An Australian publishing resource
Home | News | Resources | Research | Leisure | About us | Jobs | Main index
|
Guidomedia.com An Australian publishing resource Home | News | Resources | Research | Leisure | About us | Jobs | Main index |
Our
other mags
|
Benton media news digest – August 2006 31 August: POSITIVE PRESS ON IRAQ IS AIM OF US CONTRACT [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Walter Pincus] U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq. The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide "public relations products" that would improve coverage of the military command's performance. The request for bids comes at a time when Bush administration officials are publicly criticizing media coverage of the war in Iraq. The proposal, which calls in part for extensive monitoring and analysis of Iraqi, Middle Eastern and American media, is designed to help the coalition forces understand "the communications environment." Its goal is to "develop communication strategies and tactics, identify opportunities, and execute events . . . to effectively communicate Iraqi government and coalition's goals, and build support among our strategic audiences in achieving these goals," according to the statement of work that is publicly available through the Web site http://www.fbodaily.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083003011.html NYT MOVE TO BLOCK WEB TO BRITONS RAISES QUESTIONS [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Daniel Trotta] A New York Times decision to block British online readers from seeing a story about London terrorism suspects raises new questions on restricting the flow of information in the Internet age, legal and media experts say. While restricting what British media can report has been effective in the past, the Internet has made it far harder to stop information published by foreign outlets, which may breach Britain's laws, from being seen by UK readers. Because British courts may impose heavy fines and jail editors, foreign newspapers sometimes hold potentially sensitive stories out of their British print editions. Media lawyer Mark Stephens said he could not see anything wrong with the blocked New York Times article and the decision by British papers to print similar details showed the contempt of court law may be the problem. This was the first time the New York Times had targeted a readership and blocked it from seeing a story on the Web, as far as a spokeswoman and a lawyer from the paper could recall. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-08-30T145912Z_01_L30604113_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-NYTIMES.xml NEW FILM ATTACKS HOLLYWOOD'S "CENSORSHIP" SYSTEM [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Arthur Spiegelman] Kirby Dick, the director of "This Film is Not Yet Rated," set out to unmask some of the most powerful people in America -- the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board. The group keeps the names of most of its board members secret from the public, it says, to protect them from public pressure. Although not a censorship board in the traditional sense of the term, the board wields enormous power in Hollywood. Few filmmakers, for example, want their works rated NC-17, which bars anyone 17-years-old or under from attending, because newspapers and TV stations often won't accept ads for such films, and many theaters refuse to show them. Moreover, NC-17 carries the stigma of an "adult movie," which in many people's minds translates into "pornography." Many ratings board decisions stem from the nature of sex scenes in films. The MPAA has said its ratings board consists mostly of average Americans whose mandate is to provide guidance for parents on the nature of films' content, such as the level of violence and sexuality. The board was established in 1968 to replace a more rigid system. Dick said he would like to see the current ratings system replaced by one that gives more detailed information about what a film contains so that parents -- and parents alone -- can determine what their children see. http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=filmNews&storyID=2006-08-30T233020Z_01_N30242123_RTRIDST_0_FILM-LEISURE-CENSORS-DC.XML CREATIVE COMMONS -- AN ANSWER TO THE COPYRIGHT DEBATE? [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Eric J. Sinrod, Duane Morris] [Commentary] Creative Commons consists of a U.S. charitable corporation and a not-for-profit company in the United Kingdom. It believes that all-out copyright has failed to help many artists and entrepreneurs gain the exposure and widespread distribution they desire. As a result, a significant number of them are increasingly open to "innovative business models" that ensure a return on their creative investment. This is where Creative Commons comes into play, by offering a set of licenses on its Web site, free of charge. Creative Commons is gaining use and notoriety among prominent creators. In May of this year, the group announced that Pearl Jam's new single "Life Wasted" was to be offered to the public under its Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives license, enabling people internationally to copy, distribute and share the clip legally. It does appear that Creative Commons is offering the flexible copyright options it envisioned at the outset. As always, time will tell whether it will inspire a true movement that gains even more momentum. http://news.com.com/Creative+Commons-an+answer+to+the+copyright+debate/2010-1030_3-6110733.html?tag=html.alert STUDY: PRODUCT PLACEMENT TO SURGE 25% IN '06 [SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Marc Graser and T.L. Stanley] The global product-placement market will soar 25% to $7.5 billion this year and hit $14 billion by 2010, a study finds. But the explosion is causing product-placement agencies to rethink their business models and leading some to wonder how effective placement can be amid all the noise. "Product placement has evolved from a novel marketing tactic to a key marketing strategy on a global scale, as brand marketers seek more effective methods to make important emotional connections with consumers," said Patrick Quinn, president of PQ Media, which conducted the study. "Fear of ad-skipping technology, doubts about traditional advertising's effectiveness and declining government media subsidies have fueled a dramatic increase in the value of seamless brand integration." http://adage.com/article?article_id=111526 IN JAPAN, BROADCASTERS PITCH COMMERCIALS WITH COMMERCIALS [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Amy Chozick amy.chozick@wsj.com ] Facing a slowdown in ad revenue, Japan's television networks are running commercials ... for commercials. The country's 133 commercial stations this week kicked off a month-long ad campaign to remind viewers of the contributions made by TV commercials to popular culture. The first day, Monday, was dubbed "Commercial Day" and featured a barrage of commercials starring some of Japan's biggest TV personalities. One of the most popular, Mino Monta, appears in an ad that will run throughout the month. "Do you know how many TV commercials are made in a year?" he asks. "Twenty-thousand!" The tactic highlights how Japanese broadcasters, like those in the U.S., have become desperate to retain eyeballs and ad revenue. At $17.5 billion a year, Japan's TV-advertising market is the world's second-largest, after the U.S. But it has been hit recently by changes in the way people consume media. Despite strong growth in overall ad revenue, TV has seen its share of ad spending in Japan stagnate as marketers pour money into cellphone, Internet and other nontraditional outlets. Part of the problem is that viewers have grown so used to seeing commercials, "they don't catch people's attention that much anymore," says Hiroyuki Yabuuchi, a producer for Mainichi Broadcasting System in Osaka. What's more, Japan is among the fastest markets in the world to embrace digital video recorders, devices that make it easy for people to zip past the ad breaks in shows recorded earlier. According to Tokyo-based Nomura Research Institute, the number of Japanese households with DVRs is expected to rise to 44% by 2009 from 15% in 2005. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115697852940249935.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription) DATELINE: NEWSROOMS; SUBJECT: REPORTING [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Jensen] Investigative reporters toil in hidden corners, digging through court records, meeting anonymous whistle blowers in nondescript cafes. It is not uncommon for them to spend a year on a report that makes the front page for only a day or two. They can effect profound policy change, but their jobs usually don't bring much personal glory. Now some investigative teams will get their "All the President's Men" moment in the spotlight with "AIR: America's Investigative Reports," a weekly half-hour program on PBS, beginning tomorrow. Produced by WNET, the New York public television station, in association with the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, Calif., "AIR" will review one or two recent journalistic projects each week, most taken from regional newspapers. The episodes will summarize the reporting on the articles as well as how the reporters got their scoops. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/31/arts/television/31air.html (requires registration)
WITH SEXY STORY LINES, LOW BUDGETS, NEWS CORP WILL LAUNCH MYNETWORKTV
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Brooks Barnes brooks.barnes@wsj.com]
Every time News Corp. launches a new television business, it turns to
programming that entrenched players decry as schlocky and culturally
debasing. Then, in many cases, the company starts printing money. On
Tuesday, Roger Ailes, chairman of News Corp.'s Fox Television
Stations, will flip the switch on MyNetworkTV, a new broadcast
network that will feature a novel format for mainstream U.S.
