RSS Feeds and Media Moguls

The media moguls we've been discussing in class looked for a while as though they would monopolize the news, ever limiting our choices. Then along came new technologies like the Internet and mobiles that could take and transmit photos. My RSS feed from Goggle News this morning just delivered a Bloomberg News article to my desktop the way newspapers used to be delivered to my door. Bloomberg started out as a financial news service, providing the latest market information electronically. Now it provides solid background stories like this one on Gaza Tunnels to Egypt for Viagra, IPods to Foil Israel Blockade, an article well worth reading. When Michael Bloomberg, now mayor of New York City, started his company, traditional journalism thought he was crazy. He used word like "information" instead of "news" and pioneered a new "delivery system." His company now advertises: superior communication platform, global markets single platform, financial data on demand, tomorrow's headlines today, customer support 24/7 --- all revolutionary concepts when Bloomberg (the company) started in 1981. For more on Bloomberg.

The World is Flat -- and All News Local

The downside of globalism and Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat can be seen in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scandal we discussed in class the first day back after vacation. Initially, the story looked like U.S. news as investors in New York, Minnesota and Florida saw their fortunes evaporate. But yesterday the IHT headlined Vast Wall Street fraud knew no boundaries. The ripples extend right here to Abu Dhabi. The article notes that the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which at one point had invested about $400 million through Madoff, "wound up in the same boat as Jewish charities in New York: caught in the collapse of Bernie Madoff." So when you read the news, don't think "international," think how is this story "local," how does it affect me here.

What's in a Shoe?

I bet nobody reading this blog missed seeing clips of the Iraqi reporter throwing his shoes at President Bush, but how many viewers and readers outside the Middle East knew just how great the insult was? You could do a good content-analysis research paper counting how many western news organizations had done their cultural homework. Reuters demonstrated it had in an almost congratulatory report on the reporter's choice of "the Middle East's tastiest insults." The New York Times today focuses on the tumult the shoes caused in the Iraqi Parliament as the 29-year-old reporter languished in jail, beaten and charged with "offending the head of a foreign state." But it's no crime on the Internet. Toss some shoes yourself in a flash game that originated in Norway. What do you think should be done with the Iraqi journalist who did it for real?

Risky Business

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which defends journalists worldwide, just released its 2008 prison census. This year 125 journalists are jailed, down two from last year, but for the first time online journalists represent the biggest category. Nearly half are bloggers, Web-based reporters or online editors. Journalists are imprisoned in 29 countries, the top five being China, Cuba, Burma, Eritrea and Uzbekistan. The prison census is more than numbers. It tells the stories of the people who have been arrested for being journalists.

For News Junkies NOT On Vacation

U.S. Plans to Sign Nuclear Pact With U.A.E. is the headline on the WSJ News Alert that arrived in my Goggle Mail less than 15 minutes ago. This will be the first nuclear-cooperation agreement the U.S. has signed in the Middle East. Critics worry it will fuel nuclear proliferation in the region and also because the U.A.E.'s largest trading partner is Iran. Writes the Journal reporter: The U.A.E. has served in the past as a transshipment point for technology with military applications headed to Iran. Stay turned to your various news sources to see how this story develops.

Who Owns the News?

Just when I was ready to put up an "On Vacation" sign until the end of the school holiday, Economist. com posted an article from its print edition about how Rupert Murdoch may become Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s "puppet master" if things get any worse at The New York Tmes. The names probably don't mean much to you now, but they will after we examine the impact media ownership has on news delivered around the world. Media moguls are a fascinating crowd, often bigger-than-life figures like Murdoch, Richard Branson and Oprah Winfrey, but new technology has created a whole new cast of characters and a new definition of what's news. We'll take a look at some media moguls, old and new, after break.

Citizen Journalists of the World

A Harvard University Medical School professor had never heard of "citizen journalists," but Wednesday he became one when he chanced to be visiting Mumbai. From a terrace in south Mumbai, he used his Twitter feed to describe the gunfire and uploaded photos to his blog. "I felt I had a responsibility to share my view with the outside world," he told the New York Times in an email of course. Twitter, blogs, websites, photo-sharing sites, text messages and cellphones for voice and image are the new tools of the new journalists -- just plain folks who happen to be on the scene. As discussed in class Sunday, technology has added a new dimension to news coverage. The Times article quotes Sree Sreenivasan, a new media expert at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism: "A little bit of information is better than no information at all."