Archive for November 2009
Weekly Diaspora: Deporting Dobbs
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By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
After 30 years, commentator Lou Dobbs—infamous for his tirades against undocumented immigrants—has left CNN, as TPM reports. Dobbs employed disturbing, dangerous, and dated language to slur immigrants, often equating them with disease and infection. There is a connection between this type of demagoguery and violence.
Clearly, the organizing efforts of groups like Basta Dobbs have borne fruit, as even Dobbs admits. GRITtv recently covered the “way the mainstream media equates ‘Latino’ with ‘immigrant’” and Latino organizing efforts to correct this perspective.
“Over the past six months, it’s become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country, and affecting all of us,” Dobbs said in his last live broadcast for CNN. Other commentators belonging to the old school of racist separatism ought take note. It’s a new day in the USA. (more…)
Mirage of the Long Tail
While many consumption patterns are at play in the new competitive landscape, two are particularly important: power law and social cascades.
Power law: (aka “rich get richer effect”) is a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop. For example, the more babies are born, the more people grow up to have babies; or the more money you have in the bank, the more money you earn to put in the bank.
Both of these are more volatile and less predictable online, which creates opportunities for independent media. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: The Stupak Setback
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
A clique of anti-choice Democrats in Congress joined forces with Republicans to write abortion access out of the House’s health care reform bill last Saturday. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) wants to force women to choose between affordable health insurance and abortion coverage, even if they pay for abortion coverage with their own money.
Pro-choice Democrats and women’s health activists are up in arms over the eleventh hour deal. Ellie Smeal of Ms. Magazine denounces the Stupak amendment as a betrayal of women:
Millions of poor and middle-class women would be denied abortion coverage and millions more would lose the coverage they already have, since 85 percent of private plans now cover abortion. Far from being abortion-neutral, the Stupak amendment is a giant step backward for women. It’s unacceptable. In the compromise to get the bill passed, women and their health-care rights were thrown under the bus. (more…)
Declining Institutional Control and Affiliations
Many people today do not depend on institutions in the same way. This has forced media organizations to compete in a more decentralized, open environment. “There is this weird state of disconnect between existing structures and openness,” says Katrin Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive. “Open networks are where things are evolving; yet media organizations are not. There’s not a lot of pro-activeness but a lot of reactiveness.”
Acting Free of Institutions
“People are increasingly acting on their own, free of institutions. They are taking distinct actions on distinct issues online. If I was concerned about an issue in the past, I’d start an organization, open an office, get a bank account in order to organize letter-writing campaigns, do outreach to Congress. But, today, I might start a Facebook group and draw awareness without ever opening an office or a bank account,” says John Bracken of the MacArthur Foundation.
Civic engagement, for example, can no longer be measured by formal affiliations (a basis for past research). In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam claimed a decline in “social capital” by pointing to declining participation in civic organizations. Today, however, affiliations may even be higher—they are simply happening in more informal and decentralized ways. In fact, some research has shown that online social networks have actually increased social capital in many new ways.
The implications for institutions are significant: their relationship with constituents is more casual than what was previously acceptable, traditional organizational hierarchies are flattening, and network effects are amplified independently of institutions. Twitter has succeeded, often in spite formal institution, because of its open platform. The government of Iran couldn’t even shut it down.
Don Tapscott, author of Growing up Digital, says that every institution faces a fundamental transformation. “People can now self-organize like never before. Young people have at their fingertips the most powerful tools, to find out what’s going on, to organize collective responses. Every institution in society is going to be naked and if you’re going to be naked, you better be buff.”
Readers Not Tied to Publishers
Today’s online users, particularly casual newsreaders, increasingly receive news from direct referrals and links from their social networks. Only approximately one quarter of casual newsreaders, who comprise most of Americans, say they trust a few news sources more than others. In contrast, two- thirds of hard-core newsreaders feel that way, which indicates the value of trustworthy sources remains high for at least a small segment of consumers. Furthermore, people increasingly consume news from multiple sources. A 2008 Pew Research Center survey asked news consumers to list their most frequented online news sites. The results mostly included portals and TV news sites, yet revealed considerable fragmentation across the board. Only eight websites were mentioned by more than 2% of respondents. Only Google and Yahoo! increased their perceived trustworthiness as news sources, compared to the center’s 2006 survey.
