|
Archives
By Month
By Category
Contact Us
If you know about a story that we should be following, let us know.
Media Usage
Kicking Ink: The Guilty Pleasures of Print
On a recent trip to Washington, D.C. for "Public Media Camp," it happened again. I was tempted by print. Starting in May, I gave up my print newspaper subscription, and then compared how the iPhone beat the Kindle when it comes to reading periodical publications on electronic devices. My fingers have remained relatively ink-free each day because I get my...
more »
5Across
5Across: How to Deal with Technology Overload
So many of us are feeling overwhelmed with technology and are trying to deal with it. I've written about my own practice of taking a technology sabbath for one day off a week from my computer. On this episode of 5Across, I convened a roundtable of folks who are either overloaded with technology or helping people deal with that overload. And for true balance, the discussion also touches on the benefits of technology, too. Check it out!
more »
4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Knight Commission Report; NPR's Local Venture
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's special edition, I look at the report that came out today from the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The Commission called for strengthening public media, bringing broadcast access to all Americans, and having at least one strong online info hub for each community....
more »
4MR
4 Minute Roundup: Examiner Buys NowPublic; CIMM Wants Better Metrics
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. In this week's edition, I look at the recent buyout of NowPublic by Examiner.com for a reported $25 million. The citizen media site will combine with Examiner.com's low-pay "Examiners," who write about niche topics for the newspaper chain. Also, major TV networks, ad agencies and advertisers teamed up to form the Coalition...
more »
Media Usage
Kicking Ink: How the iPhone Beats the Kindle (So Far)
Last May, I finally took the full digital plunge and canceled my print subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle after 18 years. The cost was becoming too much, and I felt it was a good time to experiment with getting my news in digital form -- and to write about it here. In my first installment of "Kicking Ink,"...
more »
Media Usage
The Importance and Challenges of Universal Media Literacy Education
Elizabeth Thoman, the godmother of the "media literacy" movement recently told me that the Internet has endowed her field with a sense of salience, if not urgency. "As long as media literacy education was about television, it was perceived to be fluff," she said. "But when the Internet came along, kids didn't know how to cite sources online, and they...
more »
Culture
Gnomedex 9.0: Tech Conference Looks Deeper at Social Media
SEATTLE -- I am here attending the geekfest of geekfests called Gnomedex. Its name is a play on the old tech conference Comdex, which ironically doesn't exist anymore. Coming here is a throwback to my time as a pure tech journalist going to conferences such as Macworld and the Consumer Electronics Show. But what's interesting is that even in...
more »
Weblogs
Using the 'Steal-O-Meter' to Gauge if Stories Steal or Promote
In the recent dust-up between the Washington Post and Gawker, Post reporter Ian Shapira was upset when his story was excerpted on the media gossip blog Gawker. While blogs and even mainstream news articles have been quoting, excerpting and summarizing other stories and blog posts for years, there's never been accepted etiquette on how to do so. According to Shapira,...
more »
NewspaperShift
Five Ways to Use Mind-Mapping Tools in the Newsroom
About a week ago, I was in a meeting with some colleagues, preparing our coverage of an upcoming news event. We were jotting down ideas in long lists; it was quite literally linear thinking. But linear thinking isn't always the most helpful way of looking at a problem, because it restricts the way that you associate ideas together and limits...
more »
5Across
The Importance of Free Speech Online in Iran, China, Kenya
In a crisis, governments will often curtail freedom of the press, censoring or shutting broadcasts and newspapers. But blocking websites, slowing the Internet or cutting off SMS messaging can be harder to do. Stopping the flow of information online can be a difficult task, as the Iranian government has learned over the past few weeks, as protesters have posted images...
more »
NewspaperShift
Kicking Ink: The Struggles of a Print Newspaper Unsubscriber
I knew the day was coming, but it was still a shock when the day came. Groggy-eyed in the early morning light, I slowly went down the four flights of stairs in the front of my building and looked down. Nothing. For 18 generally uninterrupted years, I had the San Francisco Chronicle delivered to me, except when neighbors stole...
more »
NewspaperShift
PressTerra Tests Newspaper 'Printernet' on Iberian Peninsula
In my March 24 column, I talked about the "printernet," a system of networked desktop publishing where the desktops and printers are spread throughout the whole world. This is another way of describing the new printing model of "distribute and print," where you send a digital file via the Internet to the printing facility closest to the final distribution point...
more »
Business
Live-Blogging RJI Symposium on New Tools, New Business Models
COLUMBIA, MO -- I am at the new Reynolds Journalism Institute building on the campus of the University of Missouri, my alma mater. It's interesting to be in a new building looking out on a campus that is so familiar and so different now. The mission of the RJI is to "develop and test ways to improve journalism through...
