That crashing sound you just heard from the Upper Midwest was the Chicago Sun-Times throwing its photography staff out the window. All 28 of them. Pulitzers and everything. The paper explained thusly: The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress […]
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ArtSunday: If everything is possible, is anything possible…?
As promised earlier this week, this book review from my 2013 reading list looks at Professor Arthur C. Danto’s series of lectures on fine art (part of the Mellon series), Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, published as part of the Bollingen Series by Princeton University Press as After The End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. I go […]
The time a source has to respond to request for comment? Virtually none.
The deadline is now. Thirty years ago, I faced a deadline once a day. For any reporter today, the deadline is … well, now. The technological leap into the Internet era that changed the notion of deadlines has consequences, as I wrote three years ago: Speed kills. Accuracy dies when hordes of people, each with […]
So you wanna be a citizen journalist? Good luck with that.
Citizen journalist. Citizen journalist? How does that adjective modify journalist? What is a citizen journalist? How does a citizen journalist differ from a plain, ink-stained (or digitally adept), adjective-unfettered journalist? CJs (let’s call them that; it sounds cool) are in demand. MSNBC wants them. It asks, “Be part of the dialogue of the issues affecting […]
Is CNN’s Howard Kurtz still credible? We’ll see.
How much credence should I place, beginning now, in whatever media reporter and critic Howard Kurtz says or writes? First came his ill-considered contretemps regarding NBA player Jason Collins’ announcement that he is gay. That led to this morning’s mea culpa on Kurtz’s “Reliable Sources” program on CNN, quizzed on his credibility by two other […]
Boston Marathon bombing: tragedy, bigotry and hope
First and foremost, my thoughts are with Boston today. I hope your friends and family were as lucky as mine were to avoid any harm, and my prayers are with those who were not as lucky. Watching the news was horrific for anyone who turned on a television or browsed the Internet yesterday. But apart […]
The Tech Curmudgeon – Google’s CEO Schmidt clueless
So Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt thinks that government regulation is required to protect privacy from a rising tide of civilian drones. The Tech Curmudgeon agrees, at least in principle, because civilian drones and things like passenger aircraft should be kept well separated. Yet this is the man apparently doesn’t see a problem with Google Glass, […]
The new Mailbox app for iPhone and iPad: so far, a waste of time
Like many of you, I had been hearing about this new app called Mailbox. The buzz said it was a killer mobile app that was in nearly every respect superior to the default e-mail program in iPhone and iPad. So I went to the App Store and signed up, only to be told that I […]
Pew study: Newspapers’ hard times continue
Shocked! Shocked we should be! But the latest report on the State of the Media by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism comes as no surprise. The bottom line: Fewer resources equals compromised journalism. From a PEJ press release summarizing the 2013 report‘s overview: The report pinpoints multiple signs of shrinking reporting […]
Google Glass: Welcome to the end of privacy
If you haven’t yet seen Mark Hurst’s piece on Google Glass over at Creative Good, you need to. You really, really need to. A lot of times cool new gadget and service roll-outs mainly just affect the manufacturers and the people with the cash to buy them. Sure, there can be collateral damage – World of […]
Tea Party Community: a league of their own
There’s a teaching in communications psychology called “selective perception” and “selective retention,” which theorizes that two people with opposing viewpoints could watch the same news report or movie, and only hear and retain things that reinforce their own views. So for example, two people watching the same presidential debate could walk away remembering very different […]
ArtSunday: the Tokyo telephone book
by Dan Ryan I have owned or had the use of a personal computer since 1982, when my dad bought me an Osborne 1 to take to college. In some areas dad was a bit of a forward thinker. His experience as an upper mid-level executive for Electronic Data Systems (EDS), a now-defunct information services […]
What must the world’s data growth curve look like?
Vertical, pretty much? In 1993, during my first semester of doctoral work at the University of Colorado, we had a guest speaker from one of the federal administrations in a class talking about this newfangled thing called “the Internet.” (There are a number of US agencies in Boulder, and I can’t remember which one he […]
We the petitioners
I’ve written in blog posts before how the Obama administration is probably the most Internet-friendly presidency to date. He was the first president to effectively use (and frankly have access to) social media to raise funds and win an election. He was the first president to do a Reddit AMA. So it seemed only natural […]
Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
by Lisa Barnard I’m turning 30 in a few months, and I recently realized I’m now at the age I made a lot of promises about in the past. One of those promises was that if I was still single at 30, I’d try online dating. I’ve had an onslaught of terrible dating experiences in […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- S&R Nonfiction: “The Nobodies,” by Jennifer Pocock
- “See You in Hell” and the dominatrix garage: The Lost Patrol drops a new video, and btw, the CD is fantastic
- Iran’s election nuclear, but not nuked
- More light! More light! Reviewing Fred Chappell’s Brighten the Corner Where You Are
- Happy Father’s Day: "The Day Daddy Died"
- Mystery Unraveled: How a white, moderate, married, churchgoing, middle-class, middle-aged woman could vote for Obama
- An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption
- Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
- Climate scientists still besieged
- Pelosi on Bush: “He’s not worth impeaching”
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Frank Dilatush: And while decent men argue morality and honor, war…
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A Walkaway: Then Satan must care more about justice and truth …
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RetroHound: See, I don't think it's God's judgement, it's Sata…
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Ben Leib: Beautifully penned. The desperation of the situat…
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Russ Wellen: Fundamentally, I agree with both of you. It's just…
S&R makes major change to commenting policy
by Samuel Smith on January 28, 2013 in Internet, Telecom & Social Media, Scholars & Rogues
Once upon a time I could be counted on to say something like “the comment thread is often the most important part of a blog post.” When you have an intelligent community of good-faith readers and commenters, the initial post need not be fully baked and comprehensive – it can instead be treated as a […]