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.
Sales of Nintendo Wii Fall for First Time Ever
Three years after it was released, the number of Wii's sold has declined. And it's not the only on. The Sony PS3 hit a two-year low. On the other hand, gamers are playing their consoles more than ever. What's going on? We're in a recession. Buying video game consoles is expensive. Playing them is cheap.
Last week, people who purchased copies of the two classics discovered that Amazon had erased the books from their Kindles and refunded the purchase price. It turns out that that the company offering the two books through Amazon did not have the legal right to be selling them. So Amazon used it's electronic connection to take the text of the eBook readers.
This highlights one of the key conflicts of the new electronic media world. It doesn't really feel like we own the media content be buy, we just have access to it as long as the company we bought it from wants us to have it. NPR's On The Mediaran a great story this last weekend looking at how this issue applies to things like music purchased online that has Digital Rights Management controls on them.
To their credit, Amazon realized that they had made a bad mistake. They realized that if you bought an illegal paperback copy of a book, Amazon wouldn't be able to take it back. And it should be no different for eBooks.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos posted an unambiguous apology on the company's web site that had none of the weaselyness that company apologies often have. He writes:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
I have to say admire the spin control coming out of Amazon. You don't often hear real apologies from major corporations. But Amazon's promise, however heartfelt, doesn't eliminate people's fears. Brad Stone, writing in the New York Times points out:
A growing number of civil libertarians and customer advocates wants Amazon to fundamentally alter its method for selling Kindle books, lest it be forced to one day change or recall books, perhaps by a judge ruling in a defamation case — or by a government deciding a particular work is politically damaging or embarrassing.
Stone quotes a law professor who says that deleting the illegal copy of 1984 was the right thing to do with all the problems associated with online copyright. Especially since Amazon refunded everyone's money.
I beg to differ. I've contemplated buying a Kindle, but have yet to pull the trigger on it. What do I like about it? If I need a book all of a sudden at the last minute, I could get it through my Kindle. But if that book could disappear at a moments notice, I could be in a huge amount of hurt. Suppose you were writing a paper on Orwell and discovered at midnight the day before your paper is due that the copy of the book you bought a month earlier had disappeared? A $1.99 refund at that point wouldn't be worth much. (Though I had no trouble finding a copy of 1984 online. You get the point.)
A fascinating case that goes way beyond just the Kindle.
Controversial Cell Phone Commercial From Israel. Can you do a funny/feel-good commercial for cell phones based on Palestinian/Israeli relationships? Yes, absolutely. Ought you do so? That might be a different question. (Slate)
Going through a very busy time right now. Will keep having links, but I'm going to have to keep the comments to a minimum over the next few weeks.
All Things Comic-Con San Diego The San Diego Comic-Con is the event for geek pop culture. Comic books, graphic novels, sci-fi movies and television, you name it, it's there. Most of my favorite web comic artists will be there, as will the folks from LOST. I would give anything to be there. Here are a host of links on the topic:
Comic Riffs by Michael Cavna
Comic oriented blog from the Washington Post. Just discovered this today. Will definitely go on my reading list.
Going through a very busy time right now. Will keep having links, but I'm going to have to keep the comments to a minimum over the next few weeks.
Things I Learned Researching The 3rd Edition of Mass Communication: Living in a Media World
Here's a few things I've learned recently while working on the third edition of my textbook.
Going through a very busy time right now. Will keep having links, but I'm going to have to keep the comments to a minimum over the next few weeks.
Uncle Walter and the Moon
Wish I had time for an elaborate post today. It seems so fitting that Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS News anchor, died on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Thanks to my friend Brian Steffen for pointing me to the YouTube video of CBS coverage of the moon landing and the JFK Presidential Library online exhibit We Choose The Moon.
Media News
Going through a very busy time right now. Will keep having links, but I'm going to have to keep the comments to a minimum over the next few weeks.
Media Business News
Going through a very busy time right now. Will keep having links, but I'm going to have to keep the comments to a minimum over the next few weeks.
Book Publishers Fighting With Amazon Over eBook Pricing.
According to Slate's Jack Shafer, publishers are fighting with Amazon over selling electronic versions of their books for the Kindle at $9.99. That's a lot less than hardcover prices of more than $20, and paperbacks of $9 or more.
Approaches to Reporting the News A couple of stories have shown up in my news radar recently that add some interesting evidence to the debate over news presentation. If we put aside the debate as to whether there is an unstated liberal/conservative bias to the news, lets look at the alternative question - Do we prefer to have our news presented with a point of view (ideally one we agree with) or in a truly neutral manner.
