The press is a player, believe it or not.
The press is a player, believe it or not.
The tenets of “professionalism” prevent them from admitting it, but the press has become essential role-players in our electoral process. Jay Rosen’s argument is brilliantly crafted and must-reading for students of the subject.
And here’s William Powers of National Journal on the inside baseball approach: “The class of true political obsessives is tiny, and the media feel a little guilty about belonging to it, about behaving less and less like everyday people and more and more like the political operatives they cover.”But feeling guilty and changing your behavior are two different things. Spin Alley is absurd, and called so by journalists. But Spin Alley is there after every big debate, and it still draws the journalists. Why is this?
The answer involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst… the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for. So while the press likes being a player, it does not like being asked: what are you for?
In fact, the instructions are not to think about it too much, because to know what you are playing for would be to have a kind of agenda. And by all mainstream definition the political reporter must have no kind of agenda. The Washington Post, National Public Radio, CNN, Newsweek, The Des Moines Register, and all similar competitors, are officially (and rhetorically) committed to “no agenda” journalism, also known as the view from nowhere. So while it might be recognized that the press is a player, journalists also see an unsolvable problem if they take one more intellectual step. So they dare not.
The chuckle is that public knows (or senses) this too.
Postmodernism is all about power to the people, people who survey the landscape of Modernism, with its worship of logic and reason, and find ruin. Pomos detest hierarchy and being “managed,” and the irony is that the technological inventions of modern times have made it possible for them to call a spade a spade. The higher up the Modernist ladder one gets, the quicker the bottom is rising up to meet them, threatening to swallow them whole.
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The press is a player, believe it or not.
The press is a player, believe it or not.
The tenets of “professionalism” prevent them from admitting it, but the press has become essential role-players in our electoral process. Jay Rosen’s argument is brilliantly crafted and must-reading for students of the subject.
And here’s William Powers of National Journal on the inside baseball approach: “The class of true political obsessives is tiny, and the media feel a little guilty about belonging to it, about behaving less and less like everyday people and more and more like the political operatives they cover.”But feeling guilty and changing your behavior are two different things. Spin Alley is absurd, and called so by journalists. But Spin Alley is there after every big debate, and it still draws the journalists. Why is this?
The answer involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst… the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for. So while the press likes being a player, it does not like being asked: what are you for?
In fact, the instructions are not to think about it too much, because to know what you are playing for would be to have a kind of agenda. And by all mainstream definition the political reporter must have no kind of agenda. The Washington Post, National Public Radio, CNN, Newsweek, The Des Moines Register, and all similar competitors, are officially (and rhetorically) committed to “no agenda” journalism, also known as the view from nowhere. So while it might be recognized that the press is a player, journalists also see an unsolvable problem if they take one more intellectual step. So they dare not.
The chuckle is that public knows (or senses) this too.
Postmodernism is all about power to the people, people who survey the landscape of Modernism, with its worship of logic and reason, and find ruin. Pomos detest hierarchy and being “managed,” and the irony is that the technological inventions of modern times have made it possible for them to call a spade a spade. The higher up the Modernist ladder one gets, the quicker the bottom is rising up to meet them, threatening to swallow them whole.
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When polite downloads become impolite!
When polite downloads become impolite
The ad world is seemingly all atwitter over the unveiling this week of Unicast’s new Web video format and the advertising giants who are lined up to try it during a six-week beta test. An article in MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews oohs and ahs over the format, calling it “a new format that is capable of rendering conventional 30-second TV spots online with hardly any of the excruciatingly long download times or bandwidth required of streaming video formats.”
If the test proves successful, it could be a boon to the burgeoning online video advertising marketplace, and could encourage many top marketers to finally take online seriously as a major advertising medium.
