International Journalism Workshop, Ithaca College, July 09

CNN gets Pentagon approval

Big Media Hall of Shame, acc to the media reform group Free Press.

Sen. Stevens, opponent of net neutrality.

Indy journalists harassed at 2008 Repub convention

Indy video becomes major prez campaign story

David Weinberger of Cluetrain Manifesto says "Transparency is the new objectivity."

Grassroots local news sites

Business Week on Bloggers Who Bring in Big Bucks

Indy Media Course Syllabus

Click here for course syllabus in a word document.

Condi: "No, dear, you're wrong."

Let's hear it for YouTube and citizen journalism.

Thanks to Stanford students practicing journalism and asking about torture of prisoners, former Sec of State Condi Rice had a near meltdown moment ON VIDEO -- just before a campus dinner. She claimed she didn't authorize brutalizing prisoners, but just conveyed the authorization. Echoing Richard Nixon, she argued that if President Bush authorized it, then "by definition" it did not violate the Convention against Torture that our government has signed.

The video helped spark Stanford alumni from 1960s antiwar generation -- gathered for a campus reunion this weekend -- to publicly call for the prosecution or Rice, who is currently on Stanford's faculty.

You got censored

Steph M on Internet censorship in Australia:

What do a dentist, an owner of a dog kennel, a school cafeteria food provider and a US astrology site have in common? They all operate websites that have all fallen victim to Australia’s new Internet censorship laws.

Australia has joined the ranks of many countries that have decided to implement mandatory Internet censorship. The only problem is, their filtering system is far from perfect, and innocent people are having their businesses blocked under the new regulations.

Rural America needs broadband

Videos of rural Southerners from different walks of life asking the government to step in and help folks get broadband.

How to write a proposal...

Much how-to info all over the Net on drafting a prospectus for business start-up or a proposal seeking grants.

Video of Izzy Awards

Video of acceptance speeches from Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman

Grassroots local watchdog...

...journalism projects blooming, according to Prof. Dave Westphal writing in Online Journalism Review.

One of the most successful local online nonprofit news ops is Voice of San Diego.

Saving Journalism -- Where Should $ Go?

Every week brings new proposals to save newspapers or investigative reporting. In Bailout for Media Moguls? (a critique of the recent John Nichols/Bob McChesney article in The Nation), indy media trailblazer DeeDee Halleck argues that support and subsidies need to go to independents and grassroots/local content providers, not big media corporations. Similarly, Tracy Van Slyke of The Media Consortium argues on the British Guardian website that any federal endowment for investigative journalism must include independent journalists and outlets, not just corporate media.

Six Trends in Journalism...

...especially the business of journalism, from recent State of the News Media report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

5 Tips for Citizen Journalism

Interview with ProPublica's Amanda Michel, Pro Publica's editor for "distributed reporting."

Time Warner test marketing....

caps on downloading and two-tiered pay structure. Newly-elected nearby Congressman Eric Massa vows to resist the new plan. Here he is speaking against Time Warner's plan.

Bloggers' Code of Ethics

Here it is. (H/t Chris L.)

Going Postal

Small indy mags across the spectrum joined forces to resist postal rate hikes.

Defender of Telecom Industry

Ex-senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) -- recently convicted (and un-convicted) of accepting bribes -- has always been open for business as a defender of big telecom companies. Here is his attempt to explain his vote against a Net Neutrality measure in June 2006. His explanation put to music.

Comcast, one of the big cable/Internet companies, gets caught pushing public out of public hearing. Wonder why this wasn't a story in MSM?

Digital Divide

My daughters, 12 and 17, grew up with computers in the home and fast Internet access. In inner cities and poor rural areas, such tools for learning and commerce are out of reach.

Why do other countries...

...see broadband infrastructure as a national, public good, while the U.S. leaves it to "free enterprise"? U.S. lags behind much of developed world in speed of access and costliness of access.

Entrepreneurial Journalism Course

Instructor Jeff Jarvis writing at buzzmachine.com about his City University of NY course, which offered potential $50,000 in seed money to good ideas from students. He summarizes some of the ideas (without giving them away) and draws lessons about what was learned from the course and the exercise in pitching new ideas for journalistic or information businesses.

NY Times policy...

on reporters supporting candidates -- or even allowing their spouses/kids to put bumper stickers on family car. Policy email was leaked to NY Observer. (H/t Kristin C.)

Drudge "exclusive" accuses...

