Well talking about subversion of the democracy:

BUSH JOINS IN CONDEMNING N.Y. TIMES
U.S. President George W. Bush has joined the chairman of the House
homeland security committee in denouncing the New York Times for
publishing a story last week about a secret financial-monitoring
program used to trace alleged terrorists.
FULL STORY:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2006/06/26/congressman-new-york-times.html

A PS to this is that the Canadian government, and I'm sure others, is investigating the possibility that Canadain and International laws were broken with this secret financial-monitoring. Breaking laws has seldom stopped the White House in the past.

Remind me to tell you about the virtual reality world 2nd Life. See you next week for the last class. I have now gotten the video player worked out. Clark

I would like you to spend about 10 min. of your time looking over this web site of Reporters without Borders. Find the PDF of the Webs Black Holes and show it to me in the first 5 min. of class on Thur. and you'll get ten bonus points.

I have gotten some questions about this weeks assignment. A future story that you have to research yourself about the weather,fashion, business,the internet or what ever else you can think about were a future story would be appropriate. Good Luck. See you on Thur. Clark

We've talked about some of the threats to a free and open society and free and open news which is supposed to support it. Here is an article that clearly outlines this problem in the U.S.A. What happens there has often already happened in other places or is just about to.
Check it out at The Nation:>http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060703&s=crispinmiller
Mark Crispin Miller on the Death of News
Although its history is far from glorious, the US press has never been as bad as it is now.
Date filed: 25-06-2006

Along the lines of Tools for Journalists take a look at this:>http://www.mediachannel.org/getinvolved/journo/

Next weeks assignment, and the last one, is a future story. What is going to happen tomorrow,next week or next year in business, the weather or anything else such as fashion. You must not write a fantasy story, it should have basis in fact. We have two more classes. The class on the 13th of July will be off and there will be no class as that will be the make up for the Asahi Tour. Again look back over the last three or four entries and check out the tools for journalists. Clark

| Washington Post Reviews its 10 Years on the Web |
| from the i-also-collect-spores-molds-and-fungus dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday June 19, @19:22 (The Media) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/19/221222 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]anaesthetica writes "The Washington Post is featuring three stories
today reviewing their experience in adapting the "old media" to the new
environment of the web. The first article examines their revelation that
'The news, as "lecture," is giving way to the [1]news as a "conversation".'
The second looks at the '[2]Kaiser memo' which served as the germinating
point for what would become WashingtonPost.com, phrased in language that
today seems amusingly quaint. The final article looks at the [3]death of
traditional print newspapers as consumers flock to internet sources for
their news."

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/06/19/221222

Links:
0. http://slashdot.org/~anaesthetica/journal/
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800618.html
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800743.html
3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/13/AR2006061300929.html

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Earth Sandwich |
| from the no-mayo-mayo-sucks dept. |
| posted by timothy on Monday June 19, @13:22 (It's funny. Laugh.)|
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/19/1718219 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

yourhotneighbor writes "If you haven't seen Ze Frank's hilarious
[0]videoblog, it's worth checking out. A few weeks ago he challenged
visitors to create an "Earth Sandwich" where two pieces of bread are
placed exactly opposite each other on the globe. Google mashups showing
[1]what's on the opposite side of the Earth and [2]a live GeoRSS-based
bread gallery were provided. A piece [3]on NPR this Saturday details the
concept and a team from New Zealand and Spain [4]completed the challenge.
Then on Friday he allowed his show to be written by his viewers who
battled out 2,000+ script revisions in a Wiki. Sunday's New York Times
[5]describes the results."

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/06/19/1718219

Links:
0. http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/06/061206.html
1. http://www.zefrank.com/sandwich/tool.html
2. http://www.zefrank.com/sandwich/status.html
3. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5492174
4. http://scourist.com/2006/06/09/0009-earth-sandwich/
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/fashion/sundaystyles/18ze.html

Please look at the entry before this one....and then maybe you should tatoo this next URL on the inside of your left thumb.;>}
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm
YOU WILL FIND SOME OF THE BEST TOOLS TO HELP YOU BECOME THE 'YOU' YOU NEED TO BE TO BE A GREAT JOURNALIST

Well the Asahi tour was again very good. Only 13 students came however and 20 had commited to come. At any rate I have just run across a wonderful idea 'The Twelve Things Journalists Should Know About.......' and the illustrated example is interviewing people about the future. Everyone please check it out and we will discuss it next class. Twelve Things Journalists Need To Know to be Good Futurist/Foresight Reporters:>http://www.openthefuture.com/2006/06/twelve_things_journalists_need.html< Have a good day, week, month, year, decade, life.

