teachingmedia

As Papers Struggle, News Is Cut and the Focus Turns Local - NYTimes.com

As Papers Struggle, News Is Cut and the Focus Turns Local - NYTimes.com.

As Papers Struggle, News Is Cut and the Focus Turns Local
By RICHARD PEREZ-PENA Published: July 21, 2008

Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.

The study, by the Pew Research Center and Tyler Marshall, a former foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, is based on a written survey of the top editors at 259 newspapers of all sizes and interviews with a sampling of those editors.

The findings come as no surprise to anyone following the travails of the newspaper industry, racked every few days by new reports of layoffs, falling revenue, credit downgrades, shrinking page counts and declining circulation.

But the Pew study appears to be the broadest attempt yet to measure how widespread the changes have been. Sixty-four percent of the newspapers reported cutting the space given to foreign news over three years, making that the area that has suffered at the most papers as the business contracts. Only 10 percent of the editors said they considered foreign news “very essential” to their papers.

Where TV and the Web converge, there is Hulu - Los Angeles Times

Where TV and the Web converge, there is Hulu - Los Angeles Times.

CHANNEL ISLAND / SCOTT COLLINS

Where TV and the Web converge, there is Hulu. The streaming video site offers a free and relatively painless way to watch your favorite shows on a computer. By SCOTT COLLINS June 16, 2008

IN A very short time, Hulu has rocketed from nothing to being one of the top video destinations on the Internet. We've all heard the years of trade-show claptrap about television-Web "convergence," but Hulu has come as close as possible to turning your computer into a TV without actually sending a tech to monkey around with the hardware and wiring. Maybe more important, it's also shaping up as a key proving ground in the ongoing philosophical debate about what people want from Web-based entertainment.

How do you Hulu? You don't have to pay anything, download a special player or even register your name or e-mail address. The site, which went up in mid-March, is free; in exchange for watching relatively brief ads, you get access to complete high-resolution episodes of top TV series such as "24" and "30 Rock," as well as impressively cataloged clips from "Saturday Night Live" and other shows. (The movie roster is somewhat less formidable, unless you consider "The Payaso Comedy Slam" or "Snake Eater" the apex of cinematic art.)

You could spend hours rolling around in there, as I did over a few days recently, and just scratch the surface. "We haven't hit our three-month anniversary yet, and we already have about 700 titles," Jason Kilar, Hulu's chief executive, told me last week. Last week, Hulu began showing complete episodes of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report." The deal is important because of the corporate relationships involved.

Hulu joins the forces of NBC Universal and News Corp., parent of Fox Broadcasting and other networks. Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, a rival company that hasn't always been friendly toward outside websites that want to use its content.

THE MESSAGE seems clear: Viewers want online video, and studios have decided they'd better give it to them, traditional corporate strategy be damned. Bobby Tulsiani, an analyst at Jupiter Research, told me that he thinks Hulu is "a great first start" at developing Internet sites designed for what Web folks call premium content -- that is, full-length, professionally produced TV shows and movies. What's still unknown, he added, is just how big the market is for this stuff. Hulu delivered 63 million total streams during April, its first full month of operation, making it the No. 10 online video-streaming site, according to Nielsen Online, an audience-research company. (Yes, that's still a long way from No. 1 YouTube, Google's clip-sharing site, which logged a mind-boggling 4 billion streams.) Yet for people who care about TV programming, Hulu represents more than just another way to catch favorite episodes.

The issue boils down to this: Will low-cost original programming, à la "lonelygirl15" or those grainy, amateur YouTube clips, continue to dominate online video? Or will the little guys get crowded out in a new, heavily commercialized era, led by expensive, slickly produced studio shows that premiered on broadcast or cable?

A lot of money -- and maybe the future of TV programming itself -- is riding on the answer. After all, studios almost certainly face more years of viewer erosion on the traditional networks. Their economics might cease to work at all unless they find other ways to recapture those lost viewers. Given how much time people spend with their computers and wireless devices, the Web is going to be a key battleground.

One of Hulu's chief rivals, Veoh, has hedged its bets, programming-wise. Veoh's service is divided between user-generated content (see surveillance-cam footage of an office worker going berserk in a crowded cubicle!) and professionally produced stuff such as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "The Big Bang Theory."

Talk Radio's Last Stand? | MediaCulture | AlterNet

Talk Radio's Last Stand? | MediaCulture | AlterNet.

