiled attack on the Obama administration. But on the broader cultural level, it’s an indictment of a culture of gullibility that our country has embraced. The American people — aided by soft mainstream media and a wishy-washy and credulous religious establishment — hopped on the Obama bandwagon and its promises of hope and change. V is telling us that we need to be more careful. As is the case with reptilian aliens only dressed up in beautiful flesh, we may find that all the promises made to us are only skin deep.

Those who are interested should be sure to catch the pilot episode of V and tune in for the new episode on Tuesday at 8/7c.

Cross-posted to RedState.

“Anyone with a laptop thinks he’s a journalist.”

Are you talking about me?

Actually, I think I was one of the few people at last night’s panel discussion who wasn’t typing away as the four participants ruminated on “The Future of News.” (The incessant keyboard clacking behind my right ear was particularly irritating.) The event at Yale featured some of the usual hand-wringing among some veteran journalists  over the rise of the New Media (blogging, YouTube, Twitter, etc.) and the demise of the dinosaurish Old Media, a slow death many others seem to relish.

I don’t. And neither do the panelists: Ward Chamberlin, author of the opening quote, David Greenway, Robert Kaiser, and John Yemma. But we all seem resigned to the fact that changes are afoot, many of them not good. The Old Media is trying to adapt, but cultural and financial forces are a major obstacle.

Suffice to say, we will most likely not see again the Golden Age of American Journalism the four panelists represent. Between them, I would guess they have well over one hundreds years of experience. Chamberlin was present at the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR; Kaiser has worked for almost 50 years at the Washington Post, as both a reporter and editor; Greenway has been at the Post and the Boston Globe; and Yemma worked under Greenway at the Globe and now works for the Christian Science Monitor.

Ward Chamberlin

Ah, the Golden Age: Chamberlin recalled the days of Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow at CBS, and mentioned their news programs that not only recorded events, but shaped them, in particular Murrow’s piece on Joseph McCarthy. Friendly’s ethos, as recounted by Chamberlin: “What the American people aren’t told [by governments, corporations] may kill them.” Without investigative reporting, the kind that goes on for months and requires big bucks to finance, what New Media outlets are going to uncover the deadly, hidden truths? The Huffington Post? Hmm…

CBS News set a high standard for foreign reporting too, with bureaus around the world. All the panelists lamented the decline in foreign news, while globalization speeds along. How can we deal with the economic challenges India and China will present (are presenting), not to mention the security challenges of foreign terrorists, when several major papers have closed all their overseas bureaus, and TV news virtually ignores all but the most obvious foreign stories?

Robert Kaiser

For the Washington Post, Kaiser said, the salad days meant huge profits, now-unheard-of  levels of subscription “penetration” in the local market, and the kind of investigative reporting that helped bring down a felonious president. The Post once made $130 million in annual profits. It now loses about $100 million every year. Only the Post company’s cash cow, Kaplan Test Prep, keeps the newsgathering afloat. The other two remaining major dailies, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, also lose money.

New Media outlets are sometimes called aggregators, as bloggers gather up links and presents them in “their” news blogs (of course, most of the substantive links, the ones you regularly trust, go back to Old Media stories). The great papers were once aggregators of another kind, Kaiser said. They collected readers from a variety of backgrounds and gave them a common cultural identity. Everybody read about the JFK assassination or the first man on the moon. Now, the specialization of many New Media outlets fragments the audience, to the detriment of a sense of national culture (and forget about consensus). The papers also aggregated talent: Smart, young journalists wanted to work for the biggies, and they learned from smart old journalists and tried to keep some professional standards (in theory, anyway). The solitary bloggers are not part of a community, might have an ax to grind, just might not be any good. Some people like the free-for-all nature of it; so what if a little truth gets tossed aside along the way.

