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May 12, 2005

Breaking the codes

: In his very good coverage of l'affaire Spokane at PressThink, Len Witt points to a plethora of codes of journalistic ethics.

Methinks the volume of codes of ethics is, itself, a symptom of a problem. Doth we protest too much? Are we overcomplicating it? Are we overcompensating?

Doesn't it pretty much add up to this: Don't lie. Don't sell out.

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Close enough for Current

: Current.TV blogger Robin Sloan reacts to my post on tolerance for lower-quality video opening up new content possibilities:

You know, I remember asking Current broadcast facility manager Brett Kotheimer what video quality we'd consider a minimum threshold for VC2. His answer surprised me: I expected him to say, "Oh, standard DV with good lighting" or something. Instead he said (and I paraphrase): "Hey, as long as there's a recognizable image, it's potentially useful."

Brett is serious about running a facility that uses professional expertise to make sure Current's signal is rock-solid and broadcast-quality -- and puts it to work in service of all kinds and qualities of video, from the sharpest in-house field reports to the roughest (but, perhaps, most compelling) VC2 submissions.

Again: Bring on the webcams, baby.

It's the content that counts.

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Damn

: Treonauts reports that the Verizon Treo 650 will not have EVDO high-speed data. Damn. Guess I'll stick with Sprint.

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The satire tag

: Big, old media needs to get a sense of humor. Straight out satires have been taken as real by the big guys twice recently:

: When a fake Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on Howard Stern's show and proposed blowing up the moon -- with the fringe benefit of ending women's PMS and bitchiness -- Joe Scarborough on MSNBC took it seriously and lectured Arnold about sexism. Now, the guy's a good Schwarzenegger impersonator but still, there were scores of clues in the bit that it was a bit.

: The Swift Report -- a good and often very funny satire site -- put out a press release from the Coalition for Traditional Values upset over Laura Bush's off-color jokes and TV-watching habits. Now, of course, what makes that so funny is that it's so close to the truth. But it was just a joke. Nonetheless, Rush Limbaugh, MSNBC, and Drudge fell for it.
[via Lost Remote]

Alex Beam says: "Poor dears. Don't they know the Golden Rule of the digital age? On the Internet, no one can hear you lying."

Lying? How about joking, Alex? Nobody was trying to lie. They were trying to tell a joke. But big, old media just didn't get it.

Maybe we need to add courses in remedial humor to journalism schools.

Or maybe big, old media just needs to lighten up. Big, old media apparently has been too depressed lately from falling audience and advertising. Big, old media needs to get a big drink. Or big, old media needs to get laid. Something.

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Google goes local and more local

: Google buys localized social networking tool Dodgeball. A founder celebrates. Their teacher celebrates. Rex Hammock says they didn't acquire a tiny company with two talented founders; he said they acq-hired.

Google moves past organizing the world's content to creating the world's content (Blogger) to storing and serving the world's content (video) to organizing your own content (desktop ap) to organizing your town (local) to organizing your friends (Orkut and now Dodgeball).

Just now, I said to Michael Powell at lunch (more on that later) that what we really want to do is Google our lives.

: ADD: Yelvington.

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The tofu demographic

: Blogads adds to its helpful clumpings of citizens' media with the liberal blog network.

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The wrong Bolton

: The problem with John Bolton as UN Ambassador is not, as it turns out, that he is critical of the UN but that he is an ass. George Voinovich says he won't support Bolton because:

``Bolton would have been fired if he worked for a major corporation,'' Voinovich said as the panel opened final debate on the nomination. Bolton is ``the poster child for what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be,'' Voinovich said.

But I do believe we need someone critical of and skeptical about and demanding of the United Nations in that post. The notion that we had to put someone in the UN who loves the UN is ludicrous in a politically correct way, especially as the UN proves to be such a mess (see any angle of its involvement in Iraq, from the war to oil-for-food scandals to abandoning the nation). The UN is a mess and we should be in there demanding reform and results. So we need a reformer, not an ass.

: UPDATE: Following the Bloomberg story above, the AP reports that Voinovich will vote to pass the Bolton nomination to the full Senate: the political compromise.

: TO CLARIFY: In response to the comments, I thought this was clear but I'll make it clearer: I'm not saying he's an ass; I have no idea or way to know whether he's an ass. I'm saying the process is saying he's an ass and that's why it has appeared at various moments that he may not get approved. What I'm really saying is that we should not lose sight of the notion that whether it's Bolton or not, what we need is a critic and skeptic of this flawed organization. If the right person gets rejected just because he's an ass, then the process is an ass. Is that clearer?

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Nuculer Washington

: I passed through Washington this week and was amazed at all the political commercials on the filibuster and the nuclear option: commercials we're not seeing elsewhere in the country because they're not addressed at us (even if we are supposed to be in charge) but instead to both the political and media hives. Wendy Melillo writes about this at AdFreak and says it looks like campaign time in D.C.

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Take over the news

: Now this is the right attitude: The BBC issues essentially an API to the news. At Backstage, you can take feeds of BBC news and remake and remix it into new applications and products and share them with the world. [via Lost Remote]

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