For those voting for neutral presentation, make sure you tune in to C-SPAN all this week for coverage of the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Unlike the commercial news networks, C-SPAN covers events from beginning to end without commentary and without interruption. They have very specific rules on how camera shots are to be handled. I've been watching/listening to the hearings via C-SPAN's web site this week on my computer. I have the choice of the C-SPAN 3 feed, or picking the view from any one of the three cameras C-SPAN has running in the room. The only way I know of to have truly neutral coverage of an event is to watch it for myself. And C-SPAN lets me do that. I should note that most cable companies only air C-SPAN 1 and 2. And while they are carrying much of the hearings, if you want the full story you need to go to the Internet based C-SPAN 3.
On the other hand, might there be value in news presented from an explicit point of view? NPR's On The Mediaran a story last weekend about the late journalist I.F. Stone. Stone was an unapologetic leftist whom some accused of being a communist. Stone made no bones about approaching news from a leftist point of view, and reported stories in I.F. Stone's Weeklythat Big Media took years to catch up with. Yes, Stone actually was the liberal media, but he sure wasn't mainstream. His commitment to reporting on under-reported issues took him to stories we needed to hear about.
Summer Movies I love summer movie season - I like the blockbusters, the little movies, the break-out sleepers. Here's what I'm looking forward to on both the big screen and on DVD.
District 9 Looks To Be a Brilliant Summer Alternative Action Thriller I don't know when I last saw a trailer that excited me so much about an action/thriller as when I saw the one for District 9 over at the great movie gossip site Movie Make-Out. (That's a lie - I do know when - Cloverfield.) This story about space aliens living in a ghetto in Johannesburg, South Africa looks to tell us a very different kind of alien story than we've often seen. The movie has a couple of cool web sites associated with it as well. (One of the authors of Movie Make-Out is also the creator of my favorite movie-themed web comic, Multiplex.)
Bruno, Cohen's gay-parody follow-up to Borat, did take the top spot at the box office this weekend with a $30 million take. But it took in half that money it's opening day. So while there was a solid group of people who wanted to see this movie, it is not clear at all whether there is a larger audience for it. The movie has been criticized by gay activist group GLAAD, and it is possible that the country as a whole simply doesn't view the movie as funny.
And Finally, Lonely Are The Brave Finally Gets A Real DVD Release Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm a huge fan of both the Edward Abbey novel The Brave Cowboy and of the Kirk Douglas movie made of it called Lonely are the Brave. I have an aging VHS print of it, but last week Lonely are the Brave finally got a DVD release from a major publisher. (There had been some semi-pirated releases and foreign editions, but no full-fledged American releases.) This is the story of cowboy Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas), a sheriff trying to catch him (Walter Matthau), and a truck diver with a cargo of toilets (Carroll O'Connor). Here are a couple of interviews with Kirk Douglas talking about Lonely are the Brave, which he describes as one of his favorite movies.
It's the middle of the week, and that means it's time to see what my Facebook friends have posted about media news.
Fbooked by Howard Kurtz - Deconstructing Sarah
Former vice presidential candidate and soon-to-be former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has had a difficult time with the media. Never more so than when she unexpectedly announced she was resigning as Alaska's governor. What I find very interesting through all this is that Palin was a journalism major in college and is a former television reporter. Oddly enough, she was part of the media. Just sayin....
Fbooked by Joel Beeson - Damon Rich Maps Misery
Who says that news has to be reported through written stories or traditional info-graphics? Computer tools let us take maps in whole new directions. Story from NY Times
This is the Transformer I Want Transformers II has been kicking butt and taking names at the box office the last coupla' weeks, but there is an even cooler Transformer video out there on YouTube. Check out Steve Twist's senior project in Computer Visualisation and Animation at Bournemouth University. This is so cool, I can't stand it!
Bad Idea Bears Say - "Let's Balance The Books By Charging For Access to WP Reporters and Public Figures" Have you seen the wonderful musical Avenue Q? It's sort of a "Rent meets Sesame Street" R-rated show. Among the best characters are the Bad Idea Bears, who pop up anytime someone has a decision to make. For example, when the character Princeton gets a check from his parents, the Bears suggest the best way to use the money is to "Buy beer!" instead of paying the rent or buying groceries.
I have to admit that I think the Bad Idea
bears paid a visit to the Washington Post last week.
Here's the scoop: Last week Politico reported that the Washington Post was planning an exclusive series of dinners at the home of the paper's publisher Katharine Weymouth where lobbyists and others could have off-the-record meeting with Post reporters, members of congress, and Obama administration officials. Apparently this was seen by management as a way of bringing in a new revenue stream to the paper. The Post's newsroom was reportedly "in an uproar" over this, and the planned luncheons were soon cancelled.
