Marching Backwards

Annotated Newscast

2008-12-08T12:08:00.006-11:00

In the late 1990's, after more than ten years of playing music videos on TV and competing with MTV for the newest way to make this visualization of radio interesting, VH1 launched it's show Pop-Up Video. That year, 1996, marked the year of boredom with the music video. It was the year that the network decided, these viewers have seen the videos, they know what to expect from new ones, now they want some addition to their experience.

So the pop-up video was born. The pop-ups appeared throughout the video to supplement the reader's experience with tidbits of information about what was going on in the video. Some told behind-the-scenes stories of the video's filming, some revealed the hidden meanings behind song lyrics, some were silly facts for laugh value. All of them added to the experience of watching a music video.

Broadcast news today is in much the same position that music videos were in ten years ago. There is a seemingly never-ending supply of it. Very little of it is something we've never heard before. We have adapted to be able to perform other tasks while we "watch from across the kitchen counter (I know I keep my eyes on my fingers when I'm cooking dinner and watching the news, not the screen). Broadcast news is quickly becoming just background noise.

But what about if we take the idea of pop-up video and apply it to a nightly newscast? What if we make the visual relevant again?

In our age of celebrity newscasters (Andersoon Cooper, Rachel Maddow, Katie Couric) who wouldn't want to know anecdotes about Anderson's travels in post-Hurricane Katrina or what sort of small talk Katie made with Sarah (Palin) before the cameras turned on? In our reality-TV obsessed world, it's the more information the better.

But on a more serious level, some sort of pop-up or annotation could be used to supplement serious segments too. For example, a definition pop-up for stories on the Middle East. How many broadcast news viewers know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite Muslim? There may not be time in the newscast to remind them every day, but there is visual space. And what about a map? I'd bet there are more than a few TV viewers who aren't sure where even the staple news locations, like Guantanamo, Mumbai or the West Bank, are located. Why not have a world map to point out the location of every story in the newscast? It would be a visual reminder of where news is happening in the world.

If we move this Annotated Newscast to the web, we have even greater options. By providing links to stories from other news outlets, we could redirect viewers to explore the stories that interest them with even greater detail. We can link to opinion articles about news events reported on the broadcast. We could link to official studies and journal publications referred to in the broadcast. Remember anchormen saying, "Visit our website to...find your polling station/...write your senator/...see if your child's toys contain lead and have been recalled"? Those days would be over with a direct link that could take you straight to the relevant site. The possibilities are endless.

The web also opens up the opportunity to target different demographics with annotations with different content and in different styles. Imagine an Annotated Newscast with a target audience of sixth-graders. The annotations would remain on the screen longer to account for their slower reading pace. The background might feature brighter colors and more attention-grabbing designs (even sound effects!). The content would be adjusted for the younger audience also. The definitions would be far simpler and the facts might include something as elementary as "Barack Obama is the 44th President. George Washington was the first."

Alternatively, imagine a version of the Annotated Newscast for a well-educated professional. This would feature many more links to sophisticated news stories in publications like The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc. It may also feature short five-line biographies of key players in congressional news, with facts about their party affiliation, their home state, their voting history. In addition this Annotated Newscast may feature more technical explanation for financial, environmental, or political concepts that are glossed over in broadcast news. And certainly this would include many links to expert opinions dissecting the news stories.

The Annotated Newscast shows exceptional promise to multi-outlet news conglomerates. The Tribune Company, for example, which owns multiple print and broadcast outlets throughout America could use an Annotated Newscast to refer viewers to stories posted on their other websites, thereby generating more traffic for all of the company's holdings.

And best of all, this program generates more traffic on the web without adding additional content. Rather than increasing the amount of news available to a viewer, it keeps constant the quantity of news while making it easier to navigate and, ultimately, understand.

The Economics of Information

2008-12-08T08:25:00.007-11:00

Bree Nordenson has eloquently summarized the larger problems caused by information overload in her cover article for the Columbia Journalism Review. Her seven-page article articulates many of the points already mentioned here on this blog. She ponders whether we are more tuned in or more tuned out than we used to be, she asks whether all the information available on the web has made us any smarter and she examines the rise of niche media circles.

But she goes where I haven't yet gone: she looks at the economic impacts of information overload.

As I've said before information in our society has become (or perhaps always was but has now been revealed to be) a commodity. That being said, it can be traded in a market economy just like sugar or grain. And with the freedom to publish and freedom to obtain that has been made possible by the web, we have an entirely free-market economy to trade our commodity: information.

