links for 2008-09-27
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Fucking awesome. The possibilities are endless.
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Media Consortium's Media Wires kick off.
The Only Honest Response to Sarah Palin’s Recent Interview with Katie Couric
What. The. FUCK.
Everyone conservative in America should be forced to watch this tape and then say that this woman should be Vice President. Honestly, if you went person by person and had a video camera, I’m pretty sure at the end of it you’d end up with a 99% Obama/Biden win.
This is some shameful shit.
Palin as Miss South Carolina.
If you know it’s bad it’s ok.
Ezra is right, Politico’s editors Harris and Vandehei’s weird self-conscious “we’re ruining America” routine is really fucking strange:
Why do John Harris and Jim Vandehei keep doing this?
Media madness. Reporters complain about the lack of spontaneity in politics. Then we punish spontaneity by ensuring that any impolitic comment gets played and replayed, often simplified and distorted in each replaying—usually accompanied with disapproving analysis about a candidate’s lack of discipline and inability to stay on message.The lack of press access to both candidates this fall is frustrating. But the truth is McCain would be foolish to indulge in the kind of free-flowing, free-associating conversations that won such notice in 2000. Obama’s natural instincts are to tightly control his image and words, which works nicely in this media environment.
An unscripted campaign would be more interesting and more useful to voters, but it would require two unlikely ingredients: Candidates self-confident enough to throw out the script, and a news media that would devote as much attention to ideas as to gaffes.
Every couple of months, they come out with a new op-ed that lambastes the media’s role in cheapening our democracy and creating a substanceless, horserace-obsessed politics. Then, in the interim, they run a major political publication whose latest innovation is crowning a daily winner of the day’s news cycle. Either they should become that “news media that would devote as much attention to ideas as to gaffes” or they should admit that it’s impossible and quit their jobs in a very public protest.
links for 2008-09-26
links for 2008-09-24
Good for CNN.
They’re not allowing themselves to be a cog in the Palin Propaganda Machine:
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, on Tuesday banned reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew.
CNN, which was providing the television coverage for news organizations, decided to pull its TV crew, effectively denying Palin the high visibility she had sought. …
The campaign told the TV producer, print and wire reporters in the press pool that follows the Alaska governor that they would not be admitted with the photographers and camera crew taken in to photograph the meetings. At least two news organizations, including The Associated Press, objected and were told that the decision was not subject to discussion.
Via: the mothership.
links for 2008-09-23
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Similar to what we're doing but with less info shared and without blogging or an interface to bring up collective recommendations.
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Interesting. Not sure what the incentive is, but whatevs.
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The partnerships continue.
Maddow doubles 9 pm slot for MSNBC.
In the two weeks since Maddow took over the 9pmET slot, the program’s nine shows have averaged 556,000 demo viewers and 1.6M Total Viewers. Maddow’s averages are more than double the final two weeks (eight shows) of Verdict with Dan Abrams (225,000 demo / 601,000 Total Viewers.)
links for 2008-09-22
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A typically interesting re-framing of the "Info Overload" meme.
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If you don't get out there and start producing your own Google search, someone else will.
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Google's ad team goes to work. Crossing my fingers for them.
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Brilliant talk on the current state of new media. Some important reality checks (legacy media is still dominant, even online) and important warnings (we do need to focus on new models of credibility online). Must read.
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Everyone should aggregate.
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The academy goes viral
Random self-serving facts.
Politico.com: 85 staff members, 3 million unique readers per month.
Talkingpointsmemo.com: 12 staff members, 2.5 milliion unique readers per month.
Just sayin’.
Update: Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei says their internal numbers are much higher than 3 million. My point still stands (unless it’s 6X the 3 mill), but I thought it was fair to point that out.
The beginning of the great hybrid news battles of the early 21st century.
Scott Karp is exactly right that every newspaper in American should have a headline aggregation system that brings the best of the whole web to an audience, not just the best that newspaper has done.
But he’s wrong that the only options right now are aggregators who link and newspapers who get links. His readers may be fighting that fight, but aggregators and newspapers are already there and moving.
On the newspaper side, we’re already seeing movement. We don’t have to “imagine if the NYTimes.com put above the fold on its homepage a continuously updated list of links ot breaking news around the web.” Or at least we won’t have to wait much longer. As reported in July, the Times is getting ready to launch Times Extra “which will be links to stories from NYT competitors, and will even occupy space on NYTimes.com homepage, a huge leap for the paper’s rather cloistered journalistic attitude of lore.” It’s only a toe in the water, but as PaidContent notes it’s a dramatic move if it continues. And as with many things, if The New York Times is going there, others are sure to follow.