...CNN reporter Michael Ware -- during a news conference of Sen. McCain and other Congressional Republicans in Iraq -- of "laughing and mocking their comments." It was based on an anonymous "official" who Drudge quoted as saying: "I've never witnessed such disrespect." The claim was picked up by rightwing blogs who claimed Ware had "heckled" McCain. This videotape of the McCain-led news conference -- obtained by indy outlet Raw Story -- shows Ware sitting in the back, not saying anything.

Lib blogs ignored dishonest Obama campaign ads

Obama ad (seems to be diseappeared from Net) in Spanish aimed at Latinos smearing McCain by linking him to Limbaugh comments he had nothing to do with.

"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with, the intolerance," in Spanish as a picture of Rush Limbaugh appears onscreen with quotes of him saying, "Mexicans are stupid and unqualified" and "Shut your mouth or get out." "They made us feel marginalized in a country we love so much," the ad continues. "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote and another, even worse, that continues the failed policies of George Bush..."

Become a YouTube Star...

and appear in a hugely popular music video with Weezer or the earlier one from Barenaked Ladies.

New Texas Shield Law...

...protects journalists but only those who practice journalism "for a substantial portion of the person's livelihood or for substantial financial gain." (H/t Margaret M.) This would exclude even Josh Marshall in his first couple years of blogging -- because he was bringing in virtually no money from it. The blogger who wrote this up did some good reporting on the question, interviewed a legislative office. . .but he would not be protected under the law.

"Get off the Bus"

Amanda Michel's recent piece on "the future of pro-am journalism" in Columbia Journalism Review

"Mr. President, what do you think...

...of that hatchet job...?" asks un-identified "citizen-journalist" from Huffington OfftheBus, and here's one of the most colorful responses ever from a politician (Bill Clinton).

Why the hell...

...is "Where the hell is Matt?" so successful? (H/t Julia.)

This makes $ on You Tube?!

What the Buck? Indeed. He claims to be earning over $100k annually from YouTube videos.

This is another huge production from Lisa Donovan, "LisaNova." Huge numbers of views. Here's the McCain/Palin rap.

Cory Williams hit bigtime with "Mean Kitty Song" (19 million views) and to be earning $120k per year.

Movie Straight to ITunes

Producer of Purple Violets claims that straight to ITunes (no theatrical release) of his indy movie was a financial success.

Glenn Greenwald Video

Thanks to Chris L, we put together a Glenn Greenwald reel for Izzy Award ceremony, with its world premiere on this blog.

P.O'd Travelers Mad as Hell...

and blogging about it, and getting results. (H/t to Kristin C.)

Big Media Hall of Shame

2008 contest for worst behaving, greediest or most freedom-abridging media/telecom corporation, according to 2008 video produced by media reform group Free Press.

Victims of web censorship

Inner City Press, a monitor of Wall St. and the U.N., temporarily delisted from Google News.

Wikileaks.org, which posts documents leaked by whistle-blowers inside repressive countries, institutions or corporations, ordered to be shut down (ineffectively) by a federal judge's order, after complaint from none other than a Cayman Islands bank! The judge removed his order after 10 days.

Why some politicans dislike "Trackers"

"Macaca": The video that helped end a political career. This obscure racial slur made by incumbent Senator George Allen (R-VA) -- and its posting on You Tube -- may well have decided that extremely close 2006 Senate race, and which party held the majority in the U.S. Senate.

Indy Journalists Detained/Arrested...

...at the site of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota last Sept.

DAYS BEFORE the beginning of the convention, members of the independent video group -- I witness -- were aggressively detained by St. Paul police, without a warrant.

During a street demonstration, Democracy Now! producer Nicole Salazar was roughly arrested, shoved into the pavement and bloodies, as she yelled out to the officer that she was PRESS, PRESS.

When Democracy Now! producer Amy Goodman went to inquire about two arrested producers, Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Amy herself was arrested...relatively peaceably. Amy was clearly a press person, credentials around her neck, being followed by a camera crew.

No space for these ads on My Space

CommonCause had trouble placing ads on My Space: This is the face of Big Media.

Google "Smart" Computers...

...placed a Kraft Foods ad on a neo-Nazi website, whiterevolution.com. (H/t to Chris L.) Was ad for white cheese spread or something?

Readers of "Alternative Weeklies"

...seem to be aging.

How to save journalism

In The Nation magazine, John Nichols and Robert McChesney put forward a $20 billion yearly "stimulus program" for journalism.
1) Eliminate postal rates for small periodicals.
2) Annual tax credit for people subscribing to dailies.
3) Fund student newspapers and broadcast stations in schools, colleges to connect young people and journalism.
4) Drastically expand funding of public and community broadcasting to $10 billion per year, equivalent on per capita basis, to what other democracies spend.

