Accept no substitutes

Category: News of News (Page 5 of 11)

News and comments about news and media

Talking Back to the News

Journalists (and I am one at least in title) sometimes fear that their subjects can respond. Naked Conversations by Shel Israel & Robert Scoble is/are all about that. As you may have noticed, I regularly post about interviews I give here. Glyn Moody is a little excited though about my merely threatening (his word) to post my memory of what I told him in an interview the Linux Weekly News.
Fear Not Glyn! News is a conversation and we’re all better for it. My interview with you was a conversation and the postings are a way to widen the discussion beyond the time we had to talk, beyond the space available, and beyond just the two of us. Heck, you can even follow up on things that you wish you would have asked for example.
Chris Roush and I have had earlier conversations on this same subject. This is an ongoing subject on Chris’ blog.

Mixed Signals – News and Dues

Pew Center for the Study of Internet and American Life reports that “For many home broadband users, the internet is a primary news source.” :

By the end of 2005, 50 million Americans got news online on a typical day, a sizable increase since 2002. Much of that growth has been fueled by the rise in home broadband connections over the last four years. For a group of “high-powered” online users — early adopters of home broadband who are the heaviest internet users — the internet is their primary news source on the average day.

At the same time, the US is threatening to create a tiered Internet with positive support from FCC Chief Kevin Martin (reports /. and Networking Pipeline).

People are learning from the internet instead of watching Fox! This must be stopped (or at least further regulated and tamed)!

Flavor of the Future; History of ibiblio

Took a phone interview and an email interview at the same time on two different topics trying to prove I could multiprocess and move in both directions at once today.

The phone call was with Dawn Vaughan of the Herald Sun (in Durham). Dawn asked the unanswerable:

Do you think there will be significant changes in home technology — beyond advances in computer hard/software? Will we use the Internet more/differently? Will we use desktop computers, or everything handheld? Any new “intelligent” home appliances? Will we watch/listen/learn on one piece of equipment? What will it look like?

I answered that the future of home entertainment is would be life-sized fully interactive revival of Flavor of Love reruns controlled by grills and a large clock worn around the home participant’s neck.

Well, after that I tried to get serious to talk about control by voice, gesture and presence, about houses and devices learning your habits and anticipating your needs based on past behaviors, about presense being sensed by various bioprofiles, facescans, heat images, jewelry and implants, about augmentation of the body, about wires vanishing, about widespread fuelcell use. And about a fetishism of the outdoors. Much as trains are now romanticised, the outdoors will be seen as something that we need to visit to make up for the lack of contact with the unpredictable world of nature. Like trains, we’ll talk about nature and our lovely relationship to it more that we actually experience it.

At the same time, I was answering email from Glyn Moody of Linux Weekly News about Open Content (LWN is not Open Content as near as I can tell, they want you to subscribe but Glyn’s open access article is accessible openly). Glyn had done a piece on Open Access earlier and this would be a follow up.

Glyn asked about Sunsite/Metalab/ibiblio’s hosting of Linux, the Linux Documentation Project, Creative Commons, Project Gutenberg and about contributor-run digital libraries. I answered and will publish what I wrote after Glyn has his cut at making sense of it all. I’m sure he’ll do a great job based on what I read in his Open Access article.

Bound by Law? is out

Bound by Law
James Boyle of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain writes to remind us that Duke won the ACC Championship (after having lost their last regular season game to UNC) and that the Center’s Bound by Law comix book is now available:

Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has just released “BOUND BY LAW?” – a comic book on copyright and creativity — specifically, documentary film. It is being published today
–March 15 under a Creative Commons License. The comic, by Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins explores the benefits of copyright in a digital age, but also the threats to cultural history
posed by a permissions culture, and the erosion of fair useand the public domain. You can read or download the whole thing for free or buy hard copies (*on soft paper) from Amazon.

Will a spiky-haired, camera-toting super-heroine… restore decency and common sense to the world of creative endeavor? -Paul Bonner, The Herald-Sun

Bound By Law lays out a sparkling, witty, moving and informative story about how the eroded public domain has made documentary filmmaking into a minefield.
-Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net

Occupation: Dreamland filmmaker dies

Garrett Scott was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his work on Occupation: Dreamland, but he won’t at the Awards. Thirty-seven year old Scott died in an accident at while visiting his family in San Diego on . I got the news by a phone call from Michael Galinsky who has been distributing Occupation: Dreamland. The film is scheduled to be aired on the Sundance Channel next month. We had a panel discussion here in the fall with Garrett taking part.

SUV Hits Peds in Pit

We were walking the other way and ended up underground, when the silver SUV came around Lenoir Hall past Greenlaw then turned and sped through the large crowd standing near the Pit. James Cooley and other chased the car as he continued to accelerate past Davis Library and back on the roads. NandO reports that the driver turned himself in with a 911 call.
We were in Banditto’s and watched the news helicopter show us the Pit and yellow police ribbon.
Reports so far: News and Observer, Daily Tar Heel (notices that it was a rental car from the Enterprise store near the site of the driver’s arrest), WRAL, ABC-11, Herald Sun and of course Orange Politics (who had the first and the last word).
UPDATE: The driver was identified as a Senior Dean’s List Student from Charlotte, M R Taheriazar. UNC News Release here. Daily Tar Heel is doing the best breaking news.

