Thursday, November 12, 2009
For the next three classes we will be watching parts of the video Up Close & Personal starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. Why? It is a good introduction into how to enter into TV broadcast Journalism and it's a nice love story as well. We will be likely using a different classroom and I will leave a note of our regular classroom door with the the location. Hope to see you there.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Newspapers want readers' help with Web credibility
By Associated Press
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2009
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Publishing online creates a new set of problems for newspapers. Some people ask to have stories "unpublished," while others leave nasty, unsigned comments on articles. Now some newspapers are appealing to their own readers for advice.
The readers are taking part in six "Online Journalism Credibility" projects that were sponsored by the Associated Press Managing Editors group and detailed Thursday at APME's conference in St. Louis.
The public's involvement suggests audiences care deeply about the credibility of newspapers, said Elaine Kramer, APME's project manager. And it shows "that newsrooms are on the right track when they try to make journalism much more of a two-way conversation with readers," she said.
Readers are still getting used to seeing stories about them and people they know get catalogued by search engines that don't forget anything. The Toronto Star's public editor, Kathy English, said she gets requests to take stories down about once a month. Even a former colleague once asked her to make some embarrassing news go away.
She surveyed newspaper practices and found many editors viewed "unpublishing" as censorship. When she wrote a column asking readers their thoughts on 10 such requests faced by various newspapers in recent months, the views of most respondents were in line with editors'.
The Knoxville News Sentinel held a community round table to explore troubling aspects of anonymous, racially charged Web comments that had been elicited by news coverage of a carjacking-rape-and-murder case. One community member described the comments as "toxic to the soul."
The News Sentinel ran video of the community session and put several readers' blog posts on its Web site. The newspaper is now more willing to strike abusive comments.
"There's not an easy answer," said Jack Lail, the newspaper's director of news innovation. "Some horrific comments do reflect readers in your community. The best we can do is set some kind of bar that communities are going to have to be above."
In Texas, The Victoria Advocate lets readers contribute blogs, comments, calendar items, photographs and even stories to the Web site. When the newspaper commissioned a study of 400 readers, gauging their trust of newsroom-generated content versus that submitted by readers, respondents appeared to value straight news much more than content with opinions, Editor Chris Cobler said.
For instance, at a town hall meeting on the subject this month, Cory Garcia of Victoria said he likes the idea of being able to blog online, but worries that civil discourse can become uncivil.
Now the newspaper is considering a disclaimer on reader blogs and might create a board of readers who would discuss Internet ethics.
"People still trust the news and get the difference," Cobler said. "The challenge is how to engage the community without chipping away at the newspaper's credibility."
As news organizations' revenue has dropped, they've felt more pressure to experiment with a type of advertising that is associated with a news story's subject matter and is placed alongside, or pops up when a cursor touches a key word in a story.
The Seattle Times tested 18 types of this so-called contextual advertising on its Web site. Then it used reader surveys and focus groups to determine whether placement of such ads affected the credibility of either the advertisers or the newspaper.
The results were mixed, but the exercise helped the newspaper "figure out where the land mines were," said Kathy Best, managing editor for digital news and innovation.
Readers didn't like an ad for jobs at Weyerhaeuser Co. that popped up as they read a story about the timber industry. They also disapproved of an ad for a land commissioner candidate that was next to an investigative story on landslides and the government's policy on clear-cutting forests. The readers said it hurt the credibility of both the candidate and the news story.
On the other hand, readers said they valued contextual advertising when it was local and useful.
In another of the APME projects, the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal asked readers how the newspaper could improve standards and accuracy in gathering and reporting news online. And the Salem (Mass.) News is soliciting input on how its involvement with social networking sites affects credibility.
The six projects will be posted on APME's Web site and are the subject of a webinar series beginning Nov. 5 through Poynter's News University.
"I think we'll learn more about how precious credibility is to readers as well as to journalists," Kramer said. "Credibility is our stock in trade. We better have it."
By Associated Press
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2009
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Publishing online creates a new set of problems for newspapers. Some people ask to have stories "unpublished," while others leave nasty, unsigned comments on articles. Now some newspapers are appealing to their own readers for advice.
The readers are taking part in six "Online Journalism Credibility" projects that were sponsored by the Associated Press Managing Editors group and detailed Thursday at APME's conference in St. Louis.
The public's involvement suggests audiences care deeply about the credibility of newspapers, said Elaine Kramer, APME's project manager. And it shows "that newsrooms are on the right track when they try to make journalism much more of a two-way conversation with readers," she said.
Readers are still getting used to seeing stories about them and people they know get catalogued by search engines that don't forget anything. The Toronto Star's public editor, Kathy English, said she gets requests to take stories down about once a month. Even a former colleague once asked her to make some embarrassing news go away.
She surveyed newspaper practices and found many editors viewed "unpublishing" as censorship. When she wrote a column asking readers their thoughts on 10 such requests faced by various newspapers in recent months, the views of most respondents were in line with editors'.
The Knoxville News Sentinel held a community round table to explore troubling aspects of anonymous, racially charged Web comments that had been elicited by news coverage of a carjacking-rape-and-murder case. One community member described the comments as "toxic to the soul."
The News Sentinel ran video of the community session and put several readers' blog posts on its Web site. The newspaper is now more willing to strike abusive comments.
"There's not an easy answer," said Jack Lail, the newspaper's director of news innovation. "Some horrific comments do reflect readers in your community. The best we can do is set some kind of bar that communities are going to have to be above."
In Texas, The Victoria Advocate lets readers contribute blogs, comments, calendar items, photographs and even stories to the Web site. When the newspaper commissioned a study of 400 readers, gauging their trust of newsroom-generated content versus that submitted by readers, respondents appeared to value straight news much more than content with opinions, Editor Chris Cobler said.
For instance, at a town hall meeting on the subject this month, Cory Garcia of Victoria said he likes the idea of being able to blog online, but worries that civil discourse can become uncivil.
Now the newspaper is considering a disclaimer on reader blogs and might create a board of readers who would discuss Internet ethics.
"People still trust the news and get the difference," Cobler said. "The challenge is how to engage the community without chipping away at the newspaper's credibility."
As news organizations' revenue has dropped, they've felt more pressure to experiment with a type of advertising that is associated with a news story's subject matter and is placed alongside, or pops up when a cursor touches a key word in a story.
The Seattle Times tested 18 types of this so-called contextual advertising on its Web site. Then it used reader surveys and focus groups to determine whether placement of such ads affected the credibility of either the advertisers or the newspaper.
The results were mixed, but the exercise helped the newspaper "figure out where the land mines were," said Kathy Best, managing editor for digital news and innovation.
Readers didn't like an ad for jobs at Weyerhaeuser Co. that popped up as they read a story about the timber industry. They also disapproved of an ad for a land commissioner candidate that was next to an investigative story on landslides and the government's policy on clear-cutting forests. The readers said it hurt the credibility of both the candidate and the news story.
On the other hand, readers said they valued contextual advertising when it was local and useful.
In another of the APME projects, the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal asked readers how the newspaper could improve standards and accuracy in gathering and reporting news online. And the Salem (Mass.) News is soliciting input on how its involvement with social networking sites affects credibility.
The six projects will be posted on APME's Web site and are the subject of a webinar series beginning Nov. 5 through Poynter's News University.
"I think we'll learn more about how precious credibility is to readers as well as to journalists," Kramer said. "Credibility is our stock in trade. We better have it."
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
| Journalists Looking For Government Money |
| from the bizarro-world dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 31, @10:21 (The Media) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/31/137221/Journalists-Looking-For-Government-Money |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
We've been following the ongoing struggles of the print media, watching
as some publications have died off and others have held to outdated
principles and decried the influence of the internet. A side effect of
this has been many journalists put out of work and many others fearful
that informed reporting is on its way out as well. Now, an editorial in
the Washington Post calls for [0]a solution journalists would likely have
scoffed at only a few years ago: federal subsidies. Robert W. McChesney
and John Nichols write, "What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates
would be morally and politically absurd. These firms have run journalism
into the ground. If they cannot make it, let them go. Wait for 'pay-wall'
technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined business models
to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a self-governing
society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the horizon. This
leaves one place to look for a solution: the government." They hasten to
add, "Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/31/137221
Links:
0. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102203960.html
Collecting Headlines Funnier Than This
By ERIC KONIGSBERG
Published: November 2, 2009
Headlines in the satirical weekly newspaper The Onion tend to function both as punch line and setup, in that order. They are the heart of the paper, and not only the first thing anybody reads, but also, unlike headlines in real newspapers all over the world, the first things to be written. The staff devotes the first two days of every week to composing headlines, then assigns the articles that will run beneath them and provide a body of supporting jokes.
At the offices of The Onion in SoHo, headlines are conceived first, and then articles are assigned to flesh them out.
Todd Hanson, a story editor, started at The Onion 21 years ago.
Corner pen: Dummy, the office dog, has her own office cubicle.
It’s immediately apparent just flipping through “Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude From America’s Finest News Source,” the new, platter-size hardcover collection, appropriately enough, of front pages from The Onion, that the art of the fake headline has evolved. Early-era front-page type in the paper, founded in 1988 in Madison, Wis., had the clownish tone of a college-town humor rag: “Depressed? Try Liposuction on that Pesky Head.”
