Michael Moore on Olbermann

Allowed "free speech" as long as not effective speech? See video.

Times They Are A Changing

J schools a changing. (H/t Mary)
Music sites a changing. (H/t Matt)

Old Old Media -- NOT designed to be reader-friendly

No one will confuse the "design" of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator -- examples here and here and here -- with a modern, colorful, heavily-illustrated newspaper like USA Today or NY Post. The Revolution, an early feminist newspaper -- here and here -- seems only a little less dense than The Liberator.

Hot Off the...er...Internet: Newsroom coming to S.F.

Big news: San Francisco financier Warren Hellman – in partnership with public broadcaster KQED, the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, and perhaps even the N.Y. Times – is about to launch a "nonprofit, locally focused, online news organization with a medium-sized newsroom of full-time journalists," reports the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Borat-like Activist Filmmaker vs. ACORN

Two young Borat-like pranksters -- one pretending to be a pimp and one a prostitute -- targeted the anti-poverty nonprofit ACORN and succeeded in getting advice from from ACORN workers in some offices for their fictitious prostitution/tax evasion plans. In other words, ACORN workers -- who are supposed to give advice to poor people on housing and taxes -- seemed to be aiding and abetting criminal schemes. "Activist filmmaker" James O'Keefe (who pretended to be the pimp) was behind the videotaping.

The video has been picked up huge on Fox News and elsewhere, leading to a move in Congress to cut off future federal funds to ACORN, which reportedly has averaged several million dollars per year. Now ACORN is suing O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, the actress pretending to be the prostitute.

The website behind the effort, BigGovernment.com, was launched by Matt-Drudge protege Andrew Breitbart, praised here by Slate's media critic.
(H/t to Laura G.)

Obama on Newspapers vs. Blogosphere & My Response

In a recent interview with newspaper editors, President Obama called himself a "big newspaper junkie" and said the survival of newspapers is "critical to the health of our democracy."

A key Obama quote: "I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

Despite the "serious fact-checking" that supposedly goes on at the N.Y. Times frontpage or Washington Post editorial page, both were publishing cartoonish distortions of reality in the run-up to the disastrous invasion of Iraq. That is, they were offering a lot of shouting across the void on one of the most important foreign policy controversies in years .

Despite the blogosphere's faults properly alluded to by our newspaper reader-in-chief, I respectfully respond to him by paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson and his preference for "newspapers without a government" over "a government without newspapers."

If forced to choose, I must admit to preferring "the Internet without newspapers" over "newspapers without the Internet."

Ida B. Wells High School, San Francisco, 7/09

That Jeff Cohen guy -- imitating the "Where the hell is Matt?" guy (but without the dancing) -- stands in awe of a pioneer in independent media.

Guerilla Leader Marcos Praises Indy Media

Historic moment: "Free The Media Conference in NY City Jan 1997 receives video greeting from Subcomandante Marcos, leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Chiapas, Mexico.

CNN Fiddled While Iran Tweeted

Writer on Gawker.com ridiculed CNN last June for missing Iran upsurge.

Mashable.com quickly offered a "How To" Guide to tracking the Iran election protests.

Indy Media, not MSM, got it right on mortgage crisis

In a Columbia Journalism Review piece, Alyssa Katz explains "Why Alt Media Beat the MSM to the Mortgage Crisis."

Web video allows deeper look

A new indy outlet (h/t Archana M). This video gives a much deeper and scarier look at the 9/12 Tea Party type-gathering inspired by Glenn Beck and Fox News than was available from mainstream outlets. My guess is that the the average moderately-educated, moderately-informed US citizen would find the sentiments expressed by dozens of the participants quite scary in terms of ignorance and paranoia expressed.

Did this MSM reporter not know how Twitter works?

ABC News correspondent tweets Obama's alleged response, a negative one, to Kanye's antics at VMA Awards, and somehow didn't think folks would notice?! Hat tip to Marianne D.

Citizen Journalism

Hat tip to Kerry B. Interesting video on citizen journalism.

Jail Time for Blogging in Vietnam

Reuters reports this weekend on bloggers who've been jailed in Vietnam for criticizing the government.

In Mideast, Blogging Can Lead to Jail, Torture

EGYPT:
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" is a powerful video (with less than great translation).

IRAN:
Vancouver Film School students created this video short: Iran, A Nation of Bloggers. (Hat tip to Prof. Isakov.) This video was online months before the technology-fueled protests over Iran's disputed election.

International websites

Witness: "See it. Film it. Change it." Nonprofit using video and new technology to expose and mobilize around human rights abuses. In this video, the staff of Witness discusses what images opened their eyes.

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

Global Voices a Click Away

Global Voices Online led me to this Egyptian feminist blogger, writing pretty bold stuff here and here on her blog "Just Raise Your Head Up High."

Brother, can you spare $20 for my news report?

David Cohn's Spot.us project gets investigations and journalism funded by small donations from the citizenry. David explains the idea.

Drawbacks to foundation-funded journalism

Everyone agrees that foundation-funded journalism is growing, as foundations (despite their declining assets) notice the decline in serious journalism, especially investigative, in mainstream outlets. But Steve Katz of Mother Jones magazine, one of the most successful foundation-supported nonprofit media outlets, warns of some problems with this funding. His blog post is part of an important recent discussion on SaveTheNews.org, a project of the media reform group Free Press.

White Vigilantes, Black Victims -- Katrina

ProPublica investigation of vigilantes who shot blacks fleeing to safety from flood zones in New Orleans -- published in The Nation magazine, one of the oldest independent publications in our country.

Viral Video Plays Role in '08 Presidential Campaign

This Brave New Films "McCain's Mansions" mini-video 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 shows how the video went up the media food chain and became part of the mainstream diet.

Why didn't any MSM reporter ask this Q?

Last semester, I.C. student Chris Lisee made a strong point in his blog about the importance of indy journalists being present to ask questions that insider reporters might not ask. Chris blogged about an indy/gadfly/blogger named Ken Krayeske who used a post-game news conference to question the Univ of Connecticut basketball coach about his $1.5 million state salary -- at a time of salary cuts for almost every other state employee. That question and the coach's angry response generated a huge amount of mainstream media coverage . . .after the expected MSM rumbling and ridicule aimed at Krayeske. All the coverage (and scrutiny of the coach’s salary by state legislators) probably would not have happened but for the gadfly getting into the room posing the difficult question.

Addition to Biggest Moments in Blog History

From student Kristin Lanshe:
I think if the list were to be updated, the whole #iranelection 2009 on Twitter was a huge moment in current blogging history. With no reporters allowed outside in Iran, there were thousands of Iranian people continually tweeting blog posts, flickr pics, and articles related to the election protests. They were even covering the Twitter activity on CNN!

Mainstream Reporters Dancing with White House?

Unlike those amateurish and partisan bloggers, mainstream journalists are professional, objective, neutral. Right? Watch this video from 2007 Radio-Television Correspondents Dinner. It made me 'craugh' -- that's crying and laughing simultaneously. It's a dinner where journalists and newsmakers put aside work and enjoy themselves, but it's still embarrassing.