Update 2: Daily Tar Heel final (maybe) story.

Digital Domain and Jones (Farnsworth v Zworykin)

Just did a short talk with Randy Stross whose Digital Domain column (unfortunately in Times Select) in the NYTimes is doing a bit on Wikipedia. I get to say something like, ” Of course, my collegues use Wikipedia. They are lying if they don’t admit it.” I also say that I require students to go to primary sources that Wikipedia isn’t a primary source. Neither is Britanica nor is World Book. Researchers should get to the primary sources.

Wikipedia does point you to great primary sources tho. And unlike say World Book, you can follow the discussions of articles in the Talk section of a Wikipedia article and disputed articles are clearly marked as such on Wikipedia.

I pointed him to the wonderful HG Wells (1937) article “World Brain: The Idea of a Permanent World Encyclopaedia” which pretty much describes Wikipedia within the technological contraints on the period.

Then I expressed my doubts about the World Book entry on Television in our 1963 World Book. It’s so clearly
slanted toward RCA and Zworykin over Farnsworth. I say:

The lengthy section on television in Vol. 17 has only this to say about Farnsworth (in context so you can see how Zworykin surrounds him):

“These first TV pictures were poor, because only a few impluses could be transmitted in a short time. A more efficient system was found in the earlier work of Vladimir Kosma Zworykin of the United States. In 1923, he filed a patent application on the ‘iconoscope,’ an electron camera tube.

Another American television pioneer, who conceived of a different electronic scanning system, was Philo T. Farnsworth. In 1922, while he was a sixteen-year-old high-school student, Franswroth described his idea to his physics teacher. The Patent Office later granted Farnsworth a patent on his ‘image dissector,‘ or camera tube. He also made other contoributions to television

For the receiving end of television, in the 1920’s. Zworykin and others developed an electron tube called the kinescope. The picture picked up by the iconoscope is reproduced on the face of the kinescope.

Progress in the 1930’s. On July 30, 1930, the Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiary, the National Broadcasting Company began ….”

What follows is much more on RCA in fact most of the rest of the history article is about RCA. Farnsworth is never mentioned again or before.

There is also a table “Famous First in Television” in where there at two Zworykin references multiple RCA and NBC references and no mention of Farnsworth.

The article is signed by Jack Gould and “Critically reviewed by Vladimir Kosma Zworykin and James Robertson” No more said about any of them but you see what happened to Farnsworth (and how Zworykin was made Amercian).

Now the Farnsworth entry in volume 6. No picture. Two short paragraphs. Farnsworth was still alive then. Says he invented the dissector at 16 and 6 years later patented it. But years passed before any of his work was put into commercial use. “He licensed his important inventions to RCA and ATT.”

Zworykin, the final full entry in the final volume 19, gets a picture (credited to RCA) and 5 paragraphs. “A Russian-born American physicist and electronics engineer. He is responsible for many technological advances in radio, television, and the electron microscope.”

Compare wikipedia entries on Zworykin and Farnsworth.

The story that World Book carefully left out is clearly there. Wikipedia seems faired and more accurate and there are great links to primary sources.

Chris Roush of UNC on Blogs at NCPA

Chris RoushChris’ does TalkingBiz News blog. Asks who blogs in the newsroom. 2 types of blogs – portals and aggregators as one and opinion blogs as the other. “You have to offer the reader something new and not in the newspaper already” He loves the NandR Bizbuzz blog. Filling in beyond the news hole. A bit about Branding and the power of journalists at a branded newspaper blog. What tech do you use? He isn’t using a computer for his talk. The beauty of the blog is the simplicity. He’s only critic comment is no images — but he’s not right. He blogs at least one entry per day. 100o readers per day. Editing? Who edits it? Only one paperperson here edits blogs. He pitches for editing to avoid slander and libel etc as well as better clearer writing. He himself uses a grad student to edit his own posts [for content or for copy? – pj]. End of objectivism as opinion enters blogs? Is the the same as having a reporter be a columnist? What if a journalist is writing a story and using email to a source and then the source posts the ?s and responses on the web (in a blog). He talks about the Business Week case that’s on Chris’ blog. How do you manage your sources in this environment? Since so many of us are blogging what happens? [I do this of course — see several posts here – pj]. I wish I had he handout that Chris has given out. He’s talking about the place of opinion on blogs. He asks Elliot (a publisher) about his blog. E says he writes about a reporter conversation on his own blog (like the Business Week instance). Need to bring up Dan Gilmor. E says the everyday posting is important. Chris talks about paying bloggers. A bit about revenue streams.

