Digital Disconnect

Ann made a good point in a post-561-class conversation about the digital divide that persists in this country. We've come a long way in getting Americans connected with broadband, but more than half of our citizens still do not have broadband access. A good portion of those without access tend to be poor and minorities. There are imperfect alternatives for these people of course -- less expensive dial-up options, free-access facilities such as the public library -- but none is quite the same as being digitally connected with everyone all the time.

Thinking about the premise of this class in consideration of the mediated reality today, what are the implications innate in this digital divide? Especially in terms of the public sphere, social networking, and other cultural, political, and economic trends today?

Mediated Caroling

I was watching this commercial this morning for Hallmark or some kind of greeting card. A couple opens a door to a group of neighbors, supposedly caroling. Instead, the group hands the couple a holiday card, which when opened plays the song the carolers were going to sing. Rather than actually singing, the carolers just sway to the music. The canned sound of the card fills the evening air as the gratified couple smile and hug each other. Yet another tradition now replaced by mediation. Is it the same thing?

Art as Ritual

I thought this NYT piece about the connection of art to human bonding rituals was interesting:

After studying hundreds of hours of interactions between infants and mothers from many different cultures, Ms. Dissanayake and her collaborators have identified universal operations that characterize the mother-infant bond. They are visual, gestural and vocal cues that arise spontaneously and unconsciously between mothers and infants, but that nevertheless abide by a formalized code: the calls and responses, the swooping bell tones of motherese, the widening of the eyes, the exaggerated smile, the repetitions and variations, the laughter of the baby met by the mother’s emphatic refrain. The rules of engagement have a pace and a set of expected responses, and should the rules be violated, the pitch prove too jarring, the delays between coos and head waggles too long or too short, mother or baby may grow fretful or bored.

To Ms. Dissanayake, the tightly choreographed rituals that bond mother and child look a lot like the techniques and constructs at the heart of much of our art. “These operations of ritualization, these affiliative signals between mother and infant, are aesthetic operations, too,” she said in an interview. “And aesthetic operations are what artists do. Knowingly or not, when you are choreographing a dance or composing a piece of music, you are formalizing, exaggerating, repeating, manipulating expectation and dynamically varying your theme.” You are using the tools that mothers everywhere have used for hundreds of thousands of generations. In art, as in love, as in dancing the hora, if you don’t know the moves, you really can’t fake them.

So communication is art, as much as art is communication. But furthermore, communication is biological ritualization. And, the aesthetics of that communication matter. What do you think? And particularly, what does the line "if you don't know the moves, you really can't fake them" means, do you think?

Blame it on the Educators?

An ongoing debate rages regarding the inadequacies of journalism education, spurred in part by journalists themselves and in part by recent grads.

Here is the original claim, made by Howard Owens:

The kids right out of college, they’re the ones most likely to cling to a romanticism about being the crusading print reporter. When I talk about web-first publishing, they’re the ones most likely to say, “but won’t we scoop ourselves?” Or when handed a video camera, they say, “but I got in this business to be a writer.”

A 23-year-old recent grad blamed the J-schools for not emphasizing the necessity for online training:

It is those supposed schools of higher education and enlightened thinking that are turning out dark-age students. It is those schools that are staffed by glib professors who often fear online journalism or disparage it. They live in a fantasy world of tenure and do not have to learn the latest tools of our craft — or the realities of the industry.

In her blog, a journalist educator, Mindy McAdams, defended the schools:

You can’t generalize about journalism programs across North America. Some programs are pumped full of online journalism opportunities and skills training. Some still have zero emphasis on today’s real world of journalism....Sure, you can walk into a Department of Communication Studies and find a 70-year-old guy who thinks they still use lead type to print the newspaper. But he’s not the one teaching Reporting 101. In most respectable journalism programs, if you look up the credentials of that Ph.D.-toting professor you’re so quick to disparage, you will find that he or she has six or more years experience as a reporter or editor at daily newspapers or mass market magazines.

Care to add your voice?

I wonder at the idea that teaching students to be investigative reporters is so "romantic" today. And furthermore, the notion that being a web reporter is something other than crusading is also sad? Sometimes I get frustrated that people seem to get so caught up in technological training, forgetting that good journalism is good journalism no matter the channel.

Public Citizenry Today

I am reading Tanni Haas' new book, The Pursuit of Public Journalism, which examines the civic journalism movement over the last two decades. The book is comprehensive and constructive, and it makes some rather startling declarations. This blog entry will take into consideration this statement by Haas: "...citizen-produced weblogs do not, as scholarly and journalistic observers speculate, further public journalism’s ideals” (152). Public journalism's ideal is to increase political activity by citizens, and, furthermore, to enhance the deliberation in the public sphere (thereby leading to citizen empowerment for better self-rule). Weblogs have long been heralded as the new savior for democracy, an institution-free space for citizens to regain control over, or at least input in, public knowledge. Haas' point is that even the politically minded weblogs merely aggregate mainstream institutional content with personal commentary -- falling short of real deliberation in the sense of public debate about communal issues.

Do you agree with Haas' statement? What about the very ideal of public journalism? Finally, would you know real deliberation if you saw it?

Think about that last point. I wonder often at the meaning of the words "deliberation" and "public" today. Is everything public? If our private spheres are merging with our public lives, what does the concept of a public citizenry even mean anymore? What is journalism's job in such a world?

Future of Book Reading?

