Friday, February 12, 2010
Via AlterNet:
We can thank the likes of Sanjay Gupta, Brian Williams, Anderson Cooper — disaster porn stars with visions of Peabodys and Pulitzers dancing in their heads.
The black t-shirt — so tight, so come-hither. And oh, those safari button-downs — joke-worthy on Eddie Bauer mannequins, but on news correspondents, so … enticing.
America missed these sartorial seductions, pined for their sweet suggestive nothings. And now, finally, a nation of television addicts can thank its disaster pornographers for bringing back the lurid garments — and the lustful voyeurism they evoke.
Yes, thousands of miles from the San Fernando Valley’s seedy studios, the adult entertainment business is alive and panting in Haiti. This year’s luminaries aren’t the industry’s typical muscle-bound mustaches of machismo — they are NBC’s Brian Williams pillow-talking to the camera in his Indiana Jones garb, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta playing doctor and, of course, CNN’s Anderson Cooper in that two-sizes-too-small t-shirt “rarely missing an opportunity to showcase his buff physique,” as The New York Times gushed. They are all the disaster porn stars in the media with visions of Peabodys and Pulitzers dancing in their heads.
And We the Ogling People drink it in.
Read the full article by David Sirota.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Via The Accidental Journalist:
My last post about citizen journalism and the horrific Haitian earthquake got me thinking about the skills needed to be a reporter. Media commentators, for example Jeff Jarvis and Roy Greenslade, are known for saying that today’s journalists need to be entrepreneurs.
It’s no longer enough to be able to talk, listen and write it down. Anyone who wants to be involved in the business of reporting news now needs to understand how to put news together. We need to get to grips with what’s behind a news report: getting the photos, videos, audio, quotes, interactive maps, charts, graphs and quizzes that make up the news package. Journalists, particularly citizen journalists, must be able to write, film, record, blog, comment, fund and somehow make money along the way.
We need to be entrepreneurs. As Jeff Jarvis puts it:
“We all agree that it’s important for journalism students — and journalists — today to understand the economics of news. Some of us add that it was irresponsible of our institutions not to teach this in the past. We agree it is important to bring entrepreneurship into the industry. Some of us concentrate more on new entrepreneurial ventures, others more on bringing innovation into existing companies. Some say journalists aren’t cut out to be entrepreneurs (I disagree) but all agree that entrepreneurship is a way to teach both innovation and business.”
Read the full article.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
This is a special report which was included in the Pew Project’s The State of the News Media 2009 (previously covered here):
As revenues and resources at traditional news outlets continued to decline, a number of independent new ventures have emerged, often led and staffed by refugees of the mainstream press.
These new sites vary in how they create content, the type of news they focus on and in how they fund their operations. Some are nonprofits; others have been given start-up money with the expectation of becoming self-sustaining; still others are full for-profit entities. Some cover very local news, others report globally and still others focus on niche areas such as health or science.
But one feature they all share is original reporting meant to fill what they see as an expanding void in what mainstream media now offer.
These ventures are a new feature of American journalism worth watching. For now, our sense is that they represent something complementary to the traditional news media, much in the way that an alternative weekly and city magazine complement, enrich and broaden the journalism in a given city. Yet something new is going on here that could grow beyond that.
What follows is a listing of some of the larger-scale ventures. Most began in 2008 but some started earlier and gained more solid footing during the year. We do not attempt to list all such undertakings here, but strive to touch upon the scope of what exists. We invite readers to alert us to other innovations.
Read the rest of this report.
This is a special report which was included in the Pew Project’s The State of the News Media 2009 (previously covered here):
From producing original content and commentary to sharing and ranking news produced by professionals, citizens became an even larger part of the daily news information flow in 2008.
To get a better sense of what citizen journalism sites (both news sites and blogs) offer and how they differ from websites tied to legacy media, a team of researchers from Michigan State University, the University of Missouri and the University of North Carolina embarked on a two-part study, “Tracking and Analyzing Community News Models,” funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Knight Foundation.
One oft-cited appeal of citizen journalism is that it gives voice to average citizens, allowing them to contribute to daily news in a way that was not possible before the Internet. The new study, however, suggests that is far from universal. In particular, citizen-run blogs (traditionally those offering primarily commentary and links) trailed far behind other kinds of sites in every aspect of allowing users to post their own information. Citizen news sites, on the other hand (those producing original reporting), have embraced this more fully, even outpacing legacy sites.
Read the rest of this report.