The Unicast spots accomplish this via a patented technology that allows the 2 megabyte video ad files to pre-load into cache without a user being aware of it and then launching at the exact time the user and the publisher choose. As such, Unicast’s new Video Commercials will become the closest thing yet in terms of replicating a TV commercial advertising experience. Of course, they will go conventional TV ads one better. They will be interactive.
But there’s more. Do you have any idea how long it takes to download a 2 meg file? Long enough for you to leave the Website and go elsewhere. Will the advertiser get charged for an impression that nobody ever sees? You bet! This is not a good idea.
I opted out of ESPN Motion after having it for a few weeks. Why? Because the process was fed to me in the same manner as broadcasting, forcing me into a passive viewing mode, something I’ve come to the Web to avoid.
For streaming, my money remains with the folks at EyeWonder, whose playerless technologies keep improving. No waiting. No downloads. The user is in charge, and that’s the way it should be.
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When polite downloads become impolite!
When polite downloads become impolite
The ad world is seemingly all atwitter over the unveiling this week of Unicast’s new Web video format and the advertising giants who are lined up to try it during a six-week beta test. An article in MediaPost’s MediaDailyNews oohs and ahs over the format, calling it “a new format that is capable of rendering conventional 30-second TV spots online with hardly any of the excruciatingly long download times or bandwidth required of streaming video formats.”
If the test proves successful, it could be a boon to the burgeoning online video advertising marketplace, and could encourage many top marketers to finally take online seriously as a major advertising medium.
The Unicast spots accomplish this via a patented technology that allows the 2 megabyte video ad files to pre-load into cache without a user being aware of it and then launching at the exact time the user and the publisher choose. As such, Unicast’s new Video Commercials will become the closest thing yet in terms of replicating a TV commercial advertising experience. Of course, they will go conventional TV ads one better. They will be interactive.
But there’s more. Do you have any idea how long it takes to download a 2 meg file? Long enough for you to leave the Website and go elsewhere. Will the advertiser get charged for an impression that nobody ever sees? You bet! This is not a good idea.
I opted out of ESPN Motion after having it for a few weeks. Why? Because the process was fed to me in the same manner as broadcasting, forcing me into a passive viewing mode, something I’ve come to the Web to avoid.
For streaming, my money remains with the folks at EyeWonder, whose playerless technologies keep improving. No waiting. No downloads. The user is in charge, and that’s the way it should be.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
God bless the RIAA (with a brick)!
God bless the RIAA (with a brick)!
I’ve waited a day before commenting about the RIAA’s latest round of suing its customers, because I wanted to read what The Register wrote about it. They didn’t let me down. The headline: “RIAA goes hunting for 532 more file-traders — Only 50 million to go”
The RIAA has launched Version 2.0 of its lawsuit filing program, suing 532 music fans in Washington and New York.The music label mob scrapped Version 1.0 of the lawsuit program after a federal appeals court blocked the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) from acquiring file-traders’ identities from ISPs via subpoenas. The RIAA has now been forced to file suits against “John Doe” defendants and to acquire their identities through a longer, more costly legal process.
The pigopolist mob reckons most of the 532 consumers had more than 800 files on their PCs. Once the trader’s identity is discovered, the RIAA has graciously offered first to try and settle out of court for thousands of dollars before wringing its customer base through the legal system.
With tens of millions of people trading files online, it will take the RIAA many years to complete the copyright sweep in the courts. To its credit though, the lobby group has implemented a firm, military approach to its program that could push things along.
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God bless the RIAA (with a brick)!
God bless the RIAA (with a brick)!
I’ve waited a day before commenting about the RIAA’s latest round of suing its customers, because I wanted to read what The Register wrote about it. They didn’t let me down. The headline: “RIAA goes hunting for 532 more file-traders — Only 50 million to go”
The RIAA has launched Version 2.0 of its lawsuit filing program, suing 532 music fans in Washington and New York.The music label mob scrapped Version 1.0 of the lawsuit program after a federal appeals court blocked the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) from acquiring file-traders’ identities from ISPs via subpoenas. The RIAA has now been forced to file suits against “John Doe” defendants and to acquire their identities through a longer, more costly legal process.
