Your Take Roundup
Newspapers Should Focus on Local News — But Not Forget Bigger Picture
Recently, there was a healthy discussion on Poynter’s Online-News email list on the topic of the importance of local news. So I decided to put the question to MediaShift readers as well: Should traditional media outlets start focusing more on local news and leave the national and international stories...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Kindle, E-Readers Must Be Cheap, Flexible to Supplant Books
Are e-readers like the Amazon Kindle going to make print books obsolete, or will people’s undying love for the printed book continue on in the digital age? While the Sony Reader didn’t catch fire, the recent release of the Amazon Kindle has brought another round of debates over the...continued...
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...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Obama’s Win Related to Online Prowess?
As a candidate for president, you can collect thousands upon thousands of Facebook supporters, MySpace friends, blog readers, online video viewers and more, and yet that doesn’t guarantee you one vote in a real-world election. But perhaps the tide is turning now. With Barack Obama winning the Iowa caucuses...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Musicians Should Diversify Income in Post-CD Era
“If you love somebody, set them free.” It’s an old adage that Sting eventually made popular set to music, but it also applies to recorded music these days. More and more artists are giving away some tracks to help market themselves, either by selling other tracks, going on tour...continued...
Your Take Roundup
People Will Pay for Niche Content, Ad-Free Newspaper Sites
With the end of the TimesSelect pay service for New York Times editorialists and archives — and the possible end of the Wall Street Journal Online’s paid wall — I wondered if anyone would pay for content on newspaper sites. Most of the stories there are timely news, meaning...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Internet Offers Unlimited Time for Presidential Debates
One of the complaints most people have about televised politics and debates is the prevalence of the sound bite. There’s never enough time for candidates to discuss issues in-depth or argue their point for more than a minute. Instead, we are stuck with the tyranny of zingers and one-liners,...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Google News Comments a ‘Fabulous Step Forward’
For an experimental feature that barely registers a blip in reality, the idea of letting sources of stories comment on Google News has stirred up a hornet’s nest in journalism circles and the blogosphere. Two software engineers at Google News said they would be adding limited comments to news...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Front Porch Forum Fans Adore Hyper-Local Email Reports
Yesterday, when I heard a shooting take place in broad daylight down the street from me in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, I wondered what happened, who got shot and thought about how lucky I was not to be out and about with my son at that moment. Later,...continued...
Your Take Roundup
’Cup Is Overflowing’ for Future of Journalism
If there is one overriding debate in the world of journalism, it’s whether technology and the Internet are going to doom traditional reporting or strengthen it in the long run. Putting it bluntly, is journalism’s cup half full or half empty? The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper has been the...continued...
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...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Twitter Week Brings Praises, Catcalls
It seems like everyone who went to the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, last March came back talking about Twitter, the micro-blogging service that lets you broadcast bursts of information via text messaging. Alas, I didn’t attend, so remained a non-believer, as if I was a disciple...continued...
Your Take Roundup
YouTube Video Ads Should Be Relevant, Brief
Video-sharing phenomenon YouTube has built up its online business in classic dot-com fashion: Get the eyeballs first, then figure out how to make money. You can say “Web 2.0” all you want, but this is classic Web 1.0 thinking. So now that Google has sunk $1.65 billion into buying...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Mixed Feelings on NBC Showing Cho Video Online
The folks at NBC News debated for hours what to do with the video they had received from Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus. Eventually, they decided it was prudent to show some of the video on TV and post some snippets online. After...continued...
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....continued...
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...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Photojournalists Will Survive in Era of Citizen Photogs
Newspapers will die. Radio will kick the bucket. The packaged music CD is on death’s doorstep. There is an irresistible urge to declare one medium dead because of the rise of the new. And so it is when we consider the plight of photojournalists after the proliferation of cameraphones...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Community Is Key to Participation in Citizen Media
There are so many citizen journalism sites that seem to be in search of communities to populate them. A site such as Yahoo’s You Witness News looks so simple, inviting people to submit their photos or videos of news they have witnessed. So you’ve got easy ways to submit...continued...
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...continued...
Bubblicious
PaidContent Crowd: This Ain’t No Dot-Com Bubble
I attended the PaidContent San Francisco mixer event last night at the Palace Hotel, and was impressed with the packed house of 500 to 600 folks, from journalists to marketers to startup company executives. The room was buzzing, and brought back memories of the last dot-com boom in the...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Swamis Predict More Media Shifting in ‘07
Ever since I spent my winter break at college writing for the school newspaper — and writing a bunch of year-in-review pieces — I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth about year-end roundups and year-forward predictions. I think it’s a good idea to get some perspective on the...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Traditional Newsrooms Still Need to Walk the Talk
It’s much easier to talk about changing than to actually change. That’s the lesson everyone learns each year with New Year’s resolutions such as “I’m going to lose 20 pounds and exercise more” or “I’ll finally start my own business.” In the media world, traditional old-world media loves to...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Bloggers Leading Mainstream Journalists in Transparency
Perhaps I was being a bit purposefully provocative in my question to you — “Should bloggers avoid conflicts of interest as journalists do?” — but it didn’t take long for readers to correct my thinking. While journalists do have a code of ethics they are supposed to follow, no...continued...
Survey Says
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...continued...
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...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Wal-Mart ‘Flogs’ Par for the PR Course
All blogs are not created equal, and many of them are not transparent in their athenticity either. Sometimes we are hoodwinked, we want to believe, but we are deceived by what have become known as “flogs” or fake blogs, bought and paid for by someone else. In the case...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Facebook Still a Favorite…For Now
Sometimes we in the media get carried away by the news of the day, and draw hasty conclusions that turn out all wrong. Take Facebook and the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace. Because they are the province of the young, we assume their tastes are fickle...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Award-Worthy Blogs Showcase Evolution of the Medium
Not too long ago, your blog might be judged by your skill with the written word. Are you funny? Do you have a new view on politics that hasn’t been covered by the mainstream media? Are you writing anonymously about a sensitive subject? These were the attributes that helped...continued...
Your Take Roundup
U.S. Government Should be Focus of Investigative Reports
Whether it’s the Iraq War, the events of 9/11 or the Department of Homeland Security, government conduct (or misconduct) is what you’d like to see investigated most. I asked a very open-ended question to you last week, “What investigative report would you like to see done?” Your answers included...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Watching Shows on Computers Supplements Your TV Viewing
Let’s be clear about one thing. Watching TV shows and movies on computer screens — as they exist today — will not replace watching TV and movies on much bigger screens, in much more comfortable environs. Of course there are computers that can function as TV sets, and TV...continued...
Your Take Roundup
AmigoFish, VlogMap Point to Podcast Goodness
For people new to the world of podcasting, there are a few hurdles to jump before feeling comfortable with the medium. First, you have to consider where you’ll listen or watch podcasts — on your computer or on your portable MP3 player. Then you have to subscribe to podcasts...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Skepticism Rampant Over War ‘Fauxtography’
Most people trust that the photos they see of war in their daily newspaper shot by a professional photographer are accurate. The photographer risked his or her life to get the shot, snapped the picture, sent it to a photo editor, who then vetted it for publication. But photos...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Flickr Rules as Photo-Sharing Community
With the rise of cameraphones and cheap digital cameras, we as a society are taking more photos than ever before. But what do we do with all these snapshots? There have been websites devoted to personal photo pages for years, but which ones make photo-sharing and organizing easy? Most...continued...
Your Take Roundup
True Gritz Videoblog a Comic Fave Among Friends
So this is how you win elections in the South. I asked MediaShift readers to name their favorite sites for comic relief or work breaks, and the True Gritz video blog won in a landslide of 11 votes. But upon further review, two of the votes came from the...continued...
Your Take Roundup
BBC, Deutsche Welle Best Sources for Mideast News
When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Beirut today, there were numerous ways to report and interpret that news. The U.S.-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) saw it this way: Today’s visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice means Israel is racing against the clock. While the conflict rages...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Everyone Has an Opinion on Future of Rocketboom
So what’s up with Rocketboom, the popular video blog that lost its longtime host, Amanda Congdon? When we last left the he said/she said soap opera, Rocketboom honcho Andrew Baron was readying a replacement for Congdon, while Congdon was upset about being “unboomed” from the show. While I was...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Google Reader, Sage Lead as Favorite RSS Readers
Why use an RSS reader if it’s not straightforward and easy to set up and use? That’s the underlying point of what MediaShift readers said in responding to this week’s question, “Which RSS news reader do you use and why?” The idea of RSS news readers is to make...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Movie Download Services Still Need Work
While pay music downloads have been a hit with Apple’s iTunes and beyond, movie download services such as Movielink and CinemaNow have been slower to catch on. The problem is that these services don’t offer as much selection as a DVD service such as NetFlix, and they restrict the...continued...
Your Take Roundup
You Listen to Podcasts On Your Own Time
Perhaps the term “podcasting” isn’t the best way to describe these audio shows that run the gamut from talk to music. First of all, you can listen to podcasts on your home or work computer, or on any portable MP3 player you choose and not just an Apple iPod....continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Books Don’t Need Digital Reinvention, But…
The promise of digital books or e-books or the universal library is that we can have all the books ever printed available on any device to read. While it’s an idea that sounds good in theory, many of you were skeptical that the good old book really needs to...continued...
Your Take Roundup
YouTube Just the Start for Video Sharing
It’s easy to lose yourself in all the video at YouTube. You watch one music video, which leads to a spoof video, which leads to a stupid pet trick, which leads…who knows where. Before you know it, it’s time to leave work. Free time just evaporates when you’re immersed...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Do-It-Yourself Ways to Find Good Music
Just as the Internet and technology have changed the way people get their news, the same can be said about finding good music. At one time in our unconnected, non-Internet past, we had to listen closely to the radio, studiously writing down artist names and song titles, and then...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Newspapers Are Far From Dead
When I was in London last week, I saw just how connected the populace was in the teeming, multi-cultural city. Everywhere I walked, people were listening to iPods or talking on cell phones or texting their friends. Even San Francisco, where I live, doesn’t measure up to the way...continued...
Opinion Roundup
Mixed Views on Apple Vs. Gossip Sites
In the Age of the Blog, the wheels of justice are spinning in the U.S. as courts are trying to rule on the rights of bloggers as journalists. There are more questions than answers in a case such as Apple vs. Does: Are the people who run gossip news...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Believers, Negativists Debate Wikipedia’s Trustworthiness
Are you enjoying Wikipedia Week yet at MediaShift? The more time I spend looking at Wikipedia, delving into its arcane rules and hearing from its various supporters and detractors, the more it feels like a religious sect. People have very strong views on the community-generated free online encyclopedia, ranging...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Simplicity, Relevancy Rule in Ads You Want
What can the world of technology teach the world of advertising when it comes to keeping people tuned in? A lot more than I would have guessed. Most technically savvy people I know do everything in their power to avoid advertisments. But lately, it’s become more difficult to avoid...continued...
Two-Tiered Net
People Wary of Government in Net Neutrality Debate
The debate over “Net neutrality” has heated up immensely over the past few weeks. Why the hubbub? Broadband service providers — mainly telephone and cable companies — want to charge some heavy-use sites such as Google and Yahoo more money for carriage on their systems, creating a kind of...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Sense of Community Motivates You to Work for Free
So much of the web is powered by volunteer work it’s mind-boggling. The non-commercial ethos of the early days of the web, when people posted their thoughts to usenet groups and bulletin-board services, stuck around for years even as the web became more commercialized. America Online’s chat room moderators,...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Email Trumps Blogs for Political Action in ‘06
As more people have broadband, more people are going online to get their news. The latest research from Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that 50 million Americans went online for news in a typical day in late 2005 — up sharply from the number in 2002. And...continued...
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...continued...
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...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Congress Takes Action on China Collusion
Various technology companies in the West have helped the Chinese government in its longtime efforts to censor the Internet and do cyber-surveillance. Over the years, these companies have excused their behavior with a variation on the same theme: We have to follow local laws when we do business in...continued...
Your Take Roundup
How Much Should You Moderate Comments? It Depends
After the Washington Post’s website decided to shut down comments on its Post.Blog, I asked our own budding MediaShift community how you thought blog comments should be moderated here and elsewhere. Should online forums and blogs put up technological roadblocks to spammers and people spewing vitriol? Should they employ...continued...
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...continued...
