Out of sight, out of mind

I completely forgot I had this blog until I saw it linked on my friend Elyssa's wonderful food blog, Resolution Kitchen. For the past three years, I've been blogging at Internet Revolution, J-School Evolution. I haven't posted on that blog in nearly two months, but I'll be posting there again soon. And at least it hasn't been more than three years like it is on this poor, abandoned blog.

Where to find my links

I've discovered the Web-page sharing tool at http://delicious.com/, and it's taken all the wind out of my blogging sails. if you are interested in following what I'm reading about the intersection of journalism and the Internet, sign up for an account on delicious.com and join my network. My user name is bselvin. You can search on my page for links I've tagged "24/7."

Slaves to connectedness

A poignant post-vacation reflection by Ben Stein on how our communication-and-control society isolates us, a thought that my brother, Al, blogged about rather beautifully, I think.

selvin247 is on summer break

I'll return in September ... Enjoy the rest of the summer.

ISPs begin experimenting with metered pricing plans

This Times piece weighs the arguments: Are usage caps fair, or will they interfere with the natural growth curve of the Internet?

All Russert, All The Time

A blogger for the Orlando Sentinel takes the networks to task for excessive coverage of Tim Russert's death and memorial service. An excerpt: "Did you notice how MSNBC and CNN called attention to double rainbows over Washington after the Russert service? Yes, it was a sign, all right, to show you've gone soft, real soft."
Hal Boedeker, the blogger, was particularly incensed that on Friday, the NBC Nightly News "devoted its entire half-hour to Russert. The network ignored all the other news in the world. ... flooding in the Midwest, a deadly bombing in Baghdad, fighting in Afghanistan, the possibility of peace talks in the Mideast, talk of oil drilling off the U.S. coast. That last story could become the biggest this year in Florida."
Some who commented on the blog post said they liked the coverage because it helped them process their own feelings and gave them a respite from bad and/or stupid news (think flag pins).
What is the role of network news organizations, anyway?

Huffpo "Aspires To Be A Newspaper"

What's next for local news coverage? Huffington Post is trying local aggregation in Chicago.

What the Heck Is Hulu?

I noted the spate of stories last spring when NBC Universal and News Corp. launched a joint venture called Hulu. I grasped that it had something to do with TV and the Internet, but I never quite figured out the real deal. This story from the Los Angeles Times unwraps the mystery. Hulu lets you watch TV shows, clips and episodes on your computer -- much as you can on network sites, but the links are all in one place. The story calls it a department-store model as opposed to a single-label boutique -- Nordstrom, not Abercrombie & Fitch. It's like Joost, only better and less intrusive. I got rid of Joost--too many annoying e-mails. I went on hulu.com after I read this story, and I liked what I saw. Also worth noting: Hulu signed a deal with rival Viacom allowing it to show complete episodes of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."

Obama's Views on Media Policy

Barack Obama discusses his positions on net neutrality, media consolidation, the digital-TV transition and other communications policies with Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

The bird whisperer

This is too cool to miss, especially if, like me, you enjoy watching birds. Corey Kilgannon has a phenomenal eye -- or in this case, ear -- for the offbeat story. Students, take note: There are stories all around you, every single day.

Another hint of hope for newspaper revenues

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says he hopes that DoubleClick, which his company recently acquired, will help newspapers increase their online revenues. He sees "a huge moral imperative" to help newspapers survive.
Besides, where else is the news on Google News going to come from?

Thoughts on Hillary Clinton's Achievement

Presidential campaigning isn't my usual topic, but I can't let the end of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid pass without comment. I had been ambivalent about Hillary for years, but I made up my mind that I could not support her over the winter after reading Carl Bernstein's biography, "A Woman In Charge." He portrayed a passionate idealist who began to cut ethical corners as soon as she and her husband took power in Arkansas. The unpleasant traits and tendencies he described carried through her White House years and were already beginning to show in the campaign, and I decided that I didn't want the two of them and their psychodramas back in the seat of American power.
But now that her campaign is over, I feel nothing but pride. As a woman, I feel empowered by her courage, her stamina, her intelligence, her conviction. Sure, she made some mistakes, and she got me pretty riled at times, but now that she's ended her run, I'm enormously proud of her. She has made history. The gaffes and exaggerations and sneaky, line-crossing comments she made won't be what people will remember in 25 years. We won't dwell on those things, no matter how annoyed we were at the time; only the political historians will keep those mistakes in focus. What we'll remember, what will stand out as clearly and sharply in 2043 as it does in 2008, is the image of her powerful presence, her success in redefining presidential politics to include the clear possibility of a woman nominee. Bravo, Hillary.