Fourteen years ago Knight-Ridder and some other media companies experimented with an electronic newspaper tablet. It looked like a clipboard. The world was not ready, and the companies lost millions. This week Amazon introduced Kindle:

Thanks to electronic paper, a revolutionary new display technology, reading Kindle’s screen is as sharp and natural as reading ink on paper—and nothing like the strain and glare of a computer screen. ...
We wanted Kindle to be completely mobile and simple to use for everyone, so we made it wireless. No PC and no syncing needed. Using the same 3G network as advanced cell phones, we deliver your content using our own wireless delivery system, Amazon Whispernet. ...
With Whispernet, you can be anywhere, think of a book, and get it in one minute. Similarly, your content automatically comes to you, wherever you are. Newspaper subscriptions are delivered wirelessly each morning. Most magazines arrive before they hit newsstands. Haven’t read the book for tomorrow night’s book club? Get it in a minute. Finished your book in the airport? Download the sequel while you board the plane. Whether you’re in the mood for something serious or hilarious, lighthearted or studious, Kindle delivers your spontaneous reading choices on demand.

Check out the product page, where they have video of Toni Morrison talking up the product. It looks to be about the size of an electric can opener. What do we think? Is the world ready for this one? Will it change our book reading habits, as promised?

Memory Lapse

In a recent Wired Magazine article, Your outboard brain knows all, the claim is made that in relying on our digital tools, we are losing our memories:

This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.

That reflexive gesture — reaching into your pocket for the answer — tells the story in a nutshell. Mobile phones can store 500 numbers in their memory, so why would you bother trying to cram the same info into your own memory? Younger Americans today are the first generation to grow up with go-everywhere gadgets and services that exist specifically to remember things so that we don't have to: BlackBerrys, phones, thumb drives, Gmail.

I've heard this argument before, usually accompanied by frowns and shakes of the head. When I was young, the parallel was calculators versus rote memorization of multiplication tables. I'm curious what people think about this. 1) do you think it's true? and 2) If it is, is it a big deal? Remember that we are talking about personal information here, not random historical dates.

Marketing ethics

Here is another post that doesn't have much to do with technology or media per se, but it is an interesting topic for future marketers, and the implications reach to anyone who interacts with regular people for media production purposes. Check out this Wall Street Journal article, "In West Los Angeles, a homeless man inspires new clothing brand."

John Wesley Jermyn has been a fixture in West Los Angeles for more than 20 years. Nicknamed "The Crazy Robertson" and "The Robertson Dancer," he is a constant presence on a stretch of Robertson Boulevard that has become the city's trendiest shopping corridor and a prime strolling spot for tourists and movie stars...In a plot twist worthy of Tinseltown, Mr. Jermyn now has a clothing label named after him. Since it was introduced last month, "The Crazy Robertson" brand of T-shirts and sweatshirts, created by a trio of 23-year-olds, has flown off the shelves at Kitson, a haunt of tabloid stars like Paris Hilton...
In May, Mr. Jermyn agreed to a deal that entitles him to 5% of "net profit" from clothing sales, according to a copy of the contract seen by The Wall Street Journal. He signed the contract, without speaking to an attorney or family members. But so far he has refused to accept much cash, preferring to be paid in food, liquor and paper for his art projects, according to Teddy Hirsh, one of the label's founders. "He tries not to involve money in his daily life," says Mr. Hirsh, who says he is Mr. Jermyn's agent and manager for future endeavors.

The apparel includes logos such as "no money, no problems." They have a MySpace page featuring the guy, though it also promotes their nightclub and the brand itself. The homeless guy's sister says the man has schizophrenia and objects to the deal.

What do you think? Brilliant marketing strategy while doing good or exploitation of a guy without any kind of institutional protection?

Mind your own business

In The November/December 2007 issue of MIT's Technology
Review magazine, an article, called "The Talk of the Town: You," declared that societal privacy standards have shifted. It prompted this blog entry. I'm curious what the young folk are thinking about this:

Nowadays, thanks to Marshall McLuhan, we're accustomed to talking about the "global village." But traditionally, in villages, everybody knew everybody else's business; personal privacy and anonymity are social constructs that achieved
their current legitimacy when increasing numbers of people started moving to cities in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Now: "the Internet changes basic questions about privacy." It points out that with Facebook and other social networking sites announcing to the world our most intimate likes and disliked, younger generations are accustomed to living in a fishbowl and that older people need to accept that new reality as well.

The article is essentially a review of the book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, by Daniel J. Solove.

Traditionally, Solove reminds us, the law's view of privacy has been
binary: if somebody is filmed in public, that person is deemed to have
had no reasonable expectation of privacy; anyone who really wanted
privacy, the law generally says, should have stayed home. Similarly,
if somebody communicates confidential information--that he's HIV-
positive, say--to a trusted circle of 50odd acquaintances, and one of
them then conveys the facts beyond that circle, the law makes it
difficult to sue for breach of confidenti­ality. Solove believes it should
be harder for someone to betray trust in that kind of situation, and he
proposes using social-network theory, which analyzes social
relationships in terms of nodes (individual actors within a network)
and ties (the relationships between those actors), to determine when
a reasonable expectation of privacy exists.

I love the idea of using social-network theory to think about this phenomenon, and I think I am going to have add this book to my pile. I also agree that expectations of privacy in a digital age need to be redefined and reformed -- but not to the point where we have no expectation at all. Just because we can view/record/display/share private information doesn't mean we should. An application of social-network theory, perhaps combined with an understanding of inside-outside group dynamics, would illuminate the discussion, I suspect.