“You can see it took a little while before the paper was keyed in on the USA Today model,” said Joe Randazzo, the current editor of The Onion. (From 1998: “Inside: America Rates The Skin Colors. See Society, page 1D.”)
The paper relocated to New York in 2001, and that year, prompted partly by 9/11, the headlines took on what Mr. Randazzo called “more of a New York Times-Washington Post kind of tone — sober, important.” “We wait to chime in on a news event until after the news has chimed in,” he said. “The Onion’s charter is to be the last word, the newspaper of record. That’s a total conceit, of course, but we take it seriously, in the sense that we want to be the joke that’s making a joke about all the other jokes.”
A Tuesday in October found Mr. Randazzo and nine writers and editors gathered around a conference table in the SoHo offices of The Onion for a headline meeting. Each had a printout of 101 headline contenders, which had been submitted —mostly by one another, with some support staff and freelance contributors also allowed to pitch in — the day before.
“It’s a very specific, regimented format,” said Dan Guterman, the head writer. “You sort of learn the Onion language by rote. We spend hundreds of hours in the room deconstructing the jokes. I don’t think there’s anything comparable to the amount of material we generate and reject just to come up with the week’s headlines.”
This structured process, however, has an element of chaos, in that there is no such thing as speaking out of turn. Each person called out favorites by number, and most were rejected by consensus, or, as needed, by Mr. Randazzo.
This brain trust was all men — all 10 of them white, most in glasses, about half wearing T-shirts with something satirical printed on them, and at least 60 percent of them with facial hair. (“The dominant style” in the office of The Onion, the author Wells Tower wrote last year in The Washington Post Magazine, “is the unshaven, underexercised, Nazarene look of bookish people who probably suffered a steady program of jibes and wedgies in junior high school and carried pocketfuls of 20-sided dice.”)
The basis of some rejections was historical: “That reminds me too much of ‘Man Who Thought He’d Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit of Hope He Didn’t Even Know He Still Had’ ” — a headline from 2000 — Todd Hanson, a story editor, said about “Man Surprised He Still Had Peg to Be Taken Down.”
Others failed to meet standards of sophistication. “That’s basically a man-boobs joke, a yucka-yucka joke,” Joe Garden, the features editor, said of “November Named Male Breast Awareness Month.” Or comic rigor: “It has a finality to it that threw me off,” Mr. Guterman said of a headline about a missing tub of yogurt.
Or structural soundness: Mr. Randazzo gently deemed one headline “inert,” and quickly moved the meeting along. Or decorum: “That joke in the wrong hands could be unspeakably offensive,” Mr. Randazzo told Seth Reiss, a staff writer, about a headline that, if it had the potential to be too offensive for The Onion, is not likely to be reproduced in this newspaper.
A headline stating that the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman was revealed to be President Obama’s best friend from high school was an obvious no-go —it would be stale long before press time — but still engendered admiring debate.
“Are we sure we don’t want to do that just to show a bunch of pictures of him and Thorbjorn Jagland on the basketball team together?” Mr. Reiss asked.
“Thorbjorn Jagland’s a great name,” Mr. Hanson said.
“It’s so metal,” Mr. Garden said.
Headlines that made it often needed little discussion. “Cherokee Tribe Makes News As Fraction of Actress’s Bloodline” was a keeper from the start.
The meeting stretched from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. and included a short lunch break during which several writers were asked to brainstorm individually on a broad idea — the enduring war in Afghanistan — that was proving to be a challenge. In the end “U.S. Continues Quagmire-Building Effort in Afghanistan” won out over “Quick and Painless Overthrow of Taliban Enters Eighth Year” and “Afghanistan Rapidly Replacing Iraq as Replacement for Vietnam as Replacement for Quagmire.”
After that, Mr. Randazzo assigned articles to support the headlines according to a vaguely rotational system. Someone jokingly suggested, with a combination of affection and envy, calling in Megan Ganz, 25, a former staff member who left over the summer to become a writer for “Important Things With Demetri Martin” on Comedy Central: “Does she have enough to do?”
This is an old story at The Onion. Another whiz kid, Mike DiCenzo, departed recently when he was hired to write for “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.” Ellie Kemper, a frequent contributor, got a major acting role on “The Office” this season. Before them, several alumni from the paper’s days in Madison, Wis., found great success as writers and producers of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report” and “Futurama.”
The paper’s function as a farm league has a complicated legacy, and the few who remain from the early-era Onion see themselves as defenders of its ethos. “There used to be a certain bond everybody shared, like we were in a band,” said Mr. Hanson, 41, who started at the paper 21 years ago after he dropped out of college. (“I went to the University of Wisconsin from 1986 to 1986,” he said.) “Plenty of the original staff never did have a lot of ambition beyond making each other laugh. I don’t know, but there’s something just different about people who’ve come from real-world, minimum-wage jobs.”
The Onion, a free weekly that is also online at theonion.com, has a print circulation of 400,000. It claims 1.8 million followers on Twitter.
Mr. Garden, who began writing for The Onion in 1993, said he wrestled with the notion that staying at The Onion was akin to being left behind. “A lot of the editors who went to L.A. sort of figured out the system; meanwhile, I still don’t know the system,” he said. “I’ve never written a spec script. There’s this fear that because I’ve done this for so long, there’s nothing else I can do.”
Yet The Onion continues to feel like home. “It’s different now, but there’s still camaraderie,” he said. “I don’t feel alienated along age lines, I just feel alienated — but the way I always do.”
| from the bizarro-world dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 31, @10:21 (The Media) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/31/137221/Journalists-Looking-For-Government-Money |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
We've been following the ongoing struggles of the print media, watching
as some publications have died off and others have held to outdated
principles and decried the influence of the internet. A side effect of
this has been many journalists put out of work and many others fearful
that informed reporting is on its way out as well. Now, an editorial in
the Washington Post calls for [0]a solution journalists would likely have
scoffed at only a few years ago: federal subsidies. Robert W. McChesney
and John Nichols write, "What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates
would be morally and politically absurd. These firms have run journalism
into the ground. If they cannot make it, let them go. Wait for 'pay-wall'
technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined business models
to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a self-governing
society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the horizon. This
leaves one place to look for a solution: the government." They hasten to
add, "Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/31/137221
Links:
0. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102203960.html
Collecting Headlines Funnier Than This
By ERIC KONIGSBERG
Published: November 2, 2009
Headlines in the satirical weekly newspaper The Onion tend to function both as punch line and setup, in that order. They are the heart of the paper, and not only the first thing anybody reads, but also, unlike headlines in real newspapers all over the world, the first things to be written. The staff devotes the first two days of every week to composing headlines, then assigns the articles that will run beneath them and provide a body of supporting jokes.
At the offices of The Onion in SoHo, headlines are conceived first, and then articles are assigned to flesh them out.
Todd Hanson, a story editor, started at The Onion 21 years ago.
Corner pen: Dummy, the office dog, has her own office cubicle.
It’s immediately apparent just flipping through “Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude From America’s Finest News Source,” the new, platter-size hardcover collection, appropriately enough, of front pages from The Onion, that the art of the fake headline has evolved. Early-era front-page type in the paper, founded in 1988 in Madison, Wis., had the clownish tone of a college-town humor rag: “Depressed? Try Liposuction on that Pesky Head.”
“You can see it took a little while before the paper was keyed in on the USA Today model,” said Joe Randazzo, the current editor of The Onion. (From 1998: “Inside: America Rates The Skin Colors. See Society, page 1D.”)
The paper relocated to New York in 2001, and that year, prompted partly by 9/11, the headlines took on what Mr. Randazzo called “more of a New York Times-Washington Post kind of tone — sober, important.” “We wait to chime in on a news event until after the news has chimed in,” he said. “The Onion’s charter is to be the last word, the newspaper of record. That’s a total conceit, of course, but we take it seriously, in the sense that we want to be the joke that’s making a joke about all the other jokes.”
A Tuesday in October found Mr. Randazzo and nine writers and editors gathered around a conference table in the SoHo offices of The Onion for a headline meeting. Each had a printout of 101 headline contenders, which had been submitted —mostly by one another, with some support staff and freelance contributors also allowed to pitch in — the day before.
“It’s a very specific, regimented format,” said Dan Guterman, the head writer. “You sort of learn the Onion language by rote. We spend hundreds of hours in the room deconstructing the jokes. I don’t think there’s anything comparable to the amount of material we generate and reject just to come up with the week’s headlines.”
This structured process, however, has an element of chaos, in that there is no such thing as speaking out of turn. Each person called out favorites by number, and most were rejected by consensus, or, as needed, by Mr. Randazzo.
This brain trust was all men — all 10 of them white, most in glasses, about half wearing T-shirts with something satirical printed on them, and at least 60 percent of them with facial hair. (“The dominant style” in the office of The Onion, the author Wells Tower wrote last year in The Washington Post Magazine, “is the unshaven, underexercised, Nazarene look of bookish people who probably suffered a steady program of jibes and wedgies in junior high school and carried pocketfuls of 20-sided dice.”)
The basis of some rejections was historical: “That reminds me too much of ‘Man Who Thought He’d Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit of Hope He Didn’t Even Know He Still Had’ ” — a headline from 2000 — Todd Hanson, a story editor, said about “Man Surprised He Still Had Peg to Be Taken Down.”
Others failed to meet standards of sophistication. “That’s basically a man-boobs joke, a yucka-yucka joke,” Joe Garden, the features editor, said of “November Named Male Breast Awareness Month.” Or comic rigor: “It has a finality to it that threw me off,” Mr. Guterman said of a headline about a missing tub of yogurt.
Or structural soundness: Mr. Randazzo gently deemed one headline “inert,” and quickly moved the meeting along. Or decorum: “That joke in the wrong hands could be unspeakably offensive,” Mr. Randazzo told Seth Reiss, a staff writer, about a headline that, if it had the potential to be too offensive for The Onion, is not likely to be reproduced in this newspaper.
A headline stating that the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman was revealed to be President Obama’s best friend from high school was an obvious no-go —it would be stale long before press time — but still engendered admiring debate.
“Are we sure we don’t want to do that just to show a bunch of pictures of him and Thorbjorn Jagland on the basketball team together?” Mr. Reiss asked.
“Thorbjorn Jagland’s a great name,” Mr. Hanson said.
“It’s so metal,” Mr. Garden said.
Headlines that made it often needed little discussion. “Cherokee Tribe Makes News As Fraction of Actress’s Bloodline” was a keeper from the start.
The meeting stretched from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. and included a short lunch break during which several writers were asked to brainstorm individually on a broad idea — the enduring war in Afghanistan — that was proving to be a challenge. In the end “U.S. Continues Quagmire-Building Effort in Afghanistan” won out over “Quick and Painless Overthrow of Taliban Enters Eighth Year” and “Afghanistan Rapidly Replacing Iraq as Replacement for Vietnam as Replacement for Quagmire.”
After that, Mr. Randazzo assigned articles to support the headlines according to a vaguely rotational system. Someone jokingly suggested, with a combination of affection and envy, calling in Megan Ganz, 25, a former staff member who left over the summer to become a writer for “Important Things With Demetri Martin” on Comedy Central: “Does she have enough to do?”
This is an old story at The Onion. Another whiz kid, Mike DiCenzo, departed recently when he was hired to write for “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.” Ellie Kemper, a frequent contributor, got a major acting role on “The Office” this season. Before them, several alumni from the paper’s days in Madison, Wis., found great success as writers and producers of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report” and “Futurama.”
The paper’s function as a farm league has a complicated legacy, and the few who remain from the early-era Onion see themselves as defenders of its ethos. “There used to be a certain bond everybody shared, like we were in a band,” said Mr. Hanson, 41, who started at the paper 21 years ago after he dropped out of college. (“I went to the University of Wisconsin from 1986 to 1986,” he said.) “Plenty of the original staff never did have a lot of ambition beyond making each other laugh. I don’t know, but there’s something just different about people who’ve come from real-world, minimum-wage jobs.”
The Onion, a free weekly that is also online at theonion.com, has a print circulation of 400,000. It claims 1.8 million followers on Twitter.
Mr. Garden, who began writing for The Onion in 1993, said he wrestled with the notion that staying at The Onion was akin to being left behind. “A lot of the editors who went to L.A. sort of figured out the system; meanwhile, I still don’t know the system,” he said. “I’ve never written a spec script. There’s this fear that because I’ve done this for so long, there’s nothing else I can do.”
Yet The Onion continues to feel like home. “It’s different now, but there’s still camaraderie,” he said. “I don’t feel alienated along age lines, I just feel alienated — but the way I always do.”
Saturday, October 31, 2009
And this is why we have this class and why journalists are there:From the New York times-
- QUOTATION OF THE DAY -
"We still get most of our information from investigative journalists. If you can't protect sources, there is a lot of public corruption and private malfeasance that will go undetected and unpublished."
- SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on a bill to provide greater
protections to reporters.
- QUOTATION OF THE DAY -
"We still get most of our information from investigative journalists. If you can't protect sources, there is a lot of public corruption and private malfeasance that will go undetected and unpublished."
- SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on a bill to provide greater
protections to reporters.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
.and from Slashdot:
| Decline In US Newspaper Readership Accelerates |
| from the stop-the-presses dept. |
| posted by timothy on Wednesday October 28, @17:44 (The Media) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/28/2131236/Decline-In-US-Newspaper-Readership-Acceler|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that US [1]newspaper
circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades, as papers across
the country lost 10.6 percent of their paying readers from April through
September, compared with a year earlier. Online, newspapers are still a
success — but only in readership, not in profit. Ads on newspaper
Internet sites sell for pennies on the dollar compared with ads in their
ink-on-paper cousins. 'Newspapers have [2]ceased to be a mass medium by
any stretch of the imagination,' says Alan D. Mutter, a former journalist
and cable television executive who now consults and writes a blog called
Reflections of a Newsosaur. According to Mutter only 13 percent of
Americans, or about 39 million, now buy a daily newspaper, down from 31
percent in 1940. 'Publishers who think their businesses are going to live
or die according to the number of bellybuttons they can deliver probably
will see their businesses die,' writes Mutter. 'The smart ones will get
busy on Plan B, assuming there is a Plan B and it's not already too
late.' Almost without exception, the papers that lost the least readers
or even gained readership are the nation's smallest daily newspapers
which [3]tend to focus almost all of their limited resources on highly
local news that is not covered by larger outside organizations and have a
lock on local ad markets."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/28/2131236
Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603272.html
2. http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/10/newspapers-mass-less-mass-medium.html
3. http://www.leader-vindicator.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20382685&BRD=2758&PAG=461&dept_id=572980&rfi=6
| Decline In US Newspaper Readership Accelerates |
| from the stop-the-presses dept. |
| posted by timothy on Wednesday October 28, @17:44 (The Media) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/28/2131236/Decline-In-US-Newspaper-Readership-Acceler|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that US [1]newspaper
circulation has hit its lowest level in seven decades, as papers across
the country lost 10.6 percent of their paying readers from April through
September, compared with a year earlier. Online, newspapers are still a
success — but only in readership, not in profit. Ads on newspaper
Internet sites sell for pennies on the dollar compared with ads in their
ink-on-paper cousins. 'Newspapers have [2]ceased to be a mass medium by
any stretch of the imagination,' says Alan D. Mutter, a former journalist
and cable television executive who now consults and writes a blog called
Reflections of a Newsosaur. According to Mutter only 13 percent of
Americans, or about 39 million, now buy a daily newspaper, down from 31
percent in 1940. 'Publishers who think their businesses are going to live
or die according to the number of bellybuttons they can deliver probably
will see their businesses die,' writes Mutter. 'The smart ones will get
busy on Plan B, assuming there is a Plan B and it's not already too
late.' Almost without exception, the papers that lost the least readers
or even gained readership are the nation's smallest daily newspapers
which [3]tend to focus almost all of their limited resources on highly
local news that is not covered by larger outside organizations and have a
lock on local ad markets."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/28/2131236
Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603272.html
2. http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/10/newspapers-mass-less-mass-medium.html
3. http://www.leader-vindicator.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20382685&BRD=2758&PAG=461&dept_id=572980&rfi=6
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
We have talked about citizen journalist before and thought you might like to look at this example from the CBC:
Man who shot Dziekanski video gets journalism award
Paul Pritchard says he feels guilty he didn't help immigrant Tasered by RCMP
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 | 9:27 AM PT Comments154Recommend123
CBC News
Paul Pritchard, right, accompanied by his lawyer, Paul Pearson, held a press conference in November 2007 to demand police release his video.Paul Pritchard, right, accompanied by his lawyer, Paul Pearson, held a press conference in November 2007 to demand police release his video. (CBC)The man who used a digital camera to record the death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport says he feels guilty he didn't try to help the Polish immigrant even though others honoured his actions Tuesday with a citizen-journalism award.
Dziekanski, 40, died Oct. 14, 2007, following several shocks from a Taser four RCMP officers used to subdue him after he caused a disturbance.
The incident might never have received much attention if Paul Pritchard had not decided to grab his digital camera and start recording the actions of the distraught Dziekanski before police arrived.
Dziekanski did not speak English and, after a long flight from Poland, had been left to wander for hours in the restricted zone of the arrivals area after being processed by immigration authorities while his mother waited for him in another part of the airport.
After the incident, Pritchard, who was on his way to his family's home in Victoria and had been waiting in the international arrivals lounge at the time, handed his video over to the RCMP to use in their investigation. The police promised it would be returned in 48 hours.
'I could have gone and talked to him.'— Paul Pritchard
But when the RCMP's public statements about the incident conflicted with what Pritchard and other witnesses said they saw, Pritchard demanded the RCMP return the video so that he could release it to the public.
When the police refused, saying releasing the video would compromise their investigation, Pritchard hired a lawyer, held a news conference and threatened to use legal action to get it back.
The release of the 10-minute video, which contradicted the police version of the incident, led to widespread public outrage around the world and diplomatic tensions between Canada and Poland. It also resulted in the deepest scrutiny of the RCMP in decades in the form of a special inquiry into the incident, led by retired British Columbia Appeal Court Justice Thomas R. Braidwood.
Citizen journalism award
On Tuesday evening in Toronto, Pritchard's work in documenting what happened and waging a legal battle against the RCMP for the release of his video was honoured by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
The organization gave Pritchard its first-ever award for citizen journalism, which recognizes the contributions of ordinary people in the field of journalism.
After the video was made public, Paul Pritchard said he wanted to step out of the media spotlight and find a job.After the video was made public, Paul Pritchard said he wanted to step out of the media spotlight and find a job. (CBC)But Pritchard is still questioning his role in what happened and the choices he made that night.
Two years after the incident, Pritchard told CBC News he still wonders what might have happened had he decided to talk to the distraught Polish immigrant rather than videotape him in distress.
"I don't consider myself a hero, and to be honest, I'm not completely happy with the fact that I did that," said Pritchard. "Maybe instead of grabbing a camera, I could have gone and talked to him.
"If I feel I did something wrong, or feel I didn't do enough, I think the effort I put in afterwards is enough for me to live with that … I did everything I possibly could do."
Pritchard did not testify at the Braidwood inquiry. Instead, he spent the past two years travelling abroad, deliberately avoiding coverage of the incident, he said.
When Pritchard released the video, he received a payment of several thousand dollars from three television networks: CBC, CTV and Global. At the time, Pritchard said he planned to use the money for medical care for his seriously ill father, who died four months later.
Video conflicted with police statements
The 10-minute Pritchard video, shot in three segments, showed a distraught Dziekanski in the airport arrivals lounge attempting to smash a computer and some furniture while several people attempted to communicate with him before police eventually arrive.
Four RCMP officers subdue Robert Dziekanski after stunning him with a Taser on Oct. 14, 2007, at the Vancouver airport.Four RCMP officers subdue Robert Dziekanski after stunning him with a Taser on Oct. 14, 2007, at the Vancouver airport. (Paul Pritchard) Before the video was released, the RCMP repeatedly said that there were only three RCMP officers involved in the incident and that the Taser was only deployed twice after Dziekanski attacked the officers.
But the video showed four RCMP officers rushed in and confronted Dziekanski, who backed up toward a counter. Dziekanski then faced the officers with what later turned out to be a stapler in one hand.
Immediately, there was a loud crack from a Taser, followed by Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbled and fell to the floor.
Another loud crack can be heard, as an officer appears to fire the Taser at Dziekanski again. Then, as the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he continues to scream and convulse on the floor.
One officer is heard to say, "Hit him again. Hit him again," and there is another loud cracking sound.
Evidence at the inquiry revealed the Taser was eventually fired five times at Dziekanski.
After he was subdued, the RCMP left him handcuffed on the floor, where he died before medical help arrived. The official cause of death was listed as "sudden death during restraint" in the coroner's post-mortem report.
A decision by B.C.'s criminal justice branch concluded that while the officers were involved in Dziekanski's death, there was not enough evidence to support laying criminal charges
The public inquiry into the incident is expected to release its report in the new year.
*
Man who shot Dziekanski video gets journalism award
Paul Pritchard says he feels guilty he didn't help immigrant Tasered by RCMP
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 | 9:27 AM PT Comments154Recommend123
CBC News
Paul Pritchard, right, accompanied by his lawyer, Paul Pearson, held a press conference in November 2007 to demand police release his video.Paul Pritchard, right, accompanied by his lawyer, Paul Pearson, held a press conference in November 2007 to demand police release his video. (CBC)The man who used a digital camera to record the death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver airport says he feels guilty he didn't try to help the Polish immigrant even though others honoured his actions Tuesday with a citizen-journalism award.
Dziekanski, 40, died Oct. 14, 2007, following several shocks from a Taser four RCMP officers used to subdue him after he caused a disturbance.
The incident might never have received much attention if Paul Pritchard had not decided to grab his digital camera and start recording the actions of the distraught Dziekanski before police arrived.
Dziekanski did not speak English and, after a long flight from Poland, had been left to wander for hours in the restricted zone of the arrivals area after being processed by immigration authorities while his mother waited for him in another part of the airport.
After the incident, Pritchard, who was on his way to his family's home in Victoria and had been waiting in the international arrivals lounge at the time, handed his video over to the RCMP to use in their investigation. The police promised it would be returned in 48 hours.
'I could have gone and talked to him.'— Paul Pritchard
But when the RCMP's public statements about the incident conflicted with what Pritchard and other witnesses said they saw, Pritchard demanded the RCMP return the video so that he could release it to the public.
When the police refused, saying releasing the video would compromise their investigation, Pritchard hired a lawyer, held a news conference and threatened to use legal action to get it back.
The release of the 10-minute video, which contradicted the police version of the incident, led to widespread public outrage around the world and diplomatic tensions between Canada and Poland. It also resulted in the deepest scrutiny of the RCMP in decades in the form of a special inquiry into the incident, led by retired British Columbia Appeal Court Justice Thomas R. Braidwood.
Citizen journalism award
On Tuesday evening in Toronto, Pritchard's work in documenting what happened and waging a legal battle against the RCMP for the release of his video was honoured by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
The organization gave Pritchard its first-ever award for citizen journalism, which recognizes the contributions of ordinary people in the field of journalism.
After the video was made public, Paul Pritchard said he wanted to step out of the media spotlight and find a job.After the video was made public, Paul Pritchard said he wanted to step out of the media spotlight and find a job. (CBC)But Pritchard is still questioning his role in what happened and the choices he made that night.
Two years after the incident, Pritchard told CBC News he still wonders what might have happened had he decided to talk to the distraught Polish immigrant rather than videotape him in distress.
"I don't consider myself a hero, and to be honest, I'm not completely happy with the fact that I did that," said Pritchard. "Maybe instead of grabbing a camera, I could have gone and talked to him.
"If I feel I did something wrong, or feel I didn't do enough, I think the effort I put in afterwards is enough for me to live with that … I did everything I possibly could do."
Pritchard did not testify at the Braidwood inquiry. Instead, he spent the past two years travelling abroad, deliberately avoiding coverage of the incident, he said.
When Pritchard released the video, he received a payment of several thousand dollars from three television networks: CBC, CTV and Global. At the time, Pritchard said he planned to use the money for medical care for his seriously ill father, who died four months later.
Video conflicted with police statements
The 10-minute Pritchard video, shot in three segments, showed a distraught Dziekanski in the airport arrivals lounge attempting to smash a computer and some furniture while several people attempted to communicate with him before police eventually arrive.
Four RCMP officers subdue Robert Dziekanski after stunning him with a Taser on Oct. 14, 2007, at the Vancouver airport.Four RCMP officers subdue Robert Dziekanski after stunning him with a Taser on Oct. 14, 2007, at the Vancouver airport. (Paul Pritchard) Before the video was released, the RCMP repeatedly said that there were only three RCMP officers involved in the incident and that the Taser was only deployed twice after Dziekanski attacked the officers.
But the video showed four RCMP officers rushed in and confronted Dziekanski, who backed up toward a counter. Dziekanski then faced the officers with what later turned out to be a stapler in one hand.
Immediately, there was a loud crack from a Taser, followed by Dziekanski screaming and convulsing as he stumbled and fell to the floor.
Another loud crack can be heard, as an officer appears to fire the Taser at Dziekanski again. Then, as the officers kneel on top of Dziekanski and handcuff him, he continues to scream and convulse on the floor.
One officer is heard to say, "Hit him again. Hit him again," and there is another loud cracking sound.
Evidence at the inquiry revealed the Taser was eventually fired five times at Dziekanski.
After he was subdued, the RCMP left him handcuffed on the floor, where he died before medical help arrived. The official cause of death was listed as "sudden death during restraint" in the coroner's post-mortem report.
A decision by B.C.'s criminal justice branch concluded that while the officers were involved in Dziekanski's death, there was not enough evidence to support laying criminal charges
The public inquiry into the incident is expected to release its report in the new year.