David Greenway

Greenway talked about the blurring of opinion and news. Now, I have always argued there is no such thing as objective news, but there is accurate news. The rise of opinion shows on news channels, especially Fox, seems to dampen the call for accuracy as networks put more emphasis on entertainment. On the Internet, Greenway says, the problem is even worse, since there is no gatekeeper of any kind, no concern for checking facts. Yes,  we should get a variety of viewspoints – though I doubt many people who rely solely on the New Media for their news do – but if all the views are just plain wrong, what kind of conclusions can you draw? Pretty ill-informed ones. Greenway sums it up: “Civil discourse is being debased and dumbed down.”

John Yemma - yes, another old (oldish) white guy...

Yemma approached the subject form a different angle. The CSM, in the name of cost cutting, has stopped printing its daily paper (a “green” decision as well) and put almost all its content on the Web. (Yes, even a non-profit news organization has to think about losing less money.) And who knows, Yemma says, online ads and some subscription services could even make a profit for the Monitor. Yemma says web traffic is up, though story word counts are down (folks can buy the CSM’s weekly newsmagazine for deeper analysis of key events), and he trumpets the up-to-the-minute nature of the e-paper, something that has made the Post’s and Times’s websites popular too. But those are Old Media newsgathers using modern tools; it’s not really New Media.

The CSM approach may or may not be a model for others in the Old Media. Other alternatives include the non-profit, independent online “newspapers” that are popping up, with income (usually from grants and the like) paying real reporters to cover local events. New Haven has one, among other cities. But again, for the national stories, the foreign, the deep investigative reports, you need the funding a large corporation provides.

Or a billionaire. The great urban newspapers were mostly founded by wealthy citizens of a community. They and their families ran the paper as a public service – and an ego boost – not a source of income. As those papers die off or get swallowed up, the bottom line replaces the sense of responsibility, of the duty to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Maybe it will take a Gates or Buffet to use some of his billions to endow a newspaper foundation. Of course, some sort of wall between the paper’s journalistic duties and their benefactors’ business interests would have to be erected.

Newspapers are a fairly new development in the world’s cultural history – less than 400 years old. Electronic newsgathering is a mere tyke. The tools change, the formats change. But there’s one constant, at least in America -  voters in a republic need access to accurate information from a source separate from vested interests. I know some New Media do that. And plenty of corporate Old Media is pretty well vested in the status quo. But the Drudge Report’s releasing a leaked memo or some guy videotaping a candidate saying “macaca” does not quite equal Murrow, Woodward, and Bernstein. (Though YouTube videos from Iranian protests were gripping, and the Internet does make it easier for Old Media companies to use foreign stringers to replace some of their shuttered bureaus.) Maybe the New Media will reach that level of relevance, as far as playing a role in meaningful civil discourse. But will it be something truly new that emerges from that media, or an adaptation of the Old Media to the new technology?

I close with quotes from two of the Founders on the importance of journalists, not bloviators and aggregators. Ben Franklin: “When Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.” And James Madison: “To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity, over error and oppression.” Let’s hope the New Media  lives up to those standards, and the Old Media that have strayed return to their roots.

I’m taking a break from my series of critiques on the types of Anarchism out there because a certain issue has eaten at my mind lately. Its about what are often referred to as ‘revolutions’.

I find it chillingly apt of JFK when he stated that “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”

Of course, I’m not so terribly concerned with the issue of peaceful revolution right now. Of course I see the proper way of dismantling the State and transitioning towards a stateless society is through a peaceful transition. My way of peaceful ‘revolution’ against Statism is to avoid the military, law enforcement or anywhere else in the public sector for career options, not accept the handouts from the government that I am supposedly eligible for seeing as how I only earn a certain amount below the threshold of taxable income, and… of course… most of all is my refusal to buy into the nonsense and mindless distractions and misdirections of mainstream corporate media and culture. I could make an entire post on how people can peacefully reject the State in their own lives, but that’s not the focus of this particular post.

I am talking more about violent revolution. That is when an armed and dangerous populace start shooting at their own government… or when military leaders decide they’re going to turn against their Commander In Chief and stage a coup. There is a lot of anxiety… a lot of fear right now in the United States… some of it warranted, most of it, though, not so much.