But, Bree says, if we want to make money we are going about the trade all wrong. In an attempt to earn prestige and glory for our news outlet (whether it be the Los Angeles Times or a self-published blog), we are flooding the market with up-to-the-minute breaking news reports and tsunami-sized waves of data.

Not only does this overwhelm the consumer, it overwhelms the market. With a constant demand and this massive increase of supply, basic macroeconomic principles tell us the value of that information will go down.

So, what to do then?

My elementary knowledge of economics tells me we have two choices:

1. Reduce the supply
2. Increase the demand.

Now, reducing the supply of news may initially seen like an impossible task. But in fact, by supply, Nordenson doesn't mean the actual amount of information on the web (which is continually expanding and almost never contracting). Rather, she means the information that is new, that information that we might call "news" in the loosest sense of the word. The amount of new information added to the web has increased sharply in the past few years. This has been a large factor in devaluing the product of journalists and nonfiction writers.

Certainly the prospect of discouraging some web writers from updating their blogs, or cutting back on their wikipedia edits, or reducing the content they add daily is unlikely. Even journalists for well-established news organization have taken to spreading their writing thick on the web with "web exclusives" and story-behind-the-story blogs in addition to their print content uploaded for the web. Nordenson says, "While it is naive to assume that news organizations will reduce their output - advertising dollars are involved, after all - they would be wise to be more mindful of the content they produce." Which gets us to our next point...

We know that information, and news, is readily available on the Internet, so how might we, as journalists, increase the demand for that information? Nordenson has an interesting suggestion: she says that good explanatory journalism can actually increase the demand for more information by sparking interest in a subject and making that subject easily understood. She sites, as an example, an episode of This American Life, the radio program with Ira Glass. For the duration of a full hour episode, the show explained the housing crisis and the factors that lead up to it. The programs was a great example of explanatory journalism on a subject that was not readily understood. But the program served to increase the demand for news on the housing crisis. Once readers (or listeners, in this case) understood the basics of the problem, they sought out more information to fill in the specifics. Media critic Jay Rosen says that good explanatory journalism like this creates a "scaffold of understanding in the users that future report can attach to, thus driving demands for the updates that today are more easily delivered." The programs responded with a podcast and another follow-up episode a few months later.

Thus, by simply doing a great job at the most basic tenants of reporting and explaining, we can make our product more valuable to readers. And if we can create a whole network of follow-up stories, peripheral knowledge, links, graphics and interactive features that build on a very basic understanding, then we can create a group of products that both have an audience and that will create a demand for themselves.

I truly believe that this is how we will rescue the news business. We can create a product that transcends time (you can see the original, most basic report from three months ago side-by-side with today's latest update), exists on unlimited space (with the opportunity to link across the web to all sorts of resources from primary sources to expert opinions) and creates a thriving market for itself at the same time that it creates a more educated public.

Tribune to File Bankruptcy

2008-12-08T07:59:00.003-11:00

The reports are official, the Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets, will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to an email from Sam Zell today. He explains:

I am proud of the work we have done at Tribune in the last year. I’ve seen
strong determination to take hold of this company and put it on a new
course. As a result, we’ve reduced costs, gained market share, and laid the
groundwork for creating a new business model out of traditional media. This
restructuring will give us the time we need to build that model, to secure
sustainable and growing cash flow, and to achieve the success the talented
partners in this company deserve.

What News Should We Choose?

2008-12-08T06:56:00.005-11:00

I've talked before about "information overload" on the Internet - too much news, facts, and data for any one person to comprehend - and the effect it has on our ability to understand the world around us. Well, Curtis Brainard in an article in the Columbia Journalism Review has suggested an alternative phrase for this problem, and I must admit his is better.

The problem is not information overload, but rather access-to-information
overload. Since well before the creation of the printing press, there has been
more news available on a given day than any one person could follow, and more
information than any one reporter could process. It’s just that today both
reporter and reader have much greater access to the news and information, and as
such, there is a greater need to employ filters and other tools to help us
organize and manage the deluge.

Great point, and I commend him for it, but, like so much of cjr.org, this article fails to go on and prescribe a solution to the problem.

Brainard suggests using Internet filters, bookmarks and RSS feed to sort through the information found on the web. Sure, it's good advice but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize you'll need to organize this tidal wave of information somehow. What he fails to suggest is what criteria readers should use in organizing the information they find.