As a result, publication-centered news may continue to face greater challenges in turning readers’ fragmenting attention into a steady return of visits. Michael Hirschorn went as far as saying that, “The Internet has done much to encourage lazy news consumption, while virtually eradicating the meaningful distinctions among newspaper brands.”
The new rules of online engagement, according to Verclas, mean that there will be no central control. “It mutates and adapts; it’s flexible and agile,” she says. “We have no idea in the media how to do this. With the principles of decentralization, profits go away.”
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
Weekly Audit: The Unemployment Epidemic
By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger
On Friday, we learned that the U.S. unemployment rate officially broke 10% for the first time since the early Reagan years. This is about as bad as it gets for a modern, developed economy. No economic force takes a heavier toll on a society than rampant joblessness, and few personal setbacks take a deeper psychological toll than being out of a job for months on end. If Congress and President Obama don’t do something to create jobs fast, both are going to pay a hefty political price when next year’s mid-term elections roll around. (more…)
Dawn of a Demographic Revolution
“My bottom line is that demographics are changing in this country dramatically. Technology is changing dramatically. Willingness to hear progressive media is increasing dramatically,” says Larry Irving, former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce. “There is a certain window of time to make something long-lasting.”
Effects of Diversity
“Independent, progressive journalism doesn’t understand that progressives are speaking past Black and Brown audiences, but are dependent on Black and Brown votes,” Irving says. “They are condescending to these communities, afraid of these communities, and are not supporting and building in these communities. The reality is that five to ten years from now Browns and Blacks are going to make up more than 50% of the vote.”
Attitudes about diversity are changing in the United States. “There is a lot less concern among the younger generation about the racial divide,” says Irving. “For some Black Americans it’s important that the media they access is Black. But for younger people who want Black perspectives, it doesn’t have to be from Black people all the time. Black is one of the things they are—they have grown up in a diverse world. Some of the walls we’re seeing now are crumbling.”
Shifting demographics create both challenges and opportunities for content producers: Different groups use media in different ways. Irving notes that for Latinos, Facebook, MySpace and SMS texting drove greater adoption of technology. Furthermore, according to a 2008 Pew Research Center study, African-American Internet users are 18% more likely to watch online video than white Internet users and 15% more likely to have a profile page on a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook. In terms of gender differences, for instance, women tend to watch network TV news (particularly morning programs such as the Today show), while more men watch cable TV shows. It is insufficient for a publisher to simply make content available anytime, anywhere on any device. They must also customize content for different audiences on different devices.
Effects of Millennial Generation
“I’m concerned that independent media organizations are not figuring out how to tap into the next generation of news consumers,” said Erin Polgreen of The Media Consortium (TMC). Young people (born between mid 1980s to early 1990s) are leaving print and television news, and for a long time incumbent organizations believed that they might eventually come back. “In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade,” according to a 2008 Pew Research Center study. “About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998.”
Nevertheless, the Millennial Generation’s members are world-changers with strong democratic values, which indicates that they are interested in information about the world around them. Don Tapscott, who authored the 2008 book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing the World, explains: “This is the first generation to come of age in digital age. They have enormously strong values—they care a lot. It’s not true about this being the ‘narcissistic me’ generation. Civic engagement in U.S. has been growing decade-to-decade and is currently at an all time high, and it has turned into political action. This generation is going to change the world.”
If independent media can experiment with bold new ways to engage audiences, they may tap a new generation of users that will transform the world and how the news is reported. “In the progressive community, (young) people will have the more universal POV, and also be the ambassadors for their communities,” Irving says. “Don’t expect progressive media to have a direct path initially. They need to find trusted voices inside the community that can help create the echo chamber.”
For more information about globalization and its effects, download Vol. 2 of The Big Thaw.
This blog is an excerpt from The Big Thaw, a guide to the evolution of independent media, written by Tony Deifell of Q Media Labs and produced by The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. Learn how your organization can use this report. For more information and recommendations from the study, click here.