Finally, I am intrigued by the idea that we are both performer and audience all the time in our lives, online and offline. It reminds me of the photos after hurricanes and tornadoes that ripped the walls of houses off -- all those living rooms and other once private spaces now outside, exposed. Furthermore, we are increasingly taking on the role of disseminator. If this is so, if we 'regular people' now act, report on, and consume information for us, about us and by us, what does that mean for the nature of public information and a broad societal discourse?

Writers' Block

I've been following the writers' strike in Hollywood -- a protest about getting compensated for new media revenues from the media companies. Then, Ken Walsh, political correspondent of U.S. News & World Report, talked to my newswriting students about how the constant call of the Web site has mitigated his day. The expectations of his superiors have completely changed for Walsh, who likened his daily workload to his wire service days of continuous deadlines and content for content's sake. Walsh did not mention whether he was compensated for the additional work in some manner, but my guess is no.

Essentially these media companies are developing alternative content vehicles using existing production models of expense -- at least from a content producer standpoint. Is this fair, or, rather, the normal adaption exercise any dynamic media employee must go through as the nature of the job evolves?

The New York Times recently opened up its articles online to comment, even as its public editor lamented the change. In his Sunday piece "Civil Discourse, Meet the Internet, Clark Hoyt, who serves are the readers' rep and ombudsman for the paper, suggested that the addition of reader voices can be a detriment to public discourse.

Hoyt uses as his evidence a comment by "Ray in Mexican Colony of LA" about urination to make his point. Ray wrote "The Times “have all the displaced ILLEGALS from the FIRES Move into the TIMES NYC HQ Building ... and let them urinate in the halls like they do infront [sic] of most every Home Depot in all the rest of the USA.” And Hoyt quotes The Caucus (NYT political blog) editor longing for days when "we never heard their voices." And he ends with this:

Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations of The New York Times Company, said: “A pure free-for-all doesn’t, in my opinion, equal good. It can equal bad.”

I believe that’s especially true if you’re The New York Times and you are trying to maintain a rare tradition of civility. A site with many Rays in Mexican Colony of LA might carry the name of The New York Times, but it would no longer be The New York Times.

I read this right after I read an article about the EnoughisEnough campaign to force Viacom and other media companies to institute "universal creative standards" for content, censoring bad language, stupid stereotypes and other positive depictions of the worst of society.

I'm dismayed with both situations. While I appreciate that the NYT should hold itself to a certain standard of civility, the comments of these Times editors struck me as decidedly elitist. And the idea of begging media companies to place a lot of content restrictions on content seems dangerous and alarmist to me.

And yet, the most disturbing part of all of this is what it says about us -- We the People who want to denigrate immigrants and create videos that glorify drug dealing or demean women or perpetuate ignorance.

Instead of asking The New York Times and Viacom to censor us, let's examine the conditions in society that lead to such content. Instead of curtailing speech, let's appeal to the artists, bloggers, article commentators, and anyone who talks about this stuff over coffee in the morning. We finally have avenues to mass disseminate... in other words, to have a real voice and play a real part in the construction of public information exchange, dialogue and knowledge. Let's stop blowing it.

What else can we say about what is going on here?

A mission and a question

So at that same conference I wrote about in the last post -- the Online News Association -- one of the keynote speakers related an anecdote from a recent blog chat. Apparently, the political nature of the blogging topic caused a conservative poster to denigrate the discussion with cheap shots at John Edwards. In response, another person vowed to donate $10,000 to the Edwards campaign each time the flamer posted his/her trash talk. After two such posts followed by two $10,000 contributions (verified by the Edwards' campaign by the blogger), the poster was successfully driven from the chat.

Now, I cannot verify this anecdote, relayed by Yahoo's executive president of local markets Hilary Schneider. I cannot seem to find any mention of this incident online, so this may be inaccurate. Nonetheless the anecdote was met with general nodding approval among the audience of journalists and web developed up there in Toronto. The action and reaction on that blog signalled to these people that the self-correcting function of the Internet was alive and well. But it got me to thinking about freedom of expression according to how much money you might have.

The mission: Anyone care to help me out and find the incident in question online?

The question: Is the Internet really free? Surely, self-correction was happening. But what else was going on? Was that exchange about democracy or capitalism?

Data Structuring

I was at the annual Online News Association conference recently and one of the big topics there was data structuring -- which is an old term in computer science now brought into journalism. Data structuring basically means database-driven storytelling, very appropriate in the Information Age of the Internet where data are thrown at us from every direction. I've been seeing this buzzword all over the place lately, including on a recent Romenesko posting by Ken Sands (a fabulous former online editor at the Spokesman-Review in Washington who now works for Congressional Quarterly). The article discusses the new position of "data delivery editor" for the Roanoke Times. Examples of data structuring can be found at:
The DataUniverse at the Asbury Park Press
The RocDocs at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Is this a new function for the press, or is it merely an old mission getting emphasized? What do we lose when we concentrate on structuring information, rather than storytelling with narrative, writing flow, and other more conventional techniques? What happens to story frames and news ideology when we siphon data into these forms, which tend to be structured via categories and keywords rather than context?

What's in a word

Check out the giant Style's piece in Sunday's NYT about the trajectory of a made-up word from a television show into pop culture. The word at issue is "vajayjay" though I am more interested in emphasizing the underlying premise of the news article: Semantics matter.