Anyway… there are people who are (apparently) ready to violently oppose President Obama. They think he’s this evil fascistic communist (those words don’t belong in the same sentence btw unless that sentence is something like ‘Fascism is the opposite dangerous extreme to Communism’), and they’re armed and ready to ‘water the tree of liberty’ (WWJD is starting to mean What Would Jefferson Do? ).

This is a very dangerous situation America has allowed itself to fall into… quite reminiscent of the last days of the Roman Republic. Remember that Julius Caesar was the leader of the left-wing faction of Rome’s political elite. He was a strong advocate of the welfare state, and he probably harboured more ‘liberal’ ideas of cultural identity than his right-wing opponents.

And of course, the right-wing of Rome’s political elite stoked the flames of fear in their base, convincing them that Caesar was a personal glory whore trying to buy a crown with the Gallic trinkets he’d plundered in his ‘illegal’ war in Gaul and crown himself king.

Now was he really looking to become  a king? This was a culture that absolutely detested monarchy. Like the Americans, their republic had a founding story written in the blood of Monarchists. I find it doubtful that Caesar really did want to be a king… but of course, we’ll never know… he never got to live to see the completion of his agenda.

So… of course, Caesar came back to Rome after a bloody civil war against Pompey and the other Optimates who sought to destroy him at the end of the Gallic War to a city in turmoil. Everything he could possibly have done in the republic led to violent resistance… so of course what does the head of a State do when he comes up against violent resistance? He declares martial law… he suspends the constitution and puts a freeze on all of the ‘lawful’ processes that separate a republic from a totalitarian regime.

The situation was so bad that he repeatedly extended the term of his dictatorship until eventually he just said ’screw this!’ and made himself ‘Dictator For Life’.

So already, the violent resistance to his ‘liberal’ agenda has made their fears of a potential tyrant into something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. They fear he’s a power-hungry tyrant, so they violently oppose him, therefore he seeks more power so he can overpower this resistance and ram his agenda down their throats.

So… this went on for some time until a handful of senators like Brutus and Cassius decided to stab him twenty three times on the Senate floor. Did they imagine that with each stab they were killing the evil monster that was eating the Republic away?

No… it is clear that each stab to Caesar’s chest was one more hammer strike that was nailing the coffin of their beloved republic. The very coffin in which the Republic was to be buried alive. But unlike Uma Thurman in Kill Bill who was a strong, healthy woman in her early-mid 30s with advanced assassin training and martial arts mastery bestowed by the great Kung Fu master Pai Mei, the Roman Republic was a sickly old maid barely strong enough to lift a finger, labouring for breath, bloated from centuries of imperialistic conquest. This lady would not be strong enough to punch through the solid wood of her coffin, as the Bride had done to avert her Texas style burial.

You see… those left within Caesar’s faction of the Roman political elite… particularly his nasty piece of work of a great nephew Octavian now had a martyr for their cause, and a very angry ‘liberal’ public ready to fall in line unquestioningly behind those who finally, once and for all, swept away most of the pretense of freedom for the Roman citizenry. Octavian used his great uncle’s legacy to devastating effect to eliminate not only the senators involved in Caesar’s murder, but his own rivals within his own political faction, and to eventually make himself what we in the present day would equate with being an ‘emperor’, and for the descendants of his line to inherit that position.

Of course, there was still some pretense of ‘freedom’ and ‘democratic process’ in Imperial Rome. They still had a Senate after all… but the violent cycle of revolution and counter-revolution in the last decades of B.C.E. had emasculated them as an institution. As for the Roman people… well they were treated to bread and circuses and other largess to distract them from the reality of their situation until the perpetual debt of the Empire became so great that their currency was badly debased, the protection of their borders was outsourced to Blackwat… er… I mean ‘barbarians’ who would eventually pillage the State from within, and the political elite continued to enjoy lavish lifestyles while all everyone else had to look forward to for themselves and their descendants was brutal serfdom as landless peasants for the next thousand years or so.