Should they target a specific politician, political party or issue that they feel passionately about and subscribe to every RSS feed that mentions it? Should they sort news by geographic area, assume what's closest to them is most always the most important in their daily lives? Should they visit all the websites their friends and coworkers visit, so they will be able to keep up in water cooler conversations? Or should they bookmark only the news sites that give them the news they want to hear - all about honors students and adopting puppies with no indication of war or economic decline?

We all know that there is an "access-to-information overload," we see it everyday when we sign on to our web browsers. What Brainard needs to tell us is, What news should we choose?

Lee Abrams Speaks

2008-12-02T07:50:00.003-11:00

I've had my eye on Lee Abrams for a while now, but just recently I had the opportunity to meet him face-to-face. He was in Los Angeles to speak at an LA Press Club event about the future of news. Great topic, great speaker: of course I was there. You can check out what Abrams, the Chief Innovation Officer for the Tribune Company, had to say about the Los Angeles Times, the employee cutbacks and the changing nature of storytelling in a five-part series of you tube videos.

Wow

2008-11-23T15:44:00.002-11:00

This week's New York Times Magazine has just blown my mind. Read it.

Keeping in Touch

2008-11-13T12:03:00.002-11:00

Just before Barack Obama took to the stage for his acceptance speech in Grant Park, he emailed his supporters with a personal note of thanks and a promise: “I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.” That promise came after months of a campaign whose ultimate strategy seemed to be keeping in touch: with emails, text message and a comprehensive website.

But now that he’s been elected, it’s more important than ever for Obama to keep in touch with a citizenry lost in the technical jargon of a recession and increasingly unaware of the world around them.

The political climate isn’t unlike that of the 1932 election, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt beat the incumbent Herbert Hoover for the presidential spot. Like Obama, Roosevelt inherited a depressed economy, a massive unemployment rate, and a public on the brink of loosing hope. I believe that, like Roosevelt, Obama has the potential to massively change our country for the better.

But in order to do that, he must keep in touch.

Roosevelt’s fireside chats, a series of thirty radio programs directly addressing American citizens and explaining the complex financial issues surrounding the Depression, were massively popular and greatly affected his influence as president. Roosevelt faced a Republican-dominated legislator, and the massive amount of letters that poured in to senators’ and representatives’ offices after a fireside chat were enough to pressure those legislators into passing some of the president’s more radical measures.

Obama will enter the White House with a Democrat-dominated legislator, and so he will not need help in passing legislation. Obama, instead, will need help in keeping face. That is to say, he may need to keep the public on his side in a war against the media.

The media has been anti-Bush, and anti-conservative, for so long now that we are apt to forget that the media isn’t naturally inclined to be anti-conservative, but rather anti-authority. The Watergate legacy of news media has left it with ample reason to doubt those in power, regardless of who they are.

And the media may have only been energized by the audacity of the Bush administration. The amount of news dedicated to politics and the amount of excitement concerning that news has only increased in the Karl Rove, WMD, wire-tapping era. And the outrageous Sarah Palin impersonations and other election news only elevated that level of elation.

That excitement regarding anti-authority political reporting isn’t likely to die down once Obama sits in the Oval Office.
In fact, because the 24-hour news networks admittedly pander to public interests, the amount of political coverage may increase given Obama’s popularity. And as long as Obama remains popular with the public, we may see and increase in favorable coverage of the White House.

But should Obama lose the trust and faith of the public, should he fail to deliver on his message of change, or should he abandon his message of hope, he could lose the favor of the public and the media will, no doubt, follow.

Thus, it is integrally important that Obama follows through on his promise to “be in touch.” He must do as Franklin Roosevelt did to win the affection of his supporters and his opponents (for fear of Fox News) and he must keep the trust of the American people.

Step Away from Anti-intellectualism

2008-11-09T10:44:00.004-11:00

Today Nicholas Kristof wrote a great piece today in his column at The New York Times exalting Obama as a true intellectual, the first we've had in the white house since Kennedy. He calls last week's victory in the presidential race "a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life." Of course, I agree, but it's Kristof's definition of what exactly makes an intellectual that interests me most:

"An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity."