Weekly Mulch: The Grown Ups are Back in Charge
By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger
Senate Democrats in the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) finally squelched Republican boycotts and passed a version of the climate bill yesterday morning. Last week, Republican Senators refused to show up to committee hearings in an attempt to stall the bill. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo notes that EPW has now set “the stage for other panels to amend the legislation.”
To no one’s surprise, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) immediately complained about the legislation on Fox News. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) was the lone Democrat that did not vote, which Inhofe interpreted as a sign that the bill is “dead.”
Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was much more upbeat and argued that the Republican boycott actually marred their credibility. “The absence of the Republicans during the Environmental Protection Agency’s presentation was a clear message that their criticism of the EPA analysis was not a substantive one,” Boxer said. “We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have been able to move the bill.”
Inhofe also condemned Boxer for passing the bill through the committee unconventionally. Aaron Wiener writes for The Washington Independent that “Without a quorum that included at least two Republicans, the committee was unable to open formal debate on amendments to the bill. But passage requires just a simple majority, and Chairman Boxer and the Democratic leadership chose to forgo amendments in order to move the legislation quickly, given that the end of the GOP boycott was nowhere in sight.” Luckily, now that the bill is moving on to other committees, Inhofe and his Republican EPW colleagues will no longer have much of a say on the bill’s final outcome.
With Copenhagen just a month away, Kate Sheppard argues for Mother Jones that the odds of passing a viable climate bill before the climate summit are very grim. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will run a series of studies after each committee’s climate and energy bills are combined into a single piece of legislation. Even though the bill passed through the EPW committee, other committees, such as the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Finance Committee, and Agriculture Committee, need to weigh in before the bill is reviewed by the EPA and sent for a vote in the full Senate. How will this affect climate talks in Copenhagen? Sheppard writes that, “Without the urgency imposed by the Copenhagen deadline, any little momentum that the climate bill had could disappear very fast.”
While this news is discouraging, Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly points out that, “It’s worth remembering that it wasn’t too terribly long ago that reports said the same thing about health care reform. Legislative battles can often take some unpredictable twists and turns.” This is certainly true, but in order for the legislation to pass, more Republicans will have to get on board. Democrats are trying to gain Republican support for a bipartisan bill by pledging to meet them halfway.
“For several GOP lawmakers, the key on energy policy is building new nuclear power plants. So, Dems are willing to make a deal — they’ll back approval for expedited construction of U.S. nuclear reactors in exchange for support for the rest of the bill,” Benen writes.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC.) showed that some Republicans are capable of exerting leadership. In a press conference with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Graham criticized Republicans’ childish behavior toward climate change legislation. He asked, “If you can’t participate in solving the problem, then why are you up here?”
David Roberts writes for Grist that the three senators pledged to work with the White House to rescue the climate bill. The senators’ plan is not meant to undermine Sen. Boxer’s efforts but to strengthen the bill overall through a “dual track.”
“By stepping in, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are letting the political establishment know that the Very Serious grown-ups are back in charge. (It’s pretty telling that Kerry feels the need to craft another bill alongside the one with his name on it.) They will go to the White House, close the door, and hash out what kind of bill can really pass,” writes Roberts.
The road ahead won’t be easy. Congress’ inability to pass climate change legislation could ruin any chance of success in Copenhagen. In weeks to come, the bill will move on to other Senate committees and the world will be watching. Stay tuned.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Diaspora: Immigration Impacts Everything
By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
While many pundits and political analysts are musing about what Tuesday’s mixed bag election results mean for Obama administration, New America Media reports that “there’s another trend to watch; the surprising prominence of immigration politics.”
Even in states where other concerns “like small farms and forestry management” are far more immediate, “immigration has become a litmus test issue for the conservative movement,” and the expectation is, oddly, a “lockstep” goal toward opposing legalization. One has to wonder how the self-destructive choice to oppose immigration at any cost came about.
ColorLines‘ Leticia Miranda asks “What’s next?” now that the infamous Hutto immigration detention center, notorious for myriad human rights violations such as keeping children in prison-like conditions, is closing. Detainees are simply being moved to another detention center in Pennsylvania. So how will we know that substandard conditions and alleged sexual abuse will not be repeated? The problem is not location. The problem is that a class of people have been isolated and assigned lesser worth. making it easy to exploit them. Still, the closing of Hutto is an accomplishment for the ACLU and other activists that worked so hard to make it happen. It’s also a sign that our nation will not tolerate such conditions.
