Postings on media issues from Benton.org (most recent at top)

September 2005

Sept 30: SUBWAY BUYS ROLE ON 'WILL & GRACE' In the latest sign that product placement is finding its way into some of TV's most valuable shows, Subway Restaurants, owned by Doctor's Associates, launched a new sandwich last night by having it written into the story line of NBC's "Will & Grace." In the episode, Karen's maid, Rosario, talks about Subway's chicken parmigiana sandwich. Subway says it worked with its media-buying firm, WPP Group's MediaCom, and General Electric's NBC on an ad package that involved both the product placement and a 30-second commercial to run during the episode. "Product placement helps us connect with our consumer and it puts our products in a more tangible scenario. That can't often be done in commercials," says Ted Wirth, creative-services manager for Subway. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: ] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112804515856256466,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

US REFUSES TO RELINQUISH CONTROL OF NET The United States will not cede control of the computers that direct traffic on the Internet to the United Nations, the State Department's coordinator for international communications and information policy told diplomats in Geneva on Thursday. Ambassador David Gross said the issue of who controls the Internet has become contentious because some countries say that no single nation should be the ultimate authority over such a vital part of the global economy. The United States has been the principal overseer of the Internet since it was invented as a Defense Department project. Some countries have been discussing a proposal that would take control of domain names from the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, and place it with an intergovernmental group, possibly under the United Nations. Gross said the United States is “deeply disappointed” with a European Union proposal advocating a “new cooperation model” that would involve governments in restructuring the Internet. “There are certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to,” he said. “It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy.” [SOURCE: USAToday] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050930/a_capcol30.art.htm

IN BOGOTA, VOX POP IN A BOX Anyone can step up to a kiosk in Colombia's capital and record a message on any subject to be aired on TV. The weekly show, "Citycapsula," is a big hit. The show's inspiration came from a sister channel in Toronto, home to "Speakers Corner," a program named after the famous spot in London's Hyde Park where people station themselves and declaim on any subject under the sun. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Henry Chu] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-citytv30sep30,1,7233432.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage (requires registration)

Sept 29: TV: WHY A LITTLE 'DRY' JOURNALISM WOULD SERVE US ALL [Commentary] Storytelling has the power to shape the events it reports. Shouldn't journalists be the dry eye in the storm, the builders of a framework in which to tell the truth of suffering rather than enflame it for gain? Media have congratulated themselves mightily these past few weeks for their coverage of Katrina. But while it has often been brave and insightful, it has also been dangerous and irresponsible. Reporters sobbed and shouted along with the victims. MSNBC's Tim Russert seemed to weep, Fox News' Geraldo Rivera to act as though he'd seen the Rapture, and CNN's Anderson Cooper to froth with blame for Washington for its alleged callousness and incompetence. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Harriet Rubin] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050929/opcommedia.art.htm See also: * The eyes on the storm http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050929/opledemedia.art.htm * Cavuto suggested he can't be both "a good American" and "a good journalist" http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280005

PRODUCT PLACEMENT PUSHES INTO PRINT On the new reality TV show "Three Wishes," host Amy Grant helps small-town folks solve their problems with the help of several familiar brand-name products, whose makers chip in goods or services in order to have them mentioned on the show. On "Meet Mister Mom," dads compete at running households while their wives are away, and the men use only authorized brands: They all clean with one household product, drive the kids in one brand of minivan, and shop at one predetermined department store. Such commercial arrangements, called product placements, have become ubiquitous since "Survivor" launched the reality TV craze five years ago. Analyzing the fall season, CBS television chairman Les Moonves declared in June, "I think you're going to see a quantum leap in the number of products integrated into your television shows this year." Now some signs indicate that these practices may be infiltrating a much older medium: magazines and newspapers. Revenue from product placements in magazine editorial copy - the stories and photographs - is expected to rise 17.5 percent to $160.9 million this year, and in newspapers by 16.9 percent to $65 million, says a report from PQ Media in Stamford, Conn., released in July. The study measured all placements of products, whether paid for, exchanged in a barter arrangement, or included without compensation to the publication. It also counted such things as product reviews and photos of products provided by companies without charge. Product placements, if done in exchange for payment, would violate the operating guidelines of most publications, which usually insist on a clear division between stories or "editorial copy" and advertising as a mark of responsible journalism. [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Gregory M. Lamb] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0929/p12s02-wmgn.html *

WRITERS GUILD PROTESTS TV PRODUCT PLACEMENTS Demonstrating against the practice of product placement in TV programs, a group of protestors armed with Writers Guild of America West literature disrupted the Madison & Vine session of Advertising Week at New York University's Skirball Center in Greenwich Village Tuesday. [SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: T.L. Stanley] http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=46197

FREE SPEECH ISSUES STILL PROBLEMATIC FOR VIETNAM A business manager in Hanoi, Pham Hong Son, has spent 42 months in a Vietnamese prison. His crime: downloading an essay titled "What is Democracy?" from a U.S. State Department Web site, translating it and sending it to friends and senior Communist Party officials. Last week, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Michael Marine, called on Vietnam to release Son and four others described as prisoners of conscience. Vietnam has made progress in "collective" human rights such as improving education and reducing poverty, Marine noted. But it is still intolerant of political dissent, he said. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802218.html (requires registration)

ON CHINESE TELEVISION, WHAT'S COOL IS NO LONGER CORRECT At first glance, the new rules handed down by China's broadcasting authority seemed natural enough in a country where the Communist Party feels duty-bound to set the tone for everything, even pop music. Masters of ceremony on state television's seemingly endless roster of variety shows, the regulations said, should avoid vulgarity, dress modestly and uplift their young viewers. But also in the latest set of rules, published Sept. 10 by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, was a less obvious stipulation: Masters of ceremony should always use standard Mandarin Chinese and should stop affecting Hong Kong or Taiwanese slang and accents. To millions of Chinese, particularly boys and girls in the provinces who constitute the main audience for pop-oriented variety shows, Hong Kong and Taiwanese speech has come to mean being cool. The reason is simple. Most of the music and performers making teenage hearts throb here have long originated in the freer atmospheres of Hong Kong and Taiwan. As a result, some hosts and hostesses of mainland variety shows have taken to throwing Taiwanese slang words and Hong Kong tones into their on-air speech, associating themselves with the cool radiating from those two centers of the Chinese-language pop industry. But for nearly a year, the government broadcasting authority has been engaged in a purification project, designed to halt what officials feel is the creep of vulgarity and non-Chinese influences into programs offered by the country's 3,000 national, provincial, city and county stations. The campaign fits into a general tightening of government controls over broadcasting and other media, including additional Internet rules banning "unhealthy news stories that will mislead the public." [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Edward Cody] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092802219.html (requires registration)

BROADBAND USE GROWS IN THE US More than 60 percent of Americans who use the Internet at home now do so with a high-speed connection. That's a jump from 51 percent a year ago. Nielsen/NetRatings says 86 million Internet users surfed the Web on home broadband connections in August. Broadband use has grown steadily in the United States as prices fall and more video and other bandwidth-intent materials are available online. [SOURCE: Associated Press] http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/12766604.htm Also see: * Broadband Adoption in the United States: Growing but Slowing http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/164/report_display.asp

LIKE VIDEO GAMES? NOW YOU CAN MAJOR IN THEM Suddenly, the idea of a degree in video games is one that might even persuade the parents who grumble about the high cost of video games to write a tuition check. These days, there are companies that pay big bucks to computer science geniuses who can develop the next big thing - a Grand Theft Auto sort of game that will generate a big following and big sales. Carnegie Mellon University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, for example, now offer master’s degrees in game development. The University of Southern California offers a graduate degree in interactive media and an undergraduate program in game design. Locally, the University of Baltimore is putting together an undergraduate degree in video game development. The Entertainment Software Association, an industry trade group, puts the number of colleges and schools offering some sort of gaming-related coursework at over 50. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Mike Musgrove] http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (requires registration)

WHAT'S COOL ONLINE? TEENAGERS RENDER VERDICT So what do teenagers want? As one might expect, they want to have some fun. They want to customize products, they want to play games and they want to socialize. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Julie Bosman] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/29/business/media/29adco.html?pagewanted=all (requires registration)

Sept 28: WE SWIM IN AN OCEAN OF MEDIA The media "ecosystem" surrounding Americans - not just TV, radio, and newspapers but also the Web, PDAs, MP3 players, cellphones, video games, and more - keeps getting more widespread, personal, and diverse. A new study by Ball State University finds that more than two-thirds of people's waking moments involved some kind of media usage. What's more, of the time spent using media, nearly one-third was spent consuming two or more forms at once, such as watching TV and surfing the Internet, or listening to music while playing a video game. Watching television remains by far the most popular media-related activity. More than 90 percent of those studied viewed TV, for an average of about four hours per day. About three-quarters used a computer, for a little more than two hours per day. While much has been written about how computer use may be eating into TV watching, the report suggests that the reverse may be true as well. "As, over time, the computer becomes a vehicle for more rich media content (often related to TV programming), the line between the two media is likely to blur further, calling into question the TV-centric mindset," it says. [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor , AUTHOR:Gregory M. Lamb] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0928/p13s01-lihc.html

MEDIA FIRMS DIG INTO WAR CHESTS FOR LATEST ASSAULT ON THE INTERNET Driven by fear of losing advertisers and audience to the Internet, large media conglomerates -- all your favorites like Viacom, News Corp. and Time Warner -- are spending billions in a spate of acquisitions and aggressive Internet initiatives, and are likely to keep on spending. Some hope to directly challenge the giant portals like Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. -- Web sites that serve as gateways to the Internet. Others are transferring some of their most valuable content to online sites, even though that risks alienating their traditional distribution partners. Although it's too soon to say whether the media industry's latest approach will bear fruit, the companies are finding some areas more fertile than others. They have been investing heavily in youth-oriented Web sites, like gaming, and less in areas like prime-time entertainment programming that is still a cash cow for the television networks. They're also mostly avoiding the pay-per-view model, which hasn't yet gained traction online. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Julia Angwin julia.angwin@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112787016757454136,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

WIKIBOOKS TAKES ON TEXTBOOK INDUSTRY The Wikimedia Foundation is attempting to create a comprehensive, kindergarten-to-college curriculum of textbooks that are free and freely distributable, based on an open-source development model. Created in the same mold as the Wikipedia project--the open-source encyclopedia that lets anyone create or edit an article and that now has nearly 747,000 entries in English alone--Wikibooks is still in its earliest stages. Yet because of Wikibooks' digital model, in which material written for the project can be as short or as long as needed, and be easily manipulated, read and edited, some believe it can pose a major challenge to the publishing industry's hold on the world of textbooks. The hope is that by turning the Wikibooks keys over to a worldwide community of writers and editors, the project will eventually contain tens of thousands of books and smaller entries on a wide range of topics. In each case, the idea is that any Wikibooks reader could create his or her own book or make edits to an existing title. [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Daniel Terdiman] http://news.com.com/Wikibooks+takes+on+textbook+industry/2100-1025_3-5884291.html?tag=nefd.lede