The key is the distinction he makes between an intellectual's (presumably, Obama's) appreciation of uncertainties and contraditions, and the rigidity and "moral clarity" of so many of our anti-intellectual leaders (here, President Bush, but also John McCain and most of our recent presidents.) It's important to note that this distinction is not a Democrat-Republican distinction, or a conservative-liberal distinction, or even a conservative-progressive distinction. This is a distinction between those who see a clear, morally correct way of ruling and those who accept that they don't know it all, but are willing to try all options in pursuit of the most appropriate way of ruling for the time being. It's idealism vs. pragmatism.

In this moment, with the state of the economy and the military conflicts in the middle east, and the changing balance of power due to globalization, we need a pragmatist more than ever. No one knows what will happen in the next four years; we need someone who will be willing to look at the state of our nation objectively and explore solutions that may be unprecedented or unconventional, solutions that just may work.

The Death of Objectivity

2008-10-21T05:51:00.005-11:00

"Opinions. Ours, yours and theirs." This was the text of a Los Angeles Times advertisement touting the paper's political coverage. It ran on the back page of the California section, under the weather, which is perhaps the only truly objective pursuit of journalism today.
It used to be that journalists prided themselves on not having opinions - not having agendas or biases. It was regarded as a journalistic virtue to coolly report facts and give a detailed picture of the story while remaining objective. Today, that is not the case. Journalism has abandoned objectivity in favor of opinion reporting. You can see it on MSNBC, you can see it on Fox News, you can see it on the celebrity status reached by journalists like Anderson Cooper, and you can see it, certainly, in the "new guard" of journalism - the bloggers who take pride in flaunting their opinions across the internet.
The important question then is, does this abandoning of the journalistic virtue leave us, as a society looking to the news media for information, lacking? Or is it merely a journalistic adaptation to our world of increasing media proliferation?
I would argue the latter. The journalist's role as a keeper and disseminator of information has been made insignificant by the advent of the internet. The fact that official documents, expert opinions, and first-hand accounts are available at the click of a button means that the journalist is no longer needed to provide those things.
But it doesn't mean the journalist is no longer needed.
In fact, the role that the journalist plays today in aiding the public to understand the great tidal wave of information available on all topics is even more important than ever before. Just because statistics and quotations and video clips - all those components of a good journalism story - are available to the public doesn't mean that the public can fill in the gaps for itself. The sum of all the components of a story is not equal to that story.
There's a certain finesse to interpreting a story and making it understandable to the public, and this is the role for the journalist.
This role, believe it or not, can include articulating an opinion.
And so, as our news media turn away from the long-standing pillar of objectivity and new system which values the personal opinion of the journalist, we can understand it as more than just a selfish grappling for fame and fortune, but as a necessary adaptation to a society which has come to consume information and receive facts in a much different way than it did a decade ago. It's not necessary to talk of the abandonment of traditional journalistic values as the devolution of journalism. Rather, we can realize the changing environment in which we live and understand the factors that make it necessary to adapt. And, if we are all very understanding, we, as news consumers, can adapt too.

