The opening and the closing scenes of George Clooney's masterpiece, Good Night, And Good Luck show Edward R. Murrow (deftly played by David Strathairn) delivering a landmark speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association in Chicago on October 15, 1958. What the legendary newsman had to say on this occasion could not be more timely for media professionals working today. It's a longish speech. I've selected …
Wildcats Soccer Scores Own Network
North America’s top women's soccer team, the New Jersey Wildcats, is launching its own global broadcast network starting in May. From Online Spin: This summer every Wildcats game will be available on demand by anyone in the world who has a broadband connection by simply going to www.NJWildcats.com or Google Video. Within hours of the game finishing, a 35-minute version complete with pre-game show, first half …
Who Would Win: NYT or GOOG?
In this week’s New York Magazine, James J. Cramer proposes that the New York Times disband as we know it and go online to challenge Google. There’s one way out of this mess for the Times. It is a bold, gutsy, and, some would say, foolish way, at least initially: The Times—here’s the irony—should go all-digital. That’s right. It should abandon newsprint and force everyone to the Web. It should make a stand against …
Save Money. Dial Up An Ad.
If you want to save money, erase 1-800-555-1212 from your memory. From USA TODAY: Not long ago, the price of a cup of coffee got you a phone number from directory assistance. Now, calling 411 will nick you for the price of a Starbucks coffee. But take heart. A new crop of 800 services is offering free directory assistance. The catch: You first have to listen to a commercial for up to 15 seconds. The newest of the …
Cargo Drops Its Load
From the newly redesigned New York Times website: The lesson to be learned from the death of Cargo is not that guys don't like to shop, spend money or moisturize; or that Cargo was too gay or too straight; or that the cultural phenomenon of the metrosexual never really existed. The real culprit behind the decision last week to close Cargo, the men's shopping magazine, would have to be the stickers. In each issue for …
Egg On A.P.’s Face
Huffington Post writer, Larisa Alexandrovna, was violated by Associated Press. AP writer, Katherine Shrader, plagiarised a piece Alexandrovna wrote for The Raw Story. While that sucks, it's not the worst part of this woeful tale. Upon being confronted about their lack of ethics, a senior editor and ombudsman at AP both admitted they lifted from the original piece, and chose not to credit, because "they don't credit …
Faith In Business, Government At All Time Low
The World Economic Forum released what it calls a "global public opinion poll" that asks the question, who do you trust? The results suggest that planet Earth has indeed lost that lovin' feelin. The same set of questions has been put to representative samples of citizens around the world since January 2001. The major findings from this year’s poll are: • Public trust levels in national governments, the United Nations …
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Reporters Respected
David Lauderdale writing about the future of newspapers in The Island Packet, a McClatchy media property: There is tremendous value in a small group of accountable, well-guided individuals who hustle to gather defensible, documented information and share it with a large audience. It tells us the need for local news, local knowledge, local leadership and a local civic conversation has not gone away and newspapers are …