WP media correspondent Howard Kurtz had the unenviable responsibility of having to report on the story. It was sad following his Facebook feed all afternoon Friday as he realized the depths to which his paper had fallen.
I am a huge fan of the Post, and I can't tell you how disappointed I am in the paper for this fiasco.
Media News I Learned Wednesday By Reading Facebook
On Wednesday, it seemed like everyone was posting links to media news as part of their Facebook status updates. (Well, everyone I know, anyway.) Here's a sampling of what I learned on FB yesterday.
BYU Lifts YouTube Ban
Students and faculty at Brigham Young University can now access YouTube through the campus network without getting a special dispensation from IT. Previously the video sharing service was blocked on campus because there was a lot of questionable material up on the site. But the university now says there are so many educational resources on YouTube that they need to make it available on campus and rely on student and faculty good judgment to stay away from inappropriate materials.
YouTube Launches "How To Be a Citizen Journalist" Page
Following all of the citizen-journalism news coming out of Iran recently, YouTube is being taken more seriously as a news source. And to help with that, YouTube now has a "Reporters' Center" with lots of advice for aspiring video journalists.
Coverage of Iranian Protests Has Forced News Orgs to Change Reporting Rules
Blogs have always been willing to post news first and ask questions about authenticity later. But according to this story from the NY Times, legacy media (AKA the mainstream media) have been forced to report stories using unconfirmed sources about the protests in Iran because of the crackdown on journalists in that country. One of the biggest sources of news out of Iran has been video shot by non-journalists and then posted through social media sites. No question that it's great to have such alternative sources of news available. But should it be the basis of reports from what most of us would consider credible news outlets? That's the more difficult question.
Howard Kurtz Slow morning. No new Iran protests, no new sex scandals. Might have to do some reporting.
The big news was still Iran and the revelations about South Caroline governor Mark Sanford. I was putting together a post about the great job of reporting The State had done on the Sanford story. The paper had had the incriminating e-mails for several months, but hadn't reported on them because they didn't have the hard evidence needed to back them up. Then the paper sent reporter Gina Smith to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to stakeout the gate where passengers would exit from the plane from Buenos Aires. She was the only reporter there, and she got the first interview with Sanford. Good, old-fashioned Reporting 101 technique - an anonymous tip followed up by legwork.
Then the news came that 70s icon Farrah Fawcett had succumbed to her long battle with cancer. While she was best known for Charlie's Angels, a 1976 poster, and tragic-woman movies, she also made an excellent made-for-cable biopic about photographer Margaret Bourke-White's relationship with writer Erskine Caldwell.
And then late this afternoon the news broke on TMZ that Michael Jackson had been taken to the hospital suffering from cardiac arrest. If you've had the TV or the Internet on, you know the rest of the story by now. NBC and ABC went wall-to-wall with the story, as did the cable news channels. We have a revolution trying to take place in Iran, we have just lost the second Republican presidential hopeful in two weeks, and all that anyone wants to talk about is the death of Michael Jackson.
Here's a sample of the Facebook status messages that have shown up on my feed Thursday night.
Eric RIP MJ
Ali Ohh, Michael... Your music genius will be sorely missed in this world. :(
Matt is saddened by the passing of the King of Pop... Michael Jackson.
Lindsay RIP Michael Jackson Farrah and Ed!!!
Charley Said You Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' You Got To Be Startin' Somethin' 'Cause this is thriller, thriller night. If youre thinkin of being my baby it dont matter if youre black or white. Oh brother please have mercy 'cause I just can't take it. Stop pressurin me, just stop pressurin' me stop pressurin' me Make me wanna scream. Just beat it. So, Annie Are You OK Are You OK, Annie?
MK SO would have married Michael Jackson when I was twelve.
Garrett Michael Jackson already has three albums on the top 10 selling albums on itunes...just 3 hours after his death.
Alex why are people pissed about all the Michael Jackson status'. Same thing happened with Heath Ledger and you all didn't seem to care then? Silly opinionation.
Courtney Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958-June 25, 2009) Rest In Peace............I loved listening to his music growing up! So sad he is gone.........
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. You buy books from Amazon, the book downloads onto your Kindle, and you can read it whenever you want.
and of the Kirk Douglas movie made of it called 
. I have an aging VHS print of it, but last week Lonely are the Brave finally got a DVD release from a major publisher. (There had been some semi-pirated releases and foreign editions, but no full-fledged American releases.) This is the story of cowboy Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas), a sheriff trying to catch him (Walter Matthau), and a truck diver with a cargo of toilets (Carroll O'Connor). Here are a couple of interviews with Kirk Douglas talking about Lonely are the Brave, which he describes as one of his favorite movies.
Have you seen the wonderful musical 