Author Archives: Ralph Hanson

Truth 6 – Activism and Analysis are not the Same Thing: Numerical analysis matters

Yesterday I posted a number of predictions from pundits about how the presidential election would turn out.  The best predictions did not come from the partisans, they came  from the number crunchers who took a hard look at what the … Continue reading

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Election Day Media World

Our pundits have spoken!  And today we get to find out what we the people have to say about how the election turns out. And that means tomorrow (I hope!) we get to judge how well the pundits did at … Continue reading

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Tumblr Blog Humanae Categorizes Skin Color as Pantone Codes

There is a fantastically cool Tumblr blog called Humanae that presents simple photos of people showing their skin (in a safe-for-work way) along with the Pantone code that describes the person’s skin color. (The background for each image also uses … Continue reading

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Link Ch. 3 – Disney buys LucasFilm, now owns Star Wars – Is that really such a bad thing?

So, Disney has bought out LucasFilm from George Lucas for $4.05 billion in cash and Disney stock and now owns the rights to Star Wars, a partial interest in the Indiana Jones series, Industrial Light and Magic special effects house, Skywalker Sound, … Continue reading

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Everything is a Remix

Kirby Ferguson has put together a fantastic series of videos explaining the notion that we are living in a remix culture where most cultural products are created by recombining previous ones.  Here’s the complete series in order, along with a … Continue reading

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Repost – Puppets Explain TV Audience Ratings

A repost from last April for my Media Literacy students: A great video explaining how Nielsen’s television ratings work created by data visualization agency JESS3 for ESPN.

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Newsweek to cease dead tree edition, going digital only

Newsweek (and Daily Beast) editor Tina Brown announced Oct. 18, 2012 that the long-time news weekly (is that redundant?) would put out its last paper edition on Dec. 31, 2012. After that date, it will be named Newsweek Global and be … Continue reading

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Link Ch. 9 – Mary Tyler Moore on the Dick Van Dyke Show

In the 1950s and 1960s, networks and advertisers imposed strict controls on what could be shown on television. For example, Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke played the married couple Laura and Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke … Continue reading

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Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

Do journalists ever leave a great story unreported? Ted Koppel knew about the story the movie Argo is based on as it happened and didn’t report it because he didn’t want the people involved to be killed. (Hollywood Reporter) How … Continue reading

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Chapter 8 – Movie links

Here are the links to the silent films we looked at in class this week. Great very early examples. A great scene from Singing in the Rain that illustrates the difficulty in moving from silent to talking films. Another great … Continue reading

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