Last year BBC News online trialled technology from Apture, which created pop-up windows to wikipedia pages, youtube and relevant articles from certain hyperlinks.
The big hope of the Treasury plan is that the private sector will be willing to pay a higher price for leveraged assets than it would for unleveraged assets.
Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer lambastes newspapers for living in an “echo chamber,” failing to “adapt their business models,” and makes note of that “perfect storm” that has so many journalists bemoaning the fate of their industry. Criticisms that should sound more than a little echo chamber-ish to anyone who’s been following the pontifications about the newspaper industry.
Megan Garber (who’s awesome, btw), respectfully summarizes Lerer’s talk at Columbia University, where he prescribed the same vague calls to innovation that Clay Shirky wrote about a month ago (nothing will work, everything will work). But after initially bristling at Lerer’s generalized recommendations, upon reflection I realize he’s probably right. Now is the time for experimentation:
Lerer (after noting the usual caveats: that there’s no silver bullet to rectify journalism’s woes, and that “no one knows what the future will look like”) pointed to innovation—and hasty innovation, at that—as a necessity for newspapers and other news outlets. We need to “embrace disruptive innovation,” he said. …
The idea is supposed to have started on February 19, when Rick Santelli of CNBC “spontaneously” complained about plans (click link for video) to help people avoid foreclosure, saying this is the government “subsidizing the loser’s mortgages.” Santelli called for organizing a “Chicago tea party” against helping people pay their mortgages. But investigators starting finding clues that the on-air rant was not spontaneous, and signs that the campaign was organized by the right-wing, corporate-funded Freedomworks . According to a March 2 New York Times story,
“Mr. Santelli’s televised commentary appeared spontaneous to viewers. However, the Internet domain name ChicagoTeaParty.com was registered in August 2008 — well before his commentary — but not used until afterwards.”The events have been widely promoted by corporate-funded conservative PR professionals who specialize in “astroturf.” This is a term for the use of money to create an appearance of widespread “grassroots” support. Currently the corporate-funded conservative lobbying groups Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, are organizing the events and conservative media including talk radio and FOX News are widely promoting them. Support appears to be coming from Koch Industries, the largest privately-owned company in the country.
The Fox Nation website debuted today to much fanfare across the interwebs. I know what you’re thinking: “But is Fox Nation the right news source for me?”
You’ll enjoy it so much, in fact, that you might not question whether spreading insipid Washington-themed gossip (“The Daily Beast: Who did Pelosi’s face?”) does, in fact, celebrate “core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse—and fair and balanced coverage of the news.” Or whether it’s fair or balanced to slug a hard-news AP article about the Huffington Post’s new investigative journalism venture “Huffington Post to rummage through your trash.” Or whether, speaking of the HuffPost, it’s intellectually honest to completely appropriate the left-leaning aggregator’s model while stoking partisan passions by outwardly mocking it.
That’s why I’ve decided to become a “Death of Newspapers” blogger. I’ll join the ranks of Jeff Jarvis, Paul Gillin, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky in competing to see who can use the most jargon to describe something everyone knows is happening.
Apparently, it’s very simple. The more you self-reference, pick feuds and talk about the failure of TimesSelect, the better you’re doing. If you make it sound like you’re the one who figured out newspapers are dying, you win.
We had a provision in there that said Treasury was supposed to establish, by regulation, standards for executive compensation. We required that to be done — had it been done, it would have been binding, whether [or not] these contracts had been signed earlier. It’s entirely within the power of the federal government to have contracts modified [at companies receiving public aid]. Nixon had contracts modified by the federal government. We gave a similar power to Treasury.
Cramer and CNBC have never had this much publicity. And while they both come out of it with a slight odor, little is likely to change. There’s nothing like the stink of notoriety. And the same goes for Stewart — how many more folks watched his show because he had Cramer on? How much more polished is his white knight “armour” now that he’s “slain” the evil Booyah? You think that was part of the plan?
OK, Hegedus has a valid point. But by focusing on the motivations and sideshow aspect underlying the Stewart/Cramer face-off, he overlooks the salient issue. One that fellow Huff Post contributor Daniel Sinker apprehended after watching Cramer’s sit-down with Stewart:
