The second edition of Mass Communication: Living in a Media World is now available at the very student-friendly price of $45. (Yes, the new edition sells for less than used copies often do of the first edition.) It features a newly strengthened media literacy focus, greater depth on a number of topics, extensive coverage of "long-tail" media, and new chapters on media effects and global media. For more information, visit the CQ Press website.
Inaugural Videos From C-SPAN As an example of this shift of video from television to the Web, here are videos of presidential inaugural addresses posted to YouTube from C-SPAN's archives:
President Barack Obama's 2009 Inauguration and Inaugural Address
C-SPAN's Broadcast of the Inauguration.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 Inauguration
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 Inaugural Address
President Ronald Reagan's 1981 Inaugural Address
President Bill Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Address
And Finally... Lincoln Memorial Obama Inaugural Festivities
HBO's broadcast of the pre-inauguration concert and festivities.
The Earthquake In Slow Motion Continues Dept.
Back in 1991, Ken Auletta wrote book the book Three Blind Mice about the great change taking place in the television industry that he called an earthquake in slow motion. This is an earthquake that continues to rumble nearly two decades later.
Young People Watch More Video on Web Than on TV
At the time Auletta wrote his book, the big change was the world of cable television; today it is the world of online video. A recent study shows that young people are now watching more video online than on television.
YouTube Creates Congressional Channels
As an example of this change, YouTube is creating Congressional channels where senators and representatives can post video to go out to their constituents. This is in many ways a child born of the work done by C-SPAN - a television network designed to deliver the actions of our government directly into our homes. And while C-SPAN is still a substantial force on cable, it has an even bigger presence on the Web.
Given that this is a blog about mass communication issues, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, I’m reprinting this essay of mine on Dr. King as a brilliant practitioner of public relations:
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. displayed a brilliant understanding of public relations throughout the campaign to integrate the South in the 1950s and 1960s. King knew that it would take a combination of action, words, and visibility in the media to eliminate segregation laws and integrate lunch counters, restrooms, water fountains, and businesses. He practiced PR in churches, hotel rooms, and even jail.
In 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights group, wanted to do something highly visible that would let the entire nation see the evils of segregation. The goal of the campaign was to hold nonviolent demonstrations and resistance that would force segregated stores and businesses to be opened to African Americans.
King and his colleagues picked Birmingham, Alabama, as one of their targets, in part because the city’s police commissioner was Eugene “Bull” Conner. Conner was a racist who could be counted on to attack peaceful marchers. King’s campaign was called Project C, for confrontation, and it included press conferences, leaflets, and demonstrations in front of hundreds of reporters and photographers. Starting in April 1963, African American volunteers marched in the streets, held sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, and boycotted local businesses. As the protests started, so did the arrests. The story was covered by the New York Times and the Washington Post. King and his colleagues knew that all the protests in the world would be ineffective if they were not covered by the press, and that being beaten up by police would accomplish little if there were no photographers present to document the event.
David Halberstam, who was a newspaper reporter in the South at the time, commented on the civil rights leaders’ understanding of public relations:
“The key was to lure the beast of segregation out in the open. Casting was critical: King and his aides were learning that they needed to find the right venue, a place where the resistance was likely to be fierce, and the right local official to play the villain. Neither was a problem: King had no trouble finding men like …. Bull Connor, who were in their own way looking for him, just as he was looking for them.”
On Good Friday, King and Ralph Abernathy joined in the marching so that they would be arrested. While King was in jail, he wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail, which was smuggled out and published as a brochure. His eloquent words, given added force by having been written in jail, were reprinted across the country.
After King was released, he and his followers raised the stakes. Adults would no longer march and be arrested; instead, children became vanguard of the movement. The images, which appeared in print media throughout the world, were riveting. In his biography of King,Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Stephen Oates writes, “Millions of readers in America--and millions overseas--stared at pictures of police dogs lunging at young marchers, of firemen raking them with jet streams, of club-wielding cops pinning a Negro woman to the ground.”
King faced criticism for allowing young people to face the dangers of marching in Birmingham. But he responded promptly by criticizing the white press, asking the reporters where they had been “during the centuries when our segregated social system had been misusing and abusing Negro children.”
Although there was rioting in Birmingham and King’s brother’s house was bombed, the campaign was ultimately successful. Business owners took down the “WHITE” and “COLORED” signs from drinking fountains and bathrooms, and anyone was allowed to eat at the lunch counters and sit on the buses. The successful protest in Birmingham set the stage for the March on Washington in August 1963, where King would give his famous I Have a Dream speech.
What Can Steve Jobs Tell Us About Death?
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Steve Job's and what he's done with Apple over the last decade. I was saddened, though not particularly surprised, to hear that he's taking a medical leave of absence from Apple. He had surgery four years ago for cancer, and he's been looking skeletal as of late. The link above is to an excerpt from a commencement address he gave around that time about living and dying.
How To Do A Great Press Kit Want to know how to draw attention to your event? Try a press kit like the one for the Red Bull MotoGP race at Indy last year.
Chicago Tribune Doing a Street Tabloid The Chicago Tribune is going to do a tabloid edition of the paper to sell on the streets, while keeping a broadsheet edition for home delivery. Will it help? I've always thought that tabs were much easier for commuters to read. Thanks to my friend Bill Case for the link.
Beethoven's Music Was a Full Peanuts Character
You know all the musical scores that appeared around the character of Schroeder in Peanuts? It wasn't just random notes. Charles Schultz used particular music each time to make a point to those who were paying attention. Kind of like the Chinese cussing on Firefly.
Campuses Experiment With eTextbooks
Northwest Missouri State University is experimenting by having students use Sony Readers to download textbooks for four different classes. The Readers are on loan to the students and publishing giant McGraw Hill is providing the electronic textbooks. According to the article from The Wired Campus, students liked the eBooks in principle, but missed the interactivity that they would have gotten by downloading the books to their laptops. As interesting as the blog entry is, the comments from professors who have used electronic textbooks are even better. From a media business perspective, I find it fascinating that the university had an agreement with publisher McGraw Hill to provide all the books. What a great way of getting a monopoly for a publisher..... (Mandatory Disclosure: My book started out as a McGraw Hill title for the first edition before moving over to CQ Press for the second.)
iPhone's Stanza eBook reader has 1 Million Downloads
As many people have pointed out, Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch are too small to be ideal eBook readers, but they have the advantage of a huge installed base. According to the Galley Cat blog, eBook reader app Stanza has now been downloaded more than 1 million times. Stanza is a free download, and while it is primarily for reading public domain books, there is also now a an online store to buy commercial titles. Wired magazine listed Stanza as one of its top 10 iPhone apps of 2008. Amazon's Kindle eBook is probably the best known of the electronic readers out there, along with Sony's Reader.
What Can You Do With a Blog? Just about anything, I suppose. But this winter/spring, I'm teaching a course in commentary and blogging, and so I want to look at what can a writer do with a blog as a tool for commenting on current events and pop culture. In short, what can you do with a blog that would be part of a media outlet? Here are few examples (and required reading for my commentary/blogging students):
Fishbowl DC Fishbowl DC is a for-profit blog run by MediaBistro that has gossip about the Washington, DC, press corps. It tends to reprint memos, announcements, and the like about the press, but does some original content such as the Fishbowl Interview, gossip items, and photos. But the best things is the Morning Reading List which is an indispensable source of press news.
librarian.net This is a blog by Jessamyn West, a library consultant, who writes about library issues, including databases, censorship, free speech, and the function of libraries. This is a great example of what can be done with a blog that couldn't be done any other way. For those of you who are interested, Jessamyn is also the daughter of Tom West, one of the main figures in Tracy Kidder's brilliant book The Soul Of A New Machine.
Blog of Death
This is an obit blog run by Jade Walker, a journalist who works for Yahoo. Not updated terribly often, but always interesting.
Clicks and Pops
I simply cannot say enough about this music/music history blog. I discovered it because I have a Google Alert set for British new wave musician Joe Jackson. Amid all the Shoeless Joe Jackson links was one to this blog that mentioned Jackson's book A Cure for Gravity. I followed the link, and found this blog about the music I love written by someone who can actually write. Alex, the blog's author, wrote a brilliant post about a friend of his named Julie who loved the band The Clash.