I worry that maybe with the building tensions within America, the largess of a bloated welfare state and its network of entrenched interests both private and public, a currency debased to less than 5% of its original value, a military that is having so much trouble maintaining the Empire that they’re outsourcing to ‘private contractors’ who seem to be raping and pillaging as they please wherever they’re deployed. I worry that we are seeing a repeat of both the Late Republic and Late Empire of Rome simultaneously.

Anything Obama could possibly do during his Presidency is going to be a potential catalyst for the next gruesome stage of this process of death and decay of Republic and Empire. And I worry about the rest of the world when the American ‘Empire’ finally breathes its last, laborious breath. Its not so much because of the much elevated values upon which America was supposedly founded… its more the grim prospects when it comes to what fills the vacuum in this global system of Nation-States as the dominant force in the world… my concern is that the result is going to be as ugly… perhaps even more so than the Dark Ages that followed the end of the child-emperor Romulus Augustus’ reign over the western half of the Roman world.

No… I don’t buy the ‘New World Order’ conspiracy theories. I am not talking about a deliberate process of subjugation of the global tax livestock (thanks Stefan Molyneux for that awesome analogy ) on the part of a secretive group of bankers, oil tycoons and the military-industrial complex conspiring to impose a highly repressive ‘One World Government’ as Zeitgeist the Movie would have you believe. This is more of an unconsciously complicit population from commoner to elite with deeply entrenched vested interest in this unsustainable system.

So… I’d like to appeal for calm in the next few years. It would do the world a huge favour if these concerned citizens could just calm down, take a step back, take a deep breath, and think this through. We need not subject this bloated, sickly empire to that same Texas style burial. Why not just let it naturally pass away with what little dignity is left to it, and move on gracefully? Mourn if you must… but lets see if we can move on with our lives and build a new world that does not depend on the power of a great ‘empire’ to keep us safe from the darkest aspects of our own human condition.

Do I honestly expect this appeal for calm to reach enough people? Well not really. Even if someone who reads this was to make this same appeal and spread the word… people of this day and age are conditioned to enjoy the distracting bread and circuses of junk food, fast food, Reality TV, Top 40 music and drunken debauchery, and those who are getting violent are extremely desperate, or incredibly stupid.

Note:  most of this post was cross-posted on the LSS blog.

One of the sessions at Local Social Summit ‘09 (btw – Here’s #LSS09 on Twitter) that I am very much looking forward (all the sessions will be good, but this one will rock) to is an interactive lab session being run by Praized’s Seb Provencher. The session is called: What does the Perfect Local Media Company Look Like in 5 Years Time. This lab should draw upon Seb’s excellent white paper – “I Have Seen the Future of Local Media” – from earlier this year.

At dinner last night we had a lively and interesting discussion with both Seb and Greg Sterling about this topic. The general consensus was that most traditional local media companies are quickly running out of time to start planning for their future. Greg also blogged about our discussion earlier today.

Our discussion around the future of local media seem to echo many trends and predictions that even Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt made last week at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009. The RWW team pulled together this very good 6 minute highlight video chop of Mr. Schmidt’s interview. Here’s the RWW post: Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years (well worth a read).

Below is the presentation Seb will run through during the lab tomorrow:

Quando il concetto si concretizza nell’immagine in movimento, parlata.

“E tutti votano.“

Capisci? Si decide a maggioranza!

Ma soprattutto:

“Facebook lo salterei. Facciamo TWITTER!”

Io non l’avrei saltato. Ma si sa, sono di parte.

“The archaeology of knowledge, as we have learned from Foucault, deals with discontinuities, gaps and absences, silence and ruptures, in opposition to historical discourse, which privileges the notion of continuity in order to re-affirm the possibility of subjectivity. ‘Archives are less concerned with memory than with the necessity to discard, erase, eliminate.’ Whereas historiography is founded on teleology and narrative closure, the archive is discontinuous, ruptured.”

 

-from Wolfgang Ernst, “Dis/continuities: Does the Archive Become Metaphorical in Multi-Media Space” in New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader edited by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan.