The pigopolist mob reckons most of the 532 consumers had more than 800 files on their PCs. Once the trader’s identity is discovered, the RIAA has graciously offered first to try and settle out of court for thousands of dollars before wringing its customer base through the legal system.
With tens of millions of people trading files online, it will take the RIAA many years to complete the copyright sweep in the courts. To its credit though, the lobby group has implemented a firm, military approach to its program that could push things along.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
The audience knows as much about your (media) job as you do
The audience knows as much about your (media) job as you do
This is one of my rules for doing news in a Postmodern World. Like the emperor who has no clothes, we go through our daily routines safe in the knowledge that our audiences can’t see beyond our bullshit. Not so. Ed Cone writes:
This morning I was on a panel sponsored by the Greensboro Youth Council concerning media and politics. I was the only media person there, but the politicos (Mayor Holliday, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, and county commissioners Rakestraw and Thigpen) didn’t gang up on me. Some sharp questions; media savvy is part of the culture now, kids swim in it from birth and understand the currents and eddies. They understand (as one young woman from Page pointed out) that objective news can be spun by its placement on the page, headline size, etc.
“Everyone needs to be able to decode the way the media works, questioning everything in order to understand everything.
“We need to make sure that people are equipped to understand and interpret this mass of communication: to differentiate between opinion and fact; to make sense of what they see and hear; and to challenge and question it.
“And it is important that we know when we are watching ‘accurate and impartial’ news coverage and when we are not.”
Ms Jowell has given Ofcom, a new communications watchdog in Scotland, a specific duty to promote media literacy.
Of course, her comments are being criticized by educational types who accuse her of giving students a reason to avoid studying “hard” subjects, like math and science.
The point is we are broadcasting to media savvy folks these days, and it’s one of the reasons viewership is dropping like the temperature in New England this winter. Personally, I’m glad to see it, because anything that cuts away at the pedestal of mainstream television news can only be good for everybody, including news people themselves.
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The audience knows as much about your (media) job as you do
The audience knows as much about your (media) job as you do
This is one of my rules for doing news in a Postmodern World. Like the emperor who has no clothes, we go through our daily routines safe in the knowledge that our audiences can’t see beyond our bullshit. Not so. Ed Cone writes:
This morning I was on a panel sponsored by the Greensboro Youth Council concerning media and politics. I was the only media person there, but the politicos (Mayor Holliday, Mayor Pro Tem Johnson, and county commissioners Rakestraw and Thigpen) didn’t gang up on me. Some sharp questions; media savvy is part of the culture now, kids swim in it from birth and understand the currents and eddies. They understand (as one young woman from Page pointed out) that objective news can be spun by its placement on the page, headline size, etc.
“Everyone needs to be able to decode the way the media works, questioning everything in order to understand everything.
“We need to make sure that people are equipped to understand and interpret this mass of communication: to differentiate between opinion and fact; to make sense of what they see and hear; and to challenge and question it.
“And it is important that we know when we are watching ‘accurate and impartial’ news coverage and when we are not.”
Ms Jowell has given Ofcom, a new communications watchdog in Scotland, a specific duty to promote media literacy.
Of course, her comments are being criticized by educational types who accuse her of giving students a reason to avoid studying “hard” subjects, like math and science.
The point is we are broadcasting to media savvy folks these days, and it’s one of the reasons viewership is dropping like the temperature in New England this winter. Personally, I’m glad to see it, because anything that cuts away at the pedestal of mainstream television news can only be good for everybody, including news people themselves.
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Notes from the RSS WinterFest Webcast
Notes from the RSS WinterFest Webcast
I got into RSS (Really Simple Syndication) only a few months ago and have come to believe it’s the most amazing Web technology to come down the pike. I’ve explained many times here, including in one of my essays, but it’s one of those things that’s really difficult to explain. You have to use it to understand. This blog is available via RSS feed. All you need is a reader and the xml address (the orange graphic above).