The Times journalist spends a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of this particular term from a cultural, feminist, racial and academic standpoint:

The swift adoption of vajayjay is not simply about pop culture’s ability to embrace new slang. Neologisms are always percolating. What this really demonstrates, say some linguists, is that there was a vacuum in popular discourse, a need for a word for female genitalia that is not clinical, crude, coy, misogynistic or descriptive of a vagina from a man’s point of view.

What exactly is a "vacuum in popular discourse"? Can we have a "need" for a word that does not exist? And doesn't this new word offer its own set of problems (i.e. its very childishness)?

Let's pull out a couple of other particularly interesting snippets from this piece:

Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of “Grey’s Anatomy,” who brought the word into full public view, never intended to promote a euphemism or slang term for the female anatomy. Rather, she fought to use vagina in the script.

And note the last quote in the story:

“It’s a word I use, a word my female friends use, a word I’ve heard women in the grocery store use. I don’t even think about where it came from anymore. It doesn’t belong to me or anyone at the show. It belongs to all women.”

What can we gather from all of this, in regards to word choice and language in our society?

First, consider the very idea that we can discuss this word from all of these perspectives -- cultural, racial, gendered. Who uses the word matters as well, in terms of power in meaning. It makes a difference that it was the no-nonsense character of Miranda Bailey that used the word, and not, say, sweet Izzy. Indeed, I find the very idea that someone or a group of someones can 'own' any word fascinating. How does one do that exactly? And why?

Second, I'm intrigued by the multiple life cycles this word has had -- from its inclusion in the script of a television show to its meteoric rise into mainstream conversation. So this 'fake' word is plucked from cultural obscurity, thrown into a fictional story (uttered by a fictional character), after which it crosses into the 'real' world via a series of mediated pushs (from Oprah to the blogosphere), until it ends up in people's conversations. Next thing the poor word knows? It's on the cover of the Times Style section. Where can it go from there?

Finally, while we're considering this word's cultural progression, let's not discount Oprah's influence in here. Once Oprah used the word, forget about it. How is it that a media icon can also control our common lexicon? What does that say about the new power elite -- a mediated elite, I'd argue -- in our society?

Thoughts?

This one doesn't really have a lot to do with convergence, but it's pretty amusing (originally reported in the Wash. Post):

FEMA scolded for staging phony news conference

By Associated Press | October 27, 2007

WASHINGTON - The White House scolded the Federal Emergency Management Agency yesterday for staging a phony news conference about assistance to victims of wildfires in Southern California. The agency, much criticized for its response after Hurricane Katrina more than two years ago, arranged to have FEMA employees play the part of independent reporters Tuesday and ask questions of Vice Admiral Harvey E. Johnson, the agency's deputy director.

The questions were predictably soft and gratuitous.... She said the agency was just trying to provide information to the public, through the news media, because there were so many questions....FEMA gave reporters only 15 minutes' notice about Tuesday's news conference. No reporter attended the news conference in person, agency spokesman Aaron Walker said. The agency made available an 800 number so reporters could call in and listen to the news conference, but not ask questions.

Talk about the 'pseudo-event' -- which scholars call news that is manufactured by the powers that be. I find it fascinating that FEMA bothered at all. I think that point goes to the whole idea of institutional authority combined with the pursuit of an authentic illusion: By nudging out the reporters, FEMA officials can construct their own reality for constituents while making it seem as if there were a real news vetting process going on. The mistake, though, was assuming reporters would either not catch on, or not report the ruse. And that is the result of misjudging individual reporters, their complex relationships with sources, and their self-conception of their role (i.e. their sense of power and control over information to maintain their own authoritative stance). Anyone else care to weigh in?

Are we what we watch?

Today people judge each other based in part, on what products we buy, with whom we hang out, what social circles we join, what clothes we wear, etc etc. A recent New York Times article suggested we also determine each other's value based on what we watch. Check this out:

It's a rich television age and a demanding one. The selection is now so plentiful and fragmented and good. And deciding among hundreds of channels, on-demand options, DVR, Internet streaming and iPhones requires so much research, planning and commitment that viewers have become proprietary about their choices. Alliances are formed, and so are antipathies. Snobbery takes root. Preferences turn totemic. The mass audience splintered long ago; now viewers are divided into tribes with their own rituals and rites of passage.

Adorno would be dismayed, to say the least. What does this say about the quality of our culture today? And of us and our social values? Is it even true? Do we feel as if what we tune into (and I mean on a regular basis) says something about who we are? I think it might suggest something about our likes and dislikes, but I am not sure it goes to our essential identity.
I'm going to write more about this, but for now, I wanted to pose this for discussion...

Individualism and Culture

I'm reading this book called MediaWork by Mark Deuze, and he declares us to be in a translocal culture, enabled by new technologies and media. One of the significant results of this is that people's worlds are individual-centric and fragmented. Here is an excerpt:

Today's citizen is not only skeptical and anti-hierarchal, she is also what Schudson calls 'monitorial': scanning all kinds of news and information sources for the topics that matter to her personally. People are not necessarily disengaged from the political process -- they just commit their time and energy to it on their own terms. This individualized act of citizenship can be compared to the act of the consumer, browsing the stores of the shopping mall for the perfect pair of jeans -- it is the act of the citizen-consumer. (2007, p.29)

The result is a decline in voting and other democratic activity.

But then you listen to National Public Radio and people argue that candidates and pundits do not give the 'people' enough credit. That we care, we are listening, and we will vote. We love our communities. Volunteerism is up.

Which is right? And, what role do new technologies play in making us be more of one or the other?

