Yearly Archives: 2005

Pressthink: All Regimes are Founded on Opinion

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Jay Rosen has a very useful post over at PressThink:

He says, “As a pastor I have a very real sense of the importance of local dailies and even crappy ol’ free weeklies to build community, or foment division if that’s what clarity brings. Some regular platform for cueing the 20 percent of any town, village, or city that actually get things done as to what needs doing, or stopping, is incredibly important. I can’t figure out what that would look like in Midwestern communities without a newspaper, but I’m afraid that folks who are concerned about big-C Community had better start imagining, fast.”

Murdoch: The End of Newspapers as We Know Them

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The Economist:

?I BELIEVE too many of us editors and reporters are out of touch with our readers, ?Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media companies, told the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week. No wonder that people, and in particular the young, are ditching their newspapers. Today’s teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings ?don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important,? Mr Murdoch said, ?and they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel.? And yet, he went on, ?as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably, complacent.?

Download Murdoch’s speech for free from audible.com

Skype & Telco Disintermediation

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Martin Geddes:

It would be a tragic mistake to underestimate the potential market power Skype is accumulating. According to Skype’s own figures from VON Canada, they’re sustaining a growth rate of 1000% a year. Just another 2 years of this growth and they would have over 200 million concurrent users online. This is not beyond plausibility given how Skype and broadband are symbiotically driving adoption of one-another; the addressable market is exploding too.

That means even if you’re a mega-telco — a Verizon or a Vodafone — you’re screwed. You can create your own Private Voice Application, and start marketing it to your early-adopter users, but who ya gonna call? Ain’t nobody but Skypers out there. Want some Skype presence in your Vodafone-branded VoIP app? Gonna cost ya!

Minneapolis named top “Technopolis”

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Some interesting tidbits on Minneapolis in the latest eprairie newsletter, including Popular Science’s proclamation as the top “Technopolis”.

UW-Whitewater’s Literate Cities Study ranked Minneapolis #1… (Madison was #4). Take a look at their data sources, here. (I wonder what the yellow pages tells them, exactly. I never use it, frankly. The web is much faster).

I also have my doubts on the value of newspaper circulation data, now.

Baldwin on Election Reform

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Brittany Jordt:

Citizens of the Dane County area gathered at the Senior Center in Madison Saturday morning as U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, and Congressman Rush Holt, D-New Jersey, discussed the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2005.
?[Promotion of voter security is] personal and something that I feel very strongly about,? Baldwin said.