My thesis, now available for purchase (or, email me and I’ll send you a PDF. Bad business, I know, but good marketing?!) Yes, that’s me on the cover…
AS WE MAY THINK by VANNEVAR BUSH
…
“Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.
The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.
Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his record have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.”
…
where was this article when I was writing that paper?
Warren Buffet, founder, Bershire Hathaway, in a statement announcing the fund’s purchase of almost all newspapers currently owned by Media General, 63 titles in all mostly located in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama.
Via Yahoo Finance:
A subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, BH Media Group, will purchase all of the newspapers owned by Media General, with the exception of the Tampa group, for $142 million in cash. Media General said it is in discussions with other prospective buyers for its Tampa print assets.
Under a separate credit agreement, Berkshire Hathaway will provide Media General with a $400 million term loan and a $45 million revolving credit line. The new loan will be used to fully repay the company’s existing bank debt due March 2013 and will mature in May 2020. In conjunction with this, Media General will issue Berkshire Hathaway penny warrants for approximately 4.6 million Class A shares, which represents 19.9 percent of Media General’s existing shares outstanding. In addition, Berkshire Hathaway has the option to nominate a director to Media General’s Board of Directors.
Possible Takeaway: It’s good to have one of the world’s richest people on your side.
(via futurejournalismproject)
Above is just one finding of 6 by BBC’s Holly Goodier, who has spent a good deal of time assessing online participation patterns in the UK. Here are the other 5, which she and her team culled from a general agreement that the former audience is becoming more and more active online:
2. Participation is now the rule rather than the exception: 77% of the UK online population is now active in some way.
3. This has been driven by the rise of ‘easy participation’: activities which may have once required great effort but now are relatively easy, expected and every day. 60% of the UK online population now participates in this way, from sharing photos to starting a discussion.
4. Despite participation becoming relatively ‘easy’, almost a quarter of people (23%) remain passive - they do not participate at all.
5. Passivity is not as rooted in digital literacy as traditional wisdom may have suggested. 11% of the people who are passive online today are early adopters. They have the access and the ability but are choosing not to participate.
6. Digital participation now is best characterised through the lens of choice. These are the decisions we take about whether, when, with whom and around what, we will participate. Because participation is now much more about who we are, than what we have, or our digital skill.
See here for more on the 1/9/90 rule.
(via futurejournalismproject)
“We are no longer designers or writers or technologists, we’re creators.”That’s Barbara deWilde in “Can You Teach Someone to Be an Entrepreneur?”, a response to the class carefully crafted and led @svaixd by Gary Chou and Christina Cacioppo. “Internet School,” or the course, challenged students to use the power of the network to complete assignments, and if tacit responses around the studio were any indication, life lessons.
Barbara confirms:
The lessons from Internet school are life lessons. If I can sum them up I would say they are: 1. The Internet and the emergence of networks have disrupted and will continue to disrupt structures that are hierarchical. 2. Learn technologies and use them to build. We are no longer designers or writers or technologists, we’re creators. 3. Know yourself, have an opinion and share it. You’ll find others like you. Networks aren’t lonely, they’re empowering. 4. There is very little reason to work for others. If you have the skills that make you hirable, you have the skills to create something for yourself, and in turn, for others. 5. Don’t spend all your time refining, get your ideas out there and see if people like them.The lessons from guests, the lessons from failing in public, and reminders of what learning is for in the first place gave way to a wonderful things. I suspect this is only the beginning.
1. The Internet and the emergence of networks have disrupted and will continue to disrupt structures that are hierarchical
My final film project for my Film & Media minor is complete! Here is the result.
THE NEWSMEN captures the massive sea change within American journalism today as the old guard of print editors confronts the disruption of the digital age. Juxtaposing the experiences of these editors against vintage found footage from a 1940 vocational film, THE NEWSMEN sheds light on the emotional and social impact of the collapse of a seemingly timeless profession as it morphs into a new one.
Featuring former and current newspaper editors Hank Klibanoff, Ken Paulson and Vernon Loeb.
Produced, directed, filmed and edited by Caroline Klibanoff for Georgetown University’s Film & Media Studies program.
“The poet’s duty and privilege is to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” — William Faulkner
For more music from these artists visit freemusicarchive.org
The Influencing Machine: A Brief Visual History of the Media
via Brain Pickings:
One of the coolest and most charming book releases of this year, The Influencing Machine is a graphic novel about the media, its history, and its many maladies.
Written by Brooke Gladstone, longtime host of NPR’s excellent On the Media, and illustrated by cartoonist Josh Neufeld, The Influencing Machine takes a refreshingly alternative approach to the age-old issue of why we disparage and distrust the news.
Gladstone (in the video above):
…what victims of the syndrome have lost: identity. They no longer know who they are. They have shattered themselves into fragments and projected the shameful bits onto the influencing machine. That is my metaphor for how we see the media. We feared the telegraph, the radio, the television, the computer. Heck, Socrates even disdained writing. But I believe the media are mirrors, a mess of mirrors. And what we fear is not the machine, but the reflection.
