Tag Archives: media

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Web not killing journalism, improving it

newspaper with blogging headlineWe’ve heard plenty of worrying from journalists about how the death of print newspapers will be the death of journalism itself, so here’s a contrary view from within the same camp. Jim Stovall of JPROF suggests that the medium of newspapers is actually part of the problem, and that journalism will be improved once it is no longer chained to the printing press.

He provides a number of reasons for optimism, of which I think this is the most telling:

More reporters. Students in my experience are wildly excited about this new age of journalism. I am honored to be the faculty adviser to the Tennessee Journalist, the student operated news web site of the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee. More than 35 people regularly show up at our weekly staff meeting (only the editors are required to come) and the numbers are growing. The number of our majors has grown from 350 to 450 in just one year.

What has caused this, I wonder? The tempting conclusion is that the ease of self-publication has made people less intimidated by the idea of producing writing in public, but maybe it’s also to do with the erosion of the media monoculture – the web has provided a space for dissenting voices and niche interests that newspapers couldn’t support, tied as they are to physical locations.

Whatever the cause, it’s good to see some optimism. Journalism was born out of the desire to learn and communicate, and it looks like that desire has been increased rather than eroded. Who knew? [via TechDirt; image by Annie Mole]

Interviews

INTERVIEW: BRUCE STERLING on Caryatids, Viridian and the death of print

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Bruce SterlingNovelist, pundit, design theorist and iconoclast – Bruce Sterling is all of these and more, and is one of the people that the Futurismic project has always looked to for inspiration.

Sterling has a new novel called Caryatids out at the end of February, the writing of which has somehow been shoehorned in between him bouncing around Europe, lecturing on design theory and keeping an eye on the maelstrom of global multimedia culture and politics.

He was good enough to cave into the pestering of this irredeemable fanboy and answer some questions about the new novel, the closing of the Viridian Green project and the relentless demise of science fiction print media. Continue reading INTERVIEW: BRUCE STERLING on Caryatids, Viridian and the death of print →

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Cheaper to give away Kindles than print the New York Times

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According to an analysis by Silicon Alley Insider, it actually costs the financially struggling New York Times Company about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead. And an inside source tells them their estimate of the Times‘s printing costs is so low it’s “not even in the ballpark.” (Via Instapundit.)

Bottom line: “as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn’t just expensive and inefficient; it’s laughably so.”

No, papers can’t–yet–force everyone to read their content on some sort of hand-held device. But in the future, why not? Subscribe, and get a free ebook reader to which stories are uploaded regularly as they’re posted. Bonus: you can use the reader for other kinds of content, too. Which would also drive ebook sales. Win-win.

(And I say this as the former editor of a weekly newspaper, who once swore up and down that nothing would ever replace traditional print…a former newspaper editor, I might add, who now reads his local newspaper‘s digital edition exclusively.)

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]newspapers,ebooks,media,technology[/tags]

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Brain surgery, media, and serendipity

brainA North Carolina neurosurgeon had just about given up on the case of Brandon, a 19-year-old tumor patient, till a story on CNN.com led him to a new surgical tool that let him operate successfully.

Dr. Thomas Ellis, a senior neurosurgeon at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, had given the mother the bad news. But:

“As I do every night, I read CNN online and immediately saw on the front page that there was an article in the health section entitled, From military device to life-saving surgical tool. …”

Ellis got in touch with the manufacturer in Massachusetts, and 72 hours later the device was in his hands.

It was originally devised for the U.S. military, and rolled out for surgeries three months before Ellis read about it.

The tool allows surgeons to easily manipulate a CO2 laser and bend it to reach almost any tissue in the body, particularly in cases where scalpels may pose a danger.

Next day (Christmas Eve, no less):

“After only 30 minutes, it was clear this laser device, as simple to use as a scalpel, was successfully debulking the tumor.”

Ellis operated on Brandon for four hours and managed to remove the remaining 80 percent of the tumor by vaporizing it from the inside with the laser and then excising it.

“The boy was then extubated [removing the tube to his airway] after about 30 minutes and that same evening he was eating normally,” Wolf said.

Brandon has recovered his basic functions and is behaving normally.

Ellis says:

“I think it’s an amazing story because it’s yet another demonstration of how interconnected we’ve become in this world.

“You have a CNN reporter in London, who writes a story about a neurosurgeon in Chicago, who’s using a device that was invented in Massachusetts. That story is read by a different neurosurgeon in North Carolina, and all within 72 hours, we have the device in North Carolina.”

[PET scan image from Wikimedia Commons]

Blog

Clay Shirky on the very near future of magazines

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The pertinence of this to the genre fiction scene is inescapable… from an interview with Clay Shirky at The Guardian:

If you pick a magazine at random, it will not interest you. For people who care about quality, it’s easier to find it online. If it’s a highly qualified niche magazine, something aimed at surgeons or firefighters, it’s going online. There’s no reason those things should exist.

My bold. Your comments?