Chlling Effect in Crandon, WI

I found the statement by the AG in Crandon, WI, after that horrific killing last week requesting the community to not talk to the press to be bizarre and disturbing. Here is an excerpt from a Wisconsin State Journal article about it:

Not only did Van Hollen say last week that he would not hold any more news conferences in the city where the killings took place, he asked all Crandon residents to ignore reporters asking questions. As if leading by example, Van Hollen left the podium without taking questions.
... Many residents refused to speak to reporters after Van Hollen 's statement. Some told reporters to go home. Crandon Mayor Gary Bradley said he wished Van Hollen would have come down harder on the press.

This article detailed the criticism that The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other news organizations voiced about freedom of the press, etc etc. But my problem with the request is much more fundamental. The AG asked residents to ignore their First Amendment right to speak freely in their own community. In doing so (and as residents complied), he closed off an avenue for a collective healing. Press theorists have long studied how journalism embodies one of our key societal rituals in processing crisis and tragedy. Journalists help us make sense of the nonsensical, learn lessons, remind us of our values, and move forward. I wish the attorney general had trusted people to speak to reporters or not, as they wished -- rather than create a chilling environment that made people worried they were somehow going against the community's interests in processing this tragedy in a collective manner.
What do you guys think?

The Feed (or corporated life)

I was reading this sci fi book recently called the The Feed about a futuristic society in which everyone has a glorified Internet connection in their heads. Computer chips were embedded in people's brains, integrated with their neurological and physiological systems. All of this was corporate sponsored and corporate run. Schools were privatized, run by companies. The end result being that an individuals essential existence was directly wired to conglomeration.
In short, the normal sci fi subject matter, right?

Check out the latest marketing camaign by Nike, as reported by the NYTimes today in "The New Advertising Outlet: Your life". Here is the lead:

STEVE SAENZ used to run a 10K race in 36 minutes. But last spring — 20 years, 2 children and 50 pounds later — he found himself seriously out of shape. A new Web site from Nike, he says, has brought him back on track.

Since April, Mr. Saenz, 53, has been running with a Nike+, a small sensor in his running shoes that tracks his progress on an Apple iPod he carries. After each run near his home in Louisville, Ky., he docks the iPod into his computer and posts details of his run on the Nike+ Web site. There, he has made friends with other runners around the world who post running routes, meet up in the real world and encourage one another on the site.

Nike’s famous swoosh is there all along. For Nike, this is advertising.

Basically by using online communities, communal events and partnering with lifestyle products, companies integrate themselves into people's identity. This article leads with a guy who A brilliant strategy, highlighted by this quote from the article:

Behind the shift is a fundamental change in Nike’s view of the role of advertising. No longer are ads primarily meant to grab a person’s attention while they’re trying to do something else — like reading an article. Nike executives say that much of the company’s future advertising spending will take the form of services for consumers, like workout advice, online communities and local sports competitions.

“We want to find a way to enhance the experience and services, rather than looking for a way to interrupt people from getting to where they want to go,” said Stefan Olander, global director for brand connections at Nike. “How can we provide a service that the consumer goes, ‘Wow, you really made this easier for me’?”

But let's think a minute about the implications of this for the way someone constructs their identity. And, specifically, for the way in which someone exercises that identity. One could argue that even with traditional product marketing, people employed brands to help in their status building, their presentation of themselves with friends and the public, and otherwise were incorporated into their lives. This feels different to me; another step in creating a corporated life identity where our very being cannot be separated from the products we use.
Am I being alarmist here?
Anyone care to disagree or otherwise weigh in?

Radiohead

While we're talking about the notion of the spirit of the Internet, let's consider Radiohead's decision to offer its latest album digitally, allowing customers to decide how much they want to pay. Some customers are offering $9; for others, it makes more sense to pay less than $1. Is this going to be a viable business model, do you think?

But beyond this, I love the interconnectedness of economics, media, value, fandom, and self and communal identity that this story is demonstrating. Consider this quote from the NYTimes article on the topic:

Mr. Loewenstein, whose specialty is behavioral economics and who has studied the relationship between emotions and financial decision-making, added: “It’s almost like supporting a sports team or donating to a political candidate. You’re selling to the world how much you like them by how much you pay.” Most important, he said, “how much you are willing to pay signals something to yourself about who you are: are you exploitative? Are you a tightwad?”

Has it come down, then, that our ability to be a fan (indeed, even to merely appreciate something) cannot be disassociated from our pocketbooks? I cannot help but feel as if we might be missing the more cultural and social value in Radiohead's music. In the music. In bypassing the traditional economic label relationship, Radiohead wants to put the focus back on their songs. On the other hand, their move has also been called "the greatest marketing scheme in the world."

Finally, there is a third tier of discussion here with this topic: The interactivity of the web means consumers have a chance to mess with a previously fairly rigid (or at least, rigidly adhered to) economic payment structure for information goods. Is this just an illusion? What is interesting to me is the idea that there can be a mass, bottom-up decision in capitalism at all. What do people think about the term "mediated value"? It is not a phrase I coined, but it is not usually used in this context. To me, Radiohead's decision indicates a new way of thinking about how information will be understood as a product, how its value will be determined through interactive media itself (as opposed to the specific channel being merely another attribute considered in the overall price point). Ok, this is still a bit undeveloped as a thought, but that's what blogs are for... Have at it, if you desire.

Marthapedia

It used to be television. Now it's people. Social networking sites are the latest marketing gold mine.

