Category Archives: Media ecology

Old media and the Net

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A guy from the Richard and Judy Show (a daytime sofa programme running on UK TV; not sure which channel) telephoned this afternoon to ask if I’d be interested in coming on tomorrow’s show to talk about blogging. It seemed they’d been reading the intro I wrote for the Observer‘s list of “Websites that changed the world”.

I said that I couldn’t. “Why?” he asked, “are you out of the country?” “No”, I said, “I’m busy tomorrow. I have a meeting.” There was silence on the other end of the line as he digested the astonishing fact that someone would decline an invitation to appear on the show because he was busy. After he’d recovered, the conversation went like this:

Chap: “Well then can I talk to you about your piece about blogs?”
Me: “My piece wasn’t about blogs. It was about websites that had changed the world”.
Chap: “Oh”.
Me: “Blogs are personal websites published by individuals.”
Chap: “Oh. But what do you think are the really big blogs?”
Me: “Eh? What do you mean Big Blogs?”
Chap: “Well, you know like …” (and here he named a Blog written by an alleged London call girl whose notoriety eventually earned her a book publishing contract but whose name escapes me at the moment).

The conversation meandered on hopelessly like this for several more minutes until it finally dawned on me that (a) the chap knew absolutely nothing about blogging and (b) was so locked into the mindset of broadcast TV that he couldn’t actually comprehend the notion of millions of independently-published blogs. For him, as for everyone else in television, the idea of user-generated content is an oxymoron. It slowly became clear that what he meant by “Big Blogs” were ones that had been reported in the newspapers.

The passion of the Mel Gibson

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The NYT usefully draws attention to the fracas surrounding Mel Gibson’s arrest for drunk driving.

Almost as stunning as Mel Gibson’s anti-Jewish tirade when arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in the early hours of last Friday was the speed at which the scandal unfolded, doing serious damage to one of Hollywood’s most valuable careers along the way.

In a little over 24 hours, Mr. Gibson’s arrest and subsequent behavior in Malibu had already prompted talk of a claimed cover-up, an exposé, worldwide news coverage, an apology and then a full-blown push for alcohol rehabilitation, even as his representatives and executives at the Walt Disney Company rushed to catch up with the event’s effect on the filmmaker’s movie and television projects with the company…

The key factor in igniting the storm, says the Times, was that the news appeared not via the usual mainstream media channels but because on last Friday evening a celebrity website, TMZ.com, posted four pages of a sheriff’s report describing what the arresting officer said was Mr. Gibson’s belligerent behavior and a series of noxious remarks, including several deeply offensive comments about Jews.

Disney has — surprise, surprise! — cancelled a proposed miniseries about the Holocaust starring Mel! And the mutterings about the implicit anti-semitism of his film, The Passion of The Christ, have resurfaced. It’s tough being a global celeb.

I avoided the ‘Christ’ film for two reasons. As the child of a fanatical Catholic household, I had had quite enough of the so-called ‘passion’ to last me a lifetime; and I thought the second definite article in the title was a typo.

Billy Bragg and MySpace

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Interesting piece in today’s NYT…

When he is not writing or performing protest songs, the British folk-rocker Billy Bragg is apparently reading the fine print.

In May, Mr. Bragg removed his songs from the MySpace.com Web site, complaining that the terms and conditions that MySpace set forth gave the social networking site far too much control over music that people uploaded to it. In media interviews and on his MySpace blog, he said that the MySpace terms of service made it seem as though any content posted on the site, including music, automatically became the site’s property.

Although MySpace had not claimed ownership of his music or any other content, Mr. Bragg said the site’s legal agreement — which included the phrase “a nonexclusive, fully paid and royalty-free worldwide license” — gave him cause for concern, as did the fact that the formerly independent site was now owned by a big company (the News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch).

Mr. Bragg said that he himself had kept most of the copyrights to his recordings, licensing them out to the various record companies that have released his albums over the years. “My concern,” he said in a telephone interview, “is the generation of people who are coming to the industry, literally, from their bedrooms.”