People with varying degrees of this understanding met today and shared their thoughts via a free Webcast. Here are a couple of my notes:
Dan Gillmor: “Something RSS does (although not fully appreciated) is it may be the perfect vehicle for doing news delivery to small devices. I don’t think people understand how important this might be for the delivery of news.”
Dave Winer: “Innovation isn’t what it’s about. Value is the right word. The value is in all the people who write about news events from their points of view and then provide that to others via RSS, so I don’t have to rely on the monoculture of the big media to keep me informed. It’s a decentralized communications medium.”
Jim Moore, Director of Internet & Information Services at Dean for America: “We have our chins up in one sense. We’d love to have won Iowa, but we do think we helped promote political participation in Iowa. Among 17-30 year olds, twice as many people participated as before. We didn’t win that group, but we do believe the Web and blogging helped create that turnout. Sometimes you can do good but not get any benefit out of it. We might actually succeed and not win the election.”
Steve Gillmor: “We’ll see the rich media, fulltext feeds, video, etc., that will provide an economic model that will circle around and provide advertisers and other interested parties with information from the readers that’ll make this work. We’re overlooking the innate power of RSS to create the personalized newspaper. You become the editor of your world. That’s really largely untouched and when they intersect as disruptive technologies, it’ll explode.”
I agree with Dan Gillmor that this profoundly simple piece of technology will play a very important role in the delivery of news in our Postmodern world. A news organization that doesn’t make their content available via RSS is missing what will ultimately turn out to be a very significant audience.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Notes from the RSS WinterFest Webcast
Notes from the RSS WinterFest Webcast
I got into RSS (Really Simple Syndication) only a few months ago and have come to believe it’s the most amazing Web technology to come down the pike. I’ve explained many times here, including in one of my essays, but it’s one of those things that’s really difficult to explain. You have to use it to understand. This blog is available via RSS feed. All you need is a reader and the xml address (the orange graphic above).
People with varying degrees of this understanding met today and shared their thoughts via a free Webcast. Here are a couple of my notes:
Dan Gillmor: “Something RSS does (although not fully appreciated) is it may be the perfect vehicle for doing news delivery to small devices. I don’t think people understand how important this might be for the delivery of news.”
Dave Winer: “Innovation isn’t what it’s about. Value is the right word. The value is in all the people who write about news events from their points of view and then provide that to others via RSS, so I don’t have to rely on the monoculture of the big media to keep me informed. It’s a decentralized communications medium.”
Jim Moore, Director of Internet & Information Services at Dean for America: “We have our chins up in one sense. We’d love to have won Iowa, but we do think we helped promote political participation in Iowa. Among 17-30 year olds, twice as many people participated as before. We didn’t win that group, but we do believe the Web and blogging helped create that turnout. Sometimes you can do good but not get any benefit out of it. We might actually succeed and not win the election.”
Steve Gillmor: “We’ll see the rich media, fulltext feeds, video, etc., that will provide an economic model that will circle around and provide advertisers and other interested parties with information from the readers that’ll make this work. We’re overlooking the innate power of RSS to create the personalized newspaper. You become the editor of your world. That’s really largely untouched and when they intersect as disruptive technologies, it’ll explode.”
I agree with Dan Gillmor that this profoundly simple piece of technology will play a very important role in the delivery of news in our Postmodern world. A news organization that doesn’t make their content available via RSS is missing what will ultimately turn out to be a very significant audience.
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The eyes change, but the downstream view doesn’t.
The eyes change, but the downstream view doesn’t.
BusinessWeek’s Ronald Glover gives us his take on the future of TV, and it’s more of the same.
