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I was looking all over for the syllabus from a course I was fortunate to take in the fall of 2006 at USC, Set-Top Box: Hollywood’s Secret War on Your Living Room. As if it wasn’t enough to meet weekly with Cory Doctorow, the guests he brought in and the material we read were priceless and it has all stuck with me in many ways. Having tracked down the syllabus in an old socialtext wiki I thought I’d reprint it here so I no longer have to dig and dig and dig to refer back to some of the readings. The class blog and my class project are still online.

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Please comment at ADigitalAge.com

Posted via web from Welcome to the Digital Age

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The U.S. government is vowing to keep an open dialogue just as it seems it’s getting stuck back in it’s tight-lipped ways. Today the White House Open Government Initiative released the Open Government Directive (PDF) and the Open Government Progress Report to the American People (pdf).

#OGD Wordle via Clay Johnson.

OMB director Peter Orszag explains at WhiteHouse.gov:

The directive, sent to the head of every federal department and agency today, instructs the agencies to take specific actions to open their operations to the public. The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration are at the heart of this directive. Transparency promotes accountability. Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise to government initiatives. Collaboration improves the effectiveness of government by encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the federal government, across levels of government, and between the government and private institutions.

The Sunlight Foundation has full coverage here and here.

Below, I’ve embedded both official documents for your perusal. To what levels are these directives enforceable? Who will be monitoring and how?

U.S. Open Government Directive –

Open Government Progress Report to the American People –

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In defiance of “unfriending” I suggest listening to this while reading:

Posted via web from Andy Sternberg’s posterous

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I’d love to see Tribune papers really get some good reporting here, not just from within but from experienced beat-bloggers, city-bloggers, and more comprehensive, microfunded reporting as done by the likes of spot.us.

Personally I think the best way to cut costs is to slowly let the printed version of the paper wither away, until all that ends up at the end of subscribers’ driveways is a stack of obituaries. THEN everyone will finally get the point and take to reading the paper online, on their kindle, their blackberry, Macintosh tablet or anything else that doesn’t turn your fingers black.

Syndicate far and wide, but don’t put all your marbles in one not-so-reliable product…. especially when it ain’t free!

photo by quinn.anya via flickr (CC)

Tribune Co. papers rewiring for experimental week without AP

The Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers plan to utilize as little content from the Associated Press as practical during the week of Nov. 8.

The goal, as the papers review costs and needs, is to see whether severing ties with the news cooperative next fall is a viable option, the Chicago-based media company confirmed Monday.

The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future.

Some content Tribune Co. papers get from the Associated Press, such as sports statistics, will still be published during the experiment. The company also said that if the AP is the only available source for a report considered vital, it will use that AP coverage. But the company wants to see to what kind of void the absence of AP stories and photos would have.

Besides the content provided by the staff of its own titles, Tribune Co. newspapers will draw from such news sources as Reuters, the Washington Post, New York Times, Agence France Presse, Cable News Network, Global Post, Bloomberg and McClatchy newspapers during its AP-less trial. Not all of those sources are normally available to Tribune Co. papers.

Some newspapers have determined that shared wire content that is available to readers from many other outlets is worth less to them than unique, proprietary content, especially online. Coupled with reductions in the space allocated for news in print, papers are weighing whether there’s the same need for Associated Press content as in the past.

“The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including Tribune Co., to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to member newspapers and their readers,” AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement.

The AP Board of Directors in April announced a new $35 million in rate reductions for 2010 for its member newspapers on top of $30 million in rate reductions for 2009 announced a year earlier. AP expected that the total assessment decreases for papers would average a little less than 20 percent, although it would vary widely for members depending on their services levels.

Tribune Co. TV stations will not participate in the experiment, which falls during the November ratings period. Tribune Co. newspaper Web sites also will not be affected, the company said.

Posted at 07:36:22 PM

in Chicago, CNN, Newspapers, Tribune Co., Washington Post Co.

