new media and space

As we work on the New Media 1: Perspectives course due to run in the fall and introduce New Media Communication to students, a few issues are beginning to stand out. Perspectives concentrates on narrative structures as they relate to media and to spatial analysis as this broad concept relates to the tools and stages that we work with to present, study, build and arrange ideas in digital and other physical spaces, including architecture, and the standards of simulations as well the relationships that authors and readers develop as they interact through their actions and objects (more on this a little later).

Students will do lots of hands on work and walking around and observing. In the context of New Media 1: Perspectives, everything seems relevant and nothing appears insignificant. The physicality of things–books, interface, games–is standing out. The NMC website should be up soon.

interesting and odd

From the ABQ Journal:

Some would-be spectators hoping to attend Vice President Dick Cheney’s rally in Rio Rancho this weekend walked out of a Republican campaign office miffed and ticketless Thursday after getting this news:
Unless you sign an endorsement for President George W. Bush, you’re not getting any passes.
The Albuquerque Bush-Cheney Victory office in charge of doling out the tickets to Saturday’s event was requiring the endorsement forms from people it could not verify as supporters.
State Rep. Dan Foley, R-Roswell, speaking on behalf of the Republican Party, said Thursday that a “known Democrat operative group” was intending to try to crash Saturday’s campaign rally at Rio Rancho Mid-High School. He added that some people were providing false names and addresses and added that tickets for the limited-seating event should go to loyal Bush backers.
However, some who left the office off Osuna NE without tickets on Thursday said they’re not affiliated with an operative group and should have a right to see their vice president without pledging their allegiance to Bush.
“I’m outraged at this. I’m being closed off by my own government. It’s crazy,” said East Mountains resident Pamela Random, who added that she is an unaffiliated voter.
John Wade of Albuquerque said he initially signed the endorsement but was having second thoughts before he even left the office. Wade, a Democrat, said he returned his tickets and demanded to get his endorsement form back.
“It’s not right for me to have to sign an endorsement to hear (Cheney) speak,” Wade said. “I’m still pissed. This just ain’t right.”

I never know what to make of these sorts of things, other than to seek out other renditions. Thus this AP article.

news and markets continued

Here’s a portion of the Nightline transcript via Lexis. The speakers are Koppel and Stewart

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) Different group of people, different narrative. That’s the slice, so what I’m trying to get to here is, what is going on that is different now with these literally, I don’t think it’s even hundreds anymore, there are maybe close to a thousand outlets here.

JON STEWART

It’s that, the partisan mobilization has become a part of the media process. That they’ve realized that, this real estate that you possess, television, is the most valuable real estate known to rulers. If Alexander the Great had TV, believe me, he would have had his spin guys dealing, you know, Napoleon would have had people working. The key to leadership is to have that mouthpiece to the people, and that’s what, and that’s what this is. You guys are, this is a battle for the airwaves. And that’s what we watch, and that’s what’s so, I think, dispiriting, to those at home, who believe that, I think, there’s a sense here that you’re not participating in that battle and there’s a sense at home watching it of you’re absolutely participating and complicit in that battle, in the sense of this.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) Go a little further, go a little further on that.

JON STEWART

I’m a news anchor. Remember, this is bizarro world. And I say, the issue is healthcare. And insurance, and why 40 million American kids don’t have insurance, 40 million Americans are uninsured. Is this health insurance program being debated in Congress good for the country? Let’s debate it. I have with me Donna Brazile and Bay Buchanan. Let’s go. Donna. I think the Democrats really have it right here. I think that this is a, a pain to the insurance companies and to the drug companies and I think it’s wrong for America. Bay. Oh, no, no, no. That’s incorrect. What it is is, and then she throws out her figures from the Heritage Foundation and she throws her figures from the Brookings Institute, and the anchor, who should be the arbiter of the truth says, thank you both very much. That was really interesting. No, it wasn’t. That was Coke and Pepsi talking about beverage truth. And that, that game is what has, I think, caused people to go, I’m not watching this.

JON STEWART

(Off Camera) All right, so you have found an answer, through humor …

JON STEWART

No. It’s not an answer.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) … no, well, a truth, an answer in the sense that through humor …

JON STEWART

I found an outlet. I found a catharsis, a sneeze, if you will.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) But it’s not just a catharsis for you, it’s a catharsis for your viewers. Those who watch say at least when I’m watching Jon, he can use humor to say, BS. You know, that’s a crock.

JON STEWART

But that’s always been the case. Satire has always been.

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) Okay, but I can’t, I can’t do that.

JON STEWART

No. But you can say that’s BS. You don’t need humor to do it, because you have, what I wish I had. Which is credibility, and gravitas, this is interesting stuff. And it’s all part of the discussion, and I think it’s a good discussion to have, but I also think that it’s important to take a more critical look, you know? Don’t you think?

TED KOPPEL

(Off Camera) No.

