media

You know one of the problems about this whole copyright debate is the massive conflict of interest in reporting it in our media companies, which also happen to be our ISPs. Canada’s top 6 ISPs, in order of customer base, are: Bell Sympatico, Shaw, Telus, Rogers, Vidéotron, Cogeco. Looking at what these companies do other than provide your Internet:

• Sympatico is owned by BCE, which also owns a big stake in CTV Globe Media, representing: Canada’s biggest private TV network (CTV), Canada’s biggest national newspaper (Globe and Mail), and 35 radio stations across the country.
• Shaw - mostly a tech company.
• Telus - mostly a tech company.
• Rogers owns magazines (including Maclean’s and Canadian Business), TV stations including CityTV and RogersTV.
• Videotron is owned by Quebecor, which owns scores of newspapers across the country (including Journal de Montreal and the Toronto Sun) numerous magazines in Quebec, the TVA television network, Archambault record stores, Videotron video rental stores, and a number of book publishers.
• Cogeco - mostly a tech company.

So between them, UPDATE: the owners of Bell Sympatico, Rogers and Videotron, probably own three quarters of Canada’s non-CBC news media; the balance owned by CanwestGlobal (which owns Global Television, the National Post, and, of course, Dose Magazine).

All in all not very healthy. The Canadian mania for, and regulatory approval of, consolidation not just in the media business, but in merging media and technology, means that our ISPs are our news providers. So any discussion of Net Neutrality and Copyright will be filtered through the lens of Big Content Providers.

Which, I guess, just means that we have to keep getting the word out.

Jeff Jarvis asks 10 questions of newspapers… Probably these should be asked of anyone who has anything to do with:
a) information
b) the webbernet

Here are the questions, and some teasers… see more here.

1. Who are we?
“I’m going to start with an existential question. It’s a fairly ridiculous one but I don’t think any newspaper has really decided what they are,”…

2. A new relationship?
Jarvis said news organisations need to decide on the appropriate relationship with their audience…

3. Are we generous?
Generosity could take many forms, according to Jarvis - sharing technology, supporting people with the Guardian ad network, allowing people to be stars in the outside world…

4. Do we know who’s smart?
“I’ve changed my mind - I used to be Mr Everything Should Be Open but I have read CiF comments too,” Jarvis said, adding that he was not picking on CiF in particular. “We need to figure out who the smart people are - it’s not just about creating content but also curating people.” …

5. Are we findable?
The idea that people will come to us is changing, and news websites “can’t be findable enough”, according to Jarvis…

6. Are we a platform?
The Guardian had already moved towards becoming a platform with the launch of Comment is Free and the fact that commenters have their own profile, Jarvis said…

7. Are we inventing new narratives?
Jarvis said reporters should go out with audio equipment all the time just to capture what might happen….

8. Are we in data layers?
“Data can tell you things if you find a way to listen,” Jarvis said…

9. Are we having fun yet?
Jarvis said it was essential to experiment and “play” with new ideas in order stay ahead of the competitors…

10. Are we agile?
“The Guardian is the best in the world but others are catching up,” Jarvis warned….

This looks pretty important: CRTC, Canada’s communications regulator, is doing a consultation on “New Media Broadcasting.” Here is a CBC story on it. Here is the consultation overview doc. Here is the e-consultation site.

[via Michael Geist]

Via Michael Geist:

Sources indicate that the CBC is set to become the first major North American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM using BitTorrent. This Sunday, CBC will air Canada Next Great Prime Minister. The following day, it plans to freely release a high-resolution version via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. This development is important not only because it shows that Canada’s public broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallize the net neutrality issue in Canada.

All sorts of institutions are in big trouble because of the internet, and they’re scared as hell. Newspapers can’t figure out how they’ll keep making money; the music business is terrified that its business model is evaporating. Britannica has faded to irrelevance for anyone with an internet connection. I think that’s the tip of things, and anyone who has anything to do with information (schools, governments, book publishers, television, public broadcasters, among others) are all going to see their apple carts upset with fruit rolling all over the place in the next decade.

I’ve been thinking about this particularly in my role as President of the Board of Directors of the Atwater Library, where we are struggling (as many libraries do) to try to articulate why we are important, why we should get funding.

The big problem, I think, is that institutions tend to be wrong about what they are actually for.

That is, they have defined their existence by various functions they perform within a given ecosystem. In the context here, these institutions grew up in an ecosystem where information was scarce, and information distribution limited. The ecosystem has changed (info distribution & access is abundant), and institutions are having a hard time adapting. So: music labels think they sell CDs to people; newspapers think they get writers to make news articles, and get people to read them; libraries think they give people access to books and computers; universities think they provide a place for people to learn and do research; governments think they try to improve society by implementing policies wanted by the people … etc. But I think they are all wrong.

All those kinds of definitions get you tied up in the functional stuff you do, and they don’t really get to the core of what’s important, what the real thing is that you are doing. I don’t have answers, but any business/institution that thinks like this is going to get creamed in the next ten years, unless they take a look at what they are really for.

It seems to me the porn business, one of the most profitable businesses in the Universe, gets this in a way no one else does. Because the porn biz understands exactly what it is for:

Pornographers don’t sell pornography; they provide orgasms.

Looking at it that way, they don’t seem to care much about how they do it - they’ll just find ways to give people the orgasms however people want them given. Dirty postcards, magazines, prono theatres, VHS and Betamax, phone sex, online photos, online videos, chat lines, webcams, cybersex and God knows what else. You don’t hear the porn business whingeing about Intellectual Property and illegal downloads, and consumers as thieves, because they don’t have time: they’re too busy trying to give the world what it seems to want, more orgasms.

So, stepping out of the peepshow and back to the respectable world, why are newspapers, for instance, having such a hard time? I think it’s because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what they do.

The value of a newspaper is not that it gives me information; the value of a newspaper is how it selects information - what it puts in and what it leaves out.

So: Newspapers are not for providing information; newspapers are for selecting what information I should get. (And maybe: for helping me make decisions? - not sure about that one).

And the problem is that newspapers, for the most part, are in a tizzy because they ask: how can we compete as information providers in a world where there is unlimited information available on the web? And the answer, I think, is that they should stop competing as information providers, and start focusing on their real skills and usefulness, which is information selection. Note, by the way, that this does not mean that newspapers should stop providing information, but rather that that task might necessary in order to do a good job of selecting information.

I keep coming back again and again to something I heard Joi Ito say a couple of years ago on some podcast or other:

mp3s are just metadata associated with a musician.

That’s pretty big, pretty heavy. I don’t think I quite have it fixed in my brain yet, but the idea is that a thing’s value is defined by how well people know it, and how highly they consider it. Mp3s are meta data that allow people to “find” an artist, and allow them to determine how much they value that artist. (What that means for the music biz I’m not sure, but we’ll find out in the next ten years).

For newspapers, you might say the same thing: news articles and columns are just metadata associated with the newspaper. But the real value a newspaper performs is not giving me good articles, it’s putting it all together. The mere provision of information is worthless now, because anyone can do it (even me).

This is why blogs - at least in the techno-intelligencia - win. Blogs are excellent selectors of information, while newspapers are pretty clunky at it - because for the past 300 years they existed in an ecosystem where information was scarce. Now information (and access to it) is abundant. So a site like BoingBoing becomes one of the most popular on the net: their craft is not providing information, it’s selecting it. And they’re good at it.

And given the huge overabundance of information on the web, we need all the help we can get in selecting. So newspapers need to work harder at providing that service, bringing that core skill (which they have always had - the Editor is the God of the newspaper) to bear on the web. Have a flip thru the Gazette, or, God help you, visit their web site, and is it any wonder they’re having a hard time? Half of it is the same generic wire-service information that’s in any other paper or news site on the web. That’s not giving me much value. It’s lazy selection and boring, and lazy and boring are a dime a dozen these days. So work harder at finding and selecting interesting content (from the web, there’s tons of it), take down you stupid registration system down, put up a decent navigable web site designed by someone who understands the Internet, and get on with things and stop whingeing.

This was the idea behind earideas: that what’s missing is not good audio out there, but a really good way to find and hear the good audio. (I hope we’re succeeding … anyone have any comments on earideas? Have you checked it out yet? Do you like it?).

There is lots of work to do, and I guess you and I and many other people will be busy for the next few years figuring this all out.

Oh, and any ideas about what a library is truly for? Some help would be much appreciated in deciding that - I’ve got some suggestions, but it hasn’t quite crystalized in the old brain yet.

UPDATE: Interesting proposition about wordpress and learning, that suggests a way education might start changing. [via blogsavvy; via bentrem twitter]

UPDATE II: Stemming from a debate about the value of political groups on Facebook, Mat’s started thinking about political platforms on the web.

I’ve been listening to tons of great public broadcasting on earideas.com.

And here’s a different view about why “good” public broadcasting is important: with the web, and podcasts, the CBC becomes a calling card for Canada. Ditto Deutsche-Welle for Germany and ARN for Australia etc. The broadcaster becomes a marketing tool and a builder of prestige. This is becoming more important in the networked world, where - for many of my peers, for instance - we can be anywhere in the world to do the work we do. Ditto businesses, scientists, writers and other “elites.” We want them here, in Canada, in Montreal, because really smart people make a country more vibrant and innovative.

I believe that a strong public broadcaster with excellent, thought-provoking content, helps build Canada’s image in the world.

While this isn’t all a public broadcaster should do, this is a new kind of rationale, I believe, brought on by the web; and one that might be more compelling to the business-only decision-making that runs our governments these days.

Note, this applies as well to universities: all universities should put a chunk of their marketing budget towards producing a weekly, high-quality podcast that interviews professors doing exciting research (whether in arts, humanities, or sciences and professional disciplines). I’m thinking of a weekly podcast with content as varied and wonderful as the TEDTalks. That is the gold standard for thought-provoking web content … and should be emulated by anyone who wants to build an image as a place of exciting innovation.

I was just talking with Mitch and Julien about this at lunch the other day; and commented on Mat’s blog to this effect.

Craig’s Regret the Error blog does a round-up of 2007 media screw-ups, and their usually insipid apologies. Number one:

Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair “has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin.”

See the rest here.

Just posted a comment on Dan Misener’s blog (Dan now runs CBC radio, from what I can tell), that I thought was worth repeating here. Dan’s post was about connective tissue, says he:

On Spark, we’re trying really hard to make the show’s connective tissue live up to its content. That comes in the form of story treatments, editing techniques, music choices, sound design, scripts, segues, and all the other tiny little bits that go into making a radio program.

My comment was about the need to find the “core” of information-provision institutions:

i’ve been thinking about this lately: the changes on the web mean that many prized institutions are afraid of becoming obsolete. but i think the real problem is that the function they serve is not the one they thought they served … and they haven’t figured that out yet.

for instance, “providing information” is just one thing that say britannica, and mainstream media, and universities do. but it is not the *core* of their existence - and the core is where their importance and relevance lies. these institutions were fooled in the past century into thinking provision of information was the core of their existence, because information used to be scarce, and it’s distribution limited. now info is cheap and plentiful, and distribution ubiquitous … it turns out they aren’t all that valuable as providers of information.

and yet I feel deeply that professional media, britannica, and universities etc still have crucial roles to play in the world, they just haven’t adjusted yet to what that is.

they have to stop thinking of themselves as “providers of information” … they are something more (not sure what) and when the can confidently figure that out, they will find solutions to their angst about the future.

maybe your ideas here touch on something about where that core might be for radio.

Because I love good radio, I get very angry with CBC for their bad radio, of which the examples are abundant.

However…I must offer a big public congrats to them for two new shows:

• Spark, a great show about tech and trends hosteb by the so very excellent Nora Young; and
• Search Engine, another fine show about the web and how it’s impacting society, hosted by Jesse Brown

I just listened (on my collectik player, check the sidebar here) to CBCRadio3, Spark, and then Search Engine all in a row… and thought, whoa, is it possible that CBC is actually cool and with it? Well done programming decision-makers (ps when are you going to cancel these shows!?)

I have no idea when they are on the radio, but the podcast urls are:
http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/spark.xml
http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/searchengine.xml
http://www.cbcradio3.com/podcast/radio3/

Globe columnist Christie Blatchford wrote an article about blogs … with the tiresome old complaint, “blogs are like little girls’ diaries” etc etc. and ended: “I do not blog, I have not blogged, I will not blog and, furthermore, I do not care to read blogs.”

So, being the old crank that I am, I sent her an email:

you probably have many emails from angry “bloggers” already, but i always bang my head against the table when i read things by writers who don’t read blogs explaining why blogs are bad. “blog” is a stupid word that defines this: a way to transfer text from one set of typing fingers to a number of eyeballs. some of that text is crap, some of it good, some of it extraordinary; but a text’s goodness or crappiness is not determined by the mode of transportation (ie blog vs newspaper vs book vs magazine).

goodness and crappiness are traits independent of the mode of transportation, and i will lay down a challenge to you: you provide 5 examples of excellent pieces of newspaper writing and I will provide 5 excellent pieces of blog writing, and we do a blind taste test on some famous smart people, and see which they pick as the better text. i suspect there will be no difference.

best,

her response (which I was surprised to receive):

such a contest would be fair only if we confine the parameters…in other words, no fair if i offer five great bits of toronto writing, and you pick five from the web. let’s say five examples of good newspaper writing from Toronto writers and/or bloggers. what say you?

and my reresponse:

ha! well, that was a surprise.

so the problem with your premise is that you’re nixing one of the great distinctions between the web and print: while you are stuck with whatever the Star & Globe editors want to give you in their pages, I have the full universe of the net to choose from. score 1 for blogs. though I think it’s a big mistake to see these two means of transporting text in opposition. they aren’t, they are complementary (as are books, magazines and newspapers).

further, i don’t really read toronto web writers that i can think of. and since the globe is a national newspaper, how bout we limit the geography to canada? and i think we also have to further constrain things for fairness: no “hard news” articles … instead it should be commentary/columns/op-ed etc.

by the way, can i blog about this? including quoting your email?

no answer after a week, so i blogged about it anyway.

Michael Geist writes a worrying article about how the web is starting to look more and more like cable.

Until recently, the Internet was precisely the opposite [of cable], offering unlimited user choice, continuous interactivity, and technological capabilities to copy and remix content. That is gradually changing as broadcasters seek to re-assert greater geographic control over their content, ISPs experiment with cable-like models for prioritized content delivery, and some creator groups lobby the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to adapt Canadian content regulations to the Internet.

one thing that’s starting to happen more and more is geographical blocking:

…NBC and Fox recently unveiled Hulu.com to some critical acclaim, while Comedy Central created a new site for the popular Daily Show that features a complete archive of eight years of programming.

Canadians, alas, are generally locked out of these sites due to licensing restrictions. Canadian broadcasters have been scrambling to buy the Internet rights to U.S. programming, both to protect their local broadcasts and to beef up their online presence. U.S. broadcasters may eventually decide it is more profitable to stream their content on a worldwide basis and to remove longstanding geographic restrictions, however, for the moment they are parceling up the Internet as they would a broadcast destined for multiple cable markets. This geographic bordering extends beyond just blocking streamed content. The new Daily Show site is off-limits for Canadians since the U.S.-based Comedy Central recently took the unprecedented step of redirecting Canadian visitors to the CTV-owned Comedy Network site.

I don’t like the sound of all that. But what’s even *worse* is that cultural groups - in the name of “protecting Canadian culture” are thinking along the same lines. If commercial broadcasters in collusion with ISPs (who sometimes are commercial broadcasters) can shove their content at us, and keep us away from other content, then can’t we make sure that “Canadian culture” (chosen by us) gets precedence too … that is, can’t we start deciding what you watch and read again, all the better to *improve* our bottom line and country?

Uck.

And in other news youtube launches a Canadian version, Youtube.ca (which redirects to ca.Youtube.com)… Oilman has some complaints, for instance about this sentence from their blog: “In developing territory-specific YouTube sites, we wanted to bring YouTube to you, in your language, while making local talent more visible and getting closer to our users around the world.”

The rest of the complaints there seem to miss the point, ie he wants Youtube Canada to be more representative of Canada - bigger flag etc. Why? Why would you want Youtube Canada any more than … oh … say Sympatico Video (shudder). What’s wrong with just leaving the Internet as it is, (mostly) borderless?

[Incidentally, why do Canadians have to be such a bunch of insecure whiners? See the comments on Oilman’s post].

From one end, Youtube.ca doesn’t make much sense, as good content on youtube should win the good old fashioned way, because it gets linked to and people like it. Youtube.ca probably makes it harder to find good stuff, tho maybe all these geo-youtubes will feed into the main youtube.com site? Hope so.

But putting Geist’s article together with Youtube.ca - it’s obvious that they want to do more geographically-targeted advertising. Just like TV!

I already find it annoying that google searches search differently on different computers - depending on, for instance, where you are and what language your browser is set to. I don’t want Google to filter searches “just for me” based on where I am etc… I want to know what’s at the top of the listing.

But now it looks like the rest of the web is shifting in this direction too.

Went to Craig Silverman’s book launch for Regret the Error … looks great. Good crowd of mtl geeks and other folk. Blurb from the introduction to the book, by Jeff Jarvis:

Craig Silverman’s examination of the art of the correction in his blog and now this book could not come at a better time for journalism. For the public’s trust in news organizations is falling about as fast as their revenues (and, yes, those may be related). One way to earn back that trust is to face honestly and directly the trade’s faults. The more – and more quickly – that news organizations admit and correct their mistakes, prominently and forthrightly, the less their detractors will have grounds to grumble about them

And what a pleasure to answer this question: “How do you know Craig?” … My answer: “Oh, he wrote about LibriVox in the New York Times.”

I will be on two panels for the CKUT conference, Redefining Media: Media Democracy and Community Radio, this weekend at McGill.

My sessions are both on Sunday:

Copyright And Community Radio
Sunday, Oct 21st, 2007, 12:30pm - Shatner Ballroom, 3480 McTavish, 3rd floor
How does intellectual property law affect what you hear on your radio dial? Learn about copyright, royalties, tariffs and the emerging trend towards a creative commons.

and:

New Technologies and Community Radio
Sunday, Oct 21st, 2007, 2:30pm - Shatner Ballroom, 3480 McTavish, 3rd floor
The analog medium of radio takes on the digital age: find out how community radio can work synergistically with emerging technologies.

I also plan to go see the wonderful Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, give the keynote on Friday night, anyone wanna come?

Keynote Presentation: Amy Goodman
Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, & the People Who Fight Back

Friday, Oct 19th, 2007, 7pm - Leacock Auditorium, 855 Sherbrooke St West, McGill University.
Advance tickets are available at CKUT, located at 3647 University Street from Oct 15th-19th, 2007 between noon and 6pm.

The host, founder and executive producer of Democracy Now speaks in commemoration of Media Democracy Day at McGill University. Airing on more than 500 radio and TV stations across North America, Democracy Now is an award-winning independent news program. Democracy Now! is celebrating its tenth anniversary offering independent news and coverage of peace and human rights movements. Amy Goodman’s second New York Times Bestseller, Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back, has recently come out in paperback.

Somehow this doesn’t seem right:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been working on a secret project to build a $2-million government-controlled media centre, a newspaper reported Monday…

The new briefing centre would supplant the 47-year-old National Press Theatre, a venue where government news conferences are moderated by the executive members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery Association, a group of newspapers, broadcasters and other media outlets who report on Parliament Hill…

Not knowing much about press on Parliament Hill, I wondered, “what could the reason for this be?” One answer:

One document obtained by the Star stated that the new centre is part of efforts to “put in place robust physical and information security measures to protect the prime minister and cabinet.” …

Paranoid, but, OK, maybe reasonable. (Then again, what exactly is “information security” as it relates to the PM’s press briefings?) More:

According to documents, the new centre could give the government control over which journalists attend news conferences.

Ah. Now that, it seems to me, should be illegal. It’s certainly undemocratic.

The government would also have the ability to do its own filming at the events, and could provide the footage to journalists, instead of letting them film the events themselves, the Star reported….

They could even do their own interviews!

Also reported in the article, Harper “has only made one appearance at the National Press Theatre, on Oct. 3.”

Interesting.

[via publicbroadcasting.ca]

Hey, I *am* the media! Writing for the Huffington Post pays off! I got a press pass to Pop&Policy Conference (part of Pop!Montreal) and I plan to go see:

Thurs.Oct.4 – 1:00pm – 3:00pm - Tanna Schulich Hall (527 Sherbrooke W.)
KEYNOTE & PANEL: Dr. Daniel Levitin,
Author of This is Your Brain on Music and Max Bell Chair in the Psychology of the Information Sciences at McGill University, offers an overview on music cognition - what we know about how musical expertise is attained and how musical preferences are formed. [link]

and:

Fri.Oct.5 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm - Pollack Hall (555 Sherbrooke W.)
KEYNOTE: Patti Smith
The “Poet Laureate of Punk Rock”, in a keynote conversation with John Nichols, Washington Editor of The Nation and author of The Great Impeachment. [link]

And I might go check out Evan and Brett talking turkey in the morning at their session: “Copyright and Collaboration: Problems and Creative Solutions” … Thurs.Oct.4 - 10:45 - 12:15 - Tanna Schulich Hall.

I wonder if that gets me into music shows too?

The fabulous Nora Young has just launched a new podcast (that also happens to be a CBC Radio* show), called Spark. Covering technology, art, society, it also aims to get more interactive feedback from the net. Comments, participation, stories and the like. As with all of Nora’s radio work, it’s good good stuff.

The next episode has a segment about the Warbike:

Did you know that almost anywhere that you go in a city you’ll be sharing space with someone’s private wireless computer network? All of their personal communication—e-mail, love messages, bank passwords, credit card numbers, and bizarre surfing habits—will be passing through your body without your awareness. Who are they, and how do you feel about sharing space with their personal life?

The Warbike turns this wireless network activity into sound. As you cycle the streets, you’ll hear the activity of this invisible communications layer that permeates our public spaces. Who knew that so much was going on?

So, have a listen, and go comment on their blog (to help show CBC management that people on the web care about content).

UPDATE: also forgot to mention, they’re using podsafe/creative commons music on the show. sweet.

*NOTE: Radio shows are just like podcasts, except that you have to listen to them at specific times (often based on a “schedule” that a small group of people determine arbitrarily), and instead of being able to hear them on your computer, or put them on your portable mp3 player, you have to buy a special “radio receiver.” Radio receivers are devices that pick up radio signals (much like wifi), but are usually single-purpose machines - ie for audio only, no email, internet etc.

Laurence Dunbar and Christian Leblanc were commissioned by the CRTC to write a report and recommendations for on the Canadian broadcasting regulatory environment. Geist is happy, concluding:

The authors remain optimistic, however, concluding that “the solutions to this issue lie not in imposing new regulatory restrictions on Canadian companies as some stakeholders have suggested - but rather in encouraging them to stake out territory on the Internet. . .to regulate Canadians, while the rest of the world competes in an open market, would in our view be counterproductive.”

The message is clear - broadcasters must adapt by shifting from their reliance on protective regulations and inexpensive U.S. content to instead competing on the unregulated global stage with their own, original Canadian content delivered to an international audience on conventional and Internet platforms. This should dramatically alter Canadian content production from one mandated by government regulation to one mandated by market survival.

[link…]

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters, says Geist, is upset with the recommendations, worried that it will help to erode the solid foundation of Canadian culture they have built, the cherished productions that have made Canadian broadcasting the darling of international critics, shows like Corner Gas, Air Farce, Wind at My Back, Pit Poney … etc. etc. etc. The list of their achievements is indeed long, as is the pantheon, if you will, of Canadian TV culture, the dizzying pinnacles of creativity and cutural importance that CTV and Global and CBC TV have nurtured and cultivated in the past 20 years. Littlest Hobo, Beachcombers. Street Legal.

The internet is scary, and must be stopped, lest we lose all that our broadcasters have worked so hard to build.

Sy Hersh is the best writer on what’s going on in the US gov’ts war rooms (hint: they plan to start a war with Iran). There’s a good interview over at Jewish Journal, and check this gem, from a guy who started writing for print in the 1970s:

There is an enormous change taking place in this country in journalism. And it is online. We are eventually — and I hate to tell this to The New York Times or the Washington Post — we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular. And they are really going to cut into daily journalism.
I’ve been working for The New Yorker recently since ‘93. In the beginning, not that long ago, when I had a big story you made a good effort to get the Associated Press and UPI and The New York Times to write little stories about what you are writing about. Couldn’t care less now. It doesn’t matter, because I’ll write a story, and The New Yorker will get hundreds of thousands, if not many more, of hits in the next day. Once it’s online, we just get flooded. So, we have a vibrant, new way of communicating in America. We haven’t come to terms with it. I don’t think much of a lot of the stuff that is out there. But there are a lot of people doing very, very good stuff.

See his latest big piece here: The Redirection

And always good for the students of history, and those who don’t buy Hersh’s hype, here are a couple of pre-Iraq war pieces that laid out in detail exactly what transpired over the next year in the lead-up to the invasion in 2001-2002: The Iraq Hawks (December 2001) and The Debate Within (March 2002 - ABSTRACT ONLY!).

Video advertising has started on the YouTube website, its owner - internet giant Google - has confirmed. Google said it had designed the way the adverts work on the video-sharing website to be as unobtrusive and undisruptive as possible. The adverts will begin 15 seconds after a user has started to watch a video, but only on 20% of the screen window. Google said the advert would then disappear within 10 seconds if the user had not clicked to watch it.

[more…]

In the LA Times, journalism prof Michael Skube writes a meaningless and silly article that argues… well nothing really … or sort of that bloggers are all opinion, no fact, and that’s a waste of everyone’s time. Title? “Blogs: All the noise that fits: The hard-line opinions on weblogs are no substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters.”

His conclusion is:

The more important the story, the more incidental our opinions become. Something larger is needed: the patient sifting of fact, the acknowledgment that assertion is not evidence and, as the best writers understand, the depiction of real life. Reasoned argument, as well as top-of-the-head comment on the blogosphere, will follow soon enough, and it should. But what lodges in the memory, and sometimes knifes us in the heart, is the fidelity with which a writer observes and tells. The word has lost its luster, but we once called that reporting.

Which I agree with, except the implication that bloggers provide top-of-the-head, but not reasoned, argument. Some do, some don’t.

But check out this outstanding logical leap:

Moulitsas [of KOS] foresees bloggers becoming the watchdogs that watch the watchdog: “We need to keep the media honest, but as an institution, it’s important that they exist and do their job well.” The tone is telling: breezy, confident, self-congratulatory. Subtly, it implies bloggers have all the liberties of a traditional journalist but few of the obligations.

How do you get from the quote, which says, “someone needs to keep the professional media honest” to the conclusion, “bloggers want to be called journalists but don’t want the obligations” ??

The point is, professional journalists have done a dismal job of covering important issues (eg, WMD in Iraq) in the past, say, 5 years. And blogging has given us new mechanisms to call journalists to account for their failures. This is not breezy or self-congradulatory. It’s reality. And if anyone wants to see substantial political debates, it’s the bloggers at KOS who, so far, have hosted the best example, see: Yearly KOS Presidential Forum for a substantive understanding of how the Dem field is positioning itself.

The best part is that the Skube article mentions Josh Marshall’s TalkingPointsMemo as an example of an all-opinion/no-fact blog. TMP does tons of original reporting, and in fact Skube says he’s never read the site! (It’s in the top 5 of political/news blogs on the net, you’d think he would have read it at least once before writing an op-ed about what a waste political/news blogs are). Apparently, an editor added TPM to the piece, which Skube signed. Ha! Nice patient sifting of fact, Mr. Journalism Professor, what an excellent acknowledgment that assertion is not evidence.

Perhaps he was being ironic?

See more commentary chez TPM.

UPDATE: letter sent to LA Times:

Dear Sirs:

Re: “Blogs: All the noise that fits: The hard-line opinions on weblogs are no substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters,” by Michael Skube, if you replace the word “blog” with “op-ed,” and the word “blogger” with “blowhard op-ed writers like me,” Skube might be on to something.

Best,

Hugh McGuire
Montreal, Canada.

Ouimet over at Teamakers is throwing her hat into the ring as a candidate for CBC President. Me too. Here is my 6-point plan:

1. Podcast everything audio (none of this “best-of” stuff), and put *all* CBC TV on Youtube (leave the ads in).
Do you want people to consume your stuff? Then let them.

2. Allow all non-commercial stations to use your programming (maybe commercial, too)
I was struck, while in the US recently, that NPR radio shows pop up all over the radio dial on college stations. College stations here should be able to play CBC programs too. See above.

3. Focus internal production on: News and Documentary
A public broadcaster sinks or swims on its news and documentary programming - at least that’s where it’s reputation lies. Stop trying to make dismal “entertainment” programming. It sucks. Just stop it. You are wasting money. (Mostly).

4. Increase budget for external Canadian productions
On radio, much of the good stuff is done by external producers. I don’t know much about TV, but I bet you buying good Canadian-produced programming is a more efficient way of getting good stuff than trying to produce it yourself. And this does just as much to support Canadian culture etc as fat CBC production budgets would.

5. Focus the CBC’s Internet strategy and hire more people who understand the Internet
CBC.ca is getting better, but still isn’t good enough. See point 1. The focus should be: providing tons of good content online, and making it easy to find. Set up a conference with the world’s leading public broadcasters: BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corp, CBC, NPR …and try to figure out what best practices are. Share your experience.

6. CBC Labs
Open content shows? Kids with cameras? Young producers showcase? CBC documentary contests? etc. CBC has done some good stuff here, but lets open it up more. “CBC Labs” with a mandate to “explore the evolving landscape of broadcasting in the Internet age.” Budget, oh, say, $2 million. RIP Zed & Radio3 … Oh, and: Put it all on the web.

In addition to this, I will do everything in Ouimet’s platform, which makes me 6 better.

I’m a public radio addict, and I theoretically love CBC Radio, except that most of it is total shit. Some of it is fantastic. (By the way, this is why I started Collectik.net, so that instead of listening to crappy radio punctuated with the occasional great show, I could listen to the stuff I want to listen to all the time).

Anyway, it seems CBC needs a new president. There’s a great blog written by a pseudonymous CBCer, mostly about the CBC, called teamakers. “Ouimet” is the writer, and s/he is snarky, tough, and sometimes unfair, but generally has his/her head screwed on as straight as they come about CBC.

Anyway, s/he’s thrown his/her hat into the ring for prez, by sending an email to the selection committee (or at least pretending to) with nice paras such as:

Our current President is a bureaucrat, by his own admission. This means that he spends a lot of time kissing the asses of politicians, trying to get more money for the CBC. He’s turned his back on his employees. Between you and me, I don’t think he’s too keen on the Canadian public either.

But you and I both know that all of this didn’t get us one single dollar. We’re left with a President no politician respects, the employees hate, and we’re still broke.

and:

As for remuneration, I have no idea what the job pays but to show you I’m serious, I’ll take half of it. The other half we’ll use to bring on as many contract workers as we can, full time permanent.

Considering that Stephen Harper appoints the prez, chances are things are going to get a hell of a lot worse around the ceeb.

(PS as I write this I am listening to the dismal Afghanada, a radio drama about Canada’s “grunts on the ground” in Afghanistan … if there is anything worse than CBC writers and actors pretending to be “grunts” by dropping g’s from their Havergal & UCC accents, I don’t know what it would be).

The Mirror’s got an article on the Atwater Digital Literacy Project, nicely done. Here’s the lede:

Give a kid a video camera and they’ll fiddle around with the buttons, but teach a kid how to make movies and they’ll be feverishly posting to YouTube in no time—or at least that’s the idea behind the Atwater Library’s Digital Literacy Project.

[more…]

Thanks Tracey!

Yulblogger, podcaster, ilesansfiler, and art gallery/space guy Chris Hand, aka Zeke, has had his blog shut down (UPDATE: possibly permanently???) by a court injunction.

The Montreal and Canadian blogging, free speech, rational people communities ought to be up in arms. I urge everyone to at least write about this to get this info out. It’s a real danger to all of us who write what we think online.

The story, as I understand it, is this:

1. Radio Canada, National Post, and Le Devoir ran stories about alleged art forgeries sold to Loto-Quebec by a local art dealer whose name will remain unwritten, lest I too get sued …all links still live.

2. Loto-Quebec issued a press release about the incident … link still live.

3. Zeke, who runs a blog about art in Canada, wrote a number of posts about the incident, linking to the articles above (the posts have since been excised from the web - tho the articles he based his posts on are still up). Also, due to some vague language, suggesting that the man in question had been somehow affiliated with the mafia.

4. The fellow mentioned in articles (still available online) by Le Devoir, Radio-Canada, and Loto Quebec sued Zeke for $25,000 in damages.

5. Zeke was told to change the wording of the posts (he did).

6. Zeke posted about the threats from the other guy’s lawyer.

7. A court order required Zeke to take down the relevant posts (he did).

8. Zeke posted about the court order.

9. A second court injunction appears to have shut down Zeke’s blog altogether
UPDATE: it seems as if this injunction may only last “until after the next court hearing, June 21″

10. Zeke is no longer posting.

Here is a Globe and Mail article about the events.

Those who know Zeke know he’s loud, opinionated and something of a loose cannon. He’s also a stalwart of Montreal’s blogging/podcasting/art/arts scene, and a good guy.

But regardless of Zeke’s personality, and given that:
a) the articles Zeke linked to, and based his posts on, are still on the net in the public sphere, and
b) Zeke is now under threat of $25,000 in damages, and
c) Zeke’s blog has been shut down by court order

how do you, as a reader of blogs and citizen of Canada and Quebec, feel about freedom of speech in your country?

Chris, what can we do to help?

MORE UPDATES:
- Heri’s take
- Fagstein’s review

Matt grabbed some audio from me yakking at Podcamp Toronto, talking about:

• LibriVox, and
• Atwater Digital Literacy Project

I like the informal, trip-hoppy format. Nicely done. (But what did I mean by “audio nirvana” I wonder??).

Bill Moyers is a great old journalist from PBS who defends his vision of America in the face of iniquity; Jon Stewart is a young comedian who defends America in the face of absurdity.

See them talk.

Boris (with help from Jer) has just launched the redesign of GlobalVoicesOnline, which:

…aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore [more …]

The site is jam packed with info from blogs all over the world, and this new design is much cleaner & easier to get at than the previous incarnation. One can only assume that simplicity belies some mean-ass wordpress hacking in the background.

by the way, I would recommend they change their tagline:

aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online

that’s some pretty jargony words.

I did a video interview of Montreal hip hop artist Boogat, for the National Arts Centre’s Scene Quebec programme/podcast. SceneQuebec is an arts festival in Ottawa/Gatineau, April 20-May 5.

Here’s the boogat vid.

There are a few more vids by me coming out too, some about theatre, and another about the classical music programming.

You can find the scenequebec schedule & tix here, the podcast here, and check out Alexis O’Hara’s vid - great stuff.

First watch the video:

[link]

Julien posted about this vid, and I watched, and listened, and had a visceral reaction … which, when I later read Julien’s comments, turned out to be very similar to his.

There are so many things to love about this vid, and much to make you ponder about how we react to unfamiliar situations - even such wonderful ones.

First off - what a great rebuilding of an old classic Phil Collins tune, given a whole new life & spirit from this performance. It’s something so much more - or at least so totally different from the original. New art builds on old art, so lets be careful about how we treat our art. Next, why do we prefer to buy music than make it? And why does music in public places make us so uncomfortable? Look at all those stiff people being treated to a truly fantastic musical performace, and how long it takes them to loosen up (note that even the song is built to shake them lose … there’s that pause when people think it’s over, and then they start up again, and people are finally grooving). But watching this (I’m one of those awkward guys, who gets nervous when stuff like this happens), I kept thinking, man these guys are bold. I’d be staring at my shoes - even if I were in the band. Other notes: do you miss Video Hits? Or do you think this is a better way to find new music? (I mean the youtubes of the world, not the Parisien metro).

Now:

Watch the Fancy Produced Video. Which do you like better? Why?

By the way, the band is Naturally 7. Question: do you think their music career has been hurt by putting this video up on the net for free?

Brett Gaylor, Montreal film-maker, vlogger, Homeless Nation guy, and Atwater Digital Project Advisory Committee member (and pal) is making a documentary film about music, copyright, and remix culture, with funding from the National Film Board. Part of the idea behind the film is to get people (that means you!) to provide content (audio, video, and photos), and to help edit, mix, mash, and remix bits of the film.

He’s just (re)launched a site, opensourcecinema.org, to get people to contribute.

So go try it out.

(Sylvain, Josh and I hung out last week, cleaning up the site & getting the look, feel and text right, and Patrick did the redesign).

First, Ira Glass, the force behind This American Life, is, to me, something like a proto podcaster. That NPR radio show is just what I imagined podcasting would become, a collection of the stories of the world told in the voices of real people. And that was before I had ever heard This American Life (though I had heard Wiretap, done by Jonathan Goldstein, who worked with Ira on TAL). Here are some videos, that any artist interested in story, should absorb.
(thanks maurizio)

Next, Freebase.com, which is “an open, shared data-base of the world’s knowledge.” I have not looked yet, but seems interesting.
(via chris)

this vid made me laugh out loud several times: S.H.R.T.M.S. - ep. 2

Testi-CRACK!

Boing Boing reports that LibriVox just released an audio version of:

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,
by Charles Darwin

Twenty-four hours of audio/biology/history goodness. This project was a real battle to get finished (I’ve got a chapter in there), so congrats to the many hands that made it happen.

…fantastic organization, kudos to the putters-togetherers, and I’ll point out some cool projects shortly.

But please, please, please make this phrase disappear.

(PS, thanks for the ride home Bob).

UPDATE: you can see vids of the event, including some footage of me, here.

Julien, a Montreal podcaster (longest active Canadian podcaster, most popular DIYer in Canada etc) & satelite radio man, just told me that his show, In Over Your Head plays on SIRIUS satelite radio in the USofA, but not in Canada. CBC owns 40% of SIRIUS Canada. Presumably interested in playing CanCon? But not interested in Mr. Smith.

Wha???

Moons ago, Sylvain & I were talking about building a digital media school for kids-at-risk at the Atwater Library. Well, a couple of years later, we’ve got some funding from Heritage Canada, a fantastic project co-ordinator, a bunch of very keen partner groups; and a gaggle of great volunteers and organizers. The plan in this pilot phase is a series workshops, tailored for each partner group, from late February to April 2007.

Here is the project blurb:

The Atwater Digital Literacy Project, a project of the Atwater Library, gets at-risk kids and community groups using creative web technologies (blogging, audio, video, digital photos) to help them express themselves, find new ways to talk about things important to them, and to help them build their communities.

We need some more cash for digital equipment (about $5000). Here’s how you can donate some money (can you spare $25? $100?), or some working equipment:

SUPPORT THE ATWATER DIGITAL LITERACY PROJECT.

You can also help by blogging about this, by sending out some emails, or by volunteering. If you work for a company, especially a tech or media company, maybe you can ask them to sponsor the project? If you want more info, shoot me an email.

And thanks to all who have helped with this project, of course Mir who has done the lions share of the work, the organizers, coordinators, and volunteers, and the great Advisory Committee: Julien Smith, Jen Schultes, Austin Hill, Brett Gaylor, Anuradha Dugal, Sylvain Carle, Paul Shore.

Robin mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and I think I posted already, but I met Freddy last night. He’s making a fantastic graphic novel of Orwell’s 1984 (see: gutenberg australia’s ebook).

Freddy is selling these posters for $12 a pop:

And here is the opening scene (you can get it in B&W or colour):

For the hardcore info junkie, there was no better feed for your veins than diggdot.us: a feed of the purest quality, distilled from a mix of digg.com, del.icio.us/popular, and slashdot.org.

Cease and desist letters sent. diggdot.us is now doggdot.us. No harm done I guess, but digg are jerks.

Explains what the hell is going on on the web in a pretty compelling way. If you know all this, its fun to watch. If you don’t know all this, it might be too fast to follow. But entertaining nonetheless.

I just sent this to the Globe and Mail:

To The Editor,

I have read Rex Murphy’s climate articles with a sort of wonder for ten years now. Each year the science gets more sophisticated; each year the scientific community gets more certain; and each year more effects predicted in climate models are coming to pass (demonstrating the robustness of the models, while also showing that we are moving faster along a dangerous path than anyone expected).

Yet each year Rex Murphy’s climate articles remain exactly the same: the thousands of scientists who study this issue are alarmists and politically motivated; and those who disagree with overwhelming scientific evidence (like Mr. Murphy himself), are oppressed, unjustly attacked, and deserve to be heard with the same seriousness as the people who actually spend their careers studying climate change.

So my question, for Mr. Murphy, columnist, pundint and human: could you please list for us the evidence that *will* convince you that climate change is real, and worrisome? So that when, in a year or two, we have crossed those markers, we can all agree that it’s time for you to stop berating us with these inane columns on scientific issues, where you display total lack of interest in science?

What, I wonder, did Mr. Murphy, Newfoundlander, have to say about warnings that the cod fishery would collapse?

If you are interested what Rex Murphy did have to say about the cod fisheries, watch this wonderful video from the CBC archives, 1994.