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??

Obviously, we’ve focused our entire graduate program around creating trust and persuasion in other to communicate and transact in the 21st century (especially when framed as a story). But digital media is just a part of an overall strategy to win hearts and minds. This recent New York Times article refers to it as the “information wars”:

For Mr. Maldonado, who said that “the information wars are won before work,” that means rising early to browse all of the major newspapers, new polling data, ideological Web sites and dozens of news alerts needed to equip his bosses with the best, most up-to-date nuggets.

“Our executives walk into meetings and they’re doing battles, whether it’s on health care or cap and trade, and information is power, and my job is to make sure they’re armed with the most powerful information,” he said. “It’s reading the 1,000 stories in the papers and Hill rags, and finding that one needle in the haystack that’s going to matter.”

But to me, it’s not about using information to wage war. Rather, I believe that the digital revolution has pitted information against itself — and the strongest ideas prevail only due to those who have the strongest communication strategies. I finally grasped this when reading Atlantic Magazine’s profile of Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell:

McConnell nevertheless manipulates the press masterfully, using methods that are head-smackingly obvious and yet still elude most politicians. He knows exactly what he wants to say, repeats it with emphasis, then stops. He will not be drawn out, and has no compunction about refusing questions. He would never make Boehner’s mistake, because he won’t entertain hypotheticals. “We don’t issue a whole lot of currency,” his spokesman says. What McConnell does say makes news.

At the press conference, reporters jockeyed to throw him off message and extract some further bit that might drive the story forward. His unvarying reply when asked about Boehner was: “It does not make sense to raise taxes in a recession,” a phrase he uttered nine times in barely as many minutes. The effect was like watching a swarm of mosquitoes encounter a bug zapper. After he wrapped up the proceedings, the reporters broke their huddle and scurried to button­hole individual senators. McConnell ignored them and walked off. The story soon dried up. No vote took place. And the elections were, as McConnell intended them to be, an unadulterated referendum on President Obama.

We’re inundated by ideas, messages, creeds, sales pitches, visions — a veritable jungle of information. Does it not make sense then that a Darwinistic “survival of the fittest” is descending upon this wildest of ecosystems? And as such we should use whatever tools and tactics that will throw our tidbit of communication to the top of the heap?

So how do I apply this philosophy specifically to my own communication endeavor? As Director of the Master of Communication of Digital Media, my objective is to persuade the world that we offer a high-value graduate degree — and that we’re the best at what we do. Yes, we could buy advertising and publish swanky brochures. Sounds like an expensive way to lose the war.

Rather, my strategy has been to place the MCDM at the heart of our region’s media and technology community. We started with regular events (face-to-face information sharing gatherings hold great currency in the digital age), culminating in the hugely successful TEDx Seattle last year. Now we have Media Space TV (which, compared to its YouTube counterpart’s somewhat anemic views, is building far more attention capital through its blockbuster ratings) feeding into our new Four Peaks franchise (monthly salons and a fall summit). We’re convening community, sharing our expertise, and soliciting the expertise and creativity of others. In doing so, we’re engaging our constituents in a much larger vision. It’s ambitious. It’s epic. But in this age of easy, disposable communication, it just may stick.

Related Posts

• February 13, 2010 -- Is this the future of “Free?” (12)
• December 9, 2009 -- Media. Power. Panic. Monopoly. (5)
• July 11, 2011 -- MCDM Debuts the “Four Peaks Review” (0)
• June 3, 2011 -- Reel Grrls Donations Exceed the $18K they Dropped from Comcast (2)
• May 2, 2011 -- Bin Laden’s Nail in the Coffin: Goodbye Paperboy, Hello Apps (3)

My gut response was along the lines of “so this is what ‘do no evil’ means?”

I wrote about this at TheModerateVoice and syndicated the essay on Newsvine. The TMV post was featured in TheHill’s morning reads. (Blatant self-promotion.) Woot!

This morning, Verizon asserts that the NYTimes article is wrong but says not a word about the Bloomberg, WashingtonPost or Politico stories, which were the basis for my response.

