media future universe

Censoring the Internet

2010-01-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

It turns out china is not the only government looking for ways to
censor or restrict internet use.

Yahoo appears to be the only company that has joined Google's call to fight internet censorship in China. While supports in China set up a makeshift shrine outside Google headquarters fearing that this could mean the end for the King of Search in China.

Google's Dispute with China has revived talk of a Global Online Freedom Act that would punish companies for sharing users info with "internet-restricting" companies.

Many people in China have found holes in the Great Fire Wall that allow them to gain access to restricted sites like Facebook and Youtube.

The Italy government is looking to introduce a law that would force people to obtain authorization form the communication ministry to post video on Youtube.

Now the newspaper fits in your Pocket

2008-07-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

This story in The New York Times states that Verve Wireless has come up with a way to help local newspapers bring their product to the 40 million people in the U.S. that actively use their cell phone to go online. Verve Wireless provides publishing technologies to create newspaper websites for cell phones in exchange for a share of the ad revenue.

The Associated Press, Verve's biggest customer, made an investment of $3 million to finance the company, based Encinitas, CA. Verve already provides mobile versions of 4,000 newspapers from 140 publishers.

Verve's chief executive, Art Howe said mobile versions of Web sites “cannot just be Internet lite,” they must be redesigned to better fit this new medium of cell phones and PDAs. Verve designed a application for the iPhone one that lets users look through the day's headlines, save articles to read later and send articles to friends.

“Mobile is actually a better way to reach people than print or even Web. It’s versatile, immediate, travels and is just as compelling,” said Howe. With Verve' software publishers can place national ad campaigns on their sites or upload local ads to their cellphone sites.

Philadelphia Magazine, for example, sent readers of its Verve-developed Web site a text message offering $4 grapefruit cocktails and half-price appetizers at a local bar.

Mobile companies hope the ad customization that cellphones offer will encourage advertisers to spend more for ads on cellphones.

Advertisers will spend only $1.6 billion on mobile ads this year, while spending $26 billion online, predicts eMarketer, a marketing research firm.

While their is a hugh potential for growth in mobile readership and advertising I think it will take a three to five years for this market to really take off and for companies to realize that they can reach potential customers by advertising on mobile sites.

My personal cell phone, a cheap, Samsung SGH A707 only lets me look up news on CNN.com and it only lets you browse through a list of different news categories. Even people who have the iPhone run into areas where their internet connection is slow or does not work because they cannot find a wireless network.

Reading a newspaper or a book on the small scree of a cellphone or PDA or a electronic book reader is never going to be as easy as reading on a laptop or reading the print copy. Its like watching a movie on a big screen TV and then watching it on a portable DVD player.

I think that most people who have iPhones only use it to surf the internet when they have to. They use when they are at work, stung in an airport or, taking the subway. Most people would rather open up their laptop or buy a print copy then read on a screen so small that you have to squint at it if they really wanted to spend a few minutes reading the paper. I think most people would rather watch a movie on a big screen TV rather then their laptop or a portable DVD player.

Surfing the web on your cell phones is good for finding out quick facts like the weather, sports scores and stock updates if you cannot get to you computer or you do not want to wait for your laptop to start up. How many "CrackBerry" do you that spend several hours every week reading the paper? The PDA and the cellphone are great devices for keeping in touch with friends no matter how far away you are but not for reading.

I think that people who do spend a lot of time surfing the internet on their cellphone get most of their news from TV news and rarely read any of the copy below the headlines when they glance at the local paper.

Creating mobile websites for local newspapers will help them to increase their ad revenues but I think it will do little to help them improve circulation or increase the number of people who read the paper everyday.

This is another tool that newspapers should jump on to make their product more accessible to more readers but in the end it will do little to solve the revenue problems that the newspaper industry is facing.

Fencing off free speech

2008-07-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

This article and an article in the Chicago Tribune (protest sites for Olympics) that talks about how the Chinese are creating "free speech zones" for people who want to protest in public during the Olympics made me wonder

How can you say you are for freedom of speech on one hand and then insist that if people want to protest in public they must do it in a designated area far away from major political events?

Just as Chinese officials are trying to keep the Olympics from becoming to political officials in Denver and the twin cities are trying to keep the conventions from becoming to political and unpredictable. Denver wants to use the conventions as a world stage to showcase what so great about their cities and the great states of Colorado. They want people to visit Denver. Which is good idea, considering you can travel hundreds of miles to an exotic city without having to change you currency.

The thing is these great cities can still get a good PR boost without having to wall off free speech and keep their plans control the protesters a secret.

It is disturbing to hear about the increased secrecy over what the way the police plan to deal with protesters and what equipment they are planning to purchase to control crowds that could grow as large as the crowd that met Obama in Berlin yesterday.

The refusal of the Denver police to turn over records of the equipment they plan to purchase for crowd control and what they plan to do with unruly protesters have created an atmosphere that is ripe for rumor s and speculation.

This atmosphere has given credence to ridiculous rumors like the police are planning to buy devices that use sound waves to causing them to lose control of their bowels. This system was called the "brown note" in some corners.

Why would anyone believe a rumor that police would resort to using a "Brown Note" against protesters? How could they possibly clean up the mess?

Apparently Denver city officials were afraid that someone would. On Wednesday they told Rocky Mountain News that these rumors were false and insisted that the equipment that they are buying would not include "microwave or sonic waves or weapons that use "slime" or "goo" to immobilize protesters" according to a Fox News article.

Now that we known they are not planning on hiring the GhostBusters, or that Marc Summers from the Nickelodeon's Double Dare. Unfortunately we still cannot rule out if they plan to use sharks with laser beams on their heads.

Until the police realize the details to the public they will never be able to escape the rumors and speculation that will fly all over the internet and eventually leak out into the mainstream media.

"Free speech zones" weather they are in Beijing, a city known for keeping secrets or Denver is a violation of our freedom of speech because it creates a physical barrier between the people and the politicians and the media covering the event.

In the case of the DNC convention, Denver is planning to keep protesters couped up in a cage made of chicken wire and chain link fences that are more than 600 yards from the convention.

Those who attempt to exercise their First Amendment rights outside this makeshift cage, which is partially obscured by trees and sculptures, will be arrested.

According to an editorial in the White Mountain Independent (a small Colorado paper)
John W. Whitehead,

Whitehead points out that even some members of the media are so scared that protesters could disturb their broadcasts or endanger their reporters that they are using Denver officials to keep protesters away from media tents.

It is the job of the media to cover protesters to brave unruly situations and cover all sides of the story of the convention. They must cover the protesters outside of the convention center and keep the Democratic party from dictating the coverage of the event.

Protesters are only perceived as dangerous because their message challenges the status quo. It's the message that is feared. Thus, efforts to confine and control the dissenters are really efforts to confine and control their political messages, whatever those might be.

Free speech zones and all the secrecy that goes with them are not only unconstitutional by unpractical for Denver. By restricting where protesters can go to a few areas far from the action you are enticing them to do more in a desperate attempt to grab the attention of the press.

If you make them feel like they voice cannot be heard because they are physically kept hundreds of feet away from everyone that is participating in the conventions some protesters are more likely to protest in ways in more extreme and even violent ways. Some protesters will come to the free speech zones with the attitude that the only way to get reporters to bring their cameras over and take a peek at what they are doing is to get on the nerves of the police.

Fencing off protesters and keeping them out of the action sends the message to people all over the county that they are really two Americans. ( to steal a line from a famous speech of John Edwards) The connected: politicians who claim to represent the people, corporate tycoons and really rich people and the unconnected; everyone else who lack the money and fame to get their voice heard.
If protesters felt like someone in the convention was willing to listen to their cries if they felt like they did not have to create a chaotic situation to get the attention of the media they might be more likely to corporate.

The protesters need to a reason to believe that some of the politicians did not come all this way just to grandstand and preach from their bully pulpit. They did not come from all over the country and all over the world to be treated like terrorists suspects and extremists.

When political protest is caged, it's not just the rights of a few protesters that are at stake. The very definition of freedom is in danger.

Putting physical barriers between protesters and everyone that has a ticket to the convention endanger the definition of freedom that this country was founded on. The bill of rights was written to give freedom to the people that could only be restricted in extreme circumstances.

Citizens were given the freedoms that are guaranteed in the bill of rights to make the government fear the people. Thanks to the paranoia of terrorism in the wake of September 11 terrorists attacks citizens fear the government more then ever before.

In Beijing the International Olympic Committee's chief coordinator, Hein Verbruggen believes that by creating "free speech zones" the IOC is "Showing that Beijing is serious about human rights."

According to Olympics security director Liu Shaowu "free speech zones" give Chinese citizens an opportunity to exercise their freedom of speech that they were given by Chinese law.

"Chinese law guarantees the legal rights of demonstration and assembly," Liu said.

By fencing off protesters Denver officials are lowing themselves to the standards of the Chinese by caging protesters. In China any sign of lowering restrictions on freedom of speech is sen as a sign that the government is giving in to public pressure and actually listening to the people. In American where are freedom of speech is guaranteed by the constitution any sign that the government is trying to cutoff the average citizens from public debate and keep them out of the political process.

Citizen Journalists pays the ultimate price

2008-01-19T01:55:00.000-08:00

Wei Wenhau: the first citizen journalist to be killed? | Newsblog | Guardian Unlimited: "Tianmen."

Chinese man is murdered for filming a fight between city officials and villagers.

"On Monday, Wei Wenhau accidentally found himself a witness to a confrontation in the town where he lived in Hubei, a central Chinese province.

Villagers were quarreling with city officials who had arrived in the area to dump waste near their homes. When the officials started to unload the rubbish, a scuffle broke out.

Wenhau worked at a senior level for a construction company and was also a member of the Communist party. He was an upstanding member of the community and on seeing the violence he thought he'd record it.