You might be interested in:

• News service picks off another Tribune staffer (ChicagoBusiness Insider)
• Chicago News Cooperative begins building its base (Chicago Tribune)
• Tribune Co. papers gear for experimental week without AP (Chicago Breaking News)
• Chicago News Cooperative hopes to rewire accountability journalism (Tower Ticker)
• Tribune, L.A. Times veteran James O’Shea launching news co-op, will supply N.Y. Times Chicago content (Tower Ticker)

2 more recommended posts »

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I was honored to be on a panel this Monday with David Sarno (LA Times), Chris Tolles (Topix) and Christina Gagnier (Politech) discussing Citizen Journalism. Thanks to Geoff Brown and Social media Club LA for hooking it up and Alexia Tsotsis (LA Weekly) for moderating!

Full recap at the SCMLA site here.

Thanks to Tyler and Mahalo for hosting and finally thanks to Efren and Techzulu for shooting this video:

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Call me easily perturbed by 24-hour news media shock lingo, but CNN and CNN.com can’t seem to post a story without having an alarming red bar over or under it, indicating either developing or breaking story.

Case in point, when Tiger Woods misses the cut at the British Open it is NOT a developing story. It IS a story and it may warrant being highlighted but there’s no reason to tease readers with the “developing” tag. It happened.

See CNN.com’s current feature at left (as of 1:55pm PT, 7/17/09), along with my recommendation at right.

Posted via web from Andy Sternberg’s posterous

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Following up on my [somewhat] harsh post last month, LA Times launched BrandX yesterday. An events blog for the kids. Yawn.

“It’s content sharing on an extremely local level and will bring our great work to an audience that does not currently see it,” explained Times editor Russ Stanton in an all-hands memo.

So far it’s good blog content, written mostly by Carolyn Kellogg, a friend who was once editor of LAist (she also blogs for the Times’ book blog, Jacket Copy). The appearance and presentation could definitely pop more and have more interactivity, especially if Brand X is aimed at the younger set.

It certainly is nice to see the LA Times fully embrace the culture/entertainment/tech blog style of an LAist, BoingBoing, or LA Metblogs and I’m sure to read more content via this RSS feed than I ever did in the print <em>Metromix</em>.

So, what is Brand X? It’s trading next-generation ideas on lifestyle, tech, entertainment, food, events, volunteering, style and the outdoors. Brand X is a curated shot of shared intelligence about how we live now and how we want to live tomorrow — the next movements in social networking and the return of the kitchen garden; micro-philanthropy, and the breakthroughs in science and art that are helping Southern Californians evolve and thrive. – editors Dean Kuipers and Deborah Vankin.

the sidebar is rather minimalist but does include a blogroll

Speaking of Coachella, I’ll be there this weekend. You?

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Launch early and launch often.

But don’t let the cat out of the bag before you’ve got a basic index page, 404 or… anything but the de facto Register.com-branded ztomy.com-fueled link farm.

So when the LA Times announced a “new product launch” in an all-staff memo this afternoon (thx, Ed) it was disappointing to see that said product was nothing but a Register.com link farm. Not to mention, what the memo describes is merely a repackaging of the short-lived print edition of Metromix along with some “reverse-published” blog posts. Whatever that means. Perhaps it can only be read when held up to a mirror?

Times editor Russ Stanton had this to write about the so-horribly-named-it-makes-me-quiver ThisIsBrandX.com: “It’s content sharing on an extremely local level and will bring our great work to an audience that does not currently see it.”

I feel for my friends at the LA Times who do amazing work in spite of it all. But the news about newspapers these days just gets me depressed. And with a name like Brand X — which implies knock-off, pirated, counterfeit merchandise — I just hope that the bulk of the content isn’t produced in China.

And anyway… THIS is Brand X:

UPDATE 4/7 kinda but not really there yet:

UPDATE: Read Tony Pierce’s like-it-is response.

in the time ive been blog editor at the times, i have been in countless meetings in regards to launching new blogs. in each of those meetings the question of name comes up. because i have seen “good” names and “bad” names make absolutely no difference, i have now reached the point where i advise those involved “i dont care what you name it, just name it and move on to far more important things like content.”

I’m anxiously awaiting said content so that I can just as quickly forget about the name (and strike out the Register.com Link Farm part of theh hed).

UPDATE: Brand X went live on April 15th.

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