Digital TV Deadline

Come February, when analog TV signals go off the air, viewers with in-home antennas are in for a rude shock. They'll need to buy roof-mounted motorized antennas or subscribe to a pay-TV service. See this piece in Broadcast Engineering.

The End of The Beginning

In my darker moments, I believe that Zell's blindly destructive moves at Tribune are the end of the beginning of the dismantling of America's newspapers.
Zell is a businessman with no sentimental, patriotic, moral or ethical ties to newspapering -- no sense of newspapering's nobility. He sees only the balance sheet. How else could he base staffing decisions on his bizarre idea of "productivity"? Does he really think an investigative reporter, a feature writer, a beat reporter who covers, say, health care or real estate will-- or should be-- in the paper as often as the cop-shop or city hall reporters?
But fewer and fewer newspapers are owned by people who get it, who understand and cherish newspapering as practiced in the United States for the past 150 years. And the mass of owners, the ones who don't get it, are likely to follow Zell's lead because they think only in balance sheets, too.
So while we've seen the death by a thousand cuts at Newsday, the San Jose Mercury News, the Baltimore Sun and too many other once-great papers, now, I fear, we're upgrading to the guillotine.
Randy Michaels as Madame DeFarge, knitting messages to his followers as the condemned mount the steps to the blade?
The bloodletting up to this point has been pinpricks compared with what seems likely to happen now at Tribune. I don't think the tumbrils will roll everywhere. I think the biggest and best papers (all three of them?) will hold off, sticking with the pinpricks as long as they can, until the repeated falling of the guillotine's blade leaves the rest reading like Gannett papers.
But I may be wrong. FishbowlNY keeps a running total of the journalists who have accepted, or been forced to accept, buyouts at the New York Times. Each day's list hurts a little bit more. Maybe the Times has already moved beyond pinpricks -- not quite to the guillotine, but maybe as far as the switchblade.

Less Is Less, But Is It Enough?

The Times reflects on the changes at Tribune.

Citizen Journalists Are Changing The Rules of Engagement

Two of the most controversial quotes from the primary season--Obama's "bitter" comment and Bill Clinton's attack on Vanity Fair reporter Todd Purdum -- emerged from the digital voice recorder of Mayhill Fowler, a self-described citizen journalist who is blogging for Off the Bus, a campaign feature on Huffington Post. Unlike professional journalists, Fowler doesn't identify herself as a reporter when she's talking to people she plans to write about. Some observers of the blogosphere call this a healthy development, arguing that it's up to sources to determine whom they're talking to and that allowing the public to see public figures in their unguarded, unmanicured moments serves readers rather than protecting the reporter-source relationship. The Times explores the issue.

Krugman: 'We Are All The Grateful Dead'

How could I resist a line like that? In his June 6 column, Paul Krugman describes a future in which intellectual property is a loss leader for merchandising--kind of like the Grateful Dead meet Yogurt in "Spaceballs," I suppose. ("'Spaceballs' the flamethrower -- the kids love this one!") It's late on a Friday night. What can I tell you?

Sexism Sells

How television commentators spoke about Hillary -- this is not, in my view, why she lost, but this montage from the Women's Media Center is instructive.

How Not To Do Hyper-Local

The Washington Post's loudonextra.com, its big push into suburban hyperlocal-dom, has been a flop -- largely because the crew of big-name online outsiders never got to know the community, according to this story in the Wall Street Journal. Maybe the Post should have hired weekly newspaper reporters and editors from Loudon County to provide content.

Can Wal-Mart Save Local Newspapers?

Wal-Mart has created an online classified-ad service that includes local newspapers as partners--something Craigslist, often cited as the chief villain in local papers' plummeting ad revenues, has never been willing to do. So far only a few local papers are participating, but the potential is there for newspapers to recapture some of this crucial market, according to http://www.slate.com/id/2192828 by Chatwick Matlin in Slate.