Sorgatz: Big Media Needs to Act Small
“…that reveals the other quality that is required to make “placeblogging” work: sexiness. It’s a crass way to think of publishing, but it’s an essential quality….(My definition of sexiness: hot content with a strong voice that leads to people talking about the author and engaging with the publication.) I just don’t know if these new citizen journalism projects will have the sexiness to gain audience. It’s like old media dressed up in new media clothes.” You should really read the whole article this is quoted from. Rex rules. We share very similar views on things like bloggers that say ‘Discuss’ or ‘Share your thoughts’ at the bottom of every freaking entry.
Stop shoveling, start building
“Personal utility is one of the major drivers of Internet usage, yet newspapers put almost nothing into building long-life resource pages about basic issues in their own communities. Instead, staff time and energy is almost entirely spent on short-term, short-burn work.”
Online video use explodes from ‘06 to ‘07
“Daily video usage by Internet-enabled 12 to 64-year-olds jumped 56% in the past year. A full 14% of that wide demographic swath said they watched video online each day. Thirty-five percent of males age 18-24 view video online each day — that number explodes to 80% when you increase the metric to a week.”
Speaking truth to power: Jon shows us how to do it
“Y’know, sometimes a really good journalist catches someone in high office lying, and documents it. How about Jon Stewart on Tony Snow? Why don’t we see this on network TV? How does one nominate someone for a Pulitzer?”
Is MySpace Worth $12 billion?
“Fox and Yahoo, where Yahoo would effectively buy MySpace for 25% of the stock in the combined entity, have occured. Whether Yahoo can stomach that kind of transaction right now is another matter, of course.”
Annals of Embarrassments to Journalism
“Jack Shafer (Slate): Apple suck-up watch: Watching the press froth over a new cell phone. No drop of milk oozes from the Apple teat without a crowd of journalists gathering to swallowing it up.” It’s funny because it’s true!
Australia announces vast national broadband plan
The US continues to fall behind the developed world in broadband while our telecom monopolies companies hide their broadband deals. Speaking of…
AT&T Giving Consumers The Runaround Over Secret $10 DSL
Hopefully, you’ve heard about At&T’s $10 DSL offer (a concession with the FCC for making a new telecom monopoly). Tell your friends about this. Sign up. If they give you a hard time. Let the FCC know. Consumerist is there telling you how to do it.
Some questions and answers about citizen media
“The word ‘community’ is a slippery one, and the definition is changing. We used to think of a community as a place. The Internet has created a new definition: communities of interest. There’s a lot we can learn from Internet startups if we just recognize that geographic community is actually a special interest. A smart special-interest community-builder works to heighten participants’ sense of identity — of being part of something special. Traditional, local media can do that, too.”
Politics and Hip-Hop Are Doing a Mash-Up – Girl Talk’s Gregg Gillis gabs w/ Rep. Doyle
“At our lunch, Doyle, 54 (whose own iPod is filled with the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire and Steely Dan), had a lot of questions for Gillis, 25. How many artists were sampled on his recent album ‘Night Ripper’? (Gillis: more than 167.) If he had to pay rights to every person he sampled, how costly would it be? (Gillis: who knows? But at the least, ‘we’d have to sell the album off the shelf for $100 a copy.’)”
CNET Adds Topical Blogs
“The format has been successful and we realize that blogs are a way to expand the conversation beyond our own editorial opinion. It broadens and deepens our content and adds new opinions that may or may not be CNET opinions,” Morrison said. New blogs include The Open Road; The Digital Home; Media Sphere; Sports Tech; Surface: A Design Blog; The Web Services Report; and Digital Noise: Music & Tech. ”
Social Nets Sit on Goldmine of Behavioral Data, Says Jupiter
“As salivating advertisers realize, every MySpace profile is ripe with information about its creator, facts that could be used to tailor advertising to the page owner and his or her visitors.”
What does a health crisis look like? See Houston
Michael Moore’s new movie may actually change some things. Like 11 of my adult, college educated friends that don’t have insurance because their companies don’t provide it.
Getty Images buys music licensing start-up Pump Audio
Oooh. Interesting move.