SEARCH AND RESCUE [Commentary] Authors struggle, mostly in vain, against their fated obscurity. According to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks sales from major booksellers, only 2 percent of the 1.2 million unique titles sold in 2004 had sales of more than 5,000 copies. Against this backdrop, the recent Authors Guild suit against the Google Library Project is poignantly wrongheaded. I'm sorry to see authors buy into the old-school protectionism of the Authors Guild, not realizing they're acting against their own self-interest. Their resistance can come only from a failure to understand the nature of the program. Google Library is intended to help readers discover copyrighted works, not to give copies away. It's a tremendous service to authors that will help them beat the dismal odds of publishing as usual. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Tim O'Reilly, publisher] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/opinion/28oreilly.html (requires registration)

CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS URGE CONGRESS TO CLOSE 'DIGITAL DIVIDE' The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights hosted a discussion and released new research on the digital divide Tuesday. UC Santa Cruz Professor Robert Fairlie conducted the study that found that Blacks and Latinos are much less likely than white, non-Latinos to have access to home computers (50.6% and 48.7% compared to 74.6%) and they're also less likely to have Internet access at home (40.5% and 38.1% compared to 67.3%). Spanish-speaking Latinos, especially Mexicans, have strikingly low rates of computer ownership and home Internet use. "There are some fairly significant policy implications as a result of this study," said Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the importance of a solid communications infrastructure, Henderson said, and Congress needs to be mindful of those groups that don't have access to high-tech services as rebuilding efforts get started. "In the aftermath of this tragedy, it's no longer possible for the haves to ignore the have-nots," he said. The Leadership Conference will advocate for those "have-nots" as Congress takes up the DTV and telecom bills. "This debate will be about who gets to speak and for what price." To solve the digital divide, Henderson urged Congress to fully fund the E-Rate program and expand it to cover advanced telecom services. He suggested that providers such as cable and VoIP become more equal players in contributing to the fund. "Disparate regulation distorts the market and undermines the longstanding commitment to universal service." His other recommendations: 1) Commit Universal Service Funds (USF) to community technology centers that provide job training opportunities; 2) Encourage local governments to address community technology needs when negotiating franchises with local video service companies; 3) Direct the FCC to develop a national deployment play for advance telecom service to Universal Service-eligible customers nationwide; 4) Acknowledge tribal regulatory authority to remove barriers to deploying telecom infrastructure and services; and 5) Preserve USF and reform the program to address the needs of people with disabilities in an IP-enabled environment. [SOURCE: Communications Daily, AUTHOR: Anne Veigle] (Not available online) See also: * Minorities Urge Congress To Protect USF http://www.njtelecomupdate.com/lenya/telco/live/tb-XUWF1127855688674.html

INTERNET THOUGHT POLICE [Commentary] Transport George Orwell's novel 1984 -- in which a totalitarian Big Brother government tries to rule citizens' lives and control their thoughts -- into the 21st century, and it would look a lot like China today. Consider what happened this week. Continuing a long battle to curb what it considers a subversive information source — the Internet — China tightened its censorship of online news services and bulletin boards. At this point, it's anyone's guess how many Chinese will succeed in getting a free flow of information, and how many will be scared off by government intimidation or manipulated by censorship and propaganda. What's more clear is that democratic nations and their companies should not help China's Thought Police turn the Internet into a platform for Orwellian Newspeak and Doublethink. However appealing collaboration might seem, they would eventually find that the world of 1984 was not a pleasant place. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050928/edtwo28.art.htm

(Sept 27) ACCESS FOR THE MASSES Public-access television, whose future may hinge on a bill before Congress, is TV's public square -- a community outlet for the civic minded, musicians, and even bonsai lovers. For many viewers, local-access channels are mere speed bumps on the dial between ABC and HBO. But for the people running these channels around the country these outlets, available to all for a nominal fee, have become what Anthony Riddle, executive director of the Alliance for Community Media in Washington, calls "the public square in the electronic age." [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Teresa Méndez] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0923/p11s01-altv.html Learn more about the Alliance for Community Media and public access TV at: http://www.alliancecm.org/

KATRINA TAKES A TOLL ON TRUTH, NEWS ACCURACY National Guard spokesman Maj. Ed Bush believes that newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behaviour in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center. The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials." Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-rumors27sep27,1,7923337.story?coll=la-news-a_section (requires registration)

(Sept 26) VOIP WANTS TO CUT THE COMPUTER CORD It may be only a matter of time before people across the country will be able to use VoIP-enabled softphones on a mobile device. Web surfers are already warming up to PC-to-PC voice dialing in popular instant chat applications from America Online, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN. The big question, however, is how exactly do all these companies plan to deliver a VoIP service beyond the PC and onto some sort of mobile device? [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Stefanie Olsen and Marguerite Reardon] http://news.com.com/VoIP+wants+to+cut+the+computer+cord/2100-7352_3-5879421.html?tag=nefd.lede

CHINA STRICTER ON NEWS WEBSITES China said Sunday that it was imposing new regulations to control content on its news websites and that it would allow the posting of only "healthy and civilized" news. The new rules take effect immediately and will "standardize the management of news and information" in the country, the official New China News Agency said Sunday. Sites should post news only on current events and politics, according to the new regulations issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and China's cabinet, the State Council. The subjects that would be acceptable under those categories was unclear. Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, the news agency said. "The sites are prohibited from spreading news and information that goes against state security and public interest," it added. [SOURCE: Associated Press] http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-china26sep26,1,3423156.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business (requires registration)

MEDIA COUNTER PIRACY IN CHINA IN NEW WAYS China is the world's epicenter of entertainment piracy, a vast market where knockoffs are so common that illicit street vendors are often the major source of videos, music and games. Some 85%, or $411 million, of recorded music sold in China last year was pirated, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. U.S. film companies last year lost an estimated $280 million in box-office and video sales from piracy in China, says the Motion Picture Association of America. Some top entertainment companies are taking a new tack in dealing with knockoffs of movies, music and videogames in China: Instead of fighting to end piracy, they're working around the pirates. U.S. videogame giant Electronic Arts Inc. has moved its global online-games operation to China, and is opening an online-games studio there in an effort to thwart piracy of its products. Time Warner Inc. film studio Warner Bros. is breaking a Hollywood tradition by releasing movies on DVD in China the same day they premiere in the U.S., beating copycats at their own distribution game. Music labels are profiting by selling songs to advanced cellphone services, while also pushing into artist management, concert promotion and commercial sponsorships. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Geoffrey A. Fowler geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com and Jason Dean jason.dean@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112769450481151682,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

A TV CHANNEL TAKES AIM AT TODDLERS "PBS Kids Sprout," a national 24-hour channel aimed at the very young, debuts today on cable and satellite systems. Sprout, which will initially be available to about 16 million homes, will carry ads and will join the other new, commercial entrant vying for toddlers' TV time this fall. The Cartoon Network, which is owned by Time Warner, has converted two hours of its morning lineup to TickleU, a block of shows like "Gerald McBoing Boing" that the network says have a pedagogic foundation in encouraging a sense of humor in preschoolers. Nielsen Media Research estimates that there are 15.9 million children aged 2 to 5, and Nielsen figures show that the children watched an average of 3 hours and 40 minutes of television a day during the 2004-5 TV season -- 13 minutes more than the 2000-1 season. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Jensen] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/business/media/26kids.html?pagewanted=all (requires registration)

A STORY BETTER TOLD IN PRINT [Commentary] By their disposition, hurricanes are a television story: great pictures, an informational crawl at the bottom, and a wind-swept, rain-soaked anchor. But big papers like The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times all dug in, sending dispatches out of New Orleans that shed light where there had been only heat. What exactly happened at the convention center? Is Mayor Ray Nagin a saint or a kook? Were the levees overtopped or undermined? Will New Orleans be a real city again, or just Disneyland with Jell-O shots? Those are not questions that get asked or answered much on television. The New Orleans story needed the big muscles of print journalism to gain custody of facts that seemed beyond comprehension. People could Google their way through the storm, but for a search engine to really work, you need women and men on the ground asking difficult questions and digging past the misinformation and panic that infect a big story. Newspapers are a civic good, especially right now, but they cannot function as a nonprofit. Make all the jokes you want about dead trees, a printed artifact that people pay to read and advertise in is an absolute necessity. On television, it always seems like Groundhog Day - get wet, rinse, repeat. There is undeniably something compelling about Anderson Cooper standing in wind and rain in Galveston at 3 a.m. on Saturday as Rita blew ashore - "You feel very much at the edge of the world," he said, blinking against the rain - but that does not address the issues of governance, logistics, race and class that the hurricanes reveal. Those are stories newspapers tell well. But with department stores consolidating both their operations and their advertising and with readers canceling the newspapers that land on their doorstep in favor of more instant gratification on the Web, big newspapers full of deep reporting and serious ambitions seem like dinosaurs at the beginning of a very cold age. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/business/media/26carr.html?pagewanted=all (requires registration)

KATRINA COULD FOREVER CHANGE HOW TV NEWS COVERS STORMS Given the impact of Katrina, Hurricane Rita was covered differently than any other storm. Television outlets devoted great resources to coverage. Before Katrina, "the thinking had always been, 'It's no longer a story once it's no longer a hurricane. Be there when it hits, get out by the time it's downgraded to a tropical storm,' " CNN chief Jon Klein says. Katrina, he says, taught news outlets that post-hurricane storm surges and flooding, which destroyed levees and much of New Orleans, "are even more dangerous than the initial wind and rain. We know to stick around and wait to see how the story plays out." The human side of Katrina -- tales of agony and misery that thousands of Katrina's victims still endure a month after the storm -- also has gripped many reporters, who want to stay on the story indefinitely. "Katrina made a lot of us in the media realize that we can't undersell a hurricane," MSNBC anchor Rita Cosby says from Galveston. "News organizations, the government, everybody now realizes you've got to take Mother Nature seriously." But news executives' ability to balance budgets also is being sorely tested: Not only must they operate in a tight economy, but many must also meet profit goals set by news organizations' corporate owners. And this has been one of the costliest years in terms of coverage: There has been the war in Iraq, the death of one pope and the election of another, the Asian tsunami, the London terrorist attacks and now hurricanes. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR:] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050926/d_mediamix26.art.htm

THE RISING TIDE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL REPORTING Eight days after Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast, CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" included in its coverage of the storm's aftermath a report on toxic water and another piece on global warming. The story on the toxic soup created by the New Orleans floodwaters raised issues about the environmental impact of the cleanup as the dirty water is drained into Lake Pontchartrain. The global warming story explained the complicated cycles of increased and decreased hurricane activity and their relationship with rising temperatures in the oceans. These types of pieces-taking a long-range look at environmental issues-were less likely to generate attention in newsrooms in a pre-Katrina world. The destruction caused by Katrina may have created a defining era for environmental journalism. Coverage of environmental topics has been sparse on television over the past few years. Now viewers appear more keenly invested in such issues because Katrina isn't just the story of the worst natural disaster to hit the United States, it's also a story that has brought into sharp focus the issues of man's impact on the environment. In fact, the ongoing cleanup and the assessment of the impact of Katrina are likely to usher in a new wave of environmental reporting on TV in the next few months. What is unknown is whether that attention will translate into a long-term, consistent focus. [SOURCE: TVWeek, AUTHOR: Daisy Whitney] http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=8603 (requires free registration)