Wiki World: The Changing role of Knowledge and Truth in Our Postmodern World

2008-10-21T05:50:00.005-11:00

In January of 2001, Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales launched the encyclopedia for the internet age – Wikipedia. The online-encyclopedia (which, in an ironic move has just released a CD version) contains more than 10 million articles written by contributors world-wide. It’s an encyclopedia of the people, for the people and by the people.
A quarter century earlier, Denis Diderot established the precedent for Wales’ subversive move. In 1751, he and his Enlightenment counterparts set out to write the Encyclopédie, a work that they hoped would eventually encompass all of human knowledge. The 35-volume work comprised 71,818 articles. It was not the first encyclopedia, but it was the first of its kind. This encyclopedia was subversive and novel. It encouraged a new way of looking at the world, a way that undermined conventional pathways of information. The writers of the Encyclopédie used observation and reason to challenge long-held perceptions of the world around them and they believed that through this sort of experimentation they could find the truth. Diderot professed, "All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.”
If the Encyclopédie encouraged examination, debate and investigation “without regard for anyone’s feelings,” then Wikipedia took that notion and turned it on its head: the online encyclopedia encourages these methods of examination with regard for everyone’s feelings. It’s an ever-changing document that reflects the unique and varied knowledge of (theoretically) every person in the world, in an attempt to approach the (theoretical) truth.
Wikipedia reflects our new internet-age, postmodern economy of information, in which knowledge is a constantly changing, ever-expanding and amorphous commodity and truth is an increasingly irrelevant and unattainable entity, approached most closely with observations from multiple viewpoints.
The wiki software of Wikipedia allows for mass collaboration by contributors from all over the world. These contributors come from all walks of life. Some are experts in their fields and professors at top universities, some are students. Some are repeat contributors, editing hundreds or thousands of articles on Wikipedia; some make only small changes to a few articles. This allowance for a great number of contributors allows for a great number of subjects to be covered by a great number of people from a great number of places. The core argument here is that the sum of everyone’s knowledge will tend toward the truth over time. (Schiff)
This “sum of all knowledge” theory was outlined long before the internet and wiki software made it an achievable possibility. In 1945, Friedrich Hayek recognized the importance of the individual in recognizing knowledge within the particular circumstance of time and space. “It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made.” (Hayek) This means that a bellhop at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood may be more well-versed in its number of rooms or notable residents than a scholar of 1920’s architecture at some top East Coast university. But together, the bellhop’s specific information about the hotel and the architecture scholar’s information about the structure will get us closer to the whole truth. Hayek’s dream of collaboration in pursue of the sum of all knowledge has been made possible by Wikipedia.
But the encyclopedia’s dependence on mass collaborations has caused many critics to complain that Wikipedia gives no privilege to those who really know what they’re talking about. Among these critics is Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia who has since broken his ties with the project. He argues that “too many Wikipedians are fundamentally suspicious of experts and unjustly confident of their own opinions.” (Schiff) But in our postmodern economy of information, the question is, does it really matter where the information comes from?
For Wales, the answer is no. “To me, the key thing is getting it right. I don’t care if they’re a high-school kid or a Harvard professor.” (Schiff) And Wikipedia’s process emphasizes collaboration; that is, correction, deletion, and compromise.
Some argue that this “information by many” model produces more errors in greater numbers than conventional channels of information. But we must remember that it’s not uncommon to see corrections in a newspaper or magazine, or to witness changes in the reprinting of a second edition of a book. “When confronted with the evidence of errors or bias, Wikipedians invoke a favorite excuse: look how often the mainstream media, and the traditional encyclopedia are wrong!” (Schiff) In fact, the scientific journal NATURE studied scientific encyclopedia entries in 2005 and found errors in both Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica (4 in Wikipedia for every 3 in Britannica). In response, Britannica ran a half-page advertisement in the Times stating, “Britannica has never claimed to be error-free.” If Britannica doesn’t claim to be error-free and Wikipedia certainly doesn’t claim to be error-free, then are these errors significant?
Or, more importantly, is the truth significant? In our economy of information, where information is a commodity, the quantity of information is often regarded more highly than its quality. Neil Postman, in a speech titled Informing Ourselves to Death, commented on this changing utility of information: “Information is now a commodity that can be bought or sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one’s status.” (Postman) So as the Americans of the 1950s increased their status with shiny new cars or vacuum cleaners, the Americans of the 21st century are doing the same in an economy of information: equipping ourselves with the newest theories, conspiracies and political gossip as a means of increasing our prestige. We’ve moved beyond an economy of goods (even beyond an economy of services) to an economy of information.
As can be expected in Americans’ greed, this new economy has lead to an overwhelming amount of information available on radio, TV, billboards, cell phones, and most importantly the internet. We are swimming in knowledge. But is that good for us? Aldous Huxley, author of the dystopian 1930s novel Brave New World, feared a time when too much information was available to the public. “Huxley feared those who would give us so much [information] that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.” (Winslow) Have we reached this numbing pointed of over-informedness that Huxley so fears?
According to Postman in the 1990s, the answer is simple: yes. “The tie between information and action has been severed.” (Postman) No longer do we inform ourselves for the sake of better preparing ourselves to live in the world. Today, we are informing ourselves as a means of adornment, a means of vanity. A veteran editor of the traditional Encyclopedia Britannica complains that “we can get the wrong answer to a question quicker than our fathers and mothers could find a pencil,” but in actuality it doesn’t matter; so long as we find an answer that suits us.
As Diderot cut out the role of the church in delivering absolute information directly from the omniscient God, Wales has cut out the traditional mediating forces of the news media, who have for the past 500 years mediated the flow of news to the public, making a profession of packaging it and editing it in a way that the public can make sense of the world around them. These media lords were once the gatekeepers of information, but today those gates have run over, and the flood of information has not created a better, more knowledgeable public. Instead, it has drowned us all in a seeming unapproachable, but constantly oppressive truth.