*
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
There has been a lot of talk about how the web is revolutionising news distribution and it is true, however there are a few down sides. This below is from slashdot:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Misadventures In Online Journalism |
| from the dewey-defeats-obama dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Sunday October 11, @10:44 (The Media) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/11/1439222/Misadventures-In-Online-Journalism |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
An anonymous reader writes "Paul Carr, writing for TechCrunch, has posted
his take on some of the flaws inherent to today's fast-paced news
ecosystem, where [0]bloggers often get little or no editorial feedback
and interesting headlines are passed around faster than ever. His article
was inspired by a recent story on ZDNet that accused Yahoo of sharing the
names and emails of 200,000 users with the Iranian government; [1]a
report that turned out to be false, yet generated a great deal of outrage
before it was disproved. Carr writes, 'Trusting the common sense of your
writers is all well and good — but when it comes to breaking news, where
journalistic adrenaline is at its highest and everyone is paranoid about
being scooped by a competitor, that common sense can too easily become
the first casualty. Journalists get caught up in the moment; we get
excited and we post stupid crap from a foreign language student blog and
call it news. And then within half a minute — bloggers being what they
are — the news gets repeated and repeated until it becomes fact. Fact
that can affect share prices or ruin lives. This is the reality of the
blogosphere, where Churchill's remark: that "a lie gets halfway around
the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" is more
true, and more potentially damaging, than at any time in history.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/11/1439222
Links:
0. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/witn-yahoo-didnt-sentence-200000-iranians-to-death-and-other-misadventures-in-online-journalism/
1. http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5547&tag=col1%3Bpost-5547
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Misadventures In Online Journalism |
| from the dewey-defeats-obama dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Sunday October 11, @10:44 (The Media) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/11/1439222/Misadventures-In-Online-Journalism |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
An anonymous reader writes "Paul Carr, writing for TechCrunch, has posted
his take on some of the flaws inherent to today's fast-paced news
ecosystem, where [0]bloggers often get little or no editorial feedback
and interesting headlines are passed around faster than ever. His article
was inspired by a recent story on ZDNet that accused Yahoo of sharing the
names and emails of 200,000 users with the Iranian government; [1]a
report that turned out to be false, yet generated a great deal of outrage
before it was disproved. Carr writes, 'Trusting the common sense of your
writers is all well and good — but when it comes to breaking news, where
journalistic adrenaline is at its highest and everyone is paranoid about
being scooped by a competitor, that common sense can too easily become
the first casualty. Journalists get caught up in the moment; we get
excited and we post stupid crap from a foreign language student blog and
call it news. And then within half a minute — bloggers being what they
are — the news gets repeated and repeated until it becomes fact. Fact
that can affect share prices or ruin lives. This is the reality of the
blogosphere, where Churchill's remark: that "a lie gets halfway around
the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" is more
true, and more potentially damaging, than at any time in history.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/11/1439222
Links:
0. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/witn-yahoo-didnt-sentence-200000-iranians-to-death-and-other-misadventures-in-online-journalism/
1. http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5547&tag=col1%3Bpost-5547
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Self explanatory, really:
| Postmortem for a Dead Newspaper |
| from the what-not-to-do dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday October 02, @14:00 (The Internet) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/02/1550248/Postmortem-for-a-Dead-Newspaper |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Techdirt points out a great [0]postmortem for the Rocky Mountain News, a
newspaper that ended up shutting down because they couldn't adapt to a
world beyond print. While long, the talk (in both video and print) is
incredibly candid coming from someone who lived through it and shares at
least some portion of the blame. "It seems like pretty much everything
was based on looking backwards, not forward. There was little effort to
figure out how to better enable a community, or any recognition that the
community of people who read the paper were the organizations true main
asset. ... The same game is playing out not just in newspapers, but in a
number of other businesses as well. Like the Rocky Mountain News, those
businesses are looking backwards and defining themselves on the wrong
terms, while newer startups don't have such legacy issues to deal with."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/02/1550248
Links:
0. http://techdirt.com/articles/20091001/1900266400.shtml
| Postmortem for a Dead Newspaper |
| from the what-not-to-do dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday October 02, @14:00 (The Internet) |
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/02/1550248/Postmortem-for-a-Dead-Newspaper |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Techdirt points out a great [0]postmortem for the Rocky Mountain News, a
newspaper that ended up shutting down because they couldn't adapt to a
world beyond print. While long, the talk (in both video and print) is
incredibly candid coming from someone who lived through it and shares at
least some portion of the blame. "It seems like pretty much everything
was based on looking backwards, not forward. There was little effort to
figure out how to better enable a community, or any recognition that the
community of people who read the paper were the organizations true main
asset. ... The same game is playing out not just in newspapers, but in a
number of other businesses as well. Like the Rocky Mountain News, those
businesses are looking backwards and defining themselves on the wrong
terms, while newer startups don't have such legacy issues to deal with."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/10/02/1550248
Links:
0. http://techdirt.com/articles/20091001/1900266400.shtml
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Here's an example of a responsible rumour predictive blog news story:September 29th, 2009
Microsoft's Courier tablet: A Franklin Covey planner on steroids?
Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:32 am
Categories: Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, OEMs, Research..., Resellers, Silverlight (wpf/e), Surface, Windows 7, Windows client
Tags: Microsoft Corp., Gizmodo, Courier, Tablets, Notebooks..., Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Mary Jo Foley
33 TalkBacks
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* Print
* Email
* Thumbs UpThumbs Down
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+9
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Since the first video and photo leaks went public last week of Microsoft’s alleged second-generation Tablet PC, tipsters have been working overtime.
Since Microsoft isn’t commenting at all on Courier (the official statement is “we don’t comment on rumors or speculation”), it’s tough to separate fact from fiction at this point.
But some tipsters are a little more connected than others. And one of my connected tipsters has shared some new info with me that I’m posting now, given that it seems more verifiable.
I say “verifiable” here, not in an official sense, but based on a new Courier video clip Gizmodo posted on September 29. Gizmodo’s new clip shows more details about the journaling model around which Courier’s user interface seems to revolve. From Gizmodo’s explanation:
“The (Courier) journal can actually be published online, and it’s shown here as able to be downloaded in three formats: a Courier file, Powerpoint or PDF. There’s also a library that looks a lot like Delicious Library, where things like subscriptions, notebooks and apps, are stored.”
That sure makes the Courier sound like it fits in with Microsoft’s uber-”three screens and a cloud” vision — via which devices, TVs and PCs all share common cloud-based services, storage, etc.
The Courier journaling metaphor isn’t so different from Microsoft’s OneNote note-taking app that is currently the showcase app for existing tablet PCs, my “connected” source said. He explained:
“The concept started as a software idea on how one would really build OneNote from scratch if you could for the Tablet form factor. That then morphed into building a tablet. If you look at the most successful pocket computer today - it is still the Franklin Covey Planning Products. So, the idea was how do you create a digital planner.”
My source also claimed that the operating system underneath Courier is — at least currently — Windows 7. (That’s not as crazy as it might seem, given that the OS underlying Microsoft’s Surface is Vista — and Windows 7 is touch-enabled.)
You can’t install Windows 7 apps on Courier, the source said, and that’s intentional.
The original Microsoft Tablets “failed because the applications were not tailored to a tablet form factor - that is, Word still had toolbars and menus and scollbars. So, a tablet needs to be like an iPhone - a UX that is specific for the form factor,” the source said.
My source said that Courier is an incubation project, meaning it’s further along than a Microsoft Research project, but still not in the commercialization pipeline. That said, he heard the delivery goal is mid-2010. That seems pretty darn ambitious to me, but he also said Microsoft is currently leaning toward using the Xbox model — in other words, making the device itself, and not relying on its current Tablet partners — so that could speed things up a bit.
I can’t verify any of what my source has told me. But I figured I’d put it out there, as it jibes with what Gizmodo has unearthed.
What’s your take? Is the Courier protoype we’re hearing and seeing bits and pieces about something you could see having wider appeal than the current generation of Tablets?
Microsoft's Courier tablet: A Franklin Covey planner on steroids?
Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:32 am
Categories: Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, OEMs, Research..., Resellers, Silverlight (wpf/e), Surface, Windows 7, Windows client
Tags: Microsoft Corp., Gizmodo, Courier, Tablets, Notebooks..., Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Mary Jo Foley
33 TalkBacks
*
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
* Thumbs UpThumbs Down
*
+9
9
Since the first video and photo leaks went public last week of Microsoft’s alleged second-generation Tablet PC, tipsters have been working overtime.
Since Microsoft isn’t commenting at all on Courier (the official statement is “we don’t comment on rumors or speculation”), it’s tough to separate fact from fiction at this point.
But some tipsters are a little more connected than others. And one of my connected tipsters has shared some new info with me that I’m posting now, given that it seems more verifiable.
I say “verifiable” here, not in an official sense, but based on a new Courier video clip Gizmodo posted on September 29. Gizmodo’s new clip shows more details about the journaling model around which Courier’s user interface seems to revolve. From Gizmodo’s explanation:
“The (Courier) journal can actually be published online, and it’s shown here as able to be downloaded in three formats: a Courier file, Powerpoint or PDF. There’s also a library that looks a lot like Delicious Library, where things like subscriptions, notebooks and apps, are stored.”
That sure makes the Courier sound like it fits in with Microsoft’s uber-”three screens and a cloud” vision — via which devices, TVs and PCs all share common cloud-based services, storage, etc.
The Courier journaling metaphor isn’t so different from Microsoft’s OneNote note-taking app that is currently the showcase app for existing tablet PCs, my “connected” source said. He explained:
“The concept started as a software idea on how one would really build OneNote from scratch if you could for the Tablet form factor. That then morphed into building a tablet. If you look at the most successful pocket computer today - it is still the Franklin Covey Planning Products. So, the idea was how do you create a digital planner.”
My source also claimed that the operating system underneath Courier is — at least currently — Windows 7. (That’s not as crazy as it might seem, given that the OS underlying Microsoft’s Surface is Vista — and Windows 7 is touch-enabled.)
You can’t install Windows 7 apps on Courier, the source said, and that’s intentional.
The original Microsoft Tablets “failed because the applications were not tailored to a tablet form factor - that is, Word still had toolbars and menus and scollbars. So, a tablet needs to be like an iPhone - a UX that is specific for the form factor,” the source said.
My source said that Courier is an incubation project, meaning it’s further along than a Microsoft Research project, but still not in the commercialization pipeline. That said, he heard the delivery goal is mid-2010. That seems pretty darn ambitious to me, but he also said Microsoft is currently leaning toward using the Xbox model — in other words, making the device itself, and not relying on its current Tablet partners — so that could speed things up a bit.
I can’t verify any of what my source has told me. But I figured I’d put it out there, as it jibes with what Gizmodo has unearthed.
What’s your take? Is the Courier protoype we’re hearing and seeing bits and pieces about something you could see having wider appeal than the current generation of Tablets?
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Popular Science in the August issue which i just received in digital form as a section of misleading or wrong Science Journalism stories and the following by Ben Goldacres in his blog Bad Science has something similar to say in more detail:Asking for it
July 4th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science | 41 Comments »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 4 July 2009
There’s nothing like science for giving that objective, white-coat flavoured legitimacy to your prejudices, so it must have been a great day for Telegraph readers when they came across the headline “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists”. Ah, scientists. “Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped, claim scientists at the University of Leicester.” Well there you go. Oddly, though, the title of the press release for the same research was “Promiscuous men more likely to rape”.
Normally we berate journalists for rewriting press releases. Had the Telegraph found some news?
I rang Sophia Shaw at the University of Leicester. She was surprised to have been presented as an expert scientist on the pages of the Daily Telegraph, as Sophia is an MSc student, and this is her dissertation project. It’s also not finished. “We are intending on getting it published, but my findings are very preliminary.” She was discussing her dissertation at an academic conference, when the British Psychological Society’s PR team picked it up, and put out a press release. We will discuss that later.
But first, the science. Shaw spoke to about 100 men, presenting them with various situations around being with a woman, and asking them when they would call it a night, in order to explore men’s attitudes towards coercing women into sex. “I’m very aware that there are limitations to my study. It’s self report data about sensitive issues, so that’s got its flaws, participants were answering when sober, and so on.”
But more than that, she told me, every single one of the first four statements made by the Telegraph is a flat, unambiguous, factually incorrect misrepresentation of her findings.
Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped? “We found no evidence that that women who are more outgoing are more likely to be raped, this is completely inaccurate, we found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober.”
And what about the Telegraph’s next claim, or rather, the Telegraph’s reassuringly distant and objective assertion that it is scientists who are now claiming that women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped?
“We have found at the minute that people will go slightly further with women who are provocatively dressed, but this result is not statistically significant. Basically you can’t say that’s an effect, it could easily be the play of chance. I told the journalist it isn’t one of our main findings, you can’t say that. It’s not significant, which is why we’re not reporting it in our main analysis.”
So if the Telegraph are throwing blame around with rape, who do we blame for this story, and what do we do about it? On the one hand, we’re not naturally impressed with the newspaper. “When I saw the article my heart completely sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they’d got this study.” Since I started sniffing around, and Sophia complained, the Telegraph have quietly changed the online copy of the article, although there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate.
But there is a second, less obvious problem. Repeatedly, unpublished work – often of a highly speculative and eye-catching nature – is shepherded into newspapers by the press officers of the British Psychological Society, and other organisations. A rash of news coverage and popular speculation ensues, in a situation where nobody can read the academic work. I could only get to the reality of what was measured, and how, by personally tracking down and speaking to an MSc student about her dissertation on the phone. In any situation this would be ridiculous, but in a sensitive area such as rape it is blind, irresponsible, coverage-hungry foolishness.
July 4th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science | 41 Comments »
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 4 July 2009
There’s nothing like science for giving that objective, white-coat flavoured legitimacy to your prejudices, so it must have been a great day for Telegraph readers when they came across the headline “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists”. Ah, scientists. “Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped, claim scientists at the University of Leicester.” Well there you go. Oddly, though, the title of the press release for the same research was “Promiscuous men more likely to rape”.
Normally we berate journalists for rewriting press releases. Had the Telegraph found some news?
I rang Sophia Shaw at the University of Leicester. She was surprised to have been presented as an expert scientist on the pages of the Daily Telegraph, as Sophia is an MSc student, and this is her dissertation project. It’s also not finished. “We are intending on getting it published, but my findings are very preliminary.” She was discussing her dissertation at an academic conference, when the British Psychological Society’s PR team picked it up, and put out a press release. We will discuss that later.
But first, the science. Shaw spoke to about 100 men, presenting them with various situations around being with a woman, and asking them when they would call it a night, in order to explore men’s attitudes towards coercing women into sex. “I’m very aware that there are limitations to my study. It’s self report data about sensitive issues, so that’s got its flaws, participants were answering when sober, and so on.”
But more than that, she told me, every single one of the first four statements made by the Telegraph is a flat, unambiguous, factually incorrect misrepresentation of her findings.
Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped? “We found no evidence that that women who are more outgoing are more likely to be raped, this is completely inaccurate, we found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober.”
And what about the Telegraph’s next claim, or rather, the Telegraph’s reassuringly distant and objective assertion that it is scientists who are now claiming that women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped?
“We have found at the minute that people will go slightly further with women who are provocatively dressed, but this result is not statistically significant. Basically you can’t say that’s an effect, it could easily be the play of chance. I told the journalist it isn’t one of our main findings, you can’t say that. It’s not significant, which is why we’re not reporting it in our main analysis.”
So if the Telegraph are throwing blame around with rape, who do we blame for this story, and what do we do about it? On the one hand, we’re not naturally impressed with the newspaper. “When I saw the article my heart completely sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they’d got this study.” Since I started sniffing around, and Sophia complained, the Telegraph have quietly changed the online copy of the article, although there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate.
But there is a second, less obvious problem. Repeatedly, unpublished work – often of a highly speculative and eye-catching nature – is shepherded into newspapers by the press officers of the British Psychological Society, and other organisations. A rash of news coverage and popular speculation ensues, in a situation where nobody can read the academic work. I could only get to the reality of what was measured, and how, by personally tracking down and speaking to an MSc student about her dissertation on the phone. In any situation this would be ridiculous, but in a sensitive area such as rape it is blind, irresponsible, coverage-hungry foolishness.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Science Journalism update:
July 7, 2009 | 0 comments
Really Mass Media
In London last week at the World Conference of Science Journalists, Philip Hilts, the director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at M.I.T., reviewed the worldwide state of Internet and cell phone use, two of the major ways people now get news
e-mail print comment
60-Second Science
Listen to this podcast:
Download this podcast
Subscribe via: RSS | iTunes
More 60-Second Science | All Podcasts
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Ever increasing numbers of people are consuming news via the internet and cell phones. In London last week at the World Conference of Science Journalists, Philip Hilts, the director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at M.I.T., reviewed the worldwide state of Internet and cell phone use:
“Internet use, it’s about 1.5 to two billion internet users, subscribers. And so there’s this discussion about, well, we have it in North America but Africa’s not got it, so we’re on two different planets and so on. That’s true, 5.6 percent in Africa now, 17 percent in Asia, but this is moving very rapidly. In Africa it’s growing 12 times right now. In Asia it’s growing almost six times right now. So the greatest growth is where we’re short in penetration.
“Cell phone use where news will be also as the smart phones get around the world and as Africa gets wired up, the cables are now going in that will be useful in Africa, they haven’t been there. 1980, we had 11,200,000 cell phone subscribers which was zero penetration. And we’re looking at 60 percent penetration now, 4.1 billion subscribers. China and India is the core of cell phone usage on Earth, and then it goes on down from there, U.S., Brazil, Japan, U.K.”
—Reported by Steve Mirsky
July 7, 2009 | 0 comments
Really Mass Media
In London last week at the World Conference of Science Journalists, Philip Hilts, the director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at M.I.T., reviewed the worldwide state of Internet and cell phone use, two of the major ways people now get news
e-mail print comment
60-Second Science
Listen to this podcast:
Download this podcast
Subscribe via: RSS | iTunes
More 60-Second Science | All Podcasts
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
Ever increasing numbers of people are consuming news via the internet and cell phones. In London last week at the World Conference of Science Journalists, Philip Hilts, the director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at M.I.T., reviewed the worldwide state of Internet and cell phone use:
“Internet use, it’s about 1.5 to two billion internet users, subscribers. And so there’s this discussion about, well, we have it in North America but Africa’s not got it, so we’re on two different planets and so on. That’s true, 5.6 percent in Africa now, 17 percent in Asia, but this is moving very rapidly. In Africa it’s growing 12 times right now. In Asia it’s growing almost six times right now. So the greatest growth is where we’re short in penetration.
“Cell phone use where news will be also as the smart phones get around the world and as Africa gets wired up, the cables are now going in that will be useful in Africa, they haven’t been there. 1980, we had 11,200,000 cell phone subscribers which was zero penetration. And we’re looking at 60 percent penetration now, 4.1 billion subscribers. China and India is the core of cell phone usage on Earth, and then it goes on down from there, U.S., Brazil, Japan, U.K.”
—Reported by Steve Mirsky
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Here's a little extra plus for you. Take a look over these stories and try and think of a story you could write similar to one of them, about something that you find and research. Bonus points. See you all on Tue. (The two of you that did not get this as a forwarded e-mail should check with your classmates to see the html version)
Clark Richardson,1-10-22 #708
Uenosakuragi, Taito-ku
Tokyo-to 110-0002
Japan
Phone-only 03-5685-1503 International-81-3-5685-1503; Chiba - 1941 Yamada, Ohara, Isumi-shi, Chiba,298-0025 Japan. Phone & Fax 0470-66-0858
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clarkr/
"Where is paradise?"- "It is behind the green Sugidama
"And remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
-Confucius
Begin forwarded message:
From: AlterNet Headlines
Date: July 4, 2009 6:48:15 PM JST
To: carsurf@dragon.email.ne.jp
Subject: What's Behind Palin's Resignation? | Will Jackson's Kids Suffer the Same Fate? | Pollan: Our Food System Is Collapsing
Reply-To: alternet@mail.democracyinaction.org
Headlines Newsletter
July 4th, 2009
All stories, blogs, and video »
Will the Tragedy of Michael Jackson's Life Be Inherited By His Kids?
By Patricia J. Williams, The Nation
Jackson's fame and fortune ensured he had few barriers whatever fancy seized him -- including his made-to-order kids. Read more »
Sarah Palin Resigns: Is She Fleeing Scandal?
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
What is behind Palin's resignation from office? Read more »
Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
By David Beers, The Tyee
Pollan gives a glimpse at the current state of food politics inside the White House and within his own home. Read more »
This July 4th, Rebel and Agitate for Change
By Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. Read more »
Rolling Stone Expose Declares Goldman Sachs Behind Every Market Crash Since 1920s
By Daniel Tencer, Raw Story
Matt Taibbi explains how the company created market bubbles and then profited from the crash that followed. Read more »
"Deliver Us From Evil": The Amorality of the Catholic Church
By Greta Christina, Greta Christina's Blog
The basic hierarchy and theology of the Catholic Church is a recipe for the abuse of power. Read more »
Breadline USA: Why People Are Going Hungry in the Land of Plenty
By Sasha Abramsky, PoliPoint Press
America's poor are being priced out of a market flush with excess eatables. It's an abomination we can fix. Read more »
Summer Blockbusters: Why Do We Insist on Watching Really Bad Movies?
By Sameer Pandya, Miller-McCune.com
Maybe they are more like summer flings -- despite all the signs that should stay far away, you fall intensely anyway. Read more »
PEEK and Video: The hottest buzz and videos on the web
Michelle Malkin Freaks Out Because the Government Might Help Poor People a Tiny Bit
By D. Aristophanes, Sadly, No!
The horror! Read more »
Jon Stewart: Mark Sanford, Shut the F**ck Up
By Staff, AlterNet
Why does Sanford insist on treating us like his own private confessional?Read more »
Nazi Groups Look for New Recruits at Tea Parties
By BarbinMD, Daily Kos
Gee, what a surprise. Read more »
Cheney Orchestrated Public Response to Plame Leak
By Melissa McEwan, Shakesville
Former Bush administration officials say documents detailing Cheney's involvement must remain secret. The Obama administration agrees! Hopey changey! Read more »
Support AlterNet | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe
You are subscribed as carsurf@dragon.email.ne.jp
© 2007 Independent Media Institute
All Rights Reserved
77 Federal St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107
Clark Richardson,1-10-22 #708
Uenosakuragi, Taito-ku
Tokyo-to 110-0002
Japan
Phone-only 03-5685-1503 International-81-3-5685-1503; Chiba - 1941 Yamada, Ohara, Isumi-shi, Chiba,298-0025 Japan. Phone & Fax 0470-66-0858
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clarkr/
"Where is paradise?"- "It is behind the green Sugidama
"And remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
-Confucius
Begin forwarded message:
From: AlterNet Headlines
Date: July 4, 2009 6:48:15 PM JST
To: carsurf@dragon.email.ne.jp
Subject: What's Behind Palin's Resignation? | Will Jackson's Kids Suffer the Same Fate? | Pollan: Our Food System Is Collapsing
Reply-To: alternet@mail.democracyinaction.org
Headlines Newsletter
July 4th, 2009
All stories, blogs, and video »
Will the Tragedy of Michael Jackson's Life Be Inherited By His Kids?
By Patricia J. Williams, The Nation
Jackson's fame and fortune ensured he had few barriers whatever fancy seized him -- including his made-to-order kids. Read more »
Sarah Palin Resigns: Is She Fleeing Scandal?
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
What is behind Palin's resignation from office? Read more »
Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
By David Beers, The Tyee
Pollan gives a glimpse at the current state of food politics inside the White House and within his own home. Read more »
This July 4th, Rebel and Agitate for Change
By Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Agitators created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness that we celebrate on our national holiday. Read more »
Rolling Stone Expose Declares Goldman Sachs Behind Every Market Crash Since 1920s
By Daniel Tencer, Raw Story
Matt Taibbi explains how the company created market bubbles and then profited from the crash that followed. Read more »
"Deliver Us From Evil": The Amorality of the Catholic Church
By Greta Christina, Greta Christina's Blog
The basic hierarchy and theology of the Catholic Church is a recipe for the abuse of power. Read more »
Breadline USA: Why People Are Going Hungry in the Land of Plenty
By Sasha Abramsky, PoliPoint Press
America's poor are being priced out of a market flush with excess eatables. It's an abomination we can fix. Read more »
Summer Blockbusters: Why Do We Insist on Watching Really Bad Movies?
By Sameer Pandya, Miller-McCune.com
Maybe they are more like summer flings -- despite all the signs that should stay far away, you fall intensely anyway. Read more »
PEEK and Video: The hottest buzz and videos on the web
Michelle Malkin Freaks Out Because the Government Might Help Poor People a Tiny Bit
By D. Aristophanes, Sadly, No!
The horror! Read more »
Jon Stewart: Mark Sanford, Shut the F**ck Up
By Staff, AlterNet
Why does Sanford insist on treating us like his own private confessional?Read more »
Nazi Groups Look for New Recruits at Tea Parties
By BarbinMD, Daily Kos
Gee, what a surprise. Read more »
Cheney Orchestrated Public Response to Plame Leak
By Melissa McEwan, Shakesville
Former Bush administration officials say documents detailing Cheney's involvement must remain secret. The Obama administration agrees! Hopey changey! Read more »
Support AlterNet | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe
You are subscribed as carsurf@dragon.email.ne.jp
© 2007 Independent Media Institute
All Rights Reserved
77 Federal St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Well everyone else is talking about is so,I guess, so should we, or So should we all, may be better
| Ad Networks the Laggards In Jackson Traffic Spike |
| from the what-else-is-new dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 29, @11:02 (The Internet) |
| http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/29/1343225 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]miller60 writes "Advertising networks are being cited as the [1]major
bottlenecks in performance woes experienced by major news sites during
the [2]crush of Internet traffic Thursday as news broke about the death
of pop star Michael Jackson. An analysis by Keynote found that many news
sites delivered their own content promptly, only to find their page
delivery delayed by slow-loading ads. The inclusion of third-party
content on high-traffic pages is a growing challenge for site operators.
It's not just ads, as social media widgets are also seeing wider usage on
commercial sites. How best to balance the content vs. performance
tradeoffs?"
Discuss this story at:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/06/29/1343225
Links:
0. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/
1. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/29/keynote-ad-networks-failed-not-news-sites/
2. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/26/1221214/News-Sites-Slammed-By-Michael-Jackson-Traffic
| Ad Networks the Laggards In Jackson Traffic Spike |
| from the what-else-is-new dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 29, @11:02 (The Internet) |
| http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/29/1343225 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]miller60 writes "Advertising networks are being cited as the [1]major
bottlenecks in performance woes experienced by major news sites during
the [2]crush of Internet traffic Thursday as news broke about the death
of pop star Michael Jackson. An analysis by Keynote found that many news
sites delivered their own content promptly, only to find their page
delivery delayed by slow-loading ads. The inclusion of third-party
content on high-traffic pages is a growing challenge for site operators.
It's not just ads, as social media widgets are also seeing wider usage on
commercial sites. How best to balance the content vs. performance
tradeoffs?"
Discuss this story at:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/06/29/1343225
Links:
0. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/
1. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/29/keynote-ad-networks-failed-not-news-sites/
2. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/06/26/1221214/News-Sites-Slammed-By-Michael-Jackson-Traffic
Saturday, June 27, 2009
When information continues to blink and wink by it is important to catch the attention of your watchers and readers. Selling important news sometimes reduces you to a pimp, but if that is your job..to sell really important news you had better know about headlines and sell lines just like the business guys do: Check it out: >http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/25/10-common-mistakes-in-logo-design/
Logo designe= HEADLINES!
Logo designe= HEADLINES!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
And more....
| Print Subscribers Cry Foul Over WP's Online-Only Story |
| from the wonder-how-they-feel-about-online-coupons dept. |
| posted by timothy on Monday June 22, @17:24 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/22/2119228 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Hugh Pickens writes "The decision by the Washington Post to publish an
article exclusively online has [1]angered many readers who still pay for
the print edition of the newspaper and highlighted the thorny issues
newspaper editors still face in serving both print and online audiences.
[2]The 7,000 word story about the slaying in 2006 of Robert Wone, a young
lawyer who was found stabbed to death in a luxurious townhouse in the
Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington where a 'polyamorous family' of
three men lived, is the sort of long-form reporting that newspaper
editors say still justifies print in the digital age and many editors
agree that print is still the place to publish deep investigative
reporting, in part to give certain readers a reason to keep paying for
news. 'If you're doing long form, you should do it in print,' said
newspaper consultant Mark Potts. 'This just felt like a nice two-part
series that they didn't have the room to put in the paper, so they just
threw it on the Web.' Editors at The Post say they considered publishing
the article in print, but they concluded it was too long at a time when
the paper, like most others, was in dire financial straits and trying to
scale back newsprint costs. 'Newspapers are going broke in part because
news can be read, free of charge, on the Internet,' wrote one reader in a
letter to the editor. 'As a nearly lifelong reader of The Post, I could
not read this article in the paper I pay for and subscribe to; instead I
came on it accidentally while scrolling online for business reasons.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/06/22/2119228
Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/business/media/22post.html
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102510.html
| Print Subscribers Cry Foul Over WP's Online-Only Story |
| from the wonder-how-they-feel-about-online-coupons dept. |
| posted by timothy on Monday June 22, @17:24 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/22/2119228 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Hugh Pickens writes "The decision by the Washington Post to publish an
article exclusively online has [1]angered many readers who still pay for
the print edition of the newspaper and highlighted the thorny issues
newspaper editors still face in serving both print and online audiences.
[2]The 7,000 word story about the slaying in 2006 of Robert Wone, a young
lawyer who was found stabbed to death in a luxurious townhouse in the
Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington where a 'polyamorous family' of
three men lived, is the sort of long-form reporting that newspaper
editors say still justifies print in the digital age and many editors
agree that print is still the place to publish deep investigative
reporting, in part to give certain readers a reason to keep paying for
news. 'If you're doing long form, you should do it in print,' said
newspaper consultant Mark Potts. 'This just felt like a nice two-part
series that they didn't have the room to put in the paper, so they just
threw it on the Web.' Editors at The Post say they considered publishing
the article in print, but they concluded it was too long at a time when
the paper, like most others, was in dire financial straits and trying to
scale back newsprint costs. 'Newspapers are going broke in part because
news can be read, free of charge, on the Internet,' wrote one reader in a
letter to the editor. 'As a nearly lifelong reader of The Post, I could
not read this article in the paper I pay for and subscribe to; instead I
came on it accidentally while scrolling online for business reasons.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=09/06/22/2119228
Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/business/media/22post.html
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102510.html
GETTING THE FACTS RIGHT IS NOT EASY: (and if you don't, don't do it)
Home taping didn’t kill music
June 5th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science | 94 Comments »
Ben Goldacreimage
The Guardian
Saturday 6th June 2009
You are killing our creative industries. “Downloading costs billions” said the Sun. “MORE than seven million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, Government advisors said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material.”
That’s about a tenth of our GDP. No wonder the Daily Mail were worried too: “The network had 1.3 million users sharing files online at midday on a weekday. If each of those downloaded just one file per day, this would amount to 4.73 billion items being consumed for free every year.”
Now I am always suspicious of this industry, because they have produced a lot of dodgy figures over the years. I also doubt that every download is lost revenue since, for example, people who download more also buy more music. I’d like more details.
So where do these notions of so many billions in lost revenue come from? I found the original report. It was written by some academics you can hire in a unit at UCL called CIBER, the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (which “seeks to inform by countering idle speculation and uninformed opinion with the facts”). The report was commissioned by a government body called SABIP, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy.
On the billions lost it says: “Estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries whose products can be copied digitally, or counterfeited, reach £10 billion (IP Rights, 2004), conservatively, as our figure is from 2004, and a loss of 4,000 jobs.”
What is the origin of this conservative figure? I hunted down the full CIBER documents, found the references section, and followed the web link, which led to a 2004 press release from a private legal firm called Rouse who specialise in intellectual property law. This press release was not about the £10bn figure. It was, in fact, a one page document, which simply welcomed the government setting up an intellectual property theft strategy. In a short section headed “background”, among five other points, it says: “Rights owners have estimated that last year alone counterfeiting and piracy cost the UK economy £10 billion and 4,000 jobs.” An industry estimate, as an aside, in a press release. Genius.
But what about all these other figures in the media coverage? Lots of it revolved around the figure of 4.73 billion items downloaded each year, worth £120 billion. This means each downloaded item, software, movie, mp3, ebook, is worth about £25. Now before we go anywhere, this already seems rather high. I am not an economist, and I don’t know about their methods, but to me, for example, an appropriate comparator for someone who downloads a film to watch it once might be the rental value, not the sale value. And someone downloading a £1,000 professional 3D animation software package to fiddle about with at home may not use it more than three times. I’m just saying.
In any case, that’s £175 a week or £8,750 a year potentially not being spent by millions of people. Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press? Plenty will have been schoolkids, or students, and even if not, that’s still about a third of the average UK wage. Before tax. Oh but the figures were wrong: it was actually 473 million items and £12 billion (so the item value was still £25) but the wrong figures were in the original executive summary, and the press release. They changed them quietly, after the errors were pointed out by a BBC journalist. I can find no public correction.
I asked what steps they took to notify journalists of their error, which exaggerated their findings by a factor of ten and were widely reported in news outlets around the world. SABIP refused to answer my questions in emails, insisted on a phone call (always a warning sign), told me that they had taken steps but wouldn’t say what, explained something about how they couldn’t be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after ten minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the whole call was actually off the record, that I wasn’t allowed to use the information in my piece, but that they had answered my questions, and so they didn’t need to answer on the record, but I wasn’t allowed to use the answers, and I couldn’t say they hadn’t answered, I just couldn’t say what the answers were. Then the PR man from SABIP demanded that I acknowledge, in our phone call, formally, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, that he had been helpful.
I think it’s okay to be confused and disappointed by this. Like I said: as far as I’m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise.
Home taping didn’t kill music
June 5th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre in bad science | 94 Comments »
Ben Goldacreimage
The Guardian
Saturday 6th June 2009
You are killing our creative industries. “Downloading costs billions” said the Sun. “MORE than seven million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, Government advisors said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material.”
That’s about a tenth of our GDP. No wonder the Daily Mail were worried too: “The network had 1.3 million users sharing files online at midday on a weekday. If each of those downloaded just one file per day, this would amount to 4.73 billion items being consumed for free every year.”
Now I am always suspicious of this industry, because they have produced a lot of dodgy figures over the years. I also doubt that every download is lost revenue since, for example, people who download more also buy more music. I’d like more details.
So where do these notions of so many billions in lost revenue come from? I found the original report. It was written by some academics you can hire in a unit at UCL called CIBER, the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (which “seeks to inform by countering idle speculation and uninformed opinion with the facts”). The report was commissioned by a government body called SABIP, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy.
On the billions lost it says: “Estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries whose products can be copied digitally, or counterfeited, reach £10 billion (IP Rights, 2004), conservatively, as our figure is from 2004, and a loss of 4,000 jobs.”
What is the origin of this conservative figure? I hunted down the full CIBER documents, found the references section, and followed the web link, which led to a 2004 press release from a private legal firm called Rouse who specialise in intellectual property law. This press release was not about the £10bn figure. It was, in fact, a one page document, which simply welcomed the government setting up an intellectual property theft strategy. In a short section headed “background”, among five other points, it says: “Rights owners have estimated that last year alone counterfeiting and piracy cost the UK economy £10 billion and 4,000 jobs.” An industry estimate, as an aside, in a press release. Genius.
But what about all these other figures in the media coverage? Lots of it revolved around the figure of 4.73 billion items downloaded each year, worth £120 billion. This means each downloaded item, software, movie, mp3, ebook, is worth about £25. Now before we go anywhere, this already seems rather high. I am not an economist, and I don’t know about their methods, but to me, for example, an appropriate comparator for someone who downloads a film to watch it once might be the rental value, not the sale value. And someone downloading a £1,000 professional 3D animation software package to fiddle about with at home may not use it more than three times. I’m just saying.
In any case, that’s £175 a week or £8,750 a year potentially not being spent by millions of people. Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press? Plenty will have been schoolkids, or students, and even if not, that’s still about a third of the average UK wage. Before tax. Oh but the figures were wrong: it was actually 473 million items and £12 billion (so the item value was still £25) but the wrong figures were in the original executive summary, and the press release. They changed them quietly, after the errors were pointed out by a BBC journalist. I can find no public correction.
I asked what steps they took to notify journalists of their error, which exaggerated their findings by a factor of ten and were widely reported in news outlets around the world. SABIP refused to answer my questions in emails, insisted on a phone call (always a warning sign), told me that they had taken steps but wouldn’t say what, explained something about how they couldn’t be held responsible for lazy journalism, then, bizarrely, after ten minutes, tried to tell me retrospectively that the whole call was actually off the record, that I wasn’t allowed to use the information in my piece, but that they had answered my questions, and so they didn’t need to answer on the record, but I wasn’t allowed to use the answers, and I couldn’t say they hadn’t answered, I just couldn’t say what the answers were. Then the PR man from SABIP demanded that I acknowledge, in our phone call, formally, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, that he had been helpful.
I think it’s okay to be confused and disappointed by this. Like I said: as far as I’m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise.
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