television: Super-sexy -- and super-cheap -- prime-time soap operas
that air six nights a week for limited runs. It's an over-the-top
format borrowed from Spanish-language broadcasters. While story lines
on American soaps can drag on for years, Spanish soaps, or
telenovelas, deliver immediate gratification. They wrap everything up
after 13 weeks, offer a cliffhanger in each episode and culminate
with shocking finales that can rack up Super Bowl-size ratings --
just the formula that MyNetwork hopes to duplicate. U.S. viewers may
be jolted by the style and content of the two shows MyNetwork is
rolling out next week -- "Desire" and "Fashion House." But "Fox has a
way of turning unsophisticated, simplistic programming into a
success," says Laura Caraccioli-Davis, an executive vice president at
ad-buying firm Starcom Entertainment. She adds: "And this is
definitely unsophisticated." The hour-long episodes on MyNetwork are
taped on a shoestring budget of $200,000 to $500,000 each, and it
shows. While far from bare-bones, the sets aren't as lavishly
decorated as those seen in traditional network dramas, which cost $2
million to $3 million an episode. Advertisers have seen it, and if
they're impressed, it isn't yet showing in MyNetwork's advance ad
sales. Media-buying firms estimate that the network has secured under
$50 million in advertising commitments for the fall season. In
comparison, My Network's closest competitor, the new CW network,
lined up about $640 million in advance ad business.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115698811194650185.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
(requires subscription)
30 August: A THIRD WAY FOR NET NEUTRALITY [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Eli Noam, Columbia University] [Commentary] "Net neutrality" has been a hot topic in Washington, but the problem is that the term is "like an inkblot into people project their fears and hopes." Noam identifies seven meanings of Net Neutrality and highlights two: 1) No selectivity by the carriers over content they transmit and 2) No blocking of the access of users to some websites. Perhaps the best way to analyze the issues is to view it as a triangle involving three parties: the providers of Internet content and applications, such as Google, Yahoo, HBO, and Vonage; the end-users of that content (some of whom are also providers at the same time) like you and me; and the electronic pipes that connect between them and transport the information packets, such as Comcast and AT&T. These pipes come in two different sections: 'last-mile pipes' that reach individual end-users, and 'middle-pipes' that constitute the local and national network system and serve numerous users simultaneously. It is important to distinguish between those two different pipes. The question then is what kind of control the pipes can exercise over the content, prices, and quality of information packets that are sent by providers to end-users, and over the access of end-users to the providers. Noam offers a "third way" solution for Net Neutrality. He concludes: "This arrangement, by separating the last-mile pipe where potential problems exist, from the middle-pipes, where they do not, provides both openness and minimal intervention. It responds to both sides' legitimate problems, not as a 'divide-the-baby-in-half' compromise, but as a genuinely better system." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/acf14410-3776-11db-bc01-0000779e2340.html (requires subscription) UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AND AN ONLINE SITE PLAN A JOINT VENTURE TO CHALLENGE ITUNES [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Eric Pfanner] A new online music company said yesterday that it would make a huge catalog of songs from the world's largest record company, the Universal Music Group, available for consumers to download free. The company, called SpiralFrog, said its intention was to wean music fans, especially young people, away from illegal downloads and pirate music sites by offering a legitimate source, supported by advertising instead of download fees. SpiralFrog is the latest to offer a challenge to Apple Computer's hugely successful iTunes service, which allows consumers to download songs legally for 99 cents each, and its many smaller imitators. Though the venture is not the first to try a free ad-supported approach, the backing of Universal, with millions of songs in its catalog from thousands of artists like Eminem and Gwen Stefani, Elton John and Gloria Estefan, Count Basie and Hank Williams, promises to give it instant credibility and scale. SpiralFrog said it expected to start testing its service in the United States and Canada by the end of the year and would extend its service to Britain and other European markets next year. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/technology/30music.html (requires registration) 29 August: THE MEDIA'S POST-KATRINA FLAW: BOREDOM [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Danny Heitman, Baton Rouge Advocate] [Commentary] The first anniversary of hurricane Katrina has once again attracted an army of journalists to New Orleans, site of the worst natural disaster in American history. While Tuesday's anniversary promises to bring even more attention to one of the most documented events in national journalism, many residents of the flood- ravaged Crescent City continue to insist that reporters are missing the story. The locals frequently complain that even after months of coverage by TV, print, and Internet outlets, the full dimension of the disaster has somehow eluded the media's yardstick. Although some sloppy reporting has figured into the distortion, the divide between Katrina's perception and its substance seems to have less to do with negligence or intentional bias, and more to do with the inherent limits of journalism as a craft. Journalism is frequently derided for its embrace of mindless repetition, but the industry's understandable desire for what is new and interesting has not inclined it to capture the frequent monotony of existence in post-Katrina New Orleans. If the everyday challenges of post- Katrina Louisiana fail to register in the global media machine, it is perhaps because journalism, by its nature, sees the world as a series of dramatically packaged episodes rather than the dry continuum that a recovery from disaster can be. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0829/p09s01-coop.html GORE LASHES OUT AT MEDIA CONSOLIDATION [SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Jill Lawless] Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday ever-tighter political and economic control of the media is a major threat to democracy. Gore said the goal behind his year-old "interactive" television channel Current TV was to encourage the kind of democratic dialogue that thrives online but is increasingly rare on TV. "Democracy is under attack," Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. "Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time. "Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralized." He said that in many countries, media control was being consolidated in the hands of a few businesspeople or politicians. In the United States "the only thing that matters in American politics now is having enough money to put 30-second commercials on the air often enough to convince the voters to elect you or re-elect you," he said. "The person who has the most money to run the most ads usually wins." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060828/ap_on_re_eu/britain_gore_2 FTC CHIEF CRITIQUES NET NEUTRALITY [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com 8/21, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh] Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras expressed sharp skepticism toward proposed laws that would levy extensive Net Neutrality regulations on broadband providers. She said extensive Net Neutrality legislation currently pending in the U.S. Senate is unnecessary because there has been no demonstrated harm to consumers, that normal market forces would likely prevent any problems, and that new laws would cause more problems than they solve. "I ask myself whether consumers will stand for an Internet that suddenly imposes restrictions on their ability to freely explore the Internet or does not provide for the choices they want," Chairman Majoras said. Because the FTC shares enforcement authority with the Federal Communications Commission over certain types of deceptive practices by broadband providers, Chairman Majoras' remarks could nudge some senators who have been cautious supporters of Net Neutrality to a more laissez-faire position. A new Internet Access Task Force at the FTC will evaluate Net neutrality proposals in detail, Chairman Majoras said, and present a report with its conclusions. The Public Knowledge advocacy group, which often supports additional regulation of large telecommunications companies, took issue with Majoras's comments, saying 98 percent of broadband customers receive their service from either the telephone company or the cable company. "There are no market forces at work here, much as Chairman Majoras wishes there to be," the group said in a statement. http://news.com.com/FTC+chief+critiques+Net+neutrality/2100-1028_3-6107913.html?tag=html.alert THE NEW NETWORK NEUTRALITY: CRITERIA FOR INTERNET FREEDOM [SOURCE: saschameinrath.com] [Commentary] What exactly do you need for true Network Neutrality? Here's ten interrelated points for optimal networking: 1. Requires Common Carriage. 2. Is Open Architecture and Supports Open Source Driver Development. 3. Is Open Protocol and Open Standard. 4. Supports an End-to-End Architecture (i.e., is composed of a dumb network). 5. Is Private (e.g., no back doors, deep packet inspection, etc.). 6. Is Application-Neutral. 7. Is Generally Low-Latency and First-In/First-Out (i.e., requires adequate capacity for both). 8. Is Interoperable. 9. Is Business Model Neutral. 10. Is Run by its Users (i.e., is internationally representative and non-Amerocentric). http://www.saschameinrath.com/2006aug28the_new_network_neutrality_criteria_for_internet_freedom 28 August: WHAT-IFS OF A MEDIA ECLIPSE [SOURCE: New York Times 8/27, AUTHOR: Katharine Seelye] Many people in the newspaper industry are still scratching their heads over how and why Knight Ridder, a company with relatively high profit margins and a trophy case of 85 Pulitzer Prizes, allowed itself to be wiped off the media landscape. The dismantling of Knight Ridder is a study of the hurdles facing publicly traded newspaper companies in a time of seismic change in the industry. The migration of readers and advertisers to the Internet, as well as rising costs and falling revenue, are threatening the financial well-being -- even the very existence -- of some of the industry’s most storied brand names. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/business/yourmoney/27knight.htm (requires registration) THE SHOW IS THE COMMERCIAL [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Gyula Kangiszer, Deloitte Consulting] [Commentary] As digital video recorders advance viewers’ habit of skipping past commercials, advertisers must create new ways to increase product awareness and purchasing. There is one easy solution: Let consumers choose the commercials they want to see. Automatic skipping could be reduced by including a listing of ads in the beginning of the break so viewers could choose which to watch. In the future. advertisements on digital channels will likely be automatically matched to customer profiles and/or self predefined interests. Furthermore, entire channels dedicated solely to commercials may even emerge. In the meantime -- and possibly forevermore -- the show itself will become a constant commercial. To combat ad-skipping, advertisers will need to work with content creators to write products directly into scripts. You can't skip past products placed in shows without missing the program itself. So don't be surprised if everything you see on screen is for sale: 1) Product placement will dominate programming and account for the majority of props, background and style. 2) The use of props will be precisely defined. For example, a round table might be shown two times for 25 seconds each, the first time by itself and the second time with a popular actor leaning over it for five seconds. 3) A few key closed electronic marketplaces will emerge to facilitate product placement, matching the prop need to the highest bidding advertiser or manufacturer. 4) Prop availabilities will be acquired via open auction. Many props will have dual value: Marketing value, to enable viewers to buy identical products (e.g., a new line of clothes by a high-profile designer); or one-time revenue opportunity, for selling actual items (e.g., a specific dress worn during the program). 5) DVDs may get similar interactive remastering. For example, a soft drink in a movie or TV series could be sponsored through digital edits by different advertisers at different times (depending on the initially negotiated rights). http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6366057.html?display=Opinion TECHNOLOGY BOOSTS OUTDOOR ADS AS COMPETITION BECOMES FIERCER [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Aaron O. Patrick aaron.patrick@wsj.com] Outdoor advertising, one of the oldest forms of advertising, is reinventing itself. The $23 billion industry is introducing digital technology to change ads faster, new ways of measuring viewers, and billboards that beam information to cellphones. As a result, outdoor advertising companies -- which provide billboards, posters and video screens in public places -- are now seeing bigger gains than many competitors. Because outdoor advertising is much less expensive than TV spots, it still accounts for a smaller part of overall ad spending. But it has become the second-fastest growing form of advertising, behind the Internet, according to market-research and media-buying firms. Around the world, spending on outdoor advertising last year was $23.2 billion, up 6.1% from the year earlier, according to ZenithOptimedia, a media buyer owned by Publicis Groupe SA. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115672572723646939.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription) GORE WANTS TV TO WELCOME MORE USERS INTERNET-STYLE [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jeffrey Goldfarb] Although the Internet is a democratizing force, television is still the most influential form of media and citizens ought to have more control over its programming, former Vice President Al Gore said on Sunday. Gore, long an advocate of the information superhighway and now the owner of a U.S.-based current affairs TV channel that shows user-generated programs, also said the Internet is not yet technologically capable of replicating television's power. "Most of what's happening in the encounter between television and the Internet has been the Internet cannibalizing television," Gore told an annual gathering of British TV executives in Scotland. "What is needed is to reverse the flow and find ways to use the Internet to give individuals access to the public forum, which is television," he said. Gore framed his argument around the need for citizens to rejoin the democratic process and to be given the ability to challenge inaccurate remarks made by politicians, especially in the TV ads that dominate election campaigns. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-08-28T062110Z_01_L27801030_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-GORE-TV.xml&archived=False 10 August: BROADCASTERS TO DISCUSS 2008 SCHEDULE IN BEIJING [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Nick Mulvenney] How much does $1.18 billion buy you these days? Well, would you like to schedule the time for the swimming finals for the 2008 Olympic games? Heated discussions can be expected when the controversial competition schedule for the 2008 Olympics is hammered out at a meeting of broadcasters in Beijing this week. A draft schedule leaked to the Australian media last weekend had the finals of the swimming, gymnastics and men's basketball pencilled in for the morning sessions, prime-time for American television audiences. NBC paid $3.55 billion for the rights to three Olympic Games, including Beijing, and many are convinced the early starts are the result of the American broadcaster looking to ensure they get their money's worth. The proposed shifting of the swimming finals from their traditional evening slot has caused uproar in Australia, whose strong swimming team has a great rivalry with the Americans. Six-times Olympic medallist Michael Klim slammed the move as "pandering to the American dollar" and said leading swimmers planned to petition the International Olympic Committee (IOC). http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=televisionNews&storyID=2006-08-09T102133Z_01_SP240169_RTRIDST_0_TELEVISION-OLYMPICS-CHINA-SCHEDULE-DC.XML FCC ENDS HIGHWAY NEUTRALITY [SOURCE: Lot 49, AUTHOR: Thomas Claburn] The Federal Communications Commission today approved sweeping new rules to put the management of the nation's roads under the control of Internet service providers. The controversial new policy represents an effort to implement the Telecommunications Executive Enrichment Act, which was approved by Congress through a secret vote in early August and signed into law without being read by President Bush. "Telecom companies have had a hard time of late," said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin at a press conference. "It's our hope that putting them in charge of the highway system will allow them to recoup losses incurred by bad business decisions." Highway neutrality advocates immediately denounced the new rules as anti-competitive. "I have already paid for access to the highway system with tax dollars," complained Harlan Pasca, Director of the Association of Disorganized and Impoverished Complainers. "Why should I have to pay again?" Under the new FCC rules, the federal highway system will be turned into what amounts to a toll road. Highway Service Providers like AT&T will be allowed to levy additional fees on drivers based on vehicle make, speed and weight. These fees will be in addition to transportation taxes and subscription charges. "Some companies want us to be a big dumb road that gets bigger and bigger. . . .," said AT&T chairman Ed Whitacre following the FCC announcement. "No one gets a free ride. The American economy doesn't work that way. . . We are not going to build this with no chance for a return. Those that want to use this will pay." http://www.lot49.com/2006/08/fcc_ends_highway_neutrality.shtml INTERNET, ACTIVISTS HELP TOPPLE PROMINENT DEMOCRAT
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Patricia Wilson]
Fueled by opposition to the Iraq war and anger at President Bush,
liberal grass-roots and Internet activists on Wednesday claimed their
most significant political victory -- the defeat of Democratic Sen.
Joseph Lieberman. The three-term senator from Connecticut was
repudiated on Tuesday by voters from his own party who chose Ned
Lamont -- a relative unknown with a fierce anti-war message -- to
represent Democrats in the November election. "The winner is
people-powered politics," declared the Daily Kos Web site, a
sentiment that echoed throughout the liberal blogosphere. Lamont, a
millionaire businessman who has never held state or federal office,
had almost zero name recognition and very little political experience
when he entered the race. But his vociferous opposition to the Iraq
war and Bush's pursuit of it drew the attention of activists,
bloggers and groups like MoveOn.org, which unleashed an army of
volunteers who went house-to-house in Connecticut for months and made
80,000 phone calls in the days before the primary vote. "What you're
witnessing is the democratization of democracy and don't expect it to
be pretty," said Carol Darr, director of George Washington
University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-08-09T193948Z_01_N09300738_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONNECTICUT-ACTIVISTS.xml WESTERN INTERNET FIRMS "ACT AS CENSORS" IN CHINA [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Lindsay Beck] A rights group accused Western Internet companies on Thursday of complicity with censorship in China and called on Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. to resist Beijing's demands. New York-based Human Rights Watch called the blocking of politically sensitive Web sites and search terms "arbitrary, opaque and unaccountable" and urged the publicly traded firms to be upfront with their users about censorship. "It was ironic that companies whose existence depends on freedom of information and expression have taken on the role of censor, even in cases where the Chinese government makes no specific demands for them to do so," the group said in a report. http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-08-10T041456Z_01_PEK31177_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-INTERNET.xml NO SUCH THING AS A FREE SEARCH
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
MANY AMERICANS WOULDN'T be able to use the Internet without the
virtual road map provided by search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
As they use those sites, though, each inquiry discloses something
personal that they might not want to share. Something embarrassing,
or worse, something misleading. AOL, the nation's biggest supplier of
Internet access, made clear just how sensitive those inquiries can be
earlier this month. Hoping to aid software developers, the company
released logs of about 20 million searches made by 658,000
subscribers from March to May. Although numerical IDs were used in
place of names, the queries often provided clues to the user's
identity, interests and state of mind. The search records were
available online for about a week before a few bloggers stumbled over
them, triggering an outcry about privacy. AOL responded by yanking
the records from its site, but by then it was too late -- others on
the Web were already making the records available to all comers. AOL
may have failed its customers, but it did the rest of us a favor by
showing the kind of information that search sites collect.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-aol10aug10,1,751037.story?coll=la-news-comment
(requires registration) MANY ADVERTISERS USE NUISANCE ADWARE KNOWINGLY -- STUDY
[SOURCE: Center for Democracy and Technology]
More than half of the pop-up ads served by nuisance "adware" programs
are placed knowingly by advertisers, CDT found in a new study
released today. Although many ads purchased by major national
companies pass through complex networks of affiliates before being
displayed by nuisance adware distributors, 55 percent of the ads
served by those distributors are placed directly by the companies
being advertised, according to "Following the Money II: The Role of
Intermediaries in Adware Advertising." The study builds on the
findings of Following the Money I, which untangled the complicated
web of affiliate relationships common to nuisance adware
models. August 09, 2006
Press Release: http://www.cdt.org/press/20060809press.php
NEW BOOK REPORTS 37% OF ALL ADVERTISING IS WASTED [SOURCE: AdAge 8/8, AUTHOR: Jack Neff] A new book -- "What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds" -- finds that 37.3 percent of advertising budgets are wasted. The book traces $1 billion in spending and finds that it is at least possible to find out exactly what's wasted -- and how to get better performance from the other 62.7%, offering hope that battered business can rise from the mat. http://adage.com/article?article_id=110937 9 August: AIRWAVES AUCTION MAY RAISE $20 BILLION
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jim Puzzanghera]
The wireless future goes on sale today when the federal government
puts a huge swath of radio-wave spectrum on the auction block. With
the use of cellular telephones and other wireless gadgets booming,
the invisible bands of spectrum that serve as the nation's data
highways are getting overloaded. Putting valuable frequencies now
used by the Pentagon and other agencies to commercial use is expected
to help cellular phone carriers as well as cable and satellite TV
providers expand their services. One of the largest spectrum auctions
ever, the sale could bring as much as $20 billion into federal
coffers that could be used to offset the nation's budget deficit. The
sale, which combined with another auction planned for early 2008,
would nearly double the amount of bandwidth available for advanced
wireless devices in the United States. It also promises to jump start
the spectrum land-rush for the next generation of wireless services.
