Current News and Media Videos

Have you watched network tv lately? They have a reality show about everything. Lobster fishing, crabbing, disgusting food, hairstylists, and every other profession seems to be getting a reality show now.

Why? Would people really rather watch some crab fisherman than great sitcoms like they used to create? Sitcoms like Cheers, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Two and a Half Men, and others have audiences that loved them. Other shows like CSI, Law And Order, The Shield, and more also have loyal audiences.

So what is the real reason there are so many reality shows popping up on every tv channel? They are checp to produce. No actors to pay. No script writers. No real talented Directors needed. The networks are cutting their expenses and that is why we have reality shows. They figure that the couch potatos who like to watch tv will adapt and just watch whatever they fill the time slots with.

The reason they have to cut expenses is that the Internet is taking couch potatos away from them and turning them into office-chair or computer desk potatos.

The second way you can notice how networks are reacting to the Internet is the number of commercials they show now. Commercial breaks used to consist of 3-4 commercials in a row. Now it is more like 7 in a row, then we have to sit through 2 more about what shows that channel has coming up later.

Recently the new tv series, In Plain Sight was started. The commercials announcing the upcoming show were being shown 6 months before the first episode was even scheduled to air. In January, they were showing commercials about the great new show they will give us in June. Wow.

So TV Is reacting to the Internet stealing their customers by cutting their production budget and by selling more and more commercials for each show, and by advertising their own programs more than ever before.

There is another indicator that network tv is dying out. The number of infomercials has risen dramatically. In the wee hours of the morning and late at night and on the weekends, we used to be able to find a few shows, repeats, and other things to watch even though there were always a few infomercials. Now it’s 90% infomercials, 10% something to watch.

Now how are newspapers reacting to the Internet?

More and more people are getting their news from news websites and blogs. Many of them get their daily news in their news reader through rss feeds. Commuters are using their laptops and handhelds and cell phones to get news from the Internet. Now you don’t see nearly as many newspapers being read on trains, buses, and subways.

So their sales of advertising is down because their readership is down. What does the newspaper industry do about it?

Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.

Sixty-four percent of the newspapers reported cutting the space given to foreign news over three years, making that the area that has suffered at the most papers as the business contracts. Only 10 percent of the editors said they considered foreign news “very essential” to their papers.

Ahh, first let’s give readers less news. Good start. TV gives us less TV shows worth watching, so newspapers will give us less news to read. Follow the leader? At a time when more and more of the news that affects us every day is about dependence on foreign oil, the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism in other countries, how our allies are reacting to things we do, and foriegn money markets as well as foriegn currency vs the US Dollar, and other international issues, the newspapers have decided less is more.

Three-fifths of the papers reported having less space for news over all, as newspapers try to save money by shifting to smaller pages and printing fewer of them. The only area cut nearly as often as foreign news was national news, which declined at 57 percent of the papers. Business coverage ranked next, reduced by one-third of the papers.

Yeah, let’s cut out that pesky national news too.

Half of all papers said they had increased the amount of state and local news they published, especially “hyper-local” community news.

Pretty soon maybe there will be an opening to start your own newspaper. The Elm Street Times or the Baker Ave. Post.

At 59 percent of the newspapers, editors said news staffing had declined over the previous three years, and that was true at 85 percent of the large papers. In the months since the survey was taken, the nation’s major newspaper chains have made some of the deepest newsroom cuts on record.

Save your old newspapers and recordings of your favorite tv shows. They could be worth a lot of money on eBay someday soon.

The issue of accreditation guidelines which would have caused a major media boycott of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has been resolved by the Indian Newspaper Society (INS).

Though the agreement was settled amicably, there is still one clause concerning the issue of a bar on supply of photographs to dedicated cricket portals that lingers. The INS is looking to get that issue resolved, but will still cover the IPL under protest.

The Rest of The Story here

Democracies struggle to come into their own in the middle east as we know all too well. It is good to see that citizens and journalists are being allowed to protest in Pakistan over freedom of the press.

Journalists condemn curbs on media

They gathered in front of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Press Club on the call of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Union of Journalists (RIUJ). The journalists shouted anti-government slogans and criticised media gags. Students and members of civil society also joined the protest to express solidarity with journalists.

The protestors held placards inscribed with slogans ‘free press’, ‘stop violation against journalists’, ‘freedom of expression is people’s right’. They said the government could not prevent them from performing their professional duties and that they were committed to factual reporting, through which the government was held accountable to the public. The journalists said the government’s claims of freedom of press were false since it had targeted journalists because they were exposing its misdeeds and anti-public policies. Free media, they said, was an important pillar of the state.

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) General Secretary Mazhar Abbass said journalists were a peaceful community and they were only performing their duties.

Civil disobedience is the path to freedom and democracy. It has been for the US and it is now in countries like Pakistan. The news media and citizens of countries in the middle east are the ones that have to stand up and fight for their freedoms and for democracy if they want it.

George Bush believes he can force these countries to become democratic. It is an uninformed and uneducated opinion some others in the republican party share. This country got it’s freedom and became a democracy because citizens stood up to tyranny. Because they wanted freedom and democracy.

