Question of the Day: Does local news need an anchor?

Today’s New York Times notes that local news anchors are increasingly being forced into retirement.  The article explains: “Across the country, longtime local TV anchors are a dying breed. Facing an economic slump and a severe advertising downturn, many stations have cut costs drastically in the last year, and veteran anchors, with their expensive contracts, […]

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Coverage of the Mumbai Attacks: Was It Any Good?

Like many people, I spent much of last week consuming coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.  I first learned of the attacks while watching TV.  While switching between various cable news networks, I also surfed across several online newspaper and similar sites looking for updates and insights.  I watched for updates from people I […]

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Final Session: Aha! Moments

Rarely do you attend a conference where the accumulated intellectual star power on one stage is as great as was the case in our final group panel discussion at the We Media conference Friday morning.  We had presidents and pollsters, intellectuals and editors, donors and corporate folks all gathered for one chat.  What we did […]

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Session 4: Aha! Moments

The average age of the We Media audience dropped significantly when “The Content Creatives’ took the stage for the first panel discussion on Friday.  The discussion was supposed to pick up where Thursday night’s video presentation (outside under the stars) left off, helping the collective media brain trust in the audience understand what kinds of […]

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Session 3: Aha! Moments

I’m not sure that the third major discussion of the We Media conference was appropriately titled, but it sure was interesting.  Yes, the concept of ‘soft power’ implies that there are sources of influence that are not tied explicitly to military or financial might… and that influence is quite regularly demonstrated by the media, and […]

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Session 2: Aha! Moments

There were numerous references to the ‘elephant in the room’ at the second session of We Media’s on Thursday.  What is the elephant?  Money. Of course. No matter what role you play in the media space – head of a newspaper conglomerate trying to figure out how to integrate citizen media into your operation, individual […]

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Session 1: Aha! Moments

The first session degenerated (is that the right word?) into a discussion about who should control the conversation in our society: “little m” media (bloggers and community contributors) or “Big M” media (i.e. media companies and professional journalists).  We have had that conversation – several times (at We Media alone) – and very little new ground was broken.  Why is […]

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Where Do Trust and Connectedness Overlap?

Last week, we talked about Trust in the Media (as well as trust generally). This week we have been talking about connectedness. Is there a relationship between the two? Karen Stephenson, a social-network business consultant and friend of the Media Center (I first met Karen at a Media Center sponsored Symposium last year) would argue […]

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Trust in the Media: Closing It Out

I want to thank everyone who participated in the discussion this week about Trust in the Media. Its just about time to wind down this part of the discussion and for me to pass the moderator baton to one of my colleagues. The next area of focus as we lead up to the We Media […]

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Trust In The Media: A Pre-Discussion

One of the core themes of the upcoming We Media Global Forum is trust — or specifically, “How trust and empowerment shape our global, connected society.” At the big-think event in London early next month we will get our first look at the BBC-Reuters-Media Center global poll on trust and no doubt spend a good […]

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