FJP: This just made my day! Wonderful, creative, exciting, intelligent, and so true. —Jihii
Your Local Paper, In More Ways Than Ever
via Editor & Publisher:
A new marketing campaign from Pioneer Newspapers, Inc. is on a mission to send one very important message: Newspapers are alive and well. But you won’t find the message just in print. It’s being broadcast in television commercials, radio advertisements, and on billboards.
“We’re trying to reach people who don’t read the paper,” said president and chief executive officer Mike Gugliotto.
The Seattle-based family media business owns newspapers primarily in the Northwest…Their goal? To take a more proactive stand to dispel myths that the newspaper industry is dying.Nine Pioneer newspapers are participating in the campaign, which will continue for one year and incorporate several themes.
The current theme focuses on the changing landscape of news delivery. One of the commercials shows a newsboy riding his bike through a neighborhood delivering the news, but it’s a laptop landing in homes. Another shows the family dog fetching the newspaper, only to come back with an iPad in his mouth.
And of course, multimedia is a big part of the campaign.
In addition, Pioneer has invested in new formats to deliver the news. The Chronicle equips reporters with “MoJo” kits that allow them to carry a laptop, digital camera, video, and audio recorders so they can bring readers breaking news and live blogs. The Tribune launched HTML5 websites for readers who prefer a tablet-based experience. Advertising representatives are also given tablets to take to meetings with clients to showcase online and mobile offerings.
FJP: A nice rebuttal to the all the talk on dying newspapers.
Image: Cupcakes announce the slogan, “Your Local Paper in More Ways Than Ever.”
I love this with all my heart.
…The Internet commandeered the services that newspapers once championed and delivered each of these services on an a la carte basis. In an earlier era, it made sense to bundle these services in a single package - the newspaper - and deliver it fully assembled. Today, the Web itself is the package, and each of the services now competes against other similar services in separate, often healthy, markets. And this is as it should be - this is not somehow wrong…
…There is no rational business model that can be formed around solely the production of news, just as many artists will attest that there is no stable business model around just an artist producing art that does not involve dying first. News must be bundled with a service. And that’s a problem, because the Web model is to unbundle everything, reduce every service to its basic and fundamental form, and present it to you as a site or, more recently, as an app. If you ask southern California venture capitalists what types of investments they’re searching for, they’ll tell you they’re looking for that one thing - not six things bundled together, not three existing things that complement one another. One disruptive thing.
And that thing tends to omit the word “news.”
Scott M. Fulton, III, ReadWriteWeb. On the Difference Between Google and Journalism. (via futurejournalismproject)
Very relevant, as I wrap up final edits on my documentary THE NEWSMEN this week!
100 pages, nine months of research, 302 mentions of the phrase “news literacy,” 605 mentions of “news,” 191 mentions of “media,” 234 instances of some form of “journalist/lism,” and the culmination of four years at Georgetown in American Studies.
Hip hip hooray! Just submitted my final thesis! I will be publishing some sections from it on this blog and exploring avenues for my conclusions to reach greater audiences because I really do think they have a future beyond just this paper. I’m very excited by the conclusions I came up with and also very proud of my research and ALSO very very glad to be done!
Thesis Update - Almost Done!
I haven’t updated here lately, but that’s because I’ve been completing the final draft of my thesis and preparing it for submission. I’m most excited about the proposals I’ve come up with in my conclusions for better news literacy education in the digital sphere - now just looking for a way to make my proposals easy to understand without the research that accompanies it, for the average person (or the average foundation/start-up/governement agency that might be interested). Maybe an infographic? Maybe brief bullet points on this blog? I definitely want to see this work, or at least the forward-thinking part of it, live past its submission into Georgetown’s library.
The first newspapers, dating from the dawn of the seventeenth century, took the names “gazette,” after the Italian gazetta, likely after the copper coin that was the price of the first Venetian papers, or “coranto”, with the promise of current events. Others took up names like “News” or “Relations”. More imaginative titles would soon be on offer: the Journal, the Record, the Morning, the Evening, the Times, the Press, the Post, the Telegraph, the Intelligencer, the Advertiser, the Tribune, the Sun, the World, the Mirror. The very names of the periodical press held the promise to inform, to announce, to instruct, and to reflect the world in all its complications.
Gregory Shaya, “The Myth of the Fourth Estate,” new from our Roundtable blog
The Media Map: Who's Reading What and Where | Forbes
Simple, elegant, easy to use. Data is from Jan. 2012. How random is ABC News’ readership? I wonder if it had to do with the stories they covered.
Déjà Vu
“The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.” —Thomas Jefferson, from a letter, 1807
“According to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University, if you watch Fox News you are significantly less likely to know the correct answer to that question than if you mostly avoid news shows and newspapers all together.” —Slate, November 11, 2011