Talk Radio's Last Stand? By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet. Posted June 11, 2008. Talk radio "shock jocks" are fretting publicly about the supposed return of the long-defunct Fairness Doctrine.
The email alert read "Breaking from Newsmax.com," the conservative online news site that also publishes Newsmax Magazine. One item in particular caught my attention -- "Special: Will President Obama Ban O'Reilly, Rush?"

One click, however, reveals this "breaking" news is simply old wine poured into a "special" new anti-Obama bottle: a ridiculous recycled report titled "Talk Radio's Last Stand," offered with a subscription to Newsmax magazine and a "Dynamo Emergency World Band Radio" -- all for just $35!

Leading hard-right conservatives, led by their talk radio "shock jock" troops, have been worrying aloud about the supposed return of the long-defunct Fairness Doctrine ever since their stunning success last year in defeating bipartisan immigration reform.

The latest salvo is the Newsmax report, headlined "Battle for Talk Radio: Powerful Foes Want to End the Gabfest," which cleverly combines the usual talk radio tropes of pugnacity and victimization. The text of the "special offer" supplies the details: "The 2008 election has yet to be decided, but one thing is clear: If the Democrats win the White House, expect an all-out attack on talk radio. Political talk, as we know it, could end. If they win, Rush, Imus, Savage, Beck, and dozens of other major hosts will be muzzled by using federal regulations to control political talk.

So, what's their plan of attack?" As Newsmax sees it, "leading liberals in Congress, the Democratic presidential candidates, and even some Republicans speak openly of their plans to end conservative talk radio using federal regulations. Their weapon: a revived Fairness Doctrine, which would once again require stations to air divergent points of view -- a clever ruse that makes station owners leery of airing controversial talk-radio hosts, fearing lawsuits and federal sanctions. With a new Fairness Doctrine, you could see many top conservative radio hosts canned."

FILMCLUB

FILMCLUB.

FILMCLUB is a chance to enter the incredible, limitless cosmos of films - a rollercoaster ride through worlds that delight, challenge, inspire, unite and amaze.

WHAT IS FILMCLUB? The answer is simple – FILMCLUB is a new service run by movie-lovers to introduce kids to the wonder of films. How? By helping teachers and pupils form clubs in schools to show fantastic movies from every era and every corner of the world. We’re passionate about bringing as wide a range of great films to as many young people as possible.

That's why FILMCLUB is free to most schools. You just order the movies here on our website, and we deliver them. Simple!, we've got a huge choice of movies available. From fairy - tales for our youngest Filmclubbers to the most challenging stories for our oldest; from silent masterpieces to the latest releases; the best in Bollywood to the greatest of British; the French new wave to Japanese anime; Iranian thrillers to South African dramas to comedies from Latin America and classics from Hollywood, with documentaries, experimental film and the occasional blockbuster thrown in – we have thousands of titles available and more being added all the time.

As well as being the place to order your club'€™s movies, here at the FILMCLUB website you can stay in touch with the latest film news, keep up to date with future releases, and read about events taking place across the country. The key to our site is that it’s yours as much as ours – somewhere you can review the movies you’ve seen so that other member can benefit from your opinions, and post your own news and features too.

We want to build a thriving network of young film-fans. To help us do that, we’re being backed by countless supporters in the British film industry, including directors, producers, actors and writers – many of who will be contributing to the site and visiting member schools in the future.

Behind everything we do at FILMCLUB is the desire to hand on the joy of movies. Through films, we’re exposed to the power of other people’s imaginations – and we unlock our own. We can be mesmerized by the telling of a story, and come to terms with complex issues. We develop our own tastes, think about our place in the world, and maybe even move towards a future in the movie business. But most importantly, through FILMCLUB, we can have fun in the company of thousands of other FILMCLUB members – united in our passion for the art form that more than any other can inspire, amaze, and open minds.

Television News: Absolution for Couch Potatoes | Newsweek Periscope | Newsweek.com

Television News: Absolution for Couch Potatoes | Newsweek Periscope | Newsweek.com.

The knock on television news has long been that it emphasizes style over substance. But style, it turns out, may have some serious substance of its own. In their forthcoming book, "Image Bite Politics," Indiana researchers Erik Bucy and Maria Grabe offer absolution for couch potatoes, defending the flickering tube as a source of valuable political information. Their study begins like a typical broadside, reporting that between 1992 and 2004, network TV coverage of the presidential race got even flimsier: the average length of each candidates' TV sound bites continued to fall, from a high of 40 seconds in 1968 to less than eight seconds in 2004, while image bites—the generic footage that rolls while reporters narrate—swelled to more than a quarter of all coverage. Image bites are primarily nibbles of B-roll: soundless shots of John McCain grilling burgers, Barack Obama bowling or George Bush on wheels.