Well this coming Monday the 19th of June is the big day for the Asahi Newspaper tour. You are all expected to come and will be given an additional 50 points for attending. We will meet at 12:50 infront of the Asahi Newspaper Building. See you there. Clark

Hi we will be looking at CBC.ca the Canadian Broadcasting site and interviews with their foreign correspondents next class, you might want to check them out ahead of time, or not ;>}. Your assignment for this week as a local story and you have to attribute at the end or in the story at least three different sources. The idea is that the more points of view that you investigate the better the reporting and the final story. Also I have posted class pictures on flickr. Check my website for the address. See you on Thur. I'll be looking at your blogs tomorrow. Clark

Good Reporting? What is it? Well here's an example:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Crashing the Wiretapper's Ball |
| from the hardly-shocking dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Thursday June 01, @11:32 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/01/156213 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

An anonymous reader writes "Wired is running an article with some great
investigative journalism. Writer Thomas Green [0]snuck into the ISS World
Conference, a trade show featuring communications-tapping equipment and
normally a press-free event. There, he got some very interesting quotes
from the attendees." From the article: "You really need to educate
yourself ... Do you think this stuff doesn't happen in the West? Let me
tell you something. I sell this equipment all over the world, especially
in the Middle East. I deal with buyers from Qatar, and I get more concern
about proper legal procedure from them than I get in the USA."

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/06/01/156213

Links:
0. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71022-0.html

It's a dangerous job but someone has to do it - don't they?
IRAQ THE MOST DEADLY WAR FOR REPORTERS
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002577061
The Iraq war "is now the deadliest war for reporters in the past
century," reports Editor and Publisher. Seventy-one journalists and
26 media support staff have been killed in Iraq since 2003. That
compares to 69 journalists killed in World War II, 63 in Vietnam and
17 in Korea. In addition, at least 42 journalists have been
kidnapped in Iraq, according to Reporters Without Borders. As the
New York Times notes, "it is Iraqi journalists who have been most at
risk. Just this month, three Iraqi reporters were killed in a
two-week period." The news comes as CBS reports that two of its crew
members were killed in Iraq. Cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman
James Brolan are believed to be "the first embedded journalists to
die since 2003."
SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, May 29, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4837

Just got this from the publisher:7copies of Writing and Reporting News , 4th ed have just arrived here.
The bookstore will recieve them tomorrow.

Can you buy the truth? From the New York Times:
An investigation of military propaganda in Iraq warns that
paying for positive stories could damage U.S. credibility
there and undermine the concept of a free press.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/world/middleeast/24propaganda.html?th&emc=th

What might be happening in the media world. Here is a col. by a well known Canadian writting for the Globe and Mail Canada's priemier paper.
Social networks are hot, but where's all the cash?


If septuagenarian billionaire Rupert Murdoch wanted to stir things up in the media industry, he couldn't have picked a better way to do it than by paying more than half-a-billion dollars for a website that most media executives had probably never heard of.

The MySpace.com deal sent shock waves through the traditional media world, which is busy trying to grapple with the fragmentation caused by the rise of blogs and Web-based content, and also through the ranks of the on-line giants such as Yahoo and Microsoft.

Since the deal was announced last summer, the various players have been scrambling to find their own way into the "social networking" space, whether by buying on-line communities -- such as Vancouver-based Flickr.com and del.icio.us, both of which were bought by Yahoo -- or by partnering with existing players. Last year, media and entertainment giant Viacom bought NeoPets.com, an on-line community aimed at preteens, a market many advertisers see as a key growth area. And there were reports earlier this year that Facebook.com, a social networking site aimed at university students, was pitching itself to potential buyers at a valuation of $2-billion (U.S.).