Reports indicate that Wenhau was hauled out of his car and set on by all the government workers - about 50 of them. He was reportedly attacked for a period of five minutes."

The story of Wei Wenhau's death only came to light as a result of a blogger Paul Walsh. His blog was shut down shortly after his site was overrun by posts attacking the Chinese government.

In a democracy the free press are responsible for holding the government, corporations and anyone else with power accountable to the citizens to make sure they adhere to the rule of law In a dictatorship like China, where the government imposes its will on the people with the rule of fear the citizens have no one to turn to.

Citizen Journalists take on the government imposes on its people by taking up cameras and writing in blogs to bring there brutality to light.

To continue to push for free speech and democracy across the globe America should protest censorship wherever it arises.

Instead of standing by Taiwan and the Bush administration warned Taiwan nine times last year against voting for a referendum to apply to the United Nations as a country separate from China.

We must led the Taiwanese determine how they want to declare their independence from China.

If American does not speak out against China and support citizen Journalists in the effort to bring the truth to the world China's influence will only continue to grow. The ability of China's government to transform their economy, build enough power plants to keep it growing and take on epic architectural feats such as the Three Gorges Damn project have encourage other tyrants. China is inspiring new and old tyrants by providing them with a blueprint of how to impose your will on the people and grow your economy at the same time.

The best way that America can derail this blueprint is by supporting citizen journalists in China to shame the government by bring the truth to light. We have to show then the extreme poverty that still exists throughout the country. We have show how government officials use brutality to strike fear in the eyes of the citizens. Most of all we have to keep the memory of Wei Wenhau alive. No matter how hard the Chinese try to build a firewall to keep out the ideas of the free world the truth will always fine a way to slip through the cracks.

The best thing that we can do as Journalists and citizens is to keep talking about the injustices that continue to go on in China. As the Olympics approach us China will look for any way it can to drum up positive media stories to make it look like the government is more concerned with improving the lives of ordinary citizens then with maintains control. We must tune out the propaganda and bring the stories of citizen journalists to light so that the public can see both sides of the next superpower.

Google's Evils: Internet privacy and Censorship

2007-07-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

Microsoft and Yahoo both plan to add new measures to their search engines that are support to make all search data anonymous and therefore almost useless after a certain number of months. Microsoft would erase identifying data after 18 months and Yahoo will make all search data anonymous after only 13 months.

These announcements come a month after Privacy International released a report that called Google "Hostile to privacy" for not protecting the privacy of user information.

Some people question if other search engines really do less Evil to user privacy then Google.

Despite all the personal information that Google has amassed:
Google has never leaked personal data or shared it with the government.

As a result of Microsoft;'s announcement Google said that it has also decided to make user data anonymous after 18 months.

Only Ask.com has created a service called AskEraser a search option that erases all history of Ask searches.

These announcements make me wonder; Can any of these measures really protect user information?

Can you really keep search data private?

especially after AOL released search search records of 650,000 of its users in August 2006 to the U.S. Department of Justice.

What if AOL told the the Department of Justice that they have enacted a measure to make users data anonymous and that they had no way of recovering this data? Does anyone think the federal government would ever by that excuse?

What will happen the next time (Yahoo 'helped jail China writer') China asks Yahoo for the privacy information on users that are speaking out against the government?

Do users really care if advertising companies and government agencies look at their search data?

While it may seem unnerving to some that the government can force search engines to hand over search data and personal information I think Americans have much bigger privacy concerns to deal with.

After all the press about the NSA's warrant less wiretapping program we still do not know a lot about who was targeted or what standards if any the NSA had to meet to get permission to tape someone's phone line.

The Bush administration has kept Congress from reading classified documents on the program by claiming executive privilege. So Congress recently dropped a subponea on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush.

I think that the most evil thing that Google and other search engines are doing is going along with China's attempt to censor search results.

While I believe that people will eventually find a few to get the truth through cracks in the great firewall of China taking part in censorship with keep millions in the dark.

China still believes that they can maintain their power by keeping their citizens uneducated. The Internet has made it very easy for the common person to educated himself on any subject they choose.

Google has asked U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers like tariffs. China is not the only country that is afraid of the power that the Internet provides.

A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship.

Apparently the Great Chinese firewall does not extend to Google Earth. Research Hans Kristensen posted the first photo of what is believed to be a Jin-class Submarine to the Strategic Security blog on the Federation of American Scientists web site.

Since Google Earth has been around for a couple of years now it is hard for me to believe that China did not see this coming.

Converting bloggers to vloggers

2007-07-23T16:04:00.000-07:00

Have you ever watch a YouTube video on a computer with a slow connection and after playing three seconds the video freezes. And you have to restart the video twenty times just to get past the first thirty seconds?

According to this article Internet providers will soon give more people the ability to explore the vast library of videos that are available on the Internet without wondering if their Internet connection can handle it.

Faster Internet speed has already made huge leaps in e-commerce and how people get the news.

With faster Internet people who used to organize social gatherings and debate issues on MySpace to take the next step by watching and creating videos on YouTube.

It is also giving bloggers a chance to step out from behind the current of anonymity and show the world what they are really talking about through vlogs.

While you can already buy a cheap web camera at Best Buy for under $50 Sony has created pocket size web cam that allows you to publish videos directly to web file-sharing sites or to your personal vlog that will only set you back $200.

While YouTube already allows you to upload video from cell phones this camera will allow vloggers to store up to five hours on a 2 gigabyte memory stick Pro Duo media card.

The GC1 Net-Sharing CAM will be available in September.

"Comcast is reportedly working on technology to provide broadband speeds of up to 160 megabits per second, roughly 26 times faster than its current 6-megabit service."

Maybe in five to ten years it will reduce the time it takes to download a movie from several hours to a day to a matter of minutes.

Right now faster Internet connections are allowing more people to watch videos on YouTube, catch up on old episodes of their favorite TV shows and watch streaming TV channels through services like Joost.

It is not only opening more eyes to the power of the Internet superhighway but it is giving them a chance to interact and use it to get their individual message out there. It is pushing inter connectivity to its limits and it is letting us access information on any subject we desire in a matter of seconds.

The more people use the Internet the better of a tool it will be in helping people to connect and take part in the global debate.

Google understands this and has made a bid of $4.6 billion in the upcoming federal auction of spectrum to break the strangle hold that phone companies and cable companies have had over high speed Internet access.

"That would be revolutionary," said Bob Williams, director of Consumers Union's HearUsNow.org, a website that promotes telecommunications competition.

"If you want high-speed Internet service, you basically have a choice of two, and in a lot of places you don't have any choice ... and that situation has to change."

Google wants to stop cable and phone companies from continuing to raise their rates because they have virtually no competition.

Wireless companies control all access to the spectrum they license from the government, which is why Apple Inc.'s iPhone can't be used on any network other than AT&T's.

Under Google's plan, people could connect any device to any network and run any software they want on their phones, including free Internet-based calling systems such as Skype.

This is what we need to make the Internet cheap enough so more people can use the Internet to its full potential on all their electronic devices from home computers to cell phones.

As the Internet becomes cheaper more people will use it when more people use it ad rates will go up way way up and maybe just maybe people will stop telling us that print media is a dying industry.

Google is trying to speed up this process. Adding competition to the high speed Internet market could free millions from slow Internet connects and give them the power to interact with the information superhighway instead of just observing it.

Are newspapers gone forever?

2007-05-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

Is someone trying to buy Reuters?

Over the last two weeks it seems like more and more major media organization are vulnerable for takeover by a major corporation.

Another scary trend in media is the buying up of every new idea buy the big corporations. The latest offer that has been through out was made by Microsoft. After years of trying to create a half decent search engine to compete with the likes of Yahoo and Google. Microsoft has decided that if you can't be them buy them when they made a proposal to buy Yahoo for $50 billion. Lets put this into perspective Google purchased YouTube for a mere $1.65 billion and NewsCorp bought MySpace for $580 million. Is Yahoo really wroth 25 times the combine cost of both of these sites? In the long run maybe.

According to a blog on the Huffington Post by James Boyce the host of "Heading Left" on BlogTalkRadio a weekly radio show, a major city newspaper will fold in the next twelve months.

It seems a little hard to consider a guy who has never worked for a newspaper (according to his bio.) an expert on the industry but there are a few things that I agree with in his blog.

It is very pathetic that newspapers which such a rich traditions as the Boston Globe have to offer a $40 rebate on their monthly subscription. It sounds a lot like what many American car companies such as GMC and Ford did a few years ago by offering huge rebates to entice new customs.

Meanwhile Toyota's market share continued to grow while they were selling cars that cost thousands more then their American counterparts. Toyota realized that by making high quality products they could add value to their product and justify their high prices.

The problems with huge rebates is it lowers the value of your product. Rebates are a good short term gimmick, but if you use them for to long customer start to expect them and only turn to you because you are selling a product that they can afford rather then something they actually want.

He is right that circulation has been falling since March 2005 at almost every major newspaper and many newspapers like the Washington Post have posted scene double digit profit declines int he first quarter of this year.

Good content in hide demand now more then ever before, since the Internet has opened up the floodgates of rumors and conspiracy theories as it makes it too easy for every cook to create their own soapbox.

Newspapers are still the place most people go for in depth coverage and the place that TV and Radio station turn to when they want to make it appear like they provide in depth coverage.
The world of Citizen Journalism and blogging is still very unorganized to post a major threat to newspapers. The best blogs are too specialized to have a huge effect on newspaper readership. You still have to read 10 or 20 blogs to get the latest news on the same topics that most newspapers provide. The blogs made be kept more up-to-date and provide links to every article that is ever publish on a particular subject but they can only do so much.

The development of Yahoo paying bloggers could lead to more news web sites and search engines paying blogger to act like freelance journalists to provide intriguing content. Freelance Bloggers working by themselves on a single topic can only do so much.

