Recent posts of interest – by other people
I tend to share links via Twitter, Delicious, Google Reader, and of course everything gets funneled into FriendFeed.
However, I thought I’d focus on a few articles, blog posts, etc. that have caught my attention. They cover a range of topics, FYI.
The Art of the Gimmick by @suzemuse – Susan writes about the band KISS and how they delivered both a solid musical experience and an exciting theatrical (?) performance to help make them successful.
When you have to reach deeper than just passion – by @stevenhodson – the veteran blogger and tech afficiando writes about the occasional struggles that a blogger goes through to keep creating good content.
Is Twitter making us all self-centered? – by Jennifer Leggio – Jennifer writes about some of the downsides of the rise in popularity and usage of Twitter.
Battlestar’s “Daybreak”: the worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction – Brad Templeton pulls no punches here. He has written exhaustively about the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and he raises valid, well thought-out criticisms about the ending of this modern-day classic. What could have been…
ENJOY!
Name:
Why we need good graduates to go into broadcasting.
26 July 2009, 1:33 pm“The crisis inside mainstream media, especially daily papers, is economic – but also cultural,” says Jeff Cohen, director of the Park Center for Independent Media and associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College.
It has been very obvious recently that some of the most important news stories have originated on the internet. The Drudge report was the most popular name in this respect not too long ago, but there are many more sources on the internet today. So much so, that mainstream media is blaming economics for stealing audiences rather than where the real causes are. Mainstream outlets tend to be sloppy, highly biased and arrogant.
“Many successful bloggers and new independent media are building active communities; they don’t see their readers/viewers as mere ‘audience’ or ‘consumers’ or ‘customers.’ Blogger Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, for example, relied on his community to help uncover the still-reverberating story of political firings of federal prosecutors by the Bush White House. Marshall won the Polk award http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/business/medi... Attorney General Gonzalez lost his job,” said Cohen.
Recently Ithaca College announced the first-ever Izzy Awards for special achievement in independent media, naming Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!” http://www.democracynow.org/ and blogger Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ the winners. “[Goodman and Greenwald] have each built loyal, active communities desperate for accurate, quality journalism that sparks civic action on issues like civil liberties and racial justice,” said Cohen.
The new technologies that have and continue to evolve have added opportunity to independent voices that have always been in existence, but not quite as noticeable as they are now. Technology alone, I suggest, is not the main cause of their evolving primacy. The public simply cannot depend upon mainstream media for reliable reporting. News reporting has almost succumbed to gossip reporting, celebrity monitoring, while important stories regarding our lives are diminished or not reported at all.
Perhaps too few people truly understand the role that a free press must play in society if democracy is to thrive. We need honest, skillful and truthful reporters to ferret out corruption, misdeeds of government leaders, venal corporate activities and not reporters who are in bed with the institutions.
We need new blood in the news and media industry. We need those who are trained to be objective, those who are intelligent and strive for objectivity even if they don’t always achieve it. If this is not addressed, we can expect more independent voices and less of mainstream media.
The voices of independent media existed before the Internet, but new technologies have expanded their reach and ability to engage their readers/listeners/viewers as interactive communities. “No longer can mainstream media dismiss independent media voices as ‘unprofessional,’ instead they find themselves struggling to catch up and learn from the independents,” said Cohen.
Broadcastingpyatt.com