more »
Digging Deeper
Building the Ideal Community Information Hub
Problem: Where can people find the local information they need, whether it's about a school board meeting, a new construction project or a nearby robbery? Solution: A community hub, with all the information aggregated in one online source and pushed out via libraries, in-person meetings, community radio, small run print publications and cable access TV. That's my conclusion after studying...
more »
NewspaperShift
The Fallacy of the 'Print Is Dead' Meme
Common sense tells us that print is not going away. If print is no longer an important part of your life, that is undeniable. But to extrapolate from personal experience to a statement about what is going to happen in the world doesn't work. But that's exactly what many of the people foretelling the death of print are doing. That's...
more »
NewspaperShift
Ohio Newspapers Share Content, But Don't Give Up Hope for AP
For many, last week's news that the Associated Press planned to begin to crack down on news aggregators that link and quote its content wasn't news at all. Media industry publications have long been reporting on the friction between the AP and aggregators -- a series of verbal swipes made at conferences and in news articles that perhaps reached an...
more »
PoliticalShift
Live-Blogging Netroots Nation's New Media Summit
SAN FRANCISCO -- I am in the swanky Bently Reserve building in downtown San Francisco for the Netroots Nation's New Media Summit, affliated with the liberal blog Daily Kos. On the agenda today are panels on the evolution of journalism and new media, the wisdom of crowds, social media for social good, and using video to expand your audience....
more »
BookShift
Glaser & Son Consider Pros and Cons of Kindle 2
I am what you might call the late early adopter. Rather than live on the bleeding edge, I wait safely until Version 2 comes out with the bugs and problems fixed. I got Windows 98 in '99, waited for the iPhone 3G, and checked out the Kindle 2 rather than 1. But when my e-book reader from Amazon arrived in...
more »
Public Relations
Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age, Part 1
"What is public diplomacy?" was the first question that Ted Koppel posed at the recent Media as a Global Diplomat conference attended largely by public diplomacy professionals. I was surprised that the panelists, including the outgoing Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy & Public Affairs, couldn't readily agree on an answer to this foundational question. Koppel continued, "I thought [public...
more »
Social Networking
How Celebrity Imposters Hurt Twitter's Credibility
By the time the news spread that the Dalai Lama had opened a Twitter account it no longer seemed such a novelty that a high profile individual would join the micro-blogging service, even if he was a divine being. The account gathered nearly 20,000 followers before Twitter pulled the plug two days later when representatives of the Tibetan leader informed...
more »
Public Relations
In Hudson River Landing, PR Pros Were Not First Responders
In times of crisis, communications professionals have an important -- and increasingly complicated -- role to play. We used to be the first to offer public responses to catastrophes, able to develop elucidating messages before much of the news media was on the scene. Nowadays, the type of media that will report on a crisis is often as unforeseen as...
more »
Social Media
Journalists Still a-Twitter About Social Media
Journalists are obsessed with Twitter. Obsessed. They use it, talk about it, analyze it, deconstruct it, reconstruct it, love it, hate it, capitalize on it, become experts on it, monetize it, argue about it, and become micro-famous on it. They are mesmerized with what it is and they are as giddy as Tom Cruise on Oprah just thinking about what...
more »
Legal Drama
U.S. Supreme Court (Finally) Kills Online Age Verification Law
In 1998, the U.S. Congress enacted the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a law intended to control child access to sexually explicit material on the Internet. The law was immediately challenged on free speech and other grounds and its enforcement was delayed. After ten years of litigation, on January 22 the U.S. Supreme Court dealt the final blow to...
more »
Media Usage
How Forwarded Email Jokes, Hoaxes Evolved with Social Media
When I first ventured online in the late '90s, my in-box was constantly flooded with email forwards. Friends and co-workers alike tossed around lists of jokes, hoaxes and cautionary urban legends, pleas about a dying child in Idaho that needed your prayers or horror stories about human fingers discovered in fast food hamburgers. Today it seems that there are fewer...
more »
MediaShift
Top 10 MediaShifting Stories of 2008
Once again, it's time to look back on the year that was, and consider the new media highlights. Overall, it's been a topsy-turvy year, with a deep recession and historic election giving us reason to despair and hope. The economic turmoil pushed people to read online news at historic levels this past fall, and econ blogs became required reading for...
more »
NewspaperShift
Pulitzers Open to Online-Only Entrants -- But Who Qualifies?