On the aggregator side, Karp couldn’t be more wrong that “Drudge has NO COMPETITION!” Huffington Post is first a foremost an aggregator and is investing huge amounts of money in hiring up a reporting staff to reach the hybrid model he’s describing. At TPM, we launched an aggregating front page over a year ago that sends hundreds of thousands of pageviews a day to sites other than TPM. And we had a reporting staff before we launched the aggregator that’s only grown since.
The story to watch is not if, but how these hybrid models develop.
It’s time to start asking new questions: As aggregators report more news and newspapers do more aggregation, how does the market settle out? How do big news sites negotiate mass audiences and the need to compete witih niche aggregators? Will regional papers allow Huffington to get a foot in the door and start to develop an audiene or beat them there and prevent a challenge?
Karp is right that newspapers still need to be pushed. But my sense from things like Times Extra and the folks I talk to is that people are starting to catch on, and the real battle is about to be waged.
links for 2008-09-20
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WSJ launches social network that requires real names. They only allow folks who have paid onto the site w/ a credit card and therefore have a verifiable name to comment.
There are obvious downsides to this (less commenting, less comfort saying what's on your mind), but obvious upsides: whatever community starts to exist there could become quite a powerful and reliable asset.
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Nice, but relatively basic speech. Shoutout for TPM at minute 20.
links for 2008-09-19
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Maddow wins! Woooooo.
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So basically Gawker takes faux-controversial stands for freedom of info as a way to gin up controversy about its posts and make money. Lucrative assholery dressed up as admirable and brave!
Sarah Palin in the queen of the internets.
Not just YouTube, also the Google.
The first dude abides.
TPMtv is so funny today my face hurts from laughing:
links for 2008-09-16
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Editors make a direct pitch via YouTube for donations to keep the feminist publication alive.
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A wiki for McCain lies brought to you by the Democratic Party! What a fun chaotic moment we live in.
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Interesting post from Ethan on cultural importing and exporting as a measure of homophily and xenophilia.
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'Ben Grossman's suggestion: "Put it in the cable group alongside USA and Bravo and all its other money-printing brands that are carrying the NBCU portfolio. …With one move, MSNBC would be free to pursue the borderline-brilliant programming strategy that has elevated the network, while at the same time protecting the venerable NBC News brand, which is a bit under siege following the loss of Tim Russert and the silliness that occurred during the conventions."'
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Jesus that's depressing.
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I really don't agree that this looks good. It looks like a site from the late 90s, washed out and overwhelmed with text.
YouTube obsessed with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin.
As you can see, fully half of the “most viewed” videos today are Fey as Palin.
None of the videos, however, are the actual original clip. To get around copywright problems youtubers are posting other shows showing the Palin clip. Half of them are just duplicates of a single Fox news segment, replicated here as an ad for a free hosting service. One of the 10, naturally, is a Rick Roll.
I’ve never seen a single video so thoroughly dominate YouTube. Is Sarah Palin the new Queen of the Internets?
My friends are amazing: microfinancing edition.
My good friend Jack has been in India for about a month now working for SKS, “one of the fastest growing microfinance organizations in the world,” and he’s blogging about it.
As someone who knows very little about development, I’m finding his writing absolutely riveting. And, frankly, the pictures are even better.
Jack explains what SKS is helping this woman to do:
After speaking with her, my concerns (perhaps you could call them paternalistic concerns) about our members being able to price the full cost of our loans declined. She shared this thinking with me, though I have added a few additional calculations and clarifications. Her figures were not this precise, but her train of thought and explanations were.
She had decided to purchase a water buffalo, which cost ~30,000 rupees. She had Rs 10,000 in savings that she was willing to put towards the purchase of the buffalo. She would match this with a loan from us to complete the purchase. To determine if our 20,000 rupee (425 USD) loan, paid over a one-year term, was worth it, she calculated the following:
1) The cow would produce 4-6 liters of milk per day, which she could sell at Rs 15 – 18. Let’s call this Rs 75 more in daily income or Rs 500 per week, for simplicity’s sake.
2) In six months time, the cow would become pregnant. During this period, she would only be able to get 2-3 liters of milk per day. Or Rs 40 per day over the gestation and calf rearing period.
3) If the pregnancy was successful, she would be able to raise the calf for a year and then sell the calf for up to Rs 20,000.
4) She hoped to repeat the successful pregnancy at least twice more over the next four to six years.
The interest on her loan came out to Rs 5,000 on a principal of Rs 20,000. So, on a weekly basis, she was expected to pay back Rs 500 (Rs 60 in principal and Rs 15 in interest per day) per week. Consequently, for six months, if everything went okay, she would just be making her interest payments with the additional income from the milk sales. But, from then until the end of the loan repayment period, she would need to find money from somewhere to service the loan. She and her husband had decided that he would take on extra work to cover this shortfall.
She explained that she was confident that they would be able to pay the loan back over the course of the year and that, after this time, the cow would earn for the family more than the cost (interest) of the loan every four months or so.
You should read his blog, it’s fantastic.