Plamegate: The Opera At the risk of being self-serving, here's a link to the most popular blog post I've written. You all ought to remember the Valerie Plame/Judith Miller case. While it was going on, it seemed to me to look like an almost operatic story, so I wrote a summary of the case, complete with operatic numbers, in the style of the plot summaries from the Saturday New York Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. It had to be a blog post because there simply was no place else in the world I could have published this. One of my students even put together a poster based on the opera!
What's New With The Site? Among the things I've worked on over the break is updating the right rail - the list of links on the right-hand side of the blog.
You may have noticed that there are now far fewer ombudsman links there now - that's because most of the papers that had ombudsmen last time I updated no longer do. The general consensus is that ombudsmen are dying off primarily because of the tough economic times, but Simon Dumenco, writing in AdAge, suggests that maybe there's no longer a need for ombudsmen. He writes that media business blogs like Romenesko and reader forums accomplish much of the job of the reader representative without the cost to the paper. (Note, the column by Dumenco that I mentioned was his most commented on article of the year.
I've also added a significant number of web comics links. Please note that while several are quite family friendly (i.e. Misery Loves Sherman), others tend towards the rude side (I'm thinkin' Least I Could Do). All of them have something significant to offer that you won't find on the comic page of your local newspaper.
I've still got a number of links to add, so be watching over the next couple of weeks.
Boton Globe's Photos of the Year
The Globe's feature comes in three parts from its photo blog The Big Picture. Somehow, presented as a scrolable list of photos, it's that much more dramatic. Great blog!
Worst Words of the Year
Lake Superior State University comes up the 2009 list of banished words - or the worst words of 2008. They include green, maverick, and Wall Street to Main Street. They also don't like Firefly's "not so much" which I still approve of.
Music
WP - Best Albums of 2008
This one is a twofer, with both the Post's critics (J. Freedom du Lac and David Malitz) and their less-qualified colleagues at the paper weighing in on the significant music of 2008.
Coverville Countdown 2008 Coverville's Brian Ibbott presents the top 40 most popular covers as voted on by the listeners to the Coverville podcast. A number of interesting new entries this year, along with the classics, such as William Shatner's cover of Common People.
Just for fun, I've added some really fun YouTube videos of these covers. I especially like the sock puppet version of the Polyphonic Spree.
Part 1
Including the Polyphonic Spree's version of Nirvana's Lithium.
Part 2
The White Stripes doing Dolly Parton's Jolene. What more could you ask from from a cover?
Part 3
Cool Pink Floyd covers from the Polka Floyd Show and Dar Williams.
Part 4
An absolutely brilliant (and endless!) cover of Dire Straights' Romeo and Juliet.
Part 5
All the hits you'ld expect, including Johnny Cash's version of Hurt, Jeff Buckley's take on Hallelujah, and Jonathan Coulton's incredible Baby Got Back.
It's Not Like It Takes a Brain Surgeon Dept. - Oh, Wait a Minute, Maybe It Does! Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General
There's been a lot of talk in the last day or so that CNN's medical reporter Sanjay Gupta will be Obama's surgeon general. I first learned about it on Facebook, where I thought it was a joke. It wasn't until the comments on Howard Kurtz's Facebook wall turned serious about the idea that I realized it was real. Gupta is best known as a television personality, but he's also a real-life brain surgeon. And if you think about it, the real job of the surgeon general is to communicate to the nation about major health issues. That's something that Gupta could do really well.
NY Times - Highs and Lows for 2008 Advertising
Advertising columnist Stuart Elliott looks at the best and worst of advertising for 2008. Successes include Burger King and Barack Obama; losers include Motrin and Volkswagen (Key lesson - don't make fun of mommies!)
Washington Post on the Future of the Big Four Broadcast Networks Television columnist Lisa de Moraes closed out her 2008 reporting on television by taking a look at the future, if it can be called that, of the Big Four broadcast networks. It's been a turbulent year for the networks, with the long-shaking earthquake-in-slow-motion picking up some pretty heavy aftershocks.