When it was announced earlier this year that Joshua Marshall, founder of TalkingPointsMemo, had become the first blogger to win a George Polk Award for his coverage of the attorney firing scandal, many recognized the news as a milestone for online journalism. A somewhat condescending New York Times headline read, "Blogger, Sans Pajamas, Rakes Muck and a Prize." Earlier this...
more »
Citizen Journalism
How Political Diarists Power RedState, Daily Kos
In October of last year, a man named Leon H Wolf published a post on the front page of influential conservative blogging community RedState titled, "Attention, Ron Paul Supporters (Life is REALLY Not Fair)." One of a handful of bloggers who run the site, Wolf and his blogging colleagues decided to virtually ban all promotion for then-presidential candidate Ron Paul...
more »
World View
Google Blocks Chrome Browser Use in Syria, Iran
Recently, I learned from Joshua Landis' Syria Comment, my main source for news and analysis concerning Lebanon's eastern neighbor, that Google has blocked the use of its new web browser, Chrome, in Syria. A quick Google search turned up a post by Syrian blogger Yaser Sadeq with an account of his abortive attempt to take the new browser for a...
more »World View
China Partially Lifts Great Firewall for Media, but Access Remains Pricey
BEIJING -- Journalists scrambling to make Games-time deadlines might not make it to Badaling or Juyongguan during their trip overseas, but they're sure to become familiar with China's other Great Wall: the Great Firewall, that is. On July 31, Olympic officials admitted the International Olympic Committee had not yet secured unfettered Internet access to foreign journalists, leaving everyone to...
more »World View
A Mix of Skepticism and Hope on 'Propoganda Tour 2008'
We wrestle hi-def video cameras into our carry-on luggage, brandish SLRs at tourist attractions and arrange "Skype dates" with significant others half a world away. Blogging is the acceptable (and perhaps preferred) method of communicating with home, and the Internet at our hotel strains under the weight of so many Facebook photo uploads in so few hours. We are journalism students at the University of Missouri and volunteers at the XXIX Olympic Games, self-proclaimed new media experts and hopeless foreigners all at the same time.
more »Philosophy
A Moment of Unplugged Zen Poolside
The sun is beating down on me through hazy clouds and cool breeze. I'm sitting in a metal pool chair, perched at the edge of the water, with my feet dangling in. There's a fake palm tree nearby, giving me some shade and a spray of water to cool me.
The scene is far from quiet, as this is a sprawling kids swim park, with children of all ages swarming about, climbing stairs and coming down slides. Water is spurting all around, from water guns attached to turrets, from PVC pipes that open with the tug of ropes, from a very large bucket that sits atop the slide and pours out over everyone from time to time. As I watch my son and his cousins go up the stairs and down the slide, up the stairs and down the slide, up the stairs and down the slide, I slowly reach a state of quiet solitude.
more »Digging Deeper
'Technology Sabbath' Offers One Day to Unplug
Lately, I've been experimenting with taking one day each week away from work completely. You might think this would be an easy task as there's a "weekend" each week that allegedly offers up two full days of rest. And yet, as I work at home, the shiny big screen of the iMac beckons at all hours, and I am often in front of its white glow the first thing every morning and the last thing at night.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
3 Reasons FriendFeed Is Great -- and 3 Ways It Scares Me
Ask me what my mother is doing right now and I couldn't tell you. Or what my best friend has been up to lately...no idea. But with a quick look at my computer screen, I can see what a staggering number of people I barely know are doing right now, 10 minutes ago, or last night. What they are reading, what they are posting and what they are commenting on -- all in one place.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Are Print Newspapers Alive and Well in Spain?
From a picture window in an office from where I am writing in the Gracia neighborhood of Barcelona, I can see the same sights I could see from a similar window in my former neighborhood in San Francisco: pedestrians, taxis, cafes and bookstores. But there is something different about my view here: I can spot three different storefronts specializing in newspapers and magazines, all on one block and on one side of the street. A couple of yards away, there are more newsstands. A visit to the corner cafe reveals something else that's rather curious: the room full of coffee drinkers is full of people reading the news -- not on laptops or iPhones -- but on good old-fashioned pulp.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Twitter Helps with Reporting, Filtering the News
Last May on MediaShift, we wrote a series of articles about a new microblogging tool called Twitter, which was just beginning to gain visibility among the digerati. At that time, many bloggers were still on the fence as to how useful the service really was. Many thought it was a waste of time. Others just didn't understand if it...
more »EducationShift
Last week, I had the honor of giving a speech at Arkansas State University, as part of their Lecture & Concert series -- at least, once I made it through the mechanical mayhem of American Airlines cancelling dozens of flights the same day I flew out. I also got to address a few classes in the College of Communications...
more »Wikis
How to Be a Model Wikipedia Contributor
Wikipedia -- like Google or CNN -- is a name we recognize immediately when mentioned in conversation. The collaborative online encyclopedia currently ranks 8th on the Alexa list of top web destinations. Ask anyone sitting in front of a computer to find information for you on any topic. While most might turn first to Google, many others will turn...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
The Blessing and Curse of the iPod Touch
Here at MediaShift, we have had some less than perfect experiences with mobile devices and the Internet. Earlier this year, Mark wrote "a manifesto about what would make for a smarter smartphone." And last summer "I grumbled about the bad time I was having with my new smartphone." The Treo 680 was under-delivering in the one area that had convinced me to purchase the phone in the first place: surfing the web.
more »Media Usage
Can Electronics Stores Evolve in the Digital Age?
