We create the stories of the connected society

TBD lives up to its mushy ambition.

Join connoisseurs of creativity for an iPad tasting from 1-4:30 pm, June 14 at Gannett headquarters in McLean, Va.

Charlton Heston channels Moses. Steve Jobs assumes a higher authority. Crazy guys throw down an iPad at batting practice. All this and more in The Throwdown Video, a preview of Tabula Rasa. Check it out on the program page and on YouTube.

I am excited to announce the launch of a new project that we are calling WeThink. What is it? WeThink is a conversation about innovation and the future — an effort to explore new ideas and promote solutions to the challenges that our society is facing. What’s the big deal? If you follow our work [...]

Game Changer Demand Media’s Byron Reese describes the different thinking about content and the process of creating content.

If Ashton Kutcher’s 4.5 million Twitter followers make you feel inadequate, I’ve got good news: scientists investigating social networks have punked the “influentials” theory that drives celebrities to the top of the charts. Aplusk, who boasts that he’s bigger than CNN, is apparently overrated. A new study finds that the importance of most influential spreaders [...]

Amra Tareen, the savvy and ebullient founder of AllVoices, has just closed a $3 million funding round for the innovative, citizen journalism site. That brings funding to $9 million for the two-year-old start-up. Not bad. TechCrunch has a good take on the AllVoices funding. How does she do it? Amra returns to We Media Miami [...]

The biggest surprise from yesterday’s unveiling of Apple’s iPad was that print publishers and journos weren’t terribly excited. “Waiting to be surprised. That hasn’t happened yet,” said Jim Roberts, the only New York Times wonk who didn’t confuse Steve Jobs with Moses. Valleywag has a good take on Print Media’s Big Tablet Letdown. Our enthusiasm [...]

Magazine and newspaper publishers have fantasized, for more than a decade, about the day when portable digital display technologies render paper, ink, printing, trucks, postage and home delivery obsolete. The flaw, of course, is expecting too much from technology – the next big thing.

We couldn’t get to Hyderabad for this year’s group hug of the world’s newspaper publishers, but it sounds like the old boys are getting feisty in their dotage. Forced once to postpone because of bad economics and waning interest, the reconvened World Newspaper Congress, organized by the merged World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, launched [...]

Dear Mr. Murdoch: We’re so fortunate that we can entrust you with the future of the news business in the U.S. Such a shrewd business leader, too. Can you help a confused citizen understand your plan to save the news? 1. You’re going to charge people to read a story online that they won’t read, [...]

This is a true testimony to the magic of a system that allows for open communication and collaborative problem solving around public concerns. You can really see how media, industry, government and private citizens can work together to improve their communities:

How to profit from the business and behaviors of the Weconomy.

Today at Noon ET on the Naked Media show: Avner Ronen, CEO of media aggregation startup Boxee, and Betsy Morgan, former CEO of Huffington Post. Details here.

Each day brings another story that publishers are lurching to the business model that will save newspapers: charging for online content. Yet, each day brings news of additional buyouts and layoffs in newsrooms. Sometime soon, the publishers are going to figure out the next problem: they neither have enough good content that’s worth selling nor [...]