Our linkfest taking you to sites of varying viewpoints. Links do not necessarily reflect the views of TMV or its writers.
Is Barack Obama’s Inauguration A Turning Point? Amid typical 21st century old and new media (we admit to it) overkill, The Beast’s Tina Brown says this is indeed a pivotal moment in American history:
Sometimes the cliché “we are at a turning point,” wheeled out at every new presidential era, turns out to be true.
Is something going on in this town? There seem to be an awful lot of people around. The Acela train from Penn Station to Washington yesterday morning was stuffed to the gills with anchor people toting even more luggage than I was. And when I arrived to check in at the Ritz-Carlton on 22nd Street, an ABC camera crew pursued me to the elevator, asking me what I thought of “all the hoopla.” “I am the hoopla, darling,” was all I could think of to say.
……For years we’ve fantasized with vindictive glee about what it would be like when we finally sent President Bush on his merry way into a dark page of history. But now that the moment has finally arrived, the joy among the assembled multitudes is not a yelp, or a whoopee—it’s more a deep collective exhalation that carries us into conversation with perfect strangers. The days after 9/11 were filled with instant bonds, too, but then the bond was tragedy. Now it’s about starting over.
Read it all.
But IS IT The End Of An Era? House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi now indicates she’s open to the idea of prosecuting some former Bush administration officials and to Vodkapundit this means it is more of the same.
And If That’s Correct, then it doesn’t seem as if it’s really a new era on the other side either…
Meanwhile, It Seems As If A New Ear Is Beginning In Germany — but not one that will be celebrated on all sides…
“Obama Smells Like Bush” is pretty much what a bona fide international stinker says…
Obama Has Finished His Inaugural Speech after reading some classic ones. DETAILS HERE.
Obama’s Inaugural Train: Was it the train of hope?
No Pressure On You, Barack but you have four years to save the earth…
Who Is The $160 Million Man? Just guess…
Another Question: Did you ever hear of “halo publishing?” Who do you think this refers to? You’re probably wrong….
Has SNL Jumped The Shark (or the waterboard) on torture?
More Evidence that John McCain suffered politically due to his (laudable) work to change campaign finance laws…
A Look At Guantanamo: This Pajamas Media post argues that the facility ” bears little resemblance to the stereotypes peddled by media and politicians.”
The Problem With The Nation’s Dying Newspapers: Dave Schuler (one of the Internet’s most thoughtful writers) contends “some of the problems that newspapers are having are due less to fundamental problems with their business model than with unrealistic expectations of the revenue that could be expected under the business model.” Read it all.
The Problem With The Nation’s Dying Newspapers II: As a former, passionately journalism former newspaperman, I have a lot of inside info on what is going on in some newspapers. I also am on the “other side” as a blogger, being equally passionate about the role of the Internet in discussion and news. And one of the best think pieces on the issue didn’t get much notice when it appeared in Real Clear Politics here in December “The Future of Journalism (And How to Start It)” by former Clinton press secretary, the unflappable Mike McCurry. Here is a tiny piece of it:
On November 5, people across the country lined up at newsstands, convenience stores, and coffee shops to snag a copy of the morning paper, a keepsake from the 2008 election. But they didn’t need the paper to tell them who had won the presidency; the news of Barack Obama’s historic win had already been gathered, broadcast, beamed, and packet-switched around the globe countless times. In fact, almost every word in almost every paper had already been available for free online for hours. “You can’t put a computer screen into a scrapbook,” one woman told the Washington Post as she waited in line.
Microsoft Chief Counsel for Intellectual Property Strategy Thomas C. Rubin sees a problem in that situation for the future of the newspaper industry, and rightly so. Physical sales of newspapers have been declining significantly as the combination of 24-hour news channels and the Internet has replaced the once-daily print edition of the local paper. As Rubin recently told the UK Association of Online Publishers, “It would be one thing if print editions were being replaced with vibrant and profitable online versions. But as we all know, that is just not happening. Today we are still searching for healthy symbiosis between newspapers and new technology.”
And, indeed, what is going on today? Newspapers are hawking their inaugural editions as HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS…knowing that as their sales plummet younger readers will flock to buy the Obama edition…as a keepsake, not as a news source.
Rubin doesn’t have one particular business model in mind, but he borrows from biology to frame the issue as a choice between “parasitism”–an “information wants to be free” approach where content platform owners strip publishers of control over their content–and “mutualism”–a “healthy symbiosis between newspapers and new technology.” Obviously the latter is preferable for maintaining a vibrant news publishing industry, Rubin says, and to get there he lays out three key principles, which he calls the “Three Cs:” copyright, competition, and collaboration.
This is a long, detailed and thoughtful piece. Read. It. All.
Speaking of Journalism and Declines: Does this show ? the decline of journalism… (Answer: it may have been done before but it is a bit unusual…).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.