There's something almost laughable about shopping for digital cameras or television sets at typical big-box stores such as Target, Circuit City or Best Buy. You are usually greeted by row after row of devices, with very little explanation of how they are different -- perhaps with a few bullet points on a tag. And good luck getting someone to...
more »Media Usage
When Did Computers Become the Life of the Party?
There was a time not so long ago when home computers sat on desks away from the main action in households. People used them for basic productivity tasks such as word processing and spreadsheets. Now, things have changed to the point where our home computers have become a center of our entertainment universe, offering up music, videos and photos....
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Facebook Becomes Catalyst for Causes, Colombian FARC Protest
This morning, I received a notification on my Facebook profile that said if I sent a virtual plant to some of my friends, I'd help them "save the Earth." If you're a Facebook user, you probably wonder how much the incessant pleas by certain applications on the site might actually "change the world." Modules built to help you attack...
more »Media Usage
How One Investor Used Social Media to Shake Up Yahoo
If you're following the twists and turns of Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo, you can't escape one name that keeps popping up in the media: Eric Jackson. As an activist shareholder in Yahoo, he has become the voice of the opposition, calling on Yahoo to accept Microsoft's takeover bid -- or any reasonable bid. Last year, he was instrumental...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
5 Reasons I Won't Give Up Books
Last month at the highly anticipated MacWorld conference here in San Francisco, Apple honcho Steve Jobs said some words that left many agape. Those words weren't "Macbook Air" but "people don't read anymore." He was predicting a doomed future for Amazon's new Kindle e-reader. Shocked, I've been going over this for weeks now, trying to cut through the punditry...
more »Media Usage
The Pros, Cons and Weirdness of Microsoft-Yahoo
After years of rumors, it finally happened. On Friday, Microsoft made its buyout offer for Yahoo. But while that was expected to happen, as both companies have had trouble catching online advertising juggernaut Google, what wasn't so expected was that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer would go all Murdoch on Yahoo with a hostile bid at a 62% premium over...
more »Your Take Roundup
Facebook Has a Problem with Trust
In the not-too-distant past, I remember fondly getting an email notification from Facebook that one of my friends had sent me a message or "poked" me virtually. I happily clicked over to Facebook to see what someone had said or done, and responded in kind. Now, my reaction to getting the same kinds of notifications has changed, and I...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
How Google, Wikipedia Have Changed Our Lives -- For Better and Worse
A lecturer in the U.K. made headlines this month when she banned her students from using Wikipedia and Google for research assignments in her classes. The professor, Dr. Tara Brabazon, said that students "don't come to university to learn how to Google." I'm sure they don't, but I can imagine the fear that the ban struck in the hearts...
more »Media Usage
The Efficiency (and Shame) of Long-Distance Reporting
My writer friend Marlene once had a dot-com job that seemed odd. She wrote for a travel site about various countries but never traveled to those countries. She simply aggregated information from other websites and did extensive online research before writing about them and putting together guides. But strange as it seemed at the time, I was destined to...
more »DVR
The New Etiquette for Our Time-Shifted Culture
Do you remember the old days back when we sat around and watched a sports event or TV show with people in real time with commercials? You might have even called up a friend far away to share your thoughts on what was happening in the game or who had won which Academy Awards. But with time-shifting and DVRs...
more »Social Networking
The Universal Language of Facebook
It's been just four short years since a college student named Mark Zuckerberg launched a new social network with a very specific target demographic: American Ivy League college students. Since then, the Facebook phenomenon has exceeded everyone's expectations. After opening up accessibility to anyone interested in signing up late last year, growth in the U.S. for the social network has...
more »MobileShift
How to Make Smartphones Smarter
The cell phone industry in the United States is at a crossroads. Verizon announced it would open up its networks to other devices, AT&T opened its already-open network and Google has been pushing the carriers to adopt its more open Android platform. Whether any of this makes any sense to you, there's an obvious trend towards openness by cell...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
6 Reasons I'm Not Hooked on Podcasts
A year ago, Mark wrote about the factors that were limiting the growth of podcast adoption. Some of the problems include the difficulty in finding quality content, a lack of understanding of the medium, and a general impatience in getting podcasts to work. I can relate. Try as I might, I haven't been able to make podcasts a part of...
more »MobileShift
Pocket Journalism Takes More Than Stylish iPhones
An AP technology story out of Japan hit home week. It detailed how young folk in Asia are abandoning the PC by the drove.
more »Media Usage
California Wildfire Coverage by Local Media, Blogs, Twitter, Maps and More
The last few days have shown that online resources, social media, and collaboration on the Net can make a huge difference in a natural disaster. As the wildfires have spread in Southern California, the evacuees and local residents have utilized the Internet not only to connect and get updated information; they have used it to tell their stories, share...
more »Media Usage
How Cell Phones Are Killing Face-to-Face Interactions
Whether you are dating someone, interviewing someone, or just meeting someone for the first time, there is a special quality about face-to-face interactions. You can catch the subtle tone in their voice, see their expression as it changes from sad to outraged, and you can look them in the eye to see if you trust them. So it's unfortunate...