(Sept 23) WEB GIANTS FACE ISSUES IN CONTENT A flood of digital media content is headed toward the consumer, Internet companies are anything but sure how the consumer will respond or just how the consumer wants to receive this content. Gone are the days when viewers watched a TV show only when the networks chose to play it -- or heard a song only when the radio station played it. People get their information and entertainment when and where they want. Most online content is free, aside from dial-up and broadband charges. Media companies, though, are searching to find a format in which consumers must pay for content. But why would consumers pay for content they can get for free? [SOURCE: Investor's Business Daily, AUTHOR: Brian Deagon] http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ibd/20050921/bs_ibd_ibd/2005921tech01

MEDIA WATCHDOG TELLS BLOGGERS HOW TO AVOID CENSORS Reporters Without Boarders, a Paris-based media watchdog, released a handbook on Thursday to help cyber-dissidents and bloggers avoid political censorship in countries as far apart as China, Iran, Vietnam and Cuba. The book identifies bloggers as the "new heralds of free expression" and offers advice on how to set up a blog and run it anonymously. [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Timothy Heritage] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-09-22T212113Z_01_EIC273301_RTRIDST_0_NET-MEDIA-BLOGGING-DC.XML For more info see: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15083 Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents: http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

POLITICOS WANT TO SHIELD NET FROM ELECTION LAWS A controversial plan by the Federal Election Commission to regulate political blogging may be short-lived after all. Members of Congress said Thursday that the freewheeling world of Internet politicking should continue to be immune from campaign finance laws, and indicated they may rewrite the law to halt the FEC's proposal. The handful of politicians present at a hearing convened by the U.S. House of Representatives Administration Committee hailed the Internet's power in democratizing politics and breeding grassroots action. They touted the Net's low cost of entry, as compared with media such as television, and threw their support behind a brief amendment to campaign finance law, offered in March in both houses of Congress, that would "exclude communications over the Internet from the definition of public communication." Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat whose district covers Silicon Valley, indicated that the proposal enjoyed wide support and could be passed easily. [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Anne Broache] http://news.com.com/Politicos+want+to+shield+Net+from+election+laws/2100-1028_3-5876871.html?tag=nefd.top

THE OCCASIONAL MEDIA RITUAL OF LAMENTING THE HABITUAL [Comentary] Dan Rather caused some ripples the other day when he lamented the state of U.S. news media. The former CBS anchor said "there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career," according to the Hollywood Reporter. Speaking at a law school in New York on Sept. 19, he warned that politicians have been putting effective pressure on the corporate owners of major broadcast outlets. Over the course of his career, Rather occasionally voiced alarm that news outlets were being intimidated by government authorities and other powerful interests. But he didn't noticeably challenge such constraints in his on-air work. The pattern that we've seen from prominent TV news correspondents. In a wartime frenzy, they blend in with the prevailing media scenery. Later, a few briefly utter words of regret. But next time around they revert to the habit of behaving like war cheerleaders instead of independent journalists. [SOURCE: Alternet, AUTHOR: Norman Solomon] http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/25859/

STATIONS STAYED TUNED TO JET'S SAGA The city so known for televising painstakingly long police chases, and taking heat for airing their sometimes gruesome outcomes, took it to the skies Wednesday with moment-by-moment coverage of the JetBlue airliner that circled over the ocean for three hours. In the end, the New York-bound flight landed perfectly at Los Angeles International Airport with its front wheels at a 90-degree angle. And the decision to break programming, whether it was a regular newscast or children's shows, was a no-brainer, said several local news executives who relied on the predictions of experts that the plane would land without major incident. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Maria Elena Fernandez] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-et-news23sep23,1,4606243.story?coll=la-news-a_section (requires registration)

IN-FLIGHT TV IS TRICKY ISSUE For years, airlines controlled what passengers saw on their cabin screens, editing out scenes of graphic violence or sex, and banning movies altogether if they showed airline crashes. But now, with three U.S. airlines offering live television feeds and on-board Internet access expected to be available within a year, passengers can see anything they want -- even news coverage of an event in which they might be taking part. After the drama aboard JetBlue Flight 292 unfolded live on television Wednesday, executives of Denver-based Frontier Airlines, which like JetBlue shows DirectTV on its flights, began to rethink their policy of keeping on the feed until the pilot decides to shut it down. As a result, the company probably would implement a new policy that calls for turning off the service during in-flight emergencies, Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas said. But a spokeswoman for JetBlue, whose passengers even watched the planes crashing into New York's World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, said the company would not change its policy of allowing pilots to decide whether to turn off the TV. Company officials have long chosen not to censor television feeds and believe that, on balance, it's better to have information available to passengers, spokeswoman Fiona Morrison said. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Sharon Bernstein] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-me-tv23sep23,1,3695592.story?coll=la-news-a_section (requires registration)

NET AGE HAS NO PLACE FOR ARCHAIC TV REGULATION [Commentary] Culture that lasts, culture that lives, is culture that is close to a spirit of enterprise. In broadcasting, free enterprise has led to more choice and given people access to cultural experiences of every sort. Regulators, like television industry incumbents [in Britan], must learn to accept the new world of choice. At the Edinburgh TV festival Robert Pepper, formerly of the FCC, outlined the regulatory challenges in a world where traditional boundaries between television and the Internet have gone and where data storage and high-speed transmission eliminate _scarcity. In this world, he asked: “What, if anything, gets regulated? And what does localism, diversity or pluralism mean?” As broadband Internet becomes more able to deliver high-quality video to the home, should we continue to have different regulatory regimes for TV and for other audio-visual content? The European Commission thinks so. Its proposals seek to preserve a more stringent regulatory regime for traditional broadcasting than for on-demand content. This approach is doomed. For a consumer, whether the image on their screen has come through a TV tuner or a broadband connection may soon be irrelevant. Differential regulation is pointless and arbitrary. What is the point of having complete freedom within the law on audio-visual content received through the Internet and strict codes, format controls or production quotas on content received through digital TV? The question then becomes, should Internet audio-visual content be regulated in the same way as television currently, or should TV increasingly be deregulated in the same way as the Internet? The new world also means that the demon of powerful media companies imposing their views on the world belongs to an old James Bond movie. It always was a bit of a myth, but now it is laughable. Nobody can seriously say there is a problem with plurality when there are hundreds of TV news channels, millions of news websites and weblogs, and the ability for citizens to access information in an unmediated way. Technology and the market are delivering the ultimate pluralism. [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: James Murdoch, British Sky Broadcasting] http://news.ft.com/cms/s/647c5284-2ace-11da-817a-00000e2511c8.html (requires subscription)

(Sept 22) CHINA'S MODEL FOR A CENSORED INTERNET As China began to go online, observers made brash predictions that the Internet would pry the country open. Cyberspace, the thinking went, would prove too vast and wild for Beijing to keep under its thumb. Now these early assumptions are being sharply revised. Under an authoritarian government determined to control information, China has grown a new version of the Internet. As former US President Bill Clinton noted recently, China's Internet is very unlike the cauldron of dissenting voices that is the hallmark of the Internet familiar to Americans. Instead, it's heavily filtered, monitored, censored, and most of all, focused on making money. The success of Beijing's strategy -- to harness the network's business potential while minimizing it as a conduit for free speech -- has some concerned that it has established a medium and new censoring tools that other countries can adopt. [SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Kathleen E. McLaughlin] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0922/p01s02-woap.html

FEDS ANNOUNCE GLOBAL ANTI-PIRACY INITIATIVES During California visits with high-tech and movie industry representatives, Commerce Department Secretary Carlos Gutierrez described two new programs aimed at eroding intellectual property theft, which costs U.S. businesses an estimated $250 billion and 750,000 jobs per year. One program would place intellectual property experts on the ground in regions where piracy is considered a concern. There they would work with overseas U.S. businesses and native government officials to advocate improved intellectual property rights protection, according to a department fact sheet. Experts will be sent to Brazil, India, Russia, Thailand, China and the Middle East and serve a five-year tour of duty. Another program, called the Global Intellectual Property Rights Academy, would train foreign judges, enforcement officials and other stakeholders in international intellectual property obligations and best practices. The academy, overseen by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, plans to convene in 24 sessions in 2006, paying all travel expenses for the foreign participants, who will come from many of the same areas where experts will be working. [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Anne Broache] http://news.com.com/Feds+announce+global+antipiracy+initiatives/2100-1028_3-5876017.html?tag=nefd.top * Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez Unveils Initiatives to Fight Intellectual Property Theft (Dept of Commerce press release) http://www.commerce.gov/opa/press/Secretary_Gutierrez/2005_Releases/September/09-21-05%20IPR%20initiatives.htm

THE MEANING OF FREE SPEECH The acquisition by eBay of Skype is a helpful reminder to the world's trillion-dollar telecoms industry that all phone calls will eventually be free. Founder Niklas Zennstrom's vision for Skype is to become the world's biggest and best platform for all communications -- text, voice or video -- from any Internet-connected device, whether a computer or a mobile phone. Skype can add 150,000 users a day (its current rate) without spending anything on new equipment (users "bring" their own computers and Internet connections) or marketing (users invite each other). With no marginal cost, Skype can thus afford to maximize the number of its users, knowing that if only some of them start buying its fee-based services -- such as SkypeOut, SkypeIn and voicemail -- Skype will make money. This adds up to a very unusual business plan. "We want to make as little money as possible per user," says Mr Zennstrom, because "we don't have any cost per user, but we want a lot of them." This is the exact opposite of the traditional business model in the telecoms industry, which is based on maximizing the average revenue per user. And that has only one logical consequence. According to Rich Tehrani, the founder of Internet Telephony magazine, Skype and services like it are leading inexorably to a future in which all voice communication, near or far, will be free. [SOURCE: The Economist] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4400704

STUDY: BROADBAND PENETRATION SLOWING A new survey published by independent think tank Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that high-speed Internet adoption, after growing quickly in the past several years, has been losing steam and is poised to slow even further. During the first six months of 2005, 53 percent of home Internet users said they use a broadband connection, up from only 50 percent during the previous six months. This is a much slower growth rate than reported for the same periods a year earlier. From November 2003 to May 2004, high-speed Internet penetration grew by 20 percent, from 35 percent of home users in December 2003 to 42 percent in May 2004. Pew attributed the slowdown in broadband penetration to a maturing of the market. Early adopters, who are typically savvy about the Internet, well-educated and well-paid, have already signed up for broadband service. Today's dial-up customers, by contrast, tend to be older adults with lower incomes and educational levels. Most importantly, they do not use the Internet to do much beyond basic Web surfing and e-mailing. [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Marguerite Reardon] http://news.com.com/Study+Broadband+penetration+slowing/2100-1034_3-5875981.html?tag=nefd.top * Broadband Adoption in the United States: Growing but Slowing http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband.TPRC_Sept05.pdf ** Results of the study will be presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (www.tprc.org/TPRC05/2005.htm) in Arlington, Va., Sept. 23 to Sept. 25. I'll see you there tomorrow!