Now, TV — network and cable — has new and potentially greater competitor in DVDs, computer games, and the Internet. All you have to do is check with your teenager — as I have done — to figure out she doesn’t know NBC from MTV, or CBS from a Friends DVD. The networks are going to have trouble down the road if they don’t figure out a way to get the viewers of the future back from their game players, PCs, and DVD machines.In the next few years, an even bigger distraction is coming in the guise of the digital video recorder (DVR) — the time-shifting, ad-zapping machine that will allow folks to retrieve programs from last night, last month, or just about anywhere in the TV universe. Satellite and cable companies, in a fierce battle to win subscribers, will soon be all but giving DVRs away.
(Source: I Want Media)
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The eyes change, but the downstream view doesn’t.
The eyes change, but the downstream view doesn’t.
BusinessWeek’s Ronald Glover gives us his take on the future of TV, and it’s more of the same.
Now, TV — network and cable — has new and potentially greater competitor in DVDs, computer games, and the Internet. All you have to do is check with your teenager — as I have done — to figure out she doesn’t know NBC from MTV, or CBS from a Friends DVD. The networks are going to have trouble down the road if they don’t figure out a way to get the viewers of the future back from their game players, PCs, and DVD machines.In the next few years, an even bigger distraction is coming in the guise of the digital video recorder (DVR) — the time-shifting, ad-zapping machine that will allow folks to retrieve programs from last night, last month, or just about anywhere in the TV universe. Satellite and cable companies, in a fierce battle to win subscribers, will soon be all but giving DVRs away.
(Source: I Want Media)
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Myers: More of the same downstream
Myers: More of the same downstream
MediaLife’s “5 questions” segment this week features Jack Myers, influential television and advertising prognosticator.
How do you think the television landscape will evolve over the next year or two?In two years, we will look back and see that the indicators available today were pointing in a clear direction of continued fragmentation, growth of digital distribution, growth of satellite penetration, broadcast network erosion, more accountability and auditing in advertising, shifts of budgets into more direct and promotional media opportunities, and new programmer/advertiser relationships.
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Myers: More of the same downstream
Myers: More of the same downstream
MediaLife’s “5 questions” segment this week features Jack Myers, influential television and advertising prognosticator.
How do you think the television landscape will evolve over the next year or two?In two years, we will look back and see that the indicators available today were pointing in a clear direction of continued fragmentation, growth of digital distribution, growth of satellite penetration, broadcast network erosion, more accountability and auditing in advertising, shifts of budgets into more direct and promotional media opportunities, and new programmer/advertiser relationships.
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Multi-tasking on steroids!
Multi-tasking on steroids!
The closest I ever got to serious video games was watching my daughters play them. I prefer games that require you to think (I’m a freecell nut) over games that require you to act and react. But, of course, I’m just an old fogey. So I’m amazed — but not surprised — that the folks at Nintendo are coming out with a new Gameboyesque machine with two screens. Here’s what Reuters has to say:
Nintendo said the dual screens on the new game machine would let players see the same game from two different perspectives, or see game action on one screen while looking at a map of the game environment on the other.
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Multi-tasking on steroids!
Multi-tasking on steroids!
The closest I ever got to serious video games was watching my daughters play them. I prefer games that require you to think (I’m a freecell nut) over games that require you to act and react. But, of course, I’m just an old fogey. So I’m amazed — but not surprised — that the folks at Nintendo are coming out with a new Gameboyesque machine with two screens. Here’s what Reuters has to say:
Nintendo said the dual screens on the new game machine would let players see the same game from two different perspectives, or see game action on one screen while looking at a map of the game environment on the other.
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Pop-ups on their way out. Or not.
Pop-ups on their way out. Or not.
The complaints from Internet users about the intrusive nature of pop-up ads have long been an obvious signal to the ad community that old media tactics won’t be tolerated in the new. Yet the ads have continued, because they’ve been effective, especially those of Orbitz. Their ads, however, are interactive games, so the intrusion doesn’t seem so in-your-face. (full disclosure: I’m a confessed Orbitz miniature golf nut.)
So software that blocks pop-ups came to the rescue and is now becoming rather widespread. AOL, Yahoo and Google distribute software that blocks pop-up ads, and Microsoft will put a pop-up blocking feature in the next release of Internet Explorer this summer. The New York Times has a good overview of the issue, including the excuse of the ad industry.
“I haven’t spoken to any people who say I love pop-ups, send me more of them,” said David J. Moore, the chief executive of 24/7 Real Media, an online advertising firm. “But they are part of a quid pro quo. If you want to enjoy the content of a Web site that is free, the pop-ups come with it.”
MediaDailyNews reported yesterday on a California company’s release of new software called “Popstitial” that actually uses pop-up blockers to serve an ad impression to users.
Popstitial doesn’t defeat pop blockers. Instead, a code in the ad determines whether a pop-up or pop-under is being thwarted. Then Popstitial serves up a full-page advertisement that can either be a separate ad - using Flash, video, animation or static images - or the same style as the missed pop-up/pop-under.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Pop-ups on their way out. Or not.
Pop-ups on their way out. Or not.
The complaints from Internet users about the intrusive nature of pop-up ads have long been an obvious signal to the ad community that old media tactics won’t be tolerated in the new. Yet the ads have continued, because they’ve been effective, especially those of Orbitz. Their ads, however, are interactive games, so the intrusion doesn’t seem so in-your-face. (full disclosure: I’m a confessed Orbitz miniature golf nut.)
So software that blocks pop-ups came to the rescue and is now becoming rather widespread. AOL, Yahoo and Google distribute software that blocks pop-up ads, and Microsoft will put a pop-up blocking feature in the next release of Internet Explorer this summer. The New York Times has a good overview of the issue, including the excuse of the ad industry.
“I haven’t spoken to any people who say I love pop-ups, send me more of them,” said David J. Moore, the chief executive of 24/7 Real Media, an online advertising firm. “But they are part of a quid pro quo. If you want to enjoy the content of a Web site that is free, the pop-ups come with it.”
MediaDailyNews reported yesterday on a California company’s release of new software called “Popstitial” that actually uses pop-up blockers to serve an ad impression to users.
Popstitial doesn’t defeat pop blockers. Instead, a code in the ad determines whether a pop-up or pop-under is being thwarted. Then Popstitial serves up a full-page advertisement that can either be a separate ad - using Flash, video, animation or static images - or the same style as the missed pop-up/pop-under.
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Breathing a dangerous sigh of relief
Breathing a dangerous sigh of relief
There’s a breeze in the air today, the collective sighs of all those who’ve feared the Internet was going to sweep away their jobs and their empires. I’m talking about Modernist institutional types who’ve been in denial, as disruptive technologies have eaten away at the foundation of their businesses. They’ve been waiting for a day like this to point to and say, “Aha! I told you so!” So it is with the 3rd place showing of Howard Dean in the Iowa caucuses last night.
It is a dangerous mistake to misinterpret what happened in Iowa as a failure of the Internet, and even more dangerous to come away with the assumption that the status quo is safe. It is not.
Elections are always about candidates, not the tools they use.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Breathing a dangerous sigh of relief
Breathing a dangerous sigh of relief
There’s a breeze in the air today, the collective sighs of all those who’ve feared the Internet was going to sweep away their jobs and their empires. I’m talking about Modernist institutional types who’ve been in denial, as disruptive technologies have eaten away at the foundation of their businesses. They’ve been waiting for a day like this to point to and say, “Aha! I told you so!” So it is with the 3rd place showing of Howard Dean in the Iowa caucuses last night.
It is a dangerous mistake to misinterpret what happened in Iowa as a failure of the Internet, and even more dangerous to come away with the assumption that the status quo is safe. It is not.
Elections are always about candidates, not the tools they use.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »