Then read 'em this week, and we'll talk about 'em October 1:
New York Times interview with sex columnist Dan Savage about his new YouTube channel, called the "It Gets Better Project."
#2: Forbes reports this week that Facebook founder Steven Zuckerberg has rocketed past Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch on the magazine's annual list of the 400 richest Americans. The magazine also has a look at the continuing controversy over Facebook's use of personal data. Both underscore a point we talked about last week: Our textbook's list of the "Big 5" media companies seems seriously out of date. Rupert Murdoch owns one of those "big 5" companies-- News Corp (Fox News, Fox TV, Wall Street Journal, etc.).
Friday, September 24, 2010
Highlights from Chapters 4 and 5 (newspapers and magazines)
... at least, these are highlights according to me. We may not get a chance to discuss all of this in class, but if it's here, it could be on the midterm. I'm just saying.
Newspapers:
Inklings of Free Speech in the colonies: John Peter Zenger beats the “seditious libel” rap in 1735
Penny Press, NY Sun, 1833: Supported by advertising, the “news hole” is determined by how much advertising got sold.
The AP is created in 1848. Cause: The telegraph (introduced 1844). Effect: “Objectivity” in journalism. (Also: Timely national news everywhere.)
The Civil War gives us the byline (Union Army wants to know who wrote what: Big Brother is watching!) and the inverted pyramid. (Transmitting stories over telegraph wires that could go down any time means: Get the essentials as quickly as possible, so if the line goes down, you at least got the Five Ws in there.)
1890s: Yellow Journalism-- William Randolph Hearst gives us color comics, half-tone photos, and the Spanish-American War. (“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”)
1890s & 19-aughts: “The Quality Press”: NY Times (1896), Wall Street Journal (1889), Christian Science Monitor (1908)
1923: American Society of Newspaper Editors and the “Canons of Journalism”: Responsibility; Freedom of the Press; Independence; Sincerity, truthfulness, accuracy; Impariality; Fair Play; Decency.
Newspaper chains—starts in the 19th Century (Hearst, Scripps, et al). 80 percent chain ownership when the textbook comes out. 2006, Gannett buys Florida State University’s student newspaper.
Types of newspapers, according to our book: Dailies (local, national); weeklies; alternative papers; “ethnic” press.
Newsroom diversity and chain ownership: Are these still relevant questions?
Magazines:
Blow up in the late 19th Century, boosted by several trends—three of them government policies:
1. Public education—more people can read
2. Postage Act of 1879 lowers shipping costs—for magazines!—to a penny a pound: Selling subscriptions to individuals becomes viable.
3. Rural Free Delivery: Even if you live in the sticks, you can get mail—including magazines.
4. Magazines discover the lesson of the Penny Press: The profits come from advertisers, not consumers. (Later, radio and TV extend this—the content is free to consumers.)
Magazines rule—they are the national media for a few decades (1890s until the 1920s). Then radio kicks their ass. The penny-press model stops working so well for the biggest mags—Life, Saturday Evening Post—because the advertisers have moved on to broadcast. (Without enough ads, they lose money on every copy.) But it takes decades for them to actually fold.
Special Interest Magazines: Latina, Filipinas, Latvian Dimensions, Lefthander. You can’t get this anywhere else (attracts readers)—and you can’t get this group of readers anywhere else (attracts specific advertisers).
Editorial Independence:
Advertisers call the shots: Ask for “complementary copy,” and expect generally sympathetic treatment
Sources/subjects call the shots: Stars want to approve photos, layout—and even the copy.
OK? Not OK? Say why…
Newspapers:
Inklings of Free Speech in the colonies: John Peter Zenger beats the “seditious libel” rap in 1735
Penny Press, NY Sun, 1833: Supported by advertising, the “news hole” is determined by how much advertising got sold.
The AP is created in 1848. Cause: The telegraph (introduced 1844). Effect: “Objectivity” in journalism. (Also: Timely national news everywhere.)
The Civil War gives us the byline (Union Army wants to know who wrote what: Big Brother is watching!) and the inverted pyramid. (Transmitting stories over telegraph wires that could go down any time means: Get the essentials as quickly as possible, so if the line goes down, you at least got the Five Ws in there.)
1890s: Yellow Journalism-- William Randolph Hearst gives us color comics, half-tone photos, and the Spanish-American War. (“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”)
1890s & 19-aughts: “The Quality Press”: NY Times (1896), Wall Street Journal (1889), Christian Science Monitor (1908)
1923: American Society of Newspaper Editors and the “Canons of Journalism”: Responsibility; Freedom of the Press; Independence; Sincerity, truthfulness, accuracy; Impariality; Fair Play; Decency.
Newspaper chains—starts in the 19th Century (Hearst, Scripps, et al). 80 percent chain ownership when the textbook comes out. 2006, Gannett buys Florida State University’s student newspaper.
Types of newspapers, according to our book: Dailies (local, national); weeklies; alternative papers; “ethnic” press.
Newsroom diversity and chain ownership: Are these still relevant questions?
Magazines:
Blow up in the late 19th Century, boosted by several trends—three of them government policies:
1. Public education—more people can read
2. Postage Act of 1879 lowers shipping costs—for magazines!—to a penny a pound: Selling subscriptions to individuals becomes viable.
3. Rural Free Delivery: Even if you live in the sticks, you can get mail—including magazines.
4. Magazines discover the lesson of the Penny Press: The profits come from advertisers, not consumers. (Later, radio and TV extend this—the content is free to consumers.)
Magazines rule—they are the national media for a few decades (1890s until the 1920s). Then radio kicks their ass. The penny-press model stops working so well for the biggest mags—Life, Saturday Evening Post—because the advertisers have moved on to broadcast. (Without enough ads, they lose money on every copy.) But it takes decades for them to actually fold.
Special Interest Magazines: Latina, Filipinas, Latvian Dimensions, Lefthander. You can’t get this anywhere else (attracts readers)—and you can’t get this group of readers anywhere else (attracts specific advertisers).
Editorial Independence:
Advertisers call the shots: Ask for “complementary copy,” and expect generally sympathetic treatment
Sources/subjects call the shots: Stars want to approve photos, layout—and even the copy.
OK? Not OK? Say why…
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Part of next week's homework: Submit and vote on questions for our guest speaker
We'll be hearing from Chicago Public Radio's Justin Kaufmann next week-- he's played many roles at the station and currently, as Senior Content Developer, runs blogs.vocalo.org, where WBEZ staff and a small team of independent journalists blog daily.
Justin is one of the people charged with helping WBEZ figure out how the station can best find and serve its audience-- and get their support-- in a world that's been changing quickly. In our own class's study, actual radios got very little use, as did live broadcasts of any kind. So how's a radio station supposed to survive?
Two other things about Justin:
1. He's funny. In his spare time, he's a member of a comedy troupe called Schadenfreude.
2. He's a Columbia alum.
What'll we ask him? That's largely up to you-- and it's a big chunk of your homework. Here's the whole assignment, with some links:
1. Monitor blogs.vocalo.org during the week. Pick a post you find interesting and link to it-- with a note about what you find interesting-- in the comments section of this post. Remember to put your name on your comment, so you get credit!
Note: "find interesting" and "like" are not necessarily the same thing. As we've been noting in class, every piece of content is pitched to a specific audience-- however big or small-- and you may not be a member of the target audience here. I'm asking for you to consider this not just as a consumer (with likes and dislikes) but as an observer of media trends. So, the question of whether you like this thing or not, that's a piece of data to observe. But your interest is analytical, which means something may be interesting because you don't understand what it's intent is, or because you're curious about what audience it's trying to address.
2. Submit up to three questions for Justin via Google Moderator by Wednesday, September 29 at 9 a.m.
3. Vote on three questions for Justin via Google Moderator by Thursday, September 30, at 9 a.m.
Cool? Cool.
Justin is one of the people charged with helping WBEZ figure out how the station can best find and serve its audience-- and get their support-- in a world that's been changing quickly. In our own class's study, actual radios got very little use, as did live broadcasts of any kind. So how's a radio station supposed to survive?
Two other things about Justin:
1. He's funny. In his spare time, he's a member of a comedy troupe called Schadenfreude.
2. He's a Columbia alum.
What'll we ask him? That's largely up to you-- and it's a big chunk of your homework. Here's the whole assignment, with some links:
1. Monitor blogs.vocalo.org during the week. Pick a post you find interesting and link to it-- with a note about what you find interesting-- in the comments section of this post. Remember to put your name on your comment, so you get credit!
Note: "find interesting" and "like" are not necessarily the same thing. As we've been noting in class, every piece of content is pitched to a specific audience-- however big or small-- and you may not be a member of the target audience here. I'm asking for you to consider this not just as a consumer (with likes and dislikes) but as an observer of media trends. So, the question of whether you like this thing or not, that's a piece of data to observe. But your interest is analytical, which means something may be interesting because you don't understand what it's intent is, or because you're curious about what audience it's trying to address.
2. Submit up to three questions for Justin via Google Moderator by Wednesday, September 29 at 9 a.m.
3. Vote on three questions for Justin via Google Moderator by Thursday, September 30, at 9 a.m.
Cool? Cool.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Late-breaking data (I did some new calculations...)
I. Time spent with each type of content
In the first set of charts, we looked only at the number of times we choose a particular type of content, but that doesn't tell the whole story: A 2-minute Facebook check is not really the same thing as spending 3 hours playing a video game. Figured this way, movies/TV jump ahead of social media, and video games jump ahead of text.
II. Paid vs. Free, by content type
In the first set of runs, we had a single paid/free chart, but this gives an extra layer of information. For this run, I broke content types down into three categories-- social media, entertainment, and news/info-- and asked how many times we accessed each for free, as opposed to buying (like a book) or subscribing (like cable TV)?
***********
III. Web vs. Storage (disk/paper) vs. Broadcast
How much news do we read on paper? How much music (and video) is streaming? I left out certain types of content that pretty much only live in one place or another-- social media are all online, and books (at least for our group) are 100 percent in storage. I left other "non-daily content" out of the picture too, because it's such a broad category-- everything from Wikipedia to Rolling Stone. Here's how the rest shakes out:
***********
What else should we try to figure out? Comment below!
In the first set of charts, we looked only at the number of times we choose a particular type of content, but that doesn't tell the whole story: A 2-minute Facebook check is not really the same thing as spending 3 hours playing a video game. Figured this way, movies/TV jump ahead of social media, and video games jump ahead of text.
************************************************
II. Paid vs. Free, by content type
In the first set of runs, we had a single paid/free chart, but this gives an extra layer of information. For this run, I broke content types down into three categories-- social media, entertainment, and news/info-- and asked how many times we accessed each for free, as opposed to buying (like a book) or subscribing (like cable TV)?
***********
III. Web vs. Storage (disk/paper) vs. Broadcast
How much news do we read on paper? How much music (and video) is streaming? I left out certain types of content that pretty much only live in one place or another-- social media are all online, and books (at least for our group) are 100 percent in storage. I left other "non-daily content" out of the picture too, because it's such a broad category-- everything from Wikipedia to Rolling Stone. Here's how the rest shakes out:
***********
What else should we try to figure out? Comment below!
Most popular content
I was also interested in which specific pieces of content got listed a whole bunch of times. Here's everything that was logged 5 times or more. In several cases, the "Title" field was left blank-- I've let those display here, since they're among the most common entries:
| Content Type | Title | Count |
| Audio: Music, Entertainment | 47 | |
| Social Media | 60 | |
| Social Media | 23 | |
| Text: Daily Content | 15 | |
| Text: Non-daily content | 14 | |
| Video/Film: Entertainment | 13 | |
| Text: Daily Content | 8 | |
| Text: Non-Daily Content | cell | 8 |
| Audio: Music, Entertainment | music | 8 |
| Text: Daily Content | Text Messages | 7 |
| Audio: Music, Entertainment | boombox | 7 |
| Books: Fiction | Homework | 5 |
| Video Game | Lord of Ultima | 5 |
| Audio: Music, Entertainment | Q101 | 5 |
| Video Game | Super Mario Galaxy 2 | 5 |
| Social Media | cell | 5 |
Your Notes on What You Saw/Read/Etc.
I'm looking a little more closely at the results from your media-consumption tracking assignment, and I'm getting a kick out of the notes that were left in the "notes/comments" field. A bunch of them do a nice job of describing or reflecting on how a particular piece of media is being consumed (or reflecting on how it "should" be logged).
Here's a selection, presented anonymously, of comments that caught my attention.
Rock on!
Here's a selection, presented anonymously, of comments that caught my attention.
| Title | Notes/Comments |
| All the Kings Men | Read in class. |
| bills | They send me these bills for free. How sweet of them. |
| Chef Todd English and CSI Crime Scene Investigation | I was watching TV and Redditing on my laptop while making some food. It wasn't until I closed Reddit that I noticed all the media feeds that were slipping by me. I believe making a habit of recording all that I take in will be much harder than I first thought. |
| Doom 1 | Went riding most of today, hence all the very late postings. Stopped at a buddies house to play Doom for a couple hours. Didn't beat the game.. /sigh |
| This time cuts into the Xbox time because I was checking my phone while using the Gaming console, so this was a case of multi-tasking. | |
| I counted between 12pm to 5 pm how many times I used facebook on my cell phone and it was 11 times. | |
| Because updating my status is just that important. | |
| Chatting before class. | |
| Ghost Adventures | Not sure if this show is considered a documentary, but it is more for entertainment purposes. |
| Lord of the Rings: Fellowship | Far too many commercials. Periodically felt as if I was drowning in advertisements. |
| Lord of the Rings: Fellowship | TNT special this weekend, will likely continue watching the series. |
| Management | Viewed through Netflix |
| My Mic Sounds Nice | On Bet.com |
| Open Mic Night | There was music playing from a laptop computer (and live performances of music) at the Open Mic Night at Plymouth. |
| Starbucks Cup | I read the message about saving the earth on my Starbucks cup. |
| Surfed Ebay for good deals on Motorcycles | Did this while playing WoW. Found a couple nice 750/4's. |
| syllabus | In a way it was free. In another way, I paid thousands and thousands of dollars to receive this syllabus. |
| texting | I put this under a subscription cost because I have unlimited texting. |
| The Social Network | going very early to a pre-screening of the Facebook movie. |
| Tuck Everlasting | I was being picky with movies on Netflix. |
| Watched a bit of Football | Was mostly distracted with slappin' the bass. Used the television as background noise. |
| World of Warcraft | Ran around in circles, talked to friends in my hometown, logged off. Was mostly used as a communication piece today. |
Rock on!
Friday, September 17, 2010
And the homework: Back-of-the-envelope tally of individual communications
This is the one where you figure out how best to make a reasonable estimate of your daily individual (as opposed to mass) communications:
* Number of phone calls and number of minutes
* Number of emails (and FB messages, etc.) that you've read and that you've written. (If you also tally the ones you received but didn't read, that's excellent.)
* Number of text messages.
* Number of IM chats; some tally (or guess) of how many lines of text, that would be a bonus.
* Count up whatever else seems to fit: Skype/G-chat, etc.
The goal here is to use the most effective, efficient means to come up with a reasonable estimate of your daily activity. Taking your monthly cell minutes and dividing by 30 seems A-OK to me, for instance, but if you've got a better way to go, do it.
By Thursday morning, email me:
-- Your estimates
-- AND a quick explanation of how you came up with each one.
Example: "50 text messages on Wednesday; my inbox counts them for me."
Cool? So by Thursday 9 a.m., get those suckers to dan [dot] weissman [at] gmail [dot] com
Cool.
* Number of phone calls and number of minutes
* Number of emails (and FB messages, etc.) that you've read and that you've written. (If you also tally the ones you received but didn't read, that's excellent.)
* Number of text messages.
* Number of IM chats; some tally (or guess) of how many lines of text, that would be a bonus.
* Count up whatever else seems to fit: Skype/G-chat, etc.
The goal here is to use the most effective, efficient means to come up with a reasonable estimate of your daily activity. Taking your monthly cell minutes and dividing by 30 seems A-OK to me, for instance, but if you've got a better way to go, do it.
By Thursday morning, email me:
-- Your estimates
-- AND a quick explanation of how you came up with each one.
Example: "50 text messages on Wednesday; my inbox counts them for me."
Cool? So by Thursday 9 a.m., get those suckers to dan [dot] weissman [at] gmail [dot] com
Cool.
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