They risked their lives for it. They knew that english soldiers would kill dissenters for speaking out against the crown, but they did it anyway. Many lost their lives doing so. Many soldiers have died defending our freedom since then.

In Iraq, the people did not stand up against saddam hussein, against tyranny. A few obviously did and died but their was no mass rebellion to say the least. So bush took it upon himself to stand up for them even without being asked to do so. He told us they would welcome us with open arms. They did, but they also had bombs strapped to their waists.

You cannot tell people they should be free. You cannot force people to be free or to stand up for their rights. They have to want it so bad they are willing to risk their lives for it just as our forefathers did.

If the people of a country cannot stand up and fight for their own freedoms and to have a democracy, then they will never be able to keep it, defend it, or maintain it. You cannot give people freedom. They have to earn it.

I predict there will be a day when most of what you read in the mainstream press will come from a blog or somewhere else on the Internet.

Some people will read that prediction and say, “They already are”. Some will say, “Duh. I knew that”. And other people will say, “This guy is out of his mind. That will never happen”.

Some people call it Blogging. Some call it the New Media. Some call it Citizen Journalism. But anyone who doesn’t think of blogging as legitimate journalism is in for a rude awakening.

Blogs Influence Journalists, Nearly all Facets of News Coverage

Blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news but also influencing the tone and editorial direction of reporting, according to a survey of US journalists by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicom Group.

New media (social media and blogs) are having an impact on many aspects of reporting, particularly the speed and availability of news, Brodeur said.

Newspaper fell behind tv news because newspapers can’t bring you up-to-the minute news. TV news will fall behind or already has fallen behind the New Media, Blogs, because they can’t get the news any faster than bloggers can and journalists don’t get it as fast in many instances.

Another thing to point out is that there are a lot of bloggers who go much further in depth on a story and are more dogged in tracking down sources than journalists are. Bloggers don’t have a publisher with an agenda. Bloggers don’t have a marketing department that tells them the type of stories they need on the front page to sell newspapers.

Citizen Journalism critics say that bloggers are not as reliable as reporters. That’s bunk. It has been a very very long time since journalists who work for newspapers and TV stations were reliable sources for news.

From NYTimes reporters who plagiarized stories to those journalists who President Bush paid to write favorable stories about his No Child Left Behind education policies, journalists in the mainstream press have repeatedly shown they are no more reliable than the average joe who writes a news blog.

Now all newspapers and TV news shows are seen as far left or far right by people. Fox news is seen as far right and CNN as far left. In talk radio you have the al franken’s VS the rush limbaughs.

So the news we get on radio, TV, and newspapers is not unbiased, fair, or balanced as all of these claim they are. Add that to the fact they are owned by mega news corporations that have their own political, social, and marketing agendas and you cannot possibly be still under the impression that the mainstream media is more reliable than citizen journalists who write blogs.

Yes blogs can be slanted far left or far right as well. Usually they are much more open about that though. Fox news claims to be fair and balanced and claims they are not far right, while Redstate.org states right in their rules for posting on the site, “The purpose of this site is promote conservative and Republican ideals.”

Citizen Journalism is much more honest and straightforward about their intent than mainstream media. Mainstream Media has a bunch of lawyers, stock analysts, marketing people, and others who judge a story’s value not on how valuable that news is to the public, but how it might imact their advertisers, their stock prices, and whether or not it might get them sued.

The biggest impact of blogs is in the speed and availability of news.

Over half also said that blogs were having a significant impact on the “tone” (61.8%) and “editorial direction” (51.1%) of news reporting.

“While only a small percentage of journalists feel that blogs are helpful in generating sources or exclusives, they do see blogs as particularly useful in helping them better understand the context of a story, a new story angle, or a new story idea,” said Jerry Johnson, head of strategic planning at Brodeur, during the “Taking the Blogosphere Seriously” seminar at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

With some mainstream journalists it has already happened. With others it will happen. They will be at a point where before they write a story or run a story in the mainstream press, they will check the blogs first to see how the public might react to that story or to get new ideas and angles for that story.

Many people who have been blogging a long time have always predicted this to happen. Now it is happening.

The Rest of The Story on journalists and bloggers here

Blogging is still thought of as writing a personal diary and not something to waste time on by many people. There are still offline journalists and reporters who believe blogging is just a trend that will pass.

Dan Rather might beg to differ and many news organizations have either tried to adopt blogging or at least now know they have to take blogging seriously.

Bloggers were laughed at when they called what we do “journalism” or “news” and mainstream media only recently acknowledged bloggers as commentators at least.

But the Federal Government doesn’t seem to deny that bloggers are journalists or news sources after all;

FOIA reform: Bloggers are journalists, too
By Nate Anderson of ARSTechnica.com

It’s not every day that a senator takes to the floor to defend “Internet blogs and other Web-based forms of media,” but Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has done just that in his recent push to pass a Freedom of Information Act reform bill he has coauthored with two Republicans.