Check this Martha Stewart initiative out, called Marthapedia. Based on a wikipedia model, Marthapedia will ask people to virtually gather to discuss everything from recipes to spot removal in the malleable online encyclopedia format. One note though: any piece of advice you might want to add to this supposedly open-source publication is vetted through Stewart and her editors. And Martha admitted herself that the wiki is another advertising vehicle.

Does this meet the spirit of the social networking sites? What's going on here, sociologically, from a production standpoint, do we think? While you are thinking about this, consider these points on the Instigator (social media) blog today: Ignore the Social Media Scoreboard. An excerpt from that post follows:

At a high level, here are four things you can get out of social media:

1. Social media is about personal brand. It’s about providing you with a platform to express and demonstrate your domain expertise, interests, values and goals. It provides an extension for describing who you are to the outside world. ...
   
2. Social media is about reputation and trust. ...
3. Social media is about making money. I’m not sure when “making money” became a dirty word, but it shouldn’t be. And there’s a ton of opportunity online to properly leverage social media marketing. On top of that, many people look at how to use social media in a business context, bringing all of the proper practices of running a good business to the areas of social media. ...
4. Social media is about discovering opportunities you didn’t know existed.

Student Post about News routines

From Elli in J561:
In "What Makes News News?" by Schudson, he discusses the social-action perspective of analyzing news content. He argues that many news stories turn out the way they do because journalists want to keep news understandable and organized. Schudson writes:

"In covering a presidential campaign, most reporters come up with the same 'lead' for their stories...[Political reporters] know or fear that their editors will doubt them if their stories differ sharply from the wires. So they adopt the simple procedure of following the leader...They have to avoid errors and fend off criticism of the innumerable decisions they must make daily. Coping with this uncertainty is difficult, so newspapers establish routines which, though they may distort or arbitrarily simplify the world of events, succeed at least in clarifying the work of reporting...The basic form of the news story itself...may arise from this same need of reporters and editors to reduce uncertainty" (Schudson, 118-119).

I found this very interesting and thought it may fit with our discussions on interpreting and framing the news. I'm curious what you and others think about this idea of shaping news stories in order to provide personal organization and to avoid uncertainty. How much does conforming to a supposedly journalistically correct lead or a story pattern affect the coverage of an event and the content of an article?

Student Post about PC in the newsroom

FROM Niki in my J800 Class (she works for On Wisconsin):

I have a real-life situation that came up with On Wisconsin, the alumni magazine. We
have an alumni news section in the magazine, and we usually run two
short profiles on alums (about 500-700 words) , along with the short
items that mention people's promotions, new jobs, new books etc.

An alum contacted me and wondered if we wanted to write about his
latest career change. He was an attorney for a while, and before that
something else, and now he has switched directions again and started
a business designing Christmas ornaments. He first worked with a
pretty high-end ornament design company (I need to check on the
name), and is now branching off on his own. Since we needed another
sidebar for our Winter issue, I suggested that we do one on him,
based on the quirkiness of his career path, the prestige of the
former design company, and the timeliness, with the holidays coming
up. Of course, it would be free advertising for him, but we have
highlighted other alums who have started businesses in the past if
they seemed interesting enough.

One of our writers objects to doing the mini-profile on him because,
as she put it, it would be politically incorrect, since his business
designs Christmas ornaments. I should add that he sent photos of the
ornaments, and they are all secular things like snowmen and so on --
nothing religious.

I should also add that On Wisconsin is sort of a hybrid between a
straight news magazine, and a PR publication, since it exists, of
course, to promote the university. We've managed to cover a number
of controversial issues, however, and have developed a reputation for
being able to avoid the puff-piece trap that some alumni magazines
fall into on account of micromanaging from timid administrators.

Net Neutrality and Text Messaging

This week Verizon has been getting into some hot water for its refusal to relay pro-choice text messages from an abortion-rights group. What a new world where we have information transporters who traditionally have had no real interaction with content (i.e. telephone companies, cable companies like Charter) suddenly deciding to mess with the digital messages and the information hierarchy to boot. In part this is a result of the lack of laws regulating such interference in these new technologies. But what else about this kind of technology has these companies electing to mess with content all of a sudden? Is this just a sharing of the information wealth? How do we think about this -- is it giving still more control to corporations, or is it redistributing that power of data, or is it servicing audiences? Does this indicate a cultural shift in terms of digital information control? What will the implications be for media production and advertising and public relations strategies?
While we're at it, let's talk about this buzz concept, net neutrality, which is the idea that the Internet will remain a place of free-flowing content without real institutional controls for the sake of control:

The dispute over the Naral messages was a skirmish in the larger battle over the question of “net neutrality” — whether carriers or Internet service providers should have a voice in the content they provide to customers.

“This is right at the heart of the problem,” said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan law school, referring to the treatment of text messages. “The fact that wireless companies can choose to discriminate is very troubling.” (From the NYT article linked above)

The issue has gotten some early attention in the presidential campaign. Some panelists at a conference this summer from the Heritage Foundation pointed out that nobody can come out against net neutrality. It would be a little like coming out against democracy. A Wall Street Journal columnist called the net neutrality advocacy by "liberals" scare-mongering. But what does it mean exactly? I have a lot of questions about it: why is this a political issue instead of an institutional power issue? Shouldn't private companies like Verizon or Internet Service Providers have some control over the messages that go through their proprietary systems? Is there a consumer rights argument here regarding the desirability for tiered pricing systems, for example? What kinds of subcultures would be curtailed should net neutrality fail? What would it do to the nature of our existing media system's information flow?