Ken Rogerson of Duke on Podcasting at NCPA

He had one of the iPod grants at Duke a year ago. At this year’s debriefing, “there is no such thing as a regular iPod — now video iPod, Nano, etc” Are podcasting journalists? Complains about media overload. Now admits that he was once a reporter but then fell into academia. Trad vs New media. In which New means everything from Cable to using your Blackberry. Newspapers now do multimedia. Digital only and those that are mixed with physical. Salon now owned by WashPost which he says makes it have an offline component. A bit about a portal site like Drudge that aggregates (and comments on). Rather as having fallen to bloggers. Now on IndyMedia (hosted on ibiblio.org). What is news and are they reporters? A look at the indymedia.org Is Bill O’Reilly or John Stewart a journalist? Data smog complaint. A bit about the Yes Men with out naming them shows Gatt.com. Now “Tuned Out” why college students don’t watch the news. Show IFRA news of the future from 2000.
98% of the podcasts aren’t news, he says. A bit on John Stewart.
Finally to podcasting. No headlines but news analysis. Podcasting just another tool. Wired (March 2005)’s End of Radio article [hee hee remember their Long Boom issue just before the .com collapse -pj]. Pitches branding and tech integration.

On the phone with BBC

Skype to BBC didn’t happen. I’m queued to talk after some iTV folks. One Holmes of VideoBomb. The other, Leslie does Full Disclosure.net. It was def a British-style interview, in which the speakers had their spiel prepared and the hosts tried to take them off on their weak points. Pointing out the absurd selections chosen by VideoBomb voters and being sure that we all knew that CSpan has low ratings so that will surely doom FullDisclosure. The interviewees handled it pretty well.
I was next up and handicapped by the fact that I don’t know what blooks will perculate up to me as final judge — and in an untimely lapse of memory, when will the winners of the Blooker be announced. I know the Lulus told me but errrrrr.
Still I think I did an okay job. I was able to defend vanity press books using Whitman as an example. “But surely all of these aren’t Whitman.” No, but if one is the contest will have been worthwhile. Besides several of these blooks are from Large Publishing Houses and have been reviewed in the NY Times. Then a question about a silly author’s name, like Hamburger which I can’t find on the list, but I counter with “The World According to Mimi Smartypants” by Mimi Smartypants. The host agrees that this is a truly wonderful name. I get to mention several of the entries — none of which I have read since I’ve placed myself in blook embargo until the finalists arrive. But here goes what I recall — “Julie and Julia” “The Search” by John Battelle, “Ambient Findability” “The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl” by Belle de Jour (this gives way to a conversation about fiction and non-fiction. M. de Jour has entered in non-fiction but is this the next “Million Little Pieces”? I say that the hosts are closer to knowing that than I am.) and “Biodiesel Power” by Lyle Estill.
Save forgetting the announcement date, I got most all of what could be gotten out in I hope an interesting way. Yes I mentioned Swift, deFoe, Dickins and other serial or pseudo-diary writers as forebearers of Blook authors.

Up All Night runs once a week. The last show being on the 14th so I expect this show to run tonight late on the 21st (in the UK).

Is a 50% profit margin high enough

Charles R. Eisendrath (via Phil Meyer) writes about “Telling Rotary About the News Business.” Among the many revealing points:

* Business practices: How many of you business people, I ask, make a profit of five percent on sales? Lots. How about ten percent? One or two. Twenty percent? Nobody, and some giggles of disbelief. Well then, how about 50 percent? At that point, somebody asks whether the speaker is putting them on. So I tell them what everyone in journalism knows:

Fifty percent is what prosperous television stations make. Some newspapers also earn profits in that range but in recent years they’ve averaged 20-25 percent. That’s still double what they earned for several decades ending in the mid-1980s, when the steadily increasing profits engineered by corporate owners replaced steady community coverage as the must-do goal of all but the very best, exceptional few.

On Main Street, these figures are incendiary and there’s gasoline close to this fire—right down the road in Detroit. A five percent profit is what auto companies (U.S. or foreign) make in banner years; usually it has been half that. Their margins are slim because of what it takes to make the product reliable.

Which Way the Wind Blows

Last night on WCOM, I was not only the brief poet guest, but I was also the weatherman or at least the weather reader. I can’t remember all about the four days or so of weather prediction that I read. It was handed to me quickly. But I do know that the current weather (for last night) included a bit about the wind speed. None of the later reportlets did. But as a reader, I kept looking for some symmetry in the writing. There were highs and lows. Sunny or cloudy. Not the word breeze or windy after the first time mentioned. At the end, I said something like “no word on wind.” I can’t quite recall exactly. Others who heard did recall, but no one quite had the same story. I’m less interested in that it was me doing the talking and more interested in what different people heard. My son thought I was too emotional about the weather. Another friend was kinder, she said I was dry — seems right for weather this week. Perhaps I was breezy as well.

In related news, Phil Meyer points us to Andrew Postman’s tribute/essay to his father on the 20th anniversary of the publication of “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 The Real Paul Jones

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