Known as 3G, for third generation, the technology can enable
cellphones to access e-mail, music and video content at high speeds.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-spectrum9aug09,1,4885689.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business
(requires registration)
INTERNET/BROADBAND CHARGES OF DIRTY TRICKS ON WEB FEED SPECULATION IN THE BLOGOSPHERE [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Cooper & John Markoff] You may not be reading it here first, but challenger Ned Lamont beat three-term incumbent Sen Joe Lieberman in yesterday's Connecticut Democratic primary election. When Sen Lieberman's campaign Web site crashed in the hours leading up to the election, it was hard not to read some deeper meaning into the problem. Was it a sign that Sen Lieberman was clumsy when it came to marshaling the technology that his opponents had used so well against him? Or had some shadowy, sinister bloggertypes who were championing his challenger hacked into the site and shut it down, as the Lieberman campaign charged? The Lieberman campaign said that "we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents." The Lamont campaign responded that "if Senator Lieberman's Web site was indeed hacked, we had absolutely no part in it, denounce the action, and urge whoever is responsible cease and desist immediately." Either way, the Web battles that marked Primary Day made for a fitting coda to a campaign that played out nearly as much on the Internet as it did on the stump. Even before Mr. Lamont entered the primary race that he would eventually win, the anger directed at Senator Lieberman over his support for the Iraq war and the Bush administration had found a focal point, and a forum, on the Web, among the bloggers and activists who call themselves Netroots. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/nyregion/09blogs.html (requires registration) * Lamont Relied On Net Roots -- And Grass Roots http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080801766.html BLOGGERS DRIVE INQUIRY ON HOW ALTERED IMAGES SAW PRINT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katharine Seelye & Julie Bosman]
As of yesterday afternoon, Adnan Hajj was the most-searched term on
the Technorati Web site, which tracks what is being discussed in the
blogosphere. And a rendering of his work was one of the most viewed
videos on YouTube. Mr. Hajj, a Lebanese photographer based in the
Middle East, may not be familiar to many newspaper readers. But
thanks to the swift justice of the Internet, he has been charged,
tried and convicted of improperly altering photographs he took for
Reuters. The pictures ran on the Reuters news service on Saturday,
and were discovered almost instantly by bloggers to have been
manipulated. Reuters then announced on Sunday that it had fired the
freelancer. Executives said yesterday that they were still
investigating why they had not discovered the manipulation before the
pictures were disseminated to newspapers. The matter has created an
uproar on the Internet, where many bloggers see an anti-Israel bias
in Mr. Hajj's manipulations, which made the damage from Israeli
strikes into Beirut appear worse than the original pictures had.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09photo.html
(requires registration)
A FACE IS EXPOSED FOR AOL SUBSCRIBER NO 4417749
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Barbaro & Tom Zeller]
America Online's detailed records of searches conducted by 657,000
other Americans, copies of which continue to circulate online,
underscore how much people unintentionally reveal about themselves
when they use search engines -- and how risky it can be for companies
like AOL, Google and Yahoo to compile such data.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?ref=todayspaper
(requires registration)
CHINESE TECH BUFFS SLAKE THIRST FOR US TV SHOWS [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Howard French] Volunteers across China spend night after night creating Chinese subtitles for American sitcoms and dramas for a mushrooming audience of Chinese viewers who download them from the Internet free through services like BitTorrent. Their ambition is to make American popular culture available in near-real time free to Chinese audiences, dodging Chinese censors and American copyright lawyers. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/world/asia/09china.html (requires registration) MEDIA OWNERSHIP -- BIG MEDIA ON CAMPUS [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Emily Steel emily.steel@wsj.com] It's not breaking news that the newspaper industry is losing the attention of young readers. But one sector of the industry is defying the trend: college papers. Hip, local, relevant and generated by students themselves, college newspapers have held steady readership in recent years while newspapers in general have seen theirs shrink. Big advertisers are going on campus to reach these young readers. Ford Motor Co., Microsoft Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have all placed recent ads in college newspapers. Now, media giants are jumping in. Last week, Gannett's Tallahassee Democrat acquired Florida State University's FSView & Florida Flambeau, one of the nation's few for-profit college newspapers. The same day, Viacom's MTV, which already runs a network targeted at college campuses called mtvU, agreed to buy Y2M: Youth Media & Marketing Networks, a company that hosts the Web sites for 450 campus papers. MTV executives hope the deal will give mtvU credibility in the college community, providing its advertisers with easy access to college students. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115509164245730752.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription) 8 August: FAR REMOVED FROM THE MULTIPLEX [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: John Horn] More on the LA Times Entertainment Poll. For decades, the movie business has followed an inflexible formula: Produce features, show them first in theaters, release them on video, then broadcast them on television. But what a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll of teens and young adults has found is that Hollywood's rickety model is poised to be torn apart. With an array of devices competing to fill their leisure time, today's teens and young adults show diminishing interest in adhering to Hollywood tradition. They're willing to watch brand-new movies at home rather than in theaters, are starting to use their PCs as their entertainment gateway and are slowly turning to their iPods and cellphones for video programming. They still crave to be entertained, but not necessarily inside a movie theater. For years, theater owners and movie studios have argued about the timing of home video releases. The people running the multiplexes want to keep the wait period between theatrical debut and the DVD's first day on sale as long as possible. The studios have been pushing to shrink that gap (it now averages about 20 weeks) to minimize the need for two separate advertising campaigns. The poll found that many teens and young adults would be happy if that window were eliminated altogether. Asked where they'd prefer to watch a new movie if it were simultaneously available at home and in theaters, about a third said they would choose to stay at home, and another third said it depended on the movie. Going to movies at theaters still has appeal, particularly for younger teens, but among respondents ages 21 to 24, 56% said they wanted to see the new movie at home, and only 9% said they would rather travel to a theater. Based on the box-office popularity of many critically savaged films, it should come as no surprise that teens and young adults care little about what reviewers think. In deciding what to see, their friends' judgments are the ones that matter. Those opinions are sometimes spread instantly, with almost a quarter of teenagers and young adults sharing their opinions during or right after the movie. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-et-pollmovies8aug08,1,4492526.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage (requires registration) THE WEB RETURNS TO HEALTH
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Annys Shin]
Ninety-five million Americans -- about 80 percent of online adults --
have searched the Web for health information in the past year, and
the overwhelming majority have been disappointed. More than 70
