shouting loudly

[This is more of a holiday-cheer post than my usual academic blog entries.  'Tis the season...]
In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins’s excellent work on the various effects of digital media on media production/culture, “convergence” takes on multiple meanings.  Part of what makes it such a good book is that all of these meanings are true.  Media [...]

I think many of us are aware that the internet is working us over completely and in ways that have yet to be fully discovered

Many, many commentators have expressed vivid disgust at the right wing extremists who have shouted down any chance at civil discussion over health care reform, but the Dems haven’t done very well with re-seizing the political momentum, thoughtful and still-needed suggestions about how to do so notwithstanding.
Until yesterday.
Barney Frank shot down a feisty questioner who [...]

Last night, a friend of mine claimed that blogs have no redeeming value. (He’d had a few beers, so the claim was a bit less, um, polite and articulate; he didn’t know I’m a blogger, so it may have been a good thing I was sober.)
While I’ll grant that many blogs do not have much [...]

Politico has a great post on press bias. Their basic conclusion: political journalists face a lot of countervailing forces, and ideological bias has little if any influence in day-to-day reporting.
I think this is spot on. In 2004, for instance, the press were happy to aid and abet the right’s shameless character assassination of Kerry. They [...]

This weekend, the Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Barack Obama for President. In what I think is an unprecedented move, however, it also published a dissent making the case for John McCain.
The Times’ Caucus speculates that this was due to interference from management. Here’s a key excerpt:
Brian Tierney, chief executive of the company that owns The Inquirer, [...]

I cannot recommend against Globat.com strongly enough. After the break, you’ll find a complete and total telling-off of a company with some of the worst customer service practices imaginable.
Even if you don’t read it, avoid them at all costs. Will update w/ their reply.

Great blog post (and genuinely good comments) over at Xark! on the slow death of newspapers.
Source: DailyKos midday open thread (which also links to a great Atlantic story about the joke that is airline security).

The publishing industry is terrified of moving from the print-and-ship meatspace model to digital distribution.
Over at HuffPo, Hugh McGuire tells publishers to embrace the digital transition. He discusses why and how book publishers should eschew the music industry’s fear-driven tactics and meet customers where they are with what they want.

Why are media and power always a bad combination? Whether it is the elite who is abusing the media for its own purposes (in the words of Chomsky and Herman, to ‘manufacture consent‘) or whether it is the media themselves who are powerful, often heard as in ‘the media are biased‘, the message seems clear [...]