more »Citizen Journalism
MediaShift Launches Idea Lab Group Blog
A few weeks back, I heard gunshots outside my window. It was pretty scary, and reminded me of my urban environment here in Potrero Hill, San Francisco. But where could I turn to get the story on what happened? Was someone killed? Do police know what happened? In the past, I might have heard something about it on the...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Our Internet Obsession with Missing People Goes Too Far
Reading online news is a great way to stay constantly updated on what's going on in the world without having to rely on television. And in times of great tragedy the Internet has shown itself to be incomparable in its ability to make information move quickly for the good of public awareness and safety. But for all its positive...
more »Citizen Journalism
'People Searches' Let Everyone Investigate You
After being an online journalist for 12 years, I figure one of my specialties is doing investigations online about people I'm interviewing for stories I write. I want to know their background, where they've worked, where they live and whatever can give me relevant context for my interactions with them. But lately, I've noticed that my "people searching" skills...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Is the Future of Television Online? Not Yet
Late last month the BBC announced that it would be offering up a large part of its television content free of charge on its website. And back in May, ABC announced it would stream some of its primetime shows in HD online for free. As networks begin to put more of their content online -- either on their websites...
more »Philosophy
Converged Devices Doesn't Mean Fewer Devices
In the last blog post, I looked at the 14 messages of new media, one of which was convergence. In today's blog post, I'd like to focus on convergence and hybrid technologies, which characterize today's new media. Let's begin by exploiting a McLuhan technique known as the laws of media, in which we identify what a new medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves and reverses into Hybrid technologies enhance convenience, obsolesce many individual devices, retrieve the Swiss Army knife, and reverse into clutter.
more »Philosophy
New media have certainly changed the landscape of communications and education in an even more dramatic manner than electronic mass media did as was documented and analyzed by "Marshall McLuhan" in 1964. I had the good fortune to collaborate with Marshall back in the 1970s and have tried to carry on his tradition, as have others, by focusing on the impact of media independent of their content. McLuhan's pithy way of describing this approach was through the use of his one-liner "the medium is the message," which he made famous in his '64 book "Understanding Media."
more »Digging Deeper
The Problem with Web Measurement, Part 2
With all the web traffic numbers and metrics floating around -- page views, unique visitors, time spent, sessions -- it's a wonder that anyone can agree to a simple advertising sale on a website. Complicating matters is that the advertising world is used to traditional measurement services such as Nielsen's TV ratings that rely on usage by controlled panels of people. Online, those panel-based services can rarely gauge traffic on sites with less than 500,000 unique visitors per month.
more »Your Take
What services do you trust for measuring web traffic to your site?
I've been engrossed in the topic of web measurement the past couple weeks, with a two-part series here at MediaShift. In the first part, I wondered why the web, which is supposed to be the most measurable medium ever (putting TV and radio audience measurement to shame), is still so inconsistent with so few standards in place. If you write...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Food Lovers Become Experts at Chowhound, Yelp
Before the web was in widespread use, food lovers would wait patiently for the New York Times restaurant reviews to come out for the hottest new spot in SoHo, or for hometown papers to write up the little Korean joint that just opened down the street. We relied heavily on that system of stars, dollar signs and bells indicating...
more »Digging Deeper
The Problem with Web Measurement, Part 1
On April 19, 2007, the new CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Randall Rothenberg, sent a scathing open letter to the heads of the major web measurement firms, comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings, complaining that they better get their act together: Imagine my surprise when I came to the IAB and discovered that the main audience measurement companies are still...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
'Open Universities' Try to Bring College to Masses
A college education in the United States can be one of the most costly in the world. For many young people, college isn't an option because of the economic strain it represents for their families. And many older people who would like to attend classes must forego studies to make ends meet. But thanks to the power of voluntary...
more »MarketingShift
Marketers Grapple with Giving Teens More Control Online
SAN FRANCISCO -- A curious thing happened at the Hotel Nikko in downtown San Francisco today during the Ypulse Mashup 2007 conference about those wired teens. Yes, a lot of older folks dressed business-casual tried to look hip and decipher what the kids were doing online in social networks, on mobile phones and in virtual worlds. But on numerous...
more »Your Take
Is getting news on your mobile phone a satisfying or frustrating experience?
So many people have cell phones with web access that media companies are falling over each other to deliver content to cell phones. A recent article in the New York Times noted that CBS, News Corp. and ESPN are all putting big resources into mobile content, news and video delivered to cell phones, but the article also pointed out that...
more »Your Take Roundup
Virtual Worlds for Kids Entwined with Real World
While the media has been abuzz about Second Life and adult virtual worlds, a bevy of virtual worlds for kids have been even more popular than their adult counterparts. Tween world Club Penguin has more than 4 million visitors per month, according to a New York Times article on the virtual world craze for kids. But I wondered when...
more »Social Networking
Dangers Overblown for Teens Using Social Media
I remember the first time I watched Dateline NBC's To Catch a Predator, a TV series where they snared sexual predators using online venues. It was a train wreck -- the kind you can't keep your eyes off of. These predators were so creepy and so dumb. Some of them were lured into the trap more than once by...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Doing More Than Just Twittering Our Lives Away
When I first signed up for micro-blogging service Twitter last September, I remember reading that day that Evan Willliams, one of Twitter's founders, was in a horse drawn carriage winding through the streets of Marrakech. I found that fascinating. That day, I wrote one update ("I'm blogging...") and didn't sign in again until April of this year. Why? Because...
more »Digging Deeper
Twitter Founders Thrive on Micro-Blogging Constraints
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and co-founder Biz Stone have taken executive transparency to new heights, not only using their own Twitter micro-blogging service frequently to share details of their personal lives, but also publishing their own phone numbers and business address on Twitter's Contact page. So it was easy for me to get in touch with them to set...
more »Guides
Your Guide to Micro-Blogging and Twitter
Micro-blogging allows you to write brief text updates about your life on the go, and send them to friends and interested observers via text messaging, instant messaging, email or the web. The most popular service is called "Twitter", which was developed last year and became popular among techno-gurus at the 2007 South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas. Part of the magic of Twitter is that it limits you to 140 characters per post, forcing you to make pithy statements on the fly.
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
Are We Sharing Too Much Information via Social Media?
Social media -- the online tools we use to keep in constant contact with friends and to spy on strangers -- is something many of us believe makes the Internet a more fun, more personal place to be. It makes it easier to keep in touch with people we care about, and facilitates relationships with people we might have...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
U.S. Media Fails to Deliver Spanish News Online
Here in the United States, with over "31 million Spanish speakers", you would think Spanish would be our second language online. And you would think that content for the Spanish-speaking community would be not only available, but also rich and varied, if only for the value it represents to marketers. But that isn't the case.
more »Your Take Roundup
Loosen Copyright Restrictions for the Internet Age
Slowly but surely, the entertainment industry is realizing that it can't use copyright law as a blunt force in the digital age. Take the case of music giant EMI. Not long ago, EMI was fighting music-sharing service Napster and threatening DJ Danger Mouse over the mash-up, The Grey Album. But today the music company announced a plan with Apple...
more »Your Take Roundup
Picking Apart the State of the News Media Report
The Project for Excellence in Journalism's massive State of the News Media 2007 is like a Rorschach test for media watchers. Some people wallowed in the negative findings or attacked the criteria for the study, while others were wowed by the depth of data and the interactive elements. While I can't claim to have read all 160,000 words of...
more »Digging Deeper
Pew Internet Finds Good (and Bad) of Web's Social Impact
For those of us who spend much of our lives online, we get hunches about the way things are. It might seem like everyone is writing a blog, listening to a podcast, or watching home-made video clips. Or we might assume that everyone now uses the Internet to help research big purchases or make big life decisions.
more »Your Take Roundup
Call It a Syndrome or Disorder -- We Just Don't Pay Attention
I know you're in a hurry, you've got somewhere to go, someone to call, someone to email, someone to IM, something to say on your own blog. So I'll keep it short and sweet and to the point: Thanks to the new communication technologies and media delivery, our attention spans are somewhere between a gnat's and a goldfish's.
more »MusicShift
Music Industry Losing Control Over Album Sales
Why is the retail price of a new music CD $15.98? Where does this price come from and how is it set? Is it fair? For a long time, I've wondered about the high price of music, especially when bought in physical form as a compact disc. As longtime music buyers, we have a certain mindset about the CDs...
more »MarketingShift
Marketers Get Weak Signal from Users on Cell-Phone Ads
There is an interesting disconnect between the way marketers view advertising on cell phones and what average folks who use cell phones think about those same ads. Marketers, ad agencies, research firms, cell phone makers and carriers are salivating over the prospect of delivering marketing messages to people via their cell phones. But survey after survey shows that people are not quite as excited about it -- in fact, most people consider it an outrage to be bothered by ads on such a personal device.
more »Podcasting
Podcast Audience Small But Growing...Enough?