But Bucy and Grabe see an upside to this dumbing-down trend. Image bites may look like empty filler, they note, but those fleeting pictures are actually rich windows into each candidate's emotional and physical readiness to lead. "We are hard-wired to pick up on hints of fear, evasion and secondary status based on a quick read of someone's face," says Bucy, explaining how a superficial reading can be as informative as hard analysis. "Show a completely uninitiated person a 10-second video clip of candidates running for office," he adds, "and even with the sound off they will accurately predict nearly 70 percent of the time who won the race." The authors also unpack sound bites, concluding that nearly 70 percent of them are "essentially issue-focused," dealing with policies and qualifications.

Rick Kushman - Rick Kushman: How TV can reflect society's tolerance - sacbee.com

Rick Kushman - Rick Kushman: How TV can reflect society's tolerance - sacbee.com.

Rick Kushman: How TV can reflect society's tolerance By Rick Kushman - rkushman@sacbee.com Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, May 21, 2008

If you want a sense of the kind of open-mindedness you can see on network TV these days, ABC's "Brothers & Sisters" is a good place to start. It ended its season this month with a commitment ceremony between two gay men, but that's only part of it. "Brothers & Sisters" also features – unironically and as complete human beings – a conservative Republican senator who opposes gay marriage and his wife, a staunchly right-wing talk-show host.

I know. What is Hollywood coming to? Seriously, it's hard to know what was more rare on television two decades ago, gay characters or arch-conservative ones. Both are all over entertainment now, and despite politically motivated grumbling from groups on both ends of the ideological spectrum, the reason is simple. It's because as a whole, American society is generally that open-minded, too. Despite the rancor and, often, screeching from campaigns, from legislative bodies and before courts throughout the country, that open-mindedness is an easy thing to see if you understand how popular culture, and particularly TV, works.

Put simply, pop culture – and, again, especially TV – does have influence on attitudes and ideas in America, but much more, TV reflects the ideas that have been accepted by society. That runs counter to the arguments of the blame-TV-for-everything crowd, but it's a near- universally agreed-upon principle among network programmers, advertisers and academics who study this sort of thing.

Essentialist demograhic categories in media election coverage

The discussion last week on the PBS Newshour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/topic/media on news coverage of issues of race was very illuminating.  A key point in the discussion was that demographic groups are often labeled using essentialist racial categories, like “working-class White males” or “African-American” or “Latino,” without recognizing the variations within and across these categories. 

It’s often the case that White voters are broken out in terms of subgroups around class, gender, and age: “older, working-class White females” for Clinton, but that is not the case for African-Americans, Latinos, or Native Americans whom are treated as one homogeneous group. 

And, while John King’s impressive map analysis on CNN provides insights on geographic variation in voting, categories like “urban” are often equated with people of color and rural with Whites.

The larger issue in all of this has to do with how the media frames how we think about identities and identity construction.  The essentialist categories of race, class, and gender employed in news reports presuppose that identities are fixed and static—so that the “working-class White male” will consistently behave in the same manner or adopt the same beliefs regardless of variations in contexts or cultures.  However, identities are not so fixed; we perform different identities in different contexts or cultures.  One study (McDermott, 2006) of racial interactions in convenience stores in a working-class Boston neighborhood versus an Atlanta working-class neighborhood, found that “working-class Whites” had very different self-images and perceptions of racial differences.  In Boston, with a culture of white, ethnic pride, there were more racial tensions than was the case in Atlanta, where working-class whites were often perceived as “white trash” and therefore perceived shared bonds with African-Americans in terms of similar class woes.

What's also ignored are the generational differences related to political attitudes towards the importance of "social issues" and attitudes towards race, class, and gender differences.  Younger voters have very different attitudes on these matters--they are less concerned about "social issues" and more concerned about the need to break out of political gridlock to accomplish things.

All of this suggests that we need to have students interrogate the use of essentialist demographic categories in media election coverage.  When they hear categories like "the working-class white voter" or "the Black voter," they could ask--who are these "working-class white voters" in terms of variation in regional cultures, gender, age, and particular issues, as well as how these "voters" themselves may take up or perform very different identities in different contexts.

In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time? - New York Times

Link: In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time? - New York Times.

This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million viewers?

