Vote for the Worst

After reading some of the Jenkins book, it is especially fun to check out the Vote for the Worst site. Their goal is to influence enough people via the Internet each week to pool enough votes for the worst contestants each week on American Idol to push them through to the next round. In the words of those animated Guinness dudes: Brilliant!

The Anna Nicole Smith Story

We watched together in class as the Anna Nicole Smith story started to break. Huge coverage across all the major media players. Was it over the top and too much, we asked ourselves.

Investigative report Diane Dimond thinks so, and she had a very interesting conversation with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik, discussing the matter.

ZURAWIK: You know, we are so bad in the media today. When the public really cares about a story the way they cared about the O.J. story -- you know, I experienced a little of this when I wrote about the Anna Nicole thing. There was a lot of back and forth -- should we treat it this way, should we treat -- listen, the public cares about something this much, we ought to not be above it. We ought to try -- now, there's way to explain it. Help us understand why we care about it.

DIMOND: But five straight hours? ...If a less popular person died, and it wasn't Anna Nicole, the sexpot -- say it was Dick Cheney. I guarantee you he would not get five straight hours of coverage on MSNBC or a full hour on "20/20."

Read the whole CNN interview transcript here.

Related: Houston Chronicle ombudsman James Campbell in his About:Chron blog writes that he thinks the Chronicle set a new low in running a lengthy A1 story on Smith and her alleged long-running lesbian affair with an older Texas woman.

Behind the Scenes at On Being

In class last week, we looked at some of the On Being videos being featured on WashingtonPost.com. I thought you might find this blog Q&A -- you need to scroll down to see the answers posted in the comments section -- with Rob Curley at WaPo interesting. Curley talks about what goes into On Being each week, and why he thinks it is successful.

The PAPER of Record?

Will the New York Times printed edition still be around in five years? The paper's publisher made his own headlines across the media-watching blogosphere when he said earlier this month that he was not so sure.

The paper's futurist, however, thinks the print edition will continue to hang around for a while, while the newsroom spreads its wings a bit.

Read more.

On On Being

This Washingtonpost.com video project On Being is fascinating to me. I really like watching them -- and I like reading the comments. Once you watch a couple, trust me, you will be hooked and checking back every Wednesday for the next one.

The Power of Gossip

In Chapter 2 of his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins tackles both the historical and more recent role of gossip in society.

He writes:

The specific content of gossip is often less important than the social ties
created through the exchange of secrets between participants -- and for that
reason, the social functions of gossip hold when dealing with television
content. It isn't who you are about but who you are talking with that matters.
Gossip builds common ground between participants, as those who exchange
information assure one another of what they share. Gossip is finally a way of
talking about yourself through critiquing the actions and values of others.

It is especially interesting to me that Jenkins focuses on American Idol in this chapter of this book. This season marks my first year as a viewer of that wildly popular show. And what blows me away about the whole phenomenon is the life the show takes on after everyone has left their TV screens. There is water cooler chat, but beyond that it dominates media coverage and the conversations on the Internet are endless.

Take the latest controversy -- or gossip: the steamy photos of contestant Antonella Barba that have been flying around the Internet. As a result, Barba (and American Idol) has been one of th biggest news stories of the day today. Web sites from major news outlets are all over the story. Watch what TV news does with it tonight and newspapers tomorrow. And bloggers are all over it is well.

Check out this post at NJ.com of this one from PhillyBurbs.com. And just dive into those comments at both places. Wow. Yes, Henry Jenkins is right on the mark.

The Feedback System

In chapter 12 of his book We the Media, Dan Gillmor writes:

Blogs and other modern media are feedback systems. They work in something close
to real time and capture -- in the best sense of the word -- the multitude
of ideas and realities each of us can offer. On the Internet, we are defined
by what we know and share. Now, for the first time in history, the feedback
system can be global and nearly instantaneous.

This feedback system is a big reason I got involved in the online world in the first place. I am wondering where it ranks for other people as a reason for them to be pulled into the Internet.

'Emergent Democracy'

Joi Ito is one of the primary thinkers and innovators when it comes to the crossroads where technology meets democracy.

Ito wrote an essay called "Emergent Democracy," which started as a wiki. In the essay, Ito writes:

The monolithic media and its increasingly simplistic representation of the world
cannot provide the competition of ideas necessary to reach consensus.

Here is the whole essay.

Dan Gillmor on Storytelling

In the introduction to his book We the Media, longtime journalist Dan Gillmor writes:

This book is about the transformation from a twentieth century mass-media structure to something profoundly more grassroots and democratic. It's a story, first, of evolutionary change. Humans have always told each other stories, and each new era of progress has led to an expansion of storytelling.

This is also the story of modern revolution, however, because technology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone [to] become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before.

So I ask: What is happening as this evolution meets this revolution? Is the world changing because of it? Is journalism changing because of it? And if there is change happening, is all of it change for the good?

A True Insider

A patient in a Russian hospital heard muffled cries of young children. When she saw gagged babies, she pulled out her cell phone and took some video and stills. This is yet another example of the everyday person becoming a documentarian, a journalist, a whistleblower. It is another example of uncovering news and distributing it worldwide almost instantaneously.

An Obscure Mass. Law

Wow, I've lived in Massachusetts for 10 years, and I never even knew about this law.

The comments on Reddit.com for this piece are priceless.

Convergence Journalism at Its Finest

This story, "‘Man Down’: When One Bullet Alters Everything," by Damien Cave for the New York Times is poignant and rich in detail. The accompanying photos add some stirring visuals. And the associated video, narrated by Cave, gives even more details.

The whole package is a compelling example of convergence journalism. And it has drawn the ire of a soldier's family and the US Military and threatened the embedded status of the journalists responsible for the piece. Here is the AP story talking about aftermath of the story.

Just Because It's on a Web Site...

Mary Ann Akers, who writes a behind-the-scenes political blog for the Washington Post Web site, tackles the icy tension between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Fox News.

The highlight of her post, however, is the quote from an internal memo that John Moody, the VP for news at Fox, sent to staff in the wake of Fox's controversial and incorrect news reports that Obama was educated at a Muslim madrassah in Indonesia.

Moody writes:

For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does
it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating
information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this.