"...perfect representative of the emirate"

One reason to follow international news is to see what the rest of the world thinks about you. And not just out of curiosity. What the world thinks affects investment, trade, tourism and a nation's influence in the global arena.

So what's the world think about Abu Dhabi? We had a glimpse this week in an IHT business article headlined (in the print edition) "With little bluster, Abu Dhabi takes the stage." Reporter Landon Thomas Jr. says Abu Dhabi "is looking for attention --just not the kind of flash-and-dash that Dubai is known for." The reporter suggests that "the suave aplomb" of Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the 32-year-old director of Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's development fund, makes him "the perfect representative of the emirate."

Dubai = flash-and-dash? Abu Dhabi = suave aplomb?

Based on what you see and read in the international media, what do you think the image of Abu Dhabi is?

And Infomercial Winner Is.....

The A+ offered in the last post goes to Athra and Sara Saleh, who didn't waste any time after class in finding Obama's 30-minute infomercial on YouTube. And the informercial got a big A+ from American viewers. The New York Times called it "a smashing ratings succcess." It was even more popular than the last game of this month's World Series (baseball, America's national sport) and last year's American Idol finale!

Leslie Moonves, CBS chairman and the man who brought reality shows to TV, said, "I was shocked by the number Obama was able to draw. It's just a stunning number."

Sample the informercial on YouTube. What images do you think cut across cultures?

PS:
Athra and Sara Salem each will be awarded an A+.

If a picture is worth 1000 words......

....then what is a 30-minute campaign "spot" worth? Maybe we won't know until after the U.S. election results are in next Tuesday. But Obama just made television commercial history by launching an unprecedented infomercial running 30 minutes. Goodbye 30-second sound bite! He will be running three different 30-minute commercials each costing a cool US$1 million. Lots of Internet press on this, including a World News report from ChannelNewsAsia, a MediaCorp News operation.

First class member to post a link to viewing the commercial online, gets a big A+. Share your findings under comments for this post.

Widening the Community of Knowledge

Earlier in the semester we talked about how Gutenberg and his movable-type printing press literally unchained the book, giving more people access to information. Before the Gutenberg Revolution, the only books common folk saw were the huge, hand-copied Bibles chained to church pulpits though who could have spirited one away? In less than a century, Venetian printers had shrunk the book almost to pocket size. Soon books of all kinds were being carried everywhere.

And it happened again today. IHT headline: "Google reaches 'historic' deal to settle copyright lawsuits." Story says the deal will "allow readers to search, buy and read millions of books online and accelerate the shift of the printed word onto the Internet." The Christian Science Monitor, a small but well-respected newspaper, just announced it is going all digital in April. The move to Internet-only will allow it to cut costs without cutting its eight foreign bureaus.

Yes, My Good Lady, What News May I Serve You Today?

It occurred to me that by starting this blog, I have become your news butler, serving up tasty little tidbits of news to please you. That’s just what Nicholas Negroponte predicted would happen, but he was thinking of a robot, not a professor. “Don’t squirt more bits at me,” said the M.I.T. computer scientist and Internet visionary way back in the 90s. You gobble up millions of bits every day, by the way. Bits are the basic unit of information in this digital age.

Negroponte could already see that we would all soon be overwhelmed by the information coming at us through the Internet. What he wanted was not more bandwidth but “intelligence in the network and in my receiver to filter and extract relevant information.” That’s where the news butler or “interface agent” would come in. “Image a future where your interface agent can read every newspaper and catch every broadcast on the planet, and then, from this, construct a personalized summary.”

Writing inWired magazine, he contended that we really don’t want more “info grazing” and “channel surfing.” We want help, help in making sense of it all. Maybe he’s not talking about a news butler but a blogger.

PS: Squirt me some more bits.

I WANT YOU!!!!

Last week the U.S. Embassy came to class to talk about political cartoons (see earlier post). Naturally the presentation included the famous poster of a bearded Uncle Sam with the message I Want You for the U.S. Army . The poster such a hit in WWI that popular demand brought it back in WWII. Its creator James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960) claimed it was “the most famous political poster in the world” and he may have been right. But the image originated not as a poster but as a magazine cover. He drew it for Leslie’s Weekly in 1916, which featured Uncle Sam asking “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” Full Story

The image just inspired the September 27-October 3 Economist cover, which featured a bald Secretary of Treasury Paulson in Uncle Sam clothing pointing out of the frame with this entreaty: “I Want Your Money.” Images in the media are powerful. Why do you think Flagg’s Uncle Sam has been so much copied for over a century?

Brain on Blog/Blog on the Brain

I'm hanging out in the office long after everyone else has departed for the weekend, because I am seduced by a broader, faster bandwidth than I have at home. But even here it was something of a Zen exercise to connect to Your Brain on Blog, the podcast that The Atlantic packaged with Andrew Sullivan's "Why I Blog" piece from the November issue. The promo promised two guys -- Sullivan and an Atlantic associate editor who blogs the presidential campaign-- reflecting on "the narcotic appeal of blogging and the occupational hazards of thinking quickly." Made me wonder if bloggers have time to think at all. Where's the line between blogging and babbling?

Calling All Fashionistas

We all know that fashion makes international news. Just look at the photo spreads generated by the catwalks of Paris, New York and Milan. But one of the biggest political stories of the last 24 hours is about how much the Republican Party paid for Sarah Palin's new wardrobe. The New York Times reports this morning on its website that the Republican National Committee dropped about US$150,000 at luxury stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. The editor in chief of Glamour says she could have done it for lots less. Expect more political fallout.

Additional fashion coverage at politico.com , an American political journalism organization that usually leaves such slide shows to Glamour and Vogue.

Fashion note: Will the Carrie Bradshaw crowd flock to Cole Haan boots even if the ladies vote for Obama? Check out the prices -- around US$600 -- online at Zappo's. Wonder what Joe the Plumber would say if he had to foot just the boot bill.

The Public Pulse

I can't open up my desktop these days without getting the results of yet another political poll. I just read on Yahoo!News that polls indicate Sarah Palin is a drag on John McCain's ticket, big time. Public opinion seems to be shooting up that Palin is unqualified to serve as president. Was it the Saturday Night Live rap that did her in? Please note: if it weren't for the Wonderful Web World, I wouldn't have seen the Saturday Night Live segment here in Abu Dhabi. And I'm getting the poll results not from a traditional news source like The New York Times but from The Yahoo!Newsroom with the tag "Blog of the #1 News Site." Can international news junkies trust the polls is another question. Maybe Saturday Night Live has a better finger on the public pulse.

Why Blog?

Me? I want to see if all this talk about collaborative learning might lead to perking up the classroom. Maybe there's something to it. If I hadn't checked my Facebook, I wouldn't have known about Andrew Sullivan's Why I Blog in the November Atlantic. New friend Phillip Blanchard, who joined The National here in Abu Dhabi a few months back, had posted a comment about the article on his wall: "Psst. If anyone ever cared, Andrew, they don't anymore." I clicked on the link Phil had provided and added the piece to the class readings. Sullivan contends blogging is evolving into a literary form, a postmodern idiom, an unprecedented interaction between writer and reader. Hmmm. What's more, he says blogging "heralds a golden era for journalism." So who's right? Phil or Andrew?

What Would Happen if Newspapers Divorce AP?

Now here’s an essay exam question if ever I tripped over one. But maybe Dr. J’s students in international news criticism were snoozing – it was after lunch -- when we discussed the 1846 founding of the Associated Press cooperative wire service and the impact of the 19th century telegraph on newsgathering.

Rick Edmonds, Poynter media business analyst, posted the divorce question on PoynterOnline after the Chicago Tribune and Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch gave AP notice last week. He asked AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll what she thought newspapers would miss most. Her reply: sports coverage and AP’s “fast, steady diet of multimedia news for the newspaper’s Web site.” What has Morse wrought? Telegraph to multimedia!

Techology aside, what about the international news supplied by news editors and correspondents in more than 90 AP bureaus around the world? Will newpaper readers miss that?

Sampling Political Cartoons

Here in Abu Dhabi, we're having a guest speaker from the U.S. embassy in class tomorrow. This being a presidential election year, we're going to hear about how the electoral system works (or doesn't) and what role political cartoons play. I just ran across a great source for browsing how political cartoonists see our world. Go here and scroll down to see what they make of Colin Powell's Obama endorsement.

Welcome to My Wonderful Web World

The center of my universe is Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, but that's just the starting point of this blog. From here I hope to take my students at Zayed University on a high-speed adventure in my wonderful web world -- or as high speed as our much-too-popular bandwidth allows. Let the journey begin!