NEW TECHNOLOGY AIMS TO IMPROVE INTERNET ACCESS FOR THE IMPAIRED Aging populations in many developed countries mean disabilities -- especially impaired vision but also motor and cognitive dysfunctions -- are likely to rise. By 2010, Microsoft estimates that 70 million people in the U.S. will be using some form of assistive technology, like screen readers or screen magnifiers, up from 57 million people in 2003. New technology from Microsoft, IBM and others, as well as efforts by government and standards bodies, are trying to address some of frustrations by making computer programs and the Internet more accessible for the visually impaired and other disabled people. One major obstacle to better access to Web pages for the disabled has been differing standards. U.S. government Internet accessibility guidelines, for instance, deviate somewhat from the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet's leading standards-setting body. Harmonizing standards is "one of the things we hope will improve over the coming years," said Judy Brewer, director of the Web Accessibility Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium. Better access to Web pages also gives business a way to reach millions of potential customers among the visually impaired. "This is an important market," said Sharron Rush, executive director of Knowbility, a nonprofit organization that promotes accessible technology. "You certainly don't want to miss out on this amount of buying power." [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Chris Reiter chris.reiter@dowjones.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112735318982648204,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

INTERNET DEALS: A TANGLED WEB Traditional media companies, lured by the growth potential of online advertising, are "desperate" to acquire Internet assets. CNET, TheKnot and iVillage are viewed as attractive takeover targets. Google may consider making deals, but not in content, according to money managers. [SOURCE: CNNMoney, AUTHOR: Paul R. La Monica] http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/20/technology/techinvestor/lamonica/index.htm Also: * Viacom Seeks to Join Internet Trend http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=story&articleid=VR1117929402&p=0&s=h

(Sept 21) CHINA GETS TOUGHER ON FOREIGN MEDIA Last year, prospects looked good when China moved toward loosening rules on foreign media investments. But in recent months, Liu and other leaders of the Chinese government have clamped down on foreigners' participation in China's burgeoning media industry, declaring last month that they wouldn't allow more foreign television channels and would tighten their grip on the 31 satellite broadcasters in China. Chinese officials say they want to "safeguard national cultural security." But some analysts believe that the restrictions are aimed at keeping advertising revenue in the hands of state-controlled and domestic media enterprises. Even as Beijing has moved to limit foreign companies, it has encouraged the development of private Chinese media firms. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Don Lee] http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-chinamedia21sep21,1,6220501.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business (requires registration)

BBC TEST MAY PUSH INTERNET TV VIEWING CLOSER TO MAINSTREAM About 5,000 selected viewers in the United Kingdom will be issued a computer program called the iMP (interactive media player) that allows them to download and share most of the British Broadcasting Corp's TV programs for up to seven days. No other broadcaster has made so many shows available for download to computers. The BBC hopes its iMP software will become the iTunes of Internet television, allowing viewers to customize their TV schedules over the course of a week. If the three-month test is successful, the BBC plans to make the iMP freely available in the U.K. next year, becoming the first TV network to show its entire schedule over the Internet. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Aaron O. Patrick aaron.patrick@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112726369569546878,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

KATRINA DROVE ONLINE TRAFFIC TO LOCAL MEDIA Hundreds of thousands of people looking for the latest news on Hurricane Katrina went to New Orleans' local media last month to get the latest on the storm's devastation, a web metrics firm said Monday. Nola.com, the web home of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper owned by Advance Publications, saw its traffic soar 277 percent from July to 1.7 million visitors in August, ComScore Networks said. Meanwhile, the city's CBS affiliate WWL-TV, owned by Belo Corp., experienced a 258 percent spike in traffic to its site, WWLTV.com, to 878,000. More than half of the traffic to Nola.com originated in parts of the country that were outside the storm's path. [SOURCE: InternetWeek, AUTHOR: Antone Gonsalves ] http://www.internetweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170704725

MEDIA: AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM OR HYPE MACHINE? [Commentary] Do the media overhype minor concerns that pack a visceral punch and underplay important concerns that are more complicated and/or less immediate? The challenge for the media lies in figuring out which stories deserve coverage and which do not. In [SOURCE: CBS News/Public Eye, AUTHOR: Brian Montopoli ] http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/09/19/publiceye/entry859517.shtml

(Sept 20) INTERNET INDUSTRY UNEASE AT EU RULES REVISION European Internet groups are stepping up resistance to controversial revisions to European Union broadcasting rules, which they fear could lead to increased regulation and costs for their business. In the biggest review of the Union's broadcast regulations since 1989, the European Commission will by the end of the year decide how far Internet service providers showing audiovisual programmes should be covered by EU laws on broadcasting content. The current directive covers rules such as airtime quotas for programmes made in Europe, and advertising and product placement restrictions. The proposals include a basic set of controls such as the right to reply, protection of minors, and clear labelling of advertising on “non-linear” services, which include video-on-demand and web-based news services. The Commission insists it will not impose on ISPs old rules designed for traditional broadcasters. It says that it favours a code of self-regulation by the Internet groups and that the alarm felt in the industry is unfounded. [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Sarah Laitner and Emiko Terazono] http://news.ft.com/cms/s/bda7fd98-2940-11da-8a5e-00000e2511c8.html

CONFUSION, TECH ISSUES DELAY LEGIT FILE-SHARING SITES Getting legitimate online music and video file-sharing programs off the ground is taking a lot longer than originally promised. At the beginning of the year, two tiny ventures, Mashboxx and Snocap, said they had come up with services that could turn unauthorized downloads into legitimate transactions. IMesh, one of the first digital file-sharing companies, said it would launch an authorized service this year, but no date has been revealed. They all have been hampered by technical delays and confusion over copyright rulings that seek to curb the wildly popular practice of swapping music and videos online without paying for them. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Jefferson Graham] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20050920/p2p20.art.htm * File-Sharing Services Seek Pact With Record Studios http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/technology/20grokster.html (requires registration) * File-Sharing Services May Reform Themselves http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-piracy20sep20,1,6764378.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business

(Sept 19) LET THE SUN SHINE IN [Commentary] The Supreme Court will change radically in the coming year, but in one important way, it may not. Unless Judge Roberts -- assuming he is confirmed -- changes policy, citizens still will not know how this new court deliberates on some of the most pivotal and impactful legal dilemmas of the day. That's because the Supreme Court stubbornly refuses to open itself to TV cameras. Yet the truly divisive issues in this nation -- religion, reproductive rights, gun laws, the rights of accused criminals -- all end up, in one way or another, affected by the high court. Maybe if more Americans had access to the great arguments on all sides of those issues, more of us would be tolerant of the viewpoints of others -- left, right and center. Judge Roberts seems open to the idea of cameras in the High Court and there's legislation pending in Congress that would allow cameras in federal courts. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6257849?display=Opinion&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

EMPTY SCREENS Video On Demand (VOD) -- long pursued as the killer application of cable television -- is at a strange crossroads. Even as most TV executives agree that a technology that frees viewers from the shackles of the schedule is a sure-fire success, nobody can yet figure out how to make a dime off of it. Even so, a fight has already broken out between content providers and distributors, each fearful of setting bad financial precedents that they'll suffer with for years. While programmers and cable operators bicker over how the new service should be marketed, priced and sold, some worry that the cable industry may be passing up a golden opportunity. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John M. Higgins] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6257810.html?display=Cover+Story&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

MORE HORRIBLE THAN TRUTH: NEWS REPORTS Disaster has a way of bringing out the best and the worst instincts in the news media. It is a grand thing that during the most terrible days of Hurricane Katrina, many reporters found their gag reflex and stopped swallowing pat excuses from public officials. But the media's willingness to report thinly attributed rumors may also have contributed to a kind of cultural wreckage that will not clean up easily. First, anyone with any knowledge of the events in New Orleans knows that terrible things with non-natural causes occurred: there were assaults, shots fired at a rescue helicopter and, given the state of the city's police department, many other crimes that probably went unreported. But many instances in the lurid libretto of widespread murder, carjacking, rape, and assaults that filled the airwaves and newspapers have yet to be established or proved, as far as anyone can determine. And many of the urban legends that sprang up - the systematic rape of children, the slitting of a 7-year-old's throat - so far seem to be just that. The fact that some of these rumors were repeated by overwhelmed local officials does not completely get the news media off the hook. A survey of news reports in the LexisNexis database shows that on Sept. 1, the news media's narrative of the hurricane shifted, led by Fox News anchor John Gibson, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson and Fox's Greta Van Susteren. [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/business/media/19carr.html?pagewanted=all (requires registration)

WIPED OFF THE MAP, AND BELATEDLY PUT BACK ON IT "Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at a Media Establishment That Has Largely Ignored Them." Apparently, mass media outlets were unaware, before Hurricane Katrina hit, that there were poor people living in New Orleans. A database search of The Post for the past decade found one story that prominently mentioned the poor of New Orleans: a 2002 piece on a campaign to boost the minimum wage that cited the city's "40 percent poverty level." Far more typical of the Mardi Gras media was a 1995 Post story on how "the city's black neighborhoods come alive" with Sunday parades in the fall. New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame found a similar record at his newspaper, unearthing only two articles about New Orleans in 10 years that "contained a few paragraphs on poverty and race." The mounting problems of the urban poor, from unemployment to high infant mortality to family dysfunction, were long ago reduced to a blip on the media radar screen. Politicians rarely talked about them. Newspapers and magazines, meanwhile, have been chasing suburban readers who appeal to upscale advertisers. The poor, whether in New Orleans or Newark, were, well, very '60s. Covering the 37 million people who live below the poverty line -- the percentage has increased for four straight years -- is not as easy as, say, covering advocates who claim to speak on their behalf. Many of the poor are wary of intrusive journalists, don't carry cell phones and don't speak in snappy sound bites. The same goes for race: It is far easier to write about the politics of race -- President Bush appointing the first two black secretaries of state, or refusing to speak to the NAACP -- than to probe the impact of federal policies on the lives of minorities. And the problems of generations of low-income broken families who seem unable to escape the cycle of poverty can be depressing fare. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/18/AR2005091801265.html (requires registration) See also: * 'Blair shocked' over BBC Katrina coverage Tony Blair was shocked by the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans, describing it as “full of hatred of America” in a conversation made public by Rupert Murdoch Friday. [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Joshua Chaffin and Aline van Duyn] http://news.ft.com/cms/s/933f0642-270a-11da-b6fe-00000e2511c8.html (requires subscription)

(Sept 16) UN CONTROL OF INTERNET? TRY AGAIN. [Commentary] As revolutionary as the Internet has been, its largest effects may be yet to come: as an inexhaustible library; as a superefficient vehicle of commerce; as a way for machines and electronic devices anywhere to talk with each other or people. A UN advisory group has produced a report advocating some international control of the Internet. The document, produced by the UN's Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) this summer, calls for shared roles by government, commercial interests, and private citizens but doesn't spell out exactly how these roles would be played. It also calls for "effective and meaningful participation of all stakeholders, especially from developing countries" and more resources - human, financial, and technical - for poorer countries. Yet it's far from clear a body established by the UN is ready to become an able administrator for the Internet. The free flow of ideas and commerce, so key to the Internet's exponential growth, would not be well served if hobbled by bureaucracy or chilled by governments interested in suppressing dissident voices. If international demands for less US control boil over, other countries could employ a "nuclear option" - setting up a rival to ICANN and potentially creating chaos on the Internet with two divergent standards. That need not happen. International governance of the Internet does have an inescapable logic. Better that the US engage vigorously now in shaping that institution, even as it realizes that handing off control to it is nowhere in the immediate future. [SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0916/p08s02-comv.html