Google’s Eric Schmidt “declined to confirm” the Verizon deal yesterday, but it also sounds as though he did not deny it:

“We’re trying to find solutions that bridge between sort of the ‘hard-core Net neutrality or else’ view and the historic telecom view of no such agreement,” Schmidt told reporters on the sidelines of the Techonomy conference…”

And what, exactly, does “hard-core Net neutrality” mean? In 2006, Schmidt wrote:

Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay.

But the leaked agreement describes a two-tiered system based on payment.

What do you think? A trial balloon? Someone who wanted to sabotage any potential side-deal between the two?

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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.

Fortuitously, my colleague Kathy Gill commented on two of those Journal articles in Flip The Media posts immediately preceding this one.  I’ve linked to her thoughts, and added my own here:

Rupert Murdoch’s op-ed: He had me at”the future of journalism is more promising than ever.”  I also agreed with him that advertising could no longer sustain news.  But then he called for further media deregulation that would allow for cross-ownership between broadcast and newspapers. I firmly believe that it was deregulation in the 1980′s that kick-started journalism’s sad demise, producing a wasteland of one-newspaper towns and conglomerate-controlled broadcasters (I used to work for one of those broadcasters).  That’s when Americans began to lose faith in journalism.  This would only make it worse for us as citizens, and make him richer as a media titan.

Publishers announcing that they would delay the issuance of e-books: As a Kindle owner, I found this artificial hold-back to be just a tad offensive, and yet more proof of the backwards-thinking publishing industry.  It’s clear there’s a power struggle between publishers and retailers like Amazon.  But from my vantage point, I benefit.  I read more books, because I have more access to them.  “Industry preservation” like this is akin to medieval monks transcribing even slower as if it would somehow impede the printing press revolution.  These once powerful media institutions are losing control of how they manage content, and they don’t like it.  At all.

by Alan(ator) via Creative Commons on Flickr

And then I spied this article this morning: The Rabbit-Ear Wars, which contemplates the sale of the freely available broadcast network spectrum to mobile providers.  Danger!  I’m already well aware that I’m one of a growing minority who have canceled cable to take advantage of streaming media.  This is of concern to cable companies, as well as cable providers.  And it’s one reason (in addition to the lucrative cable fees) why Comcast wants control of NBC.  At some point, they’re going to find a way to seal this loophole and start charging broadband users for access to sites such as Hulu.  Fine.  It’s their property, as owners of NBC Universal, they’re now content creators, they’re entitled.  But in a backhanded way, it also limits the use of my internet service — especially because they’re one of the few broadband providers in the country.  What if they also start arguing that my I’m using too much bandwidth by accessing other multimedia sites too often?:

[T]he move means Comcast will control every step of the system from content creation to delivery, and could easily begin preventing customers from accessing competing content or charging them more to do so than they would normally as a sort of a penalty. (Comcast-NBC Merger and Importance of Net Neutrality)

And now, extrapolating from the Rabbit Ears article, there’s now a chance that the only way to get basic network content would be through some sort of Comcast-like provider pipeline, diverting even more money and control their way.  I just paid $10 for a set of rabbit ears that pulls in 13 basic channels in pristine high-definition — for free.  I just have to sit through the commercials — as we all once did before the advent of Hulu, iTunes, Tivo, and even VCR’s.  I’ll accept that trade-off

These recent developments have me deeply concerned that the brave new world that we celebrate in our graduate communications program — of media diversity and democratization thanks to the networked age — is illusory.  Now that powerful interests have woken up to the fact that they have much to lose in this new ecosystem, they’ll pull whatever strings necessary to regain control.

Related Posts

• February 13, 2010 -- Is this the future of “Free?” (12)
• January 19, 2011 -- In information warfare, events are effective weapons (2)
• November 17, 2011 -- What Steve, Bill and Jeff Mean to Me (11)
• June 3, 2011 -- Reel Grrls Donations Exceed the $18K they Dropped from Comcast (2)
• May 2, 2011 -- Bin Laden’s Nail in the Coffin: Goodbye Paperboy, Hello Apps (3)