Just a few days ago, Seattle non-profit Reel Grrls released a video thanking supporters for stepping up and donating to the local youth media production house during their current dust-up with former sponsor, Comcast. Ever since the firestorm broke out two weeks ago in which Comcast threatened to yank $18,000 in summer funding from the tiny non-profit, Reel Grrls has since raised over $23,000 in private donations after the story garnered nationwide attention including write-ups in the Washington Post.
It’s clearly being perceived as media justice victory for the ages, as a local group focused on teaching media literacy to youth dukes it out with a media giant and gets the upper hand. For those that weren’t following the story, on May 12, Lila Kitaeff, technical director at Reel Grrls, sent out a tweet criticizing Comcast’s hiring of FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker.
“OMG! @FCC Commissioner Baker voted 2 approve Comcast/NBC merger & is now lving FCC for A JOB AT COMCAST?!?”
Despite my position as the head of a graduate program in digital media, I’ve always held on to a plethora of print (a.k.a. “dead tree”) newspaper and magazine subscriptions. They’re usually much cheaper than their digital counterparts, and I liked the often serendipitous browsing experience — not to mention the disconnected zen of knowledge absorption.
However, as my affection continues to grow for the ergonomics, usability and convenience of my iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom, I’m resorting increasingly to the excellent tablet versions of The Economist and The New York Times. But this morning clinched it for the tablets. The headline on the rolled up, thrown-at-my-porch edition of The Wall Street Journal read: “Osama Bin Laden, Terror Mastermind Is Reported Dead” (in the smallest middle third above-the-fold of the front page no less).
Hmmm. Hadn’t I received my first notice of Bin Laden’s death last night around 7:15 p.m. Seattle time? I was preparing to view the latest Doctor Who episode (streaming it from iPad to TV set) when the New York Times alert popped up on my tablet screen. I went to Twitter for confirmation. Then I opened up my handy dandy White House iPad application (tellingly, I categorize in under “News” along with my BBC, WSJ, NYT, USA Today, Financial Times, Al Jazeera Live etc. apps), and saw that a live announcement from the President was forthcoming. I popped open CNN on the tablet, but the live stream just wasn’t kicking in. Read more…
Call it my inability to abandon my breaking news background as a former TV journalist. But I’m enamored with the notion of a “news peg” to galvanize attention around a particular issue.
Our MCDM program did it with Wikileaks in December with “Open Secrets” and the news gods have smiled upon us again, ahead of our conversation tonight “Who Owns the Pipes?” as it relates to content creation and net neutrality. That’s because the federal government just gave its blessing to the Comcast/NBC merger. We delved deeply into what this ruling means for content creators as lines are drawn around control and regulation of the Internet. Indeed, framing the issue this way struck to the heart of net neutrality, as ISP’s might content that it’s online video that strains their infrastructure the most. And if we’re talking about “transmedia” storytelling, access to the internet via cellphones to access this bandwidth-heavy content begs a whole other set of questions. That’s why the FCC created a mobile broadband exception in its December 2010 net neutrality rules.
News pegs make even more sense today as we all battle for each other’s attention. We’re caught in an interesting paradox that as the explosion in digital communication technology facilitates the promulgation of new voices, we’re also losing our ability to listen — because there are so many voices. So what’s going to grab people??
I wasn’t too concerned about missing the Opening Ceremonies from the Vancouver Winter Olympics, as I figured I could catch it online afterward. NBC was keen to showcase its cool new Silverlight plug-in by streaming a considerable amount of the Beijing games in 2008.
But when I tried to watch Part 1 of the Opening Ceremonies, up came this message, along with a sign-in screen:
“You have selected a premium video (e.g. live stream or full-event replay).” Read more…
Last week, we cancelled our cable TV service. In one fell swoop, we went from 60 to 0. No more DVR, HBO in HD, nor movies-on-demand. Also gone: the extraneous 700 other channels that I never looked at. For the first time since I was a college student, I wasn’t tethered to a coaxial connection.
I told Comcast, no hard feelings. We kept their broadband and voice services. I said, we needed more “breathing room” so I could work on my book (presently entitled Trust Me: How to Tell Stories in a Credibility-Starved World).
I was being truthful. That said, that I’m also saving $1000 a year. I’m ingesting content specific to my interests (streaming Hulu and Netflix through my Playstation 3). And I’m putting the savings to media that matters most to me: public radio (KUOW, KEXP), the Seattle Times Sunday paper, and a dead-tree subscription to the Wall Street Journal.
Image from zeropaid.com
Thanks to three recent articles in that same Wall Street Journal, I now also believe there’s a higher purpose to this decentralization of my media choices. Because once again, large institutions with a vested interest in maintaining their power aren’t too pleased that people like me are making such choices.
Well, as we discussed in class last week, social media’s immediate relevance to our mainstream institutions is indeed the threat it poses.
Yes Adriana, there is a Comcast Twitter Claus, scouring the blogosphere looking for potential PR disasters in-the-making. See today’s Seattle Times article on this very subject.
Amazingly, in this same issue (and section) of dead tree media to which I continue to subscribe, there are two other stories on social media:
So we’re all required to sign up and experiment with the Twit thing, right? Last week I posted an observation/complaint about Comcast being slow at home (after our class discussion about possible broadband charges.)
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I wasn’t too concerned about missing the Opening Ceremonies from the Vancouver Winter Olympics, as I figured I could catch it online afterward. NBC was keen to showcase its cool new 
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