About a month later, without referencing Mr. Bragg’s concerns, MySpace.com clarified its terms of service, which now explain who retains what rights. A sample line: “The license you grant to MySpace.com is nonexclusive (meaning you are free to license your content to anyone else in addition to MySpace.com).”

Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, an advocacy group for musicians that focuses on intellectual property rights, said the Internet could help musicians warn one another about potential contractual problems. “Information is now shared in a different way,” she said, “and artists who are getting a bad deal can connect with each other.”

Mr. Bragg, who said he never had any direct communication with executives from MySpace, has put some of his music back on the site. And he offered some praise for the site’s effectiveness in spreading his message. “That’s the amazing thing about MySpace,” he said. “If you say something, word gets out.”

The Scaredy Cat Encyclopedia

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From David Weinberger’s journal…

The Encyclopedia Britannica has refused my request to interview an editor for 15 minutes about the process by which it chooses authors. I explained that this is for a book. But, the head of the Britannica’s communications group decided – based on what? – that they don’t want to support people who are “cheerleading for the downfall of businesses that they deem to be part of an old regime.”

Hollywood discovers YouTube

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Hilarious piece in the New York Times…

“MySpace: The Movie” first appeared on YouTube on Jan. 31 and since then has had millions of hits, enough viewers to rival big-budget films or TV shows. Mr. Lehre, who is 21 and lived at his parents’ home in Washington, Mich., when he created the video, shot it there with friends. He scored the music himself so he wouldn’t have to deal with copyright issues, designed the graphics and Googled any technical questions he had. This development and distribution process makes even independent films, with their retinue of maxed-out credit cards and frenzied film festivals, look positively mainstream in comparison….

The movie can be found here. It’s vaguely amusing IMHO, but cleverly made. Rather like an art-school project. When I looked it had been viewed 526,878 times.

Wonder what YouTube’s bandwidth costs are.

Blogging is personal, mainly

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This morning’s Observer column…

Mr Sifry reckons that about 75,000 new blogs are created every day, ie about one new blog a second. And just to address the gibe that blogs are like Christmas toys – to be played with once and then discarded – he estimates that 13.7 million blogs are still being updated three months after their creation and about 2.7 million people update their blogs at least once a week.

Professional media folk are predictably incredulous about this. Why would anyone write without being paid for doing so? And, besides, who do these people think they are, gaily airing their so-called ‘opinions’? Jean-Remy von Matt, the CEO of a German advertising agency, spoke for many in the media industry when he fired off an enraged email after bloggers had effectively sabotaged one of his advertising campaigns. In the email he called blogs ‘the toilet walls of the internet’. ‘What on earth’, he asked, ‘gives every computer-owner the right to express his opinion, unasked for?’

What Bloggers write about

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Interesting research report from the Pew ‘Internet and American Life’ project. Summary:

A new, national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers and that only a small proportion focus their coverage on politics, media, government, or technology.

Related surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults, or about 8% of adult internet users and that the number of blog readers has jumped to 57 million American adults, or 39% of the online population.

These are some of the key findings in a new report issued by the Pew Internet Project titled “Bloggers”:

  • 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.
  • 54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.
  • Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%.
  • 76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.
  • 64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others.
  • When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is “my life and experiences.”
  • Other topics ran distantly behind: 11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% focus on entertainment; 6% focus on sports; 5% focus on general news and current events; 5% focus on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith; and additional smaller groups who focus on a specific hobby, a health problem or illness, or other topics.

    • Political blogging in the UK

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    Useful piece by Ned Temko in this morning’s Observer. Includes links to some of the most prominent blogs. One of them is by David Miliband, the teenage Cabinet minister (and the next Labour leader but one), who writes his own blog entries and claims to read the comments.

    I also rather like the Blog maintained by Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor. I’m astonished that he can find the time to write one — his day job is one of the most punishing in the media business.

    Iain Dale’s Diary is rather good too, though the reference in the name will escape most younger readers. (Mrs Dale’s Diary was an early, genteel BBC radio soap which ran during my childhood in the 1950s.) Maybe the reference escapes the author too: after all, his name is Iain Dale!