(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 by global access to news and information are assuming influence and attention at the expense of institutions such as media and government that organize power geographically through a controlled model of community.
We view a diverse, connected society as a civic strength; our ability to express differences though many forms of media makes us stronger.
Our thinking has been influenced by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, famous for his 2000 book Bowling Alone. Now comes an apparent downside.
In new research, Putnam finds that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. The findings are unsettling, especially to a rigorously relevant researcher like Putnam, a Pied Piper for civic engagement. Far from offering a doomsday scenario of societal breakdown, Putnam says his research illuminates initial human reaction and how to overcome it. But the research – from a survey of 30,000 Americans in 41 areas – fuels an already
fractious debate about immigration and diverse communities in America, among other matters.
Does the research now give validity to the message from MSM about its traditional model of organizing community? Or help explain declining trust in big media (because media itself is becoming more diverse through the Internet). Or do democratic media in all their disparate, fragmented forms represent an emerging system of trust that changes the nature of community, media, and civic engagement? iFOCOS is forming a
workgroup to consider. Contact Dale or Andrew if you’d like to get involved.
Great, yet another profile to manage
Just when you thought you’d had it up to here with your Facebook friends, Mashable pals, not to mention your secret thing for Buzznet beauties and your out-of-control iTunes bill, you’ve got to, simply got to, hang with all the digerati now cuddling via Dopplr. It’s a new social network designed around tracking people’s travels. The travel angle makes it good for global nomads – people who bounce around the globe and now have any easier way to find out who’s in town. Cool? We thinks … yes. But there’s so much coolness out there.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Now that the Bancrofts have agreed to sell Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch, maybe the whining that has masqueraded as reporting about a Murdoch-run Wall Street Journal will subside. Coverage from journalism’s elite here on the Right Coast has reeked with hypocrisy. Not that the priesthood has ever embraced change among its ranks, depleted as it is by a generation of corporate media families who’ve managed the future of newspapers into near-oblivion. At least Murdoch has a vision for the digital age and a track record of growing and investing in news and information businesses. After a decade of denying a digital future, Humpty Dumpty CEOs have lost about half the value of their news companies (not to mention all of Knight Ridder) that elite reporters favor (read on). OK, Rupert is old school, and he owns, what, besides the Fox “News” Channel – almost everything? Journalism that matters – and a lot of journalism jobs – might be better served by new owners rather than the feudal princes of the past. Saving the Bancroft dynasty wouldn’t have helped.
It’s been 25 years. Let’s try something new.
Meantime, new leadership at Gannett is shaking up local news operations. While Murdoch will likely attempt to leverage the reputation and resources of The Journal with the global distribution channels of News Corp. including Fox and MySpace, Gannett has launched its Information Center strategy with reader participation at 11 sites in the U.S. Even that detractor of the tired, Wired magazine, has taken note. Look for Gannett’s go-go leaders Sue Clark-Johnson, Mike Maness and Jennifer Carroll (an IFOCOS board member) to stir thinking about newspapers the way the last big newspaper idea – USA Today – did 25 years ago. Journalism’s elite didn’t like that idea either.
Always On (Surveillance)
A security camera that the Army Corps of Engineers placed alongside the Mississippi River in Minneapolis captured the collapse of the I-35W bridge, the most arresting image of the disaster. Atlanta-based CNN scored a coup when a tipster leaked the security camera video. The local Star Tribune, whose newsroom is less than a mile from the bridge, played catch-up. CNN and most major news sites now aggressively seek amateur news footage from viewers after years of denying We Media as a legitimate reporting tool. More: localism has given way to gloclalism – local events with global interest or implication. Beyond We Media we see cameras embedded pervasively into the environment, altering architecture, experience, behavior and assumptions about what’s local – or private. Look for our coming report.
Now the iSymphony
The iPod made its live concert debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at Wolf Trap, the national park for the performing arts, located just down the road from iFOCOS world headquarters in Reston. The performance of “Fantastic Planet” A Symphonic Video Spectacular” enabled the audience to hear recorded music and commentary from conductor Emil de Cou in one ear with live music from the orchestra in the other, all while watching dramatic video footage from NASA on a big screen. Had to be there to get the full effect of enriching the live experience for a connected culture.
So much for eHarmony’s 29 dimensions of compatibility
Novelist Robert Olen Butler has written the Pulitzer Prize of emails about how his wife, the much-younger novelist Elizabeth Dewberry, left him for an older but richer coot, media tycoon Ted Turner. Indulge in delicious Gawking about the lascivious literati and that randy captain of capitalism.
The next big old thing
Google is reported to have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a cellphone project developing prototype handsets and making overtures to operators. Look for multiple manufacturers to make devices based on its specs and multiple carriers to offer them. The payoff: more advertising revenue for the world’s richest and largest advertising company. Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes ads in mobile phones are twice as profitable or more because they’re personal. We saw the branded mobile phone as a big opportunity for news companies more than five years ago. That doesn’t mean we were right. ESPN’s investment in its own “skinned” mobile service last year was a flop. Now The New York Times, for one, says it is finally getting serious about the mobile play. Timing is right. Follow the money.
Stay connected to the trends and developments shaping media and the conneced culture at iFOCOS.