usa today

Twenty-five years ago, Gannett launched USAToday, which was widely derided by journalists for its fluffy bulk, its short articles, and its broadcast-like model. It lost a ton of money at first. Today, the paper holds the largest circulation in the nation, and it makes a tidy profit for the chain -- the main goal Al Neuharth sought to achieve. It still hasn't won a Pulitzer, but the paper now publishes some pretty good journalism (as contended in a recent New York Times piece). In addition, the chain is becoming a pioneer in the online world as well (according to a recent BusinessWeek magazine). Can we go back to the original call by the Hutchins Commission in appealing to the conglomerates to provide us with socially responsible journalism? Considering McChesney's and Bagdikian's recent writings, is USAToday, the Nation's Newspaper, still so bad for America? Or, is all of this just more window dressing by Gannett? Still another thought: maybe USAToday is merely representing a new cultural sensibility of America?

A question about information control...

This is a post from a friend (a Massachusetts journalist, artist, and art critic):

Here's a question for your new media blog...
When a semi-institutional blog recklessly reports an unconfirmed
rumor that someone has died -- an elderly local bigwig -- what happens?
Who should call them on it? How? Who polices the internet?
The post is from the new blog of a local online arts journal, which has been
publishing for something like three years.

NYT Select

A few years ago Len Apcar, then the leader of NYtimes.com, stood up at an online journalism conference and asked researchers to find a viable business model for newspapers online. He hinted that his paper would be unveiling one attempt to gain revenue and protect content. A few months later, NY Times introduced TimesSelect, hiding its op-ed content from non-subscribers and angering those who believe the Web needs to nurture, not curtail, its culture of free information. This morning I got this email:

Dear Home Delivery Subscriber,

We are ending TimesSelect, effective today. This will not affect any services you are already receiving as a home delivery customer.

The Times's Op-Ed and news columns are now available to everyone free of charge, along with Times File and News Tracker. In addition, The New York Times online Archive is now free back to 1987 for all of our readers.

Why the change?

Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion - as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.

The bloggers are having a field day with this. I think it highlights an interesting tension point between old-world notions of news as a commodity to be bought and sold and the new information culture on the Internet. I was interested in seeing which was going to win out when TimesSelect appeared. In many ways, media companies are making great strides in 'normalizing' the Internet, and taking advantage of its technological attributes in such a way that the status quo of capitalism is not threatened. Now even Murdoch is hinting that the Wall Street Journal might turn into a free site.
What is going on? Why didn't this work? Also, would it have worked better has the Times made all of its content subscription online (rather than just op-ed)? Are these an indication that culture (and the people) has trumped economics?

A student post about Second Life

From AMY in 561:

There is something I would like to get opinions from the class on and the topic may be appropriate for the blog. The question stems from self-interest -it has to do with a project I am currently working on- but it also relates to the readings.

My question relates to the Wright chapter. Beginning on page 7 of the chapter, Wright outlines characteristics of mass communication. I would like to use Wright's description (and maybe other definitions too) to determine if Second Life counts as mass communication.

This has been troubling for me. Of course the internet is mass communication. But when it comes to Second Life it gets sticky for me. Especially when studying certain spaces of Second Life- such as a store. The stores are businesses with actual customers. When moving through SL, a store seems to be more like a place than a medium of mass communication. But, the owner of the store does not interact with everyone who consumes their "messages", the recipients are largely unknown and heterogeneous, and the audience could be potentially very large. The store is public, but it is not rapid or transient (but much of the internet is not transient). And it may be easy to answer the question by equating Second Life to video and computer games, but Second Life is so much more than a game. Real life businesses and governmental organizations are using SL to communicate with their consumers and citizens!

So, could Second Life be considered mass communication? What about specific places within Second Life? Where should the line be drawn?

Public vs Private

I had a conversation with a student who was doing a story about journalistic ethics and standards for ASNE the other day. We talked at length about reporter responsibility, editorial decision-making, and audience expectations during this evolutionary change for journalism. Indeed, the profession has also been deeply concerned about these issues. But the interview also involved a discussion about how the Internet is melding private and public worlds, and what that means on a very practical level for journalists in the newsroom. Journalists want to have standards that guide the industry across media platforms, though their working ethics guidelines have also started to specify linking issues, for example. So much work has already been done, including by Poynter and cyberjournalist.net as well as individual media companies. Many of these standards have borrowed heavily from existing print guidelines. However, we cannot assume that our traditional notions of sensationalism, privacy, even ethics itself have remained intact as new media have developed.
An example of what I mean: today's editors routinely point readers to victims' Facebook sites, or download photos/material from these pages to include in news stories. Aren't there privacy issues here? Under traditional understandings of privacy (is there a reasonable expectation of privacy, is it in a public space), the answer is no. The Web is public. Period. But the reality is much different. A friend told me she wanted to publish her highly personal memoir on her MySpace page. I asked her if she had thought about the implications. Anyone she had ever known, or would ever know would read it. It would be there decades from now in some form. Today's co-workers would read it. Future employers would find it. Was she prepared for that? She's thinking about it. We all need to be thinking about this. Is the Facebook page now equivalent to someone's front yard? I'm not saying journalists shouldn't glean information in this manner. I'm just saying they shouldn't do it without a conversation. And citizens need to be involved in that discussion of audience expectations. We need to develop and expand on our media literacy teachings in junior high schools, when people start creating MySpace and other social networking pages in earnest.
But journalists also need to be thinking on a meta-conceptual level about all of this. These online guidelines emphasize transparency, and often publication on the Web of certain material is done under this standard. Yet just because we have access to certain information, and we can publish it under the guise of providing transparency, doesn't mean we should. These days -- at least in my sphere -- the word gatekeeping harbors negative connotations sometimes. In fact, there are people who would like to do away with the concept entirely, change it to 'gatewatchers' or 'networked journalism' or 'information facilitators'. But there is something to be said for information synthesis and thoughtful presentation -- accomplished with a holistic view of the cultural and social implications of publication.
But there are counter arguments to this way of thinking as well. What are they? What do others think?

