Getting to Know Your Sidebar Links - Blog Roundup Here's a quick round up of some good news business/media blogs to watch and some of what's being talked about on them.
Wonkette The foul-mouthed queen of snarky commentary and talking about behaviors I don't talk about on this blog. A great source of gossipy inside the beltway news. As much of a focus on news makers and personalities as the news industry. The most fun you can have on a news blog. The goto girl when the media wants what they wish bloggers were like.
Jay Rosen The anti-Wonkette. Lots of serious commentary and analysis by one of the top blogging journalism academic. The goto guy when the media wants a smart blogger.
Fishbowl DC Devoted to covering the Washington, D.C. media. More serious than Wonkette, more fun than Jay Rosen. And besides all that, he had a nice item on a column I wrote. (How's that for blogrolling!) Editor Garrett Graff was the first blogger with White House press credentials.
Portrait of Podcasting as a Young Medium Dept. - Old Media, New Media, & Why Disney/ABC Gets It Ever since iTunes built in automatic support for podcasts, I've been a big fan of the new medium. Podcasting jumped to the public's attention last winter and officially became a phenomenon when USA Today ran two articles on the subject on one day. The idea of podcasting is that you can produce digital audio files using your computer, upload them to the Internet, and then have people listen to what you've produced on their computer, iPod, or other MP3 player (hence the name podcasting).
In the "good old days," the most popular podcasts were those produced by a range of eclectic individuals. As an example, the first podcast I subscribed to (and still the one I listen to most often) is Brian Ibbot's fascinating Coverville featuring covers (new versions of old songs). You haven't lived till you hear Jason Falkner's punk version of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now. And it was through Coverville that I discovered Skipping Discs outrageous CD Saturday Night Hay Fever - a collection of disco hits done as bluegrass covers.
Then there are the podcasts that are straight rebroadcasts of mainstream content. For example, I listen to NPR's On The Media every week on my iPod as West Virginia Public Radio doesn't carry the show. And I'm a huge fan of Elvis Mitchell's weekly interview show The Treatmentthat runs on Santa Monica public radio station KCRW. These are old media programs being delivered using a new format in much the same way that you can buy cassettes of favorite radio broadcasts. (Except that the podcasts are free and immediately available.)
So at the extremes we have totally original content with no connection to mainstream media and material from the MSM that is repackaged for distribution through the Net. And these are both Very Good Things.
What has been more problematic is original podcast content that is tied to MSM programming. Much of this is simply really poor promotional materials. Take the House M.D. Foxcast, for example. (Is that name just to clever by half?) The materials they've posted so far are either breathless star interviews that you might otherwise hear on Entertainment Tonight, or else pointless extended plot summaries that save you from the necessity of watching the show. Now I'm a big fan of House, (in fact, I discovered the show through Mitchell's interview with Hugh Laurie on The Treatment's podcast) but the podcast is corporate promotional drivel. I don't have a link here for subscribing to the podcast, but you can get it through iTunes.
But ABC/Disney continues to show that they "get it" when it comes to utilizing new media. You can, of course, purchase a video podcast of the show Lost for $1.99 the day after it runs through iTunes. And that shows an impressive vision on the part of Disney execs. But I'm also impressed with the Lost podcast. (This free audio program is completely separate from the episodes you can buy.) The first two episodes of the podcast were mildly amusing, but nothing special in terms of content. The only thing that made them interesting was that writers and producers were talking about the show in a fun and candid way. They (and the stars who were interviewed) said little of substance, but I didn't drop off the feed immediately. But the fourth installment was fascinating. It is a full-length commentary for episode Collisionby two of the writers for the series that sounded just like the commentary tracks you might get on a DVD. Now this is making great use of the new medium. The podcast provides something of interest to the hardcore fans of the show and does something that couldn't be done otherwise. (You, in the back of the room, shut up about the fact you could broadcast it as a Secondary Audio Program... Besides, ABC already feeds a Spanish dubbing over that channel.) My point is that ABC is actually finding something innovative and interesting to do with their promotional podcast.
Podcasting is still a very young medium and is bound to change in ways that we can't predict. But it is going to be transformational to broadcasting the way that blogging has been to journalism and print. And the mainstream media ignore this change at their peril.
Is Search News? Dept. - The Price of Doing Business in China Over the last couple of years we've taken an occasional look at the question as to whether search capability is a news medium. To be sure, Google has Google News, but what about search in general? This is a significant question because various governments around the world want to put limits on Internet searching. And the companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google all seem willing to build limits into their portals as part of the price of doing business in countries with more restrictions on free speech than the United States. (Which is virtually every country...) Sometimes it is relatively noncontroversial, such as France's attempt to make Yahoo filter out all references to Nazi paraphernalia.
But over the last few weeks, the collaboration of search companies with the Chinese government has started to raise big questions in the United States. For example, according to a report from Fortune magazine, Yahoo gave up the name of blogger Zhao Jing to the Chinese government after the government there said the company must do so. Yahoo defended its actions by saying that it had to comply with local law.
Google, well known for its informal company motto of "Don't be evil," has been on the receiving end of criticism for cooperating with the Chinese government in censoring the Internet through its google.cn site. Congress's Human Rights Committee has held hearings where Google and its competitors testified about their business practices in China. (You can view the hearings on C-SPAN; you will need to page through till you get to House Hearing on Internet in China, Part 1 and Part 2.) You can also read testimony from Committee to Protect Journalists executive director Ann Cooper on the responsibility of US Internet companies operating in China.
BTW, one of the most interesting commentaries I've seen about Google in China comes from Colin W. Sullivan, a columnist at University of Nebraska's Daily Nebraskan, who actually compared search results from the Chinese and English versions of Google rather than just taking the word of pontificators.