I believe that what can save newspapers from their not so certain doom is figuring out a better way to more advertise on-line from off. Lets face it no one reads the newspaper for the ads no one ever did!!
But on most newspaper websites it is becoming harder and harder to avoid all the pop up ads that come up every time you click on a article. The ones that jump out and cover the screen so that you can't read what is underneath them or close them are one of the most annoying things that a tel-marketed ever dreamed up.

Newspapers should look for a way to work with advertises to provide personal advertising based on the reading habits of their customers. They need to create ads that compliment their coverage of entertainment and arts rather then annoying ads that making reading the newspaper online such a pain in the neck.

No matter how annoying you make things I am still going to read the paper online just because its easier and cheaper then picking it up from the newsstand every day. This is a fact don't act like your customers are doing something evil or illegal by reading online.

Whatever happen to adapting to what the customs wants instead of resenting it.

Making the advertising less annoying and more person is one way to fix the revenue stream, One way to provide more intriguing content is to focus on local news or even provide a web site for Hyperlocalism coverage. Another way is to ask readers about what they think the newspaper should cover. To use a survey or focus group or just an open call for comments to give them a say in the way that the newspaper set its coverage priorities.

Evolution of civic journalism

2007-05-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

The citizen Journalism movement

This is a good article about the origins of citizen Journalism and the part that citizen journalists played in breaking the scandal over the firing of eight U.S. attorney.

Commenting on the important role for such a new media that is not corporate dominated and owned, but that is able to fulfill the role of citizen journalism, Linda Milazzo writes, "New Media voices ... won't permit another president to disregard the will of the people as the "Old Press" wantonly do, a new press will have free unencumbered voices, much of which arise from the Internet."(12)

Citizen Journalism has played a big part in the middle east when the mainstream media is often run by the government and their are severe restriction on freedom of speech. In China, Iran and Egypt several bloggers have been arrested for casting a spotlight on social justice .

OhmyNews International is a good site to go to for stories about citizen journalism since Oh My news was one of the first major media organizations to promote citizen journalism.

Iraq still remains the most dangerous assignment for Journalists according to the Committee to Project Journalists as the death toll for Journalists killed since 2003 reaches 100. This also is one of the reasons why American journalists rarely leave the settle of the green zone to capture the story of Iraq civilians. The best way to get their story as I state in early blogs is to go on the Internet and search out blogs and video blogs create by Iraq citizens.

The Sunlight Foundation is pooling citizen journalists to investigate the government. One of the projects gives directions of how to see if representatives are putting their spouses on their campaign payrolls.
So far they have investigated 438 member and found 19 spouses who were paid by a member's campaign committee-totaling $636,876 since January 1, 2005.

They have also sent letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging her to lobby for legislation to require members file their personal financial information as part of their campaign for government transparency.

Here is a good blog about the development of blogging and how the mainstream media has turned towards bloggers and citizen Journalists for help with reporting.

The L.A. Times published a debate between two journalists about the current state of the news media and its future. They both seem to agree that the Internet is

opening up a whole new world and dramatically transforming the possibilities for journalism.
and To secure its future, Big Media is going to have to try something it hasn't excelled at in recent years: Producing a quality product.

More and more websites from The Chicago Tribune with Triblocal to neighborsgo are going up all the time that act like community bulletin board with community-generated content, where people can post info and picture on local events. In a sense these sites let average citizens contribute to a profiles of their home town Like MySpace made the art of creating you own profile popular. In a way these sites can also give little towns a chance to advertise themselves with real stories from people without all the spin that tourism office's dream up.

Is there a legal limit to what you can post?

2007-05-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

Viacom, copyright Material, etc.

Can user-generated news site that depend on readers to provide the content allow users to release copyrighted material even encryption code?

On Tuesday, Digg had to remove a link to an article containing the the HD DVD encryption key, that programmers can use to crack the copy protection code on the new disc format.

Readers response by voting for links that contained the code and bashed Diggs attempt to remove the link, which overwhelmed the site filters. Eventually Digg founder Kevin Rose gave the go-ahead to post the code in a not posted on the site.

"You've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company."

The encryption codes should be covered by the 1998 Millennium Copyright Act but their are several loopholes.

Now that Digg has caved to its users and allowed them to post the code, attorney Gregory Rutchik of the San Francisco-based Arts and Technology Law Group says the site could be sued by the AACS.

However since the code was already made public for several moths on blogs and other websites including Conde Nast's Wired.com.

The revolt of the readers has completely changed Diggs policy about taking down links according to the executive director Jay Adelson

We usually give the claimants the benefit of the doubt and take things down, thinking that it's better to be safe than sorry," says Adelson.

Now, he says, all of that has changed. "Our users have said that's not good enough," he says. "And we've made a decision to stand with them on this issue."

Beyond the ethical and legal questions that this opens up we also have to look at if their is a legal limit to what you can put on the Internet. Viacom argued that everyday people cross the legal line when they upload a video to YouTube when they decided to sue Google over YouTube clips, for $1 billion.

This also brings up the fact that no matter what the big corporations do their are millions of hackers out their trying to find a way to hack the next encryption key. What is the point of taking legal action to protect a key when it is leaked all over the Internet?

Two weeks ago attorneys for the Advanced Access Copy System used in both Blu-ray and HD DVD sent out out letter to several websites demanding that they remove references to the encryption key.

After this letter was filed and passed around the Internet Hackers started post links on Diggs, slashdot
and any other website that would allow it.

Wired.com is even taking a poll of readers on how long it will take someone to post the new key online after AACS LA updates their HD DVD encryption key. So far 38.2 percent answered less than a month.

I guess they think that no matter what the AACS comes up with the encryption key will end up on a website somewhere in a matter of months. As hackers around the world work together to open up this new technology to everyone.
Maybe that is one good thing about the Internet. It is almost impossible for anyone to regulate what you can and cannot post on the Internet. So the speed with which copyrighted material and encryption code ends up on the Internet makes any legal action that big corporations take almost irrelevant.

My Movie

2007-05-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

Someone please watch it!!!

From Gonzo to Citizen Journalism

Media layoffs hit new low

2007-05-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

the Problem with Big Media

On Monday, April 30th The Associated Press reported that newspaper circulation had fallen another 2.1 percent in the last six months. This downward spiral of circulation has inspired major layoffs from several major national newspapers. In the first quarter of 2007 media companies have announced 4,391 layoffs a 93 percent increase from last year. Newspapers are not the only one's layoff people;
with six percent of the media job cuts coming from the magazine publishing and 12 percent from television.

In the middle of the coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre NBC breaks its own record for the lowest prime-time viewership for the second straight week with an average of 6.2 million viewers.

Paying to reach everyone through a single dominant platform such as a general interest news outlet is a proposition that makes business sense for fewer and fewer advertisers.

Media organizations assemble and sell audiences, and the broad audience that a value-neutral news reporting operation tends to attract is no longer in demand, online or off.

What can still work, online and offline, is specialized content that appeals to a particular audience. The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are outperforming other papers.

While a few people are afraid that we are head toward a "Daily Me." where the media fragments into different niches to satisfy the desires of different marketers Google is making context-sensitive ads the industry standard. Every article and every video clip will find its own audience as people use search engines to pick and choose what they want.

No one wants to buy the whole paper if you are not going to read half of it. Why should you sit through a entire newscast when I all you want to know is did the Cubs win their last game?

While everyone else in the media is cutting back and crying over spilled milk Robert Murdoch is still smiling as he looks to add to his empire.

What is he doing now?

After Launching MySpace in China, Murdoch is planning a business-news television channel to challenge CNBC.
To gain a little prestige he is offering to buy Dow Jones, which owns the Wall Street Journal. This announcement rocketed Dow Jones shares up 58 percent.

Is the Media turning into Big Brother?

student essay treated as real threat

2007-04-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

How did Allen Lee, an A-student and an athlete at Cary-Grove High School senior get charged with two counts of disorderly conduct and a misdemeanor that carries up to 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine?

He wrote a 342 word essay that referred to "Shooting everyone", and having sex with their dead bodies". The most damning part of the essay was the last line:

No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting. (Cary-Grove)

Lee plans on joining the Marines but now this incident caused the Marines to discharge him from their enlistment program on Friday.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre this case brings up the issue of how can high schools and college distinguish from a kid that is just mad at his teacher and a real real threat.

I believe that Lee had no intention of hurting anyone and the school district has overreacted by threatening legal charges.

If you read the whole essay you can easily see that Lee was just naming of shocking things of the hell of it because he though it would be funny. This is the kind of thing that you laugh about with you friends after class and not something you write in an assignment that a teacher will read.

Towards the end he just goes off on why he does not like his teacher and ends the essay by stating that she may inspire the first Cary Grove shooting. This is a sign of a child that is frustrated with his teacher and just wants to be done with his class. He clearly should be punished for the last line in the essay but pressing legal charges is going to far.

The killer in the Virginia Tech Massacre had a long history of mental mental problems and low self-esteem. His stayed at a mental hospital for a while, his creative writing teacher showed his violent work to the police and then refused to teach him.

In Traverse City, Michigan a 15-year-old Student threatened massacre at a local high school similar to the one at Virginia Tech. What is the difference between him and Lee? simple their behavior patterns:

The 15-year-old in Michigan confided his intentions to a faculty member Thursday and described himself as suicidal. Lee completed the Military Entry Procession station examinations and the psychiatric evaluation.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting there is a lot of paranoia going around that school administrators need to take every threat seriously. Why that make sense for specific threats and creditable bomb threats.
A student with no history of behavior problems bad mouthing his teacher in a essay is not a serious threat.

What Lee said was stupid but that should not hold him back from graduating or joining the Marines if that's what he chooses to do with his life.

Bill to save internet radio

2007-04-28T14:57:00.000-07:00

On Friday Congress introduced a bill that could nullify the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) called the "Internet Radio Eqaulity Act." (IREA). The bills aims to stop the ruling which put royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio.

After the march 2 ruling advocates were worried that rates could rise between 300 to 1200 percent for webcasters. The IREA would set new rates at 7.5 percent of the webcaster's revenue the same rate paid by satellite radio.

This bill sounds like a good way to keep the CRB from making the world of internet radio to expensive for little radio stations. More community groups and colleges are using webcasts to broadcast their own radio stations most of them will be forced out of business if the CRB rulling stands.

How to start an internet radio station

To learn more check out Savenetradio.org.

Third World PCs

2007-04-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Negroponte is still trying to bring cheap wind-up laptops to third world children the only catch is now he says they will cost $175 instead of $100 and production may not start until October.

The former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the not-for-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project said that project has been set pack from their original goals by the rising price of materials and changes in the design.

At least seven countries Uruguay, Nigeria, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Libya have expressed interested in buying the Laptops that have a crank so they can be wound by hand.

Quanta Computer, the Taiwanese manufacturer which will assemble the machine has agreed to take a profit of about $3 per laptop and the laptops will work on a low cost version of Windows.

Mr. Negroponte also said that the project was considering shipping the machines to poor schools in the U.S.

While the U.S. is second in the world for personal computers per capita.

There is still a major gap in internet access between the rich and the poor according to the pew research center.

While 82 percent of those living in households with more than $75,000 in income now have internet access only 38 percent of households earning less than $30,000 have internet access.

Only 34 percent of Internet users have logged on using a wireless connection.

We need to close the income gap in internet access by making it cheaper and easy for people to get high speed Internet access at least school if they are unable to afford it at home. More teenagers are using the internet to learn more and research topics but they are also adding content and videos.

According to a recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 57 percent of teenagers who are online, create content for the internet. Another study determines that more than 79% of U.S. broadband Internet users watched video in 2006.

The U.S. has a long way to go to provide the next generation with internet access so they can use the internet to its full potential.

According to a report in the Economists Intelligence Unit Asian and African nations are catching up to their European counterparts in affordable broadband.

The best way to truely connect the world is to increase the amount of broadband available so that people in third world countries can communicate and add content in the same ways at first world countries. AS the internet connects the world in brand new ways the media is looking at new ways to work with citizen journalists to cover world events. Citizen Journalists can cover events from the perspective of a witness who has lived in the area and knows the people rather then an outsider reporter who is throw into a war zone with little first hand knowledge of the conflict or the people involved.

MySpace is launching a new site for China last Friday. There are already 7.7 million blogs in China with 17.5 million active bloggers. MySpace China will face competition from similar sites like WangYou.com which has 11 million users.

Hometown Baghdad shows civilian life in Iraq

2007-04-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

"Security" Hometown Baghdad

Hometown Baghdad is a video blog that joined YouTube on January 9, 2007 and has produced 18 videos since then of every day life in Baghdad for a group of teenagers. The latest video called "Security" gives a tour of Ausama's grandmother's house after U.S. soldiers raid it because they believed that it was a terrorists haven.

"Powerless"- Hometown Baghdad

Powerless shows us how Iraqis deal with constant power outages and living with only a few hours of power each day.

"Kiss and Tell" talks about the dating stories of Saif, Adel, and Ausama.

Adel plays his guitar for therapy and talks about his band in "Songs of Pain".

A picture of a regular school day in Iraq posted by BlogIraq.

If you want to find out what is really going on in Iraq, blogs and vlogs written by real Iraqis give a much different us a unique perspective on the war.

You can also get an idea of like in Baghdad from the McClatchy Baghdad Bureau at the Inside Iraq blog.

American newspapers rarely report on civilian life on Iraq. I found an article from German newspaper Spiegel called "Anything Is Better than Baghdad"

According to a survey complied by Mercer Human Resource Consulting Baghdad Came in Last for quality of life among global cities. The red cross released a report about the 'ever-worsening' humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

With all this bad news its hard to believe that John McCain's walk through Baghdad was anything more then a political stun to fool Americans into thinking the war is getting better.

In order to get the truth with whats is really going in the American public has to search beyond the mainstream media.

More newspapers cut jobs

2007-04-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

The Denver Post announced that it will buyout about 90 newsroom workers to trim costs. The paper only has about 268 workers in the newsroom so this move will take them down to 178. This comes one-year after the Post bought out a dozen newsroom positions. The Rocky Mountain News owned by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co. eliminated 50 employees last month and The Baltimore Sun just eliminated 50 positions.

All these layoffs raise the question can small papers still provide the same quality coverage that their readers rely on with 178 people? Job cuts that are this big must have a lasting effect on what the paper is able to cover and how they divide their resources to cover local and national events. Most papers already rely on the big three to provide them with coverage of most international events. So if a paper cannot afford to have a corespondent in Iraq do they need one in Chicago? New York? Washington D.C.?

All these layoffs will probably lead papers like the Denver post to focus more on local events that they can cover better then any other news outlet.

Many news outlets have used layoffs as a way to boost their stock prices but that rarely ever works.

Media General Inc had a net lost in the first quarter of 2007 of $6.5 million and as a result they are cutting 70 staff positions from the Tampa Tribune.

Discovery started April by cutting 200 jobs, with more layoffs to come.

In the case of Le Journal in Quebec, Canada 140 employees were locked out after the company reached an impasse with the Canadian Union of Public Employees at the daily tabloid newspaper.

Media: Fire newstaff Hire Programmers

2007-04-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

Here is the Trib. vs. Sun-times ad Mocking the Mac Vs. PC ads

Tribune only recent Triumph Red Eye?

Look for our classmate in video.

Excutives at the Chicago Tribune have announced another round of firings at its Flagship and the Los Angeles Times with both papers hit by declining advertising revenues and a first quarter loss of 4 percent.

Its hard to believe that this latest round of "spring cleaning" by the Trib. has nothing to do with, real estate mogul Sam Zell purchasing the Tribune Media Group. Last year on August 25, the Trib . laid off 250 jobs and another 120 on July 14. In 2005 they dropped 900 jobs on December 7, and over 200 jobs on July 7 2004. So over the last three years they have laid off a total of 1,720 employees according to I Want Media.

While newspaper ad revenue and circulation is down in almost every category you can break it up to according to The State of the News Media 2006. Many people believe that online ad revenue will one day like 2018 surpass print advertising. Lets hope that day comes a little sooner for anyone who still has dreams of becoming a reporter at a major newspaper. Like me. Damn you Tribune Dream squasher.

While the Trib. is worried about the decline stock price since its peak on 12/32/04 at $82 a share some people other newspapers are exploring new ways to use the Internet to cash in on new ad revenue.

Daily newspapers laid off around 600 people during 2005 which is about half of the 1,200 to 1,500 reduction that is projected for 2006 by the state of the media report that comes in March.

there are a few special cases where newspapers are actually transitions from print to web and gaining in profit at the same time.

The Wall Street Journal is a special case with more than 764,000 paid subscribers to its online version, and profits of its extended online operations, including indexes and “Marketwatch,” now outstripping those of the print edition.

The report had a warning about the effect of cutting staff has on the quality of newspapers.

Our sense based on the data is that deep news-staff cuts, however logical a response to tough times, may be undermining the core product in dangerous ways. The practice is certainly eating away at the range and depth of newspaper journalism in many communities.

What is inspiring the recent layoffs in the newspaper industry? not falling revenue but stagnate revenue growth.

The threat to newspapers now appears from nearly every indicator. From 1950 through 1999, for instance, newspaper revenue grew seven percent a year. From 2000 through 2006, by contrast, it has grown by just 0.5%. Then in the first quarter of 2006, growth was even less: 0.35%.

Newspapers people have been hiring Journalist-Programmers who can make their website more user friendly and using their web sites to cover stories from all angles using interactive graphics. On example of a newspaper that has done this is TheNewsTribune.com Tacoma, Washington.

One other thing that might be causing the Tribune to cut its workforce Moody's cuts Tribune rating deeper into junk since the deal with Sam Zell's will give them $8.4 billion in dept. Which means should they evertake out a loan on anything the interest on it will go throw the roof.

Presidential candidates debate on the Web

2007-04-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

from this?

To online debates

Yahoo, Slate and the Huffington post have announced that they have are co-hosting the first-ever online presidential debate. This comes two weeks after the Democratic presidential candidates all lined up behind former Sen. John Edwards by refusing to participate in a debate that was sponsored by Fox News Channel and the Congressional Black Caucus. That was in the wake of remarks made by Roger Ailes that President Bush would have trouble telling the difference between Obama and Osama bin Laden.

There will be two online debates, one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans candidates both hosted by Mr. Charlie Rose held after Labor Day.

The debate will feature real-time questions sent in by the online audience, and viewers questions uploaded on video.

So why online as opposed to the old TV model?

With an online debate the though is that you can engage rather then enrage the audience. For many people the TV presidential debate sometimes feel like way to scripted like a planned out TV drama. With online debate you can members of the public participate in the debate. The 2008 campaign has been all about connecting people through the Internet and giving them the tools to blog about the candidates and raise money online.

This is also a sign of how the campaign is moving away from TV and one to the Internet where you can produce videos and upload them to YouTube for free.

In the past local TV stations have relied on political ads for a large part of their revenue.

"In the 2003-2004 election cycle, some 80 percent of new revenue for local stations came from political advertising," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. said.
Durbin told this story by way of explaining why he has introduced, along with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., S. 936, the Fair Elections Now Act. Durbin says he's tired of political campaigns being a "cash cow for TV stations."

While it is hard to believe that Durbin's plan to take the money out of politics will work I think that the Internet is completely changing the way our candidates campaign.

Now that all the presidential candidate have YouTube channels and some of them have already begun to use their channels to ask questions of the public and answer them in short videos.

In a way the online debate has already began. Through the site ExpertVoter.org you can even keep track of what issues the candidates have made videos on.

What are you going to do to bring about change?

