Presenters at this year’s conference include: Adam Curry, Dave Winer, Steve Gillmor, Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter, John Battelle, Dan Gillmor, and others. Okay, this is the kind of stuff that interests me. If sitting in a conference room for three days listening to people talk about blogging and podasting and RSS and shit like that doesn’t sound like any fun to you… you can start to understand why your idea of a vacation doesn’t make me clap my little hands.
Category Archives: Media & Culture
Anheuser-Busch has hired JibJab Media
Anheuser-Busch has hired JibJab Media, creators of the animated video clip “This Land is Your Land,” to craft online ads for the brewer. The two brother team, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, will create web-based content designed to drive viewers to the Budweiser website. [via Adrants]
RTNDA’s Dan Shelley gets it
Dan Shelley is a long-time and valued friend. For a dozen years he ran one of best (probably THE best) radio newsrooms in Missouri. In 1995 he moved to Milwaukee to become the news director of WTMJ. A year ago he was elected chairman of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) and took over those duties a couple of weeks ago at the association’s annual meeting in Las Vegas.
In his first speech as chairman, he outlined five challenges or issues facing “electronic journalists.” We asked him about blogging, podcasting and satellite radio.
AUDIO: Interview with Dan Shelley 30 min MP3
I’m not sure Dan –or any other mere mortal– is capable of taking broadcast journalists where they need to go but he’s the right guy at the right time.
Pope fatigue
A reporter friend (not from Iowa) wrote this satirical piece on the endless coverage of the Pope’s death and funeral:
(Decorah) Many Iowans gathered around their TV sets to watch the funeral of Pope John Paul the Second this morning. John Smith of Decorah says he had never met the Pope, but he felt a closer bond to him after reading about him in the newspaper over the past week. Smith says he will miss the Pontiff’s appearances on network newscasts every Good Friday and Easter Sunday, even though he could not understand the Latin spoken by the Pope, and Peter Jennings usually spoke over the audio anyway. Smith believes the Pope will be missed by many Iowans in his bowling league, who thought John Paul seemed to be a nice man, even though he probably was not a bowler himself. He says the early TV coverage of the Pope’s funeral provided a special moment while he was trying to get ready to work the early shift at a local poultry plant, where he says many of his Hispanic coworkers are Catholic, too.
Satellite Radio
Two interesting nuggets from (still another) NTY story on satellite radio. 1) Total (XM + Sirius) subscribers will probably surpass eight million by the end of the year, “making satellite radio one fo the fastest-growing technologies ever – faster, for example than cellpones. 2) Steven Van Zandt (E Street Band and Sopranos) programs two music channels for Sirius.
Gnomedex 5
My idea of a fun vacation is a few days at a technology show, so I’m looking forward to Gnomedex 5.0 coming up in late June in Seattle. I attended the first Gnomedex in Des Moines but missed the last couple. This year’s show looks like a good one. Adam Curry is the keynote speaker and other presenters include: Steve Gillmore, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter and a bunch more. Chris Pirillo is a sharp guy and I’m betting he puts on another great conference.
Connected.
A couple of nuggets from a new Arbitron/Edison Media study (pdf) released today:
* Eight in 10 Americans have access to the Internet from any location. As of January 2005, 81% of consumers have access to the Internet from any location. This is a remarkable rise from the 50% penetration figure from just six years ago (January 1999).
* The number of people with a broadband Internet connection at home equals the number of people with a dial-up connection at home. In January 2001, only 12% of Americans with Internet access at home used a broadband connection. That figure has since quadrupled. Now, in January 2005, 48% of people with home Internet access have broadband, and 48% have dial-up service.
Bill Gates on education
Bill Gates to the nation’s governors at the National Education Summit on High Schools: “America’s high schools are obsolete.” Some data points from Gates’ keynote: The US has one of the highest high school dropout rates in the industrialized world. Only 68 out of every 100 ninth-graders graduate from high school on time, and most need extensive remediation after that. Only 28 of the original ninth-graders make it to their sophomore year in college. “When I compare our high schools to what I see when I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow,” said the Microsoft chairman, who is hiring about half of his new talent overseas.
Mainstream media suffers from “freedom envy”
Peggy Noonan (WSJ.com) wonders if mainstream media suffers from “freedom envy” where bloggers are concerned:
Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary. Breaking news can be one sentence long: “Malkin gets Barney Frank earwitness report.” In newspapers you have to go to the editor, explain to him why the paper should have another piece on the Eason Jordan affair, spend a day reporting it, only to find that all that’s new today is that reporter Michelle Malkin got an interview with Barney Frank. That’s not enough to merit 10 inches of newspaper space, so the Times doesn’t carry what the blogosphere had 24 hours ago.
This is a really good piece on blogging that –once upon a time– I might have forwarded to the reporters working in our newsrooms. I’ve stopped doing that. With one or two execeptions, our reporters are clueless and/or threatened by the whole notion of blogging. Don’t get it. Don’t want to get it.
Pod-Think.
Consultant John Silliman Dodge recently offered broadcasters his “iPod approach” to programming and marketing radio. In a recent article for FMQB he asks:
“Look at your 21st century customer: Blackberry in one hand, iPod in the other, and a cell phone on the belt. Ask yourself the defining question: how does my radio station fit into this person’s life?”