AP reports that disgraced Conrad Black is seeking a new trial for swindling hundreds of millions through his international media empire. Just in time: the 2004 documentary Citizen Black by Canadian film makers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine is marking the rounds on the Sundance Channel. Aside from several self-conscious moments by writer/director Melnyk, a […]
(We’re catching up – we sent these iSIGHTINGS to our email subscribers on Aug. 7. If you aren’t on our email list, you can sign up here. Trust us. Or trust me. Trust systems are one of the cornerstones of iFOCOS work. We’ve posited that trust is in flux: diverse communities in a society shaped […]
Maybe you thought to yourself, gosh, wouldn’t it be nifty to take a walk in the middle of a big hurricane? Or maybe you’d settle for the video. Here are some videos of Hurricane Dean posted to Weather.com by eyewitnesses in Grand Cayman, Belize and Playa Del Carmen. The video sharing setup (more here) is […]
Giving up control is difficult. Last week the US mobile phone company Sprint Nextel unveiled a new brand, Xohm, for its much-anticipated next-generation wireless broadband WiMax service. With the new brand Sprint also seems to be trying to shed its "our way or the highway" heritage, shared with wireless carriers around the globe who have […]
washingtonpost.com’s “On Being” project is simply stunning: real stories from real people based on the simple notion that “we should get to know one another a little better.” An elegant design and interface, enhanced by professional video production standards, bring to life the musings and passions of ordinary extraordinary people. This is how journalism from […]
Our favorite media pundit Jay Rosen shared this test for understanding how people define and are defined by communities. What I carry in mine: — Driver’s License. Geographic community. — Business cards. Connections to global communities. — Insurance cards. My health and wellness, anywhere. — Apple Pro Care. Ticket to my technology. — Hidden Creek […]
Sao Paulo, the world’s fourth-largest metropolis became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Although legal challenges from businesses have left a handful standing, 15,000 billboards have been stripped from a city that resembles a battlefield strewn with blank marquees, partially torn-down frames […]
You have to admire the chutzpah of any group that seeks to save journalism from itself by blowing with the wind. But inspired by native forces, the goo-goos at Journalism That Matters gathered in “open space” at a George Washington University cafeteria to agonize over the ill-winds of change. All the right people – which, […]
If the Next Newsroom sounds familiar, it is. It borrows language from Newspaper Next (request the report; don’t republish), the “transformation project” financed by newspaper publishers. Both projects owe to Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen’s broadly applicable, 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma. The difference: the American Press Institute paid Christensen’s consulting company $2.5 million to […]
Congratulations to We Media alums Merrill Brown and Michael Tippet, who now get to figure out how to spend $10.6 million of funding for NowPublic, a "crowd powered" news service that has partnered with The Associated Press and that does not want to follow in the footsteps of failed citizen journalism predecessors Bayosphere and Backfence. […]