I is a smart graduate student

Sorry for the shameless self promotion but I'm just stoked for reading the following blog post on Poynter:

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"Zorn suggest news orgs adopt the cable TV model"
Chicago Tribune | Blog Maverick

Columnist Eric Zorn says news organizations that generate significant original content should band together and and sell group subscription packages for unlimited access to their stories, photos, videos, archives and other offerings. "For, say, $10 a month, a subscriber would have a choice of, say, 50 participating local, regional and national newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations. Another $5 might buy an additional 50 outlets, and so on." || Mark Cuban: How cable and satellite can save the newspaper business.
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Who suggested that in class last week? ME, baby, ME.

And check out the title of the actual article that the blog references...

Rescuing print journalism: Does Cable TV have the right idea?

It's a rhetorical question in the title! Whoohoo!

Ok shut up, Billy. Whaddya want, a f***ing parade?

Adam Carolla's last show AND FREE FM's last day is tomorrow

After hearing so much from our class relaying their fears about the pending demise of newspapers, it is now my turn to be sad. CBS has apparently pulled the plug on FREE FM (97.1 KLSX in Los Angeles) and therefore, starting next week, I won't be able to listen to Adam Carolla live on the radio in my car on the way to work.

Luckily he will still do a podcast.

Here is the link to his website if you want to check out his show and podcast.



I'm guessing that no one else in class really cares because I didn't get the feeling that anyone else listened to Adam but me, but today he spent a great deal talking about the future of radio and that is relevant to our class. If you have the time to check it out that's awesome. If not, here's some of my highlights...

1. The jist I got is that FREE FM's demise has been on the horizon for a while. According to my best friend Sebastian (he got me into the show and is more of a Daily Show junkie than I ever will be), this demise of FREE FM may or may not have to do with the current economic situation. Apparently the FREE FM affiliate in San Francisco went belly up after only being on the air for about a year.

2. A caller told Adam that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (co-creators of the original The Office show in Britain) were on the radio. They then moved to doing a podcast that was free and but after building an audience, they started charging for it and made enough money that they don't have to work anymore. So, I guess it is possible that a business model for podcasting could be developed.

3. Adam's not sure what's going to happen, but he and his co-host Teresa think podcasting MIGHT be the way of the future for radio and that someday everyone will have internet in their cars so they can stream podcasts while driving. But, similar to the idea of newspapers going online, a business model has to be determined so that the people doing the podcasts will make money. No one is absolutely sure what that model will be. As for Adam, he's going to get it off the ground and see what happens. Luckily for Adam, he's rich and he has the freedom to experiment. However, he feels terrible for the hard-working radio guys at FREE FM that are now unemployed.

4. Teresa Strasser (Adam's co-host who reads the news headlines on the show everyday) says that the sound of human voices talking (or in my words, RADIO) will always be compelling to people. We always want something to listen to while working or driving in the car. How we get those voices in the future is the question.

Let's see what happens. Is the silly, ranting Adam Carolla correct? Will podcasting be the radio of the future?

Am I asking rhetorical questions again? I am ashamed of myself. :)

I'm really feeling that Broadcast TV and Radio will always exist. But the technological method that will bring the medium to us will probably be the internet. Again, let's see what happens.

Are rhetorical questions annoying?

One of my pet peeves when reading someone else's writing is the cliched use of rhetorical questions, especially when it's in news writing or blogs. I used to be in charge of developing course flyers for the Annenberg School (I actually started the buzz myself because I wanted my job to be more exciting when I first started here, then it was passed on to someone else {{{SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION}}}). Anyway, I wish I could have had a dollar for everytime a professor would give me a course description that had a long stream of rhetorical questions and then concluded with "This course will address those questions."

Maybe I'll find a good piece of journalism that would illustrate this further...

In any case, I got so sick of seeing rhetorical questions.

But then I read through my own blogs and noticed how many times I've used rhetorical questions. I must stop whining about them now. :)

Maybe it's the new circle of life for mainstream journalism

So here are some themes that keep coming up in class and our readings:

1. Mainstream media is on the decline.
2. "Alternative" or "freelance" media (e.g. bloggers) is on the rise
3. If mainstream media dies, then the bloggers will have nothing to write about because they rely on mainstream media for material.

Maybe we're seeing the start of a cyclical structure that may be a fact of Journalism for years and years. It would go like this:

(insert steps one through three from above right here)
4. Bloggers and other "alternative" media producers freak out that there is no mainstream media for them to write about. So, they go out and start doing serious reporting on their own.
5. "Alternative" media BECOMES "mainstream" media after they're operations become so huge. Advertising revenue and income starts pouring in because there's no one else to take it away from them.
6. Years or decades later, the NEW "mainstream media" goes on the decline.
7. New alternative media goes on the rise.

You get the idea.

And then Elton John writes a song about it. Oh wait, I guess he'd be dead by then.

Or I'm totally wrong or this has already been talked about and I should shut up.

2012?

So I'm reading my class readings like a good little boy, namely the paper by our esteemed Professor Louis(!) Cowan and this is the first passage that jumps out at me...

"When Arthur Sulzberger told the audience in Davos that he would not mourn the death of the New York Times print editions, he was offering an optimistic statement about the future of the Times as a profitable and authoritative source of news in a digital world. He is determined to make the Times the nation’s paper, the indispensable source of news for concerned citizens wherever they live." (Page 5)

It's just a breath of sweet fresh air for me to read an optimistic point of view of how the internet will change newspapers because we seem to always be talking about how the internet is going to destroy newspapers.

But then this passage came along...

"In five years or 2012, we expect 68% of revenue to come from core, 20% from online and 12% from niche. In operating cash flow, our goal in 2012 is 40% from core, 50% from online and 10% from niche. That would be a great business, one that investors would applaud.”" (Page 7)

Yeah, 2012. The next year that everyone is going to freak out about because it's another possible time that the world will end, according to the Mayan Calendar (or something like that).

Well sh**. So much for optimism in journalism in the digital age.

When did reporters become your high school counselor?

In my journey to find focus in my paper topic.... I believe I am going to do the following: If the media's role in democracy is to keep the government in check, then it is possible that it's the comedian's role to keep the MEDIA in check. I'm gonna start investigating this. Here is an example. This is the report on the Michael Phelps weed scandal featured on the Adam Carolla Show on February 6, 2009 (jump to 1:24)...




For those of you who don't want to listen to the whole thing, Adam basically asks "when did reporters become your high school counselor?" Is it really the role of the media to make sure celebrities stop smoking marijuana?

A pitch on spot.us

So I was looking at spot.us in preparation for tonight's speaker David and saw this...

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After Proposition K failed this November, sex workers in California have faced the fact that the voting majority still looks at sex work as a dirty job. That doesn't mean it's not a lucrative one though, even in tough economic times. While the recession may be bad for savings and morale, it's good for sex.

A recent study says the sale of sex toys and lingerie are up since the economy hit bottom. A report from The L.A. Times however claims that legal prostitutes in Nevada are facing harder times than ever. Which is it here in San Francisco? Is the recession good or bad for an industry that employs thousands of SF locals at jobs we often overlook? More here
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So I say I no longer worry about newspapers going out of work, I'm worried about the strip joints and prositutes that hang around the North Beach district of San Francisco (where my good buddies Ryan and Strat live).

Yes I'm joking. :)