RE: David's Question on Education in a Changing World

Airing Uncomfortable Truths

2007-04-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

In crisis's wake, focus is on 'citizen journalism' - Orlando Sentinel : Lifestyle In crisis's wake, focus is on 'citizen journalism' - Orlando Sentinel : Lifestyle

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech Massacre CNN received cell-phone video shot by Jamal Albarghouti through their I-report initiative, that encourages viewers to send in video and photographs to the network's website. The video recorded outside of Norris Hall caught the sound of several gunshots. Its the only footage of that catches the shooting as it happened. This video has been played over and over again on CNN over the last week.

In the past reporters usually arrive to the scene of a crime after the smoke has cleared and the police have taken away the bad guy.
Technology has made it easy for eyewitnesses to document events as they happened. Within a few hours the media can broadcast the footage for millions to see.

The key to Citizen Journalism is usually about being at the wrong place at the wrong time like Jamal Albarghouti was when he found himself outside of Norris Hall.

bringing the audience closer to the action and seeing it from the point of view of a direct witness tot he events rather then a reporter flow in to cover the story is an example of how citizen journalism can enhance news coverage.

A few days after the massacre NBC aired the video that the killer sent them. NBC received heat from the victims families for airing what they saw as propaganda of a delusional psycho while other people in the media argued that the public needed to see this to reignite the debate about what to do with the mentally ill and gun control.

Jeff Jarvis said that the video could have ended up on YouTube if NBC did not air it or another site.

"We need a debate in this country about our mental health and privacy laws." Jarvis said.
"It is Journalism's jobs to give us the uncomfortable truths."

When I first saw the footage my first reaction was why are we airing the rant of a madman? why are giving him any air time at all, to glorify the mass murder that he carried out?

After taking in the coverage I think Jarvis and other members of the media that have defended NBC for airing the clip. I have a hard time believing that NBC could keep the tape from ending up on YouTube once they realized what they had. As long as the video is not played every time they find a new detail about the killer.

You can see what the President of NBC had to say about airing the video at http://www.khnl.com/Global/story.asp?S=6405306

Protest of airing VaTech killer video

Should the video be taking off of YouTube?

Bringing uncomfortable truths to light to the public light is part of the media's job. It also their job to continue the public debate even of issues like gun control and how to deal with the mentally ill that have not been address in a long time.

The coverage should focus less on what was in the killer's head and more on how he was able to carry out this horrific act despite all the warning signs.

We need to reexamine our laws regarding the purchased of firearms. We need to take a second look with how we deal with mentally ill people. Most of we need to remember the victims and how 32 lives were destroyed in one day.

Tribune to victims

Recruiting citizens to do the paparazzi dirty work

2007-04-20T17:28:00.000-07:00

When two of the biggest movies stars in all of Bollywood (Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan) are planning to get married in a secret wedding how does Rediff news plan to cover the event?

By sending out a call for citizen journalists to mail the photographs, video to them.

Now, YOU can become a Citizen Journalist, and have your reports published right here on rediff.com
Here's how: If you spot Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, their families, guests, or if you are lucky enough to witness the wedding, take a photograph or a video, scan the pictures, and mail the pictures and video clips to us.

More and more Media organizations are actually recruiting citizen journalists to cover everything from world events to celebrity news.

They even played an important role in the coverage of The Virginia Tech Massacre.

Why hire professional journalists to break stories when you can find citizen journalists to sent you scoops for free or little money?

This is part of the exciting new world of citizen journalism. As long as their is still someone acting as an editor and someone doing a little fact checking with enough scepticism to tell when a story is too good to be true. In order to be a trusted news organization you have to have filters to distinguish the Hoaxes from the real thing.

This can help major media organization to get the immediate rare footage that their viewers crave and it give the average citizens to decided which angle to cover the story. But we must stick to the Principal of accuracy over immediacy. Reporting rumors just to say you heard it here first will always come back to bite you when the truth comes out.

Libel on YouTube

2007-04-16T13:10:00.000-07:00

Hawaii's Go Airlines files a lawsuit against website

Bloogger threaten with a lawsuit after she wrote about her personal experience

According to the Media Law Resource Center people attacking other people in blogs and video have sparked some 60 libel lawsuits. Today everyone who has a beef against their boss, fellow coworker or rival candidate can blog about it or create a video blog and upload it to YouTube. When does a practical joke go to far to the point where you can be suit for libel? When you secretly record it and upload it to YouTube for the world to watch over and over again.

Sites like YouTube and MySpace have content editors to censor out offensive material but their is only so much they can take out do. Mecaca moments are bond to get through because what some peope might see as a harmless joke will be racists and highly offensive to others.

The site DontDateHimGirl.com allows women to post the name and pictures of guys they have dated along with reasons not to date them. Few of the women that write on the site have any idea that they can be suit for libel for identifying their ex's and writing about them in this public forum. There are 91 profiles of men in Chicago. How can any of these men get a date after their last girlfriend profiles them as a liar and a cheater like Otis "Big O Lucky" for example? How do you distinguish pure gossip from a someone out for revenge from the truth on the Internet? You can't.

The freedom of the blogosphere and the vlogosphere for people to rant and rave about anything they want has let blogger Tim O'Reilly to draft a Blogger's Code of Conduct.

So far O'Reilly has come up with seven rules for bloggers to follow like consider eliminating anonymous comments, and take responsibility not just for your own words but for the comments you allow on your blog.

He is not only asking bloggers to be upfront and accurate about their statements but to also filter their comments. This is a practical idea but I believe that it will only be followed by the major bloggers. many bloggers pull in a large audience in the same way as Howard Stern pulls in listens "you never know what he is going to do and say next." Other throw out controversial topics and wait for their readers to argue back and forth in the form of long rants.

The Internet is a forum that can never be completely censored nor should it be. Creating a code of conduct for blogger is a good idea but a better idea is to educated the public from a young age about libel and the consequences of offensive speech. Education the public will reduce the number of Imus moments by letting people know that their are consequences whenever you blog or rant in front of a video camera and upload it into the public domain.

You no longer have to be a celebrity, or a journalists to get the public to pay attention to you all you have to do is have something interesting or provocative to say. So Citizen Journalists use you power wisely.

Is the future of newspapers Hyperlocalism?

2007-04-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

According to the Knight Citizen News Network there are over 450 U.S. citizen media sites providing local news in communities from Juneau, Alaska to Coconut Grove, Florida.

So is this the way newspapers have to go in order to grab new readers and create a brand for themselves? Does this mean that newspaper will cut back on their coverage of international news?

These are the questions that PBS FRONTLINE: news war recently tackled in Part 3 chapter 23.

My take is more local news is a step in the right direction, especially if it is done in a way that encourages readers to send in user generated content to turn the newspaper website into a forum for conversation in the community. Newspapers can use "hyperlocalism" to allow readers to interact with each other through their websites in new ways to combine their resources and make sure important news stories see the light of day that are often ignored.

Focusing on the more local news gives newspapers a chance to stick out among all the media organizations as the best place for news on their hometown. To give readers and advertises that the place to go for local news in Washington D.C. is the Metro - washingtonpost website. Since most major cities like Los Angeles only have one or two major local papers this is an easy way for only paper in a particular city to compete with the other local news outlets for advertising and for an audience. In the battle for local video advertising the newspapers are beating TV stations.

Since hyperlocalism are popping up every day newspaper are now competing with local blogs, and citizen journalism sites as more of their readers move online to get their news. The big fat cat print monopolies have to adapt to the changing market being a good local newspaper is not enough you have to have a great website to act as forum of the community.

The new design for USATODAY.com is attracting more people to register on the site since it give readers a chance to see how many people recommend and commented on a stories and to actually read the comments of their fellow readers. At the very least the other major newspapers should follow the USA Today's lead and give readers a chance to see readers comment on stories and search for the stories with most comments. Focusing on local coverage is one unique way that newspapers can better serve their core audience and argue that in the information age that their is room for local newspapers in American.

The one down side of this is some people thing that only to beef up the local news is to shut down international bureaus and cut foreign correspondents. After all do you really need more then one newspaper reporter in Baghdad covering the war in Iraq at the same time?

My answer to them is yes we need several.

Especially in such a dangerous place where everyone is trying to spin the story for their advantage. The fact is the media have made several mistakes in their coverage of Iraq and the lack of security throughout Iraq makes it very hard for any one reporter to do the hard hitting investigative pieces that will allow readers to see what is really going on on the ground beyond the number of casualties from the latest suicide bombing.

What do the average Iraqis think they can secure the country without the U.S.? Are leaders throughout the Middle East denouncing the violence or are they secretly encouraging and funding it to deliver a blow to the America's ego? You need several reporters competing together to answer these questions from ever angle.

Europe thinks newspapers are not dead.

2007-04-11T00:14:00.000-07:00

Those crazy Europeans they think that Newspaper is not dead. Meanwhile all the big newspapers corporations in America with any sense believes that only three papers (USA Today, Washington Post, NY times) are need for the U.S. and the Chicago tribune ain't one of them.

How can newspapers survive in the age of Internet with no classified section? fulling ad revenue for the print edition? And fulling circulation?

Bruno Patino, director of online projects at France's Le Monde said that the Internet would allow newspapers to focus on in-depth investigations as the web site focuses on audiences that demands up-to-the-minute-news: translation: to find who is the dad of Anna Nicole's baby the minute they announced it check the website to find out more about how the Veterans hospital system is failing our soldiers when they return from combat read the first in a series of articles on the website updated every so often as we get it. On the Internet 10,000 words costs the same as 10 words. TV and radio still really heavily on newspaper to provide in depth analysis on major stories and so do the readers of newspapers.

like the U.S. Europe is facing fulling newspaper circulation;

The most recent figures available from the World Association of Newspapers showed that daily paid newspapers in the European Union saw a 0.61 percent drop in circulation in 2005, and a 5.26 percent fall over the five years through 2005.