Some of those who were around in the late nineties may feel as though they've seen this movie before, back when the hot "social networks" were Web page communities known as GeoCities, Tripod, Homestead and theglobe.com. For those who are keeping track at home, Yahoo bought GeoCities in 1999 for $3.5-billion, and Lycos, which bought Tripod, was acquired by Mexican media giant Terra for $12.5-billion.

The latest move in the social networking space came last week from AOL, the former Time Warner basket case, which announced a MySpace-style social network called AIM Pages. Designed as an extension of AOL's instant messenger product, known as AIM, the new service includes the ability to create blogs. Like Yahoo and Microsoft, AOL is trying hard to find ways of leveraging its massive subscriber base (49 million, in AOL's case).

One of the sticky issues that both AOL and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. will have to confront, however, is how to justify the money they are spending on social networks. In the end, all those supposedly loyal users have to get converted into money, or "monetized" as financial types like to say.

It's true that based on certain estimates, MySpace is the second most-visited website in the world, with almost 30 billion page views in March -- almost twice as many as the Time Warner network (including AOL) and almost three times as many as eBay. And MySpace has about 70 million users. But it's not clear how much money it is actually making. Certainly not as much as eBay.

Even in terms of revenue, MySpace is well behind other sites that are about the same size. Its page-view number was just a shade less than Yahoo's 32 billion (for March), and yet the site's estimated revenue of $200-million for this year pales in comparison with Yahoo's almost $6-billion.

The bottom line is that Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have been able to gain substantial amounts of ad revenue from their users, but so far MySpace has not. And that is a hurdle faced by many social networking sites. How can you monetize those users without pushing them away or ruining your brand?

According to recent estimates gathered by The New York Times, MySpace has an advertising rate (known as the CPM or cost per thousand) of about 10 cents, which means advertisers are only willing to pay 10 cents for every 1,000 page views. Some Web networks charge as much as $2 per 1,000, and established media sites can charge as much as $10.

Web advertising experts say there are two reasons why MySpace may not be getting as much for its ads: One is that the number of page views it generates seems abnormally large, and advertisers may be suspicious of how valuable each one is; and the second reason is that MySpace is seen as a hangout for teens, who are a notoriously fickle market.

According to a recent article in the Financial Times, MySpace is talking with both Google and Microsoft about a partnership that would involve search-based advertising on MySpace. A similar deal was signed last year between Google and AOL, in a deal that was worth about $1-billion to Time Warner.

At the same time, however, anyone who is considering either investing in or advertising on a site like MySpace or Facebook has to be thinking not just about the fate of GeoCities and Tripod, but also about a service such as Friendster, which was arguably as big a deal three years ago as MySpace is now. At its peak, Friendster had 20 million users, but now it is a mere fraction of its former size.

What happened? Some analysts believe Friendster didn't have enough features to retain users. It also suffered from performance issues as it tried to cope with phenomenal growth. But in the end, it may simply have been a victim of the shifting enthusiasms of its young audience, who grew up and moved on. In many ways, social networking sites are like hot nightclubs -- they become popular and then flame out as the hip crowd moves on, and they are very difficult to manufacture.

Oh yes, and one more thing: For what it's worth, Friendster never figured out how to make money either.

Mathew Ingram writes analysis and commentary for globeandmail.com

mingram@globeandmail.com

OK here is the update for this week. I have ordred seven text books from the publisher. They should be here next week. I have recieved a few more resends of podcasts and wil review all I have on Sunday afternoon. Your assignment over the next two weeks is to find a story somewhere on the campus and do a vidio news broadcast. The media centre on the 6th floor of building 15 the Gucher building has been told you will be coming. They have five cameras and say that they can all be used at any one time. Have a good week. PS if you were around Aoyama last night you should have reported on the big fire. Clark

Hi well only one person even came close to submitting the podcast on time. Most people not at all. I have contacted the publisher of our text book and they will airmail copies to Japan after I tell them how many I need. Please be prepared,this Thur., to tell me if you wish me to order me a copy. Clark