Blogger Access

Controversy over restrictions on bloggers, others, mainstream journalists at Minnesota state house.

Blogger Sam Stein, given access to White House, asks question of President Obama.

Jon Wiener...

...who writes about the chaining of "alternative weeklies," is a professor and indy journalist who has fought to unearth the FBI's covert campaign against John Lennon.

Report on "Alternative Weeklies"

Alternative weeklies, according to a 2007 report from Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Student Activism, Internet Era

In past decades, when college students "sat-in" or "occupied" a campus building in protest over this or that cause, their isolation inside the building gave their opponents an advantage in message control. A recent protest at the New School in NY City showed, according to an analyst at MediaChannel, that the Internet has totally changed the situation.

Website of "New School in Exile."

Internet Pioneer Kevin Kelly...

...is writing his new book "in public."

Mark Finkelstein

Mark blogs for Newsbusters, a conservative media criticism site, here.

And he has his own blog on political and media topics with posts like this.

Giant company on trial

Journalism and law students at University of Montana covering the trial of W.R. Grace.

Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks

Business Week on bloggers who are making it -- as of summer 2007.

What Journalists Can Learn from Jon Stewart

Philadelphia Daily News staffer and blogger Will Bunch on Jon Stewart's lambasting of CNBC's inaccurate reporting and lessons journalists can learn -- such as "great research trumps good access to the powerful." (H/t Josh M.)

Unsolicited tobacco company docs

Unsolicited, the University of California received incriminating internal documents showing Brown and Williamson tobacco company knew of the addictive effect of cigarettes/nicotine. For years, the company tried to prevent the documents from being made public, but the library prevailed. CBS News caved in 1995 when threatened with a lawsuit (see the movie The Insider) over some of this material.

Sean Penn's speech censored in Asia

Capitalist (Murdoch) and communist (China) TV networks censor Oscar speeches and images/references to gay rights, as HuffingtonPost journalist shows.

Why didn't any MSM reporter ask this Q?

Chris L. makes a strong point in his blog -- that an indy/gadfly/blogger who used a post-game news conference to question the Univ of Conn basketball coach about his $1.5 million state salary (at a time of salary cuts for others) generated a good bit of mainstream media coverage . . .after the expected MSM rumbling and ridicule aimed at the outsider. Never would have happened but for the gadfly in the room posing the difficult question.

Mother Jones vs. TIME in D.C.

According to a new report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "The New Washington Press Corps" (2/11/09), Mother Jones now has as big a D.C. staff as TIME magazine, and Al Jazeera as many staffers covering U.S. Congress as CBS News.

Twitter breaks air crash in turkey

Hat tip to Julia D. As usual with these disasters nowadays, the first "reporters" on the scene are eyewitnesses or victims/participants. . .twittering.

Margaret Sanger

A critic writes about Sanger's equal-rights-for-women legacy being tarnished for publishing articles in 1920s with ugly eugenics themes -- preventing overpopulation by the "feeble-minded," etc.

McDonalds McScrews Employee...

...and demands video evidence be removed from You Tube.

Why we need indy media

Because corporate mainstream TV is capable of a four-month-long hoax: Will TV News Ever Apologize for Condit Hoax?

Strange Fruit

Ida B. Wells journalistic and advocacy efforts helped reduce the number of lynchings, but horrific practice not fully eliminated until decades later.

In the 1930s, Bronx high school teacher Abel Meeropol (pen name Lewis Allen) wrote the powerful anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit," which Billie Holliday famously sang and recorded -- over the obstruction of her record company.

One of the last lynchings ocurred in Poplarville, Mississppi, in 1959.

What the hell is this on Huffpo?

A provocative comment on politics and culture? Or free ad space? Frontpage featured blog list is prime, heavily-desired real estate -- and I posted today AND I DIDN'T GET THAT SPACE.

Correction and apology: I see that my post is on frontpage as featured blog, BUT way down the page.

Apologizing for what?

Why should a vivid, first-hand essay by a Park graduate lead to such an (over)reaction -- and does such a reaction have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in the IC community?

IC students facebook page.

Subcomandate Marcos on Indy Media

A leader of the Zapatista movement, Marcos, sent a video greeting from the jungles of Chiapis in Mexico to a 1997 gathering of U.S. independent media practitioners in New York City. By "neo-liberalism," he's referring to unregulated corporate-dominated globalization that often bulldozes the poor, especially indigenous people. In the video, he criticizes global corporate media for their worship of VIPs and celebrities, and for showing common people only if they kill someone or get killed. Instead of accepting corporate media or ignoring it as a lie, he urges a "third option" -- building independent media that can spread word about the realities of life, and save "the history of the present," especially for indigenous people. He compares the task of independent media makers to the heroes of "Farenheit 451" who memorized books to save them before the authorities burned them.

Do different broadcast systems impact knowledge?

Important survey comparing the public's knowlege of political and international issues in Scandinavia and UK and US suggests that systems based primarily on public broadcasting do better in informing the public than a system based on corporate, commercial broadcasting.

More repression against bloggers in Egypt

Hat tip to Margaret's blog post. More repression of Egyptian bloggers -- this posted on Global Voices AFTER Tuesday's class.

Internet shrinks the globe

GlobalVoicesOnline: "The world is talking. Are you listening?" A blog hosted by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society

Witness: "See it. Film it. Change it." Nonprofit using video to expose and mobilize around human rights abuses

Newsdesk.org: Important but overlooked news from around the world

"Alive in Baghdad"

Weekly videos posted from inside Iraq, supported by outside donations.

Egypt: Powerful Video

Brave Egyptians risk arrest, imprisonment, torture to use blogging, Facebook, Twitter to inform fellow citizens about protests, strikes and human rights abuses: "Internet Freedom in Egypt."

Iran Bloggers

Vancouver Film School students created this video short: Iran, A Nation of Bloggers. (Hat tip to Vadim Isakov.) Among the many Iranian bloggers, some have significant influence in society, including a former Vice President of Iran, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a moderate figure whose blog appears in English.

U.S. student activists...

...use new communications technology to disseminate their video version of events on their protest to challenge misinformation and misimpressions. "Activism in a Time of New Media: The 'New School in Exile' in Real Time"

Ethnic Media

"Voices that must be heard: the best of New York's ethnic and immigrant press"

Can newspapers be saved....

and be made more independent as nonprofit, endowed institutions? See NYTimes op-ed: "News You Can Endow."

Importance of Indy Media in '08 politics

Politico.com lists its "Top Ten Political Scoops of 2008" (lampooned by blogger Glenn Greenwald) -- and McCain's homes is #2 and Obama "bitter" comments is #3.

Volunteer-edited documentary/Amy Goodman

30-minute documentary, Independent Media in a Time of War, based on an April 2003 speech by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! -- a time when Bush's handling of the war was approved of by 80% of the country and mainstream media were in full swoon.

Indy Viral Video Plays Role in '08 Campaign

Brave New Films "McCain's Mansions" mini-video that went viral...over 600,000 views. First 90 seconds gives the gist of it.

And here is a behind-the-scenes video, "The Making of McCain's Mansions" that Robert Greenwald screened in Ithaca at our indy media symposium in Sept. It shows how the video went up the media food chain and became part of the mainstream diet.

ps. A funny video comparison of Fox News/2004 on Kerry with Fox News/2008 on Obama.

NYT blogging up a bit

If blogs are growing because of a more personal/less distant relationship with readers, perhaps NYT getting the message with its recently-hired renewable energy reporter. Here's a piece she just posted.

Envisioning NYTimes beyond 'dead trees'

Michael Hirschorn's "End Times" in Jan/Feb '09 Atlantic envisions post-print version of NY Times.

Bungled Presidential Oath & Blogosphere

Yesterday, rightwing blogger proclaimed Obama NOT president due to bungled oath, apparently sparked by Fox News. Others in blogosphere were questioning whether Obama was lawfully president; NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd said rumblings in blogosphere were a reason Obama re-took the oath.

Video of original oath on conservative site.

Inauguration Week

On HuffingtonPost, more than 3300 comments in response to this Jason Linkins report, "Gay Bishop Gene Robinson Left Out Of HBO Concert Coverage."

On TPM Muckraker, a report raises questions that departed VP Cheney may be able to bury official documents that public should have access to.

Student Blog Links

Kristin C http://kparkindymedia.blogspot.com/

Julia D. http://indyjdunn.blogspot.com/

David D. http://ddindymediablog.blogspot.com/

Chris L. http://myxomatosisblog.blogspot.com/

William M. http://questionablelettuce.blogspot.com/

Stephanie M http://thestephperspective.blogspot.com/

Josh M. http://joshandthenews.blogspot.com/

Margaret M. http://margaret-indynews.blogspot.com/

Jen N. http://jennevins-independentmedia.blogspot.com/

Oksana R. http://oksana-ori.blogspot.com/

Sherry S. http://newsscool.blogspot.com//