You could call it the Headline Conundrum. Or maybe Sound-Bite Logic. Whatever the term, there's a regular problem with journalism related to the brevity of space to explain a complex issue or finding. A recent survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 12% of Internet users have downloaded a podcast, up from 7% who said they did the same thing in a similar survey six months before. But as for people who download podcasts on a daily basis, the number was a tiny 1%.
more »Your Take Roundup
MediaShift Readers Want More MSM, Business Coverage
There's nothing like an anonymous website survey to learn what people really think about your work. That's why I did an online survey to help give me an idea of what direction to take PBS MediaShift in the coming year. Have I done a good job? Have I covered the right type of stories that appeal to you? Is there something else I could be doing to improve the site?
more »Your Take Roundup
The Definitive Guide to Cell Phone No-No's
I went to New York City last weekend, and noticed all the people on cell phones while waiting for their planes in the airport. OK, there's not much to do in these waiting lounges so why not call people up? But it got worse when we were loading onto the plane and someone stood right in the middle of everyone else and spoke loudly into their cell phone. Everyone around looked annoyed but it make no impact on the person in conversation. When it happened again while loading onto another flight this weekend, I decided it was now a trend.
more »Virtual Worlds
Wired, CNET, Reuters Agog Over Second Life
A friend of mine who works in PR in San Francisco came up to me at a party last week, and was wide-eyed at what's been going on lately at the virtual world Second Life.
more »Social Networking
Finding Balance in Teen Use of Social Media
Earlier today, I had the unusual experience of giving a speech to a group of academics at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, in Aurora, Ill. The unusual part was that I talked and interacted with them via AIM instant messaging on video. They could see and hear me talking from my home office in San Francisco, and I could hear their reactions and questions, and see the people questioning me. I even heard an announcement on the school loudspeakers about pumpkin projects!
more »Online Video
Google Spends $1.65 Billion for YouTube
It's deja vu all over again as an unprofibable Internet startup, barely 19 months old, was bought for $1.65 billion yesterday. But the startup in question, video-sharing phenomenon YouTube, is not just any startup looking to cash in on hype. YouTube is the eyeball catcher of all eyeball catchers, racking up 100 million-plus videos watched per day, and has become a brand that has broken through to the mainstream, to the non-technical masses, to our grandparents and little kids.
more »MediaShift
Help Improve MediaShift with Your Feedback
This is the post where I plead with you, offer you crazy schwag, and hope you will take 5 minutes out of your very busy lives to please fill out first ever MediaShift Reader Survey. I know, every other site on the planet is asking you for feedback too this week or this day or this minute.
more »Open Source Reporting
Eliminating Physical Media Sprawl of CDs, DVDs, Books
Lately, I have declared my own personal war on clutter in my life. That means all the paper littering my home office had to go. Those outdated hats from Burning Mans past also were out, as were old loose photos of places I don't remember. But for whatever reason, in each clean sweep I do of my stuff, I can never part with my collections of books, CDs, VHS and DVD movies (not to mention vinyl records and audiocassettes).
more »Futurama
English Today, Mandarin by 2020?
Because the Internet and computers were home-grown in America, it's no surprise that the Internet naming convention (.com, .net, .org) and computer keyboards and software interfaces are based on the English language. That has helped to push English into the dominant second language worldwide for people doing business across borders.
more »NewspaperShift
The Case for Citizen Ownership of the Los Angeles Times
Corporate ownership of daily newspapers is reaching the breaking point, especially now at the Los Angeles Times, which is owned by the Chicago-based Tribune Company media conglomerate. The newspaper is facing the same problem that hundreds of other newspapers are facing: Owners and stockholders who want profit growth each year, who want to cut back on editorial staff, and who could care less about the communities and people who actually read and gain insight from the newspaper. And there's that massive problem of people reading dead-tree edition newspapers less and reading electronic online versions more -- leading to smaller profits at the moment.
more »Philosophy
Balancing Work and Play on Summer Vacation
I promised myself (and you, dear readers) that I would take a real summer vacation this year, and try my best to unplug from technology, from work, from my usual mode of media overload.
more »Digging Deeper
Should Community-Edited News Sites Pay Top Editors?
If there is one push-and-pull balancing act that defines news in the age of Web 2.0, it's the question of how much power to give the audience, the masses, the collective mind, and how much control remains centralized. That balancing act has played a crucial role in the development of community-generated sites such as Wikipedia, Slashdot and even Google, where search results and PageRank depend on people linking to the most authoritative sources on a subject.
more »Media Usage
Big Media Last to Know Bloggers Not in Pajamas
Today was going to be a day of triumphalism in the new media world, a day where I would celebrate the growing ranks of blog creators (a.k.a. bloggers) and blog readers in the U.S., while also noting the growing number of people downloading podcasts. I would combine the happy results from a Pew Internet survey on blogging with the great news (PDF file) from Nielsen//Netratings that podcasting was gaining a foothold.
more »Media Usage
'Never Let Schooling Get in the Way of Your Education'
Some years ago, my wife, my son, and I came to a parting of the ways with the Sommerville Public School System. We felt the schooling process was failing our son. The science teacher conducted no experiments but simply had students write answers to study questions while he worked crossword puzzles in front of the class. The literature instructor had managed to walk them paragraph by paragraph through a single, not particularly challenging novel for the entire school year. And the history class had not progressed much past the American Revolution after 9 months.
more »Media Usage
According to a 2005 study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 57 percent of American teens who use the internet could be considered media creators. For the purpose of the study, a media creator was defined as someone who "created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations." Most American teens online have done two or more of these activities. 33 percent of teens share what they create online with others. 19 percent create new works by remixing content they appropriated from another source.