(Sept 15) NPR PROSPERS, WALLED OFF FROM WALL STREET Wall Street probably would be impressed by a media outfit that managed to double its weekly audience from 13 million to 26 million in a little more than six years. Yet the folks who run National Public Radio insist it's because they don't have to impress Wall Street that they've been able to increase their listenership and, with it, revenue through listener contributions, sponsorships, and foundation support. While the radio world has contracted in upon itself through consolidated ownership and copycat formats, public radio has only become more distinct, important and valuable. It looms ever larger on the U.S. dial simply as guardian of its niche. It's expanding its news operation at a time when most others are cutting back. It's in the midst of a $15 million, three-year plan to add 45 staffers and open new bureaus, including one in West Africa. But more important, listen to an NPR program for 30 seconds and you know you're listening to NPR. Unlike its TV cousin, PBS, whose specialties have been cloned by cable networks that siphon off the viewers underwriters want to reach, it's tough to argue NPR is redundant. [SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, AUTHOR: Phil Rosenthal philrosenthal@tribune.com] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/chi-0509140135sep14,1,2647923.column?coll=chi-navrailbusiness-nav

MUSIC ACTIVISTS CALL FOR PAYOLA CRACKDOWN As the FCC prepares its pay-to-play probe, fueled by N.Y. Attorney Gen. Eliot Spitzer's recent payola investigation, music industry experts Tues. welcomed any reforms to level the playing field for lesser known artists to get their songs on the radio. Musicians and activists cited frustrations and personal stories about the major record labels' dominance over the airwaves at the Future of Music Coalition summit in Washington, DC. Speaking at the Summit, Media Access Project President Andy Schwartzman said, "We're in the midst of a highly deregulatory Republican Administration that has signaled to the radio industry that 'we're going to look the other way.'" He said payola involves "greedy people out breaking the law at the expense of independent artists who expect more from publicly owned spectrum operators." While there's no law against pay-for-play, there are rules governing disclosure, Schwartzman said. "What's wrong is a failure to disclose. A marketplace works better when all sides have complete information," he said. [SOURCE: Communications Daily, AUTHOR: Andrew Noyes] (Not available online)

FILE-SHARING FIRMS ARE URGED TO PROTECT MUSIC-INDUSTRY RIGHTS The Recording Industry Association of America has sent cease-and-desist letters to several file-sharing companies, including BearShare, LimeWire and WinMX, asking that they stop activities that allow users to download copyrighted music. The letters are an attempt by the music industry to build on the favorable ruling it received from the U.S. Supreme Court in June in the so-called Grokster case, involving a file-sharing company that was accused by the industry of facilitating copyright violations. In that ruling, the court found that copyright holders could sue file-sharing companies for encouraging people to violate copyrights. Now, the industry is taking the first step toward enforcing the ruling against other file-sharing companies. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sarah McBride sarah.mcbride@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112674801125041379,00.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal (requires subscription)

FENCE OFF INTERNET PORN [Commentary] The Internet has transformed the pornography business. In little more than a decade, online “adult entertainment” has become a booming multibillion dollar industry, enabled by the World Wide Web's easy, impersonal accessibility. Avoiding or blocking the X-rated onslaught can be nearly impossible. Internet content moves with no respect for borders and at such slippery speed that tracking it is like trying to grab hold of mercury. Innocuous-looking e-mail titled, say, “Here's the offer you requested” can link to pornography generated in the Ukraine. Much of what's out there makes the “adult content” of the past look quaint. For those who want porn, that may be fine. But for others, it can be deeply offensive. And for children, it can be damaging. One fresh approach deserves encouragement. It's a proposal for a virtual red-light district in the form of a new Internet domain. Instead of .com or one of the other familiar Web address suffixes, porn would have .xxx. People would know what they're getting. Parents could more easily filter it out. The idea is no cure-all. For one, it would be voluntary. Critics point out, correctly, that pornographers could still keep their .com addresses, and many probably would. Nor would it stop those deceptive e-mails. But that's not the point. Its value is as an experiment, particularly for protecting children. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050915/edit15.art.htm

.XXX WOULD LEGITIMIZE PORN [Commentary] For years there has been near unanimous condemnation of the notion that pornographers should be rewarded with even more space on the Internet. Yet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet's governing agency, is moving ahead on this seductive idea. ICANN does not pretend that the .xxx domain would clean up the .com domain, and the agency has no enforcement powers to make this happen. Pornographers would simply expand to .xxx, thus perhaps doubling the number of porn sites and doubling their menace to society. Thus the argument that .xxx would benefit children is without any basis in fact. Furthermore, creating a designated domain for pornography would simply have the effect of legitimizing much material that is likely illegal. Selling hard-core pornography on the Internet is a violation of federal obscenity law no matter where it is located. A relatively small number of U.S. pornographers own the vast majority of Web sites selling illegal material. That is why the Family Research Council supports the efforts of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to establish an obscenity prosecution task force to prosecute violators of the obscenity law -- rather than making them masters of a new domain. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Patrick Trueman, Family Research Council] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050915/oppose15.art.htm

MORE TV VETERANS ARE MAKING JUMP TO INTERNET Is the Internet a place where TV careers go to die -- or be reborn? The benefits of online distribution include younger viewers, faster turnaround, and lower overhead. Much as radio shock jock Howard Stern plans to move his program to Sirius Satellite Radio at the end of this year, some television producers, deal makers and even on-air personalities are starting to see the Internet emerge as an inviting place to find audiences and advertisers. The Web's role as a broadcast medium where TV veterans can put their skills to use is still in its early days of development. Hollywood talent agencies have deal makers assigned specifically to find business opportunities in the video game industry, where the annual revenue rivals box-office receipts. But there are few, if any, focused on developing programming for the Internet, where most revenue is generated by simple text or banner ads. For writers, producers and their agents thinking about pitching an idea to Yahoo or AOL, "the kind of money they're going to get pales in comparison to what they can get writing a feature film or getting on staff of a TV show for a year," said Chris Silbermann, a partner with literary agency Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann. "There's just not enough financial incentive." Yet as broadband connections spawn more streaming video and TV-like commercials on the Web, the business models that have made Tinseltown hum for the last century are finally starting to take shape for original Internet programming. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Chris Gaither] http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-tvnet15sep15,1,1766394.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business (requires registration)

A STEP BACK FROM THE WEB [Commentary] "We are the Web," Walker wrote in a memo to her bosses when she rejoined the print edition of the Washington Post to launch this weekly column in 1998. "Almost anyone can plug into the Internet and transmit his or her message, making it a more participatory medium." People using the Web shape it in unpredictable ways, she wanted to spend as much time chronicling that participatory side. Seven years later, we are still transforming the Web every day. It is hard to stand back and perceive the collective impact that hundreds of millions of users are having, but for the next three months Walker is going to try, taking a temporary break from her column to work on a special project. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Leslie Walker walkerl@washpost.com.] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/14/AR2005091402553.html (requires registration)

(Sept 13) A PAPER WITHOUT A CITY [Commentary] The destruction of New Orleans hasn't stopped the 168-year-old Times Picayune from turning out some of the most urgent and personal journalism in America. But there are many outstanding questions concerning the paper's future: How does a hometown newspaper write about a city that in effect, no longer exists? How long can a newspaper staff, effectively homeless and running on fumes, continue to hold up? Where does a newspaper turn for advertising revenue when the city it caters to all of a sudden has neither businesses nor subscribers? Can a 168-year old paper, whose initial cover price was a 6 1/4 cent Spanish coin, long survive after being reduced to what amounts to the country's most tragic metro section? Answers will be a while coming. [SOURCE: AlterNet, AUTHOR: Paul McLeary, CJR Daily] http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/25372/ <http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/25372/> * Biloxi Newspaper Has Largest Press Run Ever http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001096817

WHAT JOURNALISM CAN LEARN FROM ADVERTISING [Commentary] 1) Customer insight is critical: News companies must not only understand their markets better, but journalists must operate closer to, and in conjunction with, their readers and viewers. 2) The future is fragmented: The much-documented disintegration of mass media -- and the accompanying division of advertising dollars -- continues (and accelerates) with the ability of people to create their own media and remix that made by others. Successful news organizations will be those that can slice their own products thin enough for their audiences to rearrange them as they choose. 3) Continual change will be the norm: Static, plodding news organizations will lose market share, money and relevance. Dynamic, adaptable organizations will win out. Think Senge, not Patton. The learning newsroom, one that can continually educate and reinvent itself in accordance with the world around it, will have the best chances for survival. 4) Brands need stewardship. 5) Consumers need help managing media: It's called editing. Journalists do it well. Now that media have exploded into thousands of remixable slivers, there is value in those who can help sort it out. 6) Push boundaries: Journalism is what we do. What form it takes and how we distribute it are secondary. The only journalistic rule that matters is to tell the truth (about the news, about our sources, about ourselves). Other than the only limitations are self-created, boundaries of tradition, newsroom culture and production. We made them. We can get rid of them. 7) Creativity means technology: Digital technology enables news organizations to meet the demands of fractured audiences, to empower their journalists to work in more than one dimension, to present news and information in layered, contextual formats and to report, analyze and narrate the events of the world in inventive new ways that can connect with people for whom traditional media, like newspapers and the sonorous anchor, have no relevance. 8) Big ideas still rule: "Think big. Don't just be practitioners of the craft." Tinkering won't get us anywhere. Media has exploded. We need to explode the newsroom. [SOURCE: First Draft, AUTHOR: Tim Porter] http://www.timporter.com/firstdraft/

(Sept 12) NEWS MEDIA ARE HEADING 'A CALL TO ARMS' Americans, usually critical of the media, have given the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina a thumbs up, and major outlets are pledging to stay on the story to find out what went wrong with the response to the disaster. A Pew Research Center study of 1,000 Americans Sept. 6 and 7 found that 65% rated news coverage of the hurricane good or excellent, more favorable than the 54% approval rating for 2004 presidential election coverage. Television dominated as the main source of information, with cable in the lead: CNN was the main source for 31% of respondents, compared with Fox (22%); local news (19%); ABC (14%); NBC (12%); MSNBC (9%) and CBS (8%). Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism hopes that many news organizations continue to work the story, “each one synthesizing and adding to what others are learning. If only one or two news organizations do it, it won't have the same effect.” The question is “how many news organizations have the investigative muscle to handle a story this complex, and how many can afford to lose a team for the time it will take to do that, especially in TV,” Rosenstiel says. “I fear the list of news organizations that can do that today is not very long. And sadly, it gets shorter if ad sales go down and other news pushes Katrina off our radar screens.” [SOURCE: USAToday] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050912/d_mediamix12.art.htm

