Media » Stand Aside

Socialnomics by @equalman

Are people on the internet? We seem to think so. Do they use social media? Pretty much everyday. How about businesses? They’re getting there. Do people like businesses on the internet? One would think that if they were able to find out as much that is good and bad about a business on the internet that they would begin to tell their friends. Sending a link to 1,306 friends on facebook, 460 email contacts, and 3,583 followers on twitter is a lot faster than calling 1 person to talk on the phone.

Random bit of connected nonsense with no data to back it up. Maybe. I’ll call it common knowledge for now and see what happens.

E.W. Scripps and New Mexico say farewell to the Albuquerque Tribune

SO it goes …

Another newspaper succumbs to the digitalization of our mainstream culture. Ink and paper are finding it more and more difficult to survive the harping onslaught of computers and the world wide web. In this post, I continue my series on the crises facing traditional print newspapers. This time is the Albuquerque Tribune [see title^].

The Las Cruces Sun-News, a newspaper in Las Cruces, NM and subset of the MediaNews Group conglomerate based out of Denver, CO, reported the final day of the Albuquerque Tribune. The Tribune used to be one of Albuquerque’s highest circulated daily running about 42,000 issues distributed in the late 80′s. As of early 2008 the paper was down to a little over 9,000 issues. Its legacy had lasted almost 9 decades, being founded by Carlton Cole Magee as Magee’s Independent in 1922. The E.W. Scripps Company, an American media conglomerate, moved to sell the Tribune as of August 2007. If no buyer was found the paper would be officially shut down early 2008. As of February 23, 2008 the Albuquerque Tribune has issued its last edition with the headline, "Goodnight, Albuquerque".

E.W. Scripps Company owns 18 papers across the United States as well as several television networks such as HGTV, DIY, FineLiving, and the Food Network [of which I am a BIG FAN]. Apparently, Wikipedia reports that it has closed 3 newspapers based in Ohio,

Birmingham Post-Herald (Birmingham, Alabama) (closed 2005)

Cincinnati Post (Cincinnati, Ohio) (closed 2007)

Cleveland Press (Cleveland, Ohio) (closed 1982)

as well as 6 other papers in Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, PA, and CA. It is a shame that print newspapers are slowly being put out of business by the increasing digital wave. I would hope that more print companies would embrace the digital age and instead of closing the paper, move the majority of it to the internet. Making a print newspaper available as an ‘Email Daily’ would possibly be an effective measure to combat falling distribution numbers. A few of the closed papers such as the Cincinnati Post have joined with others to put up News Websites where one to two former print papers could continue their local reporting. Methods such as these would cut down on having to layoff reporters and editors, as well as saving a good amount of capital from running printing presses.

Improvements abreast

I’m slacking in the process
of learning and experiencing new things that have been released over the last couple years. I think I can attribute this "slack" to working third shift at the bar, while going to school, and trying to get daily errands done. However! Big things are to come for me. I’m always on the lookout for projects I can use as learning tools and as publicity tools. I’ve found one marketing plan project recently that could get me some good experience, helpful contacts, and a few extra bucks in my pocket! I will definitely be spending a good amount of my time on it.

I will also be putting extra time into learning AJAX and FLEX programming markups because I enjoy the AdobeAIR platform which uses both. I’ve been trying out smaller scale applications such as the Spaz twitter desktop client, Twhirl twitter desktop client, the Pownce desktop client, etc. My goal is to take AdobeAIR and use it to develop an efficient contact aggregator. I mean to create an application that will integrate my contacts from various social networks into one place, as well as integrating the different methods of messaging into one place. It is similar to Plaxo, but I just do not like the interface or the few shortcomings with Plaxo. I’ve also thought about working to integrate everything into my Gmail account but I don’t know how well that will go over. In fact, speaking of slacking, that is another area I just have not kept up with- Google’s development section. I talked to a friend at school who has experience programming and he is willing to embark on this project with me.

A computer upgrade is definitely going to happen soon. My old IBM laptop has kept up with me so far, but now that I need more HD space, more memory, and more processor speed… there is not much else it can push out. I don’t have enough to even have the programs I need to be running, such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, a fully-tabbed Firefox, multiple Word docs. The need for space and speed is dire! I’m looking into Dell for now as well as pulling a Mac into the home for Mac specific projects.

All in all, I miss San Francisco- I need a new computer- I have a LOT to learn this semester!
[Look at that bunch of young guns! ]

Policies of Progress

Written while watching the heat of Super Duper Tuesday 2008:

I realized more than ever that this election is going to be historic, with Barack Obama mobilizing the nation’s youth, and with Hillary Clinton expanding her group of loyal supporters – the first ever potential female or black U.S. president!

This is incredible! The only other place I’ve seen crowds with the energy and size of Obama’s supporters has been major rock concerts. His speech writer is really good, especially when matched with Obama’s vocal expertise.

Hillary Clinton also generates large boisterous crowds. Her support is widespread across the nation. As can be supposed her husband, Bill, is playing a key role in the campaign. I’d have to assume that all her popularity in the past years has carried over well into the primaries and caucuses. [P.S. when you do a google image search for "Hillary Clinton" a lot of funny images are the first to appear.]

I wonder who either dem candidate may take as their VP if elected…

McCain is really old. He is definitely a senior citizen. I really doubt that his age and years in Washington is an advantage this election season. It seems that if he were pitted against Hillary or Barack, they would be running circles around him. The experience McCain has built up is really attractive but I don’t know if his physical condition would make him a good leader to wield that experience.

Huckabee. I really don’t have much to say about him. He is very religious and just seems a little off kilter when discussing topics with the media. I’m not
saying handling the media is easy, but just that being a candidate for President he should be able to handle questions with more thought than he has.

Romney is another who I really don’t have much to say about. I see him as being a third rank candidate.

So as we get ready to send off President Bush into the relaxing days of Texas retirement, lets make sure the next president is able to pick up right where he left off and even go back to fix the overlooked snags in the lines of liberty. [<-- good line!]

Political bias in the media, The Fairness Doctrine

Again, Mr. Jay Mundy points us to some more interesting numbers on today’s mainstream media.

Rasmussen Reports states that based on the results of a recent series of polls the Associated Press, local news stations, CNBC, and MSNBC are all seen as having a liberal bias by their viewers. They also state that based on some earlier reports NPR and CNN also lean to the left. Fox News jumps far to the right in political bias. The article also reports: public opinion was such a major force in the immigration debate that now interest on Capitol Hill has peaked in reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

I think that a lot of us realize that such media does present some information with a political bias. But as it is, this could be a lot more valuable than inducing the Fairness Doctrine on the nation’s media. "The Fairness Doctrine was a United States FCC regulation requiring broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance in an honest, equitable and balanced manner", in essence restricting our freedom of the press. The regulations were brought up in federal court as a violation of our First Amendment rights in 1969.

As with the economy and business, healthy competition has the ability to bring up new and innovative information. If that competition within media were to be locked, a result of the Fairness Doctrine, the potential for discovering new information in politics and media would be seriously hampered. I am a big proponent of protecting and preserving our Constitutional Rights and would not like to see these regulations enacted on our public communications. We have a right to know anything and everything about how this nation is being governed and used. I do realize that there may be some restrictions of information in order to protect us from our enemies which in SOME cases, not all, is appropriate.

More to come on this topic. Off to work. Cheers!

E.W. Scripps and New Mexico say farewell to the Albuquerque Tribune

Improvements abreast

Policies of Progress

Political bias in the media, The Fairness Doctrine

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@krispatel