Breaking Down the Walls, or at least Moving the Offices

2008-10-12T17:20:00.004-11:00

As an employee of the Los Angeles Times, I was witness this week to a great coming-together of parties that has been long overdue for the paper. I was there to see the web department integrate into the newsroom.

Formerly, the web department had been cast off onto an entirely different floor from the newsroom, that great bastion of journalistic integrity and values. And those significantly younger, significantly hipper web designers and editors had been snubbed by old-school reporters like new money is snubbed by the Kennedys.

But this week's integration reflects an acceptance of the web department as more than simply a means for disseminating the articles written by reporters in the newsroom. It shows an acceptance that the web department is less similar to the machinists working at The Times' printing plant and more similar to the print editors themselves, who shape stories to fit the medium. It verifies their worth as journalists.

And it's about time.

Our Struggle

2008-10-11T18:07:00.006-11:00

For Georgia, maintaining a free press has been a struggle: that was the message of a New York Times article earlier this week. But Georgia is only one of many developing countries whose struggle to successfully adopt democracy includes a struggle of adjustment from a former autocratic, nationally-controlled media to a free press. So, let’s look at the article as a guideline for problems encountered by all new democracies, and especially those who are former Soviet states.

The article lays out four obstacles for a free press:

1. Government Interference
Last November, the government staged a raid on a national broadcast outlet which shut the station down. The reason? The government claimed the opposition station was “fomenting unrest” when it aired a statement promising to topple the current government. It’s not quite as bad as the days of the Soviet Union, with nationally-owned media spouting the party line, but in effect, it’s similar.

2. Media Consolidation
Speaking of media ownership, there are very few media outlets in Georgia and they are (suspiciously) run by people very close to the government. The Prime minister blames media consolidation on “market forces” – not enough advertisers to support a larger quiver of TV stations (certainly not a problem here on the home front). And those few news stations in operation are operated by those wealthy few in the country – those who, inevitably, are close to the current government. The most popular television station there, according to the article, is owned by two brothers – one who is a member of the governing party, and one who is the director of the foreign intelligence service. Again, these people who own the news outlets may not literally be the party, but they are very close to it.

3. Self-censorship
One of the more subtle and nuanced factors blocking a free press is the self-censorship by journalists themselves. This, in a large part, is a result of numbers 1 and 2. With the threat of government interference and the few available journalism jobs in a shrinking market, many journalists are on a mission of self preservation. And so, consciously or subconsciously, they are censoring themselves in order to avoid rocking the boat and putting their own career, or life, in danger. Even the most subtle forms of intimidation are enough to shape the tone of public information. The article says that during the breakaway of South Ossetia, “the government asked broadcasters in some cases not to make reports that could incite panic or be used by Russia as propaganda.” And in Georgia, for the government to “ask” for something is much more powerful than it is here in America.

4. Culture of Censorship
The article only briefly touches on the idea of a “culture of censorship,” a term that implies a defunct relationship between the sources of information, the news media, and the public. The idea is that the public is aware of the too-friendly relationship between the media and the government, and consume accordingly. This breeds a distrust of the media. And this culture of censorship is often the hardest problem to solve, because there is a cultural inertia that resists a change in public opinion. Thus, because much of the citizenry was educated and socialized under Soviet rule, with Soviet propaganda newspapers, they still have a very strong distrust of the media. Unfortunately, this issue of news consumption does not respond to immediate changes in the journalism industry, and so it will be the most difficult to remedy.

But as we look at these problems in Georgia, problems we see in most developing democracies, we cannot exclude ourselves from the struggle. We can see these four problems as a mirror for our own media industry. We certainly have an issue with media consolidation and ownership. Most of our major broadcast news outlets are owned by a few big companies not in the business of journalism. And self-censorship? Certainly. How often do journalists underreport a critical story because it’s “not what the public wants to hear.” Though the West is often seen as the founder and the forerunner of fee media we, still, are not perfect. And so, it is important for us to look at the problems of struggling media industries not as helpful mentors, but as journalists who can learn just as much from them as they can from us.

Where are you leading us, Lee Abrams?

2008-09-30T11:03:00.004-11:00

Lee Abrams, the newly-appointed "cheif innovation officer" for the Tribune company will no doubt be leading the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and all of the rest of the Tribune Company's holdings into the age of new media, but the question is, where will he be leading us?

Abrams gained his innovator fame in the radio business. He transformed that medium from a strictly top-down format with savvy DJs spinning rock 'n' roll with sass, to an album-oriented, celebrity-provoking medium of the 1970s and 80s, to the user-oriented, hyper-specialized, hear-what-you-want format of satellite radio. Will he also turn the traditional print newspaper model on its head?

Abrams was profiled in the Columbia Journalism Review and Wired earlier this month. I guess now all we have to do is follow obediently and see where he leads us. I will definitly be keeping me eyes open.

The Accessible Intellectual

2008-09-30T06:10:00.004-11:00

It was long before Machiavelli wrote the Prince or Plato the Republic that intellectuals began playing the role of advisor to those who govern. It seems inevitable that no single person is aptly equipped to rule, but needs a corps of intellectuals for direction.

Intellectuals have always held a soft power over government, a power of influence. But over time, the direction and shape of their influence has had to change in accordance with changes in systems of government. Today, public intellectuals face the problem of influencing the public, the theoretical power holders in our democracy, amidst competition from the most prolific of mass media. In order to maintain their influence, the public intellectual must retain the intellectual nature of his work while making it – and himself – entirely accessible to the masses.

Yes, the role of public intellectual, one who advises more than just the heads of state, was necessitated only by the advent of democracy. Democracy changed the entire dynamics of government. Now, the “masses” (a word Stephen Mack calls "crude and ugly," but we will assume to mean those who vote and those who have any influence over others who vote) are, in theory, the ruling bodies. In some ways democracy requires a faith in the aptitude of those masses, but in others it reveals a loss of faith in any single individual. In some cases (like the case of Ferdinand of Hapsburg, for example, who was mentally retarded but ruled the Hapsburg Empire at the height of its power) the average competence of “the masses” will be greater than that of an individual who came to power solely by political maneuvering.

Democracy, however, makes the intellectual’s job much more difficult. Rather than advising a single ruler through open and established communication channels, it’s now necessary that the intellectual advise millions of people, who each have only a very small piece of the power of government. Democracy then, is not necessarily a “rule by the people,” but rather, a rule by those who can most effectively influence the people.

The question for the public intellectually is how to exercise their influence.

Today, in our media-saturated world, many players fight for the attention of those all-too-powerful “masses.” From former presidential candidates to concerned citizens and academics to celebrities; influence is exerted across nearly all mediums and nearly every hour of the day. But with people screaming from all sides, it’s hard not to get lost in the deafening cacophony.

Thus, in order for a public intellectual to be effective, he or she must chose an effective means of communicating with “the masses.” A public intellectual must step down from the city-on-the-hill that is academia and reach out to the public on a lower level. A real public intellectual must be an accessible intellectual.

Intellectuals have used the printed word as a means of public communication since Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type. They have used word-of-mouth and public speeches even longer. The accessible intellectual can also be heard on news radio or seen as talking heads on any number of news and commentary shows. Most recently, many public intellectuals, including the one writing this post, have taken to the ultimate democratic medium, the internet, to further widen the public discourse. There are a huge number of mass communications by which an intellectual can speak to the people. The key is finding the one to which they will listen.

At this point, many intellectuals retreat back to academia or politics under the guise of credibility and professionalism. But the accessible intellectual understands the importance of his role in a democracy. He or she uses all means necessary to divert the public’s attention from celebrities and gossip toward a public discourse on the area of his or her expertise.

And once the intellectual has effectively entered the public sphere, once he or she becomes truly accessible, it is paramount, and perhaps most difficult, to maintain an intellectual demeanor.

A true intellectual’s aim is not to provide a one-way stream of information, regardless of how informative and necessary that information might be. A true intellectual’s aim is also not to effect policy changes directly, though he or she might be well equipped to do so. The accessible intellectual’s aim is to open a lively and engaging public discourse.

Thus, an intellectual’s focus is not on providing absolute answers. Rather, an intellectual is more concerned with asking the right questions: questions that are provocative, questions that facilitate an exploration of a subject, rather than a lesson on it. An intellectual provides the public with the format and reason to understand a subject for itself.

Also, an accessible intellectual is not adversarial toward dissenting opinions. Rather, he or she is willing to consider counterarguments for the sake of gaining a more complete understanding of an issue.

Thus, an accessible intellectual is not the gatekeeper of a finite knowledge pool, but rather the guide who leads the way for a public who attention is too divided for self-government. The accessible intellectual not only equips the masses with the information needed for effective self-government, but also plays a role in socializing the masses as responsible citizens and individual leaders. To do this effectively is not difficult. In addition to being personally well-informed, a public intellectual must be only two things: accessible and intellectual.