Today, at work, I reflected upon Foucault’s writing about the space and function of the archive while thinking about selection processes and collection development policies.  In particular, I was reflecting on our inheritance as library and archival professionals.  If you are paying attention, you realize that power and exclusion are two forces that have shaped (and continue to shape) our collections.  I have collaborated on a project that sought to interrogate this idea, but I was only able to do this from the privileged (and rare) liminal position as a scholar that was neither fully inside nor outside of the organization I was working with (1).

The above quotation taken from New Media, Old Media, which I was reading the other evening, brought me back to my thoughts about digital forms and how the digital realm changes the space for storing and accessing information (and, thus, producing knowledge).  This strain of thought fits nicely with the reflections in a recent post on diapsalmata, a blog a have been following recently.

Archives have always been about exclusion (the necessary other side of selective inclusion).  The point is to know and understand the implications of this and to then work responsibly within this reality. When extending this further to the web and “digital” archives or archives of the digital, it is important to realize that the limitations and prohibitions shift.  We must ask: What is lost?  What is made possible?  And we must be careful not to make the digital simply a space for virtualizing (or making metaphorical) models of past practices.  Unfortunately, this limited mode seems to be how much “imagining” of digital tools takes place.

Notes:

(1) Vincler, John. “Speaking to and through the archive: An exhibition of Puerto Rican materials at the Newberry Library curated by students from the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School in Chicago.” In 5th Prato Community Informatics & Development Informatics Conference 2008: ICTs for Social Inclusion: What is the Reality? Conference CD, edited by Graeme Johanson and Larry Stillman. Caulfield, Australia: Monash University, 2008. Also available online at http://www.ccnr.net/pratoconf2008/papers.htm.

{See the original quote in context here: http://books.google.com/books?id=jZoXKMOeBowC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22New%20media%2C%20old%20media%22&lr=&pg=PA105#v=onepage&q=&f=false }

Citeam azi pe BS ca PR-ul trece peste reporteri si comunica direct cu  consumatorii. Motivatia ar fi ca presa se confrunta cu reduceri de bugete, concedieri si chiar falimente. In acest context, PR-istii au dificultati din ce in ce mai mari in a gasi un suport media pentru informatiile pe care trebuie sa le comunice, astfel incat, spune articolul de mai sus, au inceput sa recurga la alte solutii care nu mai implica comunicarea cu presa ci o directa comunicare catre consumatorii finali.

Potrivit publicatiei AdAge, citata de Business Standard, Mark Hass, CEO al agentiei MH Group Communications, spune ca unul dintre clientii sai din industria auto a ales sa foloseasca platforma YouTube in mod agresiv, ca modalitate de a ajunge direct la consumatori.

“Inca mai au traditionalele evenimente, unde jurnalistii sunt invitati sa testeze masinile si apoi sa scrie despre ele, insa acest tip de comunicare devine din ce in ce mai putin important”, a explicat Hass.

In acelasi timp, domnul de mai sus spune ca solutia mai are si un avantaj, respectiv acela ca dispare filtrarea informatiei de catre jurnalist (gatekeeping). El mai precizeaza ca, pe langa controlul complet asupra mesajului transmis, un alt avantaj al acestui tip de promovare este reprezentant de faptul ca audienta atinsa nu se mai limiteaza la cititorii de ziare si reviste.

“Construiesti un canal pe You­Tube si obtii milioane de vizualizari. Iar acesti oameni vin de peste tot si este clar ca sunt interesati de produsul tau, spre deosebire de cititorii unui ziar. Daca ai fi vrut sa atingi atatia oameni folosind media traditionala, ar fi trebuit sa iti plasezi materialele in zeci de locuri, prin mai multe medii si modalitati de promovare.”

Acum, nu sunt eu in masura sa fac obiectii cu privire la cele spuse de domnul de mai sus in articolul citat de BS. Insa ma pun de-a curmezisul

Prin urmare, nu cred ca perioada de criza este factorul/motivul definitoriu pentru care PR-ul mai sare presa si comunica direct catre consumatori. Motivul principal este noua era comunicationala web 2.0. Acum principalii gatekeepers sunt bloggerii, noii lideri de opinie se gasesc pe retelele de social media intrucat web-ul, in stadiul lui maximum de interactivitate, este acum ce-a fost presa, radioul si televiziunea la momentul lor de glorie. Ceea ce vedem noi acum nu este decat o schimbare a raportului de forte si de influenta. La fel ca si celelalte medii web-ul este un mijloc de comunicare, este noul instrument de comunicare. Nimeni nu cred ca va renunta la presa, old media, ci doar ca acum proportiile din mixul de media arata radical schimbat, dupa cum este si normal. Insusi domnul citat in material spune ca se foloseste in continuare media traditionala. Insa acum pe langa jurnalisti mai vorbesti si cu bloggerii, ii inviti la cafele, le dai produse la testat, etc.

Da, este adevarat ca ai un control mai mare asupra mesajului insa nu scapi de gatekeeping si in nici un caz de feedback. Din punctul meu de vedere, filtrarea o va face chiar consumatorul final prin prisma aceluiasi mijloc prin care o companie bombardeaza web-ul cu mesajele sale. De cate ori nu se intampla sa vezi spoof-uri negative, articole pe bloguri, forumuri, facebook, twitter care hulesc o companie si  produsele si serviciile sale? In consecinta un control complet asupra mesajului nu confera automat si un control asupra reactiilor.

In concluzie, web 2.0, new media sau cum vreti voi sa ii spuneti are avantajele si dezavantajele sale asa cum le au si celelalte media.

Not too many years ago, one senior newspaper executive said that there was nothing wrong with cutting costs but that, eventually, a company could cut so much that it would disappear up its own arse. The Audit Bureau of Circulations yesterday reported that the average American newspaper lost 10% of its circulation in the six months ending September 30, based on the 379 papers that filed data with the firm. All of the country’s largest newspapers do so. Some of the most well-known newspapers in the industry reduced their circulations much more than 10%. USA Today, the Gannett (NYSE:GCI) flagship, had a drop of over 17% to 1,900,116. The Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT), had a fall of more than 18% to 264,105.

Newspapers have sent out copies on which they lose money, based on what subscribers would pay them, for years. Some of the copies were sold at sharply discounted prices, and others were sold to people so far from the printing presses that the distribution costs were relatively enormous. The industry believed, and was right in believing, that advertising sold into those copies would make them profitable. That worked until the Internet ruined the industry.

Newspapers are in the midst of a retrenchment that they cannot avoid and part of that retrenchment is cutting back circulation. The problem with the process is that advertisers want to pay less when they have their advertising running in fewer papers. A reduction in circulation means that advertising rates drop down and the road to profit becomes much less certain.

Newspapers had hoped that putting their brands and content online would bring in enough internet advertising revenue so it would make up for the money being lost on their print editions. They found out this year that it is not that easy. Most large online newspapers had falling advertising revenue during the first three quarters of this year. It is rare to find a newspaper where online revenue is 10% of total company sales. This is simply not enough to make much of a difference.

The industry is experimenting with other ways to solve its problem of falling revenue and rising losses. In Detroit, the daily newspaper is not available daily. A subscriber can only get The Detroit News and The Detroit Free Press on Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday. The program saves a lot of money in printing and distribution and undoubtedly allowed the companies to lay off workers. But, advertisers can no longer buy advertising on the four “paper-less” days, which is a lot of money for the newspapers to give up.

Business executives and scientists, unlike theologians and psychologists, believe that every problem has a solution. Unfortunately, that is not true. The best minds in the media industry have been working on the newspaper puzzle for years. Not a single person has come up with a workable solution to the industry’s problems, probably because there isn’t one.

Newspapers can buy time by cutting circulation and people to save costs. An economic recovery may buy the industry even more time. It has been said far too often, but, with the new September 30 circulation figures in hand, it is worth saying again. For the newspaper industry a huge success on the Internet is all that is left. All the other options are gone.

Douglas A. McIntyre

The music industry never saw the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPod coming. The iPod was an expensive toy when it was introduced in 2001. There was no reason to think it would do well. Digital multimedia players were not part of mainstream consumer electronics.

The music industry has trouble tracking its own sales but data from research firm NPD indicate that Apple’s ITunes download store made up for 25% of all music unit sales in the first half of the year. The portion of the market held by CDs is now 65% and falling. The record industry hates Apple for taking what analysts believe is 10 cents on every 99 cent song downloaded. The industry hates Apple for having control over content distribution and pricing, but it loves Apple for the checks it writes to music publishers and artists every year.

Many executives at the largest media companies have been concerned for several years that they will have the same problems with their premium video content as they did with their music. The films and TV shows are pirated and sent around the Internet by file sharing services. The media companies get no income from that.  Studios and TV producers are currently experimenting with scores of distribution schemes. Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) has suggested that a consumer with a cable subscription should be able to watch the video content he would get on his TV on any device that he owns. A Time Warner (NYSE:TWC) customer could watch HBO on his phone, his PC, or his iPod. Other large media companies are putting their video content on advertising-supported Internet sites, the most visible being Hulu. Most of the industry hopes that Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube will be able to start a similar service because it has by far and away the largest number of video views of any website in the world.

There are some media companies that want to more closely control who can see their content and when. They use services like the Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) movie streaming service which sends premium content to people’s homes, but these customers cannot take that video and watch it on their iPods or send it to a friend.

So far, no new means of digital distribution of video content has been anywhere nearly as successful as the traditional theatrical release followed by DVD sales model which has kept the industry rich for years.

There have been rumors for months that Apple will launch a tablet PC. It will probably look like a very large iPod with a 10 inch screen. It will be thinner than most laptops and will not have a separate keyboard. It will be, in essence, as close to a portable TV screen as any other widely available device.

Steve Jobs is certainly not the sort of person who would take advantage of a struggling industry’s hardships, but he is an entrepreneur and knows a good opportunity when he sees it. Apple controls the high-end of the PC market and is in the process of taking ownership of the high-end of the cellular handset business. Jobs has an iTunes store that has already been used to download over two billion applications for the iPod and iPhone and to distribute hundreds of billions of songs. The iTunes store is already one of the most important points of distribution for movies and TV shows in the world. The hardware disadvantage Apple has is that many consumers do not want to watch a movie on a 2-inch handset or iPod screen or a bulky laptop. A tablet is neither of those. It is, in fact, a nearly perfect video viewing device.

Apple does not have the answer to all the video industry’s digital distribution problems, but it has a partial answer to many of them. Large media companies may not want to hear those answers because they mean Apple gets a large measure of pricing and distribution control. But, that may be better than the alternatives of piracy and online advertising models that have shown little promise of economic reward.

Jobs has a history of being in the right place at the right time with the right product, all almost certainly by design. He controls the world’s largest digital content store and he controls many of the world’s small multimedia screens because Apple has sold over 200 million iPods and 34 million iPhones. The Apple tablet PC is likely to take the digital video industry by storm whether the large media companies like it or not.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Daily circulation at the nation’s newspapers dropped 10% for the six months ending September 30 according to industry measurement service Audit Bureau of Circulations.

It is not clear whether newspapers are helping themselves by shrinking both the size of the pages they are printed on and the number of daily subscribers that they have. The industry’s theory is that if it charges more for newsstand copies and home delivery that marginal readers will fall away and profit-per-reader will rise.

The only problem with a shrinking reader base is that advertising rates have to come down as well. Fewer readers, and advertisers want a better deal.

Of course, newspapers hope to bring in money from their online editions to make up for falling print circulation and advertising sales. That has not worked. Online revenue at most large dailies fell last year. Publicly held chains say that online revenue is now 6% to 12% of total sales, and that is not enough to offset a collapse in their traditional businesses.

Most large newspaper are taking the gamble that less is more and letting their paid circulations fall sharply. For the six-month period ending September 30, the average daily circulation of The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) fell 7.3% to 927,851.  The Times Company also owns The Boston Globe where circulation fell 18.5% to 264,105. USA Today, flagship of Gannett (NYSE:GCI), watched 17.2% of its circulation go away dropping it to a daily average of 1,900,116. The circulation of The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) dropped 6.4% to 582,844.