percent of those searchers either did not find what they were looking
for or had a hard time knowing what to believe, according to market
research studies by Jupiter Research and Yankelovich Inc. That
frustration has attracted some famous deep pockets, including America
Online co-founder Steve Case, his former employer Time Warner Inc.,
the Carlyle Group and Allen & Co. Together, they have put more than
$100 million into building virtual destinations that offer consumers
something beyond disease encyclopedias. Some want to make it as easy
to choose a doctor as a restaurant. Others eventually hope to offer
"virtual assisted living" by monitoring medicines or pacemakers
remotely, so the elderly can stay in their homes longer. Harnessing
the Web to make health care more user-friendly has been a holy grail
for entrepreneurs since the earliest days of the dot-com boom. But
like many online content businesses, they failed because they could
not figure out how to make money.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080701152.html
(requires registration)
GOOGLE DEAL WILL GIVE NEWS CORP HUGE PAYOFF [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Saul Hansell] "In one fell swoop, we have paid for two-thirds of our Internet acquisitions," Peter Chernin, News Corp's President, said yesterday in reference to a deal with Google that promises to pay the News Corporation a minimum of $900 million over three and half years. Google has won a bidding war to provide search services and advertising to MySpace.com, the social networking phenomenon, and other Web sites owned by the News Corporation which paid $649 million last year to buy the parent company of MySpace. It has now spent a total of $1.3 billion to buy Internet companies that also include IGN.com, a game site, and Scout, a series of local sports sites. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/technology/08google.html (requires registration) REDUCE THE COST OF INTERNATIONAL INTERNET CONNECTIVITY [SOURCE: Association for Progressive Communications] In Argentina, Internet access averages 13 dollars a month and almost a fifth of the population are online whereas in Sudan Internet access costs 160 USD a month and only 9 people in a thousand are online. Africa, the poorest continent in the world, has the highest costs for Internet access. In the run-up to the first-ever meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Athens starting October 30, APC releases a set of recommendations that encourage the IGF to tackle the availability and affordability of the Internet in the developing world and especially Africa as a matter of urgency. http://rights.apc.org/documents/apc_igf_icc.pdf VIRUSES, SPYWARE COST USERS $7.8 BILLION [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Kim Hart] Consumers paid as much $7.8 billion over two years to repair or replace computers that got infected with viruses and spyware, a Consumer Reports survey found. That figure was down from a similar survey a year ago. Still, it suggests that people are paying large sums to cope with the flood of malicious viruses and other programs that can slow computers or render them inoperable. (So, Peter, I guess the Sox tix are on me tonight?) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080701202.html (requires registration) 7 August: JOURNALISM PROFESSORS PASS AN OFFICIAL RESOLUTION PROTESTING BUSH'S ANTI-PRESS POLICIES [SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Jay Rosen] [Commentary] On August 4, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) passed a resolution, the first major statement against the policies of a president since the Vietnam War. The key passage is: "The membership of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication urges the Bush administration to abandon its anti-press policies." The resolution identifies ten troubling practices involving secrecy, propaganda and the control of information. It recognizes that there is always tension between presidents and the press. "This tension is both unavoidable and generally salutary: When each side conducts its duties with honesty and integrity, both hold the power of the other in check." The ten practises in question: 1. The Bush administration's response to press requests for information; 2. The Bush administration's use of staged town meetings; 3. The Bush administration's vision of the government as a private domain; 4. The Bush administration's practice of massive reclassification of documents; 5. The Bush administration's support of policies that weaken the multiplicity of voices on a local and national scale; 6. The Bush administration's policy of not allowing photographs of coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq to be released; 7. The Bush administration's use of propaganda, including video news releases; 8.The Bush administration's use of bribes and payments to columnists and other opinion makers; 9. The Bush administration's manipulation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and 10. The Bush administration's using the courts to pressure journalists to give up their sources and to punish them for obtaining leaked information. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-rosen/journalism-professors-pas_b_26577.html DOES BIG MEDIA NEED TO GET ANY BIGGER? [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Norman Lear and Robert W. McChesney] [Commentary] Over the last 25 years, the number of corporations that dominate television, movies, music, radio, cable and the Internet has dwindled from more than 50 to just a handful of massive conglomerates. Do we really want Big Media to get even bigger? Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin does. He just relaunched the FCC's formal review of media ownership rules. The agency's "Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking," issued July 25, is vague, but its intent is clear: to let a few giant media corporations swallow up more local television channels, radio stations and newspapers in a single market. The Chairman's main target is the ban on "newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership" that prohibits one company from owning the major daily newspaper as well as radio and TV stations in the same area. He'd also like to allow one company to own more than one TV station in smaller markets, and more than two in the largest cities. If the changes are approved, one corporation could own the major daily newspaper, eight radio stations and three television stations in the same town. Once the digital television transition is completed in 2009 -- allowing stations to broadcast multiple signals -- one company could control 12 or even 18 television channels in a single city. But what's good for Big Media's bottom line isn't always good for the rest of us. The first casualty of "media company towns" would be journalism. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lear5aug05,0,2464261.story?coll=la-opinion-center (requires registration) WHY LOCAL NEWS IS IN A SHARING MOOD
[SOURCE: Broadcasting & Cable, AUTHOR: Allison Romano]
From top-10 markets such as Philadelphia to
small outposts such as LaCrosse-Eau Claire (WI),
stations across the country are adding news to
increase market share and boost profits. The most
popular effort is a “news share,” where a Big
Three station -- an NBC, ABC or CBS outlet --
produces a newscast for a Fox affiliate or a
soon-to-be CW or MNT station. The programs are
not simulcasts but original newscasts for the
partner. Today, nearly three dozen markets
feature such newscasts, and new deals are inked
almost weekly. This influx of local news comes at
a time when the TV-ad market is struggling and TV
stations are under increased pressure to
cultivate new revenue sources. Many are building
digital products, such as elaborate Websites and
wireless services, to grow future revenues, but,
so far, the businesses are young and returns
modest. Local news, in contrast, is a proven
moneymaker. News accounts for as much as 50% of a
station's revenue, and by launching more
newscasts, stations are relying on their
bread-and-butter product. A station in a midsize
market can make $1 million in added annual
revenue producing news for another affiliate in
town. Such a deal also helps a newsroom to
amortize expenses for high-priced anchors and
equipment over extra time periods.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6359719.html?display=Feature
DIRTY TV IS QUITE HEALTHY [SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle 8/6, AUTHOR: Greg Beato] [Commentary] A study conducted by Duke University Professor William Parker compared hygienically pampered lab rats to their filthy cousins who live in urban sewers and earthy barnyard squalor. The results? The wild rats are like, say, Iggy Pop. Vigorous and indestructible, they have highly efficient immune systems that ignore trivial germs while blocking out the more serious ones. The immune systems of their coddled laboratory counterparts grow so sensitive through underuse that even a sneeze from an Olsen twin could potentially take them down. But if we've gotten too sanitary for our own good here in the developed world, well, at least, our pop culture is still as pungent as a Bangalore outhouse, right? It packs such a devastating punch, in fact, that its detractors often accuse it of tangible physical toxicity. Liberal handwringers decry advertising and violent entertainment as airborne pathogens that pollute the minds of our children. Conservative crotch sentries claim that pornography actually has the power to reshape brain structure. If you listen to, say, the concerned citizens at the Parents Television Council, who have made it their life's work to monitor the rates at which Saturday morning cartoons depict "implied defecation" and various other categories of dangerous content, we're just one vulgar joke from cultural Armageddon. And yet, somehow, despite all those objectionable kiddie shows, despite the digital mayhem of Grand Theft Auto and all the other sexy, violent media our nation's youngsters consume, statistics show they're a surprisingly chaste and civil bunch. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/08/06/ING8CKA6U61.DTL 4 August: FCC PUSHES FOR BROADBAND OVER POWER LINES
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Anne Broache]
Federal regulators renewed on Thursday their push for a wider rollout
of what has been hailed as a viable "third pipe" for the many areas
where broadband choices have been limited to DSL or cable modems. If
broadband over power lines, or BPL, takes off, then more Americans,
particularly in rural and underserved areas, will be able to plug
into high-speed Internet access, and markets dominated by cable and
DSL (digital subscriber line) should be forced to lower consumers'
bills, members of the Federal Communications Commission said at their
monthly meeting here. The FCC unanimously adopted an order designed
to reaffirm and build on the first set of rules issued for the
technology in 2004, which had drawn a number of reservations from
both inside and outside the industry. The original guidelines focused
on preventing the nascent Internet service from causing harmful
interference with radio signals that rely on nearby frequencies, such
as those commonly used in aviation and in zones near U.S. Coast Guard
and radio astronomy stations. "It is my hope that our rules will
allow BPL systems to flourish," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said
Thursday. Commissioner Michael Copps said he believed the order
strikes an "acceptable balance" but warned that the FCC would
continue to keep a close eye on complaints about interference.
http://news.com.com/FCC+pushes+for+broadband+over+power+lines/2100-1028_3-6101925.html?tag=nefd.lede
TV NEWS: WATCHED BUT DECREASINGLY TRUSTED [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton] Americans still get most of their news from TV, but believe increasingly less of what they see and hear there. Those are some of the findings of a Pew Research Center biennial study of news consumption. According to the study, 57% of the respondents said they regularly watch TV news, compared to 40% for reading newspapers, 36% for radio and 23% for online. The TV figure is down from 60% in 2004, but up over 2002 (54%) and 2000 (56%). But while TV still tops the list, the number of people who say they believe "all or most" of what those news outlets had to say continues its precipitous slide. http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6359382?display=Breaking+News 3 August: TV STILL TOPS FOR THOSE SEEKING NEWS [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Paul J. Gough] A new study of Americans' media consumption found that nearly half spend at least 30 minutes a day getting their news from TV. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press finds that only 9% of the 3,204 adults surveyed in April spent at least 30 minutes getting their news on the Web. The study said that one-third of U.S. residents get their news online, while only 1 in 50 did a decade ago. But the audience has grown more slowly since 2000 and is skewing older. The study said that youths are less likely than fortysomethings to turn to online news sources. "Online news has evolved as a supplemental source that is used along with traditional news media outlets," the Pew study said. "It is valued more for headlines and convenience, not detailed, in-depth reporting." Both local and network news have continued their steep declines, with only 54% of people saying they are regular viewers of local TV news (compared with 77% in 1993) and only 28% regularly watching network evening news (compared with 60% in 1993). Cable TV news consumption has remained relatively steady at 34%, as has network morning news at 23%. http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=televisionNews&storyID=2006-08-02T124449Z_01_N02476812_RTRIDST_0_TELEVISION-NEWS-DC.XML PUBLISHERS VS THE CENSORBOT [SOURCE: East Bay Express, AUTHOR: Chris Thompson] Google has entered that rarefied tier of corporations whose services or products are indispensable to American life. Its search engine is an essential tool for Internet users, and the ingenious way it matches advertisements to the contents of any given search has transformed the world of marketing. The company's second main product is AdSense, a service whereby it posts ads on thousands of Web sites and blogs in a revenue-sharing arrangement that finances much of the online media industry. But as more and more media outlets come to depend on Google, one of its key policies is quietly, systematically punishing ambitious journalism all over the Web. If this trend continues, Google's power and ubiquity could inadvertently cripple an independent press in the Internet era. in 2003, Google developed "sensitivity filters" to periodically scan the Web sites of its partners in search of violence, mature content, or other unacceptable material. "They detect sensitive content that we probably don't want to be showing advertising beside, and show public service announcements instead," says Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google's business product manager for trust and safety. Unfortunately, when Google withholds advertising it also withholds the accompanying revenue, cutting off money whenever Web sites publish stories it deems too violent or tragic. Regardless of how important a story may be, the company's algorithm pulls its advertising whenever it detects too much carnage. Asked if Google would display ads next to stories about the recent Israeli massacre of Lebanese children, for example, Ghosemajumder says, "That's an example of something that is very difficult to find sensitive advertising [for]." http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-08-02/news/cityofwarts_full.html SIEGE CONTINUES AT MEXICAN TV STATION [SOURCE: Associated Press] About 500 women banging spoons against pots and pans seized a state-run television station and broadcast a homemade video Wednesday that showed police kicking protesters out of Oaxaca's main square last month. The women took control of Oaxaca's Channel 9 station Tuesday and held employees for about six hours before releasing them. It was unclear how long the siege would last, and no police officers were seen near the station Wednesday. Station director Mercedes Rojas said the state had filed a criminal complaint with the federal attorney general's office, noting that the station has about $54.5 million worth of equipment and that the protesters had threatened the 60 employees with violence while holding them captive. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-oaxaca3aug03,1,1847996.story?coll=la-news-a_section (requires registration) HOW THE WEB WAS WON [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Leslie Walker] [Commentary] Walker's last Web business column for the Washington Post takes a look back at what she was writing about when she began eight years ago. The Web is still empowering individuals to be more creative , spawning new electronic middlemen and struggling to make advertising more personal, she writes. In 1998, before "blog" was even a word or MySpace existed, the 10 fastest-growing Web sites "were ones where users create the content. Traditional media companies, meanwhile, agonized over whether to charge for content online. She concludes: "Thanks to all who read my weekly musings , participated in my online chats, visited with me in the District and sent helpful feedback. I hope you'll continue the dialogue by sending mail to leslie@lesliewalker.com" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/AR2006080201899.html (requires registration) 2 August: POSTAL SERVICE FINDS A FRIEND IN THE INTERNET [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katie Hafner] As people send e-mail and e-cards instead of handwritten letters and greetings, as they pay more bills online and file tax returns electronically, the Postal Service has started to seem like a drab and tired reminder of the old way of doing things. Yet the Internet is actually injecting new life -- and a sorely needed source of revenue -- into the Postal Service. And it is happening with packages -- millions of them shipped every day, in a journey that starts with a few mouse clicks and ends a day or two or five later at a customer's door. In 2005, revenue from first-class mail like cards and letters, which still made up more than half the Postal Service's total sales of $66.6 billion, dropped nearly 1 percent from 2004. But revenue from packages helped make up for much of that drop, rising 2.8 percent, to $8.6 billion, last year, as it handled nearly three billion packages. It is impossible to say how many of these were online orders, but Postal Service officials give e-commerce a lot of credit. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/business/02postal.html (requires registration) 1 August: OLD RULES, NEW ALLIANCES [SOURCE: Technology Daily, AUTHOR: Drew Clark] The remarkable saga of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban -- a rule that was put in place by FCC Chairman Dick Wiley in January 1975. The rule is one of several changes being considered for relaxation by the current FCC, and the foremost advocate for eliminating the rule is none other than Dick Wiley, now an influential telecommunications lobbyist. But the Washington Post plays the central role in Clark's tale. In the 1970s, the Post owned WTOP-TV Channel 9, a CBS affiliate. Its radio station was also called WTOP. It broadcast on both the AM and FM bands. With the Post breaking Watergate stories, the company became a target of then-President Richard Nixon. He threatened the company's broadcast licenses and the Post ended up selling its DC-broadcast outlets. the Post has gotten creative. This year it struck a licensing agreement with Bonneville Communications, which owns the Washington radio station that the Post once had. In a three-way swap, Bonneville moved its flagship news channel WTOP to its best frequency, 103.5 FM, put classical music station WGMS on 104.1 FM, and introduced Washington Post Radio on 1500 AM -- the old WTOP frequency. The new arrangement doesn't violate the cross-ownership ban because Bonneville owns and controls the station, advertisements and content -- even if the vast bulk comes straight from the newspaper's newsroom, say Post attorneys. Supporters of the cross-ownership ban call it the best of both worlds. "You don't need to own the TV and radio station" to exploit synergies, says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, President of the Media Access Project. The Bonneville-Post collaboration means "you have the diversity advantages of different viewpoints." Critics call that hairsplitting. "Do we continue to need unique rules for old media sectors, instead of a general competition policy standard for the entire media industry?" questions Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Indeed, the biggest irony of the media ownership debate is the old media's embrace of the new. "They know they cannot make investments in the old sector and are turning their attention to the Internet as a way to diversify their media operations," said Thierer. http://www.drewclark.com/wiredinwashington/20060731.htm JOURNALISM WITHOUT JOURNALISTS [SOURCE: New Yorker, AUTHOR: Nicholas Lemann] [Commentary] Internet journalism, according to those who produce manifestos on its behalf, represents a world-historical development -- not so much because of the expressive power of the new medium as because of its accessibility to producers and consumers. That permits it to break the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media -- usually known, when this argument is made, as “gatekeepers” -- have supposedly been able to maintain up to now. “Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff -- and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession,” writes Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit. The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn't use to be: like pure opinion and information originally published in other media made instantly available through search engines. Journalism is not in a period of maximal self-confidence right now, and the Internet’s cheerleaders are practically laboratory specimens of maximal self-confidence. They have got the rhetorical upper hand; traditional journalists answering their challenges often sound either clueless or cowed and apologetic. As of now, though, there is not much relation between claims for the possibilities inherent in journalist-free journalism and what the people engaged in that pursuit are actually producing. As journalism moves to the Internet, the main project ought to be moving reporters there, not stripping them away. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1 AUTHORSHIP GETS LOST ON WEB [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Del Jones] The Internet is becoming a cesspool of plagiarism. In some quarters, plagiarism remains a serious offense. But where it involves the Internet, an acceptance of plagiarism is taking hold, and when confronted, offenders often shrug it off as hardly newsworthy. Pew Research two weeks ago said it found that of the 12 million adults who blog, 44% say they have taken songs, text or images and “remixed” them into their own artistic creation. A new twist is software used by spammers to automatically and intentionally grab original content to post on blogs and Internet sites. Authors are byproduct victims of an attempt to draw traffic to the content so that readers will click on deceiving links that take them to advertising. It's going to take a high-profile legal case to slow it down, says Howard Kaushansky, president of Umbria, which companies hire to monitor the Internet and report back what is being said about them and competitors. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20060801/net_plagiarism.art.htm STUDY: YOUNG ADULTS SNAPPING UP NEW TECH [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Karen Brown] Generation Y young adults aged 18-26 are plugging into technology at a faster rate than any other generation, but they are doing so instead of spending time in front of a TV, according to a new Forrester Research study. Young adults spend 12.2 hours online, 28% longer than Generation X’s 27- to 40-year-olds and twice as long as baby boomers aged 51-61. The study also found that 41% of all North American households are linked to a broadband Internet connection, and of the 75% of all households that have mobile phones, almost one-half use them to make most of their long-distance calls. In addition, 45% of Generation Y users, 27% of Generation X users and 17% of baby boomers have bought into a mobile-data service, mostly using it for text messaging, ring tones and games. http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6357818.html?display=Breaking+News Click here for earler Benton files. (c)
Benton Foundation 2003. Redistribution of this email publication -- both internally
and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message: Use this tool to search our site or the web. |
Job
Watch Free
Newsletter Movers
& shakers Spin
City
|
|
Guidomedia.com An Australian publishing resource Home | News | Resources | Research | Leisure | About us | Jobs | Main index |
Return
to top