Profile: Marshall McLuhan

2008-09-30T05:39:00.013-11:00

Marshall McLuhan was an academic intellectual before he was an accessible one, but by the end of his career he was considered by some to be too radical for the academic world, while he maintained a great deal of influence over the “masses.” His famous phrase, “the medium is the message” is still well-known today, more than 40 years after his book The Medium is the Massage first brought the phrase into the public consciousness.

McLuhan was a student of English at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge; he earned a bachelor’s degree and participated in graduate work at both schools before teaching at various universities in the United States and finally settling in at the University of Toronto, where he taught for 33 years. During this time, McLuhan wrote seven books (The Gutenberg Galaxy, The Mechanical Bride, Understanding Media, The Medium is the Message, and War and Peace in the Global Village are among the most popular), began the interdisciplinary journal Explorations and a monthly, multi-disciplinary newsletter called the McLuhan Dew-Line, and served as head of the Centre for Culture and Technology.

But he also became a popular phenomenon. His style was perfectly suited to mass media; his eccentric personality and love of wordplay and one-liners made him pop icon-worthy. McLuhan was featured in a New York Magazine story by Tom Wolfe, a cover story in Newsweek, articles in Life Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Fortune and Esquire, a cartoon in the New Yorker, and an Interview in Playboy. He was guest of honor at a “McLuhan Festival” in San Francisco and spoke to corporations such as AT&T, General Motors and IBM. He was friendly with Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He was interviewed on nearly every major radio and television station in America and Canada. He was a sensation among the masses.

His popularity with the public is somewhat ironic because he was proposing that everything around them, the new electronic age of television and radio and vacuum cleaners, was fundamentally misunderstood.

McLuhan contended that media, especially electronic media, were not an addition to our lives but an extension of our own senses. This extension gives dominance to one or he other sense, an effect with throws off the natural balance of our senses and has serious effects on human society. Thus, the invention of the phonetic alphabet and, later, the printing press, serve as extensions of our own eyes. And the implications for society are great: with the transition from an oral society to a literary society comes the transition from a collective society to a highly individualistic one. But McLuhan’s focus was on the re-tribalizing of society that began with the electronic age. He asserted that the radio and television serve as extensions of our auditory sense and are pushing us back toward an oral society. Thus, he told the public they were unconsciously devolving toward a “global village.”

But he approached the people on a level that was very much their own. He appeared in television interviews many times, including this clip from the Today show in which he talks about the Carter-Ford presidential debate in 1976 (a subject particularly relevant as we are in the middle of debate season in this year’s presidential race). And he illustrated his points using the mediums about which he was speaking. For example, in 1967 he produced The Medium is the Massage audio recording, a medley of discordant sounds and music and the speech of McLuhan himself. The nonsense of this recording was meant to show McLuhan’s point of the difficulties in translating between the spoken word and electronic media.

Some believe that McLuhan stepped too far out of the box to retain the title of intellectual. But in fact, he kept an intellectual attitude in his arguments throughout his lifetime. He maintained an attitude of curiosity and inquisitiveness. He said, “I've never presented such explorations as revealed truth. As an investigator, I have no fixed point of view, no commitment to any theory -- my own or anyone else's. As a matter of fact, I'm completely ready to junk any statement I've ever made about any subject if events don't bear me out, or if I discover it isn't contributing to an understanding of the problem. The better part of my work on media is actually somewhat like a safe-cracker's. I don't know what's inside; maybe it's nothing. I just sit down and start to work. I grope, I listen, I test, I accept and discard; I try out different sequences -- until the tumblers fall and the doors spring open.”

This flexibility on the issue is partly what gained him a reputation as such an erratic individual, but it’s also what allowed him to push forward and make such gigantic leaps in the study of electronic media.

Today, more than a quarter century since his death, McLuhan is still regarded a founding father of media theory. In fact, his work is even being reconsidered for its advice on the internet and new media (though he did not actually live to witness the internet or speak directly on it). McLuhan is considered the “patron saint” of Wired Magazine, and is paid homage to in an article every three or four years. And huge amounts of new scholarship on “revisiting” the theories of McLuhan are being written. The willingness with which people are returning to his age-old theories proves his lasting importance in the public discourse.

Thus, McLuhan established himself as an accessible intellectual by being just that – accessible AND intellectual.