This comes via boingboing.net today.
After J-school, I’m more convinced than ever that newspapers (ink on dead tree) are pretty much doomed, with the exception of some niches — free papers, alternative papers, hyperlocal neighborhood papers.
Even among my journalist friends, I can’t think of anyone that has an actual subscription to a dead-tree daily newspaper.
Anyway, enjoy the video.
As many of you are probably aware, I’ve spent the last couple of months working on the Interactive Innovation Project for Fall 2009. This is the capstone project of my year at Medill.
The project has been about obituaries in print and online, and about how obituaries drive readership to local media outlets.
One of the two major pieces of the project was to produce a report on the state of obituaries in America these days. I had a pretty large hand in this aspect of the project, as I was one of the primary authors of the report. I’m happy to say that today, that report has been released.
From the obitresearch.com blog about the project:
“To better understand the nature of our project and the role of Legacy.com in today’s obituary publishing industry, the Fall 2009 Interactive Innovation Project team at the Medill School of Journalism has been diligently researching the history and trends of American obituary writing. We have summarized our findings in a report that we have released this morning. In this report, we examine the nature of the contemporary American obituary, a phenomenon that constitutes an important content category for modern newspapers – and, increasingly, for publishers in other media.”
UPDATE: Oh, hey, look at this — we got a mention on the Washington Post Post Mortem blog!
UPDATE 2: Another mention, from an Editor & Publisher blog!
UPDATE 3: An article about the report appeared in the Vancouver Sun.
UPDATE 4 (12/8/2009): A story about the report appeared on the Northwestern University website. We also got a link from Romenesko on Poynter.org
UPDATE 5 (12/11/2009): The AP wrote a story about the report, mentioning me by name. That AP story has gotten republished all over, and even ended up on NPR’s Morning Edition. Today, Michael S. Malone did an opinion piece for ABC News, which also mentions our report prominently. Another article on Canada.com. Oh, hey, look at this! My buddy Jeff Billman wrote it up for a blog on the Philadelphia City Paper. Here’s another article on Examiner.com.
This is kind of interesting.
Back in 1969, when man was first walking on the moon, Pink Floyd were in a BBC television studio, jamming improvisationally. There exists a recording, which has been mashed with some moon landing footage. Behold:
“At the time, Pink Floyd had been doing rather well. For a while, the band had been somewhat erratic and its reputation was sinking. I joined in 1968, 18 months before the moon landing. By then we were beginning to climb back up again.
It was fantastic to be thinking that we were in there making up a piece of music, while the astronauts were standing on the moon. It doesn’t seem conceivable that that would happen on the BBC nowadays.”
This little tidbit came my way via German-language site Nerdcore.de.
Another thing that came my way via the excellent Overcoming Bias site.
The author of this piece, Paul Starr, is a professor of Sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, and he floats the idea that public subsidies of investigative journalism might be one way to combat the deluge of journalists that have given up investigative reporting, and are now turning their skills to trade pubs and special-interest public relations.
It’s an interesting idea, and I don’t entirely disagree, but I need to think more about it before I’m sure.
“Curiously enough, government subsidies that are viewpoint-neutral and that do not give officials any discretion may be a less constraining method of supporting journalism than leaving it to dependence on patrons. Today, any such subsidies should be not only viewpoint-neutral, but also platform-neutral. We need the modern equivalent of the postal subsidies of the early American republic, except that there ought to be no bias in favor of publications that appear in print.
At this point, I am not advocating any specific form of subsidy — only that we should be open to the idea. There may be lessons for America in the experience of countries that have subsidized the news media without controlling them. Many European countries, for example, exempt news publications from the value-added tax; we have no VAT, but we do have a payroll tax, and one possibility might be to exempt not just newspapers, but all recognized news gatherers from that tax in whole or part.”
Via Cato-Unbound.org . The whole article is worth a read.
Two Fingers = Amon Tobin and Doubleclick.
Self-titled album available from Big Dada ( a Ninja Tune spin-off).
Here’s their Myspace page for some free samples.
You’re welcome.
The view from the 15th floor of the main Fermi Lab building
So on Friday, my health and science reporting class took a road trip to Fermi Lab, about an hour outside of Chicago.
They’ve got a particle collider there, and they smash protons and anti protons together to see what happens.
Over the years, they were responsible for the discovery of three primary particles, including the bottom and top quarks.
It was a fascinating trip, even though the weather was against us. The campus is large, and primarily looks like prairie. You wouldn’t know there was a particle collider there, unless you saw the huge earth birms from above.
Here’s a trailer for a PBS special that was filmed there called “The Atom Smashers”. Bonus — the special was scored by Ghostly International’s Kate Simko.
Want to see some more pictures I took at Fermi?
Via @hrheingold:
Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist, author, documentarian, will be releasing his new book, Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back on June 2nd.
In this video, the author of Ecstasy Club, Coercion, and others talks about the new book.
It’s available for pre-order on Amazon.
I’m doing a blog for a Medill class on interactive publishing, and I’ve chosen horror movies as my topic. If you know me at all, you’ll know that horror movies are one of my great passions, and I’m happy to have a chance to turn some of that into output.
Visit Windy City Horror, leave a comment, and let me know what you think!
Thanks!
For DJs that like to kick it old-school
Check out this beautiful gallery of obsolete gadgets and tech from DarkRoastedBlend.com
I particularly love the mad scientist cold-war era Russian stuff.
Found via BoingBoing Gadgets.
I caught a cold. It even came with a minor ear infection. So I’ve been popping the amoxicillin and OTC cold remedies. Bummer.
I saw Watchmen. I liked it. It got a bum rap from the fanboys (and critics), but then again, how could it not? Some of the reviews have said that it was too “reverent” towards it’s source material, but I thought that translated into a unique tone through the movie. Plus, at almost three hours, it was a good entertainment bargain.
I saw Ratatat. Man, what a good band. I can’t believe that this was the first time that I got to see them, but it was. As it happens, the show was sold out, and I was worried about getting in. But Mr. Baptiste was on their tour crew, and he and I used to trade stacks back and forth at the infamous games of the Armenian Poker Cartel, so he got me on the list and into the show. Thanks sir!!
The openers were interesting, too. I particularly liked Despot, a rapper on Def Jux. His set was a little drunk and disorderly, but he had a good flow.
Ratatat music video:
I read a horror book. The Descent, by Jeff Long. No, it’s not the inspiration for the movie that came out a few years ago, but there are a lot of the same elements. They both focus on monsterous homonids that live in deep caves. But the movie was just that and nothing more, while the book gets a bit more lavish, postulating an incredibly vast underworld existing deep within the earth and providing an environment for an alternate evolution of creatures decended from Homo Erectus. These creatures and the underworld they inhabit give rise to the traditional notions of “hell” and “demons”. It wasn’t a perfect book, but I liked it. It was certainly ambitious. I understand there’s a sequel, and if I happen upon it, I’ll probably give it a read. Or maybe not.
Casino floor at the Horseshoe, just outside the poker room.
I went to the Horseshoe Casino, just south of Chicago, in Hammond, Indiana. At last! A real, live, full-blown casino, instead of a crappy dog track or indian joint with no table games and bullshit slots. The Horseshoe was pretty nice, actually. Got myself into a $1-2 no-limit hold ‘em game for a reasonably paced seven-hour session. Walked away about $250 up, too. That’s a rate of almost $36/hour, which is adequate.
Oh, and I got a haircut. First time I’ve had short hair since I was 12 years old.