The Senate passed the OPEN Government Act last week (which builds on previous reform attempts), and the House followed suit on Tuesday of this week. The reforms in the bill make it easier for bloggers and other Internet journalists to make FOIA requests without paying fees, and they strengthen deadlines for agencies to respond to requests. Contractors who work for the federal government are now explicitly covered by FOIA rules, and a new FOIA Ombudsman will help resolve disputes outside of court. The legislation awaits President Bush’s pen.

FOIA has always exempted journalists from paying fees to access government records (other citizens and companies are charged for search time and duplication of documents), but the rise of the Internet has made it more difficult for government agencies to decide if someone is a legitimate “journalist” or not.

The Rest of The Story here

Here is one writer’s take on the subject of mainstream journalism vs new media jornalism.

The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn’t use to be.

One is pure opinion, especially political opinion, which the Internet has made infinitely easy to purvey.

Another is information originally published in other media—everything from Chilean newspaper stories and entries in German encyclopedias to papers presented at Micronesian conferences on accounting methods—which one can find instantly on search and aggregation sites.

Lately, grand journalistic claims have been made on behalf of material produced specifically for Web sites by people who don’t have jobs with news organizations.

According to a study published last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, there are twelve million bloggers in the United States, and thirty-four per cent of them consider blogging to be a form of journalism.

That would add up to more than four million newly minted journalists just among the ranks of American bloggers. If you add everyone abroad, and everyone who practices other forms of Web journalism, the profession must have increased in size a thousandfold over the last decade.

When mainstream journalists speak of bloggers they tend to dismiss them as amateurs and disregard the importance of blogging to news in general. It’s really too bad they did not embrace it right away because new media journalists and bloggers are here to stay.

More and more people are getting their news from sources outside of mainstream media. Whether the so-called traditional journalists think these writers and news gatherers are amateur or not doesn’t matter. The fact is traditional news sources are losing readers and don’t know how to stop the bleeding and online news sources and blogs are gaining readers in record numbers.

Traditional journalists got lazy. There are resources online to check facts and gather information at a touch of the mouse button. Anyone can write an informed post if they do a few minutes of research. And many bloggers have become well-known for reliability due to this fact.

New Media VS Traditional Media isn’t even a contest. As corporations buy up more and more newspapers, limiting the number of different sources for your daily news, more people will turn to the rich diversity of news that can be found online.

New Media 12 Million. Traditional Media 0

The Rest of The Story from the New Yorker here

I read this in the Tehran Times and was pretty surprised at the way they talk about media responsibility.

Media can be opportunity or threat: Esmaeili
Tehran Times Culture Desk

TEHRAN –- Director of the Mehr News Agency Parviz Esmaeili made a speech at the third edition of the Cultural Press Festival (the Cultural Press is affiliated to the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization) held here on Thursday.

He remarked that today’s new media forms can be an opportunity for the dissemination of constructive information or, misused, they can pose a threat to the values of society.

Esmaeili talked about the role of the media in the contemporary world and the relationship between new types of media and the younger generation. He stressed that in the Islamic Republic of Iran the media should be faithful to Islamic principles and civil rights.

Is this just the public statements made by them to mask what they really put out as news or is this for real?

You decide

The RIAA doesn’t get the whole Internet thing yet. The Movie Industry doesn’t get the whole Internet Thing yet. So I guess the CEO of AP, Associated Press shouldn’t feel bad that he doesn’t understand it either.

AP CEO Declares War On Internet
Submitted by David A. Utter to WebProNews on Fri, 12/07/2007 - 06:26

“If you want our content, we expect to be paid for it … this nonsense that you can just take the first paragraph or use the picture small doesn’t really fly with us. People die trying to take those pictures,” Curley said in the report.

Soldiers die in wars and the AP makes money on the pictures they take and the money they make from that as well. When they cover a murder, they sell that news to organizations and don’t compensate the family of the person that died.

Fair use remains the topic that never seems to come up in the discussion of using content others have created. Doctrines of fair use allow for “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work,” according to Stanford University’s Copyright & Fair Use Center.

Just as I am doing in this blog post. It’s legal and it’s fair use.

This leaves the issue open for people like Curley and a deep-pocketed organization to force a definition of fair use by litigating against anyone who tries to reuse their content.

Exactly. The CEO of AP says “people die to take those pictures”. That is not what this is about. It’s about a greedy corporation trying to litigate against smaller entities to force them from doing what is legal.

It’s no different than when the RIAA tries to say they are suing people to protect the artists. It’s to help big record companies continue to profit on the backs of the artists so they can continue to be the only ones allowed to screw the artists over.

Maybe the AP should just merge with the RIAA.

The Rest of The Story here

(Source) Western reporters (like all Westerners) lead charmed lives in China, compared with Chinese journalists or activists, since about the worst thing that can happen to a Western reporter is that he or she will have to leave.

This is more or less what they used to call the “guided tour” in the Soviet Union. James Fallows goes on to say that Western journalists who write for daily newspapers have it a bit rougher. In other words, he says, if they’re responsible for how the rest of the world views us then we should be a little hard on them. The Soviets had a different strategy. It was called wining and dining, or maybe it would be more apt to say Stoli and act holy.

The Walls Street Journal quoted another paragraph from Fallows’ commentary. Probably more appropriate than the one above. And some people are saying that China is opening up. Sure, but to what?

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