Another positive sign of progress is the reversal of what the Washington Monthly dubbed “a senseless ban” that prohibited HIV-positive individuals from migrating or traveling to the US. Author Steve Benen notes that progress in overturning the ban, which was imposed by the Reagan administration 22 years ago, began with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and then-Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-OR) in 2008.
In negative news, the anti-immigration group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) have released a bizarrely antagonistic press release calling Rep. Gutierrez (D-IL) a “traitor,” as The Washington Independent reports. The full press release is here. In it, William Gheen, President of ALIPAC, happily warns that ALIPAC is “ready to organize and channel the backlash wave of anger that is coming into peaceful civic action” and for no apparent reason, employing a Dirty Harry quote beseeching an unnamed person to “Make my day, punk!” People like Gheen and Lou Dobbs are forever talking about a culture war and are obviously not interested in human beings.
It is far too easy to get the same impression about the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Reporting on an Associated Press analysis of previously undisclosed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Wiretap declares ICE to be “critically flawed, replete with agents who have badly bungled ongoing cases.” This includes “covering up crimes and even interfering in a police investigation into whether one informant killed another.” The list of ICE’s violations of the public trust include “soliciting sex from witnesses, letting informants smuggle undocumented folks, sexual relationships with informants” and using their position improperly to accrue “personal gain.”
As author M. Junaid Levesque-Alam makes clear, any agency will develop some degree of corruption that must be rooted out. But the dangers increase when you empower an agency “specifically created to target the vulnerable” with federal authority and weapons, all the while calling this population “illegal aliens.”
Also in Wiretap, Jamila King reports on San Francisco’s ongoing battle with Mayor Gavin Newsom regarding when deportation proceedings should be initiated against youth that have bee arrested but not tried for a crime. The city recently voted that juveniles accused of crimes must actually be convicted before they are deported.
Oddly, even in the face of “crowds of people gathered at city hall to celebrate the board’s decision to overturn” the “draconian mandate,” Newsom vetoed the change last Wednesday. Supervisor David Campos responded to the veto by saying it was a “sad day for San Francisco” and that Newsom had “chosen to be on the wrong side of history on this issue.” King reminds us, however, that Newsom’s move is toothless. The Board of Supervisors had enough votes to override his veto.
Deportation is a serious issue. Last week the Diaspora featured “Torn Apart” ColorLines‘ web-only series on deportation’s effects on families of color. Free Speech TV has posted an alert to protect families from deportation. It includes a link with actions you can take to help.
Finally, as The Real News reports, Mexico is offering amnesty to all undocumented immigrants within its borders, be they from the US or other nations (video below). Juan Ignacio Pedroza, Migratory Regulations Official for Mexico, makes clear why the country is making such a move. The government of Mexico sees immigrants as an economic boon, and wants to offer them a path to citizenship so that they can contribute and be part of the social fabric.
Mexico is an older nation and surely imperfect. But this decision demonstrates wisdom about how a people can come together that we might learn from here in the US.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Device Proliferation, Convergence & Their Effects
“The future of media for me would be the type of content that I want anytime, anywhere, on any device,” says Ashish Soni, who directs the Information Technology Program at the University of Southern California. One trend that has become very clear in the last few years: Consumers want complete control of the content they consume and access to it on all their devices, platforms and services. As a result, media content no longer falls neatly along the lines that used to separate print, radio, TV or film. (more…)
New Scarcities and Their Effects
Some people have viewed the new media paradigm as a perpetual rise in disintermediation, in which authors go directly to readers. But mediation—and the organizations that benefit from it—may simply be shifting from one place of control to another. Companies such as Google are dominating the new forms of mediation: search and filtering.
In a keynote at Nokia World 2007 about the “taxonomy of free,” Chris Anderson of Wired magazine said that time and money are no longer the chief scarcities for people. The new scarcities include time, money, attention and reputation. He asked the audience, “Which economy are you playing in?” (more…)