Europe's largest newspaper Berlin based Axel Springer will spend $2.67 billion to expand its digital offerings both in Germany and throughout the world.

Zach Leonard of the The Times of London said that writers will need to learn to write better headlines since search engines tend to reduce stories to their first 200 characters. The Times also encourages journalists to fill out articles with video and audio content.

Another drawback of reading the newspaper online. the computer reads the headlights for you and it does know about everything that you are interested in unless you add 30 or 40 unique topics to the Google News.

Ad revenue online is rising too:

Advertising online is a strong lure for newspapers. In Britain, for example, online advertising rose 41 percent in 2006 to reach more than 2 billion pounds, giving it an 11.4 percent share of the market, just higher than that of the newspapers. That compared to 7.8 percent in 2005, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau report which was compiled by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and the World Advertising Research Center.

So if you will not throw away your subscription to the Chicago Tribune I will not tell my mother to stop her subscription with the Los Angeles Times. News Paper is not dead we just need to figure out how to move the ads from print to online. In the end content, in dept content is king. this is what makes us unique and what will keep us going well into the 21st century. those pin heads who say only three papers should exists hate capitalism because they are against competition and have lost sight to the importance of local news.

Watch PBS: FRONTLINE:news war: part III Chapter 21 on my precious Los Angeles Times that I grew up with.

Why blog when you can Vlog?

2007-04-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

Mefeedia just realized there first "State of the Vlogosphere" report which found that the size of its index gre to 20,913 Video blog in January 2007 from just 617 in January 2005.

Go Vlogs! with the rise of Youtube people around the country are uploading great vblogs. You know the motto of the Internet "The more the Marier" Vlogs are cool. the add the visual element to lameo bloggers who just a create a little text with a few links. here are a few examples of vlogs Atlas Shrugs.com she talks about everything from the new HPV vaccine to the New democratic congress

to the New democratic congress

of you can watch the vlog Ask a ninja answer random questions about thinks like net Neutrality for example.

Vlogs are just as good as blogs only better because they have visual matter. When it includes what the journalists did and what they saw and experienced it can be very informative. When it is just a guy talking into a web camera you think I could do that. I could do that if I was not typing this blog out on a stupid MA. Damn you Steve Jobs and you huge ego!!!

The Wisdom of the Crowd

2007-04-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

The Current-Cambrain House Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing-opening up work threw the Internet to be completed by a large number of people over the Internet who either do it for free or a small fee. Think Wikipedia, Obamapedia or The Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Open-sourcing is the nearest cousin to crowdsourcing, generally referring to crowdsourced work on software source code that is available for others to change, add to and build on, as with the Linux operating system.

Corporations and non-profits social services organizations are working with free-lancers and consultants beyond their organization to help them with research using crowdsourcing. AssignmentZero launched by Wired in March 2007 is the first attempt by the mainstream media to harness the power of the crowd to find and add to news stories.

InnoCentive will pay people to solve real research challenge for companies like Procter & Gamble.

Weather Crowdsouring is the Next Big Thing? in Citizen journalism or not is hard to say. For some websites and big new stories it would work very well. If you did a history of Chicago's transit system for example crowdsouring would be great but for small quick stories crowdsourcing would only complicated things.

There is also NewAssignment.Net started by NYU Journalisms professor Jay Rosen that will let readers help decide the topics to cover and how by signing up to pursue part of the story. the first story will cover crowsouring. Several newspapers are looking at different ways to turn into Information Centers that collect info from citizens in the streets as well as there reporters.

Topix lets citizen post local news online

2007-04-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

Topix is one of a growing number of new aggregators that has began to let citizens upload local stories giving readers the opportunity to search for stories of a small town written and produced by the people who live there.

Seizing on growing interest in Internet-based "citizen journalists" — stories and images posted by the public — news site Topix.com will introduce an area where anyone can post or edit reports, commentary and photos about local happenings.

Site visitors can find the items about their locality by entering a ZIP code or town name into the site's search engine.

The users' material will supplement Topix' current service that collects and posts news from 50,000 traditional newspapers and blogs.

If you look at the page for Chicago you will see that the page is also edited by citizen journalists from Chicago. While many of the stories are just short blog entries with links to local newspaper articles this site has created forms where people can edit, update and point out related news in new ways. Now every story can be reported on by a thousands of citizens on connected by the Internet. This is the evolution of the news story. From a dead article in a newspaper filed by the reporting of one person to a living story with several contributors that can be debated in a public forum for the world to see.

Topix laid out its plan of attack on April 1st. The center for Citizen Media has created a informed page on the principles of how to be good citizen journalists.

The University of Maryland has ten new projects in community community news such as :

New Castle News Forum. To create a weekly cyber newspaper built from citizen-generated content for the Chappaqua area in Westchester County, N.Y., which has lost its local newspaper. The project is spearheaded by local volunteers under the auspices of the Friends of the Chappaqua Library.

Who needs mapping software when you have My Maps. Google just create a new feature that lets you add place marks and lines to their maps.

Video blogger freed

2007-04-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

After serving seven months in prison for refusing to turn over video he shot July 8, 2005 of a protest in San Francisco's Mission District against the Group-of-Eight summit. During the protest a San Francisco police car was set on fire injuring a police officer.

As part of a deal cut with the prosecutors Wolf posted the footage unedited on his blog The Revolution Will Be Televised.

Wolf also swore in a new court document that he neither took part or could identify those responsible for the car's damage or the officer's injury. In exchange for this document prosecutors promised that they would not compel Wolf to testify before a grand jury.

The president of the Society of Professional Journalists who organized supporters of Wolf and the President of the national press club had "mixed feelings" about the plea deal. While they believe that it is good strategy to make the video available to the public rather then just to prosecutors
they both think that it is similar to a reporter being forced to give up all their notes n a particular story.

While it is good that this footage is out in the public the government should not be able to force Journalists to turn over everything they have for a court case because the lets more information out to the public before it has been fact check and edited. This also create a situation where journalists are force to unwillingly act as an arm of law enforcement. If law enforcement is able to use the footage of Journalists to prosecutor offenders then they are unwilling acting as a arm of the law catching criminals in the act. This seriously challenges the ability of journalists to work with the public to criticize the government. How can journalists take on the government if law enforcement can take their foootage and use it against their sources?

I am happy Josh Wolf is out but I am afraid that it is only a matter of time before another Journalists is arrested for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Hey but look at the broight side at least we are not making citizen journalism illegal like France.

Busing the internet to the poor

2007-04-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

To give people in poor villages throughout India the company, United Villages, uses buses to provide Internet access to about 110,000 people in rural India and several other countries.

Each village that they serve has computer kiosks set up for villagers to compose emails, read the news and buy products from online stores. The only catch is that the web pages are not served in real time. Two WI-FI equipped buses visit the village four to six times a day to collect requests from the computers and transport the data to United Village hub in the city. The city hub then sends the messages out, processed searches and transfers any requested data back to the bus.

Seoul, Korea has had wireless internet Buses that allow people to access the internet while they are traveling in the city for about a year. Showing once again how they are miles ahead of the technology available in the U.S.

My Question is why oh why don't they do this in the rural parts of the U.S.?

According to Pew Internet.org in 2004 only 55 percent of all Internet users or 34 percent of adult Americans have high-speed Internet connections either at home or on the job. By the end of 2005 only 24 percent of rural American had high-speed Internet connections at Home compared to 40 percent in suburban areas. In rural areas 38 percent were listed as non Internet users. However the report called Rural Broadband Internet use from February 2006 said that Rural Internet users use the Internet for things like searching the news, checking blogs and participating in fantasy sports at about the same rate as urban users.

The easier and cheaper you make Internet access the more people will use it. Opening up access to the information highway so that nothing can stand in the way of person from becoming an expert in a variety of subjects if they are a little curious.

Another report called Wireless Internet access said that 34 percent of Internet users have logged onto the Internet using wireless connections either from their home or office.

The Internet gives people a choice in how they learn about the world and view the news. Instead of listening to the local radio, watching TV, or reading the local newspaper they can choose from thousands of newspapers. The number of choices on the Internet often overwhelm and overload us with rumor and inaccurate information. They also make it nearly impossible for the mainstream media or the government to control what the public knows.

They provide a sanctuary for citizen Journalism and unedited Journals through blogs. The education of the public through the Internet can slowly but surely spread democracy. This is why China is working with Google to control the Internet. They are fighting a losing battle over information. Its too easy to broadcast the truth and get it to the Chinese public you cannot fool the masses anymore.

Sky News report on discontent in China over development.

The truth is out there. Curious people just need the tools to find it and spread the word.

Immigration: The Human Cost | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

2007-03-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

The Knight Citizen News Network: started a site to help citizen Journalist get all the tools they need to tell their local stories.

The Onion has just launched a site for fake news video called the Onion News Network.

In The Know: Our Troops In Iraq

Is very funny while the Immigration the Human Cost can only be funny to extreme liberals who choose to ignore the problem of Illegal Immigration.

Immigration: The Human Cost

Citizen journalists on YouTube

2007-03-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Covering aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

You can watch citizen Journalism from all over the world and submit your own video threw iCommunity.TV

Its time for US media companies to look at the role of Citizen Journalism and how they should incorporated into their coverage.

Common sense about Cj's, RJ's, DJ's

2007-03-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

What is a CJ?

what is a RJ?

What is a dj?

Is electronic Media a health concern?

2007-03-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

Royality fee ruling threatens internet radio

2007-03-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

Online broadcasters challenge price hike - Yahoo! News

On Monday broadcasters and online companies challenged a March 2 ruling that from a panel of copyright judges called the (U.S. copyright Royalty Board) to increase the amount of royalties that online music broadcasters would have to pay to record labels. The ruling would also require radio companies to track how many songs were listened to by exactly by how many individuals online.

NPR argued that the new rules would have a "Crippling effects" on public radio and it also objected to a $500 per-channel minimum fee. Clear Channel also disagreed with the ruling stating that the method of calculating fees was faulty.

Sound Exchange, an entity that collects royalties from digital music broadcasters and distributes rights naturally agreed with the ruling pointing out that ad revenues grew from $50 million in 2003 to $500 million last year.

This ruling is sure to kill several small time Radio Stations and college radio station who often play little tiny local bands before they get their break and our played on the corporate radio station again and again because the record company is paying he station to keep the beet bouncing around in our brains.

On March 21st the Copyright Royalty Board granted a rehearing hearing of their royalty rate decision of Internet radio. Arguments are to be submitted by April 2.

Milestones in Blogging

2007-03-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

For those of you that still believe that bloggers should not be considered part of the "Press" because many of them are written by geeks from their parents basement this story may change your mind.

The California Legislature gave blogger Frank D. Russo a "Press" credential by the California Correspondents Association. Russo is the first blogger to be credentialed for his blog the California Progress Report.

Politics and Technology: California Legislature credentials first blogger as "press"

will this lead to more bloggers being credentialed and being treated like members of the "Press"
or is it just a sign of the blurring line between citizen Journalists and real Journalists -(Whatever that means anymore) no one knows.

I think that what it proves is that you do not have to be part of the corporate media to be recognized by the CCA as part of the "Press". Bloggers and other citizen journalists should have the opportunity to become credential members of the press if they have a proven background of providing accurate interesting news.

Their body of work of a journalists should matter more then what college they graduated from or if they worked for the mainstream media.
Since I have spend the last 2 years working for the school newspaper my body of work is next to worthless.

The blogosphere hit another milestone recently Blogs turn 10
people have been ranting and raving online for ten years on every subject imaginable. Now there are over 100 million blogs around the world this is now the hobby of computer geeks and their four-eyed, pencil pushing children who are spending more time in front of the Computer screen then the Tele.

However in China Blog is still nasty version off that evil thing we like to call "Free Speech"
Zhang Ming, Dean of political sciences at Renmin University of China lost his post for a blog post that broke the "hidden rules" of posting an article attacking the "Bureaucratization of Chinese colleges."
Zhang will remain a professor at the university bu the university said that his blog post was lies which "Victimized its faculty".

But Blogs are so last decade today's techy are wasting their time glued to the YouTube watching vlogs that range from funny version of the news like Rocketboom to a Vlog by US soldiers in Iraq. The vlog called "May God have Mercy on our souls" made by a Fort Lewis Stryker recon platoon known as "Deuce Four" called

A memorial to Spc. Jeremiah Schmunk

So keep Vlog, blogging and logging hour upon hour on Warcraft slowly the mainstream media is realizing the power of citizen journalism.

Horrible news broadcast horribly

2007-03-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

This is way David Javerbaum the executive producer of "The Daily Show" describes TV news on the FRONTLINE: series News Wars Chapter 16

This chapter also asks the question what is news? has the definition been lowered or broadened?

Maybe its better to get your news through Rocketboom or other online news resources that is discussed in chapter 19.

Google becomes biggest media company

2007-03-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

French outlaw "Citizen Journalism"

2007-03-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

French gendarmes arrest a student on the Gare de Lyon rail tracks, as hundreds of demonstrating students blocked the rail tracks to protest against the new jobs contract in Paris, Thursday March 30, 2006.

On Wednesday a new French law took into effect making it a crime for anyone but "Professional Journalists" to record and distribute real-world scenes. The law is suppose to stop the practice of "happy slapping" where acts of violence are filmed and distributed on the Internet, however by going after anyone who is not a "professional Journalists" the French have made all citizen photo-Journalism a crime from a bystander filming an act of violence that they happened to witness to a film crew following the act of a terrorist so they can use it to spread fear.

The irony that this ruling comes exactly 16 years after George Holiday , an amateur videographer filmed Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King.
What do you think French police will do with a "citizen Journalist" if they catch French police beating someone on tape? Rodney king story may never have been covered if only Los Angeles police were allowed to arrest George Holiday for being at the right place at the right time to capture the video.

Punishing everyone is not going to stop the filming of violence or the actually violent acts from happening it will just become harder to tell who filmed what and why they were in the right place to film it. Yes it is horrific that terrorists and criminals film acts of violence and then upload them to the Internet to recruit new members and spread fear across the world wide web But how will cracking down on the people who film these events lower crime?

It won't. What it will do is give the French police the new power to decided who define who is a "Professional Journalist" and who is just a "Citizen Journalists". Once you let the government the power to decided who can cover certain events they will pick those publications that are friendly to them and chase everyone else out on some technicality.
What if something similar to the Paris riots of last March that occurred after the French government pasted laws that made it easier for companies to hire and fire young workers?
After the French police are done tracking down the rioters they can now go after any citizen journalists that took pictures in a futile attempt to control the message and save face if anyone accuse the police of mistreating the rioters.

Thanks to "Citizen Journalists" uploading these pictures to Flickr the world got see a closer view of the story that was beyond the control of the police and the mainstream media.
The line between "Citizen Journalism" and "Professional Journalism" should never be drawn by the government. They are bound to use it to limit access and neglect the freedom of the press.

Besides "Citizen Journalism" is growing by leaps and bounds and the French will have a hard time trying to track pictures posted on the Internet back to the person who actually took them. If they don't check a "Citizen Journalist" in the act of taking pictures or "Happy Slapping" they may never check them on the Internet where no one has to identify themselves to upload pictures and content. There already is a magazine in Europe called cafebabel.com, that runs stories by hundreds of volunteer contributors around Europe and translates them into seven different languages with a staff of just nine people. They also have 20 local teams to propose subjects recruit writers and organizing "cafe Debates" and public forum to discuss social issues.

Here is good definition of a "Citizen Journalism" that was written by Mark Glaser a blogger for PBS MediaShift program.

Beyond Broadcasting

2007-02-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

Beyond Broadcast 2007: from Participatory Culture to Participatory Democracy

Estonia Internet election

2007-02-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip casts an online ballot in the municipal election in Tallinn, Estonia, on Monday.

Estonia will become the first country in the world to allow voter to vote over the Internet in a national parliamentary election. Computer specialists estimated 20,000 to 40,000 of 940,000 registered voters will vote via the Internet from February 26-28 ahead of the March 4 election.
Voters will put their state-issued ID card into a reader attached to a computer, which will read the electronic chip in the card and then enter two passwords.

Despite being one of the poorest nations in the European Union Estonia has set up many wireless networks allowing Estonians to use their cell phones to pay for car parking or buy bus tickets.

Back in the states we are still struggling to figure out electronic voting. It maybe several years before we try any voting online or even have the wireless networks needed to allow people to buy public transportation passes with their phones.

Only 22 states require voting machines to produce VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail) as of 9/20/06. Two bills have been introduced in Congress to require a Paper Trail in future elections but they may not be able to fix it before 2008 if one of the bills pass. After the mess in 2000 and the problems in Ohio in 2004 how can we must do something about the voting system before 2008.

There is also legislation endorsed by house Speaker Nancy Pelosi that may come to the floor for debate next month to give Washington D.C. two votes in Congress, one representative in the Senate and in the House.
Sounds like a good idea but you could just go ahead and declare them a separate state instead of a territory if you give them two senators like the other 50 states get.
One second though you might have to give state rights to Puerto Rico, Guam or the Virgin Islands.
Washington D.C. is not the only territory that is not represented in Congress.

AP jump head first into citizen Journalism

2007-02-27T18:53:00.000-08:00

Libby attorney Ted Wells argued vigorously to Judge Walton to bring Tim Russert back on the witness stand; "Scooter" Libby is in right foreground.

The AP has made a deal with Mediabloggers.org to provide blog coverage, from inside the courthouse of the Scooter Libby Trial that looks like hour by hour commentary on the trial. The latest blog entitle the "Jury has a Question" talks about how the Jury is passing notes to the Judge but Court TV correspondent Savannah Guthie will not know what is on the note until tomorrow when the court meet. (Some news is better left till Tomorrow). The blogs are done by Talk Left, The Hindsight Factor and Dean's World.

Does the world really play by play of this trial by liberal bloggers and one reporter from Court TV with way too much time on her hands? The AP thinks so.

Is this just another example of why we should have cameras in the courtroom? I think so. Better to film the actual events then blog about them from inside the media room of the courtroom. Let us inside to see the actual trial. Keep the part where the jury decide on a verdict in private.

NowPublic; let the age of citizen journalism began;

NowPublic Member

roland nowpublic looking for the "story behind the story"

AP also has a wider deal with the citizen Journalist site NowPublic.com
NowPublic.com has registered base of 60,000 contributors who can upload text, photos, audio, and video to the site. Thousands of people upload material to the site on a daily or weekly basis.

The way it works is if a breaking news story occurs on NowPublic the AP Will be alerted and the wire service can then purchase the content by paying the content creator and a cut will go to NowPublic creating a network of Freelance Citizen Journalists.

NowPublic has news posts from citizen journalists who just write their comments above a few paragraphs from an article by a real journalist working at a organization like National Geographic. Other posts have comments along with pictures that the citizen journalists took of a Landslide in San Francisco for example. In a way this works like blog posts.

Reuters covering virtual news

2007-02-27T16:12:00.000-08:00

At a time when many media organizations are cutting their international bureaus Reuters has added a bureau in the virtual world Second Life
Now that Second Life logged its 1 millionth registered "resident" media companies like Wired and CNET are actually buying virtual property in the virtual world to host events there.
Reporter Adam Pasick has been assigned to head Reuters virtual bureau under the Avatar name Adam Reuters. Reuters has also created a special website for SL in fact there hiring. If only I had send the last six months on Second Life going instead of the last 2 years trying to get my master degree in Journalism I could have a job reporting for Reuters by now.

Adam Reuter

I think that Second Life has been getting just a little to much hype recently for media organizations and presidential candidates like John Edwards. One day in the not to distance future like five years virtual worlds like Second Life will have a lot of people regularly checking in on them and caring more about their Second Life then their First Life. Today only Adam Pasick is dumb enough to do that because Reuters is actually paying him.
anyway in five years when more people can afford high speed Internet, and the pin heads that created Second Life figure out how all the glitches that slow the virtual world down Journalists should write about Second Life on a regular basis. We do not need a bureau at a time when so many bureau in First Life Earth are being cut to lower costs at major media organizations.
Second Life will check on, the WarCraft virtual world already has 6.5 million registered users but not until a few things change.

Conservative Alternative to 'Daily Show"

2007-02-20T21:36:00.000-08:00

McNally anchors the fake newscast in the Fox News Channel parody 'The 1/2 Hour News Hour."

Fox News Channel's '1/2 Hour News Hour': Right Funny, in Spots

This Sunday at 10 P.M. Fox News will air the first of two episodes of "The 1/2 Hour News Hour" the conservative take on Comedy Central's "Daily Show". The second episode will air on March 4. The Boston Globe was not thrilled by the first episode and said that the show only makes you appreciate Jon Stewart and "the Colbert Report" more.
The article also points out how these show succeed by poking fun at TV news by saying the things they cannot say. The daily show work because it can point out how stupid government officials look when they try to elude the questions of the press. They can mock President Bush and his cabinet on a Daily bases.
They can refer to Iraq as "Mess O' Potamia". The Daily Show is funny because they do not have to hold to the standards of attempting to be Fair & Balance. We know it is unbalance from the get go. By pointing out their basis and referring to their news as "Fake News" the show can poke fun at every other newscast out there that tries to make their viewer believe that they are fair and balance and at our political figures who want you to believe that they are acting in the best interest of the public. The funniest contributor to the Daily show for my money is Lewis Black
Comedy Central: Shows - The Daily S lack how With Jon Stewart - Lewis Black

"The Colbert Report" succeeds because it makes fun of everyone from Bill O'Reilly "Poppa Bear" to Lou Dobbs who has a show dedicated to showing the audience what the host feels is wrong with America. He coined the term "Truthiness" to point out that these shows are more interested in spreading the opinions of the host, and shocking the audience with how screwed up America is then about bring the truth to light.

While its good to have a show that looks at the lighter side of conservative news Fox should study what makes Comedy Centrals news line up so funny before they try to imitate them.

Its nice to know Fox is trying to be funny for once but serious stick to the unfair and angry conservative balance. Comedy Central needs more clips of O'Reilly yelling at guesses, Geraldo feeding us the latest rumors on who the father of Anna Nicole's baby, more clips of Ann Coulter pointing out how evil liberals are and most of all more Chuck Norris on Fox News subbing for Sean Hannity. Ever since Conan O'Brien gave up his special leaver of "Walker Texas Ranger" clips the TV world has not been the same.
Chuck on YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Jokes about Chuck
Chuck Norris Facts

Viacom's answer to YouTube

2007-02-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

Independent Online Edition > Business News

Viacom has agreed to license its content for viewing on Joost. Joost will be launched in spring offering television-quality video over the Internet. Its like TVIO for your PC. They can watch what they want when they want.

Users will be able to create their own channels, share their own videos and chat with other users. Joost will split the proceeds of advertising with the content providers.

This is how big media should deal with YouTube. Instead of complaining and threatening to pull clips or sue video pirates they should offer a better alternative. I think the services like Joost will revolutionize TV away from hundreds of cable channels to a world of different TV shows competing with shows made on the Internet, videoblogs and home videos for your attention. Ratting will be based on how many times people download the latest episode of a TV show not on how many times they watch it on the Boob Tube.

Joost™ - Frequently Asked Questions

madrid bomb trial online

2007-02-20T18:06:00.000-08:00

The trial of Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, with head in hands, and other suspects in the Spanish train bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004 began in Madrid. Mr. Ahmed denied any involvement.

courtroom sketch of Zacarias Moussaoui as he plead guilty on April 23, 2005 to conspiring with the 11 who hijackers that carried out the terrorists attacks of September 11.

Hopes for Healing as Spain’s Terror Trial Starts - New York Times

Court officials spent more than $2 million on new technology to allow Spanish citizens access to their "Trial of the Century" even as the country was on terror alert.

The bombing took the lives of 191 people in March 2004 a few weeks before the Spanish election. At the time of the bombing Spain's conservative government initially blamed the bombing on the Basque separatist group ETA, when they had no evidence to support this claim. This caused the many in the Spaniards to accuse the government of trying to manipulated them and the conservatives were voted out-of-power in the election.

Many people in America especially conservative took the election results as a sign that Spaniards voted for the socialists because they wanted their troops out of Iraq. Many conservatives believed this was a sign that the Spaniards were scared of the terrorists to the point where they were willing to appease them by leaving Iraq to avoid future violence. A few months after the election the new socialist Spanish government made good on their election promise by pulling their troops out of Iraq.

In America the election was seen as a win for the terrorists in Iraq and an attempt by Spanish voters to appease the terrorists. Few Americas actually know the real reason why the popular opinion shifted. Now the story is too old for any TV News stations to fill Americans in on the truth. The truth can only be explained in newspapers and only the few people who care about the news will bother to read the whole article and go online to find out what really happened.

The other issue that this brings up is while the Spanish are giving access to this trial over the Internet the only access that the citizens of Illinois get of most trials are paintings. No cameras allowed. Only a rendering of the jury and the witness. Why do they even bother?

What is so bad about having cameras in the trial room in the day of court TV?

Why Aren't Trials Televised in Illinois?

Why can't they make it available over the Internet so the public and the media can piece together what caused the verdict without having to hunt down the jurors who cannot always remember all the details. in court cases the defendant is support to be innocent until proven guilty but in the court of public opinion they are always held guilty until proven otherwise. Cameras in the court will give the public a chance to learn the details of the trial and Judge the defendant based on all the evidence.

Without cameras in the court all we get are the few clues that come out as the media bugs the police about their investigation of the crime scene. Many revelations of a investigation do not come out until the trial, but by that time most people believe they are guilty anyway.

The trial for the 12th Hijacker also favorite ketch artists over cameras. Have cameras in the courtroom will help the public a chance to see that what really goes on in the classroom is much different then what TV shows would let you believe. It would show them that many murder trials go to court without DNA evidence or a "smoking gun".

People are set to life in prison all the time based on circumstantial evidence. I'm not saying that's wrong, In real life the line between innocent and guilty is much thinner than TV shows would have you believe.

Madrid watches as bomb trial begins - Europe - MSNBC.com

This article includes a slide show of the bombing and the trial.

The trial is being broadcast live on Spanish television and on the Internet (www.datadiar.com). The court is providing simultaneous translation for witnesses or defendants who do not speak Spanish.

The site is in Spanish so here is a shortcut to where you can watch the trial Live.
Retransmisión del Juicio por los atentados del 11 de marzo de 2004 - Datadiar.com

YouTube Anti-Piracy

2007-02-19T14:42:00.000-08:00

YouTube Anti-Piracy Software Policy Draws Fire

By offering anti-piracy tools and helping companies to filter out some of their content YouTube is opening the door to their competition and hurting their reputation. What was great about YouTube when it first came out was it was the one stop shop for any short video from videoblogs to a Saturday Night Live scene. If you take away a good chunk of the copyrighted stuff will push people over to other websites that catalog video clips.

earlier this month Viacom demanded YouTube remove more than 100,000 Viacom video clips after the two sides failed to reach a distribution agreement. Some of these clips used music from other artists and content that Viacom does not own all the copyrights for so its hard to know for sure who they belong to in the first place.
MySpace Makes Anti-Piracy Play

Myspace can get away with this without seriously affecting their reputation because Myspace is more about personal profiles and networking then sharing music and video clips.

While the big media companies like Viacom may have a case about uploading clips of shows before they are aired on TV, once a clip is aired on TV or in a video blog it should be fair game for YouTube or any other site. Once it is out there you should be able to watch it or download it to watch as many times as you want.

The free-exchange of copyright material on the Internet may not be legal but its going to happen no matter what tools YouTube or MySpace uses. It is to easy to pirate these clips just like it is too easy to pirate music. they could create a site like iTunes that would provide an alternative of clips and entire episodes of TV show that is legal and of better quality.

demanding YouTube to remove clips will only hurt Viacom in the end. the easy it is to access clips of TV shows the more people are gong to get interest and watch the show.

YouTube is only helping out those companies that it has agreements with so they an still be considered
the one stop shop for video and make their partners happy.

what does this have to do with how we get our news? while TV brought us the 20 minute round up of whats going on right YouTube has allowed viewers to go right to the latest celebrity gossip, the latest terrorist attack, or the latest speech by Obama. the viewer does have to watch the nightly news they can put it together by watching different clips mixing a clip of CNN with a clip from the daily show.

In a YouTube world news is all about the spectacle, the latest shocking, strange, funny, or retarded event that has happened. Its the pictures of Birtney's balled head, its the video of the employees of the cartoon network who were suspected of placing the ads around Boston that were mistakened as bombs and cost there parent company millions talking about their hair in a news conference on FoxNews. Refusing to answer any serious questions of the media. YouTube - Boston Ad Prank Suspects Talk About ... Hair

The details of the story of who did what and why that Newspapers cover so well often go by the way side as people watch the stories with spectacle over the ones with any substance.

Who do you work for?

2007-02-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

Does the media work for you or for corporate CEOs? Do we have a say in the future of the media? Where are people getting their news? Who do we trust and does the news really matter? These are all big question that no one can answer in fewer than ten words. (However you may try? if you have too much time on your hands) They are however fun to ponder, so here is a place where we will try to peer into the future on these questions. Remember there are no right answers, only wrong ones. now its time to boldly go where no Irish, catholic, college student has gone before. this is the final frontier of media.