BOMBS AWAY ON TELEVISION NEWS [Commentary] When this nation's founding fathers set out on their experiment in democratic governance, one of their most revolutionary ideas was that political power would be moderated not only by checks and balances built into the government, but by a free and independent press that would provide knowledge to the public and warn of pending dangers. As James Madison bluntly observed, "A popular government without popular information, or the means of securing it, is but a prelude to a farce or tragedy, perhaps both." It is increasingly difficult to discern the vision of Madison in broadcast news today, even though most of it comes over airwaves owned by the public and licensed to commercial outlets for a few hundred dollars a year. If avoiding "dark" becomes the criterion for broadcast news, how will Americans learn about such stories as New Orleans and Iraq, never mind Sierra Leone, Kosovo, the melting polar ice cap or the dying oceans? If only perky, upbeat stories and shows make it onto the air, who will inform the public and play the watchdog role? As the media get increasingly ratings-driven and profit-hungry, fewer and fewer news division executives support serious journalism. The result is that too many excellent broadcast journalists now feel discouraged, debased and disgusted. The reality is that it is increasingly less realistic to expect commercial broadcast outlets to effectively serve two masters: the public interest and corporate bottom line. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Orville Schell, UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-schell12sep12,1,3481785.story?coll=la-news-comment (requires registration)

RUSSIAN MEDIA CLIMATE SAID TO BE CHILLING Human rights leaders say that in President Vladimir V. Putin's Russia, journalists increasingly face a campaign of intimidation by the authorities and corrupt business interests. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists complained in July that "Russia's poor press climate is declining at an alarming rate." Twelve journalists have been slain since 2000. The number of criminal cases against journalists, accusing them of libel and insulting public officials, is increasing, in addition to the 6,000 to 8,000 civil defamation cases filed every year in which the burden of proof is on the accused, said Oleg Panfilov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR:Kim Murphy] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-press12sep12,1,2568887.story?coll=la-news-a_section (requires registration)

(Sept 9) DISPLACED STUDENTS TURN TO INTERNET The dislocation of students caused by Hurricane Katrina is fueling interest in online learning. Universities, for-profit companies and public school systems are scrambling to use the Internet to teach the 75,000 to 100,000 college students and 135,000 elementary and high-school students displaced by Katrina in greater New Orleans alone. This week, in response to the hurricane, the Department of Education said it would urge states to relax teacher-certification regulations and other rules to help more children get schooling through the Internet. Distance-education advocates are pushing to include increased funding for online efforts in emergency legislation before Congress. At the same time, if the efforts are to take off, some states and localities may still need legislative approval to pay the far-flung organizations that could offer online programs in homes and shelters. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is supporting legislation pending in Congress that would scrap a requirement that colleges offer at least half their instruction face to face and not through distance learning to receive federal funding. That rule had been adopted in part because of concern about low-quality "correspondence courses" and potential for fraud. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: John Hechinger john.hechinger@wsj.com and Daniel Golden dan.golden@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112622247296335918,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

IS THE INTERNET THE PUBLIC UTILITY OF THE FUTURE Media reform advocates maintain that the Internet is a necessary utility, and as such, should be available at an affordable cost. But many people living in the United States face geographic and financial barriers to high speed Internet -- putting them at a distinct disadvantage in today's digitized world. As Roberto Lovato writes in In These Times, "[C]ontrol over and access to broadband connectivity is defining global, regional and individual success." [SOURCE: Utne Reader, AUTHOR: Rose Miller] http://www.utne.com/webwatch/2005_215/news/11785-1.html

(Sept 8) LIVE FROM THE ASTRODOME, A RADIO STATION FOR EVACUEES Federal regulators have authorized an unusual radio station to serve the estimated 10,000 evacuees living in the Houston Astrodome, part of an effort to fill the information void left by Hurricane Katrina's disruption of communications services along the Gulf Coast. The Federal Communications Commission over the weekend granted Houston relief volunteers and media organizers permission to build a 30-watt radio station inside the Astrodome. Government and industry officials said it was the first time they could recall that a domestic radio station had been set up primarily to keep victims of a U.S. disaster informed. They predicted that the station would improve communications for residents, who rely mostly on bulletin board postings and word of mouth for news about jobs, missing relatives, housing and child care. [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jube Shiver Jr] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-radio8sep08,1,2504520.story?coll=la-news-a_section (requires registration) * Broadcasters Offer Portable TVs to First Responders in Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts The National Association of Broadcasters is partnering with Louisiana and Mississippi broadcasters to distribute 1,300 battery-operated handheld television sets to public safety officials assisting with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. [SOURCE: National Association of Broadcasters press release] http://www.nab.org/newsroom/pressrel/Releases/090705_HurricaneKatrina_TVHandsets.htm

WEB BUYING SPREE FOR BIG MEDIA [Commentary] About.com is among the many Web properties that traditional media companies have snapped up this year as they scramble to cash in on the second big Internet advertising boom. While Internet ads claim a small slice of the overall ad pie -- generating not quite $10 billion in the United States last year, less than 5 percent of all ad revenue -- the online dollars grew more than 30 percent, much faster than off-line. In response, traditional media companies have been making some startling moves. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Leslie Walker] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702178.html (requires registration) * News Corp. to Pay $650 Million For Operator of Web Game Sites http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112614765764734958,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

EBAY MAY BUY WEB PHONE FIRM IN STRATEGY SHIFT EBay is in talks to acquire Internet-telephony company Skype Technologies SA for $2 billion to $3 billion, in a deal that would represent a dramatic shift in strategy for the world's largest online auction site. Luxembourg-based Skype, whose software allows consumers to make free telephone calls around the world using Internet technology, has been in active discussions with other technology companies, and none has led to a deal. But the emergence of eBay as a suitor reveals a lot about the auction leader's growth prospects and strategy. While still dominating its field, eBay's core business is maturing, and the company is searching for new product categories and international markets. The company has made a steady string of acquisitions and investments over the last year and a half to enter markets such as rental-property listings, online classified-ad listings and comparison shopping. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Mylene Mangalindan mylene.mangalindan@wsj.com and Dennis K. Berman dennis.berman@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112615385922335028,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

CONTROVERSY DOGS TELSTRA STAKE SALE Controversy engulfing the Australian government's plans to sell its remaining 51.8 per cent stake in Telstra, the country's largest telecommunications company, widened on Wednesday as legislation enabling the sale was presented to Australian parliament and an official investigation into possible violations of stock market rules by Telstra executives began. [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR:] http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0eb5bbca-1fb5-11da-853a-00000e2511c8.html

IN JAPAN CAMPAIGN, WEB GOES SILENT As political candidates campaign feverishly before the Japanese elections Sunday, an antiquated law that effectively bans the use of the Internet is causing confusion, bickering and finger-pointing. The law, which dates to 1955, limits candidates' direct written communication with constituents to postcards and pamphlets. This means politicians and their parties are prohibited from sending emails or updating their Web sites during the official 12-day campaign period. But many candidates are finding it increasingly difficult to accommodate the law as the Internet gains importance as a source of political information. Struggling to stay within the rules, politicians have shut down their Weblogs or hired lawyers to advise them on what they can and can't post. Political parties, meanwhile, are seizing the opportunity to point fingers at rivals they accuse of using the Internet in illegal ways. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ginny Parker Woods ginny.parker@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112612187732634311,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one (requires subscription)

(Sept 7) TV FORCES A COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY [Commentary] you already can sense a shift in TV's approach as newscasts move from the on-the-fly immediacy of those emotional early reports, which left viewers so shocked and chagrined, to carefully planned televised events. Reporters now share the scene with stars: Katie Couric co-anchored NBC's Today show Tuesday morning from a flooded New Orleans street; Diane Sawyer led a Good Morning America town meeting from a shelter in Donaldsonville, La.; Oprah Winfrey did her show on the scene. Soon the stars will depart, other stories will push their way to the fore, and much of the coverage will consist of studio-bound anchors and commentators talking over video. Clearly, the story of the destruction of New Orleans is not over. But as the story shifts from what happened to why it happened, other news outlets will take over. In-depth analysis is not television's strong point; policy debates do not respond well to TV's dramatic storytelling technique -- one that tends to stress sentiment over context and emphasize individual suffering over collective impact. Yet no matter how it covers the debate to come, there's no question the debate itself has been framed by television's coverage and might not even exist without it. When disaster struck, TV's newscasters did what they do best: They showed us what was happening as it happened, a service we too often take for granted. Television made it impossible for government officials to say the situation was under control; we could see that it wasn't. Television made it impossible for government officials to say they couldn't get into New Orleans to help You cannot fix what you refuse to see. Television showed us the damage done by Katrina and forced us to examine our collective responsibility for the sorrow and pity that followed. That public service will resound long after the cameras move on. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Robert Bianco] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050907/d_topstrip07.art.htm

THE WEB AND HURRICANE KATRINA * Blogs Provide Storm Evacuees With Neighborhood-Specific News As the world's news media show the big picture of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina, some Web sites are finding ways to provide specific information to those hungry for details about their homes and local landmarks. [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Yuki Noguchi] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601995.html (requires registration) * Internet helps reunite survivors http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050907/a_missing07.art.htm * Internet is bulletin board for Katrina victims http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-09-04T200203Z_01_BAU472051_RTRIDST_0_NET-INTERNET-DC.XML * Nearly 100,000 seek family on Katrina site-Red Cross http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-09-06T135302Z_01_MCC649531_RTRIDST_0_NET-FAMILIES-DC.XML * Katrina children seeking parents shown on Web site http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-09-06T143717Z_01_ROB600012_RTRIDST_0_NET-CHILDREN-DC.XML

MURDOCH CALLS NEW WEB SUMMIT Rupert Murdoch has summoned his most senior executives for the second summit in seven months on News Corporation's Internet strategy. The broadcasting and publishing group's executive committee will gather this weekend. The summit comes as Mr Murdoch received an important show of support on Tuesday from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's Kingdom Holding Company. The Saudi prince, a long-time shareholder, converted his non-voting shares in News Corp to a 5.46 per cent stake of the voting shares and said he might buy more “if the situation warrants.” Since the first gathering in February, Mr Murdoch has spent $580m on buying Intermix, which operates social networking site My-Space.com, and bought Scout Media, a sports website company. He is reported to have held talks to buy Blinkx, a video search engine. [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson] http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d21bd7d0-1efb-11da-94d5-00000e2511c8.html (requires subscription)

MAGAZINES: THE GLOBAL CARVEOUT Magazine publishing mergers and acquisitions may reduce the number of global players. Hachette, Hearst and Time are expected to be among the survivors. VNU is "almost certain" to sell off its U.S. business media unit, which publishes Billboard, Adweek and Hollywood Reporter. "The question everyone's asking is how do you grow in a saturated market," says Mark Edmiston, a managing director at investment bank boutique AdMedia Partners, of what's driving global consolidation. "The answer is you can't." It's not lost on Edmiston that, with few exceptions, U.S. publishers are the last of their brethren to address this question. And that they're getting to it now stems not from global unity but economic necessity: The enviable growth that defined our domestic publishing market for decades is, simply, no more. [SOURCE: TheDeal.com, AUTHOR: Richard Morgan] http://www.thedeal.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=TheDeal/TDDArticle/TDStandardArticle&bn=newsby%2FMEDIAPUBLISHING.gif&c=TDDArticle&cid=1125016628798