Perpetuating democracy?

Consider this (press-release) story in Monday's Cap Times, "Fair trade shop offers new items."
Here is a portion:

"MIDDLETON -- Fair Indigo, a fair trade apparel and accessories company with a store in the Hilldale Mall, has introduced two new products aimed at the socially conscious consumer.

Fair Trade Organic Cotton Denim for Fall 2007 is made in a fair trade factory in San Jose, Costa Rica using 100 percent organic cotton grown in the U.S. and woven in North Carolina. The collection features "sleek, slim-fit jeans, fitted hip-length jackets and long, easy skirts" for women, and jeans and a jean jacket in "classic, easy-fitting styles" for men. The jeans will sell for $69."

Note the socially responsible nature of this particular company. Now think about if you are reporter in the newsroom and a marketer of another for-profit company calls you up about their new product. They want you to write about their new hat, retailing for $125 -- or at least reprint their press release too. And they are socially resp. too! They give $500,000 to United Way every year! What do you say? One of the disturbing trends I see in journalism is this conflation of capitalism and democracy, combined with the desire to fill the news pages or airtime with 'bulk'. What are the pros and cons of writing a story like this in this way? What other options did the reporter have if he wanted to showcase the social responsibility of this particular company? Is part of the responsibility of journalists to promote companies in this manner? But journalists are also the gatekeepers and have this option to write about some companies and not others, right? And consumerism is the business of America, which allows us to be a democracy (some might argue). Isn't it a business reporter's duty to write about such things? And then there is another consideration: Are we glad we know this information? Is it 'news we can use'?
(And we could have a whole other post about the use of press releases being passed off as news, especially a story that has zero original reporting. Here is the company's original press release. Is this journalism now?)

A citizen's responsibility

My newswriting class is reading Kovach & Rosenstiel's revised Elements of Journalism, which contains an addition to the original nine components for good journalism in America. This tenth element? "Citizens too have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news." On one level, this is a fairly obvious addition, given the new abilities to interact and monitor journalism with agency because of new technologies (and the ways we are using those new technologies). But on a deeper level, this adds a layer to that enduring ideal of Social Responsibility. Not only should we expect media companies to inform publics in a truthful, significant, relevant, balanced and fair manner, but we must also look to citizens to use the same communicative tools to check their journalism and counter it when warranted. This too seemed reasonable... until I started talking to a couple friends -- friends whose days involve diapers and car pools, who get to check their email about once a week, and who thought the Daily Kos was a new cereal. They recognize their democratic responsibilities (to vote, to be involved in their communities, to be informed) but now we want them to also act as a watchdog of the watchdogs? Where does it end, they asked, rather exasperated. Are K&R asking too much?

Agent Society

A comment was made in my media and society class yesterday that has gotten me thinking about social institutionalization vs. agents of socialization. We were having an introductory discussion about social institutions such as the Church, Family, School, Press... etc. And the distinction was made that perhaps we should consider these agents of socialization rather than domineering entities. I find this thought intriguing. I think the distinction matters when we think about information production and processing, when we think about communicative agency, when we think about meaning and causality. In this post I pose some questions for my 561 students (and for anyone else who'd like to wrestle with this rather narrow conceptual work).
How is an agent different from an institution? I give you a definition from Tim Cook: .An institution includes “taken-for-granted social patterns of behavior valued in and of themselves [that] encompass procedures, routines, assumptions, which extend over space and endure over time, in order to preside over a societal sector” (Cook, 1998, p. 84). An agent, presumably, would exercise those procedures and routines. I'm wondering if we can't consider, say School, both the institution and the agent, depending on the context.

Another, sort of related, question: Are we at the point where we can start considering Society (and normally a pet peeve of mine is when people randomly capitalize nouns, but here a capital S, I think, is warranted, considering my point) an institution, given its enhanced powers in mass dissemination of information and mass communicative control and influence?

Book authors and readers

Consider the following two articles from the NYT:
"A space for us"
And
"The author will take Q.'s Now"

Both consider how digital technology is changing the dissemination and consumption process of books. What kind of implications do you think these changes have for the basic functions of books?

News we are using

In his recent book Tuned Out, David Mindich suggests that society is in crisis because people your age refuse to be informed about the events and issues going on around you. You get your news from Jon Stewart and late-night comedy. This has implications for your collective national identity, he says -- meaning, you've got none.
Ok, let's hear it: What do you think? Where are you guys getting your news? Be honest now. What do you think of the news today? What parts of it interest you? What do you hate? Where have you found journalistic sanctuary? Do you find yourself having conversations about the news ever? What kinds of journalism ekes into your conversations?
And here is a big questions: What is news to you?

Fall 2007

Welcome to my new blog, media students! For the time being, I am going to post interesting tidbits and big questions to get you guys talking. I will try to post a journalism-oriented topic and a media topic each week. Please bring your current readings and theory into the discussion.
Shall we begin?