News Corp’s (NYSE:NWS) two large US newspapers posted very different results. The average daily paid circulation of The Wall Street Journal fell only .6% to 2,024,269. The New York Post dropped 18.8% to 508,042.

Douglas A. McIntyre

New Media, Old Media, and E-readers

• Barnes and Noble’s e-reader, the Nook, looks promising as  Kindle competitor (and book sharing device!).

• The Rumpus’ account of last week’s New Yorker Festival is titled “James Franco’s Face.”

• Jacket Copy suggests that because their paper gave Le Clézio’s Désert a bad review, that the Nobel Prize in Literature is becoming “esoteric” and “wrong-headed.” Ugh, close-minded print newspaper.

• And now to take back the above statement about print media back with Harper’s lovely “Blake–To Autumn.” Illuminating.

Interesting Academia

• Thomas Fleming on “The ‘Sin’ of Humility.”

• A video of Tony Judt’s lecture “What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy.”

• A scientific explanation of why males cat-call females on the street.  I always blamed it on the nature of the city, but I guess it’s primeval.

Business and Politics

• Obama’s looking to make things harder for huge business, thus easier for the small ones.

First Portfolio, the business magazine launched just two years ago by publishing giant Conde Nast, folded. Then, the largest business magazine in America, BusinessWeek, was sold by its parent company, McGraw-Hill (MHP), to Bloomberg for as little as $3 million plus its subscription liabilities. Now, Fortune, started by Time, Inc. founder Henry Luce, will cut its publishing frequency from 25 times a year to 18 times. According to several media reports, Time, Inc. will also cut several hundred jobs. Time, Inc. is part of media giant Time Warner (TWX).

Like BusinessWeek, Fortune began publishing during The Great Depression in 1930, when it came onto the market bearing the steep price tag of $1 an issue. It was printed on heavy paper and contained a sustained level of expensive photography and illustrations not found in other business magazines. Fortune published monthly until 1978, when it changed it frequency to fortnightly in order to match the publishing schedule of rival Forbes.

Read more…

///// In 3 (three) parts – making the universe sonorous, listening to space.

______________________

Part 1 – The movement of artistic sonic production from structured musical works toward sonic landscapes.

Aurora Musicalis – Brian Eno

An interview with Art Forum in which Brian Eno speaks about his invention of Ambient music and the making of sounds in the form of a landscape rather than the form of a musical piece.

Important quote -

* “Classical music works around a body of “refined” sounds — sounds that are separate from the sounds of the world, pure and musical. There is a sharp distinction between “music” and “noise,” just as there is a distinction between the musician and the audience. I like blurring those distinctions — I like to work with all the complex sounds on the way out to the horizon, to pure noise, like the hum of London. If you sit in Hyde Park just far enough away from the traffic so that you don’t perceive any of its specific details, you just hear the average of the whole thing. And it’s such a beautiful sound.”

_________________

Part 2 – On the synaesthetic expressiveness of analog recording technologies.

Primal Sound – Rilke

A piece written by Rainer Maria Rilke on the potential of  recording logic to produce sound where there was none rather than re-produce it. (Also touched upon about a year ago here)

Important Quote -

“What is it that repeatedly presents itself to my mind? It is this: The coronal suture of the skull (this would first have to be investigated) has–let us assume–a certain similarity to the closely wavy line which the needle of a phonograph engraves on the receiving, rotating cylinder of the apparatus. What if one changed the needle and directed it on its return journey along a tracing which was not derived from the graphic translation of a sound, but existed of itself naturally–well: to put it plainly, along the coronal suture, for example. What would happen?”

_____________

Part 3 – On making the planets sonorous.

NASA’s “Symphonies of the Planets”

Voyager recordings of the electromagnetic transmissions of various planets. Recorded, converted into sound and released. (Now out of print.)