NEWS JUNKIES FIND WIKIPEDIA MORE THAN ENCYCLOPEDIA The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the Web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events. Traffic to the multilingual network of sites has grown 154 percent over the past year, according to research firm Hitwise. At current growth rates, it is set to overtake The New York Times on the Web, the Drudge Report and other news sites. But the rising status of the site as the Web's intellectual demilitarized zone, the favored place people look for background on an issue or to settle a polemical dispute, also poses challenges for the volunteer ethic that gave it rise. [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Eric Auchard] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2005-09-06T211135Z_01_ROB676217_RTRIDST_0_TECH-BIZFEATURE-WIKIPEDIA-DC.XML

NEWS YOU CAN LOSE Things to hate about cable TV news: 1) musical emotional cues, 2) undated video footage, 3) conspicuous lack of maps illustrating where the camera and reporters are when reporting, 4) the fundamental dishonesty of 24/7 coverage, 5) the opportunism of Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera, 6) the absence of context and continuity, 7) the lack of input from knowledgeable outsiders, and 8) the absence of self-criticism. [SOURCE: Slate, AUTHOR: Jack Shafer] http://www.slate.com/id/2125683/

COURT CASES DON'T SCARE MUSIC FILE SWAPPERS AWAY Despite two huge court losses for file-sharing firms, unauthorized online song and movie swapping is at an all-time peak. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Jefferson Graham] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20050907/filesharing07.art.htm

(Sept 6) KATRINA MAY UNLEASH A MEDIA STORM Experts and journalists predict that mounting questions about U.S. government preparation, policies and response to Hurricane Katrina will result in intense news coverage for months. Katrina “doesn't just have legs, it has tentacles,” says Bob Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. “Its implications reach into hot-button controversies involving race, poverty, economics and partisan politics. The reach of this story will make the O.J. Simpson case look like a news brief.” Network news analyst Andrew Tyndall predicts that TV news will focus on personal stories and massive aid efforts in the coming weeks, and then turn to looking at how relief efforts may have resulted in people dying. Stories on inner cities don't get much network attention “unless carnage is involved, and this is what you have” in New Orleans. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Peter Johnson] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050906/d_topstrip06.art.htm * Katrina rekindles adversarial media http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050906/d_mediamix06.art.htm * New Orleans Paper Worries that Media Attention Might Drift http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054816

FROM CONSERVATIVE TALK FORMAT TO ALL KATRINA Last week, as Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and cut off electricity, battery-operated radios served as the only source of information for thousands of stranded people. Yet as most of the city's broadcast outlets were temporarily silenced by technical problems or the decision to send staffers to safety, WWL-AM, a conservative talk-show format, was the only local radio station able to report on the havoc in New Orleans, thanks to its strong signal, an emergency studio in another location, and its own journalists on the scene. WWL, owned by Pennsylvania-based Entercom Communications Corp., quickly abandoned its usual fare as residents, often unable to get through to 911, called the station instead. Program hosts became emergency advisers, helping panicked people plot escape routes and alerting authorities to their locations. By midweek, WWL found itself getting national attention from an interview New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin gave to WWL host Garland Robinette. In a freewheeling 13-minute conversation, Mayor Nagin criticized the national response to the crisis and said President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco should "get their asses moving to New Orleans." He then broke down in tears and hung up. Television and radio stations across the country rebroadcast the interview, and the President flew to New Orleans the next day. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sarah McBride sarah.mcbride@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112593946786731856,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

AS TELECOM REELS FROM STORM DAMAGE, HAM RADIOS HUM With Hurricane Katrina having knocked out nearly all the high-end emergency communications gear, 911 centers, cellphone towers and normal fixed phone lines in its path, ham-radio operators have begun to fill the information vacuum. "Right now, 99.9% of normal communications in the affected region is nonexistent," says David Gore, the man operating the ham radio in the Monroe shelter. "That's where we come in." In an age of high-tech, real-time gadgetry, it's the decidedly unsexy ham radio -- whose technology has changed little since World War II -- that is in high demand in ravaged New Orleans and environs. The Red Cross issued a request for about 500 amateur radio operators -- known as "hams" -- for the 260 shelters it is erecting in the area. The American Radio Relay League, a national association of ham-radio operators, has been deluged with requests to find people in the region. The U.S. Coast Guard is looking for hams to help with its relief efforts. Ham radios, battery operated, work well when others don't in part because they are simple. Each operator acts as his own base station, requiring only his radio and about 50 feet of fence wire to transmit messages thousands of miles. Ham radios can send messages on multiple channels and in myriad ways, including Morse code, microwave frequencies and even email. Then there are the ham-radio operators themselves, a band of radio enthusiasts who spend hours jabbering with each other even during normal times. They are often the first to get messages in and out of disaster areas, in part because they are everywhere. (The ARRL estimates there are 250,000 licensed hams in the U.S.) Sometimes they are the only source of information in the first hours following a disaster. The hams also get little respect from telecommunications-equipment companies, such as Motorola Inc. "Something is better than nothing, that's right," says Jim Screeden, who runs all of Motorola's repair teams in the field for its emergency-response business. "But ham radios are pretty close to nothing." Mr. Screeden says ham radios can take a long time to relay messages and work essentially as "party lines," with multiple parties talking at once. Says Mr. Leggett at the Monroe operations center: "We are the unwanted stepchild. But when the s- hits the fan, who are you going to call?" [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Christopher Rhoads christopher.rhoads@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112597561578132422,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

FCC FREES NONCOMS TO CARRY COMMERCIAL FEEDS The FCC Friday said it would allow noncommercial stations in New Orleans to carry commercial material. The move was to allow them to rebroadcast life-saving information from commercial news operations in the area. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton ] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6253691?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

A MASSIVE REBUILD FOR TELEVISION Local TV broadcasters and cable operators in the Gulf Coast area say rebuilding their stations and plant could take several months. Belo's WWL was the only station operational in New Orleans after Katrina struck. Others shifted operations to sister stations or are dark. For most TV stations, the key goal will be replacing and repairing transmission facilities. Some of the gear, such as studio-to-transmitter links, may simply need drying out, while other components will require replacement. One crucial factor that will delay the return of over-the-air TV signals to New Orleans is the amount of time it takes to get a new transmitter. It typically takes 60-90 days for a TV transmitter to be manufactured. The damage to Cox's New Orleans system is severe. Half the 270,000 subscribers are in areas swept by 4 to 7 feet of water. Much of the system is composed of aerial plant strung on poles 14 or more feet in the air. Still, there's plenty of underground fiber, copper feeder and equipment-filled vaults that spent days submerged. While the DBS providers haven't suffered infrastructure problems, they do have the challenge of having to replace dishes and set-top boxes destroyed in the hurricane. According to DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsucci, that company is still figuring out its strategy but will make it as easy as possible for previous customers to get service again. DirecTV will also strike deals with other network affiliates in the region to ensure that New Orleans residents receive regional network signals until the local stations get up and running. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Ken Kerschbaumer and John M. Higgins] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6253844.html?display=Cover+Story&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

TV TALLIES COSTS OF KATRINA [Commentary] Broadcasting&Cable estimates that rebuild costs and lost revenue for Gulf Coast media companies could easily run as high as $250 million. While TV and radio stations in the Gulf States were crunched by Hurricane Katrina, cable operators with chewed-up systems are incurring the greatest financial damage. And because cable systems tend not to insure much of their operations, their owners may be on the hook for much of the reconstruction. The major financial issues for stations is lost ad revenue and physical damage to studios and transmission towers. For cable operators, lost advertising is smaller, damage to wires much more expensive. A big question for both is how the companies fare as their markets recover. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John M. Higgins] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6253846.html?display=Cover+Story&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

WEATHERING THE STORM Amid one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history, with several hundred estimated dead in four states and more than 2 million people without electricity, food or water, getting the news out to viewers last week was critical. It was also harder than ever. Three of the four New Orleans news stations were unable to broadcast, while one Mobile, Ala., outlet was temporarily knocked off the air. Cox Cable and Charter Communications, the region's major cable systems, lost service to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Network news crews were frustrated trying to navigate an unfamiliar region with spotty communications. And already the storm has altered Nielsen ratings in at least four markets for the foreseeable future. As the disaster continues to unfold, the Internet (and radio) are proving to be crucial sources of information. Bloggers are trading images and updates to info-starved surfers. But what has become quickly apparent is that only the graphic images of television can convey the scope and devastation of such a catastrophe. Even if viewers in affected areas can eventually watch TV to get news, no one is monitoring the audience levels. Nielsen Media Research is not reporting ratings from set-top meters in New Orleans and Birmingham, Ala., because of power outages. New Orleans may not be restored for months, the ratings firm says. New Orleans ranks as the 43rd-largest U.S. market and accounts for 675,760 TV homes. Combine that with three other affected markets in the region, and more than 1.1 million TV households have been impacted, which represents about a full rating point nationally. After last year's hurricanes in Florida, Nielsen had to recruit new participants and will likely face the same problem in these Gulf Coast markets. Without a traditional TV audience, news organizations resorted to new and old technology to get the news out. Radio stations in each market have simulcast the TV coverage, enabling residents with battery-powered radios to listen to local TV news. Several stations have been streaming their broadcasts live online and blogging. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Allison Romano] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6253842.html?display=Cover+Story&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers) * 'Time Of Crisis' http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6253856.html (requires subscription)

NYC BROADCASTERS BACK AT FULL POWER 4 YEARS AFTER 9/11 When the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001, many New York City broadcast stations went dark. Four years later, stations are just getting back to full (or near full) power, relocating to the Empire State Building. The ESB is not as tall as the WTC nor was the mast designed to handle so many stations. Ten TV stations are now transmitting analog signals and 9 are transmitting digitally from the ESB. [SOURCE: Communications Daily, AUTHOR: Tania Panczyk-Collins] (Not available online)

WIRELESS CARRIERS BACK IN NEW ORLEANS The collapse of the communications network in the New Orleans area has been widely blamed for contributing to the disaster there, as local officials were unable to talk to each other and to federal authorities to arrange relief in the days after Katrina laid waste to the city. But a number of wireless carriers said this weekend they are starting to restore service in the New Orleans area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, in some cases with generators on the roofs of hotels. [SOURCE: Reuters] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2005-09-04T202655Z_01_FLE466561_RTRIDST_0_TECH-TELECOMS-DC.XML

WBZX PULLS STERN OVER INDECENCY COMPLAINT Howard Stern was pulled from WBZX(FM) Columbus, Ohio, Friday in the wake of an FCC inquiry into an indecency complaint filed against the shock jock. The complaint was filed earlier this month by Stern nemesis and frequent FCC filer Jack Thompson. Earlier Thompson complaints against Stern helped prompt Clear Channel to drop his show and the FCC to fine the company almost half a million dollars. [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6253750?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP (free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)

LOCAL TV's BRAVE NEWS WORLD According to research, viewers find the TV news format tedious and irrelevant, says Michael Sechrist, the president of Nashville ABC affiliate WKRN. So the station is retraining its entire staff -- not just reporters -- to shoot stories and become "video journalists." WKRN is also recruiting local bloggers. The station could be a model for other stations retooling themselves to regain audience in a fragmenting media landscape. [SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Jon Fine] http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_37/b3950023.htm

REPORT: EDUCATION DEPARTMENT'S PR FUNDS NEED OVERSIGHT Federal investigators probing the Education Department's public relations contracts have found a pattern of deals in which advocacy organizations received grants totaling nearly $4.7 million to promote Bush administration education priorities in newspaper columns and brochures, but didn't disclose that they received taxpayer funds, as required by law. The department's inspector general says he detected no “covert propaganda,” but he told administration officials to consider asking for some of their money back. The report, released on the Education Department's website Thursday night, said the department needs to do a better job monitoring how millions

REPORT: EDUCATION DEPARTMENT'S PR FUNDS NEED OVERSIGHT Federal investigators probing the Education Department's public relations contracts have found a pattern of deals in which advocacy organizations received grants totaling nearly $4.7 million to promote Bush administration education priorities in newspaper columns and brochures, but didn't disclose that they received taxpayer funds, as required by law. The department's inspector general says he detected no “covert propaganda,” but he told administration officials to consider asking for some of their money back. The report, released on the Education Department's website Thursday night, said the department needs to do a better job monitoring how millions of dollars in grants are spent. More than $1.7 million, for example, went to outside public relations contracts that officials said resulted in no visible media products. The report comes nearly five months after the inspector general criticized the department for its $240,000 contract with commentator Armstrong Williams. That contract called for him to promote President Bush's 2002 No Child Left Behind education reform law in newspaper columns and on his syndicated TV show, and to encourage others to do the same. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Greg Toppo] http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050906/d_gao06.art.htm * Following the money for public relations efforts http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20050906/d_gao06_box.art.htm

BIG BUCKS BACK NEXT MOBILE FRONTIER: BROADCAST TV The wireless industry is betting billions that you want to watch TV on your cell phone. [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Antony Bruno] http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2005-09-05T155837Z_01_KRA356426_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MOBILE-DC.XML

THE DVD MARKET IS NOT AS WONDERFUL AS IT USED TO BE According to the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), a trade group made up of movie studios and consumer-electronics firms, Hollywood shipped 403m DVDs to America's stores in the first quarter of this year-one-fifth more than in the first quarter of 2004. That is a healthy growth-rate, but far slower than in the whole of 2004, when nearly 50% more DVDs were sent to shops than in 2003-and much lower than previous years' dizzier increases of 100% or more. Moreover, the DEG's numbers ignore the fact that stores return unsold DVDs. Nor do its numbers reflect the fact that studios have lowered DVD prices for some categories, such as classic films. Sanford Bernstein, an investment research firm, predicts that the rate of growth of DVD sales in dollars (as opposed to units) will slow to 9% in 2005 and 4% in 2006. That the DVD market should slow is not really surprising. Nearly 70% of American homes with TVs now have DVD players. Those who bought them early have already built a library of DVDs. Poorer people who have waited until now to buy a player for around $50 buy fewer titles. And nationwide retail chains such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart have stopped shifting shelf-space to DVDs as they did in the format's earlier days [SOURCE: The Economist] http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4323261

(September 2) BIG MEDIA + BIG BUCKS = BIG EASY BOOST Amid ever more shocking images and mounting casualties, big media corporations on Wednesday announced millions of dollars in aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina, which has transformed the historic and heavily populated city of New Orleans into a virtual underwater hell and decimated areas of Mississippi and Alabama. Walt Disney unveiled corporate contributions of $2.5 million: a $1 million donation to the American Red Cross for immediate relief efforts; $1 million for rebuilding efforts targeted at children's charities; and $500,000 for volunteer centers. Viacom is planning a $1 million cash donation to the American Red Cross and a worldwide employee matching gift program directed to the agency. Its divisions CBS, BET, UPN, MTV Networks, Infinity Radio and outdoor will develop special programming and offer ad space and airtime for public service announcements from the Red Cross and other agencies. Local TV and radio stations will do the same in their communities. Time Warner, the world's biggest media company, said it will start by matching $1 million in employee contributions made to the American Red Cross. [SOURCE: Variety, AUTHOR: Jill Goldsmith] http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=story&articleid=VR1117928389&p=0&s=h

NETWORKS GET GIMMICKY TO HYPE NEW SHOWS Drugstore prescription bags, water coolers and even $1 bills have become the media the major broadcast networks are using to advertise new shows. So what happened to the supremacy of the on-air promo? For decades, the big television networks advertised new shows primarily through ads on their own air. Radio, billboard and magazine ads were thrown in for key launches or vanity projects. That worked fine when the major broadcast networks commanded 90% of the TV audience. But the growth of cable channels has eroded that share to less than 50%. More recently, growth of on-demand cable, videogames and the Internet is adding to competition for people's leisure time. As a result, the networks need a wider array of marketing ploys. Marketing of new shows is crucial. Over the next three weeks, the broadcast networks alone will start the new seasons of 77 returning shows and introduce 31 new series. Just one new hit can transform a network, but making a show stick isn't easy: Of the 31 shows the networks rolled out last season, only 10 remain -- and some of those are on life support. But as TV executives turn more to unconventional marketing methods to tout their programs, some marketing experts see the move as an unspoken admission from broadcasters that their commercials are weakening as sales tools. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Brooks Barnes brooks.barnes@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112562356746429842,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

NEWEST EXPORT FROM CHINA: PIRATED PAY TV China has become the hotbed of a new technology that distributes live television signals over the Internet, exposing the world's pay-TV operators to the kind of online piracy that has plagued the music and movie businesses. The technology, called peer-to-peer, or P2P, streaming TV, enables viewers anywhere in the world to watch cable, satellite or broadcast TV on the Web free of charge. Pirate services offer the programs to anyone equipped with a high-speed Internet connection who downloads some simple software. Underscoring the challenges for the law to keep up with technology and its global reach, P2P television is emerging barely two months after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the landmark Grokster file-sharing case, which was seen as a victory for traditional media companies. The court ruled that file-sharing companies may be liable for copyright infringement if their products encourage consumers to illegally swap songs and movies. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Geoffrey A. Fowler geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com and Sarah McBride sarah.mcbride@wsj.com] http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112560377411829361,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace (requires subscription)

INTERNET GOVERNANCE, WHAT DOES IT BOIL DOWN TO? How's this huge, influential and potentially-useful beast called the Internet to be governed? Who is to call the shots? Carlos Afonso, strategy director at APC member RITS and member of the UN-convened working group on Internet governance takes a close look at how control of the Internet is sought to be transformed, before a crucial crossroad comes up in the next few months. This 50-page paper was commissioned by APC member Instituto del Tercer Mundo (ITeM) as part of its WSISpapers series, also provides useful historical background on the current Internet global governance system. [SOURCE: Choike.org, AUTHOR: Carlos Afonso] http://wsispapers.choike.org/internet_governance.pdf

ICANN MEETING TAKES PLACE IN THE SHADOW OF US TOUGH TALK Just after the United States made clear it intention to retain control over the Internet's root-servers, an ICANN meeting took place in Luxembourg. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a California-based non-profit corporation created in 1998 to take over a number of Internet-related tasks earlier performed on behalf of the US Government by other organizations, notably the IANA. - RITS [SOURCE: APC] http://www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=973254

(September 1) A MERGER PROPOSAL EMERGES
New York-based Village Voice Media, which owns six urban newspapers including Seattle Weekly, and New Times Newspapers of Phoenix, which owns another 11, got slapped down by the U.S. Justice Department for colluding to create monopolies in Los Angeles and Cleveland. Now, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a locally owned weekly that competes with New Times, the companies plan even closer collaboration, merging into a 17-paper chain serving many of the biggest media markets in the country. Besides Seattle Weekly, Village Voice Media owns New York's Village Voice, LA Weekly, OC Weekly in Orange County, Calif., City Pages in Minneapolis, and Nashville Scene. New Times owns SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Cleveland Scene, Phoenix New Times, Westword in Denver, Miami New Times, New Times Broward-Palm Beach in Florida, the Dallas Observer, the Houston Press, Riverfront Times in St. Louis, and The Pitch in Kansas City.
[SOURCE: Seattle Weekly, AUTHOR: Roger Downey and Chuck Taylor]
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0535/050831_news_altweeklies.php

MEDIA GIANTS MAY JOIN FORCES
Australian Communications Minister Helen Coonan outlined that government's long-awaited plans for a major revamp of cross-media and foreign ownership laws now that it has control of the country's senate. Under the plans, a single media company could own a TV station, two radio stations and a newspaper in the one market. Foreign media players could also snare Australian TV networks and newspapers, subject to government approval.
[SOURCE: News.com.au, AUTHOR: Belinda Tasker]
http://finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,16449221-31037,00.html

CAN'T KILL P2P
[Commentary] People want to get their music online, and currently P2P is the best way to get it -- not because it's free, but because it's there.
[SOURCE: AlterNet, AUTHOR: Annalee Newitz]
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/24748/

TECH HELPS SPECIAL-NEEDS KIDS PASS KEY TESTS
Whether, how, and how much educators should deploy technology to help special-needs students on high-stakes tests are complex issues in the era of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). As mandated by the federal law, teachers and administrators around the nation must strive to make sure special-needs kids meet the same high standards as their peers. That struggle was underscored in July, when the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report highlighting the difficulties inherent in giving achievement tests to special-needs learners. To achieve NCLB's goal of testing every child, regardless of need, researchers concluded the Education Department must do a better job of providing guidance for alternative forms of testing.
[SOURCE: eSchoolNews, AUTHOR: Corey Murray]
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=5859

WIRELESS RAISES SECURITY CONCERN
Lost laptops on college campuses can give thieves access to information such as Social Security numbers, credit-card numbers, or passwords. Young students or college employees may not be savvy about protecting such data. Beyond identity thieves, colleges and universities are also threatened by hackers who can turn school computers into "zombies" to send out spam e-mails or target Web servers with denial-of-service attacks.
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Gregory Lamb]
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0901/p12s02-legn.html

IN EASTERN EUROPE, A GUMSHOE CHASES INTERNET VILLAINS
Peter Fifka is one of Microsoft's high-tech gumshoes, part of the software giant's intensifying efforts to combat cyber crime at a time when consumers and businesses are becoming increasingly frustrated with fraud and virus attacks.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Cassell Bryan-Low cassell.bryan-low@wsj.com]
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112554423119628807,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

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Communications-Related Headlines are compiled, summarized and edited by Rachel Anderson (rachel@benton.org), Andy Carvin (andy@benton.org) and Charles Meisch (charlie@benton.org) of the Benton Foundation -- we welcome your feedback. Based in Washington DC, the Benton Foundation's mission is to articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems. Other projects at Benton include:
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