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Take Roundup::Sports Video on Cell Phones Works in Right Situations
It's easy to ridicule the idea of watching a World Cup soccer match or baseball game on a tiny mobile phone screen. Where's the ball, who's on first, how'd they score that goal? But for the rabid displaced fans of any sport, having the tiniest video highlights in town is better than nothing at all. I asked if you...
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Take Roundup::We Need to Learn How to Unplug
Our lives are wired to the hilt, especially us urbanites. We have cell phones, laptops, handheld PDAs, broadband access at work and at home, and the availability of news updates at our every whim. But maybe there are times -- especially now as the weather warms up -- when we should take a technology vacation and totally unplug. So...
more »Media Usage
Bridging the Divide::Kudos to Telcos for Bringing DSL to Masses
A few years back, I angrily canceled my DSL and local telephone service with SBC after their horrible customer service and slamming technique drove me away. I likely muttered something like this under my breath: "Hell will freeze over before I'll say something positive about telephone companies." Consider it frozen. After poring over the numbers from the latest survey...
more »Media Usage
Screen Babies::What Do Kids Lose, Gain from Screen Time?
It's easy to get angry and self-righteous when hearing the results of a study like the recent one from the Kaiser Family Foundation about young kids' media usage. The facts come spewing off your tongue as if you're a preacher in a room full of sinners: 61% of babies aged 1 year or younger watch screen media (TV, videos,...
more »Open Source Reporting
Open Source Reporting::Living Your Life Online Has Benefits
Back in late March, I detailed some of the ways that computers and the Internet had changed my life. I use Google News to check breaking news. I use online services such as Evite to organize face-to-face activities. I communicate with more people through email than by phone or in person. I buy gifts online. Then I asked you...
more »Live from London::Which Media Do You Trust?
LONDON -- I am your on-the-scene correspondent this week from London, where I am currently in a BBC TV studio listening to various people discuss citizen journalism at the We Media Forum. The conference bills itself thusly: "No ordinary conference, We Media is about how we create a better-informed society by collaborating with one another." The big news early...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::TV-B-Gone Device Shuts Public TVs Down
The last time I was in an aiport, I was held hostage by the ubiquitous CNN Airport Network monitors that wouldn't shut up. I ranted about the experience, and then I heard from a former CNN guy, William Jeakle, who explained that these TVs made too much money for CNN to shut them off. But thanks to one commenter...
more »Open Source Reporting
Open Source Reporting::Living Your Life Online
I've been thinking a lot lately about life before the Internet, and life before computers. How was life different? Was it worse? Was it better? How? Of course, there is a generation of people and children whose entire lives have been lived on computers and online -- they know no other way to live. Conversely, there are huge populations...
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Take Roundup::Parental Involvement Key to Kids' Computer Time
My 3-year-old son Julian is obsessed with typing and sending emails to his grandparents. Whenever he sees me working on my laptop, he cries out to visit the Sesame Street site online and its various games. But so far, we have tried to limit his computer time to 20 minutes per week, just as we try to limit TV...
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Turn Roundup::Your Cell Phone's Made for Talkin'
The makers of cell phones would like you to know that you can do a lot more with your cell phone than just talk to people. You can text. You can go online and check your email. You can snap photos or take video. You can listen to music and watch TV clips, maybe even movies. But when I...
more »Media Usage
Thumb-Twiddlers Unite::Are You Dilly-Dallying on the Internet?
What are you doing here, on the web, reading this blog? Is this part of your work, or are you just hanging out, bopping around the web casually letting the URLs fall where they may? According to a recent survey by Pew Internet, more Americans than ever are going online "for no particular reason, just for fun or to...
more »Your Take Roundup
What to Watch on the Small Screen? It's Situational
I was sitting on a panel recently in Pasadena for the TV critics press tour, and someone in the audience asked about what people would really watch on the small screen of a cell phone or video iPod. I mentioned what Chris McQueen said on this very weblog, that if you're in a line somewhere, you'll watch anything. That...
more »Philosophy
The Revolution Will Not Be Advertised
It's a hot, muggy day in the Not-So-Deep South, unusual for the winter time. They're packed in to the rafters at the First Community Gospel Church of Interdenominational Mumbo-Jumbo. After a few opening hymns, a hush goes over the congregation, as mothers sternly "shush" their squirming children, while waving fans rapidly to keep the sweat off their faces. The...
more »Culture
What kind of video would you watch on a small portable screen?
The video iPod has sent shudders through the media business, because it offers a new way to watch TV, video and movies. You can download video onto the iPod and then watch it on your own clock as you travel. Plus, new cellular phones are adding the capability to watch video and TV as well. While techie types get excited...
more »Tags
Best of MediaShift