That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings. Each of the major broadcast networks, save for Fox, has seen its audience decline this season. The ratings for hit shows like “American Idol” and “CSI” have approached record lows.

Where some of last May’s 44 million viewers went is not a mystery, according to the networks. The writers’ strike this winter deflated the ratings and accelerated the flight of viewers to cable channels.

But the more significant shift can’t be blamed on the strike. In the past television season, there has been a sharp increase in time-shifting. Some of the six million are still watching, but on their own terms, thanks to TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video on the Internet, and cable video on demand offerings.

So while overall usage of television is steady, the linear broadcasts favored by advertisers are in decline.

The mystery, then, is what the networks should do now.

Brad Adgate, research director of the advertising agency Horizon Media, said that advertisers were paying attention to the changes.

“Part of the reason why advertisers buy television is because of its immediacy,” Mr. Adgate said. As more consumers time-shift their viewing, “there becomes less of a difference between ads in magazines and ads on television.”

Broadcast television remains the dominant medium for advertising, as the $9 billion upfront market attests, but its prime-time audience is gradually shrinking. Time-shifting has cushioned the declines, but in ways that are trickier to measure and pitch to marketers. With on-demand options available in more households than ever, networks have no choice but to adapt.

For starters, the prime-time schedules crafted by television programmers might become less important with each passing year. David Wolf, a senior executive with the consulting firm Accenture’s media and entertainment practice, said that “must-see TV” — the longtime slogan for of NBC’s Thursday night lineup — might become a television relic.

“The days of the ‘lineup’ are numbered,” Mr. Wolf said. In other words, with fewer viewers watching linear over-the-air television, networks can’t assume that a heavyweight lead-in like “Dancing With the Stars” will keep viewers watching all the way to the late local news, a pattern that has helped networks introduce new shows.

It may also mean that matching up programs becomes less important, or at least less potentially damaging. Last fall’s powerhouse Thursday at 9 p.m. match-up — ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” versus CBS’s “CSI” versus NBC’s “The Office” — was a scheduling move influenced by time-shifting. All three shows are popular among the young, upscale viewers who record and stream shows most often.

“I think that scheduling decision would have been a lot harder to make in a non-DVR world,” said a senior network executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the issue. “It would have been more of a zero-sum game then.”

Many of the top-rated broadcast shows now have 20 percent to 25 percent ratings gains when DVR viewing is calculated. In urban areas, the gains are even greater. In Los Angeles, fully half the 18- to 49-year-old viewership for some shows, including “The Office” and another NBC sitcom, “30 Rock,” happens on a time-shifted basis.

When Your Eyes Tell You Lies - distortion of mass media - Critical Essay | Insight on the News | Find Articles at BNET.com

Link: When Your Eyes Tell You Lies - distortion of mass media - Critical Essay | Insight on the News | Find Articles at BNET.com.

When Your Eyes Tell You Lies - distortion of mass media - Critical Essay Insight on the News,  Oct 16, 2000  by Timothy W. Maier

Government and the media commonly manipulate video and photographs using modern computer technology, raising ethical questions concerning truth and deception.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but doctoring a photo sometimes says a lot more.

Hollywood certainly has played doctor more than once. Remember the movie Capricorn One -- in which the plot centers around a mission to Mars, faked in a movie studio, that convinced the whole world we had landed a team of astronauts on the Red Planet? Such a conspiracy might seem hard to pull off in real life, but don't bet your mortgage on it.

Newspapers likely to be free in the future: survey - Yahoo! News

Link: Newspapers likely to be free in the future: survey - Yahoo! News.

Newspapers likely to be free in the future: survey

By Kate Holton Tue May 6, 6:12 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) -

Newspapers seeking to compete with the Internet are likely to become free and place greater emphasis on comment and opinion in the future, a survey of the world's editors showed on Tuesday.

The report, conducted by Zogby International for the World Editors Forum and Reuters, revealed that newspaper editors were still optimistic about the future of their publications but believed they would have to adapt further for the digital age.

Some 86 percent of respondents believed newsrooms should become more integrated with digital services as two in three believe the most common form of news consumption will be via electronic media such as online or mobiles within a decade.

"For these editors the future is self-evident and our survey shows that they see the writing on the newsroom wall," said pollster John Zogby.

"The evolution of the 4th Estate is no longer questions of if, when or how.

Editors now know the solution: Innovate. Integrate. Or perish."

According to the survey, 56 percent of respondents believed that the majority of news, be it via print or online, would be free in the future.

That was up from 48 percent who answered yes a year ago.