We create the stories of the connected society

A few weeks back Amazon got blasted by gay rights groups when it was discovered that gay and lesbian book titles were delisted from its site. Amazon claimed an internal glitch caused the problem and declined to offer additional details.  A spokesperson was quoted saying
“This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company [...]

There’s a media and technology feeding frenzy in Washington. Failing U.S. newspapers are looking for a bailout from the government; nonprofits, telecoms and policy wonks are scrambling to have their say and get their piece of the economic stimulus action – a few billion dollars – to expand broadband networks AND create more content and [...]

The Senate Commerce Committee announced announced the lineup for their hearing about the future of journalism.  The list of speakers includes:

Senator Ben Cardin
Marissa Mayer – Vice President, Search Products and User Experience, Google
Alberto Ibarguen – President and Chief Executive Officer, The Knight Foundation
David Simon – Author, TV Producer and Former Newspaperman
Steve Coll – Former [...]

Over on my Fast Company Experts blog, I have issued a challenge.
Here is what I wrote:
I have come to the conclusion that most (maybe all) business and strategy books are useless. They over-generalize. They offer little value. I go in with such high expectations, based on reviews and descriptions, and am almost universally disappointed.
For [...]

Last year Todd Smith was shot while covering a city council meeting for a newspaper in suburban St. Louis, Mo. Of the six people who were shot, he was the only one to survive.
Last week, the newspaper laid him off.
“My family is obviously really not happy that I took a bullet for a business. But [...]

The Extraordinaries and SeeClickFix have both been voted in as finalists in the Netsquared n2y4 mobile competition. The International competition saw 100’s of entries and 15 mobile innovators remain.
The stakes are high: 50K, bragging rights and the bounty of likely personal side-bets between The Extraordinaries and SeeClickFix.  (Hopefully n2y4 prints their checks in large format [...]

From our friends at Naked Media and Scribe Media, tune in at Noon ET April 14 (tomorrow) for a live interview with online publishing visionary Larry Kramer. Larry is an old friend and participant in We Media programs. He’s best known as founder of CBS.Marketwatch. More recently he’s been an advisor to a variety of [...]

WeMedia has been kind enough to offer us a place on their blog to keep their community updated about the progress of SeeClickFix.Com.
We’ll be checking in here frequently, but here’s an update on new features, new relationships, and ways you can help spread the clicking.
___New Features____*Mobile Web VersionUse
SeeClickFix from your smart phone and experience the [...]

Google announced this week that they were creating a venture capital arm whose main objective will be to turn a profit.  The group, called Google Ventures, is expected to invest up to $100 million in the next 12 months.
The New York Times article on the announcement notes that “Google will tap the connections of its [...]

As a part of the Entrepreneur’s Caucus at last week’s WeMedia conference in Miami, I asked Krista Van Tassel to share some insights about how to launch and sustain a successful social enterprise.  Her recommendations were solid gold — which wasn’t really a surprise, since Krista is surrounded by people who are pursuing social ventures [...]

The first full day of WeMedia presented interesting challenges and opportunities regarding the state of new media, social change, and journalism. Conversations revolved around the future of traditional media, expanding the scope of social media companies to facilitate social change, how to more effectively run a business, how to reach target audiences, and more. As [...]

UPDATE: Clarifications have been made to this post in the comments section
Three recent J school grads bemoan that they work for newspaper web sites where most of what they do is click buttons to paste news stories and photos on the site. This is their first job in the “new” news media. As “web [...]

We Media’s Brian Reich and I were wondering, based on the Game Changer Award winners, what would be the attributes that would not only win today’s Pitch It! presenters some of the available funding, but also see them be the Game Changers a couple/few years from now.
A few things have marked the Game Changers, based [...]

At a time when newspapers are hemorrhaging employees and questioning their survival, they are adopting a more stable role in the community through new media – namely, citizen journalism. Newspapers are helping communities connect, reach out, learn more about their resources through their sites. The goal is to foster a way to make the community [...]

Most Americans believe small business, science and tech leaders will lead the U.S. to a better future – not the news media, government or large corporations
Note: This week we’re holding our fifth annual We Media conference in Miami. Along with our research and other projects at iFOCOS, the We Media conferences, awards and community explore [...]