Tag Archives | Media

“Yahoo! Education” Declares Reporting a Dying Career, Suggests Becoming a PR Specialist Instead

By on May 4, 2013 in News 0

800px-Anna_reporterFirst, consider how the name “Yahoo! Education” could be interpreted.

With that in mind, consider whether Terence Loose had a straight face when he wrote in the recent article Dying Careers You Should Avoid for “Yahoo! Education:”

Dying Career #2: Reporter

They say a species must adapt or die, and with the trend of the Internet replacing print journalism (you are reading this on the computer, after all), media folks who don’t adjust might not survive too much longer. In short, many reporters could be going the way of their typewriters soon.

Projected Decline: Reporter and correspondent positions are expected to decline by 8 percent from 51,900 jobs in 2010 to 48,000 in 2020, for a total of nearly 4,000 jobs lost, says the U.S. Department of Labor

Why It’s Dying: The Department of Labor says that because of the trend of consolidation of media companies and the decline in readership of newspapers, reporters will find there are fewer available jobs.

… Read the rest

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Is Following The News Bad For You?

By on May 3, 2013 in News 0

too much newsAs they say, the medium is the message, and the 24-hour breaking news cycle may be degrading your mind and your life. Via the Guardian, Rolf Dobelli argues thus:

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply.

News misleads. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

News works like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. The physical structure of the brain changes.

News makes us passive.

… Read the rest

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Debating The Global Media—in Kazakhstan

By on April 29, 2013 in News 0

Sun and EagleAstana, Kazakhstan: Most people wouldn’t bother going half way around the world for their fifteen seconds of fame.  Ok, so maybe there was little fame to be found but, it was still worthwhile to spend two days flying back and forth to attend the two-day annual Eurasian Media Forum in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian nation that is actually the 9th largest country in the world, with ultra wealthy oil and gas fields.

It was also one of the few countries in the world that gave up its nuclear weapons. South Africa is another one.

Kazakhstan flickered briefly in our popular culture when the film Borat made fun of the place—it was shot in Romania, not there—and more recently, figured in the investigation into the terrifying actions of the Tsarnaev ‘Bomb Brothers’ in Boston responsible for doing so much vicious damage at the Marathon. It was reported that they had also lived here although local media disputes it.  (Two Kazakh kids are said to be in jail now in the US for visa violations although it’s not clear how or if they are linked.)

The forum here deals with political and media issues and attracts top journalists and policymakers to hold forth on panels.  I was on one with none other than Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor.… Read the rest

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Koch Brothers Set To Buy Major Newspapers

By on April 21, 2013 in News 0

koch brothers exposedCharles and David Koch, the billionaires who own companies like Georgia Pacific and bring you products like Brawny paper towels, are notorious for their singularly harsh vision for a more conservative America, with the Tea Party movement their most visible political mouthpiece. Both they and the Tea Party movement have been largely pigeon-holed as extreme and outside the mainstream by the media (Fox News excepted, of course), so now they are looking to buy the Tribune Company’s eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun.

In case you’ve forgotten just how mean the Kochs’ vision for America is for the average American, check out the powerful documentary Koch Brothers Exposed. The New York Times has the story on the planned newspaper acquisitions:

Three years ago, Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists and supporters of libertarian causes, held a seminar of like-minded, wealthy political donors at the St.

… Read the rest

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Is Our Addiction To Tragedy On Social Media Inspiring Violence?

By on April 20, 2013 in News 0

via Tech Crunch F036-006

Anyone who uses social media has witnessed or been apart of this somewhat new phenomenon of being a part of an unfolding event that is so huge it will change how we operate. So many have an opinion this way or that. Others have theories, and others just want it to go away. Wellm, it may be really bad for everyone to be flinging around this information like a hot potato. It could be debasing all involved as well as giving those who did the deed just what they want and need.

If terrorism requires an audience, then the recent mainstream adoption of social media may be giving violent actors a bigger stage than ever before. There are many reasons people lash out at the world, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that becoming the center of the attention could be a factor pushing some to commit atrocities.

… Read the rest

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ExxonMobil Gets TV Stations To Pull “Exxon Hates Your Children” Ads

By on April 15, 2013 in News 0

Corporations seem to be all about irreverent ads, yet get surprisingly sensitive when the joke is on them. Via the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

In the wake of a major pipeline spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, Exxon has launched a campaign to prevent Little Rock television stations from running a political ad titled, “Exxon Hates Your Children.” To try to keep it off the air, Exxon is circulating a memo to television stations claiming that the commercial is “defamatory toward ExxonMobil’s employees.”

The ads, which were paid for through crowdfunding, were scheduled to run on local ABC, NBC, and Fox stations this week, but were taken off the schedule when the stations got the memo. In February, Exxon pulled the same stunt when Comcast was set to air the ad during the president’s State of the Union address.

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Sate Your Documentary Addiction

By on April 6, 2013 in News 0

I’m overburdened with media! I’ve a pile of books to read, news to collate, new music to parse and podcasts to digest. My Netflix queue overfloweth. And if I ever get time to devour something in my free time, sadly, it usually isn’t the pure escapism of fiction. I think I’ve been reading non-fiction and watching documentaries for so long, my brain is now wired to be impatient with what should be delicious candy.

My problem is that I continue to welcome all recommendations from friends, co-workers, DJs, online sources, journalists and Disinfonauts. But I am thankful that the terse and listographic nature of the internet, as well as the myriad of sources for content organization, have actually streamlined this process. A digital native, I irrationally worry that I’ll be missing some current event or corner of the world’s many subcultures.

I’ll die before I give up on trying to subsume it all into my subconscious!… Read the rest

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Fox News Guest Claims She Smelled God During Near-Death Experience

By on April 5, 2013 in News 0

“Ever wonder what heaven’s actually like?” Fox News journalists have the answer, from the mouth of Crystal McVea, whose heart briefly stopped while she was undergoing treatment for an inflamed pancreas. McVea claims she ascended to heaven, where she felt like she “had 500 senses” and smelled God. She is selling an e-book titled “Waking Up in Heaven: A True Story of Brokenness, Heaven, and Life Again” describing the experience:

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New York Times Caves To Twitter Pressure

By on April 2, 2013 in News 0

Writing at PandoDaily, disinformation author Paul Carr castigates the New York Times for changing its biography of Yvonne Brill after the Twitterverse ganged up on the Gray Lady:

Another victory for the (fictional) Internet Community! Today the New York Times was forced to edit Douglas Martin’s obituary of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill (pictured left, played by Alastair Sim) after twitterers and bloggers took offense at the lede:

“She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.”

The outrage was pretty well summed up in a post on i09, titled “The New York Times fails miserably in its obituary for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill”…

“The blowback has been considerable. Since its publication yesterday, the obituary has attracted a firestorm of remonstration on Twitter. A small sampling of tweets captures the air of incredulity:”

Blowback!

… Read the rest

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Tagboard.com: A New Ally In The Information War

By on March 22, 2013 in News 0

A few days ago, I had heard that there were riots going on in Brooklyn.  I had no idea what was going on or why and didn’t feel like waiting for the evening news to tell me what was going on.  I knew that people were taking pictures on Instagram and tweeting under the hashtag #brooklynriot and #brooklynprotest, so I used a new website to get the big picture in one fell swoop.

Tagboard.com  is a hashtag aggregation website that searches all social media for the hashtag that you plug in.  In the case of the Brooklyn riot meme, I was able to see moment to moment what was occurring.

Of course, Tagboard was not created as a site to help protestors organize, but to keep the increasingly media savvy public well organized.  But one has to consider the power that a site like this can wield; across the board, from site to site, you have an eye in the sky.… Read the rest

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