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Dec 2

When it comes to newspapers, bet on the 25 year olds and Plan B

If you believed ... that the current form of the newspaper remains a good general fit for public interest journalism, merely going through a rough patch, then you’d be eager to dial down the ‘try anything’ ethic in favor of the hard, grinding work of rebuilding and shoring up the institutions that have served us so well these last several decades.

But if you believe, as I do, that many of those institutions are so mismatched to the task at hand that most of them face a choice, at best, between radical restructure and outright collapse, well, in that case, you’d probably find the smartest 25 year olds you know, and try to convince them that now would be a pretty good time to start working on Plan B.

Clay Shirky via http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2011/12/institutions-confidence-and-the-news-crisis

Filed under  //  journalism   media   technology  

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Jun 22

The media isn't so good with data and math

the media isn't so good with data, with actual mathematics. Our stock-in-trade is the anecdote. Despite a complete lack of solid evidence, we've been telling people their cell phones will give them cancer. Our society ping pongs between eating and not eating carbs, drinking too much coffee and not enough water, getting more Omega-3s -- all on the basis of epidemiological research that is far, far, far from definitive. Most reporters do not know how to evaluate research studies, and so they report the authors' conclusions without any critical evaluation -- and studies need critical evaluation.
via http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/06/the-necessity-of-data-journalism-in-the-new-digital-community173.html

Filed under  //  journalism   media   research  

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Jun 17

We're paying for our crappy news media

[The news is] something we buy, something we pay for.

We're paying for superficial analyses, talking points, shouting heads, *****gate of the moment, herd journalism and silly local urgencies instead of important international trends. We're paying for fast instead of good. We believe we're paying for hard questions being asked, but we're not getting what we're paying for.

We might pay with a dollar at the newsstand, but we're probably paying with our attention, with attention that is turned into ad sales.

Too often, we fail to stop and say, "Wait, I paid for that?"

Almost everything else we buy is of far higher quality than it was twenty years ago. . . . Is the same thing true of your news?

Seth Godin via http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/06/who-pays-for-the-media.html

Filed under  //  journalism   media  

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May 11

Are iPads a healthy replacement for TV?

Everybody’s asking: Are iPads healthy for children?

I’m here to tell you: That’s the wrong question.

The right question is this: Is the iPad a healthy *replacement* for TV? And I believe the answer is a resounding yes.

Mike Elgan via http://www.cultofmac.com/why-every-child-in-america-needs-an-ipad/93887

Filed under  //  media   technology  

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May 8

Arrogant journalism

As the debate about the NYT’s responsibility to these fixers rages, Keller’s response is to ignore both it and them entirely, as though neither the debate nor the fixers even exist. Just like Brisbane, Keller makes sure that every single link in his column is an internal one, to some other NYT web page — I count 26 different links between the two columns, which implies that in the eyes of the New York Times, the 26 most important online resources to link to when writing those columns are all NYT stories or pages. It’s as arrogant as it is hermetic.
Felix Salmon via http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/05/08/the-hermetic-and-arrogant-new-york-times

Filed under  //  journalism   media  

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May 8

The metabolism of policy v. the metabolism of the media

the metabolism of policy runs much more slowly than the metabolism of the media. . . . A President lives at the intersection of historic decisions like [the one to take out Osama bin Laden] and a media environment in which Donald Trump can make outlandish claims about the President's birthplace - and shoot to the top of Republican presidential polls. The distance between those two worlds is mind-bending.

Filed under  //  journalism   media   politics  

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Apr 25

Netflix now has more video subscribers than Comcast

Netflix knocked over a new milestone Monday: It now has more subscribers than the largest cable TV operator in the U.S.

Netflix's global subscriber base grew almost 70% over the past year, to 23.6 million users. With that audience, it dethroned Comcast as the country's biggest provider of subscription video content. More than 7% of Americans now subscribe to Netflix.

via http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/25/technology/netflix_earnings/index.htm?iid=RNM

Filed under  //  didyouknow   media   technology  

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Dec 16

Greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation

the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.

So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false. This study corroborates a previous PIPA study that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that demonstrated the break with reality on the part of Fox viewers with regard to health care. The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.

In eight of the nine questions below, Fox News placed first in the percentage of those who were misinformed (they placed second in the question on TARP). That’s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud.

via http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/study_confirms_that_fox_news_makes_you_stupid

Filed under  //  journalism   media   politics   society  

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