Media Law in Britain
Back before I took my Christmas break, we were looking at Scarlett Johansson's libel/invasion of privacy case against British Cosmo. Media law in Britain is considerably different from that in the US. Here's several recent stories from the UK Guardian on British media law:
MPs Call For Reform of Libel Laws
The members of parliament are attempting to limit the practice of "libel tourism" - the practice of non-Brits going to England to sue over material published in other countries but available in Britain.
Britain Looking to Expand Privacy Law
Madonna's multi-million dollar lawsuit against London's Daily Mail for publishing her wedding pictures without her consent has prompted a debate in England over what news outlets can publish without the subjects' permission. Britain's privacy law is drawn from the Human Rights Act that both protects freedom of the press and forces the press to justify invasions of privacy.
Elton John Loses Libel Case Over Satirical Commentary
Elton John lost a libel suit against the Guardian over a satirical article the pretended to be a diary entry by the famous singer. The judge in the case ruled that "irony" and "teasing" were not the same as defamation. There's not a lot of question that the article was mean spirited, but it was also pretty obvious to anyone reading it that the commentary was not an actual entry from John's diary.
Media News From Media Bistro's Daily Media News Feed Do you think we could get the word "media" in there any more times? Seriously, the Daily Media News Feed ought to be in your in box on a daily basis if it isn't already. Great roundup of significant media (sorry!) news. Subscribe to it here. The three following items all got there start from something I read in the DMNF.
Cable Newsers Audiences Skyrocket During Election Season
No surprise there. Fox News up by 41% in total viewers, CNN up by 72% in primetime, and MSNBC was up 84% in primetime. Fox has the highest overall audience, with CNN being the most watched network on election night, outdrawing even all of the Big Three broadcast networks.
Watergate Source "Deep Throat" Dies at Age 95
Mark Felt, Bob Woodward's secret off-the-record source during the Watergate scandal back in the 1970s, died Thursday at the age of 95. Felt had been the associate director of the FBI at the time. The identity of the source "Deep Throat" had been one of journalism's best kept secrets before Felt outed himself in 2005.
Actress Scarlett Johansson Gets Apology From British Cosmopolitan
Actress Scarlett Johansson demanded and received an apology and retraction from the British edition of Cosmopolitan magazine after the publication ran a profile of the actress in which they quoted her about her marriage. The actress is very private about her personal life and never discusses her marriage. She had threatened legal action against the magazine. Be watching here Monday for more on British media law.
What's Wrong With Articles In Scientific Journals?
This is a bit difficult to summarize, but Dr. John Ioannidis suggests that the only articles that get published are those that show the strongest results. Those with negative or weak results, which may actually be more typical outcomes, tend not to be published. Anyone who is going to cover the world of science needs to read or listen to this story from NPR's On The Media.
Everyone's Gone to the Movies Dept. - Dealing With Gay Kissing When straight male actors play gay characters, the point at which they kiss in the movie becomes the focus of all the stories written about the film. It's an impossible situation. The actors feel compelled to project their masculinity while not projecting homophobia. So they have to talk about the "ick" factor while not starting in on gay bashing. All of this is in the news because of the new movie Milk (starring Sean Penn and James Franco) that tells the story of Harvey Milk, the nation's first openly gay politician. Of course, there's very little talk about the opposite side of the fence - when gay actors play straight characters.
On a related note, gay activists in Italy complained when RAI TV cut scenes of gay sex and kissing from the movie Brokeback Mountain. They charged that if it had been men and women in the scenes, they would have been aired without any controversy at all. (Italian television has very different standards than American television.) Representatives of RAI said they got an edited print from the distributor so that's the version they aired.
BTW, you can file this one under Truth 3 - Everything from the margin moves to the center.
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Given that this is a blog about mass communication issues, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, I’m reprinting this essay of mine on Dr. King as a brilliant practitioner of public relations:
,
Stephen Oates writes, “Millions of readers in America--and millions overseas--stared at pictures of police dogs lunging at young marchers, of firemen raking them with jet streams, of club-wielding cops pinning a Negro woman to the ground.” 
.