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."