The example Stewart uses above is I think interesting and the point he makes at the end of the snip makes good sense. There’s also a sense of the confusing of basic questions: what is news, how should news people distinguish themselves from their guests, and how should they mold their questions for the benefit of a public who needs to know. Part of the context goes to the “purpose” of news as essential to information in a democracy. Satire in its way meets the need for truth gathering and analysis, but in media space where markets are competative, then info and opinion become commodities, and thus that info and opinion must be “styled” to gather and keep an audience. The purpose therefore changes when hundreds of markets are being created: from truth seeking, exposition, analysis to “taste” and “demagoguery.” News space to market space.

Yes, Ted Koppel could do his homework and cut through the BS, but then the liar wouldn’t come back onto the program, yet that would serve us well, I think. From the above it would seem too much to ask.

So much for Neptune’s rings.

media, news, and markets

An odd theater went down on Nightline yesterday. Ted Koppel was having a discussion with John Stewart of the Daily Show, Stewart getting lots of air time as the convention proceeds. I’m starting to look at JS with a keener eye and the conversation was intersting but strange. I’ll have the trnscript up soon to mark some areas of interest.

Mainly the issue was media, markets, and the nature of the Democratic Party Convention as presented via media outlets. On TGH, we’ve talked a lot about media, journalism, and media space. The Daily Show, hosted by John Stewart, really has an edge over mainstream media, such as ABC news or Nightline. Why? Because the show is satire, a rhetorical tradition that goes back thousands of years. One of it’s goals is to “reveal” or attack human weakness, excess, failure, and other things that “hide” behind the public mask. Consider A Modest Proposal in this light, Swift’s works meant to “reveal” through irony, hyperbole, and metaphor.

Stewart made an interesting point about the convention and about media programming, describing a typical “scene” on CNN as an example: 2 partisans come on stage and sell their “ideas” and the anchor or host dismisses them after their time with a “thank you for your views, an example that also describes Nightline (which didn’t seem to rub Koppel the right way). The point of the example is that “news” has become part of the narrative of the “selling” of opinion (and candidates) to audiences. Stewart’s criticism came down this way: “Why doesn’t the anchor or host tell the partisans that their both pedalling BS”?

More on this later. There are important point to be made here. Horace can help.

voting and new media

How to handle voting? Like this (from NYT):

Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.

The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.

Without the question, the knowledge wouldn’t gone down a hole. It seems a simple matter to get a slip back compared to an ATM receipt. At this point, though, I’d rather just pull a lever.

More here.

flurries and knowledge

This really goes to the space issue, but I’ve been muddling over what needs knowing, especially since I’ll be teaching Shakespeare in the Fall and wish I didn’t have to include Midsummer in the reading list, but will anyway. (I’m not a great fan of the play, but so what?)

Big tv, same-sex marriage, Iraq, 9/11 report and its influence . . . issues in the radar.

But what should people, just the average me and you, really worry about?

That’s the question I can’t answer with a standard that doesn’t include “context” in the answer. But are there things that need to be known such that if they go unknown, ignored or missed the missing and he ignorance can have dangerous consequences?

In my mind, we have major issues with how we do politics in the institutional US, which may even include conversations over coffee, since coffee houses were invented “for” something. All space, all our circles of experience, has value if valued, used for a meaningful purpose and not a frivolous one. Is this what Turner is getting at below, really?

big tv

Given a particular deliberative mood and the theme of tv news, here’s a good set from Ted Turner:

In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can’t compete by imitating the big guys–they have to innovate, so they’re less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It’s called capitalism.

But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies, and that is what’s happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse. They often kill local programming because it’s expensive, and they push national programming because it’s cheap–even if their decisions run counter to local interests and community values. Their managers are more averse to innovation because they’re afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses of the risk-takers who succeed.

Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see–and what we don’t see–will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer, and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn’t have those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it’s like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they’re already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies to pieces. . . .

The loss of independent operators hurts both the media business and its citizen-customers. When the ownership of these firms passes to people under pressure to show quick financial results in order to justify the purchase, the corporate emphasis instantly shifts from taking risks to taking profits. When that happens, quality suffers, localism suffers, and democracy itself suffers.

frames and the tv box

An interesting broadcast on rhetorical frames and local news political reporting on PBS’s Now tonight. Last weeks bit by Thomas Frank was also quite good.

I watch the local weather really and rarely notice the news part on 11:00 news. I’m wondering what people think about the nature of CT’s political coverage, landscape, and breadth. It’s a small state, right? In CT what “is” local?

the right direction–looking up

This is just really tight and “up,” if you know what I mean. As in this cluster:

Rarer still, this sudden ache for brush and paint and paper when the popcorn puffs and lines and swirls go by. Cluster clouds are best for finding faces, gargoyles easiest of all because they lend themselves to all the frilly frowns and hairdos.

I’ve been thinking a lot about voice recently in writing as the driving vision of a particular piece. In this Spinning entry, Susan’s definitely finding “a voice” through which to “tell.”

Voice is one of those unteachable elements of observation and telling and is interwoven into the thing in itself. It’s an impression, an echo, the personality of a speaker. A voice says things a particular way. For example “Cluster clouds,” “finding faces,” “easiest of al” don’t just sound right, they’re the voice of the speaker, the mind of the thinker. For the writer, voice is the thing we have to climb inside and ride.

Right on